" What, in fact, was Chivalry--which
Cervantes, intending to kill it, afterwards purified and Christianized
in _Don Quixote_--but a real though distorted religion, a hybrid between
paganism and Christianity, whose gospel perhaps was the legend of
Tristan and Iseult? And did not even the Christianity of the
mystics--those knights-errant of the spirit--possibly reach its
culminating-point in the worship of the divine woman, the Virgin Mary?
What else was the Mariolatry of a St. Bonaventura, the troubadour of
Mary? And this sentiment found its inspiration in love of the fountain
of life, of that which saves us from death.
But as the Renaissance advanced men turned from the religion of woman to
the religion of science; desire, the foundation of which was curiosity,
ended in curiosity, in eagerness to taste of the fruit of the tree of
good and evil. Europe flocked to the University of Bologna in search of
learning. Chivalry was succeeded by Platonism. Men sought to discover
the mystery of the world and of life. But it was really in order to save
life, which they had also sought to save in the worship of woman. Human
consciousness sought to penetrate the Universal Consciousness, but its
real object, whether it was aware of it or not, was to save itself.
For the truth is that we feel and imagine the Universal
Consciousness--and in this feeling and imagination religious experience
consists--simply in order that thereby we may save our own individual
consciousnesses.
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