SOURCE: “Some Rational Considerations of Andreas Capellanus,” in Romance Notes, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Autumn, 1966, pp.121-27.

In the following essay, Frank focuses on the central position of rationality among matters of love debated by Capellanus in De Amore.

The De Amore of Andreas Capellanus, a middle or later twelfth century document, was probably written under the supervision of Countess Marie of Champagne and the influence of her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, patroness of the troubadours.¹ The De Amore is a primer on the whole of the courtly love relationship. It sets forth twelve and then thirty-one rules of chivalric love. It enumerates various decisions achieved by the ‘courts of love’ and, in a series of dialogues, it presents the necessary modes of entreaty to be used by the suitor.²

Andreas' work pictures the suitor and his lady as desirous of sensual pleasure and impelled by love and the...