There is this special reason and excuse for undertaking a lengthy expositional review of M. de Rougement’s L’Amour et L'Occident, that if, as seems likely, its historical thesis fails to win general approval the book is bound to suffer neglect. Whereas in fact it has a doctrinal significance that does not depend on the soundness of its history. It is alive with the inspiration of a great theological vision. It succeeds in laying open the real meaning of the conflict between the love of Eros and the love of Agape; and to do that is to display one of the deepest and most vital of all religious issues.

The historical thesis turns on a particular theory concerning the origins of the European cult of Romantic, Passionate Love. It is universally recognized that it descends from the cult of Courtly Love practised by the Troubadours of twelfth century Provence, and that it was through the prestige of their poetry that it captured the imagination of Europe and became thereafter the chief theme of our literature and a dominant force in our civilisation. What is new in this book—new at least in the force of its conviction and the weight of its arguments—is the attempt to show that the Troubadour movement was itself originally an integral part of the heresy of Albigensianism or Catharism. It is maintained that the Courtly Love celebrated by the Troubadours was a symbolic idea invented to represent the unearthly love of Catharist mysticism. The characteristic themes of anguished love, of passion frustrated, of marriage denounced and chastity exalted are interpreted as a secret expression of the Catharist ideal of the flight of a soul from this world and all worldly happiness to achieve union with absolute love.