ced the world.--This
story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted
genuine to-day. Jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no
_amour de tete_, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine _amour de
coeur_, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved
woman but permission to love her. There are other instances, and even in
later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of
imaginative people (I need only mention Buerger and Klopstock).

We men of the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with
uncomprehending eyes. Perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered
when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in
some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in
Michelangelo, in Goethe, and in Beethoven.

The Church, dualistic and ascetic from its inception, waged war against
sensuality as the evil of evils. "As fire and water will not mix," wrote
St. Bernard, "so spiritual and carnal delights cannot be experienced
together." The toleration of matrimony was never more than a compromise;
we require no proof that as far as the Church was concerned, chastity
was the only real value. Even Luther took up that position, and to this
day Christianity and sexuality remain unreconciled. But both the
Catholic and the Protestant professions of faith regarded matrimony as
the lesser evil, a concession made to the enemy, in order to render
existence possible. It is very interesting to observe the position taken
up by the Church in connection with the new woman-worship which,
although it sprang from the most genuine Christian dualism, had for its
object not God, but mortal woman. The logical attitude of the Church
would have been one of welcome, for the chaste worship of woman which
regarded matrimony as an inferior state, was her natural ally. Two
clerics, the court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre
Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to
the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely
recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of
salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love
according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love
not dedicated to God was bound to offend Him, and advanced eighteen
points against the love of woman, starting with the well-known argument
that woman was naturally of a base dispositio