Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (review)

180 Reviews France there were those w h o m Huppert revealingly calls philosophes who were the forerunners of the better-known eighteenth-century kind: '[T]here are some fundamental beliefs shared by philosophes, whether they are writing about botany in 1553 [like Belon] or leading a new nation to independence in 1776' (p. 117). What the stile de Paris did was to sever fashionable learning from the medieval university's scholastic education, and to make the former not a profession but the foundation of 'happiness'. Thus a straight line of affiliation leads from Belon and the somewhat younger Montaigne to Bayle and Voltaire. What Huppert has now given us, in such a succinct yet incisive fashion (more Gallico) is nothing short of the origines intellectuelles de la revolutionfrancaise. To read this bo is to understand why the French Revolution can never be fully or adequately explained merely in political and social terms. Long before the Duke of Rochefoucault-Liancourt told Louis X V I that what was happening around the Bastille was a revolution, a revolution de mentalite took place. This revolution has been the life-long passion of George Huppert who, ever since his The Idea ofPerfect History, has said itfirst,said it best, and said it all. Zdenko Zlatar Department ofHistory University ofSydney Jaeger, C. Stephen, Ennobling Love: In Search ofa Lost Sensibility, Philadelphia, University ofPennsylvania Press, 1999; pp. xi, 311; R R P US$45, £34 (cloth), US$19.95, £15 (paper). This fascinating book commences with a seeming contradiction between the public demonstrations of 'love' toward rulers which were customary in the medieval period, and the refusal of Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear to express her love for her father publicly, which results in her being disinherited. Jaeger identifies what he calls 'ennobling love', and deems it a Tost sensibility', which needs to be rediscovered through the careful analysis of a wide variety of texts. This love is a 'spiritualized response to the "virtue", the "majesty", the charisma, the saintliness, of the beloved' (p. 4). Most of the loves discussed by Jaeger are between men and he is careful to distinguish his investigation from the popular scholarly discourse regarding the existence of 'homosexuality' or 'homosexual relations' in the historical past. Reviews 181 This is partly because 'ennobling love' is primarily expressed by public gestures for lovers and witnesses. Jaeger insists that the public nature of this phenomenon does not necessarily eliminate experienced emotion, and he is equally determined in his championing ofthe argument that there are 'more uses of the erotic than just erotic ones' (p. 21). The people w h o inspire ennobling love tend to be kings, great personages in the secular and ecclesiastical orders, and saints. Their virtue, physical beauty, and possession of power overwhelm lesser people. Chapter Two, 'Virtue and Ennobling Love (1)', discusses the Greek and Roman contribution to the medieval conception offriendship.Aristotle's Nichomachaean Ethics sees friendship as only possible between equals, and until the high middle ages the issue of the love ofw o m e n being potentially ennobling does not arise. Therefore, the early part of the book deals with the translation of the Ciceronian ideal offriendship(from De Amicitia) to the Christian context. The court of Charlemagne did much to establish a public discourse of 'love' between the king and his closest subjects. Alcuin's love songs and letters are passionate and sensual, even where it is apparent that they are mannered, telling of 'roles played and scenarios staged' (p. 49). Chapter Five, 'Love in Education, Education in Love', shifts to the relationship between teacher and pupil, and the way in which documents from the cathedral schools of the late tenth and early eleventh centuriesfillin this picture. This chapter has detailed investigation of letters from the Hildesheim and W o r m s collections, and poetry from the Regensburg Love Songs and Baudri of Bourgueil among others. From these examples Jaeger concludes that between the eighth and the twelfth centuries, the student's love for his teacher was cultivated deliberately as part of a program of education in mores. The next chapter, 'Women', reviews the medieval techniques for the management of the disturbing...