Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/166

142 five of them are particularly cruel and mortal.” The bishop of Chalons, Jean Germain, in his Liber de virtutibus Philippi ducis Burgundiae, in his turn does not scruple to compare the victim of Montereau to the Lamb. The Emperor Frederick IIΙ, when sending his son Maximilian to the Low Countries to marry Mary of Burgundy, is compared by Molinet to God the Father. The same author makes the people of Brussels say, when they wept with tenderness on seeing the emperor entering their town with Maximilian and Philip le Beau: “Behold the image of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” He offers a wreath of flowers to Mary of Burgundy, a worthy image of Our Lady, “secluse la virginité.” “Non point que je veuille déifier les princes!” Molinet adds.

Although we may consider such formulæ of adulation empty phrases, they show none the less the depreciation of sacred imagery resulting from its hackneyed use. We can hardly blame a court poet, when Gerson himself ascribes to the royal auditors of his sermons guardian angels of a higher rank in the celestial hierarchy than those of other men.

The step from familiarity to irreverence is taken when religious terms are applied to erotic relations. The subject has been dealt with above. The author of the Quinze Joyes de Mariage chose his title to accord with the joys of the Virgin. The defender of the Roman de la Rose used sacred terms to designate the partes corporis inhonestas et peccata immunda atque turpia. No instance of this dangerous association of religious with amatory sentiments could be more striking than the Madonna ascribed to Foucquet, making part of a diptych which was formerly preserved at Melun and is now partly at Antwerp and partly at Berlin; Antwerp possessing the Madonna and Berlin the panel representing the donor, Etienne Chevalier, the king’s treasurer, together with Saint Stephen. In the seventeenth century Denis Godefroy noted down a tradition, then already old, according to which the Madonna had the features of Agnès Sorel, the royal mistress, for whom Chevalier felt a passion that he did not trouble to conceal. However this may be, the Madonna is, in fact, represented here according to the canons of contemporary fashion: there is the bulging