ward. It has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded
and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets
represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped
her place. We know that Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, Guinicelli and
Dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought,
and Frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a
married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. The feeling of those
lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect
expression.

In a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both Cavalcanti and
Cino da Pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that God needed her
presence to perfect Heaven, and that all the saints now worship her.
She was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now:

Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells
Thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned,
Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while
To make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails.

Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,
And says to them, while yet my body thrave
On earth, I gat much honour which he gave,
Commending me in his commended songs.

(_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.)

At the conclusion of his finest poem, "Al Cor Gentil," Guinicelli, next
to Dante doubtless the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, says: "God will
ask me after my death: 'How could'st thou have loved aught but Me?' And
I will reply: 'She came from Thy realm and bore the semblance of an
angel. Therefore in loving her, I was not unfaithful to Thee!'" Here we
have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is God;
he who loves her, loves God in her.

Cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the Madonna actually
bore the features of his lady.

Guido, an image of my lady dwells
At San Michele, in Orto, consecrate,
And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state,
She listens to the tale each sinner tells.
And among them who come to her, who ails
The most, on him the most does blessing fall;
She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;
Over the curse of blindness she prevails,
And heals sick languors in the public squares....

(_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.)

And Guido Orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as
to a lost man: "Had'st thou been