Do not scowl, Mariana; do not despise my grey hairs, For, goddess, you can turn an old man back into a youth.

Sweet Marian, do not disdain my age, For you can make an old man young again.

They are always singing love songs and ditties, especially when young, and cannot stop even while going to church, or when they ought to be there. We have an entertaining story of this in Westmonasteriensis, an old writer of ours—if you care to believe it. In AD 1012, at Colewiz in Saxony, on Christmas Eve, while the priest was saying Mass in church, a group of young men and girls were singing catches and love songs in the churchyard. He sent word asking them to make less noise, but they went on singing; and, if you please, here is the very song itself.

A man rode through the leafy wood, Taking beautiful Meswinde with him. Why are we standing here? Why do we not go?

A fellow rode beside the greenwood, And fair Meswinde was his bride. Why do we stand here and not go?

They sang this while he fumed, until at last, losing patience, he prayed to St Magnus, patron of the church, that all three of them might sing and dance until that day twelve months later. And so they did, without food or drink, without growing tired or stopping, until at the year’s end they ceased singing and were absolved by Heribert, Archbishop of Cologne.

They will do this everywhere, especially the young: read love stories, talk of this young man or that beautiful girl, sing, tell or listen to lascivious tales and bawdy songs. Such things are their only delight and their constant preoccupation. As Guastavini adds, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Problems, section 4, problem 27, “because of an abundance of semen, thoughts recur, Venus is often remembered, and pleasure itches for satisfaction,” and so on. From this comes an eager longing, “an itching body, an itching soul,” amorous fancies, titillating thoughts, sweet and pleasant hopes. Hence they can think or speak of almost nothing else, and willingly discuss no other subject.

Their one desire is to see their future husband’s image in a mirror, if magic can accomplish it. They will give anything to know when they will marry and how many husbands they will have: by cromnyomancy, a kind of divination using onions laid on the altar on Christmas Eve; by fasting on St Anne’s eve or night to discover who their first husband will be; or by amphitomancy, using beans in a cake and burning it, and so forth.

This love is the cause of all fine fancies, neatness, adornment, games, elegance, delights, pleasant expressions, graceful movements and gestures, joys, comforts, exultation, and all the sweetness of our life. “What sort of life would it be, or what pleasure could there be, without golden Venus? Let me die when I no longer care for her.” Let me live no longer than I can love, says a mad, merry fellow in Mimnermus.

This love is the salt that seasons our harsh and tedious labours and gives a pleasant flavour to our otherwise tasteless activities. “Let love depart, and darkness rises, numbness, torpor, pestilence,” and so on. From it arise almost all our feasts, masques, mummings, banquets, merry gatherings, weddings, pleasing songs, fine tunes, poems, love stories, plays, comedies, Atellan farces, jigs, Fescennine verses, elegies, odes, and so forth.

Danaus, son of Belus, instituted the first games ever heard of, some say, at his daughters’ wedding at Argos. Symbols, emblems, imprese and devices may also be attributed to love, if we believe Giovio, Contile, Paradin and Camillo de Camilli.

Most of our arts and sciences, painting among them, were first invented, says Patrizi, “thanks to love”—for love’s sake. For when the daughter of Deburiades of Sicyon was about to part from her sweetheart, who was going to war, “so that she might waste away less from longing for him,” and to comfort herself in his absence, she drew his picture in charcoal on a wall, following the shadow cast by a candle. Her father admired it and afterwards perfected it; and this is said to have been the first picture ever made. Long afterwards, Sicyon ranked above every city in Greece for painting, carving, sculpture, music and philosophy.

Apollo first invented medicine, divination and oracles; Minerva discovered weaving, Vulcan intricate ironwork, Mercury letters. But who put all this into their heads? Love: “They would never have invented such things unless they had loved them.” They loved these things, or some person for whose sake they first undertook them.

True, Vulcan made a most admirable brooch or necklace, which long afterwards Axion and Temenus, the sons of Phegius, dedicated to Apollo at Delphi because of its exceptional worth. But the tyrant Pharyllus stole it and gave it to Ariston’s wife, with whom he was wretchedly infatuated. Parthenius tells the story from Phylarchus. But why did Vulcan make this splendid jewel? To give it to Hermione, Cadmus’s wife, whom he dearly loved.

All our jousts and tournaments, the Orders of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and so forth—

Nobility lies subject to love—

owe their beginnings to love, as do many of our histories. By these means, says Giovio, they wished to express their loving thoughts to their mistress and to those who watched.

Love is almost the sole subject of poetry. All our invention tends towards it, all our songs, whatever those old Anacreons wrote. Hence Hesiod makes the Muses and Graces continually follow Cupid, and, as Plutarch maintains, Menander and the other poets were Love’s priests. All our Greek and Latin epigrammatists and writers on love—Antonius Diogenes, the earliest, whose epitome we find in Photius’s Bibliotheca; Longus the Sophist, Eustathius, Achilles Tatius, Aristaenetus, Heliodorus, Plato, Plutarch, Lucian, Parthenius, Theodorus, Prodromus, Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus and the rest—