.
What a madman I was to believe,
To sigh, to rejoice and to grieve;
But no longer I'll squander my days,
We have come to the parting of the ways. Etc.

He was indefatigable in abusing the tender passion, and had a great deal
to say about the immorality of women. But it is characteristic of the
strong public opinion of the time that even this misogynist (who,
perhaps, after all was only a disappointed man) praised "high love."

The subject also found its theorists, prominent among whom was the
court-chaplain Andreas, who wrote a very learned book on love in Latin.
He expressed in propositions and conclusions what the contemporary poets
expressed in verse, proving thereby that spiritual love was not merely a
poetic fiction but the profoundest belief of the period, supported by
the full complement of its philosophical weapons. "In the whole world
there is no good and no courtliness outside the fountain of love.
Therefore love is the beginning and foundation of all good." He also
proved that a noble-minded man must be a lover, for if he were not, he
could not have attained virtue. "Love disregards all barriers, and makes
the man of low origin the equal and superior of the nobleman."

This conception of spiritual nobility, which was later on perfected in
the theory of the _cor gentil_, only existed in Provence and in Italy;
it remained unknown in France and Germany.

Andreas drew a distinction between base love, the _amor mixtus sive
communis_, and pure love, the _amor purus_. "Love," he maintained, fully
agreeing with the poets, "gives to a man the strength of chastity, for
he whose heart is brimming over with the love of a woman, cannot think
of dallying with another, however beautiful she may be." He proved from
substance and form that a man cannot love two women. In the _Leys
d'Amors_, a voluminous fourteenth-century Provencal treatise, largely a
text-book of grammar and prosody, we read: "And now lovers must be
taught how to love; passionate lovers must be restrained, so that they
may come to realise their evil and dishonourable desires. No good
troubadour, who is at the same time an honest lover, has ever abandoned
himself to base sensuality and ignoble desires." The same author opined
that a troubadour who asked his lady for a kiss, was committing an act
of indecency. On the other hand, Andreas was very broad-minded in
drawing the line between both kinds of love, allowing kisses, and even
mor