"
"What luck that Savonarola is burnt, else he would have burnt these
paintings."
At the mention of Savonarola's name the monk awoke from the state of
aesthetic intoxication into which the pictures had brought him, and
rushed out into the night. Savonarola, the last of the martyrs, who
had sought to save Christendom and had been burnt! All were burnt
who tried to serve Christ--by way of encouraging them.
How could one expect people to believe in Christianity? What added
to his trouble of mind was the fact that this painter who had the
name of an angel, and looked like an angel, painted Jupiter and nude
women! Nothing kept what it promised; all was dust and ashes.
_Vanitas!_ But this heathenism which sprang from the earth, what was
its object?
Even the divine Dante had chosen a heathen Roman poet, Virgil, as
his guide through Hell, and a beautiful maiden as his companion on
the way to heaven. That was foolishness and blasphemy.
The end of the world must be approaching, for Antichrist was come
and ruled in Rome. But an Antichrist had always sat on the Papal
throne, which was itself an evil, for Paul had taught that in
Christ's Church we are all priests and should form a priesthood.
So he reached his cell again, and recovered himself and his God in
solitude.
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