This is a retrospective term used by modern readers to denote a code of practice of love in Medieval times. It was probably more aspirational and fictional than actually practised. In the idealised form, a man loves a disdainful woman from afar and she may be married as well as superior to him in rank. He serves her, pines for her and, in hyperbolic language, may threaten to die for her because of his torment of unrequited passion.
Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" is an example of this where the two men, Palamon and Arcite, fight over Emelye, who barely knows they exist.
Click here to see my analysis of this Tale on my literary website.
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