oisie, an essential part of which is devotion and service to
ladies. Nevertheless, this service to ladies has a religious root: it is
but the evolution to its final consequence of the old German veneration
for women which Christianity crystallized in the cult of the Holy Virgin
Mary. Religion is greatly dependent upon the emotions, thus making even
this cult more sensuous than rational. Inasmuch as this religious
affection is transferred to the entire sex, we find the most beautiful
side of knighthood expressed and codified in the _Minnedienst_, or love
service. And, in so far as the delight of youthful life and feeling was
considered as dependent upon the life of nature in general, the subject
of the minnesongs dealt with love within the natural environment of
fields and forests, rivers and mountains, spring and flowers, winter and
ice. "In the month of May," runs Freytag's beautiful description, "when
the trees were adorned with foliage, and the heath with flowers, when
the birds sang, and the brooks, freed from ice and snow, trickled
through the meadows, then began also for the courtly man the sunny time
of joy. Then he prepared his arms and armour, thought of adornment and
fine garments, and wandered away for love-wooing, to repasts, to wedding
and tournament, or to earnest war to acquire honor or to serve his
chosen lady, or to win estates. But when the winter approached, the
little birds migrated away, the meadows faded, the leaves sank from the
trees, frost hovered about the burgh, then the joyful activity in the
district terminated, the German knight retired to the interior of the
house, lived honorably with wife and children and dreamed golden dreams
in the hope of the next awakening of life." This conception of a dualism
of human life, a serene, sunny side, and a cold twilight pervades the
entire chivalrous poetry. It is but a realization of the dualism of the
human soul, as Goethe has wonderfully expressed it in his Faust:

"Two souls alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral places.
Yet in each soul is born the pleasure
Of yearning onward, upward and away,
When o'er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure,
The lark sends down his flickering la