55 pages • 1 hour read
Andreas CapellanusA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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In Chapter 3 of Book 1, Andreas explains that love—amor in Latin—derives from the work amus, meaning hook. Therefore, love is associated with capturing or being captured. Andreas threads this notion of love as a form of imprisonment throughout the book, with at turns positive and negative meanings. In Books 1 and 2, when Andreas discusses the rules of love and how to retain it, being consumed by one’s beloved is portrayed as a natural consequence of love and an indication that one’s love is returned.
Andreas reinforces this meaning through many of the similes and metaphors he uses throughout the book. In the book’s Preface, Andreas refers to Walter wanting to “know how to manage your horse’s reins properly” (27), suggesting that love is a beast that must be brought under control. In the same section, he refers to love as a force that entangles one “firmly in his chains” and as a “kind of hunting” (27). He expands the hunting metaphor when he discusses the meaning of the word amor in Chapter 3 of Book 1, comparing a man trying to attract a lover with a fisherman who uses bait “to capture [fish] on his crooked hook” (31). In the Second Dialogue of Book 1, various birds of prey are associated with lovers capturing the objects of their affection, and in the Sixth Dialogue, lovers are associated with hunters who capture both birds and land animals.
In Book 3, Andreas seizes on these associations of love with capture to show why love is harmful and why men should avoid it. Being in love’s grip means losing the ability to think of anything else, including God. One becomes enslaved by love, which can lead to discord with neighbors and friends, cause men to ignore their physical well-being by forgetting to sleep and eat, and lead men into all manner of sin.
Throughout the text, Andreas uses “the works of Venus” to symbolize love and, more specifically, sex. Venus was the Roman goddess of beauty, love, sex, fertility, and prostitution (among others). In Roman myth, Venus was married to Vulcan, the god of fire, but carried on an affair with Mars, the god of war. The phrase “works of Venus” often functions as a euphemism for sex while also connecting it to pagan myths that glorify sex and beauty. These myths also tacitly condone infidelity and prostitution, contrary to the Christian values Andreas, as a clergyman, is meant to uphold. While “the works of Venus” are used descriptively in Books 1 and 2 without explicitly positive or negative connotations, Andreas turns the tables in Book 3, when he associates love and sex, especially outside of marriage, with corruption of body and soul.
Like Venus, Cupid is a Roman god associated with erotic love and desire. In Roman myth, Cupid is often represented as Venus’s child and is depicted holding a bow and arrow. Once pierced by Cupid’s arrow, the victim falls in love. Andreas refers to Cupid several times in the book. Notably, references to Cupid’s arrows bookend the text. In the Preface, Andreas writes to Walter, “You tell me that you are a new recruit of Love […] having recently been wounded by an arrow of his” (27). The final passages of Book 3 return to Cupid, this time to show that women are not capable of being “wounded by Cupid’s arrow” (210). Therefore, any attempt to love them will inevitably end in ruin for men.
Andreas refers to men and women in love as serving in Love’s army. By capitalizing love, he personifies it, again connecting it with the Roman god and goddess of love. These are both Venus and Cupid, the god of erotic love and desire who in Roman myth is often represented as Venus’s son. Cupid famously wields a bow and arrow that, when it strikes, causes the recipient/victim to fall in love. Throughout the book, “Love’s army” functions to elaborate on the motif of capture by representing love as a kind of warfare. As with Venus, Andreas does not impose explicitly negative meanings onto the phrase “Love’s army.” He uses it descriptively until Book 3, when he mentions that love can lead men to discord and war, both represented as sins to be avoided.
In Book 3, Andreas uses melting wax to symbolize the fickleness of women. He writes that women are “just like melting wax” because they are “always ready to take a new form and to receive the impress of anybody’s seal” (204). This perceived fickleness is one of many reasons that Andreas warns Walter to repudiate love for his own physical and spiritual well-being. Because women are so inconstant, their promises of love cannot be trusted.