issolution of a marriage.

So that our solemn plighted troth
When love is dead, we shall not break,
We'll to the priest ourselves betake.
You set me free, as I do you,
A perfect right then shall we both
Enjoy to choose a love anew,

wrote Peire of Barjac.

It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance;
the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of
his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the
love-alliance--so Sordello maintained, in a long poem--should be more
binding than any marriage.

Only one love a woman can
Prefer. So let her choose her man
With care. To him she must be true,
For choosing once she ne'er may rue.
More binding than the wedding-tie
Is love; for a diversity
Of causes wedlock may divide,
By death alone be love untied.

The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the
logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire
cannot together be projected on one woman.

If matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain
between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony--an expedient
chosen by the Church--or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern
sense. The first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the
ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and
the world was not ripe for the second. The tendency of the rarest minds
was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it
from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven.
One of the early troubadours, Jaufre Rudel, Prince of Blaya, gave a
practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady
whom he had never seen. The story of his love was famous for centuries.
He loved a Countess of Tripoli, a Christian princess, and his whole soul
was filled with his imaginary picture of her. The _Provencal Biography_
relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had
narrated of her." In order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed
across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a
dying condition. The countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to
the inn where he lay. As she entered his room, Jaufre regained
consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. She was
so touched by his love that she henceforth renoun