lite, sine
reprehensione, sine mundana faece._" It may be of interest to translate
this as a specimen of the sermon of the first quarter of the thirteenth
century: "Let us now see who is Bele Aeliz.... She is bele Aeliz of whom
it is said: Beautiful as a jewel, shining as the moon and brilliant as
the sun, glistening as Lucifer among the stars, etc.... This name Aeliz
is formed from a, which means without, and _lis, litis_, which is as
much as to say without dispute, without blame, without mixture of the
dregs of the world." The worthy theologian then proceeds to what is
undoubtedly the most difficult problem of his interpretation to
demonstrate the connection of the garden, the chaplet, and the five
flowers with the Virgin. "Who are these flowers? Faith, hope, charity,
humility, virginity. These flowers did the Holy Ghost find in the
blessed Virgin Mary..." The closing verses are, he says, directed
against pagans, heretics, blasphemers, whom he scripturally addresses
thus: "Depart, ye accursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the
devil and his angels."

The enthusiasm of the clergy in behalf of the Virgin was matched by that
of the people. Nothing was more popular than the hymn to the Virgin,
scarcely distinguishable, in the ardor of some specimens preserved to
us, from the contemporary love songs to women of flesh and blood. Clerks
and laymen composed these songs, vying with each other in the fervor of
the sentiments they expressed, writing in Latin, in French, in mixed
Latin and French, praising the mere physical beauty and grace of her
whom they called _rose des roses et fleur des fleurs_. One can read
these things without shock only when one remembers that there was
nothing but devotion of a purely spiritual kind intended by them, a fact
of which it is sometimes hard to persuade oneself. As an example, and
not an extreme one, it might do to substitute merely the name _Marie_
for that of _Aalis_ in the song used for Langton's sermon.

Besides these songs there were plays representing miracles ascribed to
the Virgin, and legends without end grew up in which she was the
intercessor for poor mortality. She becomes almost identified with the
attribute of Mercy assigned to the Godhead, and some of the souls
alleged to have been saved by her are not always worth the saving,
according to modern standards of morality. A legend, repeated in many
forms, tells us, for example, of a clerk of Chartres (presumably a clerk