We see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy).  The new poets deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared before the adored simply as lovers.  They did not require the dogmatic support of the Church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee.  Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up and people it with sublime intelligences.  And in this system, the crown and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side of the deities.  Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love.  What for two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of faith and truth.  Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and had become identical with the love of immortality.  “Love which moves the sun and all the stars” was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling.  The anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this metaphysical setting:  the deification of the beloved; and no greater gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true beings and values.  All that had been done before had merely prepared the ground for this great deed:  the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart of the divine secrets.

The Vita Nuova, which is at once a glorified historical record and the greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is “the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue.”  “When I saw her coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me.  And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied:  Love! and my face would have been full of humility.”  Even before his love had been translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly any other poet before or after him.  The women of Florence ask Dante:  “Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her presence?  Tell us, for the end of such love must be incomprehensible to men.”  And he replies:  “Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal of my desire.  And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, my whole happiness is contained in that which can never