e 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
materialised, thus accepted by the vivid faith of an unquestioning
populace, Christianity offered a proper medium for artistic activity. The
whole first period of Italian painting was occupied with the endeavour to
set forth in form and colour the popular conceptions of a faith at once
unphilosophical and unspiritual, beautiful and fit for art by reason of
the human elements it had assumed into its substance. It was natural,
therefore, that the Church should show herself indulgent to the arts,
which were effecting in their own sphere what she had previously
accomplished, though purists and ascetics, holding fast by the original
spirit of their creed, might remain ir