Dr. Norman Prinsky
Humn. 2001: Ancient Cultures through the Renaissance - Augusta State University
Supplementary (to NAWME) Notes and Questions on Marie de France's Eliduc ; Also, Appendix A on Courtly Love, Appendix B on the Troubadours, and Appendix C on the Cathars
Translations (Listed Alphabetically by Translator)
Burgess, Glyn, and Keith Busby, trans. and eds. The Lais of Marie de France. London: Penguin Books [Penguin Classics], 1986. [140 pp.; pb; introduction, very limited notes, bibliography; prose translation.]
Fowles, John, trans. and ed. "Eliduc." In The Ebony Tower. 1974; rpt. New York: Signet Books - New American Library, 1975. 107-133. The translation used by NAWME; has an informative introduction and some notes not included in NAWME. John Fowles (b. 1926) is an important and prestigious modern British fiction writer, author of the novels The Collector (1963) (made into a feature film, 1965), The Magus (1966; revised version, 1977) (made into a feature film, 1968), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) (made into a feature film, 1981), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1982), A Maggot (1985), and Tessera (1993). The Ebony Tower (1974) collects three novelettes, plus Fowles' translation of Eliduc; The Aristos (1965) and The Tree (1992) are philosophical nonfiction and autobiography. Fowles in a "Personal Note" prefacing his translation of Eliduc explicitly notes the influence of Henri Alain-Fournier's novel Le Grand Meulnes (1913; "The Lost Domain") and Marie de France's lais on his own fiction. There are 92 paragraphs in Fowles's translation of Eliduc.
Hanning, Robert, and Joan Ferrante, trans. and eds. The Lais of Marie de France. New York: Dutton, 1978; rpt. Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 1978. [pb; 238 pp.; introduction, notes, and bibliography; blank verse or free verse translation.]
Style and Form
As pointed out by Hanning and Ferrante, "Marie's language is quite simple" with "few complex sentences and little use of the passive voice" (25). She wrote, in Old French, in the short lines of octosyllabic rhymed couplets. Although Eliduc is the longest of Marie's lais, it is only about 1180 lines long; Fowles in his translation attempts to reproduce a trait noted by Burgess and Busby, "Marie's rather short staccato phrases, often no more than a line long" (37), which Burgess and Busby "renounce," attempting to give more "flow" to their translation. Although the original work is a poem, two of the three translations (listed above) are in prose. (Similar examples of a poem translated as prose are frequent, as with Homer’s Odyssey, for example; an instance would be the famous prose translation by Samuel Butcher and Andrew Lang, Books 1-4 of which are included in my Notes and Questions on Homer.)
Excerpt from Fowles' Preface, "A Personal Note," to His Translation of Eliduc
Biographically, next to nothing is known of Marie de France. Even the name is only a deduction, made long
after her death, from a line in one of her fables -- Marie ai nun, si suis de France. My name is Marie and I come from
. . . but it isn't even certain that she intended what we today think of as France. The region around Paris, the Ile de
France, is more probable. There are faint linguistic and other grounds for supposing she may have come from the part
of Normandy called the Vexin, which borders on the Paris basin.
At some time she went to England, perhaps in or with the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The king to whom
she dedicates her Lais, or love stories, may have been Eleanor's husband, Henry II, Beckett's cross; and there is even
a plausible possibility that Marie was Henry's illegitimate sister. His father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had a natural
daughter of that name, who became the abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey about 1180. Not all medieval abbesses led
solemn and devout lives; and in any case the romances were almost certainly composed in the previous decade. The
fact that the other two works by Marie that have survived are religious and certainly date from after 1180 reinforces
the identification. If "Marie de France" was indeed the Marie from the wrong side of the Angevin blanket who became
abbess of Shaftesbury, she must have been born before 1150, and we know that the abbess survived until about 1216.
It is very difficult to imagine the Lais being written by other than a finely educated (therefore, in that age,
finely born) young woman; that she was romantic and high-spirited is easily deduced; and that her work was a
tremendous and rapid literary success a wealth of contemporary manuscripts and translations bear witness -- one
might even proceed to see her as an early victim of male chauvinism, sent to Shaftesbury to mend her wicked ways.
There is certainly evidence that her stories were not approved by the Church. Very soon after the Lais came into the
world, a gentleman named Denis Piramus -- a monk in fact, but evidently a born reviewer by nature -- wrote a sourly
sarcastic account of her popularity. He knew why the stories gave their aristocratic audiences such dubious pleasure:
they were hearing what they wanted to happen to themselves.
Overtly, Marie set out in the Lais to save some Celtic tales from oblivion: stories from the diffuse
folk-corpus scholars call the matiere de Bretagne, and of which the Arthurian cycle and the story of Tristan and
Yseult are now the best remembered. Whether she first heard them from French or English sources is unknown, since
her own description of their provenance, bretun, was then used racially of the Brythonic Celts and not geographically
-- it included the Welsh and the Cornish as well as the Bretons proper. There are records of how far the Celtic
minstrels wandered long before Marie's time, and she could have heard their performances at any major court.
But far more important than this quasi-archeological service was the transmutation that took place when
Marie grafted her own knowledge of the world on the old material. Effectively she introduced a totally new element
into European literature. It was composed not least of sexual honesty and a very feminine awareness of how people
really behaved - and how behavior and moral problems can be expressed through things like dialogue and action. She
did for her posterity something of what Jane Austen did for hers -- that is, she set a new standard for accuracy over
human emotions and their absurdities. One may bring the two even closer, since the common ground of all Marie's
stories (what she herself could have termed desmesure, or passionate excess) is remarkably akin to the later novelist's
view of sense and sensibility. Another similarity is much harder for us to detect today, and that is of humor. Because
her stories are so distant from us, we tend to forget that much of their matter was equally distant from her own
twelfth century; and we grossly underestimate both her and her contemporary audience's sophistication if we imagine
them listening with totally straight faces and credulity. That was no more expected than that we should take our own
thrillers, Wild Westerns, and sci-fi epics without a pinch of salt.
Marie's irony is all the harder to detect now for another historical reason. Her Lais were not meant to be
read in silence -- or in prose. In the original they are in rhyming octosyllabic couplets, and they were to be performed,
sung and mimed, probably to a loose melody, or to a variety of them, and perhaps in places spoken almost
conversationally against chords and arpeggios. The instrument would have been the harp, no doubt in its Breton form,
the rote. The Romantics turned minstrelsy into an irredeemably silly word; but what little evidence we have suggests a
very great art, one we have now lost beyond recall. In the case of writers like Marie de France, to see only the printed
text is rather like having to judge a film by the script alone. The long evolution of fiction has been very much bound u
with finding means to express the writer's "voice" -- his humors, his private opinions, his nature -- by means of word
manipulation and print alone; but before Gutenberg we are lost. I will cite one small instance in the story you are
about to read. Twice Marie is very formal about the way her hero visits the wayward princess he is in love with; he
does not crash into her rooms; he has himself properly announced. One may take it as a piece of padding, a
conventional show of courtly etiquette. But I think it much more probable that it was a dry aside and directed at her
first listeners -- indeed, if what we know of Henry II is true, and Marie was related to him, I could hazard a guess at
whom the little gibe was directed.
I have attempted to convey at least a trace of this living, oral quality in my translation, which is based on the British Museum H text (Harley 978), in Alfred Ewert's edition. It only remains to remind readers of the three real-life systems against which the story is anachronistically told. The first is the feudal system, which laid a vital importance on promises sworn between vassal and lord. It was not only that the power structure depended on a man being as good as his word; all civilized life depended on it. Today we can go to law over a broken contract; in those days you could only take to arms. The second context is the Christian, which is responsible for the ending of Eliduc, but not much else. Marie is patently more interested in the human heart than the immortal soul. The third system was that of courtly love, where the same stress on keeping faith was applied to sexual relations. It is hardly a fashionable idea in the twentieth century; but amour courtois was a desperately needed attempt to bring more civilization (more feminine intelligence) into a brutal society, and all civilization is based on agreed codes and symbols of mutual trust. An age in which the desmesure of Watergate -- in my view far more a cultural than a political tragedy -- can happen should not find this too difficult to understand.
Questions
(For some of the following questions, paragraphs will have to be numbered in NAWME. For reference, the beginnings of the following paragraphs, with their enumeration, are given. Par. 5: “There were several kings”; par. 7: “The escort were armed and horsed”; par. 10: “Eliduc answers. ‘My thanks’”; par. 14: “His confidence spread”; par. 15: “They come in a crowd”; par. 20: “Now she had met him”; par. 25: “‘But how shall I know’”; par. 30: “Meanwhile, as she agonized”; par. 35: “‘Stop teasing me, you’”; par. 40: “The girl was delighted”; par. 45: “Eliduc goes back to”; par. 50: “Without further delay, Eliduc”; par. 55: “Eliduc sends a young”; par. 60: “Eliduc rode to the sea”; par. 63: “He waits no longer, puts to sea”; par. 65: “About a bowshot from the city”; par. 70: “I’ll take her there, Eliduc said”; par. 75: “Abruptly then he turned”; par. 80: “That very same afternoon Eliduc”; par. 85: “‘Good lord,’ she murmured”; par. 89: “She spoke so comfortingly that”; par. 92: “The noble Celts composed this story”)
1. (a) How do the subjects of loyalty, fidelity, trust, promises, and oaths occur in many different forms in Eliduc? (b) Why would these subject be so important in the Middle Ages — famous for its social and political system of feudalism (look up this term in a collegiate dictionary, as well as in your art and literature textbooks)? (c) How are irony and dramatic irony frequently manifested in relation to the subjects cited in 1a?
2. (a) How are the issues of sacred and secular held in tension in this work? (b) Analogously, how are the issues of Christianity and magic held in tension in this work? (c) How are these issues vividly portrayed in the film Dragonslayer (1981), from Buena Vista productions, a subsidiary of the Disney Corporation?
3. How do Biblical allusion and typology (or typological symbolism) occur in this work? (Look up typology, in the sense of typological symbolism, in your collegiate dictionary. This symbolism is extremely important in Dante’s Divine Comedy, including its first part — read in Humn. 2001 — Inferno.)
4. (a) Where and how does implied ironic criticism of certain things -- e.g., men, court society, excessive passion -- occur in this work? (b) How does the negative portrayal of kings (in which particular paragraphs of the translation?) echo a similar portrayal in 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, and some of the Proverbs, in the Bible? (c) How are different kinds or manifestations of love shown in this work?
5. (a) What hints within the text are there that its author was female (see especially pars. 2, 18, and 55)? (b1) Which character — and gender — takes the most decisive action to initiate the romance at the English court? (b2) Which character — and gender — takes the most decisive action to break the stalemate of the romantic triangle when all three members of it are assembled? (b3) A hint here of the author’s gender? (c) Proportionately in the work, how much attention is paid to war, how much to political matters, how much to religion, and how much to romantic love? A hint here of the author’s gender?
6. (a) How is the political — feudal — situation shown to be potentially chaotic by the plural reference to the kings of England, mentioned with reference to Eliduc’s exile (par. 5)? (b) How is this somewhat unsettled situation comparably portrayed in the first part of Excalibur (1981), a fine film about the Middle Ages?
7. (a) What visual arts form is emphasized with reference to the rich townsman’s lodging where Eliduc is housed when first accepted into the English king’s service (par. 7)? Where in the art textbook for this course is this particular visual art form discussed or illustrated or both? (b) How did this visual art form often include literature (words or storytelling)? (c) How might this visual art form have helped with the practical matters of climate control (remembering the damp and cold and breeziness of much of England) or acoustics control in the dwellings of the Middle Ages?
8. (a) To what values does Eliduc appeal in his exhortation to his own knights and those from the town, just prior to the battle (par. 13)? Cf. pars. 14 and 16. (b) How do these values compare or contrast with those shown in Homer’s Odyssey?
9. (a) In the items and their order of what Guilliandun finds attractive about Eliduc (par. 18), what might be implied about female romantic evaluation of the male (in long-ago times, and in literature, as opposed to real life today, of course)? (b) What reasons has modern physiology (biochemistry) established for some of the symptoms of initial romantic love displayed by Guilliandun (pars. 18 and 20)? (c1) (Romantic) love’s “arrow” (par. 18) is now a cliche; what traditions in classical mythology and medieval (French) literature are alluded to by this metaphor? (c2) What ideas are implied by the metaphor for romantic love as coming by arrow-shot — speed, physical sensations, relation to Eliduc’s occupation or profession? (d) Why, relative to the psychology of romantic love would Guilliandun so early assume that Eliduc may already be in love with her and already contemplating serious commitment, as suggested by her statement “If he’s really in love with me, if he’ll only show he’s serious, I’ll do anything he likes” (par. 21)? (e) Why might Guilliandun confide in her page (a male) rather than some kind of maidservant or lady-in-waiting (pars. 20-28)?
10. (a) What personality aspects of Guilliandun’s page are revealed in his words and behavior (pars. 20-28, 30-36)? (b) What facets of court life are revealed in these passages dealing with the page? (c) How does the page character help bring out ideas about each of the genders, as well as how they relate to each other (strictly pertinent to the Middle Ages, with no relevance to today, of course)? (d) How does Guilliandun’s page compare with Eliduc’s page (see question 18, below)?
11. (a) John Fowles in his translation of Eliduc notes that the name “Guilliadun” is based on the word root “Guilli-,” which means “golden.” What ideas does this word root help convey about any of the three main characters in Eliduc? (b) The names of the two main female characters are fairly close to each other; what ideas, pertinent to the plot and themes of the work, might be suggested by this closeness?
12. A motif in literature might be called “expletive symbolism”: apparently casual and colloquial references to the deity (e.g., “my God, what a beautiful day!”) but ultimately significant or symbolic in a particular literary work. How might this motif be meaningful running through Guilliandun’s “‘Dear God . . . I’m in such a state’” (par. 21), Guilliandun’s“‘Oh God, I’ve fallen in love with a foreigner!’” (par. 29), Eliduc’s “‘And oh God, to think of never seeing her again!’” (par. 49), and Eliduc’s “‘You sweetest thing, oh God, listen’” (par. 56)? (See question 19, below.)
13. The importance of the figure of speech hyperbole as a component in the language of Romantic love is illustrated not only in Marie de France’s Eliduc but also in many other literary works and in the lyrics of popular music (country western, rock and roll, etc.); how, and why? What might be a modern equivalent, in colloquial language, of Guilliandun’s “‘If he doesn’t love me, I’ll die of despair’” (par. 21)? Cf. Guilliandun’s “if he didn’t [recognize the significance of the love tokens], I’m lost” (par. 33), Guilliandun’s “if he [Eliduc] does [hate me], he deserves to die” (par. 35), Guilliandun’s “if she couldn’t have him . . . no other man would ever have her” (par. 40), and Eliduc’s “‘If I have to say farewell to her [Guilliandun] now, one of us will die’” (par. 49).
14. What might be the symbolism, including (but not limited to) the Freudian (or sexual) symbolism, of the gifts Guilliandun and Eliduc offer each other, and Eliduc accepts (pars. 23, 27, 30, 32, 40)?
15. (a) What might be the multiple symbolism of Guilliandun’s being able to show the overseas knight how to play chess (par. 38)? How might chess apply to Guilliandun and to Eliduc, individually or in combination (a chess pun, here)? (b) How is the King’s introduction of Eliduc to Guilliandun full of dramatic irony (the readers and two of the characters know much more than the King about something) [pars. 38-39]? (c) What small thing does Eliduc not tell Guilliandun after her confession of being in love with him (pars. 40-44)? (d1) How is irony manifested in Guilliandun’s statement “‘Eliduc, I’m so grateful for your frankness. You’re so honest . . . I trust you more than anything else in the world’” (par. 43)? (d2) How is irony manifested in the narrative statement “They knew now that they were sure of each other” (par. 44)? (d3) How is irony manifested in Eliduc’s thought to himself, relative to going back to Brittany, “‘I must be open to her’” and “‘I’ll see Guilliadun and explain the whole business’” (par. 49)? (d4) How is irony manifested in Eliduc’s statement to Guilliandun “‘So we can talk about it, and trust each other’” (par. 56)? (e) How does the description of Eliduc’s behavior with Guilliandun, in Eliduc’s initial reaction to reading his former King’s pleading letter, reveal a situation that constituted what was understood in the Middle Ages to be a proper example of chivalric or courtly love (par. 48)?
16. (a) How is the subject of materialism (the importance of money or possessions, the role of money or possessions in politics or human behavior) treated in what the English King offers Eliduc after Eliduc receives the pleading letter from the King of Brittany (pars. 50-53)? (b) How are the items that the English King offers Eliduc revealing about secular values in general, and particular values (what things would be precious, and why) in the Middle Ages?
17. (a) Why might the narrator stress about Guildeluec, after Eliduc’s return from England, that she had “remained as attractive . . . as ever” (par. 60)? (b) What irony is conveyed by the narrator’s statement that Guildeluec had, during the absence of Eliduc in England, “remained as . . . worthy of him as ever” (par. 60)? (c) What might be revealed about Guildeluec’s psychology, or the role of women in the Middle Ages, that Guildeluec, in response to the moodiness and unhappiness of Eliduc after return to Brittany, “kept asking if he hadn’t heard from someone that she’d misbehaved while he was abroad” (par. 60)? (d) What is the irony in Eliduc’s statement to Guildeluec that “‘I can’t take pleasure in anything at all until I’ve got back there [England]. I will not break promises’” (par. 61)? (e) How does Eliduc’s knightly behavior and duty in relation to the Brittany King’s enemies seem affected by romantic love, relative to Eliduc’s promised date of return to England (par. 62)?
18. (a) How do the role of Eliduc’s page and the behavior of the page, when Eliduc returns to England (pars. 63-65), compare or contrast to those of Guilliadun’s page (see question 10, above)? (b) What facets of court life and romantic love in the Middle Ages revealed here?
19. (a) How does Guilliadun’s behavior toward her father, relative to planned trip with Eliduc, characterize the father-daughter relationship, as well as the effect of romantic love on that relationship (pars. 63-65)? How might the issue of trust be involved here? Which one of the Ten Commandments would apply to Guilliadun, not counting anything in them about adultery, since she isn’t aware of Eliduc’s married state? (b) How do the references to God, St. Nicholas, St. Clement, and Our Lady by the sailors in Eliduc’s and Guilliadun’s sea voyage from England to Brittany (par. 65) contrast with expletive symbolism elsewhere in the narrative (see question 12, above)? (c) What typological symbolism — reference to the Bible — underlies what one of the panicked sailors suggests to calm the storm (par. 66)? (d) How should Eliduc’s behavior toward the sailor making the suggestion to calm the storm be evaluated (pars. 66-69)?
20. (a) What features of the psychology of grief are suggested by the emphasis on Eliduc asking advice of his companions about the disposition of the apparently dead Guilliadun, and only when they demur, “Eliduc began to think for himself” (par. 69)? (b) How are religiosity, vassalage (or hierarchy), and fidelity suggested by Eliduc’s initial behavior toward the apparently dead Guilliadun (par. 69)? (c) How does the religious vocation of the owner of the building where Guilliadun is to be taken (par. 69) foreshadow what life the three main characters choose at the close of the story (pars. 88-91)?
21. (a) How does Marie de France suggest, concerning the disposition of Guilliadun’s body, that aristocratic support and patronage of the Church are vital — that is, literally life-saving (pars. 70-72)? (b) How does Eliduc’s vow to the apparently-deceased Guilliadun (par. 74) never come to pass in the story? How does Eliduc’s vow here compare to his other vows, relative to adherence or fulfillment?
22. (a) How is the use of the messenger by Eliduc relative to coming into his wife’s presence (par. 76) both parallel and contrasting to Eliduc’s coming into Guillandun’s presence? (b) What is suggested about the male role and lord of the manor role (that is, hierarchy or the feudal system) by how others respond to Eliduc’s moodiness just after returning (par. 76)? (c) What supernatural or religious elements seem suggested by the state of Guillandun’s body that Eliduc visits in the chapel (par. 76)? (d) What are the religious implications of Eliduc’s placement of the body and visitation of it in the chapel (par. 76)?
23. (a) How does the action taken by Guildeluec in response to her husband’s behavior (par. 77) suggest something not only about female initiative but about women in marriage (in ancient times or literature, rather than real life, of course)? (b) How does Guildeluec’s reaction to what she learns about her husband’s actions and behavior after his leaving church (par. 77) help define both love in general and romantic love in particular? (c) How do the descriptions of Guildeluec as well as her words later in the chapel, in the presence of Guillandun’s body (pars. 81-82), help further define love in general, romantic love in particular, and the interrelation with religion (specifically Christianity)? (d) How do the descriptions of Guildeluec as well as her words to the recovered Guillandun (pars. 88-90) help further define love in general, romantic love in particular, and the interrelation with religion (specifically Christianity)?
24. (a) How does the flower simile used to describe Guillandun’s body in the chapel, as viewed by Guildeluec (par. 80), have both secular and sacred (specific religious) associations? (b) How is female physical beauty defined by details in the description of Guillandun’s body lying in the chapel (par. 80)? How do these elements compare or contrast (or both) with what is considered physical female beauty today?
25. (a) How does the episode with the weasels, red flower, and Guillandun’s awakening (pars. 82-86) have nonreligious supernatural elements, as well as religious (specifically Christian) elements? (b) Translators and commentators have noted that the two weasels might be female and male, or both female. In each case, what symbolic parallels between the weasels and Eliduc-Guillandun-Guildeluec might be implied? (c) How does the red flower parallel an earlier simile describing the apparently deceased Guillandun lying in the chapel, as observed by Guildeluec and the servant (par. 80)?
26. (a) How are Guillandun’s words to Guildeluec on first awakening in the chapel (par. 87) heavily laden with dramatic irony? (b) How do the descriptions and evaluations of Eliduc in the chapel conversation between Guillandun and Guildeluec (pars. 87-88) suggest both positive and negative traits of Eliduc? (c) What evaluation (positive or negative or both) of Eliduc is suggested by his actions after being contacted by Guildeluec’s servant (par. 89)? (d) How might the evaluation of Guillandun, based on all the details of the story, be slightly negative, as well as strongly positive? (d) How does Marie de France suggest in the concluding material of the tale (pars. 89-91) that aristocratic support and patronage of the Church are vital — that is spiritually life-saving? (e) How do the buildings and forms of Christianity at the tale’s end (pars. 88-91) actualize the vocation of the chapel-builder who was such an influence on Eliduc and whose building housed for so long the apparently deceased Guillandun? (Cf. question 20.) (f1) How do the buildings and forms of Christianity at the tale’s end (pars. 88-91) relate to an important religious movement in the Middle Ages, exemplified by five of the clerical (clergy) pilgrims in the General Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? (Look up Chaucer’s General Prologue, which will be read for the third unit on the Middle Ages, in NAWM.) (f2) Why was this form of Christianity or spirituality so powerful and widespread in the Middle Ages? (f3) How is this form of Christianity wonderfully portrayed in Umberto Eco’s superb novel The Name of the Rose as well as the excellent film of the same name (starring Sean Connery, Christian Slater, and many other fine actors) based on the novel? (f4) How is this form of Christianity the basis of the BBC/Mystery television series Cadfael (based on a series of mystery novels about the character whose name denotes the series)? (DVD’s are available of both the feature film and the television series.)
27. Life at a royal court in the Middle Ages has been the subject of many feature films (those with asterisks have some historical accuracy and are very good films): e.g., The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, starring Erroll Flynn; also, Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery, 1976; also, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, 1991; also, parody in Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights, 1993); Black Arrow (1948; remake 1985); Ivanhoe (1952; TV movie remake, 1982); Knights of the Round Table (1953, starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Mel Ferrer; also, Camelot, 1967, movie version of Broadway musical, loosely based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s long poem Idyls of the King; also, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, parody movie, 1975; Excalibur*, 1981; also, First Knight, 1995, starring Sean Connery, Richard Gere, and others); The Court Jester (1956, comedy-parody, starring Danny Kaye); Becket* (1964, starring Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton); Lion in Winter* (1968, starring Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn, and several other stars); Dragonslayer (1981). How do portrayals in any of these films compare or contrast with the portrait of court life in the Middle Ages in Marie de France’s Eliduc?
28. Professor Walter Evans at Augusta State University has noted that the literature, music, and art for this unit of Humanities 2001/World Humanities I, can be connected in the following points: (a) an aura of otherworldliness (more abstract, less realistic than in Classical Greece and Rome); (b) openness to the irrational, magic, or the supernatural; (c) relative simplicity (compared to art, music, or literature in the Classical or Gothic eras); (d) Christian elements, themes, or subjects; (e) borrowings from the Islamic world. How do these points apply to Eliduc, as well as to the art works and music works covered in this unit, this week, on the Middle Ages?
Appendix A: “Courtly Love” by Elizabeth Salter, University of York
COURTLY LOVE is the name given to a species of romantic love in which the relationship between lover and lady most nearly approximated to that of vassal and lord in the medieval feudal contract. It made its first appearance in the elaborate poetry of the southern French troubadours at the end of the eleventh century, and, once established in European tradition, its influence was profound and widespread. Minor lyric and romance were affected, as well as the work of major medieval authors such as Dante (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-74), and Chaucer (1340-1400). It constituted a revolution of thought and feeling, the results of which are still apparent.
The character of the love celebrated by early troubadour poets is dramatic in the extreme. The lover is always in a position of servitude; he must obey his lady's wishes, however capricious or unjust they may be. But it is his privilege, not his misfortune, to exist subject to her, for love, whether rewarded or not, is regarded as the source of all true virtue and nobility. Within marriage, such love is held to be impossible; the lover habitually addresses the wife of another, and secrecy is therefore one of the important conditions of any favor granted to him. The ritual which surrounded the whole situation was observed reverently and devotedly; as later developments make even clearer, the courtly lover often thought of himself in a semi-religious context, serving the all-powerful god of love and worshiping his lady-saint.
Classical and Nordic cultures provide no precedent for such an exotic philosophy of love. Latin and Greek poetry had dealt with erotic adventure with varying degrees of cynicism and tenderness, with domestic happiness, and, in a few striking cases, with love as a ruinous passion which, far from ennobling, destroyed nobility (e.g., the legends of Phaedra, Medea, and Dido). Germanic and Celtic society showed itself even less favorable to the development of a romantic attitude to women; this was a world in which the most strongly valued human ties were those of lord and retainer.
Social and Literary Influences
The circumstances which created the new sentiment, and made it an active force late eleventh-century France, are quite various. Certain factors in its make-up are easily definable. Feudalism, with its binding obligations of loyal service to a lord upon whom all fortune depended, provided the general background and even, perhaps, some of the poetic vocabulary — the troubadours spoke often of the lady as "my lord" ("midons"). It may also be true that the conditions of life in the castle civilization of southern France at this time were favorable to the development of courtly love. Rich but isolated centers of refinement and culture, the castles contained many men but few women; to the lady of the castle the knight and squire may have felt themselves feudally inferior. The adulterous basis of such love is understandable in the light of medieval marriage conventions, and the attitude of the church to marital passion. Marriage was usually a business contract involving property and military power but little sentiment; no woman had freedom either to choose her husband or to prevent the annulment of the marriage for political or dynastic reasons if, as often happened, it was not a success. The teaching of the church upon the relationship between husband and wife was ambiguous as far as passionate love was concerned; it could have done little to encourage the growth of romantic devotion. For these reasons the idealization of passion could not be based upon the marriage state; poets looked beyond it.
But certain specific literary influences were also at work. The first is the Ars Amatoria of the Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), a textbook upon the arts of seduction which was well known in France in the early middle ages and provided advice for both men and women. Ovid treats love with an ironic reverence, the lover making exaggerated obeisance to the god Amor and to the lady's slightest whims in order to achieve the gratification of his desires. The Ars Amatoria refers to extramarital intrigues, and it is clear that the troubadours drew upon it. The Ovidian lover is the slave of passion; he is pale, trembles, is unable to sleep or eat, swoons, and is even known to die of love. Ovid's attitude to love, however, is mock-reverent; his adoration of the lady is an assumed pose, calculated to win purely sensual rewards. He is, for instance, willing to recommend force as a legitimate method if pleading fails, and he becomes, by turn, the servant and the master of the situation, indulging, if he pleases, in more than one liaison at a time. Although his book undoubtedly provided some of the material for the idea of courtly love, it could not have accounted for the wholly serious, idealistic outlook of its first medieval exponents.
Various sorts of explanation have been sought for this outlook. One view is that increasing veneration of the Virgin Mary helped to place the lady of the French poets in such an exalted position. Another view sees the matter as a clear case of the influence of religious heresy. Provence, during the years in question, was certainly a breeding ground for strange heretical beliefs which were not completely rooted out until the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century (1209-29), and it has been suggested that the earliest troubadours were inspired to write not by love of a real woman but by the mystical doctrines of the Cathari. [Explanation of Cathari ] Its adherents were strong in Provence, and can sometimes be localized in those very castles where troubadours lived.
A rival claim has been made for the origins of courtly love in Arabic mystical philosophy; even if this is judged controversial, it is highly likely that the literature of Muslim Spain had a direct influence upon southern French poets. A treatise, the Tawq al-hamamaw {Eng. trans, by A. R. Nykl, The Dove's Neck Ring, 1931), written in 1022 by the Andalusian religious philosopher Ibn Hazm (994-1064), contains in detail most of the ideas which recur in all medieval treatments of courtly love from the troubadours onward. The Tawq, which draws upon many earlier eastern textbooks of love, and ultimately upon Platonic philosophy, contrasts strongly with Ovid's manual in that it seeks to discover spiritual significance in passionate relationships. While never denying the joys of union, Ibn Hazm approaches his themes in a refined, idealizing way, stressing, for instance, that love "is a reunion of souls in the original sphere of their higher world" and that to love properly requires the virtues of magnanimity, continence, loyalty, and courage. Features of his doctrine which ring familiarly after reading of European courtly love literature are the sovereignty of love, the conception of love as a delightful disease, the association of love with sleeplessness and lamentations, the necessity of secrecy and of faithful service, and the almost blasphemous nature of faithlessness.
Considerable evidence supports the idea that during the late eleventh century and the twelfth century troubadour poets such as Guiliem, count of Poitiers (William IX, duke of Aquitaine), Cercamon, Marcabru, and Jaufre Rudel imitated and adapted Hispano-Arabic poetry written to conform these principles. [Explanation of Troubadors.] Guilhem married Philippa, widow of the King of Aragon, in 1094, and it is very likely that among those she brought with her to Aquitaine were singers knowledgeable in the Arabic ways of making poetry. In spite of the opposition of Christian and Muslim in the crusade warfare of those times and later, there is good reason to suppose that Frenchmen could and did learn philosophies, stanza forms, and melodies from their enemies.
Courtly love must therefore be regarded as the complex product of a number of factors — social, religious, philosophical, erotic — operating upon the privileged culture of Aquitaine and Provence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The expression given to it by the troubadour poets was varied and intricate; the finest of them, from Guilhem (1071-1127) to the later Bernart de Ventadorn (c. 1150-95) and Arnaut Daniel (fl. c. 1180-1210), made their strong personalities felt through extravagant modes of sentiment and meter.
The Tradition As Developed in France
But courtly love was not long confined to Languedoc, and as it spread to the north of France, England, Germany, Spain and Italy, it both developed and was modified. By the mid-twelfth century its themes were certainly in the hands of northern French poets. One of the decisive influences in this transmission was Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122-1204), granddaughter of the early troubadour duke of Aquitaine. Married first to Louis VII of France, and then to Henry II of England, she inspired some of the best poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn; at her courts in France and in England she was a patroness of the new love poetry. Her daughter, Marie, countess of Champagne (1164-98), encouraged the writing of the most famous courtly love romance of the later twelfth century: the work Lancelot of famous medieval French writer Chretien de Troyes (fl. 1170) and possibly also the important textbook on the subject by Andreas Capellanus (Andre le Chapelain; fl. 1200), the De Arte Honeste Amandi. Chretien tells us at the beginning of Lancelot that Marie supplied him with both the content and the method of approach for his poem. Exactly how revolutionary her commands were is easily shown by a comparison of Chretien's earlier poem, Erec, with Lancelot. In Erec the older view of women predominates — the heroine is a model of wifely patience and submissiveness in the face of harsh and unprovoked trials. In Lancelot we have, in the first place, an adulterous situation. The heroine, Guinevere, dictates imperiously to Lancelot, who obeys her in every unreasonable demand. The absolute sovereignty of love is recognized, and Lancelot approaches his lady's bed with the solemn reverence of a worshiper at a shrine. Chretien's importance, in the present context, is that he was, as far as is known, the first to graft the theory of courtly love on to the old, originally Celtic narratives of Arthurian legend. It was a successful graft; others followed suit not only in France but also in Germany and England. From then on, Arthurian stories, such as those of Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseult, were framed as typical courtly love situations, with the appropriate sentiment.
The contribution of Andreas Capellanus, writing late in the twelfth century, was a textbook codification of the whole doctrine of courtly love, much on the lines of Ibn Hazm's Tawq. It consists of three books, two of which are devoted to such matters as the nature of love, methods of acquiring, retaining and increasing love, the signs of love and procedure to be followed in the event of one lover proving unfaithful. The initial definition given by Andreas could have come from the Tawq: "love is a certain inborn suffering." He stresses that love develops nobility, but also that it is the prerogative of the leisured and cultured classes. It would be inappropriate for a man to apply the rules of courtly love if he had the misfortune to fall enamoured of a peasant woman. In his specimen dialogues for lovers and his list of precepts, Andreas sums up the theory of courtly love as the high middle ages understood it. The impossibility of love between husband and wife is still maintained. Devotion to the lady's wishes and attention to secrecy are essential; the true lover is still subject to sleeplessness and violent agitation and is commonly pale through the "inborn suffering" he endures.
The fact that Andreas thought it wise to shape the third book of the treatise as a solemn exhortation to engage in the service of a higher love — that of God — should not lead us to doubt either the serious intent of the preceding books or their influence. Such palinodes are not uncommon in an age which was encouraged to see human affairs sub specie aeternitatis as well as from the viewpoint of the participant. Courtly love continued to enlarge its
dominions, sometimes retaining its original character, sometimes changing as it came into contact with new traditions of thought and literary forms. The long French allegorical poem of the thirteenth century, the Roman de la Rose (begun in 1237 by Guillaume de Lorris and finished before 1280 by Jean de Meun), took as its theme the story of the difficult progress of the courtly lover toward his goal, expressing it as a dream adventure within a walled garden; the lady's love is represented as a rosebud, enclosed by a thick thorn hedge. The dreamer, wounded mortally by the arrows of the god of love, becomes love's vassal and is instructed in his new duties with the familiar detail of the De Arte. The rest of the Guillaume de Lorris section of the poem is taken up with the dreamer's triumphs and setbacks as he attempts to gain the lady's favor; he is in continual suspense, moving between happiness and despair in the way the middle ages had come to think natural to the lover's condition.
The Tradition As Developed in Italy and England
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw courtly love pervading European literature; the romances and minnesinger lyrics of Germany are witnesses to its power, as are also the vernacular songs of Italy and England. But it is in the two last mentioned countries that it receives most interesting handling from great writers. Traditional contacts and exchanges had helped to make troubadour forms and doctrines well known to Italian poets, and as early as the twelfth century their love poetry was imbued with courtly ideals. The essence of all the romantic material considered so far can be found in the lyrical and rhetorical verse addressed to Laura by Petrarch in the fourteenth century. More important still is Dante's fusion of courtly love and mystical vision. Beatrice is the idealized lady of his earthly devotion, who was, in fact, the wife of another. But she is also, in the Divina Commedia (1307?-21), wisdom, philosophy and spiritual guide to the mysteries of paradise.
English vernacular tradition had shown itself at home with many of the tenets of courtly love by the early thirteenth century. There are lyrics of this time which describe the blissful torments of the lover and the surpassing beauty of his imperious mistress. The extreme adulterous form of the convention, however, is not often represented. Courtly love was certainly a vital influential force upon medieval English literature, as can be proved by secular lyrics and romances, and also by religious prose treatises such as the Ancrene Riwle (c. 1180-1200) which portray Christ allegorically as the adoring suitor, petitioning his disdainful lady, the human soul. But it was adopted, on the whole, as a ritual of courtship rather than as an infinitely preferred alternative to, or compensation for, marriage. In one work, the late fourteenth-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the author goes so far as to have his hero reject the opportunity of a liaison with another man's wife because of his moral scruples. Sir Thomas Malory, in his great Arthurian compilation of the later fifteenth century, the Morte d'Arthur (Death of King Arthur), does not change the outlines of the major courtly love narratives handed down to him from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but reshapes, on occasion, a minor episode of this type to bring it more into harmony with an age which had begun to idealize marriage itself.
It is in the poetry of Chaucer, above all, that the most interesting developments of courtly love can be seen. Beginning his career with a translation of part of the Roman de la Rose, he adapts many of its elaborate procedures for the love situations of his minor poems. His first major work, Troilus and Criseyde, takes a story which is, in essentials, of the courtly mould, dealing with a secret love outside marriage and the consequent sufferings and transports of the lovers. But Chaucer's conception of this love is richly ambiguous. The union of Troilus and Criseyde, in the central part of the poem, is set against a background of pagan and Christian mythology; the dominant impression left with the reader is of sanctioned, not illicit, happiness. In spite of the bitter ending of the story — Criseyde unfaithful and Troilus dead — it is quite true to say that Chaucer has here "brought the old romance of adultery to the very frontiers of the modern . . . romance of marriage" (The Allegory of Love, by C. S. Lewis, Oxford University Press, rev. ed., 1951). Significant also is the fact that one of the later Canterbury Tales, that told by the Franklin, describes a relationship between man and wife which possesses all the most valuable elements of the courtly code while its obvious social and domestic disadvantages.
The Continued Influence of Courtly Love
The history of courtly love after tie medieval period is part of the general history of European sentiment, and as such cannot be treated without reference to innumerable religious and philosophical issues and literary fashion. Sixteenth-century English poets, in their enthusiasm for Italian verse, and for that of Petrarch in particular, reinterpreted the old extravagant attitudes and phrases for the Elizabethan age; the haughty lady of their lyrics is descended, ultimately, from the lady of the troubadour songs. In the poetry of Spenser (1552-99), on the other hand, we see the continuance of the process already begun in the fourteenth century -- i.e., the absorption of courtly love into an ideal of marriage. It is this aspect of its development which has proved courtly love of greatest importance to western culture, although the imaginative appeal of the original stories of secret, unlimited passion has never failed to draw poets and musicians, and belief in the eccentric behavior of the lover is a commonplace of popular tradition today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, Eng. trans, by J. J. Parry (1941) ; M. C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (1954) ; A. J. Denomy, The Heresy of Courtly Love (1947); Ibn Hazm, A Book Containing the Risola Known as The Dove's Necklace About Love and Lovers, trans, by A. R. Nykl (1931) and by A.J, Arberry (1953); A. Jeanroy, La Poesie Lyrique des Troubadours, l vol. (1934) ; A. Kelly, "Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Courts of Love," Speculum XII (1937) and Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kaf (1952) ; C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936, rev. ed., 1951); A Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and Its Relations With the Old Pro Troubadours (1946) ; D. de Rougemont, L'Amour et I'Occident (1931), Eng. trans, by M. Belgion, Love in the Western World [1953; rev, ed., titled Passion and Society, 1956]).
Appendix B: TROUBADOURS, by Andre A.F. Berry
Troubadours were poets of southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy who wrote in the langue d'oc (the language of Provencal) from the end of the eleventh century to the last decade the thirteenth. The word troubadour is a French form of the Occiatanianan trobador, accusative singular of trobaire, "poet," from trobar,"to find," "to invent"; cf. French trouvere, trouver. A troubador, then, was one who invented new poems, finding new verse forms for his elaborate lyrics; he might be a great prince, such as Richard Coeur de Lion (the “Lion Hearted”), or a wandering adventurer who made song his profession.
The social influence exercised by the troubadours was unprecedented in the history of medieval poetry. They had great freedom of speech, they entered into questions of politics, and above all they created around the ladies of the court an atmosphere of cultivation and amenity which nothing had hitherto approached. The troubadour was occasionally accompanied by an apprentice or servant, called a joglar, who provided a musical setting for his words and sometimes sang his songs. About 400 troubadours were recognized in the 200 years in which they flourished.
The efficient cause of the decadence and ruin of the troubadours was the struggle between Rome and the Albigensian heretics (see CATHARI). This broke out into actual war in 1209, when the barons of northern France, responding with alacrity to Pope Innocent III's invitation to a crusade, fell upon the rich dominions the count of Toulouse. Most of the protectors of the troubadours had been, if not heretics, at least liberally disposed toward to the heretical party, in whose downfall they consequently found themselves involved. As the desolation of Languedoc became more and more entire, the darkness gathered round patrons and poets alike. Thus it was that Guiraut Riquier at the end of the thirteenth century was already speaking to the wind. He was in a decayed world, the mourner of one of the most brilliant poetical schools that ever flourished, an eminently creative school from which proceeded all the new European lyrism.
Literary Forms
A considerable number of specimens, if not the greater part, of the work of the troubadours is extant, having been preserved in the manuscripts known as chansonniers ("song books"); and the rules of their art are formulated in the Leys d’amors (1340). The verse form most frequently employed by the troubadours was the canso, consisting of five or six coblas (“stanzas") with a tornada ("envoy"). When the canso was of a political or satirical nature, it was called a sirventes. The troubadours also used the balada or dansa, which was a dance song with a refrain; the pastorela, illustrating the love request of a knight to a shepherdess; the alba or morning song, one of the most exquisite of their forms, in which lovers are warned by the gaita (“watchman") that day is close at hand and that el gilos, the jealous husband, may surprise them (there were also, however, albas of a religious sort). Corresponding to the alba was the serena or evening song, a later invention. Particularly interesting were the tenson and the partimen or joc partit, which were lyrical conversations between two or more persons discussing, as a rule, some point of amorous casuistry or matters of a religious, metaphysical, or satirical character. Though some of them wrote other kinds of poems, the troubadours were essentially lyrical.
Lives of the Troubadours
Information on the careers of 111 of the 400 troubadours can be gathered from the several manuscript collections of biographies of these poets. The principal collection, made by various hands toward the middle of the thirteenth century, includes contributions by Uc de Saint Circ (c. 1200-40), himself a troubadour. The Vies des plus celebres et anciens poetes provensaux (“lives of the more celebrated and ancient Provencal poets”), published by Jehan de Nostredame (or Nostradamus) in 1575, is another source, but unreliable.
Even the numerous genuine biographies, however, are often embroidered with statements that make a severe demand on a modern reader's credulity; and a major task of research in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been to disentangle the true from the fanciful in these writings.
Something must be said of a few of the most notable troubadours.
GUILHEM VII, count of Poitiers (William IX, duke of Aqui-taine), who was born in 1071 and reigned as count-duke from 1086 to his death in 1127, was the first troubadour to come to renown. He is still regarded both as the patron and earliest poet of the school. Some of his songs are rather licentious; in another he makes a pathetic farewell to the world.
Second on the ordinary list of great troubadours is JATJFRE RUDEL of Blaye (fl. 1130-50), whose heart burned like the disc of a sunflower toward his "far-away love." Little else than the famous adventure of the Lady of Tripoli (dramatized by Edmond Rostand in La Princesse lointaine') is told about this troubadour, whose stanzas, inspired either by the Church of Christ or by the Lady of Tripoli herself, have a simple and pathetic accent.
Another of the early troubadours, the Gascon MARCABRUN (fl. c. 1130-48), from whose pen 45 poems survive, was an innovator and a reformer. To him the severity of the classical troubadour's style is mainly due, and he was one of the first to make use of the complex form known as the trobar clus. He posed as a violent misogynist: "I never loved any lady, and no lady ever loved me." Several of his songs are of a rough beauty.
More famous is BERTRAN DE BORN (d. between 1202 and 1215), the warrior poet, of Hautefort in Perigord. Dante (in the Inferno of The Divine Comedy) describes him in hell, carrying his severed head before him like a lantern and comparing himself with Achitophel, who incited Absalom to revolt against David (Inferno, Canto 28, lines 118-142). This refers to Bertran's role in encouraging Henry the Young King, son of Henry II of England, in his war of 1183 against his brother Richard in Aqui-taine, which soon became a rebellion against Henry II. The Young King's death moved Bertran to a beautiful planh (lament). Besieged in Hautefort and taken prisoner, Bertran then became reconciled to Richard. He grew devout in his old age. About 25 sirventes by him are extant, including some of the most colourful and vivid poems that war ever inspired.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen first of France and then of England, was a great patroness of the troubadours; and it was at her court that BERNART DE VENTADOUR (c. 1150-95) rose to eminence. Bernart, whose name is perhaps the highest in Occitanian poetry, was the son of a kitchen scullion in the castle of Eble, viscount of Ventadour. Eble, himself a poet, early noticed the talents of his serving boy and trained him to be a poet. The beautiful wife of Eble encouraged the boy's attentions; indeed, they had secretly loved one another since childhood. The poems which this passion inspired are among the best to come down to us from the middle ages. When Eble at last discovered the intrigue and exiled him from Ventadour, Bernart took shelter at Eleanor's court. After her marriage to Henry Plantagenet (1152) he left her service and attached himself to the court of Toulouse.
The most famous adept of the trobar clus was a knight of Riberac in Perigord, ARNAUT DANIEL (fl. c. 1180-1210), who attached himself as a troubadour to the court of Richard Coeur de Lion. Arnaut owes to the repeated praise given to him by Dante in the Purgatorio (Canto 26, lines 115 ff.) and elsewhere a dazzling glory that to modern readers seems somewhat excessive. To Dante he is il miglior fabbro ("the better craftsman") and it is evident that it was the brilliant art of the Perigourdin's elaborate verse which delighted the Florentine. Arnaut's invention of forms of verse particularly impressed Dante (see SESTINA).
Dante was curiously anxious to exalt Arnaut Daniel as a better artist than his immediate rival, also one of Richard Coeur de Lion's proteges, GIRAUT DE BORNELH (c. 1165-1220), who came from the vicinity of Excideuil, between Perigueux and Limoges. Modern taste, however, is inclined to reverse Dante's verdict. Giraut indeed, besides some pieces no less laboured than Arnaut Daniel's, left an alba of incomparable freshness, the Reis glorias imitated by Ezra Pound in his Lustra ("Languedoc," i).
Appendix C: CATHARI (CATHARS), by Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke, Prof. of Medieval History, University of Liverpool
A heretical Christian sect that flourished in western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Cathars can be distinguished from the other heretical sects of the period by their dualistic views and their organized church. Dualism in this sense means the belief that goodness exists only in the spiritual world of the good God; that the material world is evil and was created by an evil god or spirit called Satan; and thus that Good and Evil have two separate creators. Views containing similar implications had been common among the Gnostic sects in the early Christian centuries; these ideas had had their greatest influence on the middle east and on Christian literature in the religion of Mani (i.e., MANICHAEISM), and were held in the early middle ages in the Balkans and the near east by the religious sects of the Paulicians and the Bogomils. The Cathars were closely connected with the last two, and they were sometimes known in the west as Publicani (a corruption of Pauliciani, but also an echo of the publicans of the New Testament) or Bougres (i.e., Bulgarians, for Bulgaria was the home of the Bogomils); but most commonly as Cathari (Gr. Catharoi, "pure") or Albigenses (“the men of Albi,” after one of their chief centers of influence in the south of France). The word "Albigenses," however, could refer to all the heretics of this region, both Cathars and Waldenses.
Emergence of the Heresy
After the fall of the Roman empire dualist heresies were virtually unknown in western Europe until about the year 1000. In the first half of the llth century isolated groups of heretics appeared of whose doctrine little is known. Some of these groups may have been merely anticlerical and puritanical, like the later Waldenses, but some were certainly dualists. It is clear that these had learned their dualism by contact with the Bogomils, but the nature and extent of the contact is quite uncertain. These groups appeared in western Germany, Flanders, France and northern Italy. In the late eleventh century no more was heard of them; then in the twelfth century they reappeared in the same areas, revealing the same range of views.
The Gregorian reform of the church in the eleventh century was accompanied by widespread popular enthusiasm. But the official church failed in the long run to contain and channel this enthusiasm. The growth of clerical education and the heightened emphasis on the importance of sacraments made of the clergy more a class apart and left the laity with little chance to develop their own initiative in the affairs of the church. It was among the unprivileged lower clergy, poorer knights, merchants and artisans that heresy became popular in the twelfth century: among men and women often of considerable intelligence and enterprise but without the means of expressing their zeal (in their own view at least) within the Catholic Church. The heretical movement was one aspect of the religious revival of the day, and in part at least it was a by-product of the immensely rapid cultural, social and economic changes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The period of most rapid growth came in the 30 years following 1140. At about this time, the Bogomil church was reorganizing itself, setting up an episcopate, planning missions; and there is no doubt that Bogomil missionaries, as well as western dualists who had imbibed their doctrines in the Byzantine empire while on the second crusade (1147-49), were at work in the west in the middle of the century. The preaching of St. Bernard against the heresy proved unavailing, and from the 1140s the Cathars were an organized church with a hierarchy, a liturgy and a system of doctrine, though none of these ever became so coherent as their Catholic counterparts. About 1149, the first bishop established himself in the north of France; a few years later he established colleagues at Albi and in Lombardy. The authority of these bishops was not clearly defined; their status was confirmed and the prestige of the Cathar church enhanced by the visit of the Bogomil bishop Nicetas in 1167. He visited both Lombardy and the south of France, which was now becoming the most fruitful area of Cathar activity, held councils and established new bishoprics. In the following years more bishops were set up in Italy, until by the turn of the century there were 11 bishoprics in all, one in the north of France, four in the south (Albi, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Val d'Aran; two more were added later) and six in Italy (Concorezzo near Milan, Desenzano, Bagnolo, Vicenza, Florence and Spoleto). It was in the second half of the 12th century that the Greek word Cathari was first applied to them; its first known use was in Germany in 1163.
Two Parties
The multiplication of bishoprics in Italy, however, was partly due to a doctrinal rift. Bishop Nicetas had come to the west in 1167 to instill into his colleagues a more thoroughgoing dualism than they had believed in hitherto. The difference corresponded to a divergence within the Bogomil churches themselves: between those who held that Satan, the creator of the world, had once been an angel of God who had fallen from grace, and those who held that he was an independent deity. The former view implied that God was the ultimate creator of the universe, and so involved a modified dualism; the latter — clearly stated in the Liber de duobus principiis, which was written by an associate of John de Lugio, the heretic bishop of Bergamo — was more radically dualist. On the whole, the Cathars in the south of France accepted the more radical dualism; those in Italy became divided into two parties. The opposition between the two never involved out-and-out schism; they always agreed in their opposition to the Catholic Church. But it was a symptom of the divergences in Cathar doctrine from place to place and time to time which make it exceedingly difficult to define with precision.
Matter, they were all agreed, was evil. Man was an alien and a sojourner in an evil world, and his aim must be to free his spirit, which was in its nature good, and restore it to communion with God. They believed in the ultimate redemption of spirits—though not always in universal redemption—but thought the process was slow since they believed in the transmigration of souls from man to man or from man to beast (for animals too had souls). There were strict rules for fasting, including the total prohibition of meat; to eat an animal's flesh was tantamount to cannibalism. Sexual intercourse was forbidden: they had a horror of procreation because it involved the imprisonment of more spirit in the world of flesh. Thus they believed passionately in celibacy and in every form of ascetic renunciation of the world; and they looked favourably on suicide, an attitude which made the more fervent of them impervious to persecution.
The extreme asceticism of Cathar doctrine made the Cathar church a church of the elect; and yet in France and northern Italy it became a popular religion. This involved a considerable process of adjustment, which was achieved, as is common in dualist or ascetic religions, by the division of the faithful into two bodies: the "perfect" and the "believers." The perfect were set apart from the mass of believers by an elaborate ceremony of initiation, or spiritual baptism, the consolamentum. Within the ranks of the perfect was a hierarchy of bishops and deacons, but they did not have the exclusive right of administering sacraments. The Cathars had two other sacraments apart from consolamentum and ordination: penance and breaking of bread. The breaking of bread was a kind of communion; they did not believe in transub-stantiation. The perfect devoted themselves to contemplation and were expected to maintain the highest moral standards, and it was the privilege of the believers to provide them with food and drink.
The believers could not be expected to attain the standards of renunciation of the perfect. Many believers underwent the consolamentum at the end of their lives, as many early Christians had received baptism on their death beds, so as to avoid the dire consequences of a lapse after being received among the elect. The enemies of the Cathars usually admitted the lofty standards of the perfect, but they accused the believers of all manner of vice. Sexual intercourse was officially forbidden but could not be entirely suppressed. Marriage, however, was regarded as organized vice, and particularly noxious; it seems that casual vice and sodomy were preferred. But the charges of the Catholics were doubtless exaggerated, and in course of time the Cathars came to conform themselves in a variety of ways to normal western standards.
The Cathar doctrines of creation led them to rewrite the biblical story — like all dualists they devised an elaborate mythology to replace it — and to reject the notion that the whole Bible was sacred. They viewed much of the Old Testament with reserve; some of them rejected it altogether; and in the vernacular Bibles they circulated there was much apocryphal matter. The New Testament was accepted but extensively reinterpreted. The orthodox doctrine of incarnation — of God, as it were, imprisoned in human flesh — was impossible to the Cathars. Jesus was an angel merely, who came to indicate the way to salvation not himself to provide it; his human sufferings and death were an illusion.
The Church's Attack
The Cathar doctrines, therefore, struck at the roots of orthodox Christianity and of the social institutions of Christendom, and the authorities of church and state united to attack them. Some of the heretics of the llth and early twelfth centuries perished, but more often because of the zeal of the lay power or the violence of a mob than at the instruction of the ecclesiastical authorities. But the church's law had always envisaged the possibility that active persecution might be needed; and the catastrophic rapidity with which various heretical sects, and most notably the Cathars, grew in the middle of the twelfth century led to a rapid development of the legal machinery. In 1184 Pope Lucius III and the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa joined at Verona in issuing the decree Ad abolendam, which laid down a procedure for ecclesiastical trial, after which an obdurate heretic would be handed over to the secular arm for punishment; and punishment meant confiscation of property, exile or even possibly death. Tradition, however, had already established burning as the most suitable punishment for the unrepentant heretic.
Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), like many of the church's leaders, preferred conversion to persecution. But the Cathars were not to be persuaded, and their triumphant progress looked like giving them dominance over the Catholic Church in southern France and northern Italy. By and large the Cathars did not recruit from the nobility; so large a proportion of them were artisans that they were commonly known as the Weavers, and it was under this title that their brief appearance in England in the 1160s was noted by William of Newburgh (Historia rerum Anglicarum, ii, 13) and other writers of the late 12th century. But in Provence and to a lesser extent in Italy they won the favour of the nobility, and" even recruited some of them. Innocent Ill's attempts to force Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, to join him in putting down heresy ended in disaster; the papal legate Peter de Castelnau was murdered (Jan. IS, 1208), and the count was generally thought to have been an accessory to the crime. A crusade was proclaimed against the heretics, and a substantial army led by a group of barons from northern France proceeded to ravage Toulouse and massacre the inhabitants, both Cathar and Catholic. The Albigensian crusade was violent and cruel, but it seems that the more orderly persecution sanctioned by Louis IX, in alliance with the nascent Inquisition, was more effective in breaking the power of the Cathars. In 1244 the great fortress of Montsegur near the Pyrenees, which had long contained a large nest of the perfect, was captured and destroyed. The Cathars had to go underground, and many of the French Cathars fled to Italy, where persecution was more intermittent.
Final Collapse
Early in the thirteenth century the Dominican order was founded to provide learned preachers as able and as poor as the Cathars for the purpose (among others) of combating heresy. It was natural that they should often be employed by the papacy in inquiries into heresy; and it was out of these inquiries that the machinery of the Inquisition was gradually developed in the thirteenth century. In a very different way the other great order of friars founded about the same time, the Friars Minor or Franciscans, were almost equally dangerous to the Cathars. St. Francis also preached to the classes to whom the Cathars had especially appealed; but his message was a message of joy, and he brought home, as it had never been brought home before, that the world was God's world, and good. It is likely that the collapse of the Cathars was as much due to the failure of their appeal as to the fires of the Inquisition, and it is noticeable that they disappeared both in France and in Italy about the same time, although persecution was much more persistent north of the Alps. The hierarchy faded out in the 1270s; the dying embers of Cathar heresy lingered through the 14th century to be finally extinguished early in the ISth.
The Inquisition was their chief legacy to medieval Europe, for the future of the church was to be directly influenced far more by the sects that preached a puritanism and a return to the primitive church innocent of dualism. Of all the sects denounced in the decree Ad abolendam, only the Waldenses continue to exist in the 20th century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (1947); A. Borst, Die Katkarer (1953) ; J. Guiraud, Histoire de I'inquisition au moyen age, vol. 1 (1935) ; H. Maisonneuve, Etudes sur les origines de I'inquisition, 2nd ed. (1960); Z. Oldenbourg, Massacre at Montsegur (1961) ; Liber de duobus principiis, ed. by A. Dondaine (1939).