and these answers led to more robust theology. This is no less the case in the way human thought has developed through the ages on any given topic, not the least of which is marriage. When understanding increases and progress occurs, its development is likely to be mirrored by the literature of the age.
In The Allegory of Love Lewis writes of continuity and change. At least two kinds of change may be observed. First, a change of kind where the present conceptual framework has been falsified by unbending realities and the abiding paradigm must be abandoned for one better. Second, a change of degree where new data demands adjustment in currently held beliefs without the need to abandon them—a tree does not have to give up its interior rings just because it adds new ones—yet, these beliefs must be adjusted to keep up with the data. Put another way, Lewis’s biggest idea, one that can be traced in all of his books, is that “reality is iconoclastic.”15
The iconoclast breaks idols. I may have an image of God (or anything else for that matter); the new image may come after reading a book, listening to a lecture, or following a conversation. New pieces of the puzzle have come together to form a clearer image; but if I hold too tightly to the present image it will become an idol and an obstacle to growth. Lewis reminds readers that God, in his mercy, always kicks out the walls of temples we build for him because he wants to give us more of himself.16 We want a clearer grasp of the world where we live. Even the truths we hold are subject to degrees of change. We have yet to plumb the depths of any truth we presently grasp; nor have we imagined all the possible applications of any given truth we currently know. We will never have a last word, or complete understanding of anything, but this does not mean we cannot have a sure word about some things. All truths ought to be held with this humility and honesty. This type of change, one of degree, is chronicled in The Allegory of Love.
Additionally, these attempts to grasp this continuity and change are destined to affect our interior life. We respond to our world not only by means of reason, but also with the heart. We are creatures of passion as well as intellect. Lewis notes that in medieval times allegory became the literary form developed to speak of and depict the interior life. He writes, “The inner life, and specially the life of love, religion, and spiritual adventure, has therefore always been the field of true allegory; for here there are intangibles which only allegory can fix and reticences which only allegory can overcome.”17 Lewis also observed, “The function of allegory is not to hide but to reveal, and it is properly used only for that which cannot be said, or so well said, in literal speech.”18
The subject of courtly love filled much of the literature of the Middle Ages. It was the preoccupation of the leisured classes who had the time to write. Courtly love maintained four characteristics: humility, courtesy, the religion of love, and adultery. The fact that adultery was an idealized feature of courtly love may surprise some. However, Lewis reminds his readers that in an age where marriages were arranged, one’s passions were generally focused toward someone other than one’s spouse.
For instance, Lewis notes how in feudal society, marriages had nothing to do with love. “All matches were matches of interest, and worst still, of an interest that was constantly changing.” Therefore, “Marriages were frequently dissolved.” Furthermore, “Any idealization of sexual love, in a society where marriage is purely utilitarian, must begin by being an idealization of adultery.” Lewis also notes that “according to the medieval view, passionate love itself was wicked, and did not cease to be wicked if the object of it were your wife.”19 So the church taught that ardent love, even of one’s spouse, was a mortal sin. And those in the Middle Ages concluded that “true love is impossible in marriage.”20 Theologians and philosophers did little to restore marriage to its proper place.
The institution of marriage was threatened by unique challenges in the Middle Ages as it is in our own day. But romantic passion came to be linked with marriage, and the story of how this occurred is the developing exposition of Lewis’s The Allegory of Love. He says this transfer of passion to one’s spouse, rather than to one’s paramour, is the greatest change to occur in medieval poetry, and that “compared with this revolution the renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.”21 What is to be noted is that the transformation, as Lewis traces it, did not come from the writings of the theologians but from the poets—in fact, the Christian poets. Once again, it can be seen that artists are most often the shapers of culture, for good or for ill.
What exactly was this courtly love like? How might it be understood? For an illustration one can draw on Lewis’s own explanation of that period in his life when he flirted with idealism. What he says about his own pre-conversion idealism provides a rough analogy of this “Religion of Love.” After a long bout with atheism and materialism and its supporting worldview, and having seen the bankruptcy of both, Lewis turned to idealism. He writes in Surprised by Joy that this idealism was for him a convenience and provided a “quasi-religion.” He observed it was “all eros … steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey.”22 This idealism which came with no sense of obligation to anything truly transcendent, is analogous to the religion found in courtly love. There was religious devotion to one’s beloved, but the obligations were all subjective feelings not tethered to transcendent reality.
From Courtly Love to a Christian Concept of Marriage
Lewis explains how marriage was rescued from the challenges of courtly love. To do this, he traces chronologically the gradual changes that occurred in the literature of the age and its effect on the cultural consciousness. His observations are like a stroll through the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy, where a careful eye can follow the gradual movement from Byzantine iconography to the more realistic, lifelike art that eventually gives way to the Romantics and Impressionists. Lewis follows the thread of the love allegory from the profligate love of the early Middle Ages to love idealized in marriage.
First, Lewis considers The Romance of the Rose. After the Bible and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, Lewis says it may have been the most influential book of the Middle Ages.23 For this present study, it is not necessary to unpack all that Lewis writes about The Romance of the Rose, but simply to note that it “is the story of a lover whose deepest convictions remained opposed to his love and who knew that he acted neither well nor wisely.”24 Here consciousness is awakened to conscience; the adultery that was once prized creates internal conflict. Yet, the lover’s behavior remains contrary to what he knows he ought to do. The sentiment is like that of Romans 7:19, finding that we are doing what we do not want to do. How is this to be explained? Why do we rush to whatever is the immediate pleasure before us? Why do we avoid the virtue of temperance which resists the enticement of the immediate pleasure in order to gain the greater, though more remote, good? In this struggle, perhaps we find evidence that our wounds, accumulated in a very fallen world, are deeper than our convictions. When pleasure and convictions clash, it is convictions that are often sacrificed. Moreover, until whatever wound drives us is healed, the convictions will always suffer infirmity. What is important to notice is that the passions are directed toward someone who is not the lover’s spouse and there is guilt about the matter, yet nothing is done to correct the error. In this recognition of human failure, and in the guilt that follows, Lewis chronicles a small step found in The Romance of the Rose, which will eventually lead to the discovery that passion can be found legitimately in marriage. Change is occurring and a thread of continuity is becoming visible.
The next text in the progression of those Lewis examines is Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida. He observes, “Chaucer’s greatest poem is the consummation, not the abandonment, of his labors as a poet of courtly love. It is a wholly medieval poem.”25 In what way does Lewis mean “a wholly medieval poem”? Simply, that Chaucer is drawing on the romantic literature that was produced before him, using it as a source for his own material. However, Chaucer’s embellishment is to take the passions described
