In the Voir-Dit of Machaut religion and love are mixed up with a sort of ingenuous shamelessness. We need not be shocked by the fact that the author was a canon of the church of Reims, for, in the Middle Ages, minor orders, which sufficed for a canon (Petrarch was one), did not absolutely impose celibacy. The fact that a pilgrimage was chosen as an occasion for the lovers to meet was not extraordinary either. At this period pilgrimages served all sorta of frivolous purposes. But what astonishes us is that Machaut, a serious and delicate poet, claims to perform his pilgrimage ”very devoutly.” At mass he is seated behind her:
He says his hours as he is waiting for her in the garden. He glorifies her portrait as his God on earth. Entering the church to begin a novene, he takes a mental vow to compose a poem about his beloved on each of the nine days—which does not prevent him from speaking about the great devotion with which he said his prayers.
We shall revert elsewhere to the astonishing ingenuousness with which, before the Council of Trent, worldly occupations were mixed up with works of the Faith.
As regards the tone of the love-affair of Machaut and Peronnelle, it is soft, cloying, somewhat morbid. The expression of their feelings remains enveloped in arguments and allegories. But there is something touching in the tenderness of the old poet, which prevents him from seeing that “Toute-belle,” after all, has but played with him and with her own heart.
To grasp what little we can of actual love relations, apart from literature, we should oppose to the Voir-Dit, as a pendant,
