13th Century

The thirteenth century marked a pivotal shift in European intellectual and literary culture, as scholasticism flourished and Aristotelian philosophy, transmitted by Muslim scholarship, provoked debates on the relationship between faith and reason. Church authorities, notably in Paris, censored controversial ideas such as the “double truth” and scrutinised expressions of erotic love in literature. As a result, the topic of love was subjected to a polarisation into opposite extremes (sublime devotion and carnal appetite), vaguely reminiscent of the patristic and early medieval discrepancy between caritas and cupiditas , a development noticeable in, for example, chivalric romances, the nascent poetry in the Italian – particularly Tuscan – vernacular, and the widely copied Old French poem The Romance of the Rose from the middle of the thirteenth century.