animates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition,
purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living
heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence
collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out
of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith,
and vital craftsmanship, of the world.

67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. The word
'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. I mean
Lombard, Scandinavian, Frankish; everything north-savage that you can
think of, except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never mind
it just now.)[L]

All north-savage I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; this
latter including dead native Greek primarily--then dead foreign Greek,
in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can think
of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one
term Byzantine. Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hot
art--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no conscience, no
didactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are.

Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarum
through the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, and
the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno. There the northern and
southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they
are first baptized unto John's baptism for the remission of sins; there
is born, and thence exiled,--thought faithless, for breaking the font of
baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'--the
greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost.

68. Now, therefore, my whole history of _Christian_ architecture and
painting begins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with its
associated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you
now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose,
and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school.

For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world. Here is
the center of Christian knowledge and power.

And it is one piece of large _engraving_. White substance, cut into, and
filled with black, and dark-green.

No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you to grasp the
idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as I
told you in a previous lecture) to qui