TROUBADOR LOVE
WELCOME to the LibidoFilms Blog where we put sex into socio/political/historical context. Comments and questions are invited below. For part one of this two-part piece scroll down past the piece on sex workers.
Part Two: The Birth of Romantic Love
A troubadour typically wrote love poetry, set it to music and then chose a married noblewoman to whom he devoted his life’s work. A relationship could last a lifetime and the question still remains whether the connection to his Mi-dons, My Lord, was platonic or sexual.
Given the political (and often fatal) consequences of adultery, not to mention the problematic issue of illegitimate children in a culture ruled by primogeniture, sexual contact seems unlikely — though not impossible.
Unrequited love, however, seems to have been an inherent component of troubadour romance and fueled many of the fetishistic elements of this idealized relationship. A look, a smile, a thread from a glove, a garter or tuft of fur was seemingly enough to sustain a poet’s passion for light years.
BIRTH TRAY
In this image Venus is venerated by six earthly lovers. Sunrays emanating from her vulva refer not only to the power of her pudenda but to her fertility. It is an image that celebrates femaleness — a concept that was to reverse itself dramatically during the European witch-hunt craze.
Taking the psychoanalytic tack here puts us squarely in Freud territory. If, according to chivalric concepts, the ideal is to worship an unattainable woman (i.e. mom) then it makes sense that the notion of consummation with the love-object might be undesirable — if not socially unacceptable.
In his illuminating book, Sex in History, G. Rattray Taylor states: “…a man who has fixated on his mother tends to be impotent with women he loves and idealizes, but has no difficulties with persons of a lower class who cannot be regarded as superior in position.
As Freud points out, such men tend to direct their love to someone who already belongs to another, and who therefore can never be possessed.”
THE GAZEBO OF DESIRE 1400
It seems little surprise then that many troubadours chose the Virgin Mary as their special patron and devoted poems to her. In a sense, the emergence of the progressive, Eros-focused troubadours is all the more interesting in light of the anti-sexual, blood-thirsty, milieu of the Middle Ages from which they sprang. That they got away with it is short of amazing. Not long before the advent of the troubadours, addressing a love-song to any married woman would have been punishable by death.
Given the rules of courtly love set forth in Capellanus‘ sensitive treatise, De Amore, this makes perfect sense. Capellanus warns that the main reason to avoid sexual contact is that “love leads to incest” — hardly the primary reason for two people not to make like the beast with two backs. Capellanus goes on to advise that for sexual relief, it’s best to seduce lower-class women who do not aspire the sense of awe that the worshipped mistress does.
Adds Taylor in his analysis: “…in the troubadours we have a body of men each of whom loves and obeys a woman who is powerful and superior to himself, and with whom he never sleeps, apparently for fear of incest.” Apparently, if it isn’t one thing, it’s your mother.
The troubadour phenomenon did not last long. The devotion to the erotic — even in its abstract and chaste forms — was essentially anathema to Church teachings. From the middle of the 13-th century on, the Church set out to wipe out anyone holding heretical views — and that included anyone who proselytized about earthly delights.
The concept of romance would be dead for a long time. And the one that emerged in the 18th Century, was very different.
Marianna Beck holds a Ph.D. in Erotology, the study of the material culture of sex.
By Marianna Beck
Part Two: The Birth of Romantic Love
A troubadour typically wrote love poetry, set it to music and then chose a married noblewoman to whom he devoted his life’s work. A relationship could last a lifetime and the question still remains whether the connection to his Mi-dons, My Lord, was platonic or sexual.
Given the political (and often fatal) consequences of adultery, not to mention the problematic issue of illegitimate children in a culture ruled by primogeniture, sexual contact seems unlikely — though not impossible.
Unrequited love, however, seems to have been an inherent component of troubadour romance and fueled many of the fetishistic elements of this idealized relationship. A look, a smile, a thread from a glove, a garter or tuft of fur was seemingly enough to sustain a poet’s passion for light years.
BIRTH TRAY In this image Venus is venerated by six earthly lovers. Sunrays emanating from her vulva refer not only to the power of her pudenda but to her fertility. It is an image that celebrates femaleness — a concept that was to reverse itself dramatically during the European witch-hunt craze.
Taking the psychoanalytic tack here puts us squarely in Freud territory. If, according to chivalric concepts, the ideal is to worship an unattainable woman (i.e. mom) then it makes sense that the notion of consummation with the love-object might be undesirable — if not socially unacceptable.
In his illuminating book, Sex in History, G. Rattray Taylor states: “…a man who has fixated on his mother tends to be impotent with women he loves and idealizes, but has no difficulties with persons of a lower class who cannot be regarded as superior in position.
As Freud points out, such men tend to direct their love to someone who already belongs to another, and who therefore can never be possessed.”
THE GAZEBO OF DESIRE 1400
It seems little surprise then that many troubadours chose the Virgin Mary as their special patron and devoted poems to her. In a sense, the emergence of the progressive, Eros-focused troubadours is all the more interesting in light of the anti-sexual, blood-thirsty, milieu of the Middle Ages from which they sprang. That they got away with it is short of amazing. Not long before the advent of the troubadours, addressing a love-song to any married woman would have been punishable by death.
Given the rules of courtly love set forth in Capellanus‘ sensitive treatise, De Amore, this makes perfect sense. Capellanus warns that the main reason to avoid sexual contact is that “love leads to incest” — hardly the primary reason for two people not to make like the beast with two backs. Capellanus goes on to advise that for sexual relief, it’s best to seduce lower-class women who do not aspire the sense of awe that the worshipped mistress does.
Adds Taylor in his analysis: “…in the troubadours we have a body of men each of whom loves and obeys a woman who is powerful and superior to himself, and with whom he never sleeps, apparently for fear of incest.” Apparently, if it isn’t one thing, it’s your mother.
The troubadour phenomenon did not last long. The devotion to the erotic — even in its abstract and chaste forms — was essentially anathema to Church teachings. From the middle of the 13-th century on, the Church set out to wipe out anyone holding heretical views — and that included anyone who proselytized about earthly delights.
The concept of romance would be dead for a long time. And the one that emerged in the 18th Century, was very different.
Marianna Beck holds a Ph.D. in Erotology, the study of the material culture of sex.
Labels: Romantic Love, Sex in History, Troubadors
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6:48 PM
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