es, of increasing his importance and
independence in proportion to the hourly increasing strength and claims
of the overlord, the king, who casts covetous eyes upon him--the husband
has not married for love; he has had his love affairs with the wives of
other men in his day, or may still have them; this lady is a mere feudal
necessity, she is required to give him a dower and give him an heir,
that is all. If the husband does not love, how much less can the wife;
married, as she is, scarce knowing what marriage is, to a man much older
than herself, whom most probably she has never seen, to whom she is a
mere investment. Nay, there is not even the after-marriage love of the
ancients: this wife is not the housekeeper, the woman who works that the
man's house may be rich and decorous; not even the nurse of his
children, for the children are speedily given over to the squires and
duennas; she is the woman of another family who has come into his, the
stranger who must be respected (as that most typical mediaeval wife,
Eleanor of Guienne, was respected by her husbands) on account of her
fiefs, her vassals, her kinsfolk; but who cannot be loved. Can there be
love between man and wife? There cannot be love between man and wife.
This is no answer of mine, fantastically deduced from mediaeval poetry.
It is the answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question by the
Court of Love held by the Countess of Champagne in 1174, and registered
by Master Andrew the King of France's chaplain: "Dicimus enim et
stabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas
extendere vires." And the reason alleged for this judgment brings us
back to the whole conception of mediaeval love as a respectful service
humbly waiting for a reward: "For," pursues the decision published by
Andre le Chapelain, "whereas lovers grant to each other favours freely
and from no legal necessity, married people have the duty of obeying
each other's wishes and of refusing nothing to one another." "No love is
possible between man and wife," repeat the Courts of Love which,
consisting of all the highborn ladies of the province and presided by
some mighty queen or princess, represent the social opinions of the day.
"But this lady," says a knight (Miles) before the love tribunal of Queen
Eleanor, "promised to me that if ever she should lose the love of her
lover, she would take me in his place. She has wedded the man who was
her lover, and I have come to claim f