cannot serve God,” he declared, “and God will punish every man who, apart from matrimony, serves Venus.  What good could come from acting against the will of God?” Here we are face to face with a grotesque position:  the official Church favouring sexuality, that is matrimony, as against the newer and higher standard of ascetic, spiritual love.  This attitude was quite logical, if not in the spirit of religion and in contradiction to the principle of asceticism, yet in the spirit of orthodoxy; for “whatever was not for her, was against her.”  The brave, Janus-headed abbe was spokesman for the whole clergy, which branded love not projected on God as fornicatio.  In his recantation Andreas upheld the previously-despised matrimonial state at the expense of love; “love,” he maintained, “destroys matrimony.”  Matfre did exactly the same thing; after recapitulating in his Breviari d’Amor all the splendid achievements rooted in the cult of woman, he suddenly veered round (at the 27,445th verse): 

     And Satan blows on their desire,
     In monstrous flames leaps up the fire,
     And maddened by the raging fiend,
     From love of God and honour weaned,
     They turn from their Creator’s shrine
     And call their mistresses divine. 
     With soul and body, mind and sense,
     They worship woman’s excellence. 
     Abandoned in her beauty revel,
     And unawares adore the devil.

Three hundred years later the fanatical Savanorola stormed:  “You clothe and adorn the Mother of God as you clothe and adorn your courtesans, and you give her the features of your mistresses!” which, as we shall presently see, was literally true.

The clergy resisted all counsels of the cortezia and cavalaria with the sure instinct desiring the continuance of existing conditions rather than the victory of the higher conception.  Some writers aver that it was partly due to this fact that later on the cult of woman developed into the cult of Mary.  Again we are confronted by a process which in the course of time has been repeated more than once:  the spiritual-mystical principle of Christianity entered upon a new stage, and took possession of a new and important domain; but the Church, rigid and unyielding, preferred clinging to a past lower stage rather than tolerating any change.  Had she been absolutely consistent, her greatest poet would be on the index to-day, for, following his own intuition and ignoring her rigid dogma, he introduced his beloved Beatrice into the Catholic heaven.

The new spiritual love was not without its caricatures.  Famous in Provence for many strange exploits, committed in order to please his lady, was the talented Peire Vidal.  On one occasion he caused himself to be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds.  He was an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in