History of art . , and even a vague, universal, and confusedculture. But their imagination moved within limits—immense and multiform, be it said—of the life thatsurrounded them, and their instinct as artists was tooimperious to permit their theological and legendaryculture to furnish them anything but pretexts for themanifestation of that instinct. Our Lady the Virginstepped out of the stone alive, because the image ofmaternity, in this period of superabundant life, waseverywhere. And if the saints and the angels sur-rounded the portals, it was because those who sufferedsaw faces of kindness a
History of art . , and even a vague, universal, and confusedculture. But their imagination moved within limits—immense and multiform, be it said—of the life thatsurrounded them, and their instinct as artists was tooimperious to permit their theological and legendaryculture to furnish them anything but pretexts for themanifestation of that instinct. Our Lady the Virginstepped out of the stone alive, because the image ofmaternity, in this period of superabundant life, waseverywhere. And if the saints and the angels sur-rounded the portals, it was because those who sufferedsaw faces of kindness and faces of hope bending overthem daily in their distress. The Church, in the course of its defensive organiza-tion, had turned aside, to the profit of its external power,the impulsion of sentiment from which Christianity CHRISTIANITY AND THE COMMUNE 311 had sprung. The France of the thirteenth centuryrestored this impulsion of sentiment in the full life ofhumanity. Under the pressure of this inner force, the. Rheims (xiii Century). A knight. {Cathedral.) old world of theology cracked everywhere. Christi-anity, which until then had dominated life, was dom-inated by it and carried along in its movement. Movingon a higher plane than that of the Semitic idea of SaintPaul, who had prepared life for its explosion by forcing 312 MEDIEVAL ART repose upon it, contrary to the discipline of Romewhich, for a thousand years, had been raising dikes toprotect it against the anarchical forces from without.
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
