476 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF FRENCH LITERATURE. 
they sometimes hid a warmer sentiment beneath the more decorous 
name of friendship, or shrouded it beneath the cloak of Platonic 
love or disinterested affection, such was the simplicity of manners 
that, even in the presence of their husbands, they unblushingly 
dared to give unequivocal marks of the friendship and admiration in 
which they held their cavalieri serventi. This unbridled licentious- 
ness, combined with the foppery which characterized these institu- 
tions, tended, perhaps, to hasten their suppression, as we find little 
mention made of them after the commencement of the fourteenth 
century. Evil, however, as was the system of these tribunals, the 
tensons which were discussed in them are, perhaps, more valuable 
than any of the other reliques of the Provengals, as presenting us 
with a more lively and more natural picture of the manners of the 
times; they give us, in fact, the only complete view of the institu- 
tion of chivalry ; and in the licentious, yet ingenious, and indecent, » 
yet sincere, expressions which characterize these compositions, we 
have a faithful picture of that institution, composed as it was of ve- 
neration and of grossness, of simplicity and of gorgeousness, of mag- 
nanimity and of selfishness ; in short, of feelings the most opposite, 
and of affections the most remote. 
In the consideration of the Courts of Love, we must be careful 
not to confound them with the Jeua Floréaux, which were of a to- 
tally different nature. These latter sprang up at Toulouse in the 
decline of Provencal literature, and were one of the numerous efforts 
then made for its revival. These games were instituted in 1323, 
under the auspices of seven gentlemen of Toulouse, who, poets them- 
selves, were accustomed to meet for the recitation of their composi- 
tions at a retired spot near the city. Wishing to increase their num- 
bers, and at the same time to give publicity to their scheme, they sent 
round the country circular letters, signed by La gaie Société des Sept 
Trobadors, offering a reward of a golden violet to the author of the 
poem which should be deemed the best, at the next assembly in 
May, 1323. This first meeting was numeronsly attended, and the 
prize was adjudged to Arnauld Vidal, who was immediately created 
a doctor of the “ gaie science.’ These assemblies were continued 
annually, and were numerously attended ; they, however, received 
greater publicity through the generosity of a poetess, Clemence 
d’Isaure, who left in her will three other golden flowers, which were 
added to the original violet. Until the reign of Louis XIV, it had 
been merely a private institution for the encouragement of poetry ; in 
1646, however, that monarch took it under his especial patronage, 
added a golden amaranth to the prizes already offered, and limited 
