Courtship

 Courtship, as the name implies, is something that is done at court.  We are talking here not about a law court but about a king's or great lord's court, where he (or she) would gather all their powerful men and women around them.  Now in fact a law court and an aristocratic court were essentially the same thing in the Middle Ages, as the great lords were the law-givers, but let's focus on courtship for now.

At its most basic courtship meant making a case to a powerful person that one's position should be supported.  There might be only a small difference between asking for a grant of property as a favor (in return, of course though probably unsaid explicitly, for loyalty) and asking for a favorable ruling in a legal case.  All great lords were surrounded by petitioners, and the lords' wives often in effect had their own courts, with petitioners of their own.  Someone who feared a duke might not look kindly on their petition would start with the duchess, in the hope that if he could persuade her, she might persuade her husband.

In a broader sense, "courtship" applies to men seeking the affection and favor of women.  Women were petitioned for their love in the same way that a petitioner might ask a count for the revenue from a toll bridge.  We in fact still use the term courtship in that way, asking for a woman's love, even though the idea of sweet-talking a great lord into making one gifts has fallen by the wayside.  As scholars have recently demonstrated, women, especially aristocratic women, had a great deal of authority in the Middle Ages, so such courting made sense.

At a great lord's court a number of young people might be assembled, some hoping to rise in the world through association with the powerful, some there as hostages for a parent's good behavior.  With few responsibilities day to day, these young men and women enjoyed hunting and hawking, playing games like chess, and especially having romantic entanglements.  As a student of mine once said, like college without the muss and fuss of going to class.

The women gave every sign of having had a blast.  They could act coy, or allow an embrace, or give way to jealousy, or have secret trysts, or gossip mercilessly.  Because the men were asking for anything from a sweet smile to a kiss to a whole lot more, they were in a subservient position, the humble petitioner, making gifts in the hopes of winning that smile (or something more).  Women at the court of Champagne in the twelfth century made up a whole lot of arbitrary rules for the men to follow (which has led some scholars who ought to know better to suggest that there were clear mandates for "courtly love" throughout the Middle Ages).

Financial transactions as a part of romance may seem odd to us today, but not to the wealthy who now routinely draw up pre-nuptial agreements.  Not just among the well to do young people at court, but among all of medieval society, marriage arrangements involved discussions about money.  There was the dowry to decide on, what the bride would bring to the marriage, and the dower, what would be settled on her if her husband died.  Potential inheritance and very cost of the wedding required discussion.  So a man of whatever status looking for a wife would engage in courtship that might begin with a gift of something like a ring or a puppy to engage the woman's affection but quickly became much more financially serious.

Such courting was not restricted to men looking for a wife.  The duchess being "courted" so that she would persuade her husband to grant someone a toll bridge would receive gifts and asked for her "love" as well as her agreement, such love not being actually romantic, though it used the same language, but rather something closer to a friendly business deal.

The single women found in many late medieval cities, running businesses or working in crafts and trades, would also be courted, by men looking not necessarily for a wife but for female companionship, of a variety of possible sorts.  The poverty in which many of these women lived could be alleviated by allowing men to court them -- as well as providing entertainment and friendship.  The January 2024 issue of the medieval studies journal Speculum has a good article about late medieval single women being courted in cities.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on medieval women, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.