turning it into a rhapsodical eulogy of the Virgin Mary, carrying versification to what seemed then its utmost limits.  The picture shows him playing and singing to some prince, the carpet on which he stands being lifted by the attendants.  It makes plain the difference between the minnesingers and the troubadours.  In this picture the singer is seen to be accompanying himself before the king, whereas in plate 28 we see two troubadours in the lists, their jongleurs playing or singing the songs of their masters, while the latter engage each other in battle.  In order to give one more example we will take the pictures of Conrad, the son of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstaufens (plate 11).  He was born about 1250, and was beheaded in the market place at Naples in 1268.  The story of Konradin, as he was called, is familiar; how he lived with his mother at the castle of her brother, Ludwig of Bavaria, how he was induced to join in a rebellion of the two Sicilies (to the crown of which he was heir) against France, his defeat and execution by the Duke of Anjou, himself a well-known troubadour.  The text accompanying his picture in Hagen’s work describes him as having black eyes and blonde hair, and wearing a long green dress with a golden collar.  His gray hunting horse is covered with a crimson mantle, has a golden saddle and bit, and scarlet reins.  Konradin wears white hunting gloves and a three-cornered king’s crown.  Above the picture are the arms of the kingdom of Jerusalem (a golden crown in silver ground), to which he was heir through his grandmother, Iolanthe.  One of his songs runs as follows, and it may be accepted as a fair specimen of the style of lyric written by the minnesingers: 

    The lovely flowers and verdure sweet
    That gentle May doth slip
    Have been imprisoned cruelly
    In Winter’s iron grip;
    But May smiles o’er the green clad fields
    That seemed anon so sad,
    And all the world is glad.

    No joy to me the Summer brings
    With all its bright long days. 
    My thoughts are of a maiden fair
    Who mocks my pleading gaze;
    She passes me in haughty mood,
    Denies me aught but scorn,
    And makes my life forlorn.

    Yet should I turn my love from her,
    For aye my love were gone. 
    I’d gladly die could I forget
    The love that haunts my song. 
    So, lonely, joyless, live I on,
    For love my prayer denies,
    And, childlike, mocks my sighs.

The music of these minnesingers existing in manuscript has been but little heeded, and only lately has an attempt been made to classify and translate it into modern notation.  The result so far attained has been unsatisfactory, for the rhythms are all given as spondaic.  This seems a very improbable solution of the mystery that must inevitably enshroud the musical notation of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.