{"id":2128,"date":"2019-07-26T08:10:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T13:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/?p=2128"},"modified":"2019-07-26T08:10:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T13:10:57","slug":"the-languor-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/2019\/07\/26\/the-languor-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The Languor of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Love is an affliction, and the suffering of a soul that is sick.\u00a0 The authority of the poet [Ovid]–even though it seems unworthy and unsuitable–affirms the truth of this, when he says, ‘Woe is me, for no herb can cure love.’ But for the religious minds, it should be enough that this is the voice of the bride.\u00a0 She states what she feels and says: ‘I am afflicted with love.’\u00a0 Let us then consider, therefore, whether all love is an affliction.” Baldwin of Ford (Canterbury), ‘Tractate XIV: On the Order of the Charity,’ in Spiritual Tractates, <\/em>vol. 2 trans. David N. Bell (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1986), p. 141.<\/p>\n

Baldwin, a Cistercian abbot, later became Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1180s.\u00a0 In his recorded sermons he wrote extensively on the nature of love.\u00a0 As a Cistercian, he was continuing his Order’s traditional focus on love that began with Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song of Songs.\u00a0 Here Baldwin explains Song of Songs 2:4-5:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He brought me into the cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples: because I languish with love.”\u00a0 The Latin text for the last part reads:\u00a0 “…quia amore langueo<\/em>,” which we could translate as “…since I am weakened by love,” or as translated above: “I am afflicted with love.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Baldwin does discuss various types of love in the following sermon, he focuses on divine charity.\u00a0 However, consider the fact that he began this sermon with a reference to Ovid (the lascivious Roman poet).\u00a0 The transposition of Eros<\/strong> to Caritas<\/strong> for rhetorical effect in order to explain divine love characterized much of the monastic exposition of holy Scripture in the twelfth century.\u00a0 Consider how another writer described romantic love in this famous work:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love’s precepts in the other’s embrace.” Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love<\/em>, trans. John J. Parry (New York: Columbia, 1960), p. 28.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Love is an affliction, and the suffering of a soul that is sick.\u00a0 The authority of the poet [Ovid]–even though it seems unworthy and unsuitable–affirms the truth of this, when he says, ‘Woe is me, for no herb can cure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,9,80,109,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-love","category-preaching","category-theology","category-vice","category-virtue","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2141,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions\/2141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}