The Canon of Polycleitus (Rome)
And if you think of the physical and spiritual operations they had been made to undergo, you will not feel very much inclined to question these conclusions. It must not be supposed that the canon of Polycletus, measuring seven heads, was transformed into the Byzantine canon, measuring nine heads, without some one's suffering—even though it took centuries to effect the change. It must not be believed that the calm Pagan idea of death was converted into the Christian terror of death without the sacrifice of something; nor must these emaciated, careworn, and neurotic faces in Mediæval paintings be conceived as mere inventions of morbid phantasy. The deeds of the body are not mortified through the Spirit with impunity. Such brilliant achievements have their accounts to pay, and the Church never once deceived itself or its followers as to what was paying, what was suffering, or where the amputations and vivisections were taking place.
Look at the type of which the monks approved! Examine it in Cimabue's, Duccio's, Segna's and the Cologne painters' pictures. Examine it in the tapestry of Berne, known as the "Adoration of the Kings"; look at it in countless stained glass windows, and see its repetition in hundreds of illuminated manuscripts, some of which, like the Latin missal of the Church of St. Bavon at Ghent, and the Lives of the Saints by Simeon Metaphrasi, have found their way into the British Museum.
Then ask yourself whether or not humanity was suffering in conforming itself to this holy creed. "Like those mothers," says Lecky, "who govern their children by persuading them that the dark is crowded with spectres that' will seize the disobedient, and who often succeed in creating an association of ideas which the adult man is unable altogether to dissolve, the Catholic priests, by making the terrors of death for centuries the nightmare of the imagination, resolved to base their power upon the nerves."[28]
And, now that all this is known and realized, what is the meaning of the Renaissance, what is its explanation?
[20] Speaking of Gothic buildings in general, Fergusson, in A History of Architecture, Vol. I, p. 41, says: "It is in Nature's highest works that we find the symmetry of proportion most prominent. When we descend to the lower types of animals we find we lose it to a great extent, and among trees and vegetables generally find it only in a far less degree, and sometimes miss it altogether. In the mineral kingdom among rocks and stones it is altogether absent. So universal is this principle in Nature that we may safely apply it to our criticism on art, and say that a building is perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived regularity, and departs from the highest type in the ratio in which symmetrical arrangement is neglected. It may, however, be incorrect to say that an oak-tree is a less perfect work of creation than a human body, but it is certain that a picturesque group of Gothic buildings may be as perfect as the stately regularity of an Egyptian or classic temple; but if it is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a lower and inferior class of design." Page 34: "The revival of the rites and ceremonies of the Mediæval Church, our reverent love of our own national antiquities, and our admiration of the rude but vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages, all have combined to repress the classical element, both in our literature and in our art, and to exalt in their place Gothic feelings and Gothic art to an extent which cannot be justified on any grounds of reasonable criticism."