How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance

by Marilyn Yalom

  One case with wide-ranging implications for romantic love asked whether true love could exist between spouses. In 1176, at the age of thirty-one, the countess answered in no uncertain terms: “Love cannot establish its claims between spouses.” She based this decision on the belief that marriage was based on mutual obligation, and thus precluded the spontaneous attraction required for true love. Other grand ladies echoed her position when they handed down their own judgments. Ermengarde, the Vicomtesse of Narbonne, insisted that affection between spouses and love between lovers were completely different sentiments. The reigning queen of France, Adèle of Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII, added: “We would not dare contradict the decision of the Comtesse de Champagne: true love cannot extend its claims to spouses.”

  The question was thus settled by the grandest of ladies. Or was it? Around 1177, Marie de Champagne became the patron of Chrétien de Troyes, the most eminent French writer of his age. His narrative poems dealing with chivalric romance would be recited in all French-speaking courts and would quickly spread throughout Europe. Some of these romans (the term has evolved to mean “novel” in modern French) run counter to the notion that true love is impossible within marriage. Indeed, one of Chrétien’s first works, Erec et Enide, shows nuptial bliss so consuming that the hero must be sent back into the world of errant knighthood in order to regain his stature. Oddly enough, his wife insists on accompanying him, and she is allowed to do so with the provision that she never speak to him. That makes for a suspenseful tale amid monster giants and magical gardens and other fairy-tale elements. In the end, the spouses make their way to the court of King Arthur, where they are finally allowed to settle down.

  Similarly concerned with marital love, Yvain, written toward the end of Chrétien’s life, tells the tale of a knight who wins the wife of the lord he has slain in combat. But then, instead of settling permanently into wedded bliss, he asks his wife’s permission to join his fellow Arthurian knights in another round of combat and jousts. She gives him leave to be absent for a year, after which time she will no longer take him back. Yvain becomes so embroiled in chivalric adventures that he forgets his wife and his promised date of return. Then, when she forbids him to reappear in her presence, he goes mad and must undergo Herculean ordeals to regain his sanity and win his wife once more. Yvain is something of a morality tale, suggesting that family life requires men to give up the warlike practices of youth. As an author, Chrétien de Troyes had no difficulty imagining love between spouses and tried to reconcile romantic love with the demands of domesticity; yet when he entered the service of Marie de Champagne, whose opinionated pronouncements on true love excluded marriage, he was persuaded to write the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, which he turned into a foundation tale of death-defying adultery.

  Who has not heard of the love between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, the wife of the legendary King Arthur? Even before the twelfth century, Guinevere was a familiar character to English and French audiences, who had come to know that elegant and capricious lady from oral Celtic tales. But no one before Chrétien de Troyes had imagined Sir Lancelot as her lover. Chrétien’s Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart gives us a hero who is both a perfect knight and a perfect lover. His extraordinary strength in battle stems from his intense love for Queen Guinevere. Nothing can stop Lancelot in his quest to save her from the evil prince who holds her in captivity, and when the time comes to reward him, she does so in the flesh.

  If we consider the story in detail, it is possible to see how Chrétien refashioned Celtic myth and troubadour poetry into a novel of love. For, without doubt, this is a novel, albeit a novel in verse. It is the ancestor of all the romance novels we devour today.

  Chrétien’s first words set the tone of complete submission to a woman above his station, in this case Marie de Champagne: “Because my lady of Champagne / Wants me to start a new / Romance, I’ll gladly begin one, / For I’m completely her servant / In whatever she wants me to do.”7 Then the narrator jumps immediately into a scene at the court of King Arthur, with his barons, the queen, and many “beautiful high-born / Ladies, exchanging elegant / Words in the finest French.” Right from the start, the qualities admired in a woman are stated explicitly: she must be beautiful and articulate. The tyranny of good looks and the requirement for lively speech set standards for desirable Frenchwomen up to our own time.

  Into this convivial scene a prince appears with an unsettling announcement: he holds in captivity many of Arthur’s people—knights, ladies, and girls. He does not intend to release them, but if there is a knight from Arthur’s court who is bold enough to bring him Queen Guinevere as a hostage, and if this knight can defeat him in battle, he promises to return all the prisoners along with the queen.

  Against his will, King Arthur is forced to send Queen Guinevere to the court of this evil prince. But hard on her heels is a band of men, including Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gauvain. Another knight arrives covered with sweat and out of breath; this is Lancelot. Of course, true to the dictates of mystery and suspense, the reader is not told immediately the name of this extraordinary knight. In fact, he is not named until halfway through the story! Nor are we told explicitly that he and Guinevere have exchanged oaths of love, though there is a guarded allusion to her lover when she is first sent away: “Oh, my love, if only / You knew . . .”

  The first half of the narrative is constructed around Lancelot’s adventures as he goes in search of Guinevere. These lead him into supernatural terrains and meetings with uncanny women, reminiscent of Celtic myth. He undergoes life-threatening trials and engages in fierce combats, all enacted according to the chivalric code expected of a faultless knight. But Chrétien introduces an odd element that departs from this idealized picture and gives the story its subtitle, The Knight of the Cart. Early in his quest, Lancelot, having lost his horse, is obliged to get into a cart driven by a dwarf in order to discover the whereabouts of the queen. Lancelot hesitates before entering the cart, which generally carries brigands, criminals, and people of the worst repute. The author tells us that the cart is a traveling pillory, inspiring ridicule and fear in the general populace, who never fail to cross themselves as they see it go by. It is understandable that Lancelot is reluctant to be seen in such an ill-famed vehicle; yet we are told he was wrong to be ashamed because Love ordered him to move as quickly as possible in pursuit of the queen. “He listened / To Love, and quickly jumped in, / Putting all sense of shame / Aside, as Love had commanded.” Despite the burden of ridicule he must bear because of the ignoble cart, Lancelot conducts himself nobly. He always wins the battle, even when his opponents outnumber him, and he always treats women with courtesy, even when they make outrageous demands.

  One of the most delightful is an encounter with a bold young woman who offers him lodgings in her castle on the condition that he share her bed. Although he tries to abstain, he ends up accepting her proposal, resolved in his heart to do nothing more than sleep at her side. Here we see not only the skill of Chrétien as a storyteller, his use of irony and humor, but also details that reveal the refinements that had been adopted by the wealthy nobility. The table is set with a large tablecloth, candlesticks and candles, goblets made of gold-encrusted silver, and two jugs—one filled with blackberry wine, the other with a heady white wine—all creating a suitable aesthetic atmosphere. One doesn’t just throw oneself into sleep or sex in a medieval romance. The height of refinement appears in the two bowls of hot water provided for washing one’s hands and the finely worked towel used for drying them. These are amenities that Chrétien had become accustomed to at the court of Marie de Champagne and that he proudly shares with his readers.

  The scenes that follow are masterful presentations of chivalry in action. After eating and drinking together, Lancelot goes to join the young lady in her bed, as he had promised. But he finds to his horror that she is being attacked by another knight intent upon raping her! “Help me! Help me!” she cries out. “Unless you get him off me / He’ll
dishonor me while you watch!” Although there are other knights armed with swords and four henchmen with axes, Lancelot summons the courage to confront the lady’s assailant. “My God, what / Can I do? I began this great / Quest for Guinevere’s sake. / I can’t proceed if my heart / Is only as brave as a rabbit’s.”

  With Guinevere’s image spurring him on, Lancelot succeeds in overcoming all his enemies. We are not spared the gory details of heads split open “down to the teeth.” It’s a scene familiar to us from a hundred movies featuring sword fights between swashbuckling actors, the hero always overcoming his evil adversaries despite their numerical advantages. And always there is a lady to be fought over and won.

  The comic originality of this episode lies in the role Lancelot must play as bedmate to a woman for whom he feels no desire. His desire is firmly fixed on Guinevere and remains attached to her even when he finds himself lying on clean white sheets next to the unnamed lady. Still, he can’t help noticing the niceties of upper-class hanky-panky. The lady has not set out a common straw mattress, nor a rough blanket, but a “coverlet of flowered / silk.” He keeps his chemise on and makes sure that “no part / Of his body was touching hers.” Staring at the ceiling (the image of Billy Crystal after he had made love to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally comes to mind), Lancelot cannot remove from his heart the imprint of his one true love. “Love, which rules / All hearts, allows them only / One home.” Mindful of his deepest feelings, he rejects the sexual advances of a charming young lady, and she, having sensed his disinclination, goes off to sleep in another room. Now, what woman, other than Guinevere, could expect comparable abstinence from her partner? However unrealistic, romance literature fulfills the aspirations of idealized love.

  Keeping a promise—either to sleep alongside a woman or show up at a tournament or return to captivity when released for a limited period—is the mark of a true knight. Lancelot has many occasions to demonstrate that he is a man of his word, often at his risk and peril. But above all, it is his promise to be a faithful servant to Guinevere that overrides all other considerations. Over and over again, Lancelot must obey her commands, however arbitrary they appear. She orders him to stop in the middle of a combat he is winning against the evil prince; he stops. She sends a message for him to fight badly in a tournament; he behaves like a poltroon and incurs the contempt of all assembled. She sends another message for him to fight as well as he can; he defeats all his opponents and distributes his booty to the multitude who had ridiculed him the day before.

  Lancelot serves his lady as others serve God—an analogy that is brought home in several telling incidents. When, after numerous adventures, he finally finds Guinevere and steals into her bedchamber at her request, “He approached the queen’s bed, / Bowing in adoration / Before the holiest relic / He knew.” And when he reluctantly leaves in the morning, “He bowed and crossed himself, / As if Acknowledging / An altar.” Courtly love borrowed from religion some of its most sacred rituals, and would continue to do so as the cult of love and the cult of the Virgin Mary developed side by side and grew in strength during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

  The bedchamber scene leaves no doubt as to the corporeal pleasures both lovers enjoyed.

  It was so exceedingly sweet

  And good—the kisses, the embraces—

  That Lancelot knew a delight

  So fine, so wondrous, that no one

  In the world had ever before

  Known anything like it, so help me

  God! And that’s all I’m allowed

  To tell you; I can say no more.

  The art of Chrétien is not prurient. It stops short of describing the physical details of lovemaking because such descriptions were considered too coarse for noble sensibilities. A chivalric story respects silence and leaves much to our imagination.

  Chrétien set the gold standard for love stories during the late twelfth century. His numerous imitators spread the vision of the young hero doggedly pursuing a sentimental education alongside his escapades as a warrior. There could be various twists in the plot, but if the story did not portray romantic love, it would not have found an enthusiastic audience.

  Another commanding figure at the court of Marie de Champagne was the chaplain Andreas Capellanus. Like Chrétien, he wrote and prospered under Marie’s generous patronage. His book The Art of Courtly Love (De arte honeste amandi), written in 1185, became the official guide for practitioners of fin’amor, not only in the provincial city of Troyes but throughout medieval Europe. Circulated both in the original Latin and in the vernacular of each country, its admonitions were cited endlessly to demonstrate how lovers should behave.

  Capellanus presented love as an all-consuming attraction between two noble participants who were equal in every way. The man had to treat the lady as if she were of higher status, however. He had to address her as if he were her feudal subject and he always had to submit to her will. In the first part of his treatise, he lays out thirteen precepts for an ideal lover.

  Flee avarice like the plague and embrace its opposite.

  Remain chaste for the one you love.

  Don’t try to destroy the love of a lady who is happily bound to another.

  Don’t look for love with a woman you would not marry.

  Remember to avoid lying.

  Avoid revealing the secrets of your love.

  By obeying in every way the commands of the ladies, try to belong to the chivalry of love at all times.

  When giving and receiving the pleasures of love, try to respect modesty at all times.

  Don’t bad-mouth others.

  Don’t divulge lovers’ secrets.

  In every circumstance, be polite and courteous.

  In giving yourself to the pleasures of love, do not exceed the desire of your lover.

  Be worthy of the chivalry of love.8

  The lover was expected to show respect for his beloved, demonstrate extravagant marks of adoration, perform exploits in her honor, and remain true to her even if he received nothing in recompense. It was up to the lady to decide if she would reward him with the gift of her person. For the most part, Capellanus focused on extramarital love and repeated Marie de Champagne’s declaration that love could exert its power between two married people because they were bound by duty. Married people could not even experience jealousy in regard to one another, according to Marie and Capellanus, since marriage was a contractual arrangement that had nothing to do with spontaneous attraction. Only nonmarried lovers could experience jealousy, which was considered intrinsic to “true love.” Marie’s reasoning suited her personal situation, first as a married woman whose husband was away for long periods during the Crusades, and then as an unmarried widow. Just as she had persuaded Chrétien to privilege adultery in his Lancelot, so too she leaned upon Capellanus to write about nonmarital love as if it were a lofty ideal.

  But by the time Capellanus had finished his opus, he made a complete about-face and no longer condoned extramarital affairs. Suddenly, in the third and final section of his work, he condemned adulterous love and made a good case for love in marriage, but the damage had already been done. Adultery had already become the major model for romance in medieval France.

  Courtly love was predicated on desire so intense that it could not be bound by the conventional rules of society. Passion took precedence over everything, including ties to husbands, family, overlords, and the dictates of the Catholic Church. Not surprisingly, the church reacted vigorously to the adulation of profane love; at the beginning of the thirteenth century, it even tried to suppress it through the arm of the Inquisition. But before that time, the cult of courtly love openly defied religious prohibitions, and in so doing, created the trio of familiar stock characters: the husband, the wife, and her lover.

  Another adulterous couple, Tristan and Iseult, rivaled Lancelot and Guinevere as the most popular French model of star-crossed lovers. Later audiences throughout the world would come to know them through Wagner’s incomp
arable opera, Tristan and Isolde. In the earliest Tristan saga based on oral Celtic sourses, the hero is sent to Ireland by King Mark to fetch his bride, Iseult. On the return voyage, Tristan and Iseult accidentally drink the love potion intended for Iseult and Mark. Henceforth, the lovers are eternally bound to each other by a fatal passion, despite Iseult’s subsequent marriage to King Mark. In centuries to come, the love potion became a robust metaphor for the mystery of passion that starts at first sight and endures in spite of everything designed to annihilate it.

  While the works of Chrétien and Capellanus and various versions of Tristan and Iseult were creating a groundswell in favor of courtly love, the poet Conon de Béthune revealed its underside in a long poem derived from an unpleasant incident at the French court at the time of the marriage of the young king Philippe Auguste to Isabelle de Hainaut. Philippe Auguste was the son of the widowed Adèle de Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII. Her two brothers, Henri and Théobald de Champagne, married the two daughters of Louis VII and Eleanor d’Aquitaine, thus making Adèle the wife of her brothers’ father-in-law! More pertinent to our concern, it also made her the sister-in-law of Marie de Champagne. When the minstrel Conon de Béthune came to the royal court, both Adèle and Marie ridiculed him because of his Flanders accent. Conon got his revenge on these contemptuous ladies in the following savage piece, which I have translated at length, since you are unlikely to find it elsewhere.

  Once upon a time, in another country,