e illiterate. Incapable of distinguishing the good from the
bad, it included in one condemnation the filth of pornography and real
works of art; in short, it ended by emitting such folly and talking such
preposterous nonsense, that it fell into utter discredit and ceased to
count at all.

And it would have been so easy for it to work on a little way, to try to
keep up with the times, and to understand, to convince itself whether in
any given work the author was writing up the Flesh, glorifying it,
praising it, and nothing more, or whether, on the contrary, he depicted
it merely to buffet it--hating it. And, again, it would have done well
to convince itself that there is a chaste as well as a prurient nude,
and that it should not cry shame on every picture in which the nude is
shown. Above all, it ought to have recognized that vices may well be
depicted and studied with a view to exciting disgust of them and showing
their horrors.

For, after all, this was the great theory of the Middle Ages, the
theological method in sculpture, the literary dogma of the monks of that
time; and this is the meaning and purpose of certain groups which even
now shock the propriety of our methodistical purists. These unseemly
subjects and images of indecency are very numerous at Saint Benoit on
the Loire, in the cathedral of Reims, at le Mans, in the crypt at
Bourges, everywhere in our churches; for in those where they do not
occur, it is because the prudery which was most rife in the most immoral
times, broke them by stoning them in the name of a morality very unlike
that which was inculcated by the mediaeval saints.

These subjects have for many years been the delight of Freethinkers and
the despair of Catholics; those see in them a scathing satire on the
manners of the monks and bishops, these lament that such turpitude
should ever have fouled the walls of the Temple. And yet it would have
been so easy to explain the purpose of these scenes; far from seeking to
apologize for the tolerance of the Church that allowed them, her honesty
and breadth should have been held up to admiration. By acting thus, the
Church manifested her determination to inure her sons by showing them
the ridiculous side of the temptations which assail them. It was, so to
speak, an object lesson or demonstration, and at the same time a bidding
to self-examination before venturing into the sanctuary which was thus
prefaced by a catalogue of sins as a reminder to conf