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Updated: June 14, 2025
It is the tribute we pay to the Lords of Song. The minnesinger of the past wrote with his heart's blood; but we moderns dip our pen into the sap of our nerves. We analyse life, love art and the dissecting knife that we use on other men's souls finally turns against ourselves. "But what shall a man do?
His son Enzio, a man of remarkable beauty and valor, celebrated as a Minnesinger, and of unusual intellectual qualities, had been taken prisoner, as we have already told, by the Bolognese, and condemned by them to perpetual imprisonment, despite the prayers of his father and the rich ransom offered.
After the dogs had caught him, he would not allow them to be pulled off, but insisted upon enduring their attacks for the glory of his lady-love. When nearly dead, he was rescued and taken to her castle, where he recovered health if not mental balance. More noble than any of these was the tribute paid to women by the Minnesinger Henry of Meissen.
Sweet, deep, disaster- toning nightingale! sings the old minnesinger; 'who that has not loved, hearing thee is touched with the wand of love's mysteries, and yearneth to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but who, listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears, saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee so far! now shall I never die in thee !
After a long and vehement discussion, the King of Arles left the knight standing with his arms folded on his breast and his back to the group, and released Gilbert from the close grasp of his captors. "Come with me," he said, in a whisper. "Where?" inquired Gilbert. "To the other side of the drawbridge?" "But I cannot leave Humbert," said the youth, pointing to the frightened minnesinger.
Humbert received the baron's congratulations without embarrassment, and pledged his health in a brimming bowl. While the minnesinger and the noble were exchanging compliments, Gilbert kept a respectful distance, supporting the harp. He feared to look at the missionary, who sat, evidently little concerned about Ailred of Zurrich, wrapped in meditation.
Willigis. Through the low gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked, and serious countenance. Below it is a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral.
But in extending the benefits of a crusade to Christians fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national life of Southern France the papacy again set a people against itself. The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were reechoed in the complaints of the last of the Troubadours.
Above all, and giving one a shock of surprise by association with the man's other work, is a very long and elaborate poem addressed to Christ or God by no less a minnesinger than Master Gottfried of Strasburg.
Before the drawbridge was gained, Humbert had recovered himself, and was prepared to put forth all his daring and skill to extricate themselves from the consequences of this perilous adventure. "Ho! warder!" he cried, in a confident tone, "a minnesinger Ailred of Zurich and his harp-bearer, wet and fasting. Shelter in the name of God!"
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