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Indissolubility 97
Rome; I bared my conscience to him, and he imposed a penance on me.
I have been in this town ever since: it will be four years this summer. So
help me God, whose servant I am, there was never anyone who gave me
any news of you until today; but now I have news which I know is good
andwelcometoyouandallyourfriends....[4145] My lord, I can see
very well that I am keeping you too long: you are due to marry the king’s
daughter. For God’s sake, may I be in your thoughts and in your wife’s, so
that for the sake of God and his countenance the pope may do this much
for me, and find a place for me in an abbey. May God sanctify and bless
you! I intend to pray God night and day to grant you a place in Paradise
when our souls leave our bodies, when evil doers will be left outside.
She takes it for granted that her entry into a nunnery will leave
him free to remarry. Entry into the religious life would end the
marriage, which had definitely been consummated. Gautier had
earlier told his readers that ‘Ille, who had longed for her so much,
shared one bed with Galeron, and they experienced such joy and
such delight that it defies description’ (ibid. 53). As it happens, Ille
does not take up her o·er. He still loves Galeron and the marriage
to the other woman is called o·.
Furthermore, the whole atmosphere is religiously charged, and
there is no hint of unorthodoxy. On the contrary, Galeron assumes
the pope will be involved. This is not a courtly love counter-culture.
The passage reflects genuine unclarity among pious laypeople about
the indissolubility doctrine held by the higher clergy.
That becomes doubly evident later in the poem, when Galeron
takes a vow in childbirth to enter a nunnery (ibid. 178–9) and Ille
can consider marrying the other woman, whom he also loves. Ille
was confused about his emotions. The poet compares his heart to
atower:
Who was inside? The first love, which held it by force of custom; except
that his love for the maiden, which was outside, frequently accused her,
saying that she had no right to be there inside, and intended to demonstrate
logically and prove that love for a nun has no title to the heart of a castellan,
a duke, a count or a king, and that it is on the contrary wholly unreasonable
that it should be allowed, that it should be permitted to be there. It was Ille
who su·ered, Ille who felt the e·ects of this. The first love was dicult to
overcome, and did not know what on earth to reply, but what she did say
Gautier d’Arras, Ille et Galeron, ed. and trans. P. Eley (King’s College London
Medieval Studies, 13; London, 1996), 139.
In a later chapter it will be explained that an unconsummated marriage could
be dissolved by entry into a monastery.