Salve, Mater pietatis,
 Et totius Trinitatis
     Nobile Triclinium! 
 Verbi tamen incarnati
 Speciale majestati
     Praeparans hospitium!

O Maria!  Stella maris! 
 Dignitate singularis,
 Super omnes ordinaries
     Ordines coelestium! 
 In supremo sita poli
 Nos commenda tuae proli,
 Ne terrores sive doli
     Nos supplantent hostium!

Mother of our Saviour, hail! 
 Chosen vessel!  Sacred Grail! 
     Font of celestial grace! 
 From eternity forethought! 
 By the hand of Wisdom wrought! 
     Precious, faultless Vase!

Hail, Mother of Divinity! 
 Hail, Temple of the Trinity! 
     Home of the Triune God! 
 In whom the Incarnate Word had birth,
 The King! to whom you gave on earth
     Imperial abode.

Oh, Maria!  Constellation! 
 Inspiration!  Elevation! 
 Rule and Law and Ordination
     Of the angels’ host! 
 Highest height of God’s Creation,
 Pray your Son’s commiseration,
 Lest, by fear or fraud, salvation
     For our souls be lost!

Constantly—­one might better say at once, officially, she was addressed in these terms of supreme majesty:  “Imperatrix supernorum!” “Coeli Regina!” “Aula regalis!” but the twelfth century seemed determined to carry the idea out to its logical conclusion in defiance of dogma.  Not only was the Son absorbed in the Mother, or represented as under her guardianship, but the Father fared no better, and the Holy Ghost followed.  The poets regarded the Virgin as the “Templum Trinitatis”; “totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium.”  She was the refectory of the Trinity—­the “Triclinium”—­because the refectory was the largest room and contained the whole of the members, and was divided in three parts by two rows of columns.  She was the “Templum Trinitatis,” the Church itself, with its triple aisle.  The Trinity was absorbed in her.

This is a delicate subject in the Church, and you must feel it with delicacy, without brutally insisting on its necessary contradictions.  All theology and all philosophy are full of contradictions quite as flagrant and far less sympathetic.  This particular variety of religious faith is simply human, and has made its appearance in one form or another in nearly all religions; but though the twelfth century carried it to an extreme, and at Chartres you see it in its most charming expression, we have got always to make allowances for what was going on beneath the surface in men’s minds, consciously or unconsciously, and for the latent scepticism which lurks behind all faith.  The Church itself never quite accepted the full claims of what was called Mariolatry.  One may be sure, too, that the bourgeois capitalist and the student of the schools, each from his own point of view, watched the Virgin with anxious interest.  The bourgeois had put an enormous share of, his capital into what was in fact an economical speculation, not