Editing Courtly love (section)

==Points of controversy==
===Sexuality===
A point of ongoing controversy about courtly love is to what extent it was sexual. All courtly love was erotic to some degree, and not purely platonic—the troubadours speak of the physical beauty of their ladies and the feelings and desires the ladies arouse in them. However, it is unclear what a poet should do: live a life of perpetual desire channeling his energies to higher ends, or physically consummate. Scholars have seen it both ways.

[[Denis de Rougemont]] said that the troubadours were influenced by [[Cathar]] doctrines which rejected the pleasures of the flesh and that they were metaphorically addressing the spirit and soul of their ladies. Rougemont also said that courtly love subscribed to the code of [[chivalry]], and therefore a knight's loyalty was always to his king before his mistress.{{sfn|Rougemont|1956}} Edmund Reiss claimed it was also a spiritual love, but a love that had more in common with Christian love, or ''[[Charity (virtue)|caritas]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Edmund |last=Reiss |year=1979 |title=Fin'amors: Its History and Meaning in Medieval Literature |journal=Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies |volume=8 }}</ref> On the other hand, scholars such as Mosché Lazar claim it was adulterous sexual love, with physical possession of the lady the desired end.{{sfn|Lazar|1964}}

Many scholars identify courtly love as the "pure love" described in 1184 by Capellanus in ''[[De amore (Andreas Capellanus)|De amore]]'':

{{blockquote|It is the pure love which binds together the hearts of two lovers with every feeling of delight. This kind consists in the contemplation of the mind and the affection of the heart; it goes as far as the kiss and the embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, for that is not permitted for those who wish to love purely.... That is called mixed love which gets its effect from every delight of the flesh and culminates in the final act of Venus.{{sfn|De amore}}
}}

On the other hand, continual references to beds and sleeping in the lover's arms in medieval sources such as the troubador {{lang|pro|[[Alba (poetry)|albas]]}} and romances such as [[Chrétien de Troyes|Chrétien]]'s ''[[Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart|Lancelot]]'' imply at least in some cases a context of actual sexual intercourse.

Within the corpus of troubadour poems there is a wide range of attitudes, even across the works of individual poets. Some poems are physically sensual, even bawdily imagining nude embraces, while others are highly spiritual and border on the platonic.{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}}

===Real-world practice===
A continued point of controversy is whether courtly love was purely literary or was actually practiced in real life. There are no historical records that offer evidence of its presence in reality. Historian [[John F. Benton]] found no documentary evidence in law codes, court cases, chronicles or other historical documents.<ref name="John Benton">{{cite journal |first=John F. |last=Benton |author-link=John F. Benton |title=The Evidence for Andreas Capellanus Re-examined Again |journal=Studies in Philology |volume=59 |number=3 |date=1962 |pages=471–478 |jstor=4173386 |jstor-access=free}}; and {{cite journal |first=John F. |last=Benton |title=The Court of Champagne as a Literary Center |journal=Speculum |volume=36 |number=4 |year=1961 |pages=551–591 |doi=10.2307/2856785 |jstor=2856785 |jstor-access=free}}</ref> However, the existence of the non-fiction genre of [[courtesy book]]s is perhaps evidence for its practice. For example, according to [[Christine de Pizan]]'s courtesy book ''Book of the Three Virtues'' (c. 1405), which expresses disapproval of courtly love, the convention was being used to justify and cover up illicit love affairs. [[Philip the Good|Philip le Bon]], in his ''[[Feast of the Pheasant]]'' in 1454, relied on [[parable]]s drawn from courtly love to incite his nobles to swear to participate in an anticipated crusade, while well into the 15th century numerous actual political and social conventions were largely based on the formulas dictated by the "rules" of courtly love.{{Citation needed|date=August 2008}}

===Courts of love===
<!--NOTE: [[Courts of love]] and [[Court of love]] redirect here as [[Courtly love#Courts of love]] - Please keep this section name in sync.-->
A point of controversy was the existence of "courts of love", first mentioned by [[Andreas Capellanus]]. These were supposed courts made up of tribunals staffed by 10 to 70 women who would hear a case of love and rule on it based on the rules of love. In the 19th century, historians took the existence of these courts as fact, but later historians such as Benton noted "none of the abundant letters, chronicles, songs and pious dedications" suggest they ever existed outside of the poetic literature.<ref name="John Benton"/> Likewise, [[Feminism|feminist]] historian [[Emily James Smith Putnam|Emily James Putnam]] wrote in 1910 that, secrecy being "among the lover's first duties" in the ideology of courtly love, it is "manifestly absurd to suppose that a sentiment which depended on concealment for its existence should be amenable to public inquiry".<ref name=Putnam>{{cite magazine |last=Putnam |first=Emily James |author-link=Emily James Smith Putnam |date=1910 |title=The Lady of the Castle |url=https://archive.org/details/atlantic106bostuoft/page/357/mode/1up?view=theater |magazine=The Atlantic Monthly |volume=CVI |page=357 |access-date=16 October 2022}}</ref> According to Diane Bornstein, one way to reconcile the differences between the references to courts of love in the literature, and the lack of documentary evidence in real life, is that they were like literary salons or social gatherings, where people read poems, debated questions of love, and played word games of flirtation.{{sfn|Boase|Bornstein|1983}}

===Courtly love as a response to religion===
Theologians of the time emphasized love as more of a spiritual rather than sexual connection.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brundage|first=James A.|title=Sex and Canon Law|year=1996|publisher=Bullough & Brundage|pages=33–50}}</ref> There is a possibility that writings about courtly love were made as a response to the [[theology|theological]] ideas about love. Many scholars believe that Andreas Capellanus' work ''[[De amore (Andreas Capellanus)|De amore]]'' was a satire poking fun at doctors and theologians. In that work, Capellanus is supposedly writing to a young man named Walter, and he spends the first two books telling him how to achieve love and setting forth the rules of love. However, in the third book he tells Walter that the only way to live his life correctly is to shun love in favor of God. This sudden change is what has sparked the interest of many scholars,{{sfn|Moore|1979}} leading some to regard the first two books as satirizing courtly love and only the third book as expressing Capellanus' actual beliefs.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Finoli |lang=de |title=Andreas Capellanus. I. Theorien über Verfasser und Werk |trans-title=Andreas Capellanus. I. Theories about author and work |journal=Lexikon des Mittelalters |date=1999 |volume=10 |pages=604–605 |location=Stuttgart}}</ref>