well-shaped forehead and bright brown eyebrows
shone her moderately large eyes with the lustre of a sapphire. The white
in her eye was milk-colored and brilliant as crystal. The straight and
normal nose as well as the mouth were comparable to snow in whiteness.
Each of her cheeks was like a lily upon which lies a rose-leaf. Her
well-rounded chin bore a dimple, her throat was white and ivory, her
neck slender and well-proportioned. Fine was her gait, graceful the play
of her features, chaste her entire attitude. Briefly, excepting the Son
of God, none ever possessed such a beautiful and pure body as the Holy
Virgin Mary." Indeed, the humanizing of the Mother of God was as
complete as that of foam-born Aphrodite in Homer. Mary is the leader,
the choregetes of saintly womanhood; solemnly enthroned in the heavens,
she moves everything, including Christ, her Son. She is the alpha and
omega of Christian poetry and art.

No wonder that women of all states of society found high incentives
toward dedicating their lives to the service of Christ and the Holy
Virgin. The disappointments and trials of womanhood, too, prompted many
to seek seclusion from the world. Scheffel, in his _Ekhehard_, describes
such a type of holy recluse under the title of _Wiborada Reclusa_. She
had once been a proud, unapproachable maiden, he says, well versed in
many arts; she had learned from her priestly brother Hitto to repeat all
the Psalms in Latin, and had not once been inclined to sweeten the life
of a husband; the bloom of her land (_Suabia_) had found no grace before
her eyes, and she had made a pilgrimage to Rome. There her soul must
have been shaken to its foundation; for three days she was lost sight
of, for three days her brother Hitto was running up and down the Forum,
and through the halls of the Coliseum and under Constantine's triumphal
arch, down to the four-headed Janus on the Tiber, seeking his sister and
finding her not. On the morning of the fourth day, she came in through
the Salarian gate and carried her head aloft, and her eyes were shining,
and she spoke, saying that everything was vain in the world as long as
the honor due to Saint Martin was not rendered to him.

When she returned home, she bequeathed her property to the Episcopal
church at Constance, on condition that the priests on the eleventh day
of every October should celebrate in honor of Saint Martin. She herself
entered into a narrow hut, where the recluse Citia had