When a German knight had chosen a Dulcinea, he adopted and wore her colour, for he was now her love-servant, and stood to his mistress in the same relation as a vassal to his master. “The beloved,” Scherr continues, “gave her lover a love-token—a girdle or veil, a ribbon, or even a sleeve of her dress; this token he fastened to his helmet or shield, and great was the lady’s pride if he brought it back to her from battle thoroughly cut and hewn to pieces. Thus (in Parzival) Gawan had fastened on his shield a sleeve of the beautiful Olibet, and when he returned it to her, torn and speared, ‘Da ward des Mägdlein’s Freude gross; ihr blanker Arm war noch bloss, darüber schob sie ihn zuhand.’”
The attitude of the knight-errants may be briefly described as Gallantry gone mad. We have seen that a few traces of Gallantry are found in the pages of Ovid; but it was during the age of Chivalry that this overtone of Love made itself heard for the first time distinctly and loudly. And as, when a new popular melody appears, everybody takes it up and sings and whistles it ad nauseam; so these knights, intoxicated with the novel idea of gallant behaviour toward women, took it up and carried it to the most ridiculous extremes.
The women, naturally enough, unused to such devotion, became as extravagantly coy as the men were gallant. They subjected this Gallantry to the most absurd and even cruel tests. The knights were sent to war, to the crusades, into the dens of wild animals, to test their devotion; and few were so manly as the knight in Schiller’s ballad, who, after fetching his lady’s glove from the lion’s den, threw it in her face, instead of accepting her willing favours.
It is with reference to these coy and cruel tests of Gallantry that Wolfram von Eschenbach bitterly accuses Love of having caused the death of many a noble knight.
Yet, despite these absurdities, the trials and procrastinations to which the knights were subjected had one good result: they helped to give Love a supersensual, imaginative basis. This fact is brought out clearly in the following statement made by Dr. Bötticher in his learned work on Parzival. When, he says, after the middle of the twelfth century, the Troubadour love-poetry became known in Austria, “it was especially the idea of Minnedienst (love-service) that was seized upon with avidity: the knight wooes and labours for a woman’s love, but she holds back and grants no favours until after a long trial-service. The final object of this service, the possession of the beloved, is regarded as quite subordinate to the pangs and pleasures of wooing and waiting.”
Here was a novelty in Love, indeed! And, as good luck would have it, fashion lent its powerful aid to the innovation. The sentiment was that “Whoever is not in the service of love is unworthy to be a courtier”; and thus many a boor who would have very much preferred to continue treating women as servants, had to put his head into the yoke of Gallantry, in order to be “fashionable.”
CHIVALRY—POETIC
If these knights of Chivalry bestrode their warlike Rosinantes to show an astonished world for the first time what could be done in the way of Gallantry, the peaceful poets of Chivalry—the Troubadours and Minnesingers—in turn mounted their winged Pegasus, and soared for the first time to the dizzy heights of Ecstatic Adoration or Emotional Hyperbole.
“Woman was regarded,” says Mr. Symonds, “as an ideal being, to be approached with worship bordering on adoration. The lover derived personal force, virtue, elevation, energy from his enthusiastic passion. Honour, justice, courage, self-sacrifice, contempt of worldly goods flowed from that one sentiment, and love united two wills in a single ecstasy. Love was the consummation of spiritual felicity, which surpassed all other modes of happiness in its beatitude. Thus, Bernard de Ventadour and Jacopo da Lentino were ready to forego Paradise, unless they might behold their lady’s face before the throne of God. For a certain period in modern history this mysticism of the amorous emotion was no affectation. It formulated a genuine impulse of manly hearts, influenced by beauty, and touched with the sense of moral superiority in woman, perfected through weakness, and demanding physical protection. By bringing the tender passions into accord with gentle manners and unselfish aspirations, it served to temper the rudeness of primitive society; and no little of its attraction was due to the conviction that only refined natures could experience it. This new aspect of love was due to chivalry, to Christianity, to the Teutonic reverence for woman, in which religious awe seems to have blended with the service of the weaker by the stronger.”
These remarks, though applicable to Chivalrous poetry in general, refer especially to the Italian species. The most important varieties of Chivalrous poetry, however, are those of the Provençal, or French, Troubadours, and the German Minnesingers. These must be briefly considered in turn, as they present national differences of importance to the history and psychology of Love.