THE OXFORD 

DICTIONARY 

OF THE
Edited by Robert E. Bjork
VOLUME 2
C-J
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
courtliness and courtesy
wield so much influence as they did in *al-Andalus and in
the Hispanic kingdoms.
In Muslim Spain, Jews such as *Hasdai ibn Shaprut
attained high positions in the Umayyad court and later
under the *taifas, thanks to their expertise in Arabic and
*medicine. With the rise of independent sultanates, many
courts offered opportunities to Jews such as the Hebraist,
Talmudist, poet, and statesman Shemuel ibn Nagrela.
Jewish courtiers in al-Andalus played a role similar to that of
their Muslim counterparts. In addition to their administrative,
political, diplomatic, and financial tasks, they turned
their own courts intoJewish-Hebrew cultural centres where
patronized poets, intellectuals, scientists, and scholars,
maintaining theirJewish
after the *Reconquista led kings to
expertise in Arabic, their ability to provide money, their
loyalty to the king to whom they owed their position, their
administrative capabilities, and their medical or scientific
trainingexplain the enthusiasmwith which rulers appointed
non-threaterungJews, often preferring them to Christians
who might pose a challenge. In some cases, such as under
*Pere III of Aragon, an attempt was made to create aJewish
civil service to replace the nobility. While in the Crown of
In the Christian north, special circumstances n::lfti(,lll::l
*Aragon, following a large-scale dismissal in 1283 under
noble pressure, the number of Jewish courtiers declined
drastically, in *Castile they continued to serve the crown
until the 1492 expulsion. YTA
L. M. Wills, TheJew in the Court of the Foreign King:
Court Legends (I990).
courtliness and courtesy [OFr. cort, curtesie, courtoisie]
Terms describing the refined customs and behaviours
that emerged in the European courts of the nth and 12th
centuries.
Courtliness has its origins in the cult of *fin'amor('refined
celebrated in the lyric poetry of the *troubadours
and *trouveres, who situated the love of an unattainable
lady of equal or higher rank at the centre of their
experiences-a concept known as the amor de lonh, or 'love
from far away'. Over the course of the 12thcentury, the idea
resurfaced in a new genre of vernacular writing, destined to
be performed aloud at court: the 'courtly *romance' (or
roman courtois). Striving to describe the puzzling, adulterous
relationship between *Lancelot and *Guinevere in one of
the most famous of these works, *Chretien de Troyes's
Chevalierde la Charrette (c.lI80), the 19th-century philologist
Gaston Paris coined the term *'courtly love'.
Under the influence of powerful *patrons of the artssuch
as *Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter, Marie,
countess of *Champagne-the cult of courtly love spread
throughout Europe. Courtliness became a prominent
fixture of noble life, and furnished a new code of conduct
Couttrai
turmoil following Charlemagne's death, poetry continued
to be produced for the imperial court, such as the work of
*Ermoldus Nigellus and *Walahfrid Strabo. Ottonian emperors
in the 10th century supported a rebirth of classical
that inspired historical poems and panegyrics
from the aristocratic Saxon nun *Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim;
from Gerbert of Aurillac, later *Pope Silvester II;
and from *Leo of Vercelli. The famous *Cambridge Songs
poetic anthology contains a number of anonymous shorter
poems from this milieu. A wealth of Latin courtly verse
survives from the lIth and 12th centuries. Fulcoius of Beauvais,
archdeacon of Meaux, and Godfrey, chancellor of
*Rheims, both wrote Latin poetry for the court of Manasses
I, archbishop of Rheims (1069-80), constructing elaborate
poetic personas for themselves based on Virgilian and
Ovidian models. In the Angevin realm *Marbod ofRennes, a
and *Baudri of Bourgueil, an abbot, cultivated wide
po~tic circlesthrough verse epistles addressed to ecclesiastics
and lay magnates, including women. For their aristocratic
audiences they wrote classically inspired poems praising
rulers' learning, piety, and wise use of power. Later in the
12th century, *Henry II and *Eleanor of Aquitaine encouraged
Latin poets who wrote "epics, satires, and lyrics,
including, perhaps, erotic songs of the sort found in the
Arundel collection. In the same period Hugo Primas
II60) wrote irreverent Latin songs likely destined for episcopal
courts. Later in the MA courdy Latin poetry continued
to be written, but inincreasing competition with vernacular
poetry. TCM
P. 	Dronke, 'Peter of Blois and Poetry at the Court of Henry II',
MS 38 (1976), 185-235.
P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (1985).
C. S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness (1985).
c. J. McDonough, ed., The Oxford Poems of Hugh Primas and the
Arundel Lyrics (1984).
T. Moser, 	A Cosmos of Desire: The Medieval Latin Erotic Lyric in
English Manuscripts (2004).
F. J. E. Raby. A History of SecularLatinPoetryin the Middle Ages (1934;
rev. edn. 1957).
A. G. Rigg, A History ofAnglo-Latin Literature: 1066-J.422 (1992).
J. Ziolkowski, ed. and tr., The Cambridge Songs (1994).
court procedure See PROCEDURE, LEGAL.
Courtrai (Kortrijk) Important cloth-manufacturing town
in *Flanders, able to switch to linen in the 15th century. On
IIJuly 1302 the battle of "Courtrai (or of the Golden Spurs)
was fought before its walls. A Flemish army of foot soldiers,
mostly from *Bruges, defeated a French army of knights.
The battle guaranteed the relative autonomy of the county
from the French king and consolidated the political
ance of the urban craft guilds. PSt
P. 	Stabel, DwarfS among Giants: The Flemish Urban Network in the
Late Middle Ages (1997).
458 459
to medieval knights. *Andreas Capellanus' Art of Courtly
Love (c.rr84-<» provides us with a detailed description of
courtly behaviour (although some scholars have suggested
that Andreas intended his work as a parody of courtliness).
According to Andreas, courtly love relationships could exist
only outside of marriage, and the man had to initiate the
love affair by declaring himself to his lady. In so doing, he
fully submitted to her will, while she retained the power
either to accept or to deny her suitor. The courtly love relationship
was thus modelled on the feudal *oath taken by a
"knight in affirming his service to a liege-lord, and knights
often served their ladies by competing in their honour at
tournaments.
Much vernacular literature of the 12thto 14thcenturiesincluding
*Guillaume de Lorris's *Roman de la rose, *Chaucer's
Troilus and CriseydeandBook oftheDuchess,and*Dante's
Vita Nuova-celebrates the ideals of courtliness and courtesy.
However, other writers, including Alain Chartier and
the anonymous authors of the *fabliaux, call into question
the excesses of courtly conduct. Even Chretien de Troyes,
in his last romance, Perceval or Le Conte del Graal (c.II90), reminds
his readers that societies devoted to tournaments and
refined pleasures are doomed to failure if they do not find
their primary purpose in the service of God. See also CHIVALRY
AND KNIGHTHOOD; COURT POETRY; COURTESY BOOKS;
COURTS OF LOVE. SJM
D. Burnley. Courtliness and Literature in Medieval England (1997).
H. Dupin, La Courtoisie au Moyen Age (1982).
J.	M. Ferrante and G. D. Economou, eds, In Pursuit of Perfection:
Courtly Love in Medieval Literature (1975).
C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936).
P. Porter, Courtly Love in Medieval ManUSCripts (2003).
J. A. Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of
Sexuality (2006).
courtly love A term that loomed large in 20th-century
discourse about medieval life and literature. It caused endless
confusion because, even though understanding of its
meaning varied widely, it was commonly used as if it had
only a single meaning which was understood by all. The
term was taken to correspond to amourcourtois, introduced
in 1883 by Gaston Paris to characterize the kind of 'lovewith-rules'
he found first in the Lancelot of "Chretien de
Troyes: a code of conduct that requires it to be illicit and
furtive, placing the lady in a place of superiority to the man
(as in *troubadour lyrics), with the man constantly doing
feats of prowess to win the lady's approval (as in the Arthurian
court of *Geoffiey of Monmouth's History of the Kings
of England). Although the latter element was lacking in the
lyrics, and their universal illicitness only inferred, troubadour
poems became the chief paradigm of courtly love,
with some critics asserting thatthese activitiescorresponded
to real life and others holding that they were merely
conventions.
An early application of the term was by Lewis Mott,
The System of Courtly Love, Studied as an Introduction to the
Vita nuova of Dante (1894), in which the incompatibility with
marriage was stressed; and the same element was central
to William G. Dodd's Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower
(1913), in which, for instance, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
was explained as portraying noble and pure love outside
the bonds of marriage by following the conventions of
courtly love.
A very influential statement of courtly love was put
forward by C. S. Lewis in his Allegory of Love (1936), in
which he declared that 'it appears quite suddenly at the
end of the eleventh century in Languedoc', and that its
main characteristics are humility, *courtesy, *adultery, and
the religion of love (2). Some of the variations of meaning
and application of the term are detailed by Roger Boase,
The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love (1977), though
often with a greater impression of unity of usage than is
warranted.
The contradictorinessofcourtlylove was notablypointed
out by E. Talbot Donaldson in an essay of 1965, The Myth
of Courtly Love', given wide circulation in his Speaking
Chaucer (1970). One method to reduce the confusion was to
resort to a medieval term, *fin'amor, but the contradictions
remained. Both French and English terms were used sometimes
to mean primarily ennobling love, sometimes chiefly
adulterous love, or pure love, or love from afar, or unrequited
love, or love of a cruel mistress, or knightly service
for love, or purely fictional love, or love accepted and practised
in real life, or love in lyric poetry, or love in romances,
or love in *Dante or in *Chaucer, and so on.
The term has largely fallen out of use, in favour of speaking
simply of love conventions as found in specific bodies of
writing, whether literary or historicaL HAK
R. Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of
European Scholarship (1977).
H. A. Kelly, The Varieties of Love in Medieval Literature According
to Gaston Paris', RPh 40 (I986-7), 301-27.
court poetry Much of the Latin poetry composed in the
MA was written for lay and ecclesiastical magnates and their
households. Writers of such verse tended to be classically
educated courtier-clerics, from bishops and abbots to minor
ecclesiastical functionaries, who recorded history, wrote
*panegyric and invective, and offered advice, instruction,
and entertainment. Though little court poetry survives
from before the *Carolingian revival, even in this period
*Venantius Fortunatus wrote occasional poetry for Frankish
aristocrats, and the AS *Aldhelm sent an instructional
in verse to the king of *Northumbria. *Charlemagne drew
to his court scholar-teachers who were also poets, including
*Alcuin and *Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, who composed
a longpoem about the royal court and its members. Despite