Courtly Love

What is specific to ((Courtly Love)) is the conception of love as a cult which is addressed to an excellent object and is founded, like Christian lvoe, on an infinite disproportion between deserts and desire: as a necessary school of honour, which gives worth to the lover and transforms vilain into the courteois: as a voluntary bondage which conceals an ennobling power and makes the dignity and beauty of passion consist in suffering.

J. Bedier, quoted by Lindsay in The Troubadours And Their World