Another prominent Madonna-worshipper was Conrad of Wuerzburg (died 1278).
He began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery.
He was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection
of songs in praise of the Queen of Heaven. "The Golden Smithy" is an
interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism
and traditional Church doctrines. Conrad inextricably mingles all the
Biblical allegories more or less applicable to Mary, the stories of the
Gospels, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, etc., with his own
emotions, and thus creates a world of feeling which, though in many
respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something
entirely novel and unique:
Thy glorious form,
Though by beauty all envested,
Never passion has suggested
Nor has lit unholy fire
In man's heart, that gross desire
From thy purity should spring.
He, too, describes the celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which
Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a
reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens):
Thy white hand with blossoms
Their chaplets enhances,
Thou show'st them the dances
Of God's Paradise.
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