ABSTRACT
A man, a potential lover, seeks the love of a woman who already has a lover. She declares herself bound to the love of another but offers her suitor a certain hope. If she were ever to be deprived of, or more literally disappointed or frustrated by her present lover (sui coamantis amore frustrari) then she promises that she would undoubtedly take the suitor as her lover. A short while later she marries her lover and the suitor demands that she keep her word. The woman denies this claim on the ground that she has not lost her lover. The dispute is presented to the Court of Queen Eleanor of France where it is decided in favour of the suitor. The ostensible ground of the decision is a precedent judgment delivered by the Court of the Countess of Champagne, a court composed of some thirty women who collectively debated the distinct principles of love and marriage. In the precedent decision, handed down on the 1 May 1174, the Court of the Countess of Champagne had stated that love and marriage were mutually exclusive: ‘Lovers give all they have to each other freely, and without any consideration of necessity, whereas married partners are forced to comply with each others desires as an obligation, and under no circumstances can they refuse each other.’ 1 Principally on that ground, the Court found that the promise of love should be kept for the simple reason that when her lover became her husband, the woman lost her lover, and thus fulfilled the condition of her promise.
