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object of the lover’s affections was “a married lady of high rank” for whom he could only sigh
from afar.^3 His sole means of expressing his passion was through acts of chivalry and valor,
which he dedicated to his idol. Courtly love poems mirror the lyrics of the troubadour poets
and are consistent with the rules of love as outlined by the twelfth- century cleric Andreas
Capellanus,^4 who is thought to have been a courtier of Marie of France, the daughter of
Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor had famously fostered the literary tradition in her court, and
Marie’s commissioning of Capellanus’s treatise De Amore around 1185 is in that tradition.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to tell whether Capellanus intended the work to be didactic, satir-
ical, or merely a reflection of the times.
Typical of the courtly love tradition, the garden plays a central role in De Amore.
Capellanus cites the example of a spurned lover who succeeds in convincing his Lady to
reciprocate his love by bringing her to a beautiful garden meadow, where Venus, the Queen
of Love, holds court:the meadows were very beautiful and more finely laid out than mortal had ever seen.
The place was closed in on all sides by every kind of fruitful and fragrant trees, each
bearing marvelous fruits according to it kind.Capellanus’s garden is divided by walls into concentric circles.^5 In the middle of the
innermost circle is the Tree of Life, “a marvelously tall tree, bearing abundantly all sorts of
fruits.” A “wonderful spring of the clearest water, which ... taste[s] of the sweetest nectar,”
gushes from its roots. Venus sits beside the tree on her gem- encrusted throne, attired in
splendid robes and wearing a golden crown.
The inner circle of the garden is termed “Delightfulness” (Earthly Paradise), the middle
circle is called “Humidity” (a kind of Purgatory), and the outer circle is “Aridity” (Hell). The
“King of Love” (Cupid as Venus’s husband rather than her son) arrives and sits on his throne
beside Venus, enjoying a glass of red wine. His entourage soon follows, and the women take
their seats according to their rank and/ or conduct. Ladies of rank who accept Love sit in the
area of Delightfulness, common women who accept Love take their places in the circle of
Humidity, while women of any rank who reject Love must sit in the outer circle of Aridity.
The latter are made to sit on chairs of thorns with the soles of their feet resting on burning
ground. As the pièce de résistance, a man assigned to each of these love- rejecting women is
tasked with periodically shaking their chairs, inflicting painful injury.
Terrified of suffering the same fate as the women of Aridity, the lover’s Lady reluctantly
acquiesces to his advances. Thus Capellanus combines, either naively or cynically, the sadis-
tic theology of the era with the aestheticized ritual of courtly love. Pulling out all the stops,
the lover deploys a fearful tableau in his campaign to win his Lady’s favors, a technique of
psychological coercion that medieval clerics had honed to a fine art, although deploying it to
different ends.Mother Earth and Mother Nature
In the biblical account of the Creation, the earth is not merely a passive substrate for grow-
ing plants. Rather, it acts as God’s intermediary in bringing forth vegetation: