Unveiling the Intriguing Evolution of Courtship: From Ancient Times to the Medieval Era

Ancient Greece and Rome

For Greco-Roman societies, marriage was not for love; rather, it was seen as a legal duty for all citizens. Although each city and society were politically and judicially independent, there are some similarities between them that we can use to interpret the wider society. It must be noted at the start that the sources and evidence we have are from the middle and upper classes of Greco-Roman societies. Although we can use them to suggest interpretations, they are not hard proof of all social classes. 

In ancient Greece, marriage was attributed to the Goddess Hera and many ceremonies that took place were often during the month of Gamelion, which for our modern calendar would correspond to January – February. During these celebrations, people would make sacrifices and during this, she was invoked as the “wedding preparer” and “Uniter.” Interestingly, in Symphalos, an area of northeast ancient Arcadia, Hera had three temples: The Pais (“Girl”), Teleia (“Fulfilled”) and Chera (“Separated”). For the ancient Greeks, the ‘fulfilment’ of a woman’s life was her marriage. In terms of who Greek women were marrying, it was culturally acceptable for daughters to marry their kinsmen such as uncles or their cousins as there were no laws surrounding blood relations like we find during the medieval period. Marrying within direct blood links such as siblings was frowned upon, but there were still no laws against it. 

Of the sources we have, most are from either Athens or Sparta. For a man, the main goal of marriage was to be monogamous and produce legitimate children and every effort should be made to fulfil this. In ancient Sparta, if a woman couldn’t have children by her husband then she could live with another man and have children by him. For a child to be a legitimate Spartan citizen, they had to be healthy and strong; it was a customary practice that if a child wasn’t healthy then the parents could leave and abandon their child. On the other hand, for proper courtship and marriage to take place in Athens the couple both had to be Athenian citizens and be of ‘free’ status – meaning they weren’t enslaved. Similarly, in ancient Rome the act of marriage was entirely a legal duty that was solely for creating children; also, marriage in ancient Rome was monogamous and there was actual legal repercussion for adultery; courtship was something that was arranged and expected to take place mostly between the bride’s father and the groom. 

Throughout all the ancient Greek sources, arranged marriages were the expected norm. Often it was the parents of the young bride and the groom who would arrange these marriages. The bride’s guardian was known as the kyrios in ancient Greek, and he would announce that his daughter was allowed to marry. Then it was time for prospective suitors to compete with each other in games, music, and poetry in order to prove their superiority. Once this suitor was chosen, he would take part in a process known as engysis where they would shake hands and say ritual phrases. In Athens and Sparta, this betrothal process was paramount to the legitimacy of any children as they could lose inheritable status if their parents hadn’t taken part in engysis. In Sparta as well as engysis, there was also another part to the betrothal in which the husband-to-be would ‘seize’ the bride. In Sparta, a bride wouldn’t immediately live with her husband, instead, she would cohabit clandestinely until her husband had brought her and her mother to his home a few times.

Likewise, in ancient Rome, the reason behind these arranged marriages was for political or business reasons and alliances. Our modern word ‘matrimony’ comes from the Latin ‘matrimonium’, which captures the duties of a woman in a marriage: namely, to be a mother (‘mater’) and produce legitimate children. Again, it’s clear here that any courting between the couple wasn’t done by the couple at all; in most cases, the bride had a duty to fulfil, and the groom was actually trying to woo the father into allowing his daughter to marry them. It should be noted, that like the Greeks, evidence of Roman courtship is primarily from the aristocratic families as their records are the ones that survived; even Augustine referred to this as a ‘Roman custom’ during the fifth century. 

When looking for a bride, in Rome, a prospective husband would consider many different things but there were three that were the most important: the dowry, her fertility, and her skills such as sewing. Another aspect was the girl’s age; we are familiar with the idea that girls were married off incredibly young, especially when looking at ancient or medieval history. Although these girls are young by our modern standards, they often waited until the girls reached sexual maturity which was around 14 years old, as to marry your daughter off before she was considered old enough was frowned upon. 

Roman girls were also relatively young when they were married off by their fathers. As was customary in the Roman courtship rules, the oldest male relative in the family was known as the ‘Pater Familias’ and he was the one who had absolute authority over his children. It was within his right to seek a good match and thus it was the father who was to be wooed, not the prospective wife. However, there was a loophole that daughters could use if they decided they did not like their match; if the husband-to-be was deemed to be of bad character then the girl could refuse the match. This is an example of some independence that women had during ancient Rome, although it is unknown how often these refusals were accepted.

Outside of the legal requirement to marry, the law did not stipulate how the couple had to get together. For many of the couples, it was their parents who did the ‘matchmaking’ for their children. There was also a profession to be found in this ‘matchmaking’ and it was entirely made up of women. However, this profession was not looked upon fondly and was not the main mode of creating couples. For ancient Romans there’s not much evidence of this ‘matchmaking profession’ like there’s for ancient Greece; any matchmaking that did happen was by the parents of both the bride and groom, or more often than not, it was by the father of the bride and the groom himself. 

Ancient marriages are not a well-studied area in historical discourse, but the similarities between the Greco-Roman societies proves that there is something global about courtship that is older than we first believed. Whilst some of these similarities can be put down to similar cultures, I think there is also a chance to explore the social and political systems that both were bound in. Ancient Greece and Rome were polytheists and often these Gods and Goddesses, and their roles, overlapped especially when it came to women and marriage. Therefore, it is not too far-fetched to assume that would also translate into marriage and courtship. Although it may not follow the conventional standards we see today, it does not mean they are wrong, it is a part of history that deserves  more time and consideration. 

Medieval Courtship

When we start to move into the medieval period, we start to see some changes in the ideas surrounding love and marriages. Europe was such a vast, multi-cultural place and so I will be focussing on Western Europe for most of this section. The idea of love and relationships in the early medieval period continued much the same from its predecessors; however, that all began to change during the twelfth-century when the idea of ‘courtly love’ began to crop up in what would be modern-day France. 

To understand the climate in which troubadours and chivalric love was entering, we must mention the cultural conventions of the time. The Church ran marriages, and although they may not have been high-class affairs for everybody, they were important religious sacrament. Much like the ancient Greco-Romans, marriage was a duty for the production of children that they, the parents, would raise into good, religious citizens. Despite the religious nature of marriage, it wasn’t necessary to be married in a church – there are instances of marriages taking place on the side of the road, in a pub or even at family homes. This was much the same for wider Europe and had been for some time, however there was a change happening on the continent that would start a shift in romantic enterprises. 

In Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne, and ducal Burgundy there was a cultural shift within literature and music with the depiction of love and romance. It has often been said that Eleanor of Aquitaine is the woman who birthed the ‘Court of Love’ and therefore the whole concept of chivalric love. This isn’t necessarily the case, first we must look at her grandfather, William ‘the Troubadour’, Duke of Aquitaine. William wasn’t known for his battle prowess, but he was known for his lyrical prowess, and he is regarded as the earliest troubadour that we have any surviving works for. What it meant to be a troubadour was quite simple; it was someone who wrote lyrical poetry on romance usually in the language of Occitan. 

Many of these poems and songs revolved around this idea of loving an unattainable woman – often the wife of a friend or foe. There were standards that had to be followed and often we can see patterns begin to emerge when we read closer and broader throughout this time. Instead of the usual style of ‘wooing’ that the nobility was used to, there were stories of dashing knights saving their damsels in distress and fighting foes in the name of love. It was no longer about the wealth or status of the person but rather their character and good actions that came to the forefront. 

As these troubadours spread their stories throughout Europe, some thanks to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s two marriages here, the idea of chivalry, nobility and romance spread with them. Suddenly, we begin to see a shift in romantic ideals, more so in the nobility as troubadour poems and songs were entertainment for the noble classes, but even in the lower classes as the ideas start to disseminate downwards. This of course doesn’t mean that everybody was suddenly marrying for love and arranged marriages were outdated, but it did provide a fantasy for those to express their love in a way they previously didn’t have access to. 

Courtly love was commonplace in many distinguished works by a variety of most major authors at the time – Geoffrey Chaucer and Andreas Capellanus spring to mind. Some historians suggest that these authors were taking an innovative approach to love in the medieval period, but in fact they were no more entrepreneurial than simply being authors in the middle ages. One famous work that is thought to be a sort of ‘bible’ for courtly love is Capellanus’ works ‘The Art of Courtly Love’ in which he codified ‘rules’ one should follow to have a noble romance:

• “Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.”
• “He who is not jealous cannot love.”
• “No one can be bound by a double love.”
• “When made public love rarely endures.”

Courtship was still a game of negotiations, duty towards your family and country. There may have been a shift in what was seen as honourable love and the correct way to court your intended, but the romantic ideals of the middle ages wouldn’t appear for many centuries as later period would start to romanticise the period of one filled with great love. As within any culture, there are exceptions to the rules and there are cases that we can find where people married for love or indeed found love within their marriages. However, chivalry and courtly love weren’t about marrying for love. For love was something you sought outside of your marriage – that often times the two didn’t go hand in hand. 

Love and relationships are hot topics for social historians, it’s something that we can relate to. We all love someone or something and being able to trace that back through the centuries provides a connection we don’t often get with some historical topics. There’s so much more to be discovered in the history of love. As we move through time, patterns emerge, which provide perspectives and new insights to our intimate experiences today. 

Written by Ellie-Mae Britton

Bibliographical sources:

Capellanus, Andreas. The Act of Courtly Love. Translated by John Jay Parry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Davidson, Lucy. “Love, Sex and Marriage in Medieval Times.” History Hit. February 10, 2022. Accessed January 4, 2024. https://www.historyhit.com/medieval-love-sex-and-marriage/

Delahoyde, Michael. “Courtly Love.” Washington State University. May 16, 2007. Accessed January 10, 2024.

Fantham, Elaine. Women in the Classical World: Image and Text. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

O’Siodhachain, Deirdre. “The Practice of Courtly Love.” Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. August 20, 2008. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20080820155345/http://www.eleanorofaquitaine.net/The%20Practice%20of%20Courtly%20Love.htm

Pomeroy, Sarah B., Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts and David W. Tandy. A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Scheidel, Walter. “A peculiar institution? Greco-Roman monogamy in global context.” In History of the Family 14, (2009): 280-291.

Toth, Mike. “8 Key Facts on Ancient Greek Marriages & Wedding Ceremonies.” The Collector. June 23, 2023. Accessed January 3, 2024.

List of images (in order of appearance):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty – Attic Kylix.

Roman Courtship, William Ernest Reynolds Stephans, c.1900.

Court of Love in Provence in the Fourteenth Century – Manuscript of the National Library of Paris.

The Codex Manesse, Germany, 1304-1340.