The Light of the East June 1946

So when the 16th-century innovators affected to take umbrage at the use of pictures and statues in the Catholic Church theologians were wont to point out to them that the Church was not bound in the same way as the Syngogue by the observance of the letter of the Decalogue and that she was not at all bound by the Mosaic prescriptions. [...] " The flourishing condition of the fine arts in the days of the Flavii of Trajan of Hadrian and of the Antonines and of the great number of their professors in the metropolis of the Epire the conversion to Christianity of poweful personages and even of members of Iperial families such as Domitilla and Flavius Clemens certainly very much favoured the introduction and development of [...] And on the contrary the deline of these same fine arts in the third and fourth centuries ; the increasing cost of the handiwork of the painter and the sculptor as their numbers diminished every day ; the gradual but continuous impoverishment of public and private fortunes which induced even the Senate and the Emperors to make their new monuments at the expense of others more ancient —all th [...] Writing about these cemeteries Kuegler a competent and independent critic has it that " as regards the distribution of the spaces and mode of decoration they approach very near to the wall-paintings of the best period of the empire ; the light arabesques remind us of the paintings at Pompeii and the Baths of Titus ; they are characterised by a peculiar solemnity and dignity of style though acc [...] 6/1565-72 THE RULE OF LAW The distinctive mark of a free society is not the existence of democracy but the oservance of the rule of law.