Courts Of Love

( Sordello ) “were judicial courts for deciding affairs of the heart, established in Provence during the palmy days of the Troubadours. The following is a case submitted to their judgment: A lady listened to one admirer, squeezed the hand of another, and touched with her toe the foot of a third. Query, Which of these three was the favoured suitor?” ( Dr. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. ) It was at a Court of Love at which Palma presided, that Sordello outdid Eglamour in song, and received the prize from the lady’s hand. At these courts, Sismondi tells us, tensons or jeux partis were sung, which were dialogues between the speakers in which each interlocutor recited succe ively a stanza with the same rhymes. Sismondi introduces a translation of a tenson between Sordello and Bertrand, adding that this “may, perhaps, give an idea of those poetical contests which were the great ornament of all festivals. When the haughty baron invited to his court the neighbouring lords and the knights his va als, three days were devoted to jousts and tourneys, the mimicry of war. The youthful gentlemen, who, under the name of pages, exercised themselves in the profe ion of arms, combated the first day; the second was set apart for the newly-dubbed knights; and the third, for the old warriors. The lady of the castle, surrounded by youthful beauties, distributed crowns to those who were declared by the judges of the combat to be the conquerors. She then, in her turn, opened her court, constituted in imitation of the seignorial tribunals, and as her baron collected his peers around him when he dispensed justice, so did she form her Court of Love, consisting of young, beautiful, and lively women. A new career was opened to those who dared the combat—not of arms, but of verse; and the name of tenson , which was given to these dramatic skirmishes, in fact signified a contest. It frequently happened that the knights who had gained the prize of valour became candidates for the poetical honours. One of the two, with his harp upon his arm, after a prelude, proposed the subject of the dispute. The other then advancing, and singing to the same air, answered him in a stanza of the same measure, and very frequently having the same rhymes. This extempore composition was usually comprised in five stanzas. The Court of Love then entered upon a grave deliberation, and discu ed not only the claims of the two poets, but the merits of the question; and a judgment or arrêt d’amour was given, frequently in verse, by which the dispute was supposed to be decided. At the present day we feel inclined to believe that these dialogues, though little resembling those of Tityrus and Melibæus, were yet, like those, the production of the poet sitting at ease in his closet. But, besides the historical evidence which we po e of the troubadours having been gifted with those improvisatorial talents which the Italians have preserved to the present time, many of the tensons extant bear evident traces of the rivalry and animosity of the two interlocutors. The mutual respect with which the refinements of civilisation have taught us to regard one another, was at this time little known. There existed not the same delicacy upon questions of honour, and injury returned for injury was supposed to cancel all insults. We have a tenson extant between the Marquis Albert Male spin a and Rambaud de Vaqueiras, two of the most powerful lords and valiant captains at the commencement of the thirteenth century, in which they mutually accuse one another of having robbed on the highway and deceived their allies by false oaths. We must charitably suppose that the perplexities of versification and the heat of their poetical inspiration compelled them to overlook sarcasms which they could never have suffered to pa in plain prose. Many of the ladies who sat in the Courts of Love were able to reply to the verses which they inspired. A few of their compositions only remain, but they have always the advantage over those of the Troubadours. Poetry, at that time, aspired neither to creative energy nor to sublimity of thought, nor to variety. Those powerful conceptions of genius which, at a later period, have given birth to the drama and the epic, were yet unknown; and, in the expre ion of sentiment, a tenderer and more delicate inspiration naturally endowed the productions of these poete es with a more lyrical character.” (Sismondi, Lit. Mod. Europe , vol. i., pp. 106-7.)