So that our solemn plighted troth
When love is dead, we shall not break,
We'll to the priest ourselves betake.
You set me free, as I do you,
A perfect right then shall we both
Enjoy to choose a love anew,
wrote Peire of Barjac.
It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance;
the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of
his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the
love-alliance--so Sordello maintained, in a long poem--should be more
binding than any marriage.
Only one love a woman can
Prefer. So let her choose her man
With care. To him she must be true,
For choosing once she ne'er may rue.
More binding than the wedding-tie
Is love; for a diversity
Of causes wedlock may divide,
By death alone be love untied.
The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the
logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire
cannot together be projected on one woman.
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