Hymns to the Virgin
But there is one large class of sacred poems very
characteristic of the mediaeval period, which has not
yet been mentioned--the poems addressed to saints,
and, above all, to the Virgin Mary. The former class
is not very important, either as to number or quality;
but not so the latter. "Marien-lieder," and, in a
minor degree, "Annen-lieder," hymns to St. Mary
and to St. Anne, constitute a very large and well-known
class among the poems of the ante-Reformation
times in Germany. It is in the age of the Crusades
and the Minne-singers that they first assume a prominent
place in its literature. The intercourse of
Christians with Saracens tended to intensify the devotion
paid to the Virgin, just because such a sentiment
towards a woman was a most distinctive peculiarity
of the Christian mind. Again, the chivalry which
owed so much to the Christian idea of womanhood,
had in its turn a reflex action on religious
thought, favourable to the worship of a feminine
ideal. The hymns addressed to the Virgin at this
time form a sort of spiritual counterpart to the minne-songs
or love-songs addressed to his earthly lady by
the knight. It was easy to transfer the turn of expression
and tone of thought from the earthly object
to the heavenly one, and the degree to which this is
done is to us often very startling. After this period,
for a while these poems become less frequent, but
in the fifteenth century they revive in the most extravagant
forms. The honours and titles belonging to
our Lord Jesus Christ are attributed to His mother;
God is said to have created the world by her and to
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have rested in her on the seventh day; she is said to
have risen from the grave on the third day and
ascended into heaven; she is addressed, not only as a
persuasive mediator with her Son, but as herself the
chief source of mercy and help, especially in the hour
of death and at the day of judgment. By degrees,
her mother is invested with some of her own attributes;
for it is said, if Christ would obey His own
mother, ought not she much more to obey hers?
And so a set of hymns to St. Anne sprung up, in which
she is entreated to afford aid in death, and obtain
pardon for the sinners from Christ and Mary, who
will refuse her nothing. Some of the earlier hymns
to the Virgin, especially those on her lamentation beneath
the cross, are very sweet and touching; but the
greater number of such as we have now been speaking
of have not much poetical merit. They are often
mere lists of titles, or word-play on her name or on
the relation of the words "Ave" and "Eva." As
Wackernagel says, "The existence of so many godless
hymns addressed to the Virgin and the saints, or
teaching the whole doctrine of indulgences, is a perfectly
irrefragable testimony to that degeneracy of
the nation which rendered the Reformation necessary;
the existence of so many breathing an unstained
Christianity is a witness to the preservation of so
much true religion as made the Reformation possible."
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