Another View 8

I’ve been rereading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror of late, and once again have been captivated with the whole chivalric idea of “courtly love.” While it’s beginnings can be traced from the 12th century through the troubadour tradition across western Europe, it’s height comes to fruition in the 14th century, the century Tuchman is reflecting upon.

This troubadour movement was also a movement of spiritual chivalry, in which poets and knights dedicated themselves not only to a monogamous relationship, but also as spiritual love, often consummated and seen as a manifestation of the Divine Feminine, or Sophia. There were both male and female poets, whose poetry expressed their longing (eros) for their lovers.

This courtly love was at one level literary -- but it also had a secret or initiatory dimension expressing itself through cryptic language, the key to which only the initiated possessed. Herein is this rich and extravagant tradition containing love letters to God (read Mechthild of Magdeburg, or Hadewijch -- both of this courtly religious chivalric era) -- and you will find an eros (longing for God) that is pretty amazing.

They spoke of a “chivalry of the heart,” which was about the “spiritual quest” -- the pursuit of God, -- using imaginative language that tempted God to come nearer. Of course, they were not tempting God whatsoever -- their desire was to be consumed by God. It was their way of “pledging their troth” to Christ.

This courtly love tradition rivals that of the knight and troubadour, living in privation from their beloved. Their poetry is the language that assures God that they have spurned worldliness, and are dedicated to a spiritual life. It is their marriage. Sounds somewhat like reading the Song of Solomon, which you might invite yourself to read again. .

What is religious eros, the name I would ascribe to this “courtly love” language? Oddly enough, this religious eros flows through the writings, of all people, Plato. Here it is -- the understanding that eros (longing) is the “intermediary between heaven and earth,” that is, the power linking that which is above to that which is below -- the bridge, if you please, that makes God’s love known to us in this world. It is Christ showing us the human face of God, creating the longing for the Divine and for our own divine life. It is the same eros that infills all creation and procreation -- but it is only realization of the Divine that truly satisfies this longing.

Origen, another of our great spiritual forbearers, says that people are infatuated with money, others with power, and still others with sexual desires. These infatuations he says are “sickness of the soul” -- the soul is taken over by them and forgets that its real longing for its fulfillment is in God.

The work of Christ, he says, is to restore the soul to its proper balance, to its true desire and meaning. Here is religious eros redirecting the basic human longing (for whatever our substitute gratifications may be) by orienting them towards their ultimate transcendence. Therefore, for instance, the longing for a partner is also a longing for spiritual companionship, and religious eros turns the former into the latter, shows the former really is the latter, and makes the two, one, allowing us to see heaven through one who is on earth.

In essence, religious eros is the transmutation of one’s beloved into symbol (which is truly our desire for God), through which the whole world and one’s spiritual journey through it is revealed in its symbolic reality. Thus, in a sense, medieval Christian spirituality and courtly love converge. Here, earthly longing and spiritual longing partner in a marriage that bridges an understanding of God’s longing for humanity, and humanity’s longing for God. We touch God’s love through the other who is human, and the other who is human reveals to us something of Divine love.