As a satire, Andreas Capellanus' The Art of Courtly Love manages to make fun of or tick off pretty much everybody. And here I thought Jonathan Swift was good, but his plan to cannibalize the orphans doesn’t quite measure up to Capellanus’ work. The book’s tongue-in-cheek approach to love kind of mocks the courtiers who swooned (if there was dramatic swooning in the twelfth century) at the idea of a passionate, loving knight in shining armor. Of course, Capellanus probably didn't totally ridicule the idea; I imagine he believed in love between people as well, being that he was a cleric and all.
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| Eleanor of Aquitaine is not amused. |
To
make things better, the book is riddled with inside-inside jokes that would
have made medieval busybodies seethe with rage. There
are numerous subtle twists of Christian doctrine that only a literate person
who had read the Bible, essentially only priests and monks (and not even all of
them), would understand. Here are a few examples:
1a.
“[Love] can endow a man even of the humblest birth with nobility of character;
it blesses the proud with humility” (Capellanus 31).
1b.“[The
redeemed are] children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and
joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16b-17a). And that “‘the last will be first,
and the first last’” (Matthew 20:16).
2a.
“A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his
beloved” (Capellanus 185).
2b.“Test
all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And “'he who does
the will of My Father in heaven [shall be saved]'” (Matthew 7:21, which relates to
pleasing God). And “He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord—how he
may please the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:32).
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| Medieval Fist Bump! |
Others
might have said, “Andy, my man, we like you, but you took it a bit too far,
don’t you think?” That might be why he wrote a third book recanting the first
two satires…
Yet is it possible that Capellanus
believed that love was truly powerful, even as he poked fun at courtly love?
Perhaps he satirized courtly love in order to differentiate it as a corruption
of the love inspired by God. After all, this was a man whose doctrine stated
the greatest two commandments were to love God and to love one’s neighbor
(Matthew 22). His satire implies that love has a truly divine quality, although
courtly love does not. As some historians have pointed out, it is possible The Art of Courtly Love was meant to encourage
knights to behave well (Schwartz), but could it have also been meant as a not-so-gentle way to
encourage all courtiers to remember God as their first love?
If
so, maybe the priests were right to give him that fist bump after all… 