Chivalric Love

The courtly love tradition (fin’amor) combined both chastity and sensuality. In fact, according to the late scholar Jean Markale it ideally abolished the dichotomy between what is spiritual and what is carnal.

Fin’amor lovers also quested after another, highly ambitious, objective. When successful, their practice “put an end to the perpetual conflict persisting between men and women” because they were able to perceive that they were “two faces of one single reality”.

Laws of love

Courtly love had many precepts, some of which were stringent indeed. Here is a sample:

Flee avarice as if it were a dangerous plague and, in contrast, be generous.
Keep yourself chaste for your lady.
Never seek the love of a woman you would be ashamed to wed. (In fact, knights were encouraged to aim high, to devote themselves to a lady among their social superiors.)
Never divulge lovers’ secrets.
Speak no ill.
Do not knowingly seek to steal another’s beloved. (This one could be a bit tricky as courtly love liaisons were secret.)
When devoting yourself to love’s pleasure, do not allow your desire to exceed that of your lover.
Whether you are giving or receiving the pleasures of love always maintain a certain modesty.
He whose lust is too great does not truly love.

Ladies first

Perhaps the most revolutionary courtly-love precept was that a knight’s lady embodied the Divine Feminine and was honoured as such. This was a radically new way of looking at love and the place held by women in the world. This perspective replaced the widespread contemptuous view of women, that was sometimes accompanied by fear and loathing.

Markale maintained that the assais initiation ritual went all the way back to the great mother goddess, much like Indian tantra. The courtly feminine in fact enjoyed a central role as the inspiration for all male action. (Compare the Kularnava Tantra scripture, which states, “Shiva without Shakti is a corpse”.)

In keeping with his profound devotion the lover-knight must never take the initiative in the bedchamber. He must only respond to his lady’s desire.

She, in turn, owed him a duty: to improve him. She set trials for him to help him strengthen his knightly qualities and subdue his ego.

Her demands were by no means always straightforward quests such as slaying mere dragons. Often they involved humiliation, vows of poverty, or ploys to rouse his jealousy.

The knight was obliged to sustain both his cool and his ardour for her. And also to obey her every whim. Indeed, courtly lovers were duty-bound to recognise a certain superiority in every woman, hence the precepts, “Be ever mindful of all the commands of the ladies” and “The lover can refuse his beloved nothing”.

The assais

Perhaps the most rigorous challenge a courtly lover faced was the assais (also called the assag). It took place at the end of a long initiatory quest imposed by the lady. The assais was, according to Markale, “beyond all shadow of doubt, the best conceived test to isolate love from sexuality.”

Its ultimate goal was cosmic fusion of the divine male and female, via the union of the couple. “If the couple actually reaches that intimate fusion in which there is now only one being, it is because procreation (and thus marriage) should not be confused with love,” explains Markale.

The assais called for strict, challenging sexual techniques and activities. Ejaculation was forbidden.

Fin’amor thus demanded total mastery of the physical impulses, especially sexual urges. Not by denying them, which was considered impossible, but by channelling them upward to employ them as a springboard to a state of heightened spiritual development.

In short, the assais demanded a form of chastity, or sexual continence, based on avoiding climax while still engaging in sexual activity. The lovers must nourish desire yet also keep it in check. While the practice shares much with Synergy, courtly lovers seem to have deliberately inflamed their passions. (Not recommended.)

Code of love

Courtly love imposed an extensive code beyond its basic precepts. Here’s a taste of that code:

Strive to be ever worthy of belonging to the knighthood of love.
Show yourself polite and courteous in all things.

No one can have two love affairs at the same time.
The true lover desires no other embraces than those his beloved gives him.
At the sudden sight of his beloved, the heart of the lover should tremble.
No one can truly love (or reach for any objective) without being pushed by the hope for love.
A man cannot love until after puberty. (Courtly love is sexual.)
At the death of his lover, the survivor will wait 2 years. (The period of mourning.)
The genuine lover finds nothing good in what has not pleased his lover.
The lover can never be sated with his lover’s pleasures.

Connection with Catharism

Fin’amor may sound like a parlour game. Yet it had a far nobler objective, perhaps inspired by the Cathars. They resided in the Occitanie region (now Southern France) in which courtly love arose. The Cathars were a sect of devout Christians with high ideals, who disagreed with the Roman Catholics on various fundamental points. Their commitment to their beliefs ultimately triggered their extermination when the pope initiated a barbarous crusade.

Markale explains the Cathar link:

The renunciation of baseness and the exaltation of the primordial couple, freed from the illusions of this world, and also the attempt to overcome the ego in order to attain a perfect fusion are all familiar themes of the Cathars. It [might be reasonable to claim] that the difficult journey of the courtly lover is the reascension of the Fallen Angel toward the Divine Light. …[Metaphysically, it is] the reascension of the Light Being, who had been momentarily deceived by his illusions, back to the repose he ought never to have left.

He concludes,