Courtly Love Review

Courtly Love in Two Novels by

Zoé Oldenbourg:

 

The Cornerstone

Translated by Edward Hyams

Pantheon, New York, 1955

 

 Cities of the Flesh

Translated by Anne Carter

Pantheon, New York, 1963

 

With introductory observations on courtly love from

Zoe Oldenbourg’s

Massacre at Montsegur,

A History of the Albigensian Crusade

Translated by Peter Green

Dorset Press, New York 1961

A THREE-PART DISCUSSION

PART THREE: Cities of the Flesh

Cities of the Flesh is a title reminiscent of The City of God by Saint Augustine.  The first book of the collection of writings that makes up The City of God refutes the pagans in Rome who are complaining that this new religion that has invaded the city, Christianity, has angered the Gods and led to the current miseries in the city.   The city had been sacked by the Goths.  

Oldenbourg’s Cities of the Flesh documents the sacking of Southern France by Christians seeking to wipe out an upstart, yet undeniably Christian, religion.  The Cathars are heretics, say the Catholics.  The Catholics are the whore of Babylon of scripture and their God is the Devil, say the Cathars.  They, the Cathars, are the true Christians, they say.  They call themselves the good Christians.  The time and location have changed since the City of God.  The Catholics in the South who were being slaughtered, starved, jailed and tortured along with the Cathars that they had been neighbors with are blaming all their miseries on this new religion that has invaded their territory and caused God to have to assume destroyer mode.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Cities of the Flesh is very different from The Cornerstone.  In The Cornerstone, the courtly love affair between Marie and Haguenier is important, but it is just one of many themes that illustrate what life was like in this time and place for good Catholics.  Catholics who answer the call to put on the cross, a red cross on their war tunics, and spend 40 days in the battlefield killing Cathars, they have all their sins forgiven as a benefit of their war-service.  Cities of the Flesh, by contrast, is completely wrapped around the love affair between Roger, a Southern Catholic knight defending his lands against the invading Northern Catholics, and Gentian, heretic, and wife of a heretic knight.

The progress of war, individual battles Roger is involved in, and the progress of the Inquisition in weeding out heretics using torture, jail, and the stake are also important themes, but directly related to the characters who are part of Roger's and Gentian’s lives.  Roger’s prison experiences are harrowing, not a pleasant tale, but very well told.

Another difference is that these two lovers are not stopped by their religious scruples, as the lovers were in The Cornerstone, although they do have such scruples.  In both The Cornerstone and Cities of the Flesh, it is the woman who expresses these religion-based scruples.  The nature of these scruples differs between these two novels, however, and in Cities of the Flesh they illustrate some of the peculiarities of the Cathar religion’s views on life in the flesh and sex as the means of capturing souls into this world, which is the creation and domain of the Devil.  Christ came here to loosen the Devil’s grip on us and allow us to get out of the wheel of rebirths into this veil of misery.  A good Christian was assured of spending no more lives in this world if he or she received the rite of consolation, and did not sin afterward, before death.  

Life in this area at this time was miserable, because of the war, and because of the Inquisition, both of which were systematically decimating the country, the cities, and its people.  That misery, consisting of a brutal decimation of the population, starvation by burning crops and stopping agriculture, was proudly being delivered in the name of the Catholic God.  This was the God who promised forgiveness of sins for anyone that answered the call and took part in the killing wearing a red cross of their chest.  It also promised forgiveness to those who confessed their errors and did penance, even if that error was heresy.  Of course there was a catch, and many who so confessed spent the rest of their days in jail, albeit a rather human jail compared to the horror-houses where people were being brought to this state of seeking forgiveness.  It should not be surprising that our heretics, in this story, have and express strongly anti-Catholic feelings.

In this review we will touch on some of these things, unavoidably, but we will focus on the book’s  example of a courtly love relationship.  It is a love story.

As in the review of The Cornerstone, we will do this by the numbers, marching through the book from beginning to end.  However, since I had marks in over 160 pages, copious citations will be rare and short descriptions and paraphrases will generally be the mode of conveying what Oldenbourg wrote.  This book is worth reading, and like The Cornerstone, it is out of print.  Most city libraries will have it, however, and if they do not they are more than willing to get it for you through an interlibrary loan.  Just ask.

1.  Page 7 is the first page, and here Roger and Gentian meet and it is love at first sight.  This is in contrast with the love between Haguenier and Marie in The Cornerstone where it takes some time for them to warm up to each other, but this reflects personality differences only, nothing more.  I liked Roger’s speech when he runs into Gentian for the very first time and finds his hunting falcon, resting on her wrist:

The next page describes Gentian in great detail and tells us that she kept his bird.  Roger was so impressed with her strength and bearing and pride that he started to call her Rigueur from the moment they met.  Renaming is a power move, and although he thought of this name for her at the very beginning he wisely kept it to himself until they were on a surer footing.

Gentian/Rigueur was a married woman, married to a knight for five years, and had two children. She and her husband no longer slept together.  Yet she loved her husband, and page 9 informs us that Roger “developed a strong friendship for the chivalrous knight.”  On page 8 we have already been told that

“Common” lovers is to draw a contrast with “courtly” lovers.

2.  Pages 25-26 give some insight into the whole constellation of allowable behaviors for a man of knightly status under Parage, the larger context for courtly love. The list of behaviors Roger has been taught as a youth is not inspiring, ethics are highly nuanced: “He learned too that a man could lie about serious things, but not for little things; that he could claim to be a lady’s lover when he was not, but never if he was in truth.”  There were rules about relations with persons of lower social rank and higher social rank.  Their was a stratified society, with the Cathars actually softening these sharp divisions, leading in part to its popularity.

3.  That latter behavior, lying about one’s lover, plays out on pages 42-43 where Roger decides that the best way to gain access to Gentian was through her husband.  He tells him that a friend of his is pining away for a lady in his household, but cannot gain access.  This friend is a noble person and supporter of the Count of Toulouse, as Gentian’s husband was.  Gentian’s husband said for Roger to bring his friend, his house was open to both of them anytime, but it was up to the lady in question whether or not she would see him.  He got his friend to pretend he was in love with and desirous of seeing a cousin, a beautiful woman, who resided in this house.  His friend was to pretend this so that Roger’s love for her could remain hidden.  Roger, of course, did not love her at all, it was a lie, but now he was able to come into Gentian’s house when he wanted, just on the pretext of allowing his friend to see another lady, a friend who thought he was doing this to hide Roger’s secret love for this lady.  It gets convoluted.  Roger sees Gentian for a second time when working on this subterfuge and he worried needlessly if perhaps at a second look she might not have seemed as beautiful as upon their first encounter.  He heard much said about this lady, Gentian, about how “she held love and lovers in contempt” and wanted to move into a convent (a Cathar convent, of course).  Oldenboug observes: “Until now Roger had never attempted to woo a woman of this type, he had been content to honour them from a distance.”

4.  Although he saw her a second time, it was another whole day before they again spoke while on a hunting outing.  On pages 49-50 there is a conversation between the two in which the passion is like magma boiling under a volcano, but their words are carefully chosen to not allow an eruption.  Sensing this tension, in herself as well as in him, lady Gentian ask him to leave her now, and come back after she return home.  Roger had used a serving girl of Gentian’s, one with fiery red hair like his, to obtain information about his lady.  On page 51 she explains why she no longer sleeps with her husband.  She loves him very much, but they stopped sleeping together when a battle scarred and injured her husband to the point where he thought he would not survive.  As an ardent believer in his Cathar faith, he asked for the consolamentum rite.  He received it, but then recovered.  But one of the sins forbidden to those who had been thus consoled was sexual union.  It was a sin because it ensnared souls out of the world of spirits into this world.  She was angry with him for having asked for consolation, because it meant no more man-wife unions which she wanted to continue.  Theirs was an unusual relationship, they actually loved each other.  Even now, his informant tells Roger, they still love each other enough to tell each other all their secrets.  Roger does not like hearing any of this (page 54) and asks the girl if her lady had asked her to tell him these things to torment him.  He felt a great need to be with his lady and tell her many things that he had never felt the need to tell anyone before (p. 55).  He had never felt this way before about a woman, and had made love to hundreds of women!

That last sentence reminded me of Dante as a young man hanging around in the streets of his home town just hoping for a glimpse of his beloved Beatrice, who only recognized him and spoke to him once, in passing, in a street, fueling the whole cycle that came to maturity only after her death and only in Dante’s mind and heart, as recorded in The Divine Comedy.  But Roger was no Dante, and the love he had for Gentian was returned by her in this world.

5.  But Gentian wants to abide by the rules of courtly love, and on page 71 sets Roger the task of explaining himself to a married cousin of hers: “She is courtly, discreet, and well versed in the arts of love.”  He is to plead his case to her, not letting her know who the lady is that he is in love with.  She will then tell him whether or not he is worthy to pursue the woman he is seeking to love.  Roger protests, but she insists, so on page 73 he kneels in front of this woman, promising to tell the truth, with three friends who are his character witnesses.  The woman asks him questions and he answers them, and his friends attest to the truthfulness of some of the questions when asked.  At one point Roger appeals to nature and reason as compelling him to seek this woman’s love as a remedy for his inner hurt.  This gets a pointed response from the lady, to which he in turn responds:

Note how his protestations do not address “vulgar pleasures” but instead assure her of his sincerity and devotion, not quite the same thing but related, as suggested on the next page where the lady admonishes him again to keep honor as his first desire.  He agrees.  

Soon after he receives a note from Gentian saying he has passed his test and they can now place their relationship on a surer footing (p. 74): “You shall say what you have to say to me tomorrow at the crossroads marked by three stones. . . .   I shall tell you my mind also.”

6.  At this meeting (pp. 75-76), Roger asks her about their secrecy, whom was she protecting?  Her husband, she says, whom she loves:

Their exchange as this meeting continued and took two unexpected turns, with both having an unexpected outcome (for me): the first turn is when he confesses having had three hundred women in his life, maybe more.  To my surprise she said she knew that, but felt she knew him.  The context was his saying that her nearness gave him super strength and made him feel youthful again.  She said this was “the power of the Devil of the Flesh.” He misinterpreted this and thought she was talking about sex, and confessed all his previous partners.  She responded that she knew this, but also knew him, and besides, that was not the Devil she was referring to.  

Emboldened, he next asked her “When can I make you my mistress?”  To his surprise and mine she seemed completely stunned, speechless, and changed the subject to the men who had died at this location in recent battles.  Once she regained her composure, she measured her words carefully to Roger:

7.  With the crush of activity related to being in a state of war, they had little time for each other, and no time to be alone.  But they developed a habit of snatching moments to exchange words and thoughts, and became adept at remembering from time to time what the previous conversation was before interruption and continuing it on days or a week later if need be.  One of their conversations during this time (p. 78) was about Roger showing the respect to a Cathar preacher expected of a believer, and her calling him to account for it since it made him “sin greatly” against his faith.  This led to their first disagreement.  He said he would gladly pretend for her, since religion was the cause of so much death and destruction.  She called him a shallow liar.

They made up, with her saying she would believe anything falling from his lips, and then she got in his face:

But (p. 79) Roger was preparing for their inevitable meeting.  He borrowed a half year’s pay in advance to buy himself a tent and the very finest furnishings and cushions and tapestries and installed it in a secluded wood on land belonging to a brother-in-law.  The brother-in-law sais she must be quite a lady to be honored so.

War now occupies Roger for a time, and Oldenbourg catches us up on some serious events in Gentian’s history, including her miscarriage when her husband was almsot illed in the same battle that widowed her beloved cousin Beatrix.  Oldenbourg also gives much evidence of Gentian’s now being in love, using words and images that remind one of the first experiences of love in one’s own life.  But the action continues again on page 86 when they meet secretly in the woods of his brother-in-law’s domain.

8.  Pages 86-90 represent the climax to this first part of the book.  Oldenbourg does a masterful job letting us into their lovemaking without getting clinical about it.  She describes a glorious love feast, as these few snippets will have to suffice to show.  It is all so believable.  They are almost silent riding through the forest until they come upon his tent with its wonderful bed, colorful cloths, banners flying, and a cage full of birds.  She is surprised and impressed and laughs and says he’d better hurry and take it all back and see is he can get for it half of what he paid.  He assures her it will stay here for a long time.  It is a gift to her, it is hers.  He shows her the supplies cached in the tent, enough to live on for a while, and offers to stand outside as a guard while she enjoys it all.  She says she doesn’t believe that for a second, and they enter the tent together.

He lights the candles and she is smitten with the light’s reflection off many shiny things inside, it is really an elaborate love nest.  Roger asks for one kiss, she says for him to do as he wishes, she will not refuse him.  This is their first kiss, and it is a heavy one made from a kneeling position that led them into a timeless state of being Love:

Oldenbourg next describes the surprise in Gentian’s realizing she is totally naked, as is this man, a state she has always avoided before, unsuccessfully because her husband had insisted on it at times, but here she is totally naked with a naked man and thoroughly loving it as if it were a religious experience.  Which then brings her to realize that it is: “It is the Devil I serve now, he is my friend and I can only see goodness in him.”

Having seen photos of Oldenbourg, I cannot help but wonder if Gentian is a replica of herself:

How could a married woman with children be untouched?  Metaphorically, this was her first experience of Love.  What had come before was sex, even though she loved her husband.

Roger can’t leave the subject of her husband alone and remarks that he could never have done what he did, which was to not sleep with her anymore.  Stupid man, but she took it well and turned it into a compliment for Roger, saying her husband was changeable but he, Roger was not.  Roger then wondered to himself, which was a good thing, about this miracle: “Of the three hundred women he had held in his arms, his body retained no trace;” . . .

Apparently Roger had not been quite as naked as we were led to believe, because now on page 89 we find out he had been wearing a cross on a chain and she good naturedly pointed to the imprint of it on her body and teased him by asking why he had let that symbol, which she hates, come between them.  He flung it away and she then teases him by suggesting that since he does venerate it, he ought not treat it so.  This exchange ends with Gentian making another reference to Satan: “There is no evil in you, except that you serve Satan.  But I serve him even better than you.”  To her, love was a powerful demon that would move walls to keep them from being apart.

They made love the rest of the day and parted at sunset.  Before parting, Roger patiently re-plaited her hair, and wove into it the black silk cord that pulled his shirt together at the neck, it was all she would take as a memento, and she gave him a red scarf, saying their secret color was now red.  Parting was very sad, leaving them speechless and feeling, in their clothes, as if they were now wearing disguises.  They were able to return to this secret/sacred place three more times before war came closer and tore them further apart.

That first day in the tent, after their lovemaking, Roger began to call Gentian 'Rigueur' and she made no objection: . . .“he gave it to her out of gratitude, just because she no longer had any rigour for him, only a boundless goodness.”

9.  As they were out on campaign, Roger now was a knight in service to the Count of Toulouse, a Catholic nobleman friendly to his Cathar subjects, defending all against the Northern invaders.  Roger served with and often alongside Gentian’s husband.  They liked and respected each other, but Roger was jealous of him.  Gentian was among the women who followed and nursed the wounded best they could.  During those hectic times, (page 91), on twenty occasions he attempted to sneak into her tent for a moment of mutual bliss, but only succeeded three of those times.  Their separations and at the same time being close drove them crazy and they took risks like one time when he stayed up all night to look at her face and had to go fight at dawn, not a good way to assure your survival.  The little incident with the cross, an instrument of murder, not a symbol of salvation, in the eyes of Cathar believers, was an ominous one.  Soon, during this lengthy campaign, Gentian and Roger were speaking of their respective religions, sometimes defensively (pp. 91-94).  It had all the making of a serious and permanent disagreement between them but they always walked away from it before it became a serious fight.  At some points, however, she did get Roger to agree with her perception of the current Pope and Church, on whose orders they were being slaughtered daily.  Referring to the day the Count is killed and he is damned publicly by his own Church, Roger swears that if that ever happens (p. 93): . . .“the Pope will be damned first, for God’s mercy is greater than that of the Church!  God has permitted th wolves to enter the fold in the guise of shepherds in order to test our faith!”  

This outburst allowed Gentian to probe a bit deeper and as Roger defended the ability of these wolves to perform sacred rites with God’s power regardless of their own behavior, Gentian reminded him that such subtleties were never part of Christ’s teachings.  She tehn, on page 94, explains why they hate the Catholic marriage rite so much: the Church blesses and makes unbreakable a union very often enforced and arranged by parents out of self-interest alone, and the Church seals these arrangements as if they were holy, as if God were really anxious to aid and abet marriages based on lust, greed, pride, or simply out of obedience to parents.  At the same time, unions based on love, but not so blessed, are called accursed and evil and its offspring is the “fruit of the Devil.”  Roger makes no defense except to say these are hard words and make him melancholy since he loves her.  

On page 95, Roger takes the offensive and attacks the Cathar idea that the life of the flesh is of the Devil’s making: “I should tell you,” said Roger, “that I love a lady so perfect that the mere sight of her is enough to convince me that our bodies are the work of God.”  She laughs at this and reminds him that a beautiful bird, the owl, is full of carrion, and the forest is continually dying, etc.  “Your lady is no different, her body is rottenness and conceals all manner of impurities.”  She is a hard-core Cathar, and well-versed in its teaching, whereas Roger is not well versed in his own religion.

She does not feel well (page 95) and returns to her home.  When Roger finds her there two weeks ater she is still very sick, verdigris poisoning he is told.

It is six months later that it came to light that she had administered this poison to herself to abort Roger’s child as soon as she knew she was carrying it.  To protect her husband, of course.  Roger mourns for the little boy child as if it had been born and healthy.  On page 96 she tells Roger that he should never even think of her as his wife, that he was to never even wish for her husband’s death, and that because of her recent abortion there would never be any heirs born through her.  This was a serious blow to their relationship.  But there was more to it, Roger was being pressed by his liege Lord, the Count, to marry a woman with property.  The woman had been arranged for by the Count because he valued Roger’s support in the war, and he wanted Roger to be able to hire his own men and bring them into the fight with him, and this lady’s properties would make that possible.  Roger had admitted this to Gentian and promised he would never betray her like this.  Gentian thought he should marry, hence this speech about her husband staying in his place as her husband, and that there would be no heirs for him through her.

When Roger had confessed to the Count that he could not marry because he was in love, (page 97), the count had said: “I am in love myself . . . and it never occurs to my mistress to complain of my marriage.”  End of discussion.

Rigueur (Gentian) was upset at his actually marrying, even though she had said it was what he should do in principle, now that it seemed it was likely to happen, she was upset.  But she told him to do it, he deserved property and heirs.  So marry he did (pages 89-103).

10. Oldenbourg (pages 101-102) paints his bride, named Guillelme, as somewhat less than beautiful, with acne and a pale face with hard eyes.  She was also obviously not one raised as a true lady, surrounded by luxury.  But she was tall and strong, her only defect was a shrill yet hoarse voice, one “she had had ever since the day she saw her brother and the men of the garrison hanged.”  

On pages 102-103, Oldenbourg tells part of her sad tale of being captured by the Crusaders from the North and forcibly married to one of the Crusader knights, an ugly old man who wanted her property after having killed her only male relative.  She did not say “yes” in the marriage ceremony, but the priest said that wasn’t necessary anyway, but she was rescued before the marriage was consummated, so a priest friendly to the locals assured her there had not been a true marriage performed.  The knight who had married her and now owned her property, in his mind, would be planning to retake the area at some future time, so Roger was a bit unsettled over the state of affairs in terms of property, but he took a liking to his bride and was kind to her, saying he would repair the castle, replant the vineyards, and erase all traces left be the destructive Crusaders before she would live in his own castle again, in the meantime she would live at his father’s house with his brother and his wife. That was a kind gesture.  

The wedding night was described as a rather factual one: Roger was not filled with heated passion, he was feeling a bit guilty, and Guillelme’s  experiences with physically fighting off the amorous Crusaders left her less than enthused about sex:

We are not told whether or not Roger answered her, Oldenbourg tells us instead on page 104 that he had one of those “what have I done?” moments, and was forcing himself to recount Rigueur’s repeated  admonishments, after her initial shock at it being real, to go ahead and marry.  As soon as he was ready that next morning he saddled up to rejoin Rigueur’s husband in his latest battle for the Count, and on his way he stopped by to see her, Gentian, because he knew where she was: it was harvest time and she was in the fields with her laborers (this was distinctive Cathar thing, they believed all were equal in the eys of God, so the nobles would work with their vassals and servants when it was necessary, like at harvest time.  

Roger was feeling very amorous toward Gentian when he found her in the fields as expected, but his heart and brain were turned to lead when Gentian exclaimed: “Ah, God!  What are you doing here?  You have your house and I have mine!”  He left without answering, went to war.

11. Pages 114-115 set the stage in Roger’s father’s house where Bertrand his brother and Rachel his brother's wife also lived.  Rachel took care of the household, Bertrand was usually gone on missions for his Church, he was an important person in the regional Cathar faith.  Guillelme joined this troupe and got along well with Rachel but not with Roger’s father.  

Guillelme was pregnant and bore a son, and Roger had an heir, but thought in his head that this boy was also Riguer’s son, it was a replacement for the child she had aborted.  In the meantime Guilleleme, half of Roger’s 30 years, was growing up and turning pretty, and Roger tried to avoid her because he felt attracted to her yet he was trying his best to be loyal to Rigueur who was now sensing the state of affairs at home and suffering over it to the point where Roger thought of killing his wife to make Rigueur’s suffering stop.  But it was just a thought.  

Friction between Roger and Gentian/Rigueur increased.  Roger had always prided himself on writing songs that others would sing, battle songs mainly, and love songs to make men fiercely determined to wipe out their enemies and return to their lovers.  Trying to impress Gentian with his songs did not work, she said it was all vanity and pride to her, and Roger knew that it was.

Then came peace (pages 116-117), and Roger did not go home to his father’s house to be with his wife and son, who was turning out to be rather sickly.  Instead he moved into an old ruined Crusader tower erected on land belonging Riguer.  She, on the other hand, spend the summer at her brother’s home, giving her the freedom to range on horseback where she would, and the two made a love-nest out of the abandoned fortification Roger had cleaned up and made somewhat livable.  Rigueur’s brothers were hardened soldiers with much experience and cared nothing for the fact that she was basically hiding her lover on their properties and visiting him there regularly.

For food, Roger hunted small game (poached, in essence).  On page 118 her Cathar ethics come through on this issue, Cathars do not eat meat if they can avoid it:

But to please Roger and because there was not much to eat in this forest, she did take some morsels.  Roger felt he was the richest man alive, he loved this arrangement.  He loved sleeping with her, awakening with her, and going out and making love with her on the moss beside a stream in the sunshine.  Roger loved how she was and looked, strong, hard, perfect, not at all like the soft ladies with their languid movements trying to always be proper, this woman laughed out loud and had energy to spare.  At 32 she was like someone half her age in terms of physical strength and ability.  They spend all Summer together this way, and Oldenbourg (page 119) says many splendid things about the way every moment was one of new discovery and joy for these two genuine lovers.  Then came a note from her cousin asking her to come home.  There were problems that needed her attention, and she was, after all, the lady of the house.

12. Two new developments surprise us on pages 130-131.  Gentian/Rigueur has become a more important figure in her Cathar Church, she is now often away on missions of mercy, to attend to the sick, ask for donations from believers, or to try to make believers out of good Catholic women in her region, or at least to plead with them for tolerance, and in some cases asking them to provide hiding places fro some itinerant ministers for when the war started again, which it would.  Never unprepared again, became her motto.  She had not much time for love, although they did arrange to meet.  Much of their meeting time was devoted to her criticism of the Catholic Church and Catholics.

Some of her critical turn was no doubt the result of her husband having taken a very young, pretty, but “empty headed” lover.  This was a breech of his vows after being consoled, of course, but Gentian was pleased that he was so happy that he was almost handsome again in spite of his burned face.  It takes a while in the story, but Gentian and this girl, Saurene, became very good friends.

Rigueur’s dedication to her Church increases further when on page 135 she heads fro a retreat, a holy place, and cannot sleep with Roger in order to maintain her ritual purity for the occasion.  Roger is admonsihed to ask those whose prayers are meaningful to pray for him (Meaning she or other Cathrs), Roger, a bit dense since he has been told there will be no love-making tonight, says the Saints do not seem to answer his prayers.   This starts some sparring about Roger’s God being the Devil, and thus His Saints not being what they seem.  Roger was depressed and irritable, he had ridden 30 leagues to make love, and now her piety stood in the way, and piety a gentleman does not argue with.

But it gets much worse, in order to keep his lands Roger makes a phony declaration of loyalty to the King (of France, to the North).  He says it is just to keep his lands should the war come out the wrong way, but Rigueur’s sense of honor does not lie in this direction, Cathars are taught not to lie to anyone (except in cases where the Inquisition is involved, of course, but that is an imminent threat to body and life).  Roger, on page 146, discusses his pledge of Loayalty to the King with the Count, the King’s vassal yet his enemy too.  Roger suggests his duties as lord over his wife’s properties require him to put on one face, and his duties as one who has sworn allegiance to the Count will have him back in the saddle as a captain of soldiers if that same King invaded again.  The Count indicated he understood, so did Gentian’s husband who welcomed him back at his side in war when it recommenced, although he said pointedly that he did not approve playing both sides–hedging one’s bets–in a conflict like this.

Roger, to please the Count, makes a rash promise as to how many men he can bring to the conflict.  He does not have the wherewithal to pay for this promise, fighting men cost money.  So Roger badgers his wife into pawning her family jewelry to pay for it, slapping her (but “without malice” –as if he were “correcting a child”) in the process, and she tearfully does as commanded.  She looked so forlorn that (page 147) “Roger felt such a surge of pity and desire that he was within an ace of taking her in his arms and persuading her to give him a second heir.  That he did not was due to lack of time.” [I don’t know if Oldenbourg meant to imply that one aspect of Roger’s character was that being physically and emotionally abusive of a woman was a turn-on for him.  I do not think she meant that at all.  But that “surge of pity and desire” was NOT a positive thing, in my opinion, it made Roger in that moment a rather typical wife-beater is all, and many men think of their wives as children that often need correcting.]

Immediately after this, he receives a package from Rigueur, it has no message, only some ashes and the silken cord he had woven into her hair cut into tiny pieces.  The message was obvious, she considered their love affair to be over.  I was proud of Roger, he felt bad for her, that he could not be there to comfort her in her obvious pain.

13. When next the lovers meet it is on campaign.  She is in her husband’s camp as a nurse, essentially.  Saurene is in her husband’s tent as his private nurse, so to speak, and was also taking care of their six-month old child, a boy, who cried much in the night, perhaps from the sounds of shooting in the dark (p. 163).  Roger tries to talk to her several times, and finally succeeds in having it out over this being a liar business.  Neither gives way, but they decide they love each other in spite of their differences over this issue of making an official lie to protect one's property from confiscation by the enemy, should the enemy prevail.  

This takes place on pages 156-157, where there is a scene of Gentian watching men being cut up in front of them, on the ramparts of the city they are besieging.  The French are butchering, dismembering, captured soldiers alive.  Roger suggests she should not watch.  She says they did this to her father, and it is compassion that wells up in her as she watches.  Cruel times.

Pages 158-159 go through much meaningful dialogue to come out at the end reestablishing that fact they are still in love and lovers.  But then something new develops.

On pages 161-163, the Count comes to Gentian’s husband with a compliment for his wife and also a complaint.  His complaint is that in his territories, people are free to believe what they wish, so he cannot countenance a woman in his camp seeking to argue people away from their religious beliefs.  Apparently, Gentian was goaded about her religion by a man, and she let him have it with both verbal barrels in front of many witnesses.  Gentian received a visit from her husband and agreed to keep quiet, and she stroked his hair and they held each other for a long time, as in the olden days.  In the meantime, Saurene had become a companion to Gentian.

14. Pages 164-169 tell an awful tale of Roger making a rash vow to do something heroic with his men the next day to turn the tide of battle and to impress Gentian.  Gentian is horrified at this but other ladies say it is noble gesture and she ought to encourage him.  She does by sleeping with him, in a place arranged to be protected by Roger’s men yet outside the compound.  Roger is so excited, both by being with Rigueur again and by what he has pledged to do tomorrow, that he gets no sleep.  

The next day is a horrible debacle, Roger is not up to his usual standard of fighting and his hired men are massacred.  He did not succeed in his pledge.  But the ladies who had previously encoured Gentian to support him said he was not to blame for his lack of success, others did not provide the right type of support for his daring plan, so she should let him off easy.

15. We see another, dismayng side of Roger next on pages 178-180, where he causes his wife great pain and tears by borrowing from a Jewish merchant and giving their son as collateral.  Their beautiful son will live with the lender’s family until the debt is repaid!  She does not protest, says she will do it for him, and she will take every opportunity to visit the boy.  It will only be until the next town is taken from the Crusaders.  Roger’s share of the booty will repay the loan.  A few months at best.  

That evening is a night of passion for the two, and Roger realizes that his wife is very much in love with him, not a good thing for a wife with a husband whose heart is pledged elsewhere. When she begged him to not go back to that other woman, Roger pledged his sole devotion to her, his wife.  He had made the mistake, in one his previous moments of passion with her, of mentioning Rigueuer.  He had forgotten that Guillelme knew, forgotten that he had ever mentioned Rigueuer to her.   So in this moment he re-pledged faithfulness to Guillelme, makes it a vow to God, even!

16. Pages 184-189 reveal much of Gentian’s internal struggles over Roger and over her relationship with her husband through a discourse with her best friend and confidant Beatrix. Then a strange thing happens.  She goes to church, Cathar, and sees Roger’s wife Guillelme who is emanating hatred from her eyes, and won’t take her eyes off Gentian.  She does not take her usual place at the front of the group but seats herself at the back to be able to get away quickly.  She goes home and Saurene serves her what little food and drink there is available, but Gentian can only drink.  She tells Beatrix, who accompanied her home, that that grl has a Devil in her filling her full of hate and it will destroy her.  There is some discussion of who actually has the Devil in her, Guillelme as Gentian suggests, or Gentian, as Beatrix suggests, and Gentian winds by telling Beatrix that it is her: “It is she who is jealous of me, because of a superficial man who gave away my secret to her.”  We have gone from courtly love to common love, it seems.

Gentian’s closing thought on this development is interesting: “If he could forget me, and love her, then I too should love them both, and all would be peace, friendship, and love . . . “  

17. Pages 193-197, meanwhile, have Roger and Gentian’s husband on campaign together, and this time they share a tent and speak of much and really bond.  Gentian’s husband explains the differences between Cathar and Catholic beliefs on the nature and role of Christ, and Roger does not argue but listens.  Roger, for his part, writes poetry some of it becomes battle songs, some of it his fellow officers discourage him performing it because it is about a man and his lady in (courtly) love, and they think his description of her is immodest and he will be found out as the author by his lady and will catch hell, so to speak.  Of course he was writing about the very same Gentian who at this point had met his wife and was hoping he would just go away.

On page 200 Roger receives a letter from Gentian basically telling him their love is history.  He is on his way to Paris to swear loyalty to the King in person.  Although he tries to see her, she does make herself available (p. 220).  On page 221 we learn that he does not see her alone again for years.

What happens during those years is monumental.  Beatrix, Gentian’s clsost relative and friend, goes off to a convent to serve her people until she dies, she is not well.  Roger and Guillelme’s son is taken sick and dies, and Guillelme has somehow gotten the notion that the boy’s Jewish caretakers had poisoned him, making his death Roger’s fault, and she wants nothing to do with him anymore.  

In the meantime Gentian’s husband made a plea for Roger to hide some of the Cathar faithful, a pair of men, in his estate.  Roger agreed, with genuine fear,  and tried to use this as a way to impress and soften Gentian’s heart.  He sent her a long letter telling her he is ready to risk all he has to come to the aid of her fellow believers.  He got the letter back unopened with a note explaining that her refusal of his letter did not meant she hated him, but their love relationship was over, she could no longer be to him what she once was, and he should get over it and find love with another woman.  Roger was crushed.  We are now up to page 275.

Beatrix had moved into the convent at Montsegur, to live out her life in contemplation and service to fellow believers, and receive consolation.  Gentian joined her there and worked in the hospital with her.  Roger went to see her there, and met Beatrix first, and gave her the prostration sign of respect for a consoled person, and she laid her hand on him and blessed him as if he were true believer.  Later when he and Gentian are speaking again, she tells him this was a mistahe, there are spies everywhere.  

He then sees Gentian, and she walks past him into the hospital with just a nod of acknowledgment.  She refuses to make a meeting possible, so (page 277) he lies to her accompanying ladies to tell their leader that he has terrible news from home.  She thinks of all the things that could be wrong at home, and there are many, and agrees to see him.  

He is speechless sitting next to her, and she accuses him of lying to get an audience, to which he pleads guilty.  She says they should speak, and that this lie is just once again showing his nature, which she accepts.  Then she tells him she does not hate him, but has dedicated her life to her religious work now.  He sees that this is so, and says, foolishly, that he had thought her attitude toward him had changed because she had a new lover.  She angers at this, and suggests he has a problem with reality and sees everything from his own heart’s perspective and his pride’s.  

They spoke of other things, and when Gentian suggested he care for his soul and become a good Christian, Roger said he would be a Catholic the rest of his life.  Turns out this was an ominous prediction.  They parted civilly, she even gave him a special breakfast of berries his last day at the fortress, and he enjoyed every morsel thinking of her (p. 283).

18. Roger (page 284) was now reduced to living in his father’s house because things had gone very badly there.  His brother, the heretic leader, was in the Inquisition’s prison, as was his wife Rachel.  Rachel had taken care of Roger’s father, and Guillelme would not do it.  She hated the mean-spirited old man.  She was pregnant by a young boy that worked in the household and said she did it for spite, not for love.  He asked her not to disgrace him by flaunting her condition in public, and she said she was a married woman and the presumption would not disgrace him.  She said that because he had lived off her estate for so long, and had ignored her existence for the last 5 years while using her estate, he owed her the privilege of doing what she pleased.   He let loose a torrent of verbal abuse on her and stomped out to see his sister-in-law, Rachel, who could be visited in jail (his brother could not be).

When he returned from visiting Rachel he was quite despondent.  His sister-in-law, a beautiful and capable woman, had gone insane and was spouting Catholic doctrine, praising the miracle of the Virgin, claimed to see angels whenever she was given the sacraments, and blessed her prison for having brought her such joy!  Her fellow prisoners, all heretic women like her sitting in a common room of one the Church’s more humane prisons, thought she was severely tortured to have gone this deep over the edge.  Roger wasn’t so sure.

19.  Soon after his visit to see his sister-in-law in prison the Inquisition sent for him.  He dapperly appeared of his own free will and tried to talk them into believing he was still a good Catholic, which he in fact was.  But there had been spies everywhere, it seems, and warning from Gentian which he had not heeded now came to roost: someone had reported that his mistress was a heretic, that he fought side by side with heretics, that he bowed low as a true Believer did when one of the perfecti (those who had received consolation and were now living without sin as best he or she could, teaching, preaching, and blessing the regular believers and giving consolations where needed).  He was in prison for real, and someone had even informed on him for hiding heretics in his wife’s properties, and the person responsible for this was his wife who had come during one of the “free” periods and confessed all her sins, and was given freedom and forgiveness of her heretical beliefs if only she turned over all the names of all the heretics she knew and the Catholics who gave heretics aid and comfort.  He had now been starved and kept with an insufficient amount of water to weaken him, and many, under this treatment, readily confessed.  What kept him focused was wanting to see Rigueur again before he died.  When they had brought him out of his cell they confronted him with his wife’s testimony against him.  He in turn accuses his wife, out of the two, she was the one who was actually a heretic.  That was true, but they wanted no part of that, she had confessed and been forgiven, and as a result now they had this soldier in custody who had fought very effectively against the Northen armies that stood with the Pope.  This takes us into pages 298-299.

As was customary, since he did not confess, they next lowered him into a dark hole with no light for a long time, where he scratched the name Rigueur into the rock with his bare nails, deep enough so he could read it with his hands.  He completed this rigorous task two and a half times before they pulled him out of the pit on ropes.  It took a long time for his eyes to adjust even with the blindfold on that they had kindly thrown down with the rope.  He remained obstinate and was whipped mercilessly and tortured in other ways.  The Inquisition, another book told me, thought that it was nothing to punish or even kill the flesh if in return a soul was saved from damnation.  This seems a bit like the Cathar faith’s attitude toward the flesh, and the soul being the real part of a human being.  Except Cathars convinced souls through words after they helped a person feel better if he needed food or healing, not torture.  They wanted conversions to be an act of free will.

On page 360 they confront him with his wife.  He spars with her some, threatens to rape her since wives are admitted into this prison for conjugal visits because the priests who run the prison superstitiously believe that what God has joined together, no man should sunder.  Then they exchange news from home, she has been betrayed by his older brother’s children who ran off carrying anything of value. If Roger was convicted as a heretic, all properties in his name, including hers, would become the Church’s.  Things were not looking good, so she bargained for what she could in her confession.  She accused him in these sharp words, all of them true:

So you have letters for me, Raymond asked, and she said no but raised her hands to her breast. He tore her hands away and her clothes aside to reveal her breasts and a letter, and reached to take the letter even while thinking he really needed to taste those breasts again more than he needed that letter.  He took the letter.  They parted acrimoniously, promising to never see each other again.  The letter was a disappointment, his friend had to be very circumspect, if it looked like he was interested in freeing him, he would soon be in jail.  This takes us up to page 361.

20. Roger was befriended by one of the priests, a physician who stood by each flogging and stopped it when it seemed to be endangering the prisoner’s life.  This false friendship was part of the routine to get a prisoner to confide, and Roger knew it.  This physician/priest told his life story, being converted away from heresy by a man very close to the person who was now Saint Dominic.  He revered Saint Dominic and sang his praises.  Roger thought to himself that if this technique works because of our common human nature, it might work in reverse too.  So he began to act very converted by this story, and in the end this priest recommended life in a Church prison because he was returned to the faith.  Roger had begged the man to make sure he cleansed his soul by making him do the meanest job at that jail, removing and disposing of the prisoners’ excrement daily.  

During his solitary time, Roger had spent much time actually agonizing over his sins.  On page 407 he thinks back to all the crazy things he did as a young soldier to get into bed with beustiful but pompous rich ladies, each of whom was a challenge that drove him to incredible feats of daring, whom he would abandon as soon as the conquest had been made.  On page 430 he is wondering how he can ever become worthy to be in Rigueur company again, and on pages 431-2 he realized he is forgetting what she looked like and was scared because there seemed to be nothing left of the man who had once loved Rigueuer.

He is placed in a minimum security prison to spend the remainder of his life working under the watchful eye of guards, as was the common sentence for a confessed heretic eager to save his soul by rejoining Mother Church.  To allow him to go free, however, would be to take too great a risk for him and for themselves, he was still capable of regaining his strength and soldiering.

Roger arranged for a serious diversion in the prison, one to which guards would have to respond,  and made it our one of the doors vacated by a guard running to the commotion.  He had a narow escape and almost died in the attempt just to stay alive in the forest undetected.  Finally some kind souls took pity on him and he was fed and regained some of his strength.  He used that strength to travel quite a distance to see Rigueur once more, his constant dream during his incarceration.

Pages 436-437 tell of the two meeting in her convent.  She could only be visited by speaking through bars erected for the purpose.  She looked like she had suffered greatly.  Roger, still weary and disordered, he felt carnal passion for her, she detected it and put a stop to it, he apologized for it.  Rigueur told him that Rigueur was dead, she no longer existed, that what she once felt for him was also dead.  He accepted that, reluctantly, and told her she was the only person in his life that he had never betrayed in either word or thought.  It was a mistake to bring that subject up.

Apparently word had got out that Roger spilt the beans under torture, which was not true but a sneaky way to cause his associates to confess when captured.  He can’t believe that she would believe such things about him, and she can’t believe he can’t believe that someone would believe such a thing since it was the norm, not the exception, to stop pain by confessing.  Their meeting was temporarily acrimonious, but then settled down to a final good bye on friendly terms.  And they knew it was their final good bye.  We are now at page 439.

21. From page 440 to the 470's, there was a reversal in the war, and the local forces had the upper hand for half a year.  Roger went on a rampage after learning of Rigueur’s death by fire, she was burnt at the stake with her husband and two of their associates.  Roger and his men burnt several churches, with their priests in them.  He had come to the conclusion, in prison, that his Church had become his enemy.  After all, he was a good Catholic in his own mind and could not understand why he was worthy of so much suffering.  His war-making was strictly out of allegiance to his liege-lord, something known as loyalty, a noble obligation.

At home a person that really sparked his interest was his fourteen-year-old niece, her father had been burnt at the stake, and her mother was insane in prison.  She was a hardened young woman, very pretty but with an attitude to match Roger’s.  He seduced her and she went along very eagerly.  They had a son together and went to war as a family.  He wondered how it was that this young girl could actually make him forget about the pain inside him from losing his Rigueur, but he was happy during these years.  

Then, although he had gone a long time without really thinking much of his Rigueur, he went on a solitary, short pilgrimage to see the tower where they had once loved each other and say a final good-bye to her in his heart (pp. 482-5).  He saw her, and him, in a vision, making love on the moss.  He said good bye to her in his mind and heart.

Shortly after, since he was in territory where he was well known, he was informed on, surrounded by soldiers, and captured.  This time he was considered a lapsed heretic and since he was already 50 given a life sentence in chains in a dark and cold room below ground level.  They were kind to him and gave him long chains, he could almost reach the door.  Short chains were very cruel in that they made it difficult to even lie down on the stone floor.  

He was given little to eat, he got sick, and was barely conscious and close to death when priest came to give him the final rites for Catholics.  The priest about to officiate is one he recognized in a lucid moment, and he got extremely agitated and cursed the man, declaring himself a heretic through and through and wanting to die that way.  It was the doctor who prescribed tortures, including Roger’s, so as to not kill the prisoners and to preserve them for more torture at a later time.  The same priest who had befriended him and got him an assignment to a more humane prison, one from which he had escaped.  The same priest who had given Roger the opportunity to be impressed with his own conversion story, whom Roger had hoodwinked into seeing sincere sorrow for sin and repentance in Roger.  

The priests left with their cross and materials for giving the extreme unction rite, and their stooges came in with rocks and finished Roger off while still in his chains, in his cell.  His last thoughts were (p. 503): “Why have they done this to me? . . . Rigueur.  Sweet Rigueur.  Gentle Rigueur.”

SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT COURTLY LOVE from these two, or actually three, books?  That even when a society structures itself to deny love a place in men’s and women’s lives, love will find a way?  That the ideal was for the woman to be and remain inaccessible, but the ideal was often compromised?  That there are other forces in life that eventually overtake the all-consuming fire of true love stoked inside courtly lovers?  That the all-consuming fire of love changes a person ay a deep level, at his or her root, and those changes last a lifetime?  All of the above?

In part one, Oldenbourg said there are those who see the object of true love, love directed by the God called Love, as a spiritual symbol, not as a real human being.  I think she told two tales that show that to be not so.  In both cases the object of love was a real woman, a real woman who was a living symbol of God and Love, which are one in the mystical sense.

Speaking of mystics in disguise, the very practical nation-building second prophet of Mormonism, Brigham Young, taught that all revelation is natural, and we, no matter how or who we are, a revelators to each other.  That is a very mystical world view, one which bridges the gap between the Lady and the mystical entity called Love nicely: the Lady is the face and messenger of Love to her beloved.  She actually is that Love, and she is also the Beloved in the sense the word is used in the ecstatic poetry of Rumi, the twelfth-century Islamic mystic of the Sufi persuasion.  

The combination of courtly love and Catharism made many women into powerful forces that did not fit the typical expectation of what a woman was supposed to be at the time.  Women traveling, teaching, preaching, healing, and organizing, were not a staple of the Catholic social vision for women.  Courtly love was a liberator for women and a civilizer for men.  But it was only possible because of the way marriages were arranged for all purposes except love.  The couple expecting to be in love at their marriage was a very small minority.  Love was to be found outside marriage.  Courtly love gave structure to this quest for love and kept it from overtaking and destroying households.  It allowed Love to have his way in the land.  It was a good thing for that society.

Before we get all carried away, however, as a peasant I must observe that it was strictly for the upper classes of society, this courtly love business.  If a man wanted to satisfy himself but not sully his idealized lover, it was OK for him to take a maid of lower class either by flattery or force if she was part of his crop of servants.  Don’t get the idea that this was a civil society.  Although when it came to this practice, both the Catholic and Cathar churches railed against it. The Cathars taught the equality of all humans in the eyes of God, a potent teaching when it comes to discouraging the taking of a lower class person for a sex object to be used and discarded.  The Catholics were protective of the ranks in society.  God had placed everyone where they were by birth, and in an orderly society people stayed in their places assigned by birth.

Oldenbourg wrote astonishingly insightful novels about human nature on display at an extreme time in history.  I recommend all her books highly.  Since they are only available on special order or in local libraries, I told more of the story than I would have if the books were still in print.  But I hope I have told enough to make you want to read these books, not that I have over-satisfied your curiosities and thus ruined your appetite for the real thing.

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