Chapter XXXII

. III.

[428] Further illustrations of the mediaeval emotionalizing of Latin Christianity could be made from the history of certain Christian conceptions, angels for example:--the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha contain the revelation of their functions; next, their natures are defined in the works of the Fathers and the _Celestial Hierarchy_ of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The matter is gone over at great length, and their nature and functions logically perfected, by the schoolmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But, all the while, religious feeling, popular credences, and the imagination of poet and artist went on investing with beauty and loveliness these guardian spirits who carried out God’s care of man. Thus angels became the realities they were felt to be.

[429] Hartmann belongs to that great group of courtly German poets whose lives surround the year 1200. He was the translator of Chrètien de Troye’s _Erec_ and _Ivain_. See Bech’s _Hartmann von Aue_ (Deutsche klassiker). The verses quoted can hardly be rendered; but the meaning is as follows:

“My joys were never free from care until the day which showed me the flowers of Christ which I wear here (_i.e._ the Crusader’s cross). They herald a summer-time leading to sweet pastures of delight. God help us thither! The world has treated me so that my spirit yearns therefor;--well for me! God has been good to me, so that I am released from cares which tie the feet of many, chaining them here, while I in Christ’s band with blissful joys fare on.”

These lines carry that same yearning of the simple soul for heaven, _its home_, which was expressed, some centuries before, in Otfried’s _Evangelienbuch_ (_ante_, Chapter IX .). The words and their connotations (_augenweide_, _wünneclich_) are utterly German. Yet the author lived in a literary atmosphere of translation from the French.

[430] _Post_,