So my reaction is...what?
You have a marriage for propriety, and an affair for love, which messes up the marriage. So why don't you just allow for love within marriage and avoid the whole mess?
Matthew (my tall husband) and I (his short wife) were discussing this while making Mexican food (if I could write my own book on courtly love it would probably be all about making food in general), and he seemed to think these rigid rules had something to do with control. But of what? Or whom?
However, it seems that Equitan equates passionate love with marriage. Although the wife having an affair with her husband is presented as permissible, the king does desire to marry her so that they may stay together and continue expressing their love. The king seems to love his would-be-wife.
So this leaves me...confused. And anyway, the Mexican food is ready.
These are good questions...but I think we just need to shift our perspective a little to understand. You're right, love within marriage was looked down upon by proper society and the Catholic Church. But think about it this way. Marriages were more of a legal thing, a way to continue the family line, a way to form/break an alliance between families. These marriages were arranged. And if you think about it, the likely hood childhood arranged marriages forming a relationship with the potential for love is rare at best. So the idea that love could form within marriage wouldn't even be considered (and if it was, maybe it was seen as only a distraction from duties).
ReplyDeleteThe Church, who forms these marriages under God, thus had great legal power among the people. If marriage was only a legal thing, it would be fairly easy to influence and arrange. But if love was what tied the knot, the church would have little to no control over who would marry who. I think the parents of children thought in a similar power...or in simpler terms, I think your husband was right.
Remember, translations and interpretations of the bible have "changed" throughout the years. And thus, so has the position of the church on different topics. The lack of love in marriage gave parents/the church more legal power over the people.To reinforce this, it's possible the church twisted the teachings of the bible to say that love was a bad thing, especially in marriages, so married couples were being forced to fulfill those urges for love elsewhere. From some outside reading, I gathered that having a "mistress" (or prostitute for love) was actually frequent but not really discussed due to how love in-general was looked down upon (yet needs had to be met, and silence was the best way to satisfy everyone involved).
It's true some would try to divorce and/or marry the one they loved (to fulfill those scandalous desires), but it seems that when this happened it was quickly forgotten or shushed to prevent future recurrences. I think the occurrence of love-filled marriages in writing, like the story of Equitan, was also another outlet created to fulfill and keep love out of real life marriages. Fiction has often filled the holes in our being that crave for more, no matter what time period.
Wow thanks so much for the response!
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