mother more than me, is not worthy of me," "He that taketh not his cross
and followeth me, is not worthy of me." It is needful to insist upon these
extremest sentences of the New Testament, because upon them was based the
religious practice of the Middle Ages, more sincere in their determination
to fulfil the letter and embrace the spirit of the Gospel than any
succeeding age has been.[7]

If, then, there really exists this antagonism between fine art glorifying
human life and piety contemning it, how came it, we may ask, that even in
the Middle Ages the Church hailed art as her coadjutor? The answer lies in
this, that the Church has always compromised. The movement of the modern
world, upon the close of the Middle Ages, offered the Church a compromise,
which it would have been difficult to refuse, and in which she perceived
art first no peril to her dogmas. When the conflict of the first few
centuries of Christianity had ended in her triumph, she began to mediate
between asceticism and the world. Intent on absorbing all existent
elements of life and power, she conformed her system to the Roman type,
established her service in basilicas and Pagan temples, adopted portions
of the antique ritual, and converted local genii into saints. At the same
time she utilised the spiritual forces of monasticism, and turned the
mystic impulse of ecstatics to account. The Orders of the Preachers and
the Begging Friars became her militia and police; the mystery of Christ's
presence in the Eucharist was made an engine of the priesthood; the dreams
of Paradise and Purgatory gave value to her pardons, interdictions,
jubilees, indulgences, and curses. In the Church the spirit of the
cloister and the spirit of the world found neutral ground, and to the
practical accommodation between these hostile elements she owed her wide
supremacy. The Christianity she formed and propagated was different from
that of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up into itself a mass
of mythological anthropomorphic elements. Thus transmuted and