Did romantic love exist in the Middle Ages?

Currently, it is quite in vogue to speak of the "romantic love”, which has acquired a somewhat pejorative connotation in recent times. Despite the fact that, in principle, and from a scientific perspective, the idea corresponds to the attraction, emotions and feelings that unite two people and that have a lot to do with each other. To do with biology and psychology, in many circles this term is used to talk about cultural beliefs that lead to creating toxic or unhealthy love ties. And, although in a certain way it is so, reducing the concept of romantic love to that implies leaving aside a series of equally important factors.

It is not our intention to write an article about the pros and cons of so-called "romantic love." In fact, and as we indicated in the title, our intention is to get closer to the concept from a historical perspective. Specific, examine whether in the Middle Ages there was romantic love as such or if, on the contrary, the idea is the fruit of a later society and culture. To analyze this, we must first briefly discuss what exactly is meant by “romantic” and what the original meaning of the word is. Let's see it.

Romantic love in the Middle Ages: an anachronism?

To begin with, etymologically, "romantic" comes from Romanticism, a cultural current and thought that, from the end of the 18th century and until the first decades of the 19th century, set its sights on human emotions and ideals. The movement was a reaction to the prevailing classicism and Enlightenment, whose precepts "corseted" the artist and the human being in general and inhibited the natural flow of their natural emotions.

In this context, love began to be seen as a path of sublimation, a kind of catharsis to purify the soul. The romantic artist was obsessed with the transcendent; For him, the world had no meaning without the elements that raised the human being above the mediocrity of everyday life. Love, of course, could not be an exception.

The veneration of the loved person (a veneration that often bordered on the humiliation of the lover), the suffering of love, the obsession with goals impossible... All this perfectly characterizes the idea of ​​love in the romantic era, which Jane Austen, the great British writer, perfectly portrayed in his novel Sense and Sensibility, in which the protagonist, Marianne, suffers tremendously for letting herself be carried away by this type of feeling.

Now, if the concept was born in Romanticism, Can we talk about romantic love in the Middle Ages, or is it an anachronism?

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The medieval romance and the "romantic"

The concept, etymologically at least, is closely linked to the Middle Ages. And it is that "romantic" (and its related words, such as Romanticism) comes, according to the most accepted theory, from roman, the name given in medieval times to texts that used languages ​​of Latin origin as a vehicle of expression. That is to say, While scholarly writings continued to be written in Latin, ballads, songs, and novels were written in the Romance language..

Romance languages ​​were the ones that had their roots in Latin. This idea originated many other words, such as "Romanesque", which described the buildings erected at the time of consolidation of these Romance languages, although this is another topic. In the case at hand, it referred to literature written in the vernacular language of the place, since outside Spanish, French, Occitan, Catalan or any other language related to the Latin trunk original.

It was logical, on the other hand, that romance literature (li romanz, it began to be called in the twelfth century in the French sphere) was written in languages vulgar or vernacular, since, unlike the scholarly texts, it was intended for the aristocratic class, while the other texts were written and read by clerics. These romances used to include fantastic themes, sprinkled with the characteristic medieval courtly love. This may be one of the reasons why, later, at the height of Romanticism, they began to call the new "romantic" artists, since they also gave importance to elements that escaped from realism surrounding.

On the other hand, we must not forget that artists and other romantic intellectuals felt a special attachment to the Middle Ages. (conveniently idealized, of course), which again connects the romantic sentiment of the 19th century with the romances medieval.

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The lady, the troubadour and the gentleman

OK; So far we have seen what relationship we can establish between the word "romantic" and its origin, which has its roots in the Middle Ages and the origins of the Romance languages. But etymologies aside, did romantic love exist in medieval culture? Let's see what one of the most prestigious medievalists of the 20th century, George Duby (1919-1996), says about it.

In one of his essays on love in medieval times (see bibliography), Duby briefly describes the basic outline of the concept of medieval courtly love. On the one hand, we would have the lady (whose name comes from the Latin dominates, ma'am), invariably married, whose beauty arouses greed (sexual, but also for power and yearning for sublimation) of a young bachelor, who most of the time is precisely a vassal of the lady's husband. From then on, a game of flirting and conquest is established, in which the lady gradually "delivers" to the rhythm that she herself imposes.

Duby sees in this behavior a clear feminine "empowerment" (if this expression can be used for the Middle Ages), since she is the lady, and not her suitor, the one who sets the standards for flirting and conquest, without forgetting that she is also the one who marks the end of the relationship, at the time and in the way she wants.

In any case, the scheme of courtly love that began to consolidate in the twelfth century fully coincides with the explosion of romance literature and, therefore, of chivalric novels, which clearly mark values ​​and behaviors that gentlemen must follow.

In another essay collected in the same volume, in this case by Arnold Hauser (1892-1978), the author raises the idea that the birth of this Medieval courtly love is closely related to the revival of cities and the rise of commerce, which led to a refinement in the tastes of the wealthy classes and, therefore, the birth of a new ideal in relation to love, which manifested itself in a specific and new: the poems and songs of the troubadours.

sublime love

new? Depends. The lyric of the beloved who sings to the beloved already existed in antiquity. If we take, for example, the Song of songs biblical, we will find beautiful verses about it. Likewise in Ancient Egypt and in its compilations of love songs, where the beloved speaks of the physical virtues of his beloved.

In any case, and despite not being a completely new theme in history, it is true that courtly love Medieval has an unquestionable trail in the European culture of the following centuries, especially in the Romanticism of the 18th century. XIX. The idea of ​​the absolute adoration of the desired woman and the humiliation for which the lover is willing to spend to get her attention is intimately linked to the ideal of love of the romantic current later. The link is very clear if we observe the terminology in which the troubadours expressed themselves: this type of love was called Fin'amor, sublime love.

So, the lady stands as an object of veneration, and everything about her is perfect. Courtly love is an absolutely idealized love, in no way real, since it is based on the image that the troubadour has of the beloved woman. In some cases, as it happens with the famous troubadour Jaufré Raudel (s. XII), the song is addressed to a lady whom the lover does not even know (the Countess of Tripoli), but before the image of which, drawn from narrations and legends, has fallen hopelessly surrendered.

Marriage and love, two different realities

The idea of ​​love unions is relatively recent. The marriage union has always been a contract between interested parties, closer to a commercial bond than an affective one. In the case of Christian Europe, it was a link destined exclusively for procreation or, in the "worst case" cases, to prevent the contracting parties from satisfying their sexual appetites in a less "sacred". It is evident, therefore, that the idea of ​​love was not included in the pact.

As Hauser maintains in his already cited work, the Church itself clearly distinguished the affection that the spouses professed (the dilectio Latina), much closer to respect and consideration, of love. It was understood that this second feeling was not linked to the matrimonial sacrament, since it had more to do with appetites and revolutions (both physical and emotional) that the Church advised check.

Courtly love, therefore, represented a true escape for medieval society. In a world in which marriage represented a contract between lineages, courteous dialectic became a delicious game to which knights and ladies indulged with special pleasure. It is important to note that the Church tolerated courtly love to a certain extent, as long as it remained relegated to the "sublime" realm and did not involve carnal contact.

conclusions

Before finishing the article, let's briefly summarize what we have exposed in it. On the one hand, we have that the word "romantic", linked to the movement of Romanticism, comes etymologically from medieval romance and romance, and that their connection may come from the interest of romantic artists in the medieval past, especially in chivalrous deeds and refined love cuts.

Second, we have observed the similarity between this courtly love and the concept of love in the Romanticism: the unrestrained adoration and idealization of the loved subject, which inevitably entails pain and frustration. We have also commented that, just as romantic love was clothed in sublimation, so was Fin'amor, sublime love, in which ideal veneration prevailed over carnal contact.

So, can we say that romantic love existed in the Middle Ages? Well yes and no. Yes, because there is an obvious parallelism between the romantic love of the 19th century, whose reverberations continue in today's world, and medieval courtly love. No, because, despite this, they are two very different worlds with two very different contexts.

While courtly love arises from the interest of the aristocracy to assert itself in a world where the bourgeois class was on the rise, the romantic love of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries arises as a protest against the ideas of the Enlightenment and classicism, in an attempt to unleash the subjective self of the artist. On the other hand, the situation of the concept of "romantic love" today cannot be compared to that of Romanticism.

Our values ​​are very different from those that promoted the emergence of the romantic current, so it is lawful that present society reconsiders this type of models, which were born a long time ago, in a very social context different.