Calvinism - pagina 216

CALVINISM AND ART.

212

Church a somewhat

Christian in

place.

in

the

The

high

demoralized,

was

still

and

civilization

its

world,

bound,

at

its

the outset,

to

dominating overestimation of

appearance

by

itself

splendour.

artistic

here

is

which, though tho-

recommended

oppose principle to

order to

in

Roman

explanation

made

Christian Religion

Greek and

roughly

fuller

its

Therefore,

principle, Christianity

react against the then-

art,

and thereby

to break

the dangerous influence which Paganism was exercising, in

As

world.

tiful

by the enchantment

last convulsion,

its

Paganism

therefore,

remained a

of

relation

long,

struggle

Christianity

This

hostile one.

to

as for

life

or

death, the

not but be an

period was followed almost im-

first

Roman

mediately by the influx into the highly civilized

Empire of the

still

beau-

its

the struggle with

could

art

of

almost barbaric Germanic

tribes,

whose speedy baptism the centre of power gradually removed from Italy to beyond the Northern after

Alps,

to the Church, as early as the 8th

thus giving,

century an almost exclusive ascendency over the whole of Europe.

Thanks

several

centuries

for

human

to

this

constellation, the

Church

became the guardian of higher

and so nobly did she acquit herself of

life,

this

exalted task that no religious hatred or party prejudice

dares

question any longer the glorious result she then

In the

achieved.

literal

sense of the word,

all

human

development of that period depended entirely upon the church.

No

shielded

by

nated

that

passion,

science

and no

art

could prosper unless

ecclesiastical protection.

And

hence

specifically Christian art, which, in

tried

to

embody

the

maximum

its

origifirst

of spiritual

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