Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all virtues."
As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible coarseness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. Spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian poets of the dolce stil nuovo, will prove the historical reality of this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin poets.
Bernart of Ventadour:
Lady, I ask no other meed
Than that you suffer me to serve;
My faith and love shall never swerve,
I'm yours whatever you decreed.
Mine is her smile and mine her jest,
And foolish were I more to ask