'Fedeli d'Amore' & 'Courts of Love'

Research in Italy on the Fedeli d'Amore continues to give rise to interesting works. Alfonso Ricolfi, already known for some articles on this subject, has just published a study, to be followed by others, in which he states his intention to take up the work left unfinished by Luigi Valli. ^[1] Perhaps he does so with some reservations, however, for he considers that Valli has 'exaggerated' certain points, particularly in denying, contrary to the most common opinion, the real existence of all the women extolled by the poets attached to the Fedeli d'Amore. But in truth this question is no doubt less important than he seems to think, at least if one places oneself outside the point of view of simple historical curiosity, and it has no bearing whatsoever on a true interpretation of the work. Indeed, there is nothing impossible about the idea that in designating the divine Wisdom by a feminine name certain poets may in a purely symbolic way have adopted the name of a woman who had actually lived, and there are at least two reasons for doing so: firstly, as we had occasion to say recently, anything at all can, according to the nature of the individual, provide the occasion and starting-point for a spiritual development, and this may be true of an earthly love as well as of any other circumstance (all the more so as what we are dealing with here, lest we forget, can be characterized as a path for the Kshatriyas); and secondly, the real meaning of the name so used became the more impenetrable to the profane, who naturally held to the literal meaning, and this advantage, although of a contingent order, was perhaps not entirely negligible. This remark leads us to consider another point closely related to the preceding. Ricolfi deems it necessary to distinguish between 'Courts of Love' and 'courts of love'; and this distinction is not the mere subtlety it may seem at first glance. Indeed, one must understand by 'Court of Love' a symbolic assemblage presided over by Love itself personified, whereas a 'court of love' is only a human gathering, a sort of tribunal called upon to adjudicate more or less complex cases. Whether these cases were real or imaginary, or, in other words, whether they involved effective jurisdiction or simply a game (and they may in fact have been both), matters very little from our point of view. If they were truly only occupied with questions of profane love, the 'courts of love' were not assemblies of the genuine Fedeli d'Amore (unless they sometimes assumed this aspect outwardly in order to better disguise themselves); but they may have been an imitation and a kind of parody born of the incomprehension of the uninitiated, just as during the same period there were undoubtedly profane poets who celebrated real women in their verse and put nothing more in their poetry than a literal meaning. Likewise there were 'puffers' alongside the true alchemists, and here too we must beware of any confusion between the two groups, something not always easy to do without a thorough examination, for outwardly their language may be identical; and this same confusion may in fact have sometimes served, in both cases, to turn aside injudicious prying. However, it is not admissible to attribute any sort of precedence or priority to what is counterfeit or degenerate; and Ricolfi seems disposed to allow too readily that the deeper meaning may have been added after the fact to something that at first would have had only an altogether profane character. With regard to this point we will be content to recall, as we have often done, that all art and science has an initiatic origin and that their strictly traditional character can have been lost only as a result of the incomprehension we have just mentioned; to assume the reverse is to admit an influence of the profane world upon the initiatic world, that is to say a reversal of the true hierarchical relationships inherent in the very nature of things. What might give rise to such an illusion in the present case is that the profane imitation must always have been more visible than the true Fedeli d'Amore, who, moreover, were an organization that should not be considered a 'society', as we have already explained with regard to initiatic organizations in general. ^[2] If the Fedeli d'Amore seems to evade the ordinary historian, this is proof not of its non-existence, but, on the contrary, of its truly serious and profound character. ^[3] One of the principal merits of Ricolfi's work is that it discloses new evidence for the existence of the Fedeli d'Amore in Northern France; and the little-known poem by Jacques de Baisieux on the Fiefs d'Amour (identified with the 'celestial estates' [fiefs célestes] in contrast to the 'terrestrial estates' [fiefs terrestres]), about which he speaks at length, is particularly significant in this respect. The traces of such an organization are certainly much rarer in that region than in the Languedoc and the Provence, ^[4] but we must not forget that a short time later the Romance of the Rose appeared; and, in another connection, close links with the 'Knighthood of the Grail' (to which Jacques de Baisieux himself explicitly alludes) are suggested by the fact that Chrétien de Troyes translated the Ars Amandi [The Art of Love] of Ovid, which also may well have some other meaning beside its literal one, something that should occasion no surprise given that Ovid is also the author of the Metamorphoses. Nor by any means has everything been said on the subject of 'knight-errantry', the very conception of which is connected with that of initiatic 'journeys'; but for the moment we must restrict ourselves to recalling what we have already written on this last subject, adding only that the expression 'wild knights' [chevaliers sauvages], which Ricolfi mentions, would merit a separate study. Some rather strange things are also to be found in the book of André, chaplain of the King of France; unfortunately this for the most part escaped Ricolfi's attention and he only reports a few of them, without seeing therein anything extraordinary. For instance, it is said in this book that the palace of Love rises 'in the center of the Universe,' and that it has four sides and four gateways; the east gateway is reserved for the god, and the north remains forever closed. Now here is something remarkable: according to Masonic traditions the Temple of Solomon, which symbolizes the 'Center of the World', also takes the form of a quadrilateral or 'long square' with gateways opening on three of its sides, the north side alone having no opening; if there is a slight difference (absence of a gateway in the one case, gateway closed in the other), the symbolism is nevertheless exactly the same since the north is here the dark side, which the light of the sun does not reach. ^[5] Moreover, Love appears here in the form of a king bearing on his head a crown of gold; and is this not how we also see him represented in Scottish Freemasonry at the grade of 'Prince of Mercy', ^[6] and might we not say that he is therefore the 'king of peace', which is the very meaning of Solomon's name? And there is yet another parallel which is no less striking: in various poems and fables, the 'Court of Love' is described as composed entirely of birds who take turns speaking; now we have previously explained what is to be understood by the 'language of the birds', ^[7] and would it be reasonable to see nothing but a coincidence in the fact that, as we have already pointed out, it is precisely in connection with Solomon that this 'language of the birds' is explicitly mentioned in the Koran? Let us add yet another point that is also not without interest in establishing other concordances: the principal roles in this 'Court of Love' generally seem to be attributed to the nightingale and the parrot. The importance accorded the nightingale in Persian poetry is well-known, and the interconnection with the poetry of the Fedeli d'Amore has already been pointed out by Luigi Valli; but what is perhaps not so well-known is that the parrot is the vāhana, or symbolic vehicle of Kāma, that is, the Hindu Eros. Is there not much for further reflection here? And while we are on the subject of birds, is it not also curious that in his Documenti d'Amore Francesco da Barberino represents Love itself with the feet of a falcon or a sparrow-hawk, the bird emblematic of the Egyptian Horus, of which the symbolism has a close connection with that of the 'Heart of the World'? ^[8] Speaking of Francesco da Barberino, Ricolfi returns to the figure already mentioned ^[9] in which six couples symmetrically arranged, and a thirteenth, androgynous, figure at the center, quite clearly represent seven initiatic degrees. If his interpretation differs somewhat from Valli's, it is only on points of detail that do not at all alter its essential significance. He also reproduces a second figure, a representation of a 'Court of Love' where the characters are arranged on eleven tiers. This last fact does not seem to have attracted Ricolfi's attention particularly, but if one recalls what we have said elsewhere on the role of this number eleven for Dante in connection with the symbolism of certain initiatic organizations, ^[10] its importance should easily be understood. It seems, moreover, that the author of the Documenti d'Amore may even have been acquainted with a certain specialized kind of traditional knowledge, such as the explication of the meaning of words through the elucidation of their constituent elements. Indeed, read attentively the following phrase in which he defines one of the twelve virtues corresponding to the twelve parts of his work (this number also has its raison d'être: a zodiac wherein Love is the sun), but which Ricolfi quotes without comment: Docilitas, data novitiis notitia vitiorum, docet illos ab illorum vilitate abstinere. ^[11] Is there not something here that recalls, for example, Plato's Cratylus? ^[12] Before leaving the subject of Francesco da Barberino, let us further point out a rather curious mistake Ricolfi has made with regard to his androgynous emblem, which is clearly Hermetic and has absolutely nothing to do with 'magic', these being altogether different things. He even goes so far as to speak in this connection of 'white magic', whereas he is inclined to see 'black magic' in the Rebis of Basil Valentine because of the dragon which, as we have already said, ^[13] merely represents the elemental world (and which, moreover, is placed beneath the feet of the Rebis and is thus dominated by it), and, even more amusingly, also because of the set-square and the compass, for reasons that are only too easy to guess and undoubtedly depend more on political contingencies than on considerations of an initiatic order! And finally, to end, since Ricolfi seems to be in some doubt as to the esoteric character of the figure where, under the form of a simple 'illuminated letter', Francesco da Barberino had himself represented in adoration before the letter 'I', let us clarify further the significance of this letter. According to Dante, this was the primordial name of God, designating properly the 'Divine Unity' (which, moreover, is why this name is primordial, since the unity of essence necessarily precedes the multiplicity of attributes). Indeed, not only is it the equivalent of the Hebrew yod, hieroglyph of the Principle and itself principle of all the other letters of the alphabet, and of which its numerical value of ten reduces to unity (namely the unity displayed in the quaternary: 1+2+3+4=10, or that of the central point that through its expansion produces the circle of universal manifestation); not only does the letter 'I' itself represent unity in Latin numeration by reason of its lineal form, which is the simplest of all geometric forms (a point being strictly speaking 'formless'); but, further still, in the Chinese language the word i signifies 'unity' and Taï-i is the 'Great Unity', symbolically represented as residing in the pole star, which is again full of meaning, for, coming back to the letter 'I' in Western alphabets, we notice that, being vertical, it is for that very reason apt to symbolize the 'World Axis', of which the importance in all traditional doctrines is quite well known; ^[14] and thus this 'primordial name of God' recalls to us also the anteriority of 'polar' symbolism in relation to 'solar' symbolism. We have called attention here mainly to the points where Ricolfi's explanations are patently unsatisfactory, for we think this most useful in the present context; but it goes without saying that it would be unfair to hold against specialists in 'literary historicism', whose training has not touched on the esoteric domain, their lack of the data required to discern and correctly interpret initiatic symbols. On the contrary, we should recognize their merit in daring to go against the grain of officially accepted opinions and anti-traditional interpretations that are imposed by the profane spirit dominating the modern world, and we should thank them for putting at our disposal, by impartially disclosing the results of their research, documents wherein we may discover what they themselves did not see; and we can only hope that more works of this kind will soon be forthcoming and will shed new light on the exceedingly mysterious and complex subject of the initiatic organizations in the Western Middle Ages.