It’s the commercial day of love, and you know what that means – it’s time to buy things to prove your emotions, or something. And look, we all know that Valentine’s Day is made up and has nothing to do with St Valentine. Did people sometimes pass love notes around St Valentine’s Day? Yes. I mean, at least from the fifteenth century onward. Did people buy chocolates and book restaurants? Not so much. Anyway, other people have written about the oldest Valentine and the commercialisation of a forgotten saint’s day and I don’t need to add to that. Instead, I thought I would talk a little about fancy medieval people and their various ways of communicating about love.
Now we are talking about fancy people because that’s who could read and write more commonly, so that’s who we have records about. It’s annoying. I wish I could tell you more about how peasants were doing their thing, but I just can’t. I can, however, tell you what rich people were up to.
The source I am using for this is of course my old hobby horse De Amore or the Art of Courtly Love. If you’ve read my stuff on this, you already know the drill, but the thing about De Amore is that we aren’t sure whether it is just a straight up medieval pick-up artist manual or if it is meant to be parodying people who would be doing courtly love things. Either way it ends up being much the same thing, in my opinion, being as if something parodied it means that it must be common enough for people to understand it as a parody. So that’s point one. Point two, as always, is the fact that courtly love is mostly about doing romantic stuff if you are in a class of society where marriage is emphatically not about romance, but instead about making business deals. So as a result the relationships in question are generally extra marital.
Now that’s why talking about how this communication happened is interesting, because well, if you are married but shagging around, you sort of want to keep that fact down. See, according to Andreas Cappelanus, the weird priest who wrote a guide to having extra marital sex, people are having affairs at court. They just are. However, you aren’t supposed to talk about it “because when a number of people begin to get wind of such an affair, it ceases to develop naturally and even loses what progress it has already made.”[1] And yeah I can see this, I mean if people know you are having it off behind your husband’s back that is probably going to make things difficult. Further, I think he maybe has a point about putting other people’s expectations on to a relationship. The last thing you need when you are banging the bosses wife, or trying to, is your mates chiming in to ask how that’s going.
Part of this might mean a bit of play acting in public. Andreas says “every man ought to be sparing of praise of his beloved when he is among other men; he should not talk about her often or at great length, and he should not spend a great deal of time in places where she is. When he is with other men, if he meets her in a group of women, he should try to communicated with her by signs, but should treat her almost like a stranger lest some person spying on their love might have opportunity to spread malicious gossip.”[2] You know, gossip like ‘I think they are banging.’ Which they are. Or are trying to, anyway. To that end, “Lovers should not even nod to each other unless they are sure that nobody is watching them.”[3]
So, OK that’s a lot of don’ts. How do you in these circumstances then communicate with your beloved?
Well, first of all a lover should “wear things that his beloved likes and pay a reasonable amount of attention to his appearance. … Let the love strive to practice gracefully and manfully any act or mannerism which he has noticed is pleasing to his beloved.”[4] This, then becomes a form of communication. If she told you she likes parti-coloured hose, well guess what big boy, you are putting them on. If she wants you to get a fresh new bowl cut, then baby it’s to the barber for you! If she says you have a nice signing voice, then pick that lute TF up. These are all ways of being in communication even if you are not.
Of course, these things are all well and good, but how do you go about letting your DL BF know what you like if you are not even allowed to nod in mixed company? Well to this Andreas has an answer – a go trustworthy go between or messenger. He discusses the process in one of his theoretical cases in the court of love, where he pretended that Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughters sat around considering the best ways to cheat. Anyway in Case XVI he reports that a “certain knight was suing for a woman’s love, and he did not have frequent opportunities of speaking to her, so with the woman’s consent he chose a go-between for this purpose, that with his help each of them might the more easily know the other’s wishes and in grater secrecy make it known his own and that the love between them might forever be managed in even greater secrecy.”[5
In this case said go-between proceeded to woo the woman in question, which, oops! But that in and of itself is interesting to us because it indicates that you aren’t getting people in your employ to deliver your love messages. You need to get someone from your own echelon who understands the importance of covert wooing. Probably just … be careful when you do that.
But, say you are a lover who has a covert lover, and you have yourself a go between, and now you are ready to woo away, but … you don’t know what to say to her. Well never fear amorous but unimaginative rich dude! There is a sort of equivalent to the sentimental Valentine’s card that you buy from a shop in the medieval period – formularies. The hint is kinda in the name on this one – formularies give you formulas for texts if you can’t write them yourself. Sometimes that can be public documents for court, but even in one of our oldest formularies the Formulae Salicae Merkelianae from the ninth century – there’s a sample love letter in case you can’t write those either. It goes a little something like this:
“In God’s name, with amorous love and insatiable longing for the sweetest and most beloved of all my much-desired honeyed girlfriend. I send you greetings through this letter, for as much joy is contained within the fulness of our hearts. As they [the greetings] themselves walk safely among the clouds, may the sun and the moon lead them to you. When I lie down, you are in my mind. And when I sleep I always dream of you. May you have good days and pleasant nights, and always have your boyfriend on your mind, and do not forget me, for I will not forget you. You think of one plan, and I’ll one more acquire, by which genius we’ll fulfill our desire. May he who reigns in heaven and provides for all things, deliver you into my arms before I die.”[6]
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Hilariously the last line then sells the model letter, saying: “This is a great greeting between two young people. One sends it to the other, and neither of them get tired of it.” I mean, I am gonna hope it has that kind of longevity, being as it was written about four centuries before De Amore was written, so your GF better be in the mood when it shows up. (Incidentally, if someone sent me this it absolutely would work on me, but because of the provenance, but hey ho.)
More to the point, by the time you are a dude reading De Amore, a book which gives you model conversations to use on women, why wouldn’t you be checking out centuries-old formularies for model love letters. We get it, you don’t have chat. Play to your strengths.
This isn’t to say that people didn’t have imaginative and sweet love letters they were writing to each other. One of my favourite love letters of all time comes from a couple of nuns in the twelfth century, aka smack dab in the time-frame of courtly love. This makes sense because nuns were literate. It’s their job to read and write all day, so they can write each other love letters. Just like I’m a historian so it’s my job to read their letters and gossip about them, thank you.
Further, they can send each other love letters when they are separated because it’s fine and normal for nuns to write to each other. No need to a trusted go between when communication is expected!
Anyway, the letter in question is as follows:
“To C, sweeter than honey or honeycomb, B sends all the love here is to her love. You who are unique and special, why do you make delay so long, so far away? Why do you want your only one to die, who as you know loves you with soul and body, who sighs for you at every hour, at every moment, like a hungry little bird. Since I’ve had to be without your sweetest presence , I have not wished to hear or see any other human being, but as the turtle-dove having lost its mate, perches forever on its little dried up branch, so I lament endlessly until I enjoy your trust again. I look about and I do not find my lover – she does not comfort me even with a single word. Indeed when I reflect on the loveliness of your most joyful speech and aspect, I am utterly depressed, for I find nothing now that I could compare with your love, sweet beyond honey and honeycomb, compared with which the brightness of gold and silver is tarnished. What more? In you is all gentleness, all perfection, so my spirit languishes perpetually by your absence. You are devoid of the gall of any faithlessness, you are sweeter than milk and honey, you are peerless among thousands, I love you more than any. You alone are my love and longing, you the sweet cooling of my mind, no joy for me anywhere without you. All that is delightful with you is wearisome and heavy without you. So I truly want to tell you, if I could buy your life with the price of mine, [I’ll do it] instantly, for you are the only woman I have chosen according to my heart. Therefore, I always beseech God that bitter death may not come to me before I enjoy the dearly desired sight of you again. Farewell. Have of me all the faith and love there is. Accept the writing I send, and with it my constant mind.”[7]
I know what you are thinking – wow medieval people really write about honey a lot when they consider love. Yes, you are correct. Probably you are also thinking that this letter between nuns is a bit risky. Technically, yes, nuns being in love is as frowned upon, perhaps more so, than married people having elaborate affairs. This is because all of that loving each other with the body as B out it up there is sodomy, and they are meant to be dedicated to the Lord. [8] I don’t know what to tell you bud. Turns out medieval people don’t really care that much about what the Church says. Even when they are members of it. And thank goodness, you know? Because if it wasn’t for these plucky nuns and their secret missives we’d be stuck reading a bunch of dudes’ fill in the blank love letters.
All of this is to say that for a long long time there have been various approaches to communicating about love. And people are going to fall in love and make a record of it even when they aren’t supposed to. And that record will survive to us even when you were being very secretive in some cases. These sorts of communication were so common that you could even be real lazy with it and buy the equivalent of a greeting card. However, a lot of people still went all in and poured their queer little hearts out about us. Luckily for us we live in a time where written communication is easier, and we don’t have to be so sneaky about it. Unless you are having an affair I guess. In which case, uh, good luck? I suppose if that’s what you are up to you are in good company.
A word to the wise though, if I know that a couple of nuns were getting it on in the twelfth century, some day historians might be all up in your secret love letter business too. I’m just saying. We will read your letters, and we will judge them. Bring your A game.
[1] Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 151.
[2] Ibid, pp. 151-152.
[3] Ibid., p. 152.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., p. 174.
[6] “Amabiliter amando et insaciabiliter desiderando dulcissima atque in omnibus amatissima, multum mihi desiderabilem melliflua amica mea illa ego in Dei nomine. Ego mando tibi salutes usque ad gaudium per has apices, quantum cordis nostrae continent se plenitude. Et ipsi salutes inter nubes ambulant, sol et luna eis deducant ad te. Ego quando iaceo, tu mihi es in animo. Et quando dormio, semper de te somino. Bene habeas in die et noctes suavis transeas et amico tuo semper in mento habeas nec ponas illum in pblivione, quia ego tibi non facio. Ty pensas unum consiloium, et ergo penso altero, per qualem ingenium implemus desiderium. Qui regnat in celo et providet omnia, tradat te in manibus meis, antequam moriar.
Haec est magna salutatio inter duos iuvenis; alter alterius transmittit et neminem sufficet.”
K. Zeumer (ed.), MGH Formulae Merowingici et Karolini aevi, 1, 1886, 241-263, p. 258 https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_formulae/index.htm#page/258/mode/1up <Accessed 13 February 2024>.
Readers who cared to check out the Latin will note that it has all kinds of cute rhymes and stuff that I have not figured in the translation. There’s a reason for this – it is very hard, and I am lazy. Thank you.
[7] Peter Dronke (trans.), Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, II, 479. Quoted in, Jacqueline Murray, “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages”, in, The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, (New York and London: Garland, 1996) p. 211.
[8] Go read Murray’s chapter about this, cited above. It’s really good.
For more on courtly love, see:
On courtly love and pick up artists
On incels and courtly love
For more on sodomy, see:
That’s not what sodomy means, but OK
For more on nuns and sexuality, see:
On ‘the way of carnal lust’, Joan of Leeds, and the difficulty of clerical celibacy
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My book, The Once And Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society, is out now.
© Eleanor Janega, 2024
Going Medieval 
A word to the wise though, if I know that a couple of nuns were getting it on in the twelfth century, some day historians might be all up in your secret love letter business too. I’m just saying. We will read your letters, and we will judge them. Bring your A game.
As I’ve always told my kids, whatever you’re doing, if you don’t want other people to know about it you’d better keep it face to face.
The examples I’ve mostly given involve criminals being caught because they post pictures of themselves with their ill-gotten gains on Facebook or write braaaaaaaains in the Venmo receipts for their illegal trade in body parts (also, they were using venmo when this should’ve been cash only) but thanks to you I’ll now add “future historians reading love letters and, I don’t know, texts” to the list.
Or maybe I won’t – turns out they’re both terribly dyslexic.
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What about fancy people exploiting servants?
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In what sense?
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As I may have commented otherwhere, I am interested in dynastic politics and have read briefly how these are supposed to have spread from the medieval ruling classes to early modern middle classes. Dynastic family parents/guardians or heads are faced with the problem of how to control/condition their offspring to keep them in line to arrange propitious marriages for them, limiting their opportunities to pair-bond elsewhere, but allowing them some scope so as not to risk them absconding (eloping). I think a modern royal-watcher expressed the view along the lines of “sex with a footman doesn’t count” in a documentary.
I presume this is pretty mainstream since it is the stuff of Comedy (even some Tragedy) since ancient times.
I think the British might be a little strange in European terms by going so far as single-sex boarding schools for the elite, with consequences for the children going through such institutions.
So what was the medieval dynastic playbook? Were monasteries and nunneries sometimes used as a holding pen for ‘spares’, who might be yanked out of holy orders if the heir was incapacitated or a diplomatic marriage became unexpectedly expedient?
Or to put it another way, were there groups of people trying to reverse and put a stop to the goings-on you’ve colourfully described here, and to what levels of coercion, conditioning and incarceration did they go to? Or inducements and free range with the servants?
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This is an absolutely huge question. The British are of course weirdos writ large, but medieval European dynasties have some general rules, but a lot of different ways of practicing succession. We do absolutely see a lot of spares sent off to the Church as it were. However, we don’t see a lot of push back to hegemonic structures in these cases unless we see crises in succession. So, for example, when there are no sons to inherit, etc.
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