With the devastation that Italy had suffered the Latin language was
becoming extinct. But Roman literature had never been converted to
Christianity. Of the best writers among the Fathers, not one was a
Roman; all were provincials. The literary basis was the Hebrew
Scriptures and the New Testament, the poetical imagery being, for the
most part, borrowed from the prophets. In historical compositions there
was a want of fair dealing and truthfulness almost incredible to us;
thus Eusebius naively avows that in his history he shall omit whatever
might tend to the discredit of the Church, and magnify whatever might
conduce to her glory. The same principle was carried out in numberless
legends, many of them deliberate forgeries, the amazing credulity of the
times yielding to them full credit, no matter how much they might
outrage common sense. But what else was to be expected of generations
who could believe that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels were still
impressed on the sands of the Red Sea, and could not be obliterated
either by the winds or the waves? He who ventured to offend the public
taste for these idle fables brought down upon himself the wrath of
society, and was branded as an infidel. In the interpretation of the
Scriptures, and, indeed, in all commentaries on authors of repute, there
was a constant indulgence in fanciful mystification and the detection of
concealed meanings, in the extracting of which an amusing degree of
ingenuity and industry was often shown; but these hermeneutical
writings, as well as the polemical, are tedious beyond endurance; with
regard to the latter, the energy of their vindictive violence is not
sufficient to redeem them from contempt.

[Sidenote: Painting and sculpture.]

[Sidenote: Adopts a typical model of the Saviour,]

The relation of the Church to the sister arts, painting and sculpture,
was doubtless fairly indicated at a subsequent time by the second
Council of Nicea, A.D. 787; their superstitious use had been resumed.
Sculpture has, however, never forgotten the preference that was shown to
her sister. To this day she is a pagan, emulating in this the example of
the noblest of the sciences, Astronomy, who bears in mind the great
insults she has received from the Church, and tolerates the name of no
saint in the visible heavens; the new worlds she discovers are dedicated
to Uranus, or Neptune, or other Olympian divinities. Among the
ecclesiastics there had always been