Unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was Folquet de Lunel. Some of his poems cannot be classed with any certainty.
The first poem which obtained a prize at the Academy of Mastersingers of Toulouse was a hymn to Mary.
This very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter into the feelings of that period. A modern philologist, Karl Appel, regards Jaufre Rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the Countess of Tripoli:
Oh, love in lands so far away,
My heart is yearning, yearning. . . .
as songs to the Madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on an unknown Countess of Tripoli, or a still more unknown Lady of Heaven. It is not the loved woman who is of importance—what do we know of the ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? They have long been dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is the perfection of their grand-daughters. But the love of the poets is alive to-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman has passed.
The following are a few stanzas by the German minnesinger, Steinmar, which were later on adapted to the Holy Virgin:
In summer-time how glad am I
When over lea or down
A country lass mine eyes espy,