use for churches.
Or did not the idea of a dualism become confused into a vacillating,
contradictory notion of a Power at once good and evil, something
inscrutable, unthinkable, but inspiring less confidence than terror?

[Footnote 4: Here are a few dates, as given by Murray's Handbooks.

Fiesole Cathedral begun 1028; S. Miniato a Monte, 1013; Pisa Cathedral
consecrated 1118; baptistery (lower storey), 1153. Lucca facade
(interior later), 1204; S. Frediano of Lucca begun by Perharit 671,
altered in twelfth century; S. Michele facade, 1188. Pistoia: S.
Giovanni Evangelista by Gruamons, 1166; S. Andrea, also by Gruamons; S.
Bartolomeo by Rudolphinus, 1167. Pulpit of S. Ambrogio of Milan, 1201;
church traditionally begun about 868, probably much more modern.]

Whatever the secret of those sculptured monsters, this much is
historically certain, that a dualistic, profoundly pessimist belief had
honeycombed Christianity throughout Provence and Northern and Central
Italy. But for this knowledge it would be impossible to explain the
triumphant reception given to St. Francis and his sublime, illogical
optimism, his train of converted wolves, sympathising birds, and saints
and angels mixing familiarly with mortal men. The Franciscan revival
has the strength and success of a reaction. And in sweeping away the
pessimistic terrors of mankind, it swept away, by what is at least
a strange coincidence, the nightmare sculpture of the old Lombard
stonemasons.

What the things were which made room for the carved virgins and saints,
the lute-playing angels and nibbling squirrels and twittering birds of
Gothic sculpture, I wish to put before the reader in one significant
example. The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although finished
in the thirteenth century, had been begun and consecrated so early as
1135, and the porch thereof, as is frequently the case, appears to have
been erected earlier than other portions. Of this porch two pillars
are supported by life-sized figures, one bearded, one beardless, both
dressed in the girdled smock of the early Middle Ages. The enormous
weight of the porch is resting, not conventionally (as in the antique
caryatid) on the head, but on the spine; and the head is protruded
forwards in a fearful effort to save itself, the face most frightfully
convulsed: another moment and the spine must be broken and the head
droop freely down. Before the portals, but not supporting anything,