Venusfahrt

Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s “Venus tour” (Venusfahrt). In his poetic autobiography (see under 1255), the Bavarian knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein describes his undertaking of a tourneying journey in honor of "Frau Venus" and his lady love. Dressed in full armor covered by a plus size woman's dress and wearing a blond woman's wig, Ulrich rode from Italy to Bohemia, issuing a general challenge to all knights to joust with him. To each knight who broke three lances with him he gave a gold ring, but if the challenger was defeated, he was to bow to the four corners of the earth in honor of Ulrich's lady. He tells us that he “broke” 307 lances in a month's jousting, sometimes engaging in up to eight matches a day. An interesting sidelight is that Ulrich was married and took time out to visit his wife during the Venusfahrt. His unnamed lady love, meanwhile, was a married woman, whom he fell in love with when he served as a twelve-year old page in her husband’s household. Ulrich’s Venusfahrt illustrates the artificiality and playfulness of “courtly love” in the thirteenth century.