But the more this hope faded, the more the Pagan-Jewish conception of woman again made itself felt. It is true the Church sought to place man and woman on an equality in regard to certain marriage duties and rights; to uphold on both sides the sanctity of marriage; to protect women and children against despotism. It is true the Church strove to counteract crude sensuality, utilising, among other things, an emphasis of celibacy as the expression of the highest spirituality. But, on the other hand, the doctrine of this Church became the greatest obstacle to the elevation of woman, because it lessened the reverence for her mission as a being of sex. Marriage, the only recognised ends of which were the prevention of unchastity and the propagation of the race, was looked upon as an inferior condition in comparison with pure virginity. And the more this ideal of chastity was extolled, the more woman was degraded and considered the most grievous temptation of man in his striving after higher sanctity. Before God, so man taught, man and woman were truly equal; but not in human relationships or qualities; yes, and man has gone in this direction even to the point of debating the question in church councils, as to whether woman really had a soul or not! But when the Church revered pure virginity in the person of the Mother of Jesus, it was woman in highest form—as happy or suffering mother—that the Church unconsciously glorified. In the statues and altar pieces of the cathedral man worships, in the likeness of Mary, the purest and noblest womanhood. The virtues especially extolled by the Church were also those in which Mary in particular and woman in general had pre-eminence. By all these impressions a soul condition was created in which the heart penetrated by religious ecstasy, must, of psychological necessity, devote itself to the earthly manifestations of this same pure womanhood. Generally this devotion was only an ecstatic cult, an adoration from afar of an ideal, inspiring deeds or poetry. Sometimes this ecstasy fused the being of man and woman in the sensuous-soulful unity of great love. But when neither was the case, yet the adoration of knights and minnesingers increased the esteem of man for woman and the esteem of woman for herself. It also contributed to the esteem of man for woman that, as the men were always obliged to stand in arms, they could rarely acquire the learning which the priests—and through them the wives and daughters of the castles—acquired. The superiority of woman in this respect had a refining influence upon manners and customs and upon the general culture of the time. Often through a number of women auditors the poem of a minnesinger first became famous. When in Mainz one sees Heinrich Frauenlob’s tombstone, one comprehends, through the soulful noble lines, how mourning women bore him to the grave, as the little bas-relief at the base of the stone represents. Their sympathy