Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition

5. Love and the Ontological Order: Andreas’s Scholastic Definition

5 ≥ LOVE AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ORDER Andreas’s Scholastic Definition In the preceding chapters we have seen that the De amore is a complex didactic enterprise interweaving the separate generic vectors that we have called ars, scientia, and sapientia, and that it is organized according to principles derived from the arts of the trivium, rhetoric and dialectic, especially the latter. We have also seen that, in accordance with its scholastic organization, it is concerned with assembling all pertinent opinions on the subject of love, and that it thus establishes an intricate dialectic between four main medieval traditions. The learned, Latin, clerical tradition includes a secular strand inherited from classical antiquity, especially the love writings of Ovid, as well as the dictates of Christian theology and canon law. Along with these standard sources of authority, Andreas also invokes contemporary, vernacular, courtly sources, that of the courtly vernacular love poetry and the “non-literary intertext” comprising the attitudes and prejudices of courtly feudal society . It is time to apply these findings to an analysis of the Chaplain’s doctrine, including its psychological, social, and ethical components. We shall begin with the cornerstone on which the entire edifice is constructed , Andreas’s definition of love.1 No aspect of the De amore has received more attention than the def169 1. For an earlier version of this chapter, see Monson, “Andreas Capellanus’s Scholastic Definition.” inition of love with which it begins. Already in the Middle Ages this was among the best-known parts of the treatise: apparently anthologized very early in medieval florilegia, it is quoted, among others, by Albertanus da Brescia (1238), the earliest of medieval authors to react to Andreas, and by Jean de Meun, who translated it into Old French in the Romance of the Rose.2 In modern times it has become the center of a lively controversy intimately connected with that which surrounds the meaning of the treatise as a whole. Current discussion of Andreas’s definition centers on the question whether it should be seen as an ironic allusion to Scripture in the Patristic tradition (D. W. Robertson, Alfred Karnein) or as a physiological description in the medical tradition (Paolo Cherchi, Rüdiger Schnell).3 I shall argue that it is neither, that it is, within certain limits, a properly philosophical definition, firmly rooted in the tradition of early medieval philosophy, although it is not devoid of literary influences. Since the same philosophical tradition also provided the intellectual foundation of medieval medicine and theology, it is not unreasonable to assume that any similarity between Andreas’s definition and contemporary medical or moral pronouncements is due to this common heritage.4 Andreas’s first chapter, Quid sit amor, calls for a definition. As one of the “predicables” (prædicabilia), or basic notions by means of which anything may be predicated of anything else, definitio played a key role in dialectical argumentation.5 Aristotle’s Topics 6 and 7.1–3 are devoted 170 p ro b l e m s o f m e a n i n g 2. Karnein, “De amore,” pp. 61–62. 3. Resumed in ibid., pp. 59–71. Cf. Karnein, “Amor est passio”; Robertson, “ Subject ”; idem, Preface, pp. 84–85; Cherchi, “Andreas’ De Amore,” pp. 88–91; Schnell, Andreas Capellanus, pp. 159–65. Wack, “Imagination,” argues for an influence of the Salernitan medical school on the treatise as a whole, including the definition. Nevertheless, she disputes (p. 108, n. 26) the influence of Arabic medical works alleged by Cherchi and Schnell, pointing out that amor hereos is a thirteenth-century concept. 4. The most prominent representatives, respectively, of the moral and medical traditions , those most frequently mentioned in connection with the De amore, are also major philosophers: St. Augustine and Avicenna. 5. According to Aristotle, Topics 1.4–5 (101b11–102b26), the four essential notions later designated as “predicables” were definition, property, genus, and accident. Medieval philosophers generally followed Porphyry’s Isagoge in substituting species and differentia for definition, bringing the number of predicables to five. See Boethius (trans. Stump, pp. 237–61). For Aristotle definition also played an important role in demonstrative reasoning; see Posterior Analytics 2.10 (93b29–94a19). to definition. It is also discussed at length in Cicero’s Topica and in Boethius’s commentary on that treatise.6 Marius Victorinus...