How they made love in the Middle Ages. Sergey Kocherov Love story. Love in the Middle Ages
In this note, of course, I do not pretend to fully cover the topic: it is very extensive. I will simply state some facts that need to be taken into account when we consider the plots of medieval history.
Firstly, marriage had nothing to do with love. From Roman times to the High Middle Ages, marriage was an exclusively civil institution, concluded in the upper class through legal procedures (conclusion of a contract), and in other classes in general “in a simple way” (up to bride kidnapping). The driving force has always been calculation, and not only among aristocrats: to take possession of a good dowry, to strengthen friendship with another ruler or a villan from a neighboring village.
In the fifteenth century, the development of the private bedroom had a major impact on sex. This likely made sex more frequent and also led to more partners. Historians in Germany and France refer to the period as the "age of the bastards". With the Reformation in the sixteenth century, sexuality in Ruggerio's world of marriage changed significantly. Although sex in marriage had previously been a sin, albeit a minor one, the Reformation led to ideas that marital love, mutual pleasure and desire, and marriage enhancement could be achieved through or benefited from sexual activity.
Marriage became a commonly used church sacrament in the West in the 12th - 13th centuries, and in Byzantium at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries (in Rus' around the same time). But this did not cause derationalization family relations. The Christian Church had a very definite opinion on this matter: men and women create families only in order to continue the human race. Study carnal love for the sake of pleasure is a great sin (that’s why contraceptives, if I’m not mistaken, are still prohibited among Catholics); the wife should be treated with respect, and no more, since love for her would distract a Christian from the main thing - love for God. Priests got rid of such temptation by taking a vow of celibacy.
Although moderation was still recommended and sex outside of marriage was still frowned upon, sex became part of romantic romance, with marriage based on romance rather than family interests. Protestant attitudes toward sexuality were based on a broader belief system about the family. Just as Reformation ideas emphasized the importance of the individual, so Protestantism encouraged a stronger sense of the family as a discrete unit. Once deeply rooted in kinship and communal networks, the nuclear family that emerged during this period was an independent organization, a "little commonwealth" ruled by its own patriarch, and reflective of the political unit of the state.
They got married very early: the age of marriage for men was 14 years old, for women - at 12, but engagements took place even earlier, when the bride and groom were just children. Thus, young people had no opportunity to participate even a little in choosing a couple - so that the option chosen by their parents would be, if not attractive, then at least tolerable. True, members of high-ranking families did not see their brides before the wedding in any case. Sometimes this led to very unpleasant incidents when the complete sexual incompatibility of the newlyweds became clear.
However, for other social groups, love has become one of the elements of choosing a mate. Once married, husbands and wives were encouraged to learn to love each other, a significant departure from the older ideal of extramarital and unrequited courtly love. The depraved world of Ruggerio was home to prostitutes, sex offenders and perverts, as well as sodomites. Prostitution was widespread during the Renaissance and could be found in large numbers in all major cities.
On a more professional level, an Englishman who lived near London could visit the brothels in Southwark, safe in the knowledge that they were under the solid jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester. Prostitution of private enterprise has flourished in Europe since time immemorial, and nothing its rulers have been able to achieve.
This probably explains the dark story with the second marriage of Philip Augustus - to Ingeborg of Denmark, who after the first wedding night went into captivity, and the groom began searching for a new bride; Moscow prince Semyon the Proud was unable to consummate his second marriage, because it seemed to him that his wife smelled of carrion; Leshko Cherny lived his life in a forcedly chaste marriage with Agrippina Rostislavna.
Although the term "sodomite" had different connotations during the Renaissance, it included the practice of homosexuality. However, sodomy also included other activities such as bestiality and general corruption. A recent stimulating discussion about the "historical construction of the homosexual" concerns the issue of when we now call "homosexual people" began to identify themselves as an "other" category, and when society began to perceive them as a distinct minority.
Since the beginning of the Renaissance, there were prohibitions against sodomy, but they were not strictly enforced. In the fourteenth century, various anti-sodomy laws were enacted by the northern Italian city states. These rulings laid the foundation for a larger European trend toward secular anti-sodomy legislation in the fifteenth century. Although the punishment was initially lax, in 15th-century Venice, sodomy was "one sexual crime where harsh language and harsh punishment coincided."
But more often it happened differently: the man regularly made children for his wife, and for comfort he found other women, as a rule, of a simple rank. 19th century writers were left to invent romantic stories about Agnes Sorel, about Blanca Lancia (Manfred’s mother), about the beautiful Jewish woman Esther, who gave birth to bastards to Casimir III, and about other similar characters. I’m not sure that it’s worth talking about love in this context: monarchs needed entertainment, and beautiful commoners, of course, could not refuse them this. The vassals did not see anything wrong with this - until the mistresses and bastards of their lords found themselves dangerously close to the throne. And then riots began: the Galician boyars burned Yaroslav Osmomysl’s mistress Nastasya alive and forced their master to return to his wife. But some bastards still managed to get the throne as an exception. This is how the House of Trastamara in Castile, Aviz and Braganza in Portugal came to power. By the way, Elizaveta Petrovna was born out of wedlock, but ascended the throne, and the Romanovs-Holstein-Gottorp family descend from her older sister Anna, also illegitimate.
During the fifteenth century, Italy also saw several anti-sodomy purges, most notably the Savonarola episode in Florence. It seems that these purges occurred for two reasons. First, the practice of sodomy was initially considered a mildly valued step toward adult heterosexuality. However, "growing awareness and fear of the homosexual subculture has crystallized the perception that some continue to prefer homosexuality to heterosexuality as they grow older."
Secondly, many people came to associate sodomy with the plague. They believed that the practice of sodomy caused the wrath of God, manifesting itself as repeated outbreaks of the plague. There was also the problem of population decline in plague-stricken Italy. People looked down on practices such as sodomy in a society that had difficulty keeping reproduction at a constant level.
Women were much more limited in their personal lives. This is understandable: they had to give birth to heirs from their husbands. In addition, woman is the culprit of the Fall, the “sweet evil” that rules the world. She was required to observe the only commandment that was universal for the feudal era: a woman had to remain faithful to her husband. Strangely enough, courtly love was also based on the same loyalty. A real knight must have a lady of his heart, and the wife of the overlord was often chosen as such, making her the object of platonic adoration. Lady of the heart = senora; love turned out to be a kind of vassalage, like religion (we remember how the dying Roland handed the glove to God, his supreme overlord). The lady’s husband had nothing to worry about: his wife’s admirers remained faithful to him, not demanding anything from their beloved. All Lancelot received from Queen Guinevere (according to the courtly version of the plot) was one single kiss. And he was presented to him after taking the vassal oath.
All of these factors are associated with the creation of a new, more hostile environment for those who choose to engage in sodomy. Italian authorities have taken a number of measures in an attempt to curb the practice of sodomy. These included official sponsorship of prostitution, new and harsher laws for those caught practicing sodomy, and more effective police surveillance.
As in other cases throughout history, although the regulatory system attempted to prevent sodomy, the practice continued. For women in the Middle Ages, creating a special status for the Virgin Mary in the church was very important. Arriving from Byzantium, the cult of the Virgin Mary was brought to Europe in the twelfth century by people returning from the Crusades. Its popularity grew, and until the fourteenth century it occupied a very important place in the pantheon of the Church. This facilitated the progress of women, since “for many centuries the Western Church equated women with Eve, the architect of human ruin; when Eve finally succumbed to Mary in the fourteenth century, all women benefited.”
True, there were other versions of this story. Some write that the valiant knight was caught in bed with his king's wife, which is why Lancelot had to kill a bunch of people. Isolde was also married - to King Mark, but still fell in love with Tristan and surrendered to him. For the author of the novel, this love is certainly sinful, and it leads the heroes to a terrible end, but it is important to note that they are not guilty of anything: they accidentally drank a love potion intended for Isolde and Mark, and since then they could not help themselves. An accident, so to speak.
Bernard, many Cistercian abbeys were created. The monks of the Cistercian order were dedicated to the Virgin, who wore White color in her honor. They also began to build special chapels for her in their cathedrals. By the thirteenth century, the combination of virgin worship and love poetry had transformed Mary into the ideal archetype of female virtue. Although her image was originally rather courtly, Franciscan influence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries transformed the Holy Virgin into the protector and mother of the poor and downtrodden.
While the church helped the image of women, it also kept them in a position of inferiority. One of the most influential authors of the Church's position on sex and women was Thomas Aquinas. His position on women became the position to which the clergy subscribed for over 400 years. He argued that since women were created from Adam's rib, they were destined for union with men. However, she was only supposed to become a man's partner when she was biologically irreplaceable.
These are the two main plots medieval literature about love: Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere. Both are about the love of a married woman and her husband's vassal. The topic is dangerous, no matter how soul-savingly it is revealed, and since the 13th century, women of the upper and third classes have been increasingly reading books. If you believe Dante, it was the story about Arthur’s wife that provoked the beginning of a criminal love affair between Paolo Malatesta and his brother’s wife Francesca (“In our leisure time we once read // A sweet story about Launcelot”). As a result, the eldest of the Malatesta brothers became Cain... And Dante, having met two disembodied spirits in the corresponding circle of hell, grieves not only about the terrible fate of the two lovers, but also that the punishment they suffered is well deserved.
Aquinas also believed that since man was the head of the family, he had the capacity for intelligence that women lacked, and since he played an active role during sexual intercourse; the male sex was clearly superior. Regarding marriage, Aquinas believed that he had only two recommendations: it allowed children to think without sin, and it left people out of sexual problems. Aquinas also went into detail about the various sexual sins in appropriate order.
The Church has also taken the most interesting position regarding prostitution, considering fornication and adultery to be considered sins. The Church could not and did not want to prohibit prostitution. Take prostitutes out of the world and you fill it with sodomy. So the church found itself in an interesting position. Supporting one evil to prevent a greater one led the church to create many brothels. However, the church has also realized that prostitution is also a sin. Mary Magdalene was appropriated by the church as the patron saint of "fallen women".
There have been other examples of the harmful influence of novels on minds. The love of two Norman nobles for the daughters-in-law of the French king Philip the Fair did not find its singer, but became, as they say, a distant reason for the Hundred Years' War. Well, God be with him.
Dante himself, by the way, loved his Beatrice in a completely medieval spirit: “genius pure beauty", a semi-religious symbol, an ethereal being whose place is in heaven, not on earth. There he placed her, next to Jesus Christ; and on earth Dante had a wife, Gemma Donati, and at least three children.
Throughout Europe, "Magdalene houses" were built to house women who saw the error of their ways and wanted to correct their ways. These houses were supported by local patronage, and local residents apparently gave generously, as the House of the Soul in Vienna became the wealthiest institution in the city.
The Reformation had a significant impact on how the clergy viewed sexuality. The new views of Protestantism, with its emphasis on individuality and family, created important changes in clerical views on sex. While Catholic Church saw sexual sin as part of the fall of Adam and thus expressed some ambivalence towards marriage and sins of the flesh; Protestants saw marriage as salvation from sexual sin.
The conclusion is clear: people of the Middle Ages could read about love in books if they were literate, and life went on as usual - separately from high feelings. And it was going well. At least humanity hasn’t died out, and that’s already worth a lot).
It is usually stated that Christianity establishes a new relationship between God and man and that they are bound by love. In general, it is typical for Christian thinkers to pass off what they want as reality, since they are confined within the limits of religion, and one of the religions, and within the limits of exclusively morality, in which what is and what should be does not overlap, but what should be is postulated as what exists: God is love.
To Luther, virginity or abstinence from sex were abnormal conditions that could be overcome through marriage, which was as necessary to people as food and drink. Although separation without remarriage was the only form of divorce that Christ specifically sanctioned, Luther chose to accept it as advisory rather than mandatory. He believed that adultery on the part of either partner automatically dissolved the marriage, and that if a woman renounced her conjugal rights to her husband or one of the partners, it prevented the other from leading a pure life, the only practical alternative being divorce.
The commandments: “Love your God with all your heart”, “Love your neighbor as yourself” - should they be considered the most important principles of Christian morality or an essentially new attitude to love? First of all, there is no novelty here. The pagans also knew how or wanted to love the gods and their neighbors, and how, even to the point of recreating their most beautiful images. But the difference between Christianity and paganism manifested itself precisely in the rejection of aesthetics, the perception of nature and reality.
Although Luther primarily saw women as potential marriage and sexual partners, Calvin made the somewhat more constructive point that women could also be indispensable companions and helpers. As the views of Calvin and Luther gained currency throughout Europe, the Catholic idea that marriage was acceptable primarily as a way to channel lust and prevent sexual sin gave way to the belief that marital love, as well as the need to produce children, could justify sexual intercourse .
Hence the emphasis on the moral aspect of life, on moral principle, in contrast to paganism, specifically Greek antiquity, in which the emphasis is always on the comprehensive aesthetic aspect of being, it must be borne in mind that among the Greeks the aesthetic included both the laws of the state and morality in all its manifestations.
Accordingly, the ancient and Christian concepts of love are significantly different, contrastingly opposed. Just not in favor of the latter, as Christian thinkers believe. Soren Kierkegaard in “A Work of Love” (1847) argued (and this after the Renaissance and Enlightenment) that only Christian love has moral value, saying that only with the establishment of Christianity, for the first time in European history, love becomes the principle of not only behavior, but also morality.
At the same time, with a new emphasis on the importance of sexuality in marriage, Protestantism more clearly distinguished between proper sexual expression and sexual misconduct. This new emphasis on sex only within the marital relationship meant that Protestants did not view prostitution with the same ambivalence as Catholics. Young people were urged to get married and fulfill their sexual desires in the marriage bed rather than seek the company of prostitutes. Many of these new Protestant values were influenced by the new epidemic that swept through Europe just as the Reformation began.
The question is, who adhered to this principle of behavior and morality over the centuries and millennia of European civilization? Maybe Augustine the Blessed (354-430)? They even claim that Christian love has nothing in common with ancient eros.
“I have arrived in Carthage; and the destructive passions of criminal love began to overwhelm me,” Augustine writes in “Confessions,” which sounds like an excerpt from a Renaissance story. “I had not yet indulged in this love, but it was already nesting in me, and I did not like the paths open to it. I sought objects of love because I loved to love; the direct and legal path of love was disgusting to me. I had an inner hunger for spiritual food - You yourself, my God; but I was languishing in the wrong hunger, I was not hungry for this incorruptible food: not because I did not need it, but because of my extreme destructive vanity.
Perhaps no other aspect of human sexuality transformed Europe as thoroughly during the Renaissance and Reformation as the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. In particular, the spread of syphilis led to far-reaching changes. There is no scientific consensus regarding the origin of syphilis. Its most obvious origin is the Americas, as it first became widespread in Europe shortly after the return of Columbus. This event is called the Columbian Exchange.
Others argue that syphilis was previously a relatively harmless organism that mutated into a more virulent pathogen, or that it was commonly misidentified as leprosy before the fifteenth century. Regardless of the actual origins of syphilis, it became a new European plague and spread rapidly in the late fifteenth century. It spread so quickly as a result of the war.
My soul was sick, and, covered with scabs, it pitifully rushed to the outside world in the hope of quenching the burning pain of contact with sensory objects. But if these objects did not have a soul, they could be loved. Loving and being loved was pleasant for me, especially if sensual pleasure was added to it.
I defiled the life-giving feeling of love with the impurities of lust, I mixed the hellish fire of voluptuousness with the clear shine of love, and, despite such dishonor and shame, I was proud and admired of this, in the blindness of vanity, imagining myself as an elegant and secular person.
In a word, I rushed headlong into the love affairs that I so craved, and was completely captivated by them. My merciful God! With what bitter and at the same time saving bile You dissolved for me these destructive pleasures of mine.
What haven't I experienced? I experienced love, and reciprocity, and the charm of pleasure, and the joyful consolidation of a disastrous connection, and after that suspicion, and fear, and anger, and quarrel, and the burning rods of jealousy...”
What is this? This means that ancient eros has not gone away, no matter how much thinkers talk about Christian love, having especially sinned from a young age. They write that Christian ethics creates a new understanding of love as caritas (pity, compassion, mercy), as if the ancient Greeks did not know this feeling, but only indulged in eros. They claim that all the norms and rules of Christian ethics, the rules of family life, are based on compassion: live in love, do not commit adultery, husbands, love your wives as your own bodies, and let the wife fear her husband - Plutarch says it much better.
Ancient ethics does not exclude either eros or a purely aesthetic perception of reality, in particular, of a woman or wife. She does not exclude caritas, which cannot be opposed to eros, these are diverse phenomena. They write that caritas does not imply choice, it is not love for a specific person, like eros. But eros more often appears in general. In a word, the definition of medieval love, which does not need reciprocity, removes this concept from the sphere of love as such. This is just a scholastic construction, mystical rhetoric in the name of the notorious salvation of the soul.
In the Middle Ages, as in all others, love manifested itself, only hidden in every possible way and often tragic. This is famous story the love of Pierre Abelard (1079-1142), a French philosopher, theologian, poet, and Heloise, his extraordinary student, whose letters, along with his memoirs “The History of My Disasters,” represent a wonderful literary document of the era.
Pierre Abelard gained great fame as a poet and theologian, who was persecuted by the church; he was condemned at two church councils for philosophical positions recognized as heretical; he fell in love with a girl who burned with love for him, as she herself would write about later:
“As if jokingly, in a moment of rest from philosophical studies, you composed and left many beautiful love poems in form, and they were so pleasant both in words and in melody that they were often repeated by everyone, and your name was constantly heard on everyone's lips; the sweetness of your melodies did not allow even uneducated people to forget you. This is what most of all prompted women to sigh with love for you. And since most of these songs sang our love, I soon became famous in many areas and aroused the envy of many women. What wonderful spiritual and physical qualities did not adorn your youth!”
“God is my witness that I have never looked for anything in you other than yourself; I wanted to have only you, and not what belongs to you. I did not strive for marriage or to receive gifts and tried, as you yourself know, to bring pleasure not to myself, but to you, and to fulfill not my own, but your desires. And although the title of wife seems more sacred and lasting, I have always found it more pleasant to be called your friend or, if you are not offended, your cohabitant or mistress. I thought that the more I humble myself for you, the greater will be your love for me and the less I can harm your outstanding glory.”
An educated, talented girl felt free, like a hetaera, like Aspasia, whom she quotes in the letter, but, alas, society and time were very far from both antiquity and the Renaissance, and besides, neither Heloise, who lived with her uncle, nor Abelard , who earned money by teaching girls, did not have a fortune. He could engage in philosophy entirely only when he was alone, which essentially meant living like a monk, or being one. This is how Petrarch will live his life. But the girl became pregnant, the uncle howled; Pierre sent Heloise to his family; her uncle demanded that Abelard marry and agree to a secret marriage, but he took revenge: he castrated his niece’s husband, which predetermined separation. Eloise took monastic vows and Pierre also became a monk. She wrote letters from the monastery.
“Confessing the weakness of my truly unfortunate spirit, I am unable to find such repentance with which I could appease God, who has been accused by me all the time of the greatest cruelty because of this injustice; By doing this contrary to his destiny, I offend him with my indignation more than I appease him with my repentance.
Can sinners be called repentant, no matter how much they mortify their flesh, if their spirit still retains the desire for sin and burns with the same desires?! After all, it is easy for everyone to confess sins in confession and even to humble one’s flesh with external tortures, but it is truly extremely difficult to turn one’s soul away from the desire for the greatest pleasures...
And in fact, the love pleasures that we both equally indulged in were so pleasant for me then that they can neither lose their charm for me nor be at least erased from my memory. Wherever I turn, they appear to my eyes and arouse desires in me. Even in my sleep these dreams do not spare me. Even during solemn worship, when prayer should be especially pure, sinful visions of these pleasures take possession of my unfortunate soul to such an extent that I indulge more in these abominations than in prayer.
And instead of lamenting what I have done, I often sigh about what has not happened. Not only what you and I did, but even the places and moments of our deeds, along with your image, are so deeply imprinted in my soul that I seem to be reliving it all again and even in my sleep I have no peace from these memories. Often my thoughts are expressed in involuntary movements and accidentally bursting out words...”
What remains of “Christian”, “medieval” love, of love for God, except Eloise’s love for Pierre? For millennia they came up with something pleasing to God, and the love that was and is, by definition, by nature, not pagan or something like that, but purely human, blossomed again and again.
Pierre Abelard and Heloise lived in the 12th century, when the poetry of troubadours and minstrels flourished, with the cult of courtly love, which will be echoed in the work of Dante and his circle of poets of the “sweet new style”, forerunners and heralds new era. And Christian thinkers are no longer limited to mysticism and morality, but are seriously beginning to develop issues of aesthetics, like Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). (See the article “Renaissance Aesthetics”).
The most significant thing in courtly love is a turn from love for God to a woman, humiliated in every possible way in Christian doctrine, but in life, as in pagan times, the embodiment of love and beauty. This was a turn from a culture permeated with religious institutions to secular culture and to life itself, as J. Huizinga writes in “Autumn of the Middle Ages”:
“In no other era was the ideal of secular culture so closely fused with the ideal love for a woman as in the period from the 12th to the 15th centuries. The system of courtly concepts enclosed within the strict framework of true love all Christian virtues, public morality, and all the perfection of forms. way of life. Erotic life perception, be it in a traditional, purely courtly form, be it in the embodiment of “The Romance of the Rose,” can be put on a par with contemporary scholasticism. Both expressed the greatest attempt of the medieval spirit to embrace everything in life from a general point of view.”
“One of the most important turns of the medieval spirit was the emergence of a love ideal with a negative connotation. Of course, antiquity also sang of longing and suffering because of love... The experience of sadness was associated not with erotic dissatisfaction, but with an unfortunate fate. And only in the courtly love of troubadours is it dissatisfaction that comes to the fore. An erotic form of thinking with excessive ethical content arises, despite the fact that the connection with natural love for a woman is not broken at all. It was from sensual love that noble service to a lady flowed, without claiming to fulfill one’s desires. Love became a field in which all kinds of aesthetic and moral perfections could be cultivated.”
Thus, the attempt to create a new form of love, based on Christian theology, with an orientation towards the mystical aspect of love, with a rejection of ancient eros, with a new understanding of love as agape, fails. It couldn't have been any other way. Christianity could not abolish neither the laws of nature, nor the natural process of life, nor ancient eros, nor ancient art, with which it struggled for millennia, nor love, nor poetry, with which life was permeated in all centuries, with the appearance of the phenomenon of courtly love, in which a turn took place from the love of God cultivated by the church to a woman.
True, ideas about ideal love caused dissatisfaction in life itself, as happens in youth and among romantics, which is overcome by the erotic aspect of love, with the revival of ancient ideas about love and beauty.
Peter Kiele
