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Introduction 1 NOTES Introduction 1. Gerard of Bourges (also known as Gerard of Berry), Glosule Super Viaticum, edited and translated in Lovesickness, pp. 200–201. 2. “Courtly” love is the English translation of Gaston Paris’s term, amour courtois. See Charrette, p. 519. Fin’amors appears frequently in the Old French verse romance; the Old French version of amour courtois does not. See J.D.Burnley, “Fine Amor: Its Meaning and Context,” Review of English Studies 31 (1980): 129–48. 3. As Pierre Payer notes in his study of sexual behavior as outlined in the penitentials, “Yet I had a feeling while reading these manuals that they were engaged in strenuous combat against urges and forces in human nature which were long in being brought to heel.” Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code 550–1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 121. 4. The Church was motivated to assert the sacramental nature of marriage in part by challenges from heretic sects claiming that because all matter was evil, marriage could not be considered a sacrament. It can be argued that marriage was already understood to be a sacrament long before the twelfth century,but that it simply was not officially articulated as such until challenges from heretic sects occasioned the defense of marriage as sacrament. For example, in Book I, Chap. 11 of De Bono Coniugali, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 41 (Vienna: F.Tempsky, 1887),Augustine argues that marriage represents a sacramental bond. In the twelfth century Peter Lombard sets out the seven sacraments, the last of which is marriage. See the fourth book of his sentences, dist. 2, chap. 1, Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Ed. Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–1981), vol. 2, pp. 239–240.The status of marriage as a sacrament was confirmed at the second Council of Lyons, 1274: “The same Holy Roman Church also holds and teaches that there are seven sacraments of the Church: one is baptism, which has been mentioned above; another is the sacrament of confirmation which bishops confer by the laying on of hands while they anoint the reborn; then penance, the Eucharist, the sacrament of order, mat- rimony and extreme unction which, according to the doctrine of the Blessed James, [ James 5:14–15] is administered to the sick.” The Christian Faith in the 246 N OTES Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, ed. Josef Neuner and Jacques Dupuis (New York:Alba House, 1982), p. 20. It is also important to note that the Church was never a monolithic institution and that it debated its own decisions.The debate over marriage practice takes place as much within the Church as between the Church and the laity. 5. See Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 183–203. 6. Exceptions existed. Pope Alexander III (ruled 1159–1181) upheld the prin- ciple of consent even when it caused him political difficulties. See Charles Donohue, Jr., “The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History 8, 2 (1983): 144–158 and Law, Sex, and Christian Society,pp.331–337. 7. Keith Nickolaus describes Christian feudal marriage as the outcome of negotiation: “In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, medieval attitudes toward marriage included dogmatic practices and opinions informed in some cases by religious ideology,in others by secular customs, and emerging marriage doctrines negotiated both traditions and relied on both pragmatic and speculative approaches in response to what historians agree was a note- worthy paucity of established precedents and principles for defining a Christian doctrine of marriage.” Marriage Fictions in Old French Secular Narratives, 1170–1250: A Critical Re-evaluation of the Courtly Love Debate (New York:Routledge, 2002), p. 133. 8. The consummation versus consent debate was long and complicated. Gratian originated the so-called “Italian” solution, which held that consent and consummation created an indissoluble marriage bond which would invalidate any later marriage. The “French” solution held that consent to marry alone created an indissoluble marriage bond, which would invalidate any later marriage, even if the first were not consummated. See Law,Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 235–240. 9. See Charles Donohue, Jr., “Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage,” pp. 146–157 and also his “The Policy of Alexander the Third’s Consent Theory of Marriage,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Monumenta Iuris Canonica 5, ed. Stephan Kuttner (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1976), pp. 251–281. Clandestine marriage had been addressed at the Council of Rouen of 1072, the Councils of Westminster of 1076 and 1102, the Council of Troyes of 1102, the Council of London of 1200, and, most famously, at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Alexander III also pronounced upon clandestine marriages, ruling them valid,although the spouses in question were required to undergo penance. See Michael M. Sheehan, “Marriage Theory and Practice in the Conciliar Legislation and Diocesan Statutes of Medieval England,” Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978): 408–460.Also, Law,Sex, and Christian Society, p. 189–190. 10. Memoirs of the Papal Court, pp. 14–15. 11. In this study I will not discuss the possible connection between treatments of love in the lyric and the romance, because I am interested in the means by which romance composers transform what they imagine as the “raw” N OTES 247 emotion of love into something useful in a narrative context, and the uses to which love in its new form is put.The notion of the transformation of love into a useful emotion plays no role in lyric poetry. On further reasons that the origins of the stories of love in narrative works should not be sought in troubadour lyric, see Keith Nickolaus, Marriage Fictions, chapter one, “Marriage Fictions and the Meaning of ‘Courtly Love,’ ” pp. 1–48. 12. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Masoch/Lancelotism,” New Literary History 28 (1997): 236. 13. On the presence of this contradiction in twelfth-century theories of king- ship see Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political T heory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 95–96. See also Walter Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1961), pp. 150–154. 14. Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics,p.151. 15. Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics, p. 156. 16. To cite a parallel, American society is currently re-examining traditional conceptions of marriage, an institution that has frequently proven incom- patible with individual happiness. Individuals are genuinely eager to re- define marriage in such a way as to enable their own personal satisfaction while at the same time creating social stability. The widespread obsession with the love lives of American political leaders, upon whose bodies are projected a series of conflicting notions about love and marriage, reflects this interest. But at the same time, the bodies of leaders are canvases onto which larger senses of malaise with public institutions are projected. Laura Kipnis writes of American politicians of the late twentieth century that their “marital fidelity had somehow become elevated into something beyond a political requirement: it had begun to resemble a utopian imaginary ...as if once transparency between our politicians’ private and public lives was achieved, faith in our national institutions could be restored once again.” Against Love: A Polemic (New York:Pantheon Book, 2003), p. 168. 17. Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p.6. 18. Keith Nickolaus, Marriage Fictions. 19. Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore and London:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p.5. 20. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966; London and New York City: Routledge, 2002), p. 142. 1 The Problem of Love 1. The Knight, the Lady and the Priest, p. 281. Lambert’s story of Arnoul and Ide is recorded in chapters 93 and 94 of Lambert of Ardres, Lamberti Ardensis his- toria comitum Ghisnensium, Monumenta Germaniae historica inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum, Scriptorum 24, 32 vols. (Hannover: Hahn, 1826–1934). The History of the 248 N OTES Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres has been translated by Leah Shopkow (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). For the story of Arnoul and Ide see pp. 125–129. 2. The Knight, the Lady and the Priest, p. 216.The seminal article on the “youths” whose behavior presumably was targeted by the romance is Duby’s “The ‘Youth’ in Twelfth Century Aristocratic Society,” Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe, ed. Frederic L. Cheyette (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1968), pp. 198–209. 3. For Paris, amour courtois is a social—rather than merely literary—phenomenon. He writes that the circle of Marie de Champagne “et des siens a été le principal foyer de la propagation en France de l’idéal social, sentimental et poétique” (p. 523) (and her friends and family formed the principal setting for the propa- gation in France of the social, sentimental, and poetic ideal . .). My translation. 4. See D.W. Robertson, “The Concept of Courtly Love as an Impediment to the Understanding of Medieval Texts,” in The Meaning of Courtly Love,ed. F.X. Newman (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1968), pp. 1–18. On Paris’ use of amour courtois see Henry Ansgar Kelly,“The Varieties of Love in Medieval Literature According to Gaston Paris,” Romance Philology 40 (1986): 301–327. 5. The idea is that to the extent that courtly love is a cover for physical desire, a humorous inconsistency between the fleshly exigencies and spiritual claims of love can be laid bare within the narrative, creating an occasion for comic exploitation.
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