Chapter 7

Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune,And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens,(I cannot keep you sundered and apart.)

Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune,

And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens,

(I cannot keep you sundered and apart.)

I shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible, for I am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its creation, womanhood deified, and not with Catholic dogmas. With this object in view, I will return to the poets previously quoted, and continue the unfolding of the process ofdeification. As a rule the metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in, very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection. The quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure of the cosmos animated only one poet, Dante, who, combining the Catholic striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created a masterpiece which is unique in literature.

Typical among the later Provençals was Guirot Riquier. Several of his poems which have been preserved to us make it impossible to say whether they are addressed to an earthly woman or to the Queen of Heaven; these poems mark, in a sense, a period of transition. They are exceedingly vague, and it is not worth while to translate them; but as they are dated it is interesting to watch the poet's love growing more and more spiritual and religious, to see him gradually deserting his earthly love for the Lady of Heaven. In one poem he prays to his lady "who is worshipped by all true lovers," to teach him the right way of loving. In the next he repents his all too earthly passion:

I often thought I was of true love singing,And knew not that to love my heart was blind,And folly was as love itself enshrined.But now such love in all my soul is ringing,That though to love and praise her I aspireAs is her meed—in vain is my desire.Henceforth her love alone shall be my guideAnd my new hope in that great love abide.For her great love the uttermost shall profferOf honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss,With her to love, my heart will never missThose who no gifts like her gifts have to offer.She the fulfilment is of my desire,Therefore I vow myself her true esquire;She'll love me in return—my splendid meed—If I but love aright in word and deed.

I often thought I was of true love singing,

And knew not that to love my heart was blind,

And folly was as love itself enshrined.

But now such love in all my soul is ringing,

That though to love and praise her I aspire

As is her meed—in vain is my desire.

Henceforth her love alone shall be my guide

And my new hope in that great love abide.

For her great love the uttermost shall profferOf honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss,With her to love, my heart will never missThose who no gifts like her gifts have to offer.She the fulfilment is of my desire,Therefore I vow myself her true esquire;She'll love me in return—my splendid meed—If I but love aright in word and deed.

For her great love the uttermost shall proffer

Of honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss,

With her to love, my heart will never miss

Those who no gifts like her gifts have to offer.

She the fulfilment is of my desire,

Therefore I vow myself her true esquire;

She'll love me in return—my splendid meed—

If I but love aright in word and deed.

and one of his rather more religious songs ends as follows:

Without true love there is on earth no peace,Love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve,A noble mind and willingness to serve.How rare a thing on earth in perfect ease!To Thee, oh Virgin! Mother of all love,I dedicate this song; if thou deniestMe not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." With ChristI pray Thee, intercede for me above.

Without true love there is on earth no peace,

Love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve,

A noble mind and willingness to serve.

How rare a thing on earth in perfect ease!

To Thee, oh Virgin! Mother of all love,

I dedicate this song; if thou deniest

Me not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." With Christ

I pray Thee, intercede for me above.

In this song, then, he calls Mary "his sweet bliss" (bel deport), a name which he had previously given to a certain countess with whom he had been in love. In the next poem, in which earthly love and love of the Madonna are again brought into juxta-position, he commends himself "to the Virgin, the sublime mother of love, on whom all my happiness depends." One of his poems which begins in quite an earthly strain, ends thus:

I feel no jealousy; for he whose soulIs filled with yearning for his heavenly love,Has purest happiness; he is her serf,And he has all things that his heart can crave.

I feel no jealousy; for he whose soul

Is filled with yearning for his heavenly love,

Has purest happiness; he is her serf,

And he has all things that his heart can crave.

But long before this, in one of his very worldly poems there is a sudden outburst, addressed to the Madonna: "He who does not serve the Mother of God, knows not the meaning of love." Excellent proof of this intimate connection between earthly and Madonna love is found in the poems of the trouvere Ruteboeuf, who calls Mary his "very sweet lady."

Lanfranc Cigala wrote genuine love-songs to the Virgin. The following are two stanzas from one of his poems:

I worship a celestial maid,Serene and wondrously adorned;And all she does is well; arrayedIn noble love and gentleness.Her smile is bliss to all who mourn,Her tender love is happiness,And for her kiss the world I scorn.Lady of Heaven, Thy heart inclineTo me, and untold bliss is mine.

I worship a celestial maid,

Serene and wondrously adorned;

And all she does is well; arrayed

In noble love and gentleness.

Her smile is bliss to all who mourn,

Her tender love is happiness,

And for her kiss the world I scorn.

Lady of Heaven, Thy heart incline

To me, and untold bliss is mine.

By day and night my only thoughtArt, Mary, Thou. I am distraughtSay many men, for few can gaugeThe ardour which consumes my soul.I care not that they say bereftI am of sense; the world I've left,To worship Thee, love's spring and goal.

By day and night my only thought

Art, Mary, Thou. I am distraught

Say many men, for few can gauge

The ardour which consumes my soul.

I care not that they say bereft

I am of sense; the world I've left,

To worship Thee, love's spring and goal.

But other poems written by Cigala are unmistakably addressed to the celestial Madonna; some of them seem to be written in a penitential mood; he almost seems to repent of his former passionate adoration. The same poet, in his love-songs, uses all the metaphors which are commonly used for Mary (or for Christ), "root and climax, flower, fruit and seed of all goodness."

A little older is an erotic hymn to Mary by Peire Guillem of Luserna; I quote a few stanzas:

Thy praise is happiness unmarred,For he who praises Thee, proclaims the truth,Thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth,Full of compassion, with all grace bedight,From Thy white hands we gather all delight.

Thy praise is happiness unmarred,

For he who praises Thee, proclaims the truth,

Thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth,

Full of compassion, with all grace bedight,

From Thy white hands we gather all delight.

The love of Mary had usurped the peculiar property of the love of woman: it had become the source of poetic and artistic inspiration.

The songs of Aimeric of Peguilhan resemble those of Cigala; the former bewails the decline of the service of woman; he sings of the "root and crown of all noble things," but it is not quite clear whether he is addressing an earthly or a heavenly lady. "Suffer my love, which asks for no reward!" The terms, "friends" and "lovers" (amans) of the Virgin are with these poets convertible terms, and the Virgin is styled "the true friend" (i.e., the beloved).

Guilhem of Autpol wrote a fine poem to the Queen of Heaven, beginning:

Thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love,Thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace,Thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness,Thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope.Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades,Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad,Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades,Alien to death, and shelter in the madWhirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port.Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice,Thou roseate dawn and light of Paradise!

Thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love,

Thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace,

Thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness,

Thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope.

Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades,

Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad,

Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades,

Alien to death, and shelter in the mad

Whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port.

Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice,

Thou roseate dawn and light of Paradise!

Perdigon, among many worldly songs, wrote one to theregina d'auteza e de senhoria, which might be translated thus:

Supreme ruler of the world,Thy grace sustainsAnd maintainsThe world.Thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine,Thou wert the chosen vessel ofMercy divine.

Supreme ruler of the world,

Thy grace sustains

And maintains

The world.

Thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine,

Thou wert the chosen vessel of

Mercy divine.

Unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was Folquet de Lunel. Some of his poems cannot be classed with any certainty.

The first poem which obtained a prize at the Academy of Mastersingers of Toulouse was a hymn to Mary.

This very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter into the feelings of that period. A modern philologist, Karl Appel, regards Jaufre Rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the Countess of Tripoli:

Oh, love in lands so far away,My heart is yearning, yearning. . . .

Oh, love in lands so far away,

My heart is yearning, yearning. . . .

as songs to the Madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on an unknown Countess of Tripoli, or a still more unknown Lady of Heaven. It is not the loved woman who is of importance—what do we know of the ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? They have long been dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is the perfection of their grand-daughters. But the love of the poets is aliveto-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman has passed.

The following are a few stanzas by the German minnesinger, Steinmar, which were later on adapted to the Holy Virgin:

In summer-time how glad am IWhen over lea or downA country lass mine eyes espy,Of maidens all the crown.Oh! Paradise! How glad am IWhen o'er the heavenly downGod and God's Mother I espy,Of women all the crown.

In summer-time how glad am IWhen over lea or downA country lass mine eyes espy,Of maidens all the crown.

In summer-time how glad am I

When over lea or down

A country lass mine eyes espy,

Of maidens all the crown.

Oh! Paradise! How glad am IWhen o'er the heavenly downGod and God's Mother I espy,Of women all the crown.

Oh! Paradise! How glad am I

When o'er the heavenly down

God and God's Mother I espy,

Of women all the crown.

The Italian poets, far more profound than the Provençals, saw a goddess in the beloved (whom they always addressed as Madonna), and humbled themselves before her. Social differences, which played such a prominent part in the North, are here ignored. The impecunious poet no longer extols the princess, the wife of his lord and master. There is no question of such a relationship; the poet is a free citizen of the town, subject only to the emotion of the heart, and his song carries its own reward. It has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped her place. We know that Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, Guinicelli and Dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought, and Frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. The feeling of those lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect expression.

In a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that God needed her presence toperfect Heaven, and that all the saints now worship her. She was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now:

Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwellsThy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned,Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the whileTo make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails.Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,And says to them, while yet my body thraveOn earth, I gat much honour which he gave,Commending me in his commended songs.(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)

Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwellsThy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned,Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the whileTo make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails.

Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells

Thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned,

Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while

To make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails.

Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,And says to them, while yet my body thraveOn earth, I gat much honour which he gave,Commending me in his commended songs.

Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,

And says to them, while yet my body thrave

On earth, I gat much honour which he gave,

Commending me in his commended songs.

(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)

At the conclusion of his finest poem, "Al Cor Gentil," Guinicelli, next to Dante doubtless the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, says: "God will ask me after my death: 'How could'st thou have loved aught but Me?' And I will reply: 'She came from Thy realm and bore the semblance of an angel. Therefore in loving her, I was not unfaithful to Thee!'" Here we have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is God; he who loves her, loves God in her.

Cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the Madonna actually bore the features of his lady.

Guido, an image of my lady dwellsAt San Michele, in Orto, consecrate,And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state,She listens to the tale each sinner tells.And among them who come to her, who ailsThe most, on him the most does blessing fall;She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;Over the curse of blindness she prevails,And heals sick languors in the public squares. . . .(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)

Guido, an image of my lady dwells

At San Michele, in Orto, consecrate,

And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state,

She listens to the tale each sinner tells.

And among them who come to her, who ails

The most, on him the most does blessing fall;

She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;

Over the curse of blindness she prevails,

And heals sick languors in the public squares. . . .

(Transl. byD.G. Rossetti.)

And Guido Orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as to a lost man: "Had'st thou been speaking of Mary, thou would'st have spoken the truth. But now I must bewail thy errors."

A complete blending of sensuality and Mary-worship was achieved in an Italian poem of the fifteenth century. The author of this poem addressed Mary as "queen of my heart," and "blossom of loveliness," and goes on to say: "I can tell by your gestures and your face that you respond to my love; when you look at me, you smile, and when you sigh, your eyes are full of tenderness.... Sometimes, in the evening, I stand below your balcony; you hear my sighs, but you make no reply.... When I gaze at your beauty, I burn with love, but when I think of your cruelty, I call on death to release me." In this poem we have a caricature of metaphysical eroticism.

In the sonnets of Petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. Adoration has become a phrase (as Cupid has become a phrase with the earlier poets). It is obvious that he loves Laura because the play on the word Laura andlauro(laurel) caught his fancy. I can find no spontaneous feeling in the famous Canzoniero; all I see is erudition and perfection of form. But among the few sincere specimens there is one beautiful poem addressed to Mary: "Vergine bella che di sol vestida!" which is not without erotic warmth. But the singer and humanist expresses himself judiciously:

Oh, Thou, the Queen of Heaven and our goddess(If it be fitting such a phrase to use).

Oh, Thou, the Queen of Heaven and our goddess

(If it be fitting such a phrase to use).

So far we have observed the current which, emanating from the beloved woman, lifted her into supernal regions and endowed her with perfection—the mistress is stripped of everything earthly, the longing which can never be stilled on earth, soars heavenward. Now we will examine the opposite current; the current which emanates from the Madonna of dogma, the Lady of Heaven who is the same to all men, in her last stage, that is to say when she is finally enthroned by the side of God. Many a monk—earthly love being denied to him—was driven to a purely spiritual, metaphysical love by the fact of his being permitted to love the Lady of Heaven without hesitation or remorse. She was the fairest of women, and he was at liberty to interpret the meaning of "the fairest" in any sense he chose.

The climax of the emotional worship of the ecclesiastical Mary was reached by St. Bernard, theDoctor Marianusmentioned on a previous occasion. He was the author of sermons and homilies in honour of Mary, and has been instrumental in dogmatising her worship by placing her side by side with the Saviour. "It was more fitting that both sexes should take part in the renewal of mankind," he says, "because both were instrumental in bringing about the fall...." "Man who fell through woman, can be raised only by her." "Humanity kneels at Thy feet, for the comfort of the wretched, the release of the prisoners, the delivery of the condemned, the salvation of the countless sons of Adam depend on a word from Thy lips. Oh! Virgin, hasten to reply! Speak the word for which the earth, the nethermost hell, and the heavens even, are waiting; yea, the King and Ruler of the universe, greatly as He desires Thy loveliness, awaits Thy consent, in which He has laid the salvation of the world." Basing his description on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, he draws her picture as follows: "Brilliant and white and dazzling are the garments of the Virgin. She is so full of light and radiance that there is not the least darkness about her, and no part of her may be described as less brilliant, or not glowing with intense light." And with increasingly pronounced erotic emphasis, passing from the Church dogma of salvation to passionate fervour, he goes on to say: "A garden of sacred delight art Thou, oh, Mary! In it we gather flowers of manifold joys as often as we reflect on the fulness of sweetness which through Thee was poured out on the world....Right lovely art Thou, oh, perfect One! A bed of heavenly spices and precious flowers of all virtues, filling the house of the Lord with sweet perfume! Oh! Mary, Thou violet of humility! Thou lily of chastity! Thou rose of love!" etc.

St. Bernard inaugurated that extraordinary blending of eroticism with half-crazy, inconceivable allegories and fantasies, which lasted for centuries. Here, again, we perceive the ideal of metaphysical eroticism, which in the case of a loyal son of the Church could only refer to the official Queen of Heaven, and consisted partly of the genuine emotion of love, partly of allegorically constructed connections with the Church dogma.

St. Bernard's emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. His authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes him, and Brother Hans called himthe harpist and fiddler of her praise.

The great ecstatic poet, Jacopone da Todi, sang Mary's praise as follows:

Hail, purest of virgins,Mother and maid,Gentle as moonlight,Lady of Aid!I greet thee, life's fountain,Fruitladen vine!Infinite mercyThou sheddest on thine!Hope's fairest sunshine,Balm's well serene!I claim a dance with thee,All the world's Queen!Gate of beatitude!—All sins forgiven,—Lead us to paradise,Sweet breeze of heaven!Thou pointest us upwardWhere angels adore,White lily of gentlenessThy grace I implore.Mirror of Cherubim!Seraphim laud thy grace,All things in heaven and earthRing with thy praise!

Hail, purest of virgins,Mother and maid,Gentle as moonlight,Lady of Aid!

Hail, purest of virgins,

Mother and maid,

Gentle as moonlight,

Lady of Aid!

I greet thee, life's fountain,Fruitladen vine!Infinite mercyThou sheddest on thine!

I greet thee, life's fountain,

Fruitladen vine!

Infinite mercy

Thou sheddest on thine!

Hope's fairest sunshine,Balm's well serene!I claim a dance with thee,All the world's Queen!

Hope's fairest sunshine,

Balm's well serene!

I claim a dance with thee,

All the world's Queen!

Gate of beatitude!—All sins forgiven,—Lead us to paradise,Sweet breeze of heaven!

Gate of beatitude!

—All sins forgiven,—

Lead us to paradise,

Sweet breeze of heaven!

Thou pointest us upwardWhere angels adore,White lily of gentlenessThy grace I implore.

Thou pointest us upward

Where angels adore,

White lily of gentleness

Thy grace I implore.

Mirror of Cherubim!Seraphim laud thy grace,All things in heaven and earthRing with thy praise!

Mirror of Cherubim!

Seraphim laud thy grace,

All things in heaven and earth

Ring with thy praise!

The spiritual love of Mary especially appealed to the German temper. Among the adoring monks Suso deserves particular mention. He laid great stress on the difference betweenhighlove andlowlove. "Low love begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in eternity." He was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of Mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the inaccessible Deity. "Oh, thou! God's chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden song of the Eternal Wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a little of my sufferings. My soul prostrates itself before thee with timorous eyes, shamefaced. Oh! thou Mother of all mercies, I ween that neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the intercessor for all sinners." Compared to his forerunner, St. Bernard, Suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with Mary. He describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and Mary keeping court, like any earthly princess. "Now go and behold the sweet Queen of Heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her lover with roses and lilies! Behold her wonderful beauty shedding light and joy on the heavenly hosts! Eya! Look up to her who giveth gladness to heart and mind; behold the Mother of Mercy resting her eyes, her tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners,powerfully protecting her beloved child." The whole sixteenth chapter of theBooklet of Eternal Wisdomis an ardent hymn to the Madonna, almost comparable to St. Bernard's prayer to Mary in Dante'sDivine Comedy. It was written about the time of Dante's death, not very long, therefore, after the composition of the last chapters of theParadise.

The Life of Suso(the first German biography ever written) evidences his adoration for the Lady of Heaven: "It was customary in his country, Swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts' houses on New Year's Eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet in return. This custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, too, went on the eve of the New Year to his eternal love, to beg her for a gift. Before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the Virginal Mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful Eternal Wisdom, to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a chaplet from her Child...." "He then said to the Eternal Wisdom" (and it is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child): "Thou art my love, my glad Easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the sake of which it has scorned earthly love. Give me a guerdon, then, my heart's delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed."

With a sweet, low singing of his soul, this worshipper approached the statue of the Queen of Heaven. This is love of woman undisguised, it merely has a religious undertone. Other secular merry-makings were adapted by Suso to his celestial mistress, as, for instance, the planting of the may-tree, and he repeatedly makes use of similes and metaphors borrowed from the chivalrous service of woman. He frequently alludes to himself as "the servant of the EternalWisdom"; the meaning of this expression is apparently intentionally obscured, but it has a savour of the feminine. Suso pictured himself, after the manner of lovers, with a chaplet of roses on his brow. In hisLifethere is a passage unsurpassed by the best of the minnesingers: "In the golden summer-time when all the tender little flowers had opened their buds, he gathered none until he had dedicated the first blossoms to his spiritual love, the gentle, flower-like, rosy maiden and Mother of God; when it seemed to him that the time had come, he culled the flowers with many loving thoughts, carried them into his cell and wove them into a garland; and after he had done so, he went into the choir, or into Our Lady's Chapel, prostrated himself before his dear lady, and placed the sweet garland on her head, hoping that she would not scorn her servant's offering, as she was the most wondrous flower herself, and the summer-joy of his heart."

Doubtless we here have an analogy to the religious feeling of the mystics. The metaphysical lover is still under the impression that he is worshipping the Mary of the Catholic Church; but as in the case of the mystic the Christ of dogma is transformed into the divine spark in his own soul, so the love of Mary has become undogmatic and pure woman-worship, the ideal of the great lovers of that age.

Another prominent Madonna-worshipper was Conrad of Würzburg (died 1278). He began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery. He was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection of songs in praise of the Queen of Heaven. "The Golden Smithy" is an interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism and traditional Church doctrines. Conrad inextricably mingles all the Biblical allegories more or less applicable to Mary, the stories of the Gospels, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, etc., with his own emotions, and thus creates a world of feelingwhich, though in many respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something entirely novel and unique:

Thy glorious form,Though by beauty all envested,Never passion has suggestedNor has lit unholy fireIn man's heart, that gross desireFrom thy purity should spring.

Thy glorious form,

Though by beauty all envested,

Never passion has suggested

Nor has lit unholy fire

In man's heart, that gross desire

From thy purity should spring.

He, too, describes the celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens):

Thy white hand with blossomsTheir chaplets enhances,Thou show'st them the dancesOf God's Paradise.'Mid radiant skiesThou gather'st heavenly roses.

Thy white hand with blossoms

Their chaplets enhances,

Thou show'st them the dances

Of God's Paradise.

'Mid radiant skies

Thou gather'st heavenly roses.

The Italian Franciscan monk Giacomo of Verona also wrote poems to the "Queen of the Heavenly Meadows". "On the right hand of Christ sits Mary, more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened rose-buds. Before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives them roses." Just as Pons of Capduelh describes the transfiguration of his earthly mistress, Jacopone describes Mary's ascent into Heaven, where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, theirsanctus, sanctus, sanctus, replaced by a joyfulsancta, sancta, sancta—a goddess has been received in the place of God.

Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic poem "Tristan and Isolde," composed a long poem in honour of Mary couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper:

Thou vale of roses,—violet-dell,Thou joy that makest hearts to swell,Eternal wellOf valour; Queen of Heaven!Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red,Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled,The living bread,Oh! Lady, hast thou given.Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight,Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight,Thou art bedightWith heaven's golden splendour!Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine,Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine,The sweetness thine,Is my salvation ever.Thou art a potion sweet of love,Sweetly pervading heaven above,To sailors roughSang syrens sweeter never.Thou enterest through eye and ear,Senses and soul pervading,Thou givest to the heart great cheer,A guerdon dear,A glory never fading.

Thou vale of roses,—violet-dell,

Thou joy that makest hearts to swell,

Eternal well

Of valour; Queen of Heaven!

Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red,

Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled,

The living bread,

Oh! Lady, hast thou given.

Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight,Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight,Thou art bedightWith heaven's golden splendour!

Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight,

Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight,

Thou art bedight

With heaven's golden splendour!

Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine,Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine,The sweetness thine,Is my salvation ever.Thou art a potion sweet of love,Sweetly pervading heaven above,To sailors roughSang syrens sweeter never.

Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine,

Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine,

The sweetness thine,

Is my salvation ever.

Thou art a potion sweet of love,

Sweetly pervading heaven above,

To sailors rough

Sang syrens sweeter never.

Thou enterest through eye and ear,Senses and soul pervading,Thou givest to the heart great cheer,A guerdon dear,A glory never fading.

Thou enterest through eye and ear,

Senses and soul pervading,

Thou givest to the heart great cheer,

A guerdon dear,

A glory never fading.

The poet who wrote of Isolde's love potion here calls the Queen of Heaven apotion sweet of love, a strange metaphor to use in connection with the Mary of dogma. Another characteristic frequently alluded to is hersweet perfume, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as exclusively celestial.

Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, butan earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live.

Mary! Gentle mistress mine!I humbly kneel before you;All my heart and soul are thine.

Mary! Gentle mistress mine!

I humbly kneel before you;

All my heart and soul are thine.

And:

Oh, Mary! Secret fountain,Closed garden of delight,The Prince of Heaven mirrorsHim in thy beauty bright.

Oh, Mary! Secret fountain,

Closed garden of delight,

The Prince of Heaven mirrors

Him in thy beauty bright.

But after describing all the joys of heaven, Brother Hans comes to the conclusion that a man knows about as much of celestial matters as an ox knows of discant singing.

His relationship to Mary is tender, intimate and familiar:

Within my heart concealedThere is a secret cell;At nightfall and at daybreakMy lady there does dwell.The mistress of the house is she,I feel her love and care about.If she denies herself to me,Methinks the mistress has gone out.

Within my heart concealed

There is a secret cell;

At nightfall and at daybreak

My lady there does dwell.

The mistress of the house is she,

I feel her love and care about.

If she denies herself to me,

Methinks the mistress has gone out.

In another poem he prays to Mary to allow him to tear off a small piece of her robe, so that he may keep himself warm with it in the winter.

Like Cino da Pistoia, who commended his dying soul not to God but to his loved one, Brother Hans commends himself to Mary:

Thus I commend my soul into thy hands,When it must journey to those unknown lands,Where roads and paths are new and strange to it.

Thus I commend my soul into thy hands,

When it must journey to those unknown lands,

Where roads and paths are new and strange to it.

And:

Oh, come to me, thou Bride of God,When my faint soul departs from me!

Oh, come to me, thou Bride of God,

When my faint soul departs from me!

There remains one more motif to consider, a motif which in a way completes the picture of the celestiallady: As men love and desire the women of the earth, so God loves the Lady of Heaven. St. Bernard first expressed this naïve idea, which makes God the Father resemble a little the ancient Jupiter. "She attracted the eyes of the heavenly hosts, even the heart of the King went out to her." "He Himself, the supreme King and Ruler, so much desires thy beauty, that He is awaiting thy consent, upon which He has decided to save the world. And Him Whom thou delightest in thy silence, thou wilt delight even more by thy speech, for He called to thee from Heaven: 'Oh! fairest among women! Let me hear thy voice!'" etc. Here we have St. Bernard, the rock of orthodoxy, representing God as Mary's languishing admirer! Suso is irreproachable in this respect, but Conrad says that the colour of Mary's face was so bright and made it so lovely,

That even the Eternal SireWas filled with sacred fire,And all the heavenly princes. . . .

That even the Eternal Sire

Was filled with sacred fire,

And all the heavenly princes. . . .

Thus, at the turn of the fourteenth century the great celestial change was complete: By the side of God, nay, even in the place of God, a woman was enthroned. "The Virgin became the God of the Universe," says Michelet, a thorough, though rather imaginative expert on the Middle Ages. The people primitively worshipped idols. The clergy, headed by the Dominican and Franciscan monks, introduced Lady Days into the calendar and invented the rosary to facilitate the recital of theAves; secular orders of knighthood placed themselves under the Virgin's protection (La Chevalerie de Sainte Marie), but the rarest minds, sublimating the beloved, raised her into Heaven and worshipped her as divine. The established religion was compelled to enter into partnership with the great emotion of the time, metaphysical love, lest it ran the risk of losing its sway over humanity.

And a feeling was born then which to this day constitutes one of the striking differences between the Eastern and the Western worlds: the respect for womanhood. It is based on the woman-worship of secular, and the Madonna-worship of ecclesiastical circles. It is true that Jesus, anticipating the intuition of Europe, had taught the divinity of the human soul and recognised woman—in this respect—as on an equality with man, but the instincts of Greece and the Eastern nations had proved to be stronger than his teaching; for twelve hundred years woman was despised, and more than once the question as to whether or no she had a soul—in other words, as to whether or no she was a human being—had come under discussion. The crude and primitively dualistic minds of the period realised in her sex merely an embodiment of their own sensuality, the enemy against whom they fought, and to whom they knew themselves subject. The strongest argument in her favour which the first millenary could adduce, was the fact that the Saviour of the world had been borne by a woman, and that consequently her sex had a share in the work of salvation; the idea that through the "other Eve" a part of the sin of the first Eve was expiated. But genuine appreciation and respect were only possible after base sensuality had been contrasted with spiritual love, whose vehicle again was woman. Now the "eternal-feminine"—contrasted with the "earthly-feminine"—drew the lovers upwards, and this new emotion threw such a glamour over the whole sex, that it never entirely died away; if to-day women are respected and their efforts at emancipation supported, they are not indebted, as they are sometimes told, to Christian ethics, but rather to the mundane culture which had its origin at the courts of the Provençal lords, whose ideals ultimately became the controlling ideals of Europe, and whose inmost essence still influences the world.

The evolution of love had obviously arrived at a stage when respect was considered due to women—though not perhaps to all women. I will not go to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode from the life of the Dominican friar Suso: "In crossing a field, Suso met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. When he was close to her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her to pass. The woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'How is it, Sir,' she said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that I should stand aside and make room for you?' 'Why, my good woman,' replied Suso, 'I like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle Mother of God in Heaven.'"

It may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In hisEssence of Christianity, as well as in his treatiseOn the Cult of Mary, he refers to it more than once. "The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they dispense with the women of flesh and blood. Themore they emphasised in their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God." Feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest sentiments on Heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing in the Mother of God, because the love of a child for its mother is the first strong feeling of man. "Where the faith in the Mother of God declines, the faith in the Son of God, and in God the Father, declines also."

I will now leave the region of the historical and examine the emotion whose reality and influence I have substantiated, from a timeless standpoint, for my principal point is the psychical, and more particularly the metaphysical consummation of the emotion of love. The sole object of the abundant evidence I have been compelled to adduce is my desire to prove the existence and significance of all the emotions which stir the soul, and in the later Middle Ages strove so powerfully to express themselves. My thesis that sexuality and love are opposed principles will no doubt be rejected, for, under the strong influence of the theory of evolution, all the world is to-day agreed that love is nothing but the refinement of the sexual impulse. I maintain that (as far as man is concerned) they differ very essentially, and I have attempted to prove their incommensurability by submitting historical facts. That they may, and will, ultimately merge, is my unalterable conviction. My assertion that something so fundamental as the personal love of man and woman did not exist from the beginning, but came into existence in the course of history, at a not very remote period, may seem even more strange. My only reply is that instead of advancing opinions I have brought forward facts and allowed them to speak for themselves. Moreover, to my mind therealisation of the intimate connection of love and evolving personality is a far more magnificent proof of the soundness of the evolutionary theory than the reflection that we have received all things ready-made from the hands of nature. Has it not been proved to us that the religious consciousness of the divinity of the human soul was also evolved in historical time, and has never again disappeared?

Every strong love which finds no response is fraught with the possibility of an infinite unfolding; it may powerfully seize the whole soul and make life a tragedy. But this tragedy is not of the very essence of tragedy, inasmuch as here we have merely love confronted by an unsurmountable obstacle, meeting and overwhelming it; the discord is not inherent. Many a lover suffering from unrequited love, is born with the tendency to become unhappy, with a secret will to the voluptuousness of pain and melancholy; he will enjoy his unhappiness, perhaps become productive through it. Thus, this deliberately unhappy love may be regarded as an analogy to genuine metaphysical eroticism. For the worship of woman is in its essence infinite striving; its object is always unattainable, an illusion. Every earthly love, even if it finds no response at all, may, in principle, be gratified, and is only unhappy if external circumstances intervene. But the love of the Madonna is in itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. A lover filled with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. The beloved may have died young—as did Beatrice—without his ever having come into close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward—and imagination has ample scope to transform and transfigure the dead. Or he may have been disappointed in his mistress; it may havebeen that he, attuned to pure, spiritual love, has found her all too human. He flees from reality into the world of dreams, and envelops her with the veil of mysteriousness and divinity. Purely spiritual love is an intense emotion, and as men and women of flesh and blood cannot always live at high pressure, hours of dejection and disappointment will necessarily have to be experienced. The soul takes refuge in an illusion which becomes more and more an end in itself, and gradually the lover creates an inaccessibly lofty, celestial woman. For purely spiritual love aspires to absolute transcendency; it cannot bear contact with every-day life. The psychologists of the present day tell us that a feeling, in becoming spiritualised, loses strength,—history teaches us that in the case of great souls the opposite is the rule.

These suggestions purpose to explain the inception of an ecstatic love; but the true metaphysical erotic is born and needs no outside stimulus; his heart yearns for the inaccessible from the very beginning. There are certain elements of feeling which must be present in his soul simultaneously: a religious elementary feeling tending to the metaphysical; the need of a sacred—a divine—being, as the foundation of all existing things; a powerful and purely spiritual craving for love, hurt, perhaps unconsciously, in early youth, and finally an imagination endowed with plastic force—artistic tendencies. In the case of the mystic the soul, too, is filled with the consciousness of the divine; he, too, has the capacity for a great love, but with him it is not the love of woman, but of something universal, not individualised, the world, the cosmos, God.

While the mystic attempts to embody the inconceivable Deity in his soul, the worshipper of the Madonna, like the artist, imaginatively creates a being which he sets up for contemplation at the greatest possible distance. The mystic is blind, as it were; he is yearning personified, and he would force Godinto his soul. The metaphysical lover needs a plastic figure which, in the extremest case, may represent the whole world to him, and this figure must be a woman. It is a historical accident that this woman is frequently connected with a woman of ecclesiastical tradition, an accident strengthened by insufficient creative power on the part of the lover, or lack of courage and self-confidence. He is grateful for the support given to him by tradition. The greatest metaphysical lovers, Dante, Goethe and Michelangelo, freely created the objects of their love; the Protestant Goethe—whom some people even accuse of paganism—clung more closely than either of the others to the Mary of Catholicism (in the final scene ofFaust). The worship of the Madonna is the love of great solitary souls, and—as is proved by Goethe—of the great souls in the hours of their last solitude.

While there was only unindividualised sexual instinct, the chastity of woman was of no account; we have seen that neither the Eastern nations nor the Greeks attached any value to it. The woman who had best fulfilled her vocation as a mother, was the woman most highly respected. In the East, as well as with Jews and Romans, a woman could be divorced by her husband for sterility. The only women who were, to some extent, appreciated for their own sakes, were the Greek hetaerae. But when asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a profound significance. Henceforth woman should no longer be regarded as the vehicle for the gratification of male sensuality; it should be her mission to lead the lover to spiritual perfection. The fusion of the older ideal of womanhood, the mother (acknowledged and sanctioned by religion in the mother of the Saviour), with the newer ideal, the Virgin, created the ideal of the late Middle Ages: the virgin with the Child. Here the natural vocation of woman and the fantastic mission laid upon her byman were united in a paradoxical higher intuition, and it is superfluous to point out that the most irreligious minds of the Renascence, as well as those of all later eras, have to this day worshipped this ideal, and never wearied of representing it under new forms.

But the worship of the Virginal Mother contains another element, an element of which man in his contact with woman is deeply conscious: the element of mystery. To a man a young girl, untouched by the faintest breath of sensuality, has a quality of strangeness and mysteriousness (this is probably a result of European sentiment), and at all times the woman who has become a mother has been regarded with a slight feeling of superstitious awe. In the Virginal Mother these two vaguely reverential feelings are blended; she is a strange and awe-inspiring being, and man, divining a mystery, bows down before her.

Otto Weininger was the first to give us a psychology of the cult of the Madonna, and he did it in a manner which proved his entire comprehension of this peculiar sentimental disposition. He realised and pointed out the contrast between sexuality and eroticism (his terms for sexual impulse and love), but in accordance with his extreme mental disposition he left these two principles in irreconcilable conflict, while I regard their antithesis merely in the light of a transient phase which will be followed by a reconciling synthesis. Weininger is, I believe, in conflict with spiritual reality when (guided by ethical, not psychological considerations) he proposes the theory that a man endows the beloved woman with all the lofty values he desires for himself. "He projects his ideal of an absolutely perfect being on another human being, and this and nothing else is the meaning of his love." "To bestow all the qualities one would like to possess, but never can quite possess, on another individual, to make it the representative of all values,that is to love." It is a commonplace experience that genuine love will awaken in the soul new and transcendent emotions, compared to which all previous experience appears petty and insignificant. The waves of this emotion are able to carry the lover to the infinite, or at least his emotion will help him to divine the infinite. He sees, unexpectedly, his inmost soul revealed to him, he has exceeded the limits upon which he has hitherto looked as a matter of course; the barrier between him and the universe has fallen, the whole world belongs to him; the egoist becomes less selfish, the cruel man gentle, the dullard clairvoyant; every man feels that he has become greater and more human. This is neither illusion nor projection, nor is it a subtle, psychical deception—it is sober reality. Weininger's suspicion of a delusion is nothing but the result of his ascetic solipsism, refusing to accept another being's help in his striving for perfection, a consequence of the one-sided, sterile cult of his individual soul, a noble but puerile pride refusing to be indebted to the world and to his fellow-men, the fanatical, metaphysical dualism which is so often met with in the second stage of eroticism, and to which stage he belongs.

Weininger shrank from the idea that an individual might be made the means to an end, instead of being an end in itself. In my opinion his justification for the translation of this formula—framed by Kant for pure ethics—to empirical psychology, is doubtful. To use an individual only as a means to an end which is alien to his inmost being, is certainly immoral. But all social life is based on a mutual relationship of means and ends; a man is an end in himself at the same time that he is a means to other individuals and the community. The teacher is a means as far as his pupils are concerned; the poet is a means in respect to all who seek in his writings information or recreation. To carry the stigmatisation of these facts to a logical conclusion, one would have to callit immoral to accept anything from parents or teachers; one would have to reject every good influence—which always comes from outside—and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. One would even have to object to being born, and would have to create one's self out of nothing. It has always been regarded as the splendid privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others—why, therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her lover be objectionable?

Weininger's error in the sphere of eroticism arises from the fact of his imprisoning love in a formula which is by no means applicable to it. In love the mutual relationship of means and ends does not exist, the lover feels that the beloved is always an end in herself in the highest sense; he would find it impossible inwardly to establish such a relationship between himself and her; very frequently himself, his well-being and his life, are of no account to him if he can serve her. Weininger's assertion that at the consummation of love every woman is merely the means of gratifying a man's passion, is simply not true. On the contrary, it is a characteristic of genuine love that the physical embrace is of no great importance, does not even rise to full consciousness. The personality of the beloved is everything, physical sensation nothing. Weininger identifies love with passion and his argument is easily refutable by the experience of many. In love there is neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one might speak of a reciprocal action. Equally erroneous is his corresponding assertion that the artist loves a woman spiritually, that is, in the sense of deifying her, for the purpose of drawing from her inspiration for his work. If he loves her, then his love is the alpha and omega of his striving, and if love inspires him to achieve a masterpiece, the effect of love on him must be considered great and good, because it is a creative effect.

The extreme individualistic ideal would lead to an absolutely unproductive view of life. Asceticism stands condemned because it is unproductive. I may regard an Indian fakir who has become so godlike that he can sustain life on six grains of rice a day, and draw breath once every quarter of an hour—to say nothing of speech or cleanliness—as a very strange individual; but I see nothing positive or important in him. The road which leads from the individual to the universal cannot be the rejection of the world; it must be its perfection, resulting from productivity of mind, or soul, or deed. He who on principle refuses to be productive, condemns himself to annihilation in the higher sense. I admit that he who works at his own perfection does good work, too; but it is the inexplicable secret of all truly creative labour—in the highest as well as in the lowest sense—that it must ultimately affect the world and eternity. The strongest emotions, the inner illumination of the mystic and the love of the great erotic, have been conceived in theheart of hearts; and have ultimately grown beyond their creator, from the individual to the universal. The more intimate and powerful the creative impulse has been, the more retarded and abundant may, perhaps, be the effect. But the chain which links the great soul to humanity cannot be broken, the work will make itself manifest—the work of deed, the work of the mind, the work of love—I do not say to "the public," but to life, to the world. The creative personality alone is the father of the objective values of civilisation.

The great love which led Dante, Goethe and Wagner to the summits of humanity is in the highest sense positive and creative. And he who realises that love is not subject to sexual impulse, who knows it as something purely personal, foreign and even hostile to the genus, must admit that it is one of the very highest of values. A contrary ethic is sterile, Indian, unproductive, not European. I am wellaware that Weininger did not explicitly draw this conclusion; but he rejects spiritual love because it endows the lover with new capacities, the capacities of growth and perfection, and he is therefore in the last resort a representative of philosophic nihilism.

The worship of woman found its climax in Dante. Through the work of his youth, theVita Nuovaand his masterpiece,The Divine Comedy, we can trace step by step the stages of the road, beginning with a glimpse of a young girl in Florence, and ending with the incorporation of a woman into the world-system. We are face to face with an extraordinary process of evolution. The young girl he had seen a few times, and who died in her youth, goes on growing and developing in his soul, until, at last, in him the will to raise woman above time into eternity, the will to make her a member of the divine system, reaches its full realisation. What had been begun by the troubadours and fully comprehended by the poets of thesweet new style, reached completion in Dante, and, was henceforth an eternal value for all humanity.

We see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy). The new poets deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared before the adored simply as lovers. They did not require the dogmatic support of the Church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee. Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up and people it with sublime intelligences. Andin this system, the crown and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side of the deities. Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love. What for two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of faith and truth. Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and had become identical with the love of immortality. "Love which moves the sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. The anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true beings and values. All that had been done before had merely prepared the ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart of the divine secrets.

TheVita Nuova, which is at once a glorified historical record and the greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "When I saw her coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me. And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied: Love! and my face would have been full of humility." Even before his love had been translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly any other poet before or after him. The women of Florence ask Dante: "Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her presence? Tell us, for the end of such love mustbe incomprehensible to men." And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship, Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. Not until after her deification has become an established fact, does Beatrice (in the beginning of theDivine Comedy) remember her lover and come to save him. In one of his poems Dante says that not every woman could inspire such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character. It is very apparent that Dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and becomes more sacred to him.

It is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for Dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth with the system of the Church; this could be done in an allegorical way without being inwardly untruthful.

Vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high in theVita Nuovaand in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in sleep and sickness. In the third canzone Dante speaks of the impossibility of comprehending what gave him a glimpse of the nature of his mistress. It was a foreboding of new and great things, struggling slowly and gradually to take shape, for the creation of a world-system, one of whose supporting pillars was personal love of an individual, was an unprecedented achievement. "When she speaks a spirit inclines from heaven." The angels implore God to call this "miracle" into their midst, but God wills that they shall have patience until the "Hope of the Blessed" appears.

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