Barbara H. Rosenwein - Love

1. ‘Before I Fight this Dragon’ New Yorker Cartoon

Maddie Dai’s prudent knight upsets our fantasies about valorous medieval knights who risk their lives for love of their lady.

2. Sergius and Bacchus

The military saints Sergius and Bacchus were the best of friends and (as their biographer said) “undivided from each other.” In this icon from the 7th century, the halos of the two saints and Christ form a golden chain uniting them in love.

3. Marc Chagall, The Birthday (1915)

The kiss of Marc Chagall and his fiancée Bella on his birthday flips him literally head over heels. They float off the floor, about to escape their tiny room.

4. Old Testament Genesis, Initial

The startlingly empty roundel just below God signifies the Nothing that was apart from God at the moment just before Creation. The annihilated soul of Marguerite’s Mirror is conceived as that very nothingness into which Divine Love may pour itself.

5. Lady Love Hits Her Mark

The arrow shot by Lady Love hits its mark on the panel to the left; on the right, the lover shows her his wounded heart. During the High Middle Ages, jewelry boxes such as these were sent by grooms to their prospective brides. Although their marriage had no doubt been arranged and the couple had not yet seen each other, the object symbolized their expectations of falling in love at first sight.

6. Roman Tombstone

On this inscribed stone funerary relief from c .80 CE of Aurelia Philematium, a husband and wife express their mutual love.

7. Holy Family

The affective impact of this family portrait is hardly impaired by Mary’s missing head. As Saint Joseph puts his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulder and shields mother and child with his body, she in turn tenderly embraces their swaddled baby.

8. The Lover Heard, c .1785, Louis Marin Bonnet

In this print by Louis Marin Bonnet, an ardent suitor strikes a humble pose, while the lady cocks an ear and accords him a side-long glance. The print was so popular that it was adapted for mass production by a textile manufacturer in Nantes.

9. Eros (5th century BCE)

Eros flies in to visit a woman preparing for her nuptials. Lightly touching her on the shoulder, he prepares to crown her with a wreath. She is in love.

10. A Nun Gathers Penises from a Tree

Unlike the male protagonist of the Roman de la Rose , who wants just one rose, the nun here is happy to have lots of penises in her basket. A bit later in the manuscript she and the monk she is embracing here have a roll in the hay.

11. Castle of Love

On this small ivory roundel, probably a box cover, a castle populated by ladies is besieged by lover-knights. The ladies defend themselves with flowers and flowering branches. (Paris c. 1320–40)

12. Roman Erotic Scene

Made during the reign of Augustus at Rome, this cameo glass perfume bottle shows a man about to penetrate a boy. On the other side the man (perhaps the same one) kneels over a woman, his arm encircling her waist.

13. America Greets Vespucci

In the sixteenth century, Jan van der Straet prepared this sketch for an engraving (which is why the lettering is backwards). It was part of a series meant to illustrate new inventions and discoveries. Just landed in America (his ship beached behind him), Vespucci is greeted by a voluptuous, naked woman in a hammock, the first Miss America.

14. Aretino as Phallic Satyr

On the obverse is Aretino’s head in profile. On the reverse, as if his mirror image, is this head of a satyr made up entirely of male genitalia. The penis near the eyes is ejaculating, a metaphor for the role of the gaze in exciting imagination and judgment, which, in turn, stimulates thought and speech – the semen of the mind.

15. Lord Byron

As Byron became identified with great lovers like Don Juan, he developed a cult following that has not yet disappeared: consider the many Byron portrait iPhone covers for sale. Here he is presented as a young ancient Roman with curly hair.

I didn’t always want to write a book on love. Perhaps I should have, for I was brought up in a household of committed Freudians, and Freud talked a lot about Eros. But under the spell of a wonderful college professor, Lester Little, I decided to become a historian of the Middle Ages. Given my upbringing, it was an odd decision. I tried to explain it to my parents by using what was then the lingo of my household: history is but the “manifest content” of the unconscious fantasies of the people living at the time. In other words, I was saying, history is the reported dream behind which is the real story. And I would discover that real story. I meant it. My favorite book at the time was Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams .