were male (Baldur and Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange.  The Germanic tribes at all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to represent their highest values.  The change of gender of the supreme symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god.  Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine symbol of “Lady Sun.”

The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that his lady is radiant “as the sun at break of day.”  And also: 

     My lady shines into the heart
     As through the glass the sun does shine;
     Thus the beloved lady mine
     Is sweet as May, full of delight,
     Unclouded sunshine, golden light.

Mary, who had been called Maris Stella, the morning star, gradually assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun.  Suso, in one of his poems, still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds.  “When the radiant morning star, Mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words:  Greeting, beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving hearts!” But he also calls Mary:  “Thou dazzling mirror of the Eternal Sun!” And his Biography contains the following beautiful passage:  “And his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven; as the little birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul.”  This is pure and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of Mary.

So much for Suso.  In Goethe’s Faust, Doctor Marianus prays: 

     In thy tent of azure blue,
     Queen supremely reigning,
     Let me now thy secret view,
     Vision high obtaining.

It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as one.  Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor: 

     The sun is smiling languidly
     Like to a woman wondrous sweet.

The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a poem:  Der Sonnengeist (the sun-spirit).

The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of the supreme value; at the conclusion of the Paradise there is a passage (in St. Bernard’s prayer) which points to a connection in Dante’s mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven: