Knights asserted by arms their mistress’ beauty.
Chivalric love had, indeed, its absurdities as well as its impieties. It was a pleasing caricature of chivalry, when the knight of La Mancha stationed himself in the middle of a high road, and calling to the merchants of Toledo, who were bound to the silk fairs at Murcia, forbad them to pass, unless they acknowledged that there was not in the universe a more beautiful damsel than the empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. For the knights of chivalry were not satisfied to fight in defence of the ladies, and to joust in their honour, but from the extravagancy of their love, each knight maintained at the point of his lance, that his mistress surpassed all other ladies in beauty.[235] The knight Jehan de Saintré (whose education in chivalry has been already described by me) vowed to wear a helmet of a particular shape, and to visit, during three years, the courts of Europe, maintaining against all their chivalry the beauty of his mistress. Four knights and five squires, who had made a similar vow, were his companions. At a tournament held by the Emperor of Germany, the noble undertaking was held to be accomplished, and the emblems of the emprise were unchained from the left shoulder of the gallant knights and squires.[236] Indeed, wherever a knight went, to court or to camp, he asserted the superiority of his lady and his love, but he hurled his defiances not against simple merchants, as our right worshipful knight Don Quixote did, but against persons of his own rank, who were in amours as well as himself. Instances of this chivalric disposition occur frequently in chivalric history: but Cervantes caricatured the romances, and not the sober chronicles of chivalry, when, in reply to the natural enquiry of one of the merchants regarding the beauty of the lady, he made his hero exclaim, “Had I once shown you that beauty, what wonder would it be to acknowledge so notorious a truth? the importance of the thing lies in obliging you to believe it, confess it, affirm it, swear it, and maintain it, without seeing her.” But the display of chivalric bravery in avowal of woman’s beauty proceeded from so noble a feeling, that it must not be censured or satirised too severely, for
“Who is the owner of a treasure
Above all value, but, without offence,
May glory in the glad possession of it?”
Penitents of love.
As history, however, should be a record, and not a panegyric, I proceed to observe, that the most marked display of the extravagancies of our knights took place in the courts of love; but as I have dilated on that topic in another work, I am precluded of treating the subject here, and it is the tritest of all the subjects of chivalry. Equally ridiculous among the amatory phrenzies of the middle ages was the society of the penitents of love, formed by some ladies and gentlemen in Poictou, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. They opposed themselves to nature in every thing, on the principle that love can effect the strangest metamorphoses. During the hottest months of summer, they covered themselves with mantles lined with fur, and in their houses they sat before large fires. When winter came they affected to be burning with the fires of love, and a dress of the slightest texture wrapt their limbs. This society did not endure long, nor was its example pernicious. A few enthusiasts perished, and reason then resumed her empire.[237]
Other peculiarities of chivalric love.
The knight was as zealous in the gentle as in the more solemn affections of the soul. He believed that both God and love hated hard and hypocritical hearts. In a bolder strain of irreverence he thought that both God and love could be softened by prayer, and that he who served both with fidelity would secure to himself happiness in this life and the joys of Paradise hereafter. On other occasions the gallant spirit of chivalry spoke more rationally. Love, according to one renowned knight, is the chaste union of two hearts, which, attached by virtue, live for the promotion of happiness, having only one soul and one will in common.
“Liege lady mine! (Gruélan thus return’d,)
With love’s bright fires this bosom ne’er hath burn’d.
Love’s sovereign lore, mysterious and refined,
Is the pure confluence of immortal mind;
Chaste union of two hearts by virtue wrought,
Where each seems either in word, deed, and thought,
Each singly to itself no more remains,
But one will guides, one common soul sustains.”[238]
The passion universal.
Story of Aristotle.
So prevailing was amatory enthusiasm, that not only did poets fancy themselves inspired by love, but learned clerks were its subjects, and in spite of its supposed divinity some natural satire fell upon the scholar who yielded to its fascination. In Gower’s Confessio Amantis, the omnipotence of love is strikingly displayed; for besides those whom we might expect to see at the feet of the goddess, we are presented with Plato and Socrates, and even him who was the object of veneration bordering on idolatry in the ages which we in courtesy to ourselves call dark. Gower, the moral Gower, says with some humour,