The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.  The twelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, and might almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbid as any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, like children, in an attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle of miracles which they felt in their own consciousness; but one can see in this emotion, which is, after all, not exclusively infantile, no special reason why they should have so passionately flung themselves at the feet of the Woman rather than of the Man.  Dante wrote in 1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarch wrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains the strongest symbol with which the Church can conjure.

Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment to Mary rested on an instinct of self-preservation.  They knew their own peril.  If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope.  She alone represented Love.  The Trinity were, or was, One, and could, by the nature of its essence, administer justice alone.  Only childlike illusion could expect a personal favour from Christ.  Turn the dogma as one would, to this it must logically come.  Call the three Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One; must administer one justice; must admit only one law.  In that law, no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it was infinite, eternal, immutable.  There was no crack and no cranny in the system, through which human frailty could hope for escape.  One was forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until one fell helpless at Mary’s feet.

Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for atheism the world was not ready.  Hemmed back on that side, men rushed like sheep to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy in finding protection and hope in a being who could understand the language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer.  How passionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows; and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and history of the time proclaim.  If you need more proof, you can read more Petrarch; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, to the men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a matter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, throughout their daily existence.  The surest measure of her reality is the enormous money value they put on her assistance, and the art that was lavished on her gratification, but an almost equally certain sign is the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, which assumes her presence.