the Mother of all things recreated.... God
begat the creator of the world, Mary gave birth to its Saviour." Peter
of Blois declared that the Virgin was the only mediatress between Christ
and humanity. "We were sinners and afraid of the wrath of the Father,
for He is terrible; but we have the Virgin, in whom there is nothing
terrible, for in her is the fulness of mercy and purity." The twelfth
century produced the _Ave Maria_, the angelic salutation, the principal
prayer to Mary, which was introduced into all churches. The Italian
Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, and Peter Damiani, were above all others
instrumental in spreading the worship of the Virgin, and Damiani said of
her: "To Thee has been given all power in heaven and on earth." The
fresco of the Camposanto at Pisa, ascribed to Orcagna, shows the
transfigured Virgin sitting by the side of Christ, not below Him. The
numerous legends in which Mary, often regardless of justice and
propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers,
were written during the same period. One of the most famous of these is
the legend of Theophilus, the forerunner of Faust. In a German version
(by Brun of Schoenebeck) dating from the thirteenth century, Theophilus
abjures God and all things divine, with the sole exception of Mary,
wherefore she saves him from eternal damnation. This poem therefore
shows us Mary as absolutely opposed to God.

We have now arrived at the third stage of the cult of Mary; the new,
spiritual love, translated into metaphysics, was projected on her; she
was approached by her worshippers with the ardent love which hitherto
had been the prerogative of earthly women. The two currents, the one
arising in ecclesiastical tradition, and the other in the soul of the
metaphysical lover, had met; the genuine spiritual cult of Mary was the
creation of the great metaphysical lovers, who existed not only in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are met not infrequently later
on; man's irresistible need to raise woman above him and worship her,
created the true Madonna, for whose sake romantic souls of all times
have "returned home" into the fold of the Church, the true Madonna who
at heart is alien to the principles of the Church, but is re-born daily
in the soul of the metaphysical lover. The hierarchy knew how to take
advantage of and control this adoring love; the metaphysical lover
raised his mistress above humanity and prayed before her shrine;
r