IX. CHRISTIAN LAW. After the justice which rules men, comes that which
rules the Church of Christ. The distinction is not between secular law,
and ecclesiastical authority, but between the equity of humanity, and
the law of Christian discipline.

In full, straight-falling, golden robe, with white mantle over it; a
church in her left hand; her right raised, with the forefinger lifted;
(indicating heavenly source of all Christian law? or warning?)

Head-dress, a white veil floating into folds in the air. You will find
nothing in these frescoes without significance; and as the escaping
hair of Geometry indicates the infinite conditions of lines of the
higher orders, so the floating veil here indicates that the higher
relations of Christian justice are indefinable. So her golden mantle
indicates that it is a glorious and excellent justice beyond that which
unchristian men conceive; while the severely falling lines of the
folds, which form a kind of gabled niche for the head of the Pope
beneath, correspond with the strictness of true Church discipline
firmer as well as more luminous statute.

Beneath, Pope Clement V., in red, lifting his hand, not in the position
of benediction, but, I suppose, of injunction,--only the forefinger
straight, the second a little bent, the two last quite. Note the strict
level of the book; and the vertical directness of the key.

The medallion puzzles me. It looks like a figure counting money.

_Technical Points_.--Fairly well preserved; but the face of the
science retouched: the grotesquely false perspective of the Pope's