Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/98

86 scholar with his scrolls. He knew life well, this artist, and had an eye for every catching scene, also for Nature's subtle beauties. Sometimes a certain passing show was represented because a window was given by some drapers' guild, desirous of seeing its craft shown in a place of honour; and the artist loved his scenes from busy life, as he loved his ornament from Nature. Such scenes (which rarely held specific allegory) were not unconnected with the rest of the drama of creation and redemption mirrored in the cathedral, nor was the exquisitely cut leaf and rose without its suggestion of the grace incarnate in the Virgin and her Son. Daily life and natural ornament had at least an illustrative pertinency to the whole, of which they were unobtrusive and lovely elements; and since that whole was primarily a visible symbol of the unseen and divine power, these humble elements had part in its unutterable mystery, and were likewise symbols. Finally, have not these nameless artists—even as Dante and our English Bunyan—presented by their art a synthesis of life's realities? Their feet were on the earth; with sympathy and knowledge their hands worked in the media of things seen and handled, and fashioned the little human matters which are bounded by the cradle and the grave. Such were the materials from which Dante formed his Commedia, and Bunyan drew the Progress of his Pilgrim soul to God. Yet as with Bunyan and Dante, so with these artists in stone and coloured light, the mortal and the tangible were but the elements through which the poem or story, or the carved or painted picture, was made the realizing symbol of the unseen and eternal Spirit.

Beneath the Abbey Church of Saint-Victor there was a crypt consecrated to the Mother of God. Here a certain monk was wont to retire and compose hymns in her honour. One day his lips uttered the lines: Salve, mater pietatis, Et totius Trinitatis