These utterances, considered in the light of the political and racial situation, seem to deny, at least implicitly, the secular power of the papacy. Yet in matters of religion Walther apparently was entirely orthodox, and a pious Christian. He has left a sweet prayer to Christ, with ample recognition of the angels and the saints, and a beautiful verse of penitent contrition, in which he confesses his sins to God very directly—how that he does the wrong, and leaves the right, and fails in love of neighbour. “Father, Son, may thy Spirit lighten mine; how may I love him who does me ill? Ever dear to me is he who treats me well!”[26] Walther’s questing spirit also pondered over God’s greatness and incomprehensibility.[27] His open mind is shown by the famous line: “Him (God) Christians, Jews, and heathen serve,”[28] a breadth of view shared by his friend Wolfram von Eschenbach, who speaks of the chaste virtue of a heathen lady as equal to baptism.[29]
The personal lot of this proud heart was not an easy one; homelessness broke him down, and the bitterness of eating others’ bread. Too well had he learned of the world and all its changing ways, and how poor becomes the soul that follows them. Mortality is a trite sorrow; there are worse: “We all complain that the old die and pass away; rather let us lament taints of another hue, that troth and seemliness and honour are dead.”[30] At the last Walther’s grey memory of life and his vainly yearning hope took form in a great elegy. After long years he seemed, with heavy steps, and leaning on his wanderer’s staff, to be returning to a home which was changed forever: “Alas! whither are they vanished, my many years! Did I dream my life, or is it real? what I once deemed it, was it that? And now I wake, and all the things and people once familiar, strange! My playmates, dull and old! And the fields changed; only that the streams still flow as then they flowed, my heart would break with thinking on the glad days, vanished in the sea. And the young people! slow and mirthless! and the knights go clad as peasants! Ah! Rome! thy ban! Our groans have stilled the song of birds. Fool I, to speak and so despair,—and the earth looks fair! Up knights again: your swords, your armour! would to God I might fare with your victor band, and gain my pay too—not in lands of earth! Oh! might I win the eternal crown from that sweet voyage beyond the sea, then would I sing O joy! and never more, alas—never more, alas.”[31]
BOOK V
SYMBOLISM
CHAPTER XXVII
SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN