" "I myself," he continued, "treat all
women with tenderness and courtesy, but then--I am considered a fool."
As may be expected, sublimated, metaphysical love was not without its
caricatures and eccentricities. One of the most grotesque figures of the
period of the troubadours was Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a German knight.
As a page, we are told, he drank the water in which his mistress had
washed her hands. Later on he had his upper lip amputated because it
displeased his lady-love, and on another occasion he cut off one of his
fingers, had it set in gold and used as a clasp on a volume of his poems
which he sent as a present to his inamorata.
At the famous Courts of Love, the most extraordinary questions were
seriously discussed and decided. A favourite subject for debate was the
relationship between love and marriage, and some of the decisions which
have been preserved for us prove without a doubt that those two great
factors in the emotional life were considered irreconcilable.
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