§ 130. THE WORSHIP OF MARY. 833
The Canticles was regarded as an inspired anthology of Mary's excellences of body and soul. Damiani represents God as inflamed with love for her and singing its lines in her praise. She was the golden bed on which God, weary in His labor for men and angels, lay down for repose. The later interpretation was that the book is a bridal song for the nuptials between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin. Bernard's homilies on this portion of Scripture are the most famous collection of the Middle Ages. Alanus ab Insulis, who calls Mary the "tabernacle of God, the palace of the celestial King," says that it refers to the Church, but in an especial and most spiritual way to the glorious virgin.1 Writer after writer, preacher after preacher, took up this favorite portion of the Old Testament. An abbess represented the Virgin as singing to the Spirit:2 "My beloved is mine and I am his. He will tarry between my breasts." The Holy Spirit re sponded, "Thy breasts are sweeter than honey."
To Mary was given a place of dignity equal or superior to Christ as the friend of the sinful and unfortunate and the guide of souls to heaven. Damiani called her " the door of heaven," the window of paradise. Anselm spoke of her as " the vestibule of universal propitiation, the cause of univer sal reconciliation, the vase and temple of life and salvation for the world."3 A favorite expression was "the tree of life" — lignum vitce — based upon Prov. iii : 8. Albertus Magnus, in the large volume he devotes to Mary's virtues, gives no less than forty reasons why she should be wor shipped, authority being found for each one in a text of Scripture. The first reason was that the Son of God honors Mary. This accords with the fifth commandment, and
1 Specialissime et spiritualissime. Migne, 210. 53.
2 See von Eicken, p. 481. In a song to Mary written by the Dominican, Eberhard of Saxony, in the thirteenth century, occur the lines : —
Got in sinem hohen trone hat begehret diner schone Da er wil, o wiber Krone mit geluste dich ansehen.
" God on His throne desired thy beauty and wanted, 0 crown of woman hood, to look on thee with passion."
3 Orationes, LIL, Migne, 158. 954.
834 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Christ himself said of his mother, " I will glorify the house of my glory," Isa. Ix : 7 ; house, according to the School man, being intended to mean Mary. The Bible teems with open and concealed references to her. Albertus ascribed to her thirty -five virtues, on all of which he elaborates at length, such as humility, sincerity, benignity, omnipotence, and modesty. He finds eighty-one biblical names indicative of her functions and graces. Twelve of these are taken from things in the heavens. She is a sun, a moon, a light, a cloud, a horizon, an aurora. Eight are taken from things terrestrial. Mary is a field, a mountain, a hill, a stone. Twenty-one are represented by things pertaining to water. She is a river, a fountain, a lake, a fish-pond, a cistern, a torrent, a shell. Thirty-one are taken from biblical figures. Mary is an ark, a chair, a house, a bed, a nest, a furnace, a library. Nine are taken from military and married life. Mary is a castle, a tower, a wall. It may be interesting to know how Mary fulfilled the office of a library. In her, said the ingenious Schoolman, were found all the books of the Old Testament, of all of which she had plenary knowl edge as is shown in the words of her song which run, "as was spoken by our fathers." She also had plenary knowl edge of the Gospels as is evident from Luke ii : 19 : " Mary kept all these sayings in her heart." But especially do Mary's qualities lie concealed under the figure of the garden employed so frequently in the Song of Solomon. To the elaboration of this comparison Albertus devotes two hun dred and forty pages, introducing it with the words, " a garden shut up is my sister, my bride," Cant, iv : 12. l
Bonaventura equals Albertus in ransacking the heavens and the earth and the waters for figures to express Mary's glories and there is a tender chord of mysticism running through his expositions which is adapted to move all hearts and to carry the reader, not on his guard, away from the simple biblical statements. The devout Franciscan fre quently returns to this theme and makes Mary the subject
1 DC laud. Marice, Borgnet's ed., XXXVI. 600-840.