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 97 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."