Such was the system of Theology into which the Imaginative Religion of
Europe was crystallized, by the growth of its own best faculties, and
the influence of all accessible and credible authorities, during the
period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries inclusive. Its
spiritual power is completely represented by the angelic and apostolic
dynasties, and the women-saints in Paradise; for of the men-saints,
beneath the apostles and prophets, none but St. Christopher, St.
Nicholas, St. Anthony, St. James, and St. George, attained anything
like the influence of Catharine or Cecilia; for the very curious
reason, that the men-saints were much more true, real, and numerous.
St. Martin was reverenced all over Europe, but definitely, as a man,
and the Bishop of Tours. So St. Ambrose at Milan, and St. Gregory at
Rome, and hundreds of good men more, all over the world; while the
really good women remained, though not rare, inconspicuous. The
virtues of French Clotilde, and Swiss Berthe, were painfully borne
down in the balance of visible judgment, by the guilt of the Gonerils,
Regans, and Lady Macbeths, whose spectral procession closes only
with the figure of Eleanor in Woodstock maze; and in dearth of
nearer objects, the daily brighter powers of fancy dwelt with
more concentrated devotion on the stainless ideals of the earlier
maid-martyrs. And observe, even the loftier fame of the men-saints
above named, as compared with the rest, depends on precisely the same
character of indefinite personality; and on the representation, by
each of them, of a moral idea which may be embodied and painted in
a miraculous legend; credible, as history, even then, only to the
vulgar; but powerful over them, nevertheless, exactly in proportion
to the degree in which it can be pictured and fancied as a living
creature. Consider even yet in these days of mechanism, how the
dullest John Bull cannot with perfect complacency adore _himself_,