It was thus, for instance, that in Provence, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the most powerful nobles humbly obeyed, in everything that concerned the heart, the decrees issued by the _courts_ or _tribunals of love_, a kind of feminine areopagus which was held with great ceremony on certain days, and at which the ladies most distinguished by birth, beauty, intelligence, and knowledge, met to deliberate, publicly or with closed doors, with proper gravity and solemnity, on delicate questions of gallantry, which in those days were considered highly important. These courts of love, which appear to have been regular and permanent institutions in the twelfth century, had a special code, in accordance with which the sentences pronounced were more or less rigorously in conformity; but this code has not been handed down to our day, and we only possess its outline conveyed in the commentaries of the legal writers of the fifteenth century. Causes in these courts were sometimes decided on written evidence, sometimes the parties themselves were allowed to appear in person. Among the celebrated women who at different epochs and in different places presided over these romantic assizes, may be cited the beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France, and afterwards of England; Sibyl of Anjou, who married Thierry, Count of Flanders; the Countess of Die, surnamed the Sappho of France; and the famous Laura or Lauretta of Sade, whom Petrarch, who chose her for the lady of his love, has immortalised in his verse. But to return to the esquire, who was left undergoing his laborious novitiate. When he had at last performed all its numerous requirements, the investiture of knighthood was conferred upon him, a symbolical ceremony, as indeed were all that went to make up a chivalric ordination, but one of a more serious and solemn character than the rest. We have already said that this word ordination (_ordène_) implies that the arming of a knight was a kind of sacred ceremony. A very curious poem entitled “L’Ordène de Chevalerie” is still in existence. Its author, Hugues de Tabarie or de Tibériade, undertook the task of explaining all the forms of the investiture. In order to make his explanations more intelligible, Hugues de Tibériade supposes himself before an aspirant entirely ignorant of all the usages of chivalry: he pretends that the Sultan Saladin, whose prisoner he is, has forced him to confer upon him the order of knighthood. The first thing Hugues does is to order him to comb his hair and beard, and to carefully wash his face:-- TEXT. TRANSLATION.