55 pages • 1 hour read
Andreas CapellanusThe Art of Courtly Love
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1186A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaBook 1, Chapters 7-12 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Introduction to the Treatise of Love”
Book 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Love of The Clergy”
Chapter 7 concerns “the love of the clergy,” which Andreas calls the noblest class owing to its “sacred calling” (141-42). Since this nobility comes from God rather than lineage and can only be taken away by God, it has no bearing on how clerics should conduct themselves in matters of love. They should renounce “all the delights of the flesh,” but since they too are “liable to temptations of the body” (142), they should act according to the social class of their lineage.
Book 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Love of Nuns”
Andreas discusses “the love of nuns” (142). Andreas writes that loving nuns is abominable and “a scandal to God and men” (143) that condemns body and soul to death. For this reason, he will not discuss the proper words to woo a nun, though he warns that nuns too are subject to temptation and willing to engage in affairs. Therefore, Andreas cautions Walter to avoid being alone with nuns lest they tempt him to ruin.
Book 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “Love Got with Money”
Andreas cautions against “love got with money” (144), as one cannot buy real love. Women who appear to want gifts or otherwise demand payment for their affections dishonors their gender. Andreas emphasizes that he does not want to impugn honorable women, through whom “all the world is induced to do good deeds” (147). Instead, he wishes Walter to guard against the tricks of deceitful women.
Book 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “The Easy Attainment of One’s Object”
Chapter 10 questions “the easy attainment of one’s object” (148). Andreas warns that women who cannot confine themselves to one lover cannot truly love and, as a result, cause men pain. True love joins two hearts so thoroughly that the two thinks only of each other. The same is true of men. A man who “lusts after every woman he sees” is “a counterfeiter of love,” “a pretender,” and “lower than a shameless dog” (149).
Book 1, Chapter 11 Summary: “The Love of Peasants”
Chapter 11 involves “the love of peasants” (149). Andreas compares peasants to farm animals, who satisfy their natural sexual urges but for whom love is “contrary to their nature" (149). Although love may, rarely, be stirred in a peasant, Andreas recommends against falling in love with them. If it happens, however, Andreas suggests praising them liberally and taking “what you seek and [embracing] them by force” (150).
Book 1, Chapter 12 Summary: “The Love of Prostitutes”
Chapter 12 briefly considers “the love of prostitutes” (150). Prostitutes are to be “shunned absolutely” (150). Anyone who deals with prostitutes “falls into the sin of lewdness” (150) and sacrifices his good name. Andreas points out that instructions for gaining a prostitute’s love are unnecessary since they will give themselves to a suitor “without much urging” (150).
Book 1, Chapters 7-12 Analysis
The concluding chapters of Book 1 rounds out Andreas’s introduction to love by discussing love among groups of people he has not previously addressed. Chapter 7 is dedicated to clergy. Although Andreas has mentioned them previously, he explicitly articulates that clergy is the noblest class in the eyes of God. However, this does not impact their social status in the human world. Andreas again subverts and affirms, creating internal confusion. Clergy are the most noble but must adhere to the status conferred on them by social rules. They should not engage in love, but since they too are men and subject to temptation, they will inevitably do so and should thus respect social class as it exists. The underlying point may be that social classes created by humans are corrupt. They deny what God elevates (clergy as nobility) and tempt clergy to sin by encouraging romantic and sexual love. Further, the social class system deems peasants as no better than animals and endorses the rape of peasant women, implied by Andreas telling Walter that it is acceptable to embrace peasant women “by force” (150).
Nuns, discussed in Chapter 9, and prostitutes, discussed in Chapter 12, represent opposite ends of the sexual spectrum. Nuns are meant to dedicate their lives to God and maintain a lifetime of chastity while prostitutes live by exchanging sex for money. Yet Andreas seems to conflate them in that both provide sexual temptation to men. Andreas warns Walter not to be alone with nuns and likewise to avoid prostitutes. In a sense, this prefigures Andreas’s repudiation of women in the second half of Book 3, since he depicts both nuns and prostitutes as being oversexed and leading men to eternal torment.
Following his pattern of subverting and affirming, Andreas differentiates between tricky and honorable women in Chapter 9. Women who expect gifts for their affections are no better than prostitutes. They sully the name of honorable women, who must exist since they provide the foil for women of bad character. Likewise, in Chapter 10, both men and women should be wary of love that is given too easily. Andreas seems to be thinking specifically of sexual love as he goes on to say that it is equally unacceptable for men and women. Meanwhile, he elsewhere forgives men more easily for sexual indiscretion than he does women owing to men’s natural boldness of character. However, he also subverts this description of men through the characterization of the higher noblewoman in the Eighth Dialogue.
