n rites of Venus.

The _poesie courtoise_, moulded in form and inspired in its sentiment
by the Provencal lyrics, lies within the compass of about one hundred
and thirty years, from 1150 to 1280. The Crusade of 1147 served,
doubtless, as a point of meeting for men of the North and of the South;
but, apart from this, we may bear in mind the fact that the mediaeval
poet wandered at will from country to country and from court to court.
In 1137, Louis VII. married Eleonore of Aquitaine, who was an ardent
admirer of the poetry of courtesy. Her daughters inherited her taste,
and themselves became patronesses of literature at the courts of their
husbands, Henri de Champagne and Thibaut de Blois. From these courts,
and that of Paris, this poetry of culture spread, and the earlier
singers were persons of royal or noble rank and birth. The chief period
of its cultivation was probably from 1200 to 1240. During the
half-century before its sudden cessation, while continuing to be a
fashion in courts and high society, it reached the wealthy bourgeoisie
of the North. At Arras, where Jacques Bretel and Adam de la Halle,
the hunchback, were eminent in song, it had its latest moments of
splendour.

It is essentially a poetry of the intellect and of the imagination,
dealing with an elaborated theory of love; the simple and spontaneous
cry of passion is rarely heard. According to the amorous doctrine,
love exists only between a married woman and the aspirant to her heart,
and the art of love is regulated by a stringent code. Nothing can
be claimed by the lover as a right; the grace of his lady, who is
placed far above him, must be sought as a favour; for that favour
he must qualify himself by all knightly virtues, and chief among these,
as the position requires, are the virtues of discretion and patience.
Hence the poet's ingenuities of adoration; hence often the monotony
of artificial passion; hence, also, subtleties and curiosities of
expression, and sought-out delicacies of style. In the earlier
chansons some outbreak of instinctive feeling may be occasionally
present; but, as the amorous metaphysics developed, what came to be
admired was the skill shown in manipulating a conventional sentiment;
the lady became an abstraction of exalted beauty, the lover an
interpreter of the theory of love; the most personal of passions lost
the character of individuality. Occasionally, as in the poems of the
Chatelain de Couci, of Conon de Bethune,