All do I love and never will refrain
Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.
It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who—while living with a very earthly woman—extolled all his life long a lofty being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of love, the Don Juan.
In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love.
The troubadours never weary of drawing a line between drudaria and luxuria, pure love and base desire. Mezura, seemliness, is contrasted with dezmezura, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and "high" love.
As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire must dim her purity, occurs again and again. But it should not be forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without being in the least influenced by it. Many a troubadour drew inspiration from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love and denunciation of base desire—a trick of his trade—suddenly came to himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had been a fool.
Deceitful love beguiles the simple fool
And binds with magic thongs the hapless wight;
That like a moth lured by the candle-light,
He hovers, helpless, round the heartless ghoul.