Matrimony had no advantage over the love-alliance, not even the sanction of the Church. A love-alliance was frequently accompanied by a ceremony in which a priest officiated. Fauriel describes--without mentioning his source--such a ceremony as follows: "Kneeling before his lady, with his folded hands between hers, he dedicated himself to her service, vowing to be faithful to her until death, and to shield her from all harm and insults as far as lay within his power. The lady, on her side, declared her willingness to accept his service, promised to devote her loftiest feelings to him, and as a rule gave him a ring as a symbol of their union. Then she raised and kissed him, always for the first, usually for the last time." The parting of the lovers, too, was a solemn act, resembling in many ways the dissolution of a marriage.
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,
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 With care. To him she must be true, For choosing once she ne'er may rue. More binding than the wedding-tie Is love; for a diversity Of causes wedlock may divide, By death alone be love untied.
The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire cannot together be projected on one woman.
If matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony--an expedient chosen by the Church--or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern sense. The first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and the world was not ripe for the second. The tendency of the rarest minds was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven. One of the early troubadours, Jaufre Rudel, Prince of Blaya, gave a practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady whom he had never seen. The story of his love was famous for centuries. He loved a Countess of Tripoli, a Christian princess, and his whole soul was filled with his imaginary picture of her. The _Provençal Biography_ relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had narrated of her." In order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a dying condition. The countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to the inn where he lay. As she entered his room, Jaufre regained consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. She was so touched by his love that she henceforth renounced the world.--This story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted genuine to-day. Jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no _amour de tête_, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine _amour de coeur_, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved woman but permission to love her. There are other instances, and even in later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of imaginative people (I need only mention Bürger and Klopstock).