thoughts were more occupied with the Infant Christ, the saints, and
the angels, than ours generally are. They thought of themselves as
under the protection of some saint, who would plead with God the Father
for them if they asked him, for God Himself seemed too high or remote
to be appealed to always directly. He was approached with awe; the
saints, the Virgin, and the Infant Christ, with love.

We must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture
painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can
we look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom
he painted, so loved the holy personages. They thought about them
always, not only at stated times and on Sundays, and never tired of
looking at pictures of them and their doings. It is sometimes said
that only Catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel
towards the saints as the old painters did. But it is possible for
any one to realize how in those far-off days the people felt, and it
is this that we must try to do. The religious fervour of the Middle
Ages was not a sign of great virtue among all the people. Some were
far more cruel, savage, and unrestrained than we are to-day. Very
wicked men even became powerful dignitaries in the Church. But it was
the Church that fostered the impulses of pity and charity in a fierce
age, and some of the saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catharine of Siena, are still
held to be among the most beautiful characters the world has ever known.

The churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Florence were
lined with marble, and a great picture frequently stood above the altar.
It is difficult to realize to-day that the processes which we call
oil and water-colour painting were not then invented, and that no shops
existed to sell canvases and paints ready for use. The artist painted