[230] M. Cartier, in his introduction to the Life of Fra Angelico, has adduced many passages from St. Thomas, not only elucidating the philosophy of Christian art, but showing that he had a natural taste for such pursuits, and drew from them more than one graceful illustration. Thus he lays down the three conditions of beauty to consist in entireness, proportion, and clearness of colour. He also enunciates that broad principle which justifies us in requiring that one who aims at representing spiritual subjects should himself be holy in life, when he declares that “all inferior forms flow from the forms which are in the intellect.” For how then, we may argue, can a spiritual form flow from a debased intellect? And among the maxims and sayings preserved by his biographers there occur more than one, the imagery of which seems to show even a practical acquaintance with the art of painting.
[231] Histoire Eccl., vol. xviii. p. 686.
[232] The image is taken from St. Gregory, who compares secular letters to the smiths’ tools which were to be found in the hands, not of the Israelites, but of the Philistines. Nevertheless, he says, as the Israelites went down to the Philistines and borrowed their tools to sharpen their own instruments, so Christians may and ought to use the liberal arts in order to explain and defend the truths of religion. And those who seek to prohibit the faithful from the study of the liberal sciences are like the Philistines who did not suffer the children of Israel to have smiths among them, “lest they should make them swords or spears.” (S. Greg. in 1 Reg. lib. v. c. iii. No. 30.)
[233] Greith; Die Deutsche Mystik im Prediger-Orden, pp 38, 39.
[234] Quoted by Sighart (French Trans.), p. 378.
[235] Summa, 2, 2, qu. 180, 1, ad 1 et 2.
[236] Ibid. 1. 2, qu. 27, a. 2, and 2.
[237] S. Thom. 2, 2, q. 27, a. 6.
[238] Sup. Psal. xxi.
[239] Sermon for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost.