c races it appeared a
matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the
fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male
principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon
was usually conceived as a female deity. In primitive Christianity
Christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the
sun. Thus we naturally find in the old and new Indo-Germanic languages
the designation of the sun--or the sun-god--of the masculine gender. In
the following words our word _sun_ is easily recognisable:

Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue).
svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar--the sungod).
saval (the oldest European language).
savel (Gracco-Italian).
sol (Latin and related languages).

In the Germanic languages and in the Prussian-Lithuanian both genders
occur. (Gothic sunnan and Old High-German sunno). _Sol_ in the Norse
Edda is a female deity, and the Anglo-Saxon _sol_ is also feminine. The
transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the
Middle-High-German language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and
the German language is the only one in which the word _sun_ is
feminine. As the old Teutonic deities of light were male (Baldur and
Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. The Germanic tribes at
all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention,
borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to
represent their highest values. The change of gender of the supreme
symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in
the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male
but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god.
Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had
become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine
symbol of "Lady Sun."

The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that
his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." And also:

My lady shines into the heart
As through the glass the sun does shine;
Thus the beloved lady mine
Is sweet as May, full of delight,
Unclouded sunshine, golden light.

Mary, who had been called _Maris Stella_, the morning star, gradually
assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. Suso, in one of his poems,
still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of