hich then reigned, especially by the fact that the Normans, holding
both coasts of the Channel, formed a link between France and England.
When the murderous activities of French kings and English kings
destroyed that link, the Courts of Love were swept away in the general
disorder and the progress of civilization indefinitely retarded.[78] Yet
in some degree the ideals which had been thus embodied still persisted.
As the Goncourts pointed out in their invaluable book, _La Femme au
Dix-huitieme Siecle_ (Chap. v), from the days of chivalry even on into
the eighteenth century, when on the surface at all events it apparently
disappeared, an exalted ideal of love continued to be cherished in
France. This conception remained associated, throughout, with the great
social influence and authority which had been enjoyed by women in France
even from medieval times. That influence had become pronounced during
the seventeenth century, and at that time Sir Thomas Smith in his
_Commonwealth of England_, writing of the high position of women in
England, remarked that they possessed "almost as much liberty as in
France."

There were at least two forms of medieval romantic love. The first arose
in Provence and northern Italy during the twelfth century, and spread to
Germany as _Minnedienst_. In this form the young knights directed their
respectful and adoring devotion to a high-born married woman who chose
one of them as her own cavalier, to do her service and reverence, the
two vowing devotion to each other until death. It was a part of this
amorous code that there could not be love between husband and wife, and
it was counted a mark of low breeding for a husband to challenge his
wife's right to her young knight's services, though sometimes we are
told the husband risked this reproach, occasionally with tragic results.
This mode of love, after being eloquently sung and practised by the
troubadours--usually, it appears, younger sons of noble houses--died out
in the place of its origin, but it had been introduced into Spain, and
the Spaniards reintroduced it into Italy when they acquired the kingdom
of Naples; in Italy it was conventionalized into the firmly rooted
institution of the _cavaliere servente_. From the standpoint of a strict
morality, the institution was obviously open to question. But we can
scarcely fail to see that at its origin it possessed, even if
unconsciously, a quasi-religious warrant in the worship of the Holy
Mother