Sifting the Cinders of the Cathars IV Chivalry and Solar Heroes
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Sifting the Cinders of the Cathars IV Chivalry and Solar Heroes Troubadours, Chivalry and Courtly Love The chansons de geste were the old national epics, meant for the hall, for Homeric recitation after supper. The French romances were dedicated to noble ladies, and represented everything that was most refined and elegant in the life of the twelfth century. The old French poet’s well- known division of stories according to the three “matters”—the “matter of France”, the “matter of Britain” and the “matter of Rome the great”—imperfectly sums up the riches and the variety of French romantic themes, even when it is understood that the “matter of Rome” includes the whole of antiquity—tales of Thebes and Troy, and the wars of Alexander. Arthur was a manifestation of the suppressed Christianity of the first century that had a transfusion of blood from the related myths of the Celts and the Germans. Lady Charlotte Guest rendered a service to Celtic sources and Celtic influence, with her translation of the Welsh Mabinogion . Arthur’s knights are a collection of Celtic gods known already in the Mabinogion . Further elements appear in Provence also in the tenth century, suggesting a link, however unlikely, between the Celtic lands and Languedoc. In the eleventh century, it exploded in Languedoc with the troubadour chivalric image expressed in poems and songs. The troubadours were poets of Languedoc, a country then separate from France, and closer to Catalonia, northern Spain, and northern Italy, who wrote in the Language of Oc (Occitan), the lingua Franca of the time, from the end of the eleventh century to the end of the thirteenth. The troubadour’s deity was the Lady, the idealised woman, in whose service the aspirant won the prize of the Rose—chivalric or courtly love. Maureen Duffy tells us of the eleventh century manuscript poem kept at Canterbury which describes “the Spring wherein everything renews save only the lover”, written in the first person feminine. Troubadour lyrics were often written from the woman’s viewpoint. Establishment Christian fanatics had scraped other similar poems from the pages but had somehow missed this one. Christ, the son of David (the Lover), loved the earth and that renewed all. It is sun god mythology, with Christ being Balder or Mithras, showing the roots of a primitive Christianity that became Catharism. The troubadour was a poet, whether a poor wandering minstrel or a king. An early and prominent troubadour was Pierre Vidal who wrote about hospitality. The places he mentioned were all Cathar cities and fortresses. Troubadours reviled the clergy and their protectors, the feudal lords. They liked best to lead the wandering life of the Cathars, who set off along the road in pairs. David De Rougement The Roman Church had supposedly set moral standards for almost 1000 years but morals were at the level of the gutter, and the emerging class of nobles, keen that their inheritance should not go to other men’s sons, wanted a more reliable moral code than the Church offered. It seems they found it in the Christian heresies that had lingered among the poor for the whole of this time. In the south of France, the local nobles found the heresy worth adopting. Amour courtois , first appeared in the country of the Cathars around 1100. Out of it came an amazingly open society so soon after the Dark Ages, with standards of good manners and honour that made the lord’s job of handling the small but confined town, that his castle staff was, less oppressive. The lord and lady were the father and mother figures of the whole household—“mi don” and “ma dame”. But the lord had duties beyond the castle, to the rest of his estates that were often dispersed, and to the king, hunting and fighting, and so the lady was in charge for much of the time, and she it was that had to be treated honorably and respectfully by all. Do not imagine that the lady was necessarily an old dowager. “Ma dame” was often still young and attractive, having married for title or wealth often in her low teens. Thus, Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII at fifteen, had a child but divorced him at thirty and married Henry II of England, being thus a wife to a long serving English king and mother to three others, with nonconformist consequences that are never recognized. The staff of the castle consisted of the court itself—a body of young men and women of noble blood in their own right placed as apprentices with the lord from the age of about twelve to learn the noble skills of warfare, hunting and management. The youths were learning to be knights and the girls, as attendants to the lady, were learning the skills of household management. The were training to be rulers, and were not expected to marry for romantic love but for political reasons and for the betterment of their family and prospects. Yet in these narrow confines, pubescent boys and girls had to live together for many years without spoiling their future chances of success by having love-children. The adolescent sexuality of the young princes and princesses had to be controlled. Christianity never had any high regard for women, as we can see in its origins in Essenism, but the established Church had written them off as beneath contempt, whereas it seems that the primitive Church treated women with respect, perhaps out of fear of their powers of temptation. This respect of women proved a better way of controlling adolescent sexuality than the disdain of the Church. After all, disdain of women invites rapage, and that was not what the feudal lords wanted within their own demesnes. Cathars had accepted women as equal to men. Their souls were equally certain to be saved. Hildegard of Bingen thought people would rise to be angels, and directly experience God, a Cathar belief in so far as it was certain. So, respect of women had to be conditioned, and young men were taught a sense of their own honour as knights and a respect for women that made them hesitate to be dishonourable. The ideal of courtly love is that it is true yet it is unrequited, and so is given as selfless and adoring service. All the young men could aspire to love the lady of the house, but it was a love they knew could not be returned in a personal way, and to expect particular requitement of it was dishonourable. All Cathars sought the ultimate spiritual union with God, so God was loved spiritually, but it could not be a singularly requited love because God necessarily loved everyone, and no one could be singularly loved by Him. God loved every soul equally and therefore none in particular, unlike the personal and mutually self-congratulating image that modern Christians have of their God. The Cathar ideal was one of chaste love, and this it was that the troubadour celebrated. When the object of your love loves everyone equally, then your own singular love is unrequited in the same singular way. The best love was therefore unselfish, given freely, but not demanding any personal response. The troubadour ideal was this platonic love. Practising it helped them touch the spiritual goal that Cathar Perfects sought in their ascetic existence. The squires could woo and flatter the lady and her attendants, but it was an elaborate game that had no physical outcome for the honourable knight—it was training for heaven—the Holy Grail. Like Cathar Croyants , honourable knights extolled chastity even if they did not always achieve it as knights errant! The young ladies in waiting simply had to resist temptation, seeking help from the older ladies and praying to God on her knees in the chapel if necessary, but should she yield, the honourable squire would not take advantage of her weakness. He could notch up a victory for his charm and—in his refusal to take advantage—for his honour, and, if he still felt frustrated, could turn to a village wench. Chivalry was restricted to the nobility. There was no dishonour in having bastards among the lower class. The two levels of lovemaking distinguished, were like the distinction between Croyants and Parfaits , a worldly level and a spiritual level. The latter was the ideal, requiring no physical love at all, but was much superior. The women of the court were much flattered by this new ideal, having been generally treated as sex objects or drudges by their men since Christianity triumphed. Troubadours popularized the chivalrous idea by which women were all treated as a lover who was unreachable. All of them were the Holy Virgin—Maid Marian in the Robin Hood sagas. Such love was the fount of all virtue and nobility. In Ancren Riwle (c 1200), a rule for Anchoresses, Christ courts the human soul, but it is an unresponding lover. In Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight , Gawain is tempted by the Grene Knight’s wife but is too moral to accept, and finds that it was a test. The system mainly worked. Love was romantic but unattainable with anyone that the young knight might truly desire among his equals. Courtesy and chivalry grew up to restrict wantonness among the ruling class. The troubadour and minstrel were to remind them constantly in poetry and song of their duty and honour, and how nobles should behave towards each other. The point of these stories for the feudal courts was that they canalised the hothouse sexual atmosphere of the feudal household into harmless “gestes”.