al theories of Plato and
Plotinus; and they seized at once upon the mythic metaphysics of an
antenatal condition, of typical ideas, of the divine essence of beauty,
on all the mystic discussions on love and on the soul, as a
philosophical explanation of their seemingly inexplicable passion for an
unapproachable woman. The lady upon whom the poetic fervour, the
mediaeval love, inherited from Provence and France, was now expended, and
whom social reasons placed quite beyond the reach of anything save the
poet's soul and words, was evidently beloved for the sake of that much
of the divine essence contained in her nature; she was loved for purely
spiritual reasons, loved as a visible and living embodiment of virtue
and beauty, as a human piece of the godhead. So far, therefore, from
such an attachment being absurd, as absurd it would have seemed to
troubadours and minnesingers, who never served a lady save for what they
called a reward; it became, in the eyes of these platonizing Italians,
the triumph of the well-bred soul; and as such, soon after, a necessary
complement to dignities, talents, and wealth, the very highest
occupation of a liberal mind. Thus did their smattering of platonic and
neo-platonic philosophy supply the Tuscan poets with a logical reality
for this otherwise unreal passion.

But there was something more. In this democratic and philosophizing
Italy, there was not the gulf which separated the chivalric poets, men
of the sword and not of books, from the great world of religious
mysticism; for, though the minnesingers especially were extremely devout
and sang many a strange love-song to the Virgin; they knew, they could
know, nothing of the contemplative religion of Eckhardt and his
disciples--humble and transcendental spirits, whose words were treasured
by the sedentary, dreamy townsfolk of the Rhine, but would have conveyed
no meaning even to the poet of the Grail epic, with its battles and
feasts, its booted and spurred slapdash morality, Wolfram von
Eschenbach. In the great manufacturing cities of Italy, such religious
mysticism spread as it could never spread in feudal courts; it became
familiar, both in the mere passionate sermons and songs of the wandering
friars, and in the subtle dialectics of the divines; above all, it
became familiar to the poets. Now the essence of this contemplative
theology of the Middle Ages, which triumphantly held its own against the
cut-and-dry argumentation of scholasti