Mr. Coulton is consciously out to break idols, and he does so effectively. In moderation it is healthy and exhilarating; pursued for long stretches, it leaves one a little weary, invites reaction and confuses issues. A more eirenic perusal, for instance, of M. Maritain’s Art et Scholaslique—the contents of which he realises so inadequately—would have shown him that the scholastics held art to be a contemplative activity in the natural order, entirely engaged in the right way of making things. It may use religious symbols for material; it does not ‘express’ religion. The only thing it expresses is the form in the artist’s mind. If the artist happens to be a mystic, his work, however secular the subject, will be religious art: it results from his being. In any given civilisation the artist will use the symbols common to it. During the Middle Ages these were religious. It by no means follows that specifically Christian art was abundant. Indeed, it becomes increasingly rare as we descend from the Byzantine heights to the dreary flats of naturalism.

We think also that Mr. Coulton has not escaped confusing a discussion of medieval civilisation—that brief period in the history of the Church of Christ— with a polemic against, or an apologetic for, the truths of the Catholic Faith. This imperils judgment, evokes unnecessary passion, and fogs objective vision.

‘It would be a mortal error,’ M. Maritain has written, ‘to confound the universal cause of the Church with the cause of a particular civilisation….