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humility, courtesy, the religion of love, and adultery. The fact that adultery was an idealized feature of courtly love may surprise some. However, Lewis reminds his readers that in an age where marriages were arranged, one’s passions were generally focused toward someone other than one’s spouse.

      For instance, Lewis notes how in feudal society, marriages had nothing to do with love. “All matches were matches of interest, and worst still, of an interest that was constantly changing.” Therefore, “Marriages were frequently dissolved.” Furthermore, “Any idealization of sexual love, in a society where marriage is purely utilitarian, must begin by being an idealization of adultery.” Lewis also notes that “according to the medieval view, passionate love itself was wicked, and did not cease to be wicked if the object of it were your wife.”¹⁹ So the church taught that ardent love, even of one’s spouse, was a mortal sin. And those in the Middle Ages concluded that “true love is impossible in marriage.”²⁰ Theologians and philosophers did little to restore marriage to its proper place.

      The institution of marriage was threatened by unique challenges in the Middle Ages as it is in our own day. But romantic passion came to be linked with marriage, and the story of how this occurred is the developing exposition of Lewis’s The Allegory of Love. He says this transfer of passion to one’s spouse, rather than to one’s paramour, is the greatest change to occur in medieval poetry, and that “compared with this revolution the renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.”²¹ What is to be noted is that the transformation, as Lewis traces it, did not come from the writings of the theologians but from the poets—in fact, the Christian poets. Once again, it can be seen that artists are most often the shapers of culture, for good or for ill.

      What exactly was this courtly love like? How might it be understood? For an illustration one can draw on Lewis’s own explanation of that period in his life when he flirted with idealism. What he says about his own pre-conversion idealism provides a rough analogy of this “Religion of Love.” After a long bout with atheism and materialism and its supporting worldview, and having seen the bankruptcy of both, Lewis turned to idealism. He writes in Surprised by Joy that this idealism was for him a convenience and provided a “quasi-religion.” He observed it was “all eros … steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey.”²² This idealism which came with no sense of obligation to anything truly transcendent, is analogous to the religion found in courtly love. There was religious devotion to one’s beloved, but the obligations were all subjective feelings not tethered to transcendent reality.

       From Courtly Love to a Christian Concept of Marriage

      Lewis explains how marriage was rescued from the challenges of courtly love. To do this, he traces chronologically the gradual changes that occurred in the literature of the age and its effect on the cultural consciousness. His observations are like a stroll through the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy, where a careful eye can follow the gradual movement from Byzantine iconography to the more realistic, lifelike art that eventually gives way to the Romantics and Impressionists. Lewis follows the thread of the love allegory from the profligate love of the early Middle Ages to love idealized in marriage.

      First, Lewis considers The Romance of the Rose. After the Bible and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, Lewis says it may have been the most influential book of the Middle Ages.²³ For this present study, it is not necessary to unpack all that Lewis writes about The Romance of the Rose, but simply to note that it “is the story of a lover whose deepest convictions remained opposed to his love and who knew that he acted neither well nor wisely.”²⁴ Here consciousness is awakened to conscience; the adultery that was once prized creates internal conflict. Yet, the lover’s behavior remains contrary to what he knows he ought to do. The sentiment is like that of Romans 7:19, finding that we are doing what we do not want to do. How is this to be explained? Why do we rush to whatever is the immediate pleasure before us? Why do we avoid the virtue of temperance which resists the enticement of the immediate pleasure in order to gain the greater, though more remote, good? In this struggle, perhaps we find evidence that our wounds, accumulated in a very fallen world, are deeper than our convictions. When pleasure and convictions clash, it is convictions that are often sacrificed. Moreover, until whatever wound drives us is healed, the convictions will always suffer infirmity. What is important to notice is that the passions are directed toward someone who is not the lover’s spouse and there is guilt about the matter, yet nothing is done to correct the error. In this recognition of human failure, and in the guilt that follows, Lewis chronicles a small step found in The Romance of the Rose, which will eventually lead to the discovery that passion can be found legitimately in marriage. Change is occurring and a thread of continuity is becoming visible.

      The next text in the progression of those Lewis examines is Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida. He observes, “Chaucer’s greatest poem is the consummation, not the abandonment, of his labors as a poet of courtly love. It is a wholly medieval poem.”²⁵ In what way does Lewis mean “a wholly medieval poem”? Simply, that Chaucer is drawing on the romantic literature that was produced before him, using it as a source for his own material. However, Chaucer’s embellishment is to take the passions described in courtly love and, though he does not turn them toward marriage per se, he does turn his story toward the Christian God. Again, we won’t recount the story of Troilus and Cressida, here, but we’ll say that it is the best extra-biblical story of love we have read, and we find it both tragic and moving.

      For our purposes, it is important to note that although the concept of courtly love is strong in the text, and love is embodied in fornication, Chaucer begins with prayers. This connection of love and true religion is unique and noteworthy. Chaucer asks the reader to pray for him that he might tell the story of Troilus and Cressida well. Shakespeare, who borrows from Chaucer, should have also asked his readers to pray for him, as he does not tell the story nearly as well.

      Then Chaucer asks for more prayer. He asks for the reader’s prayers on behalf of those who have never loved, that they might know love. He asks for prayers for those who have been unrequited in their love, that they might find happiness and response from their true beloved. He asks for prayers for those who have once been in love, and have now fallen out of it, that they might be restored. He asks for prayers for those who are in love that they might remain in it. This turning to heaven to understand more fully the nature of love for the beloved is unique in its time. Yet it underscores a kind of desperation one might expect when all one’s hope is tethered to mere human love. It is filled with soaring expectations that are at risk of crashing disappointments due to human limitation and fallenness. Certainly, human love can be good, but it cannot replace divine love. Chaucer makes this clear.

      Regarding the desperation of Troilus’s situation, Lewis observes, “All men have waited with ever decreasing hope, day after day, for someone or something that does not come, and all would willingly forget the experience.”²⁶ Chaucer’s story ends with Troilus’s heart desperately broken, and he is defeated on the battlefield. Then he has an out-of-body experience where his soul transcends the battlefield after his death. From this elevated perspective, he sees what must ultimately be made of all earthly loves. Chaucer then includes one last prayer: “Blessed Jesus turn all our loves to Thee.”

      As Lewis observes, “Chaucer, never more truly medieval and universal … recalls the ‘yonge, fresshe folks’ of his audience from human to divine love: recalls them ‘hom’, as he significantly says.”²⁷ This idea, if not first encountered in Dante is, at least, developed in Dante and widely distributed through him, influencing many other authors following in his wake. For now, suffice it to say, Lewis underscores that “Chaucer has few rivals and no masters.”²⁸ In his hands, this story of love and passion directs the heart to God if one ever hopes to make significant sense of human love. Passion in marriage is not yet emphasized but there is movement in a direction away from courtly love toward the management of the passions under God.

       Setting the Stage for Edmund Spenser

      Chaucer

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