So that our solemn plighted troth
When love is dead, we shall not break,
We'll to the priest ourselves betake.
You set me free, as I do you,
A perfect right then shall we both
Enjoy to choose a love anew,
wrote Peire of Barjac.
It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance; the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the love-alliance—so Sordello maintained, in a long poem—should be more binding than any marriage.
Only one love a woman can
Prefer. So let her choose her man