To the Phidian Jupiter it can oppose the Moses of Michael Angelo; and to the voluptuous beauty of the Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of the Virgin Mother.

The legends of its martyrs and its saints may vie in ingenuity and interest with the mythological fables of Greece; its ceremonies and processions were the delight of the vulgar; the huge fabric of secular power with which it was connected attracted the admiration of the statesman.

At the same time, it never lost sight of the most solemn and tremendous doctrines of Christianity,--the incarnate God,--the judgment,--the retribution,--the eternity of happiness or torment.

Thus, while, like the ancient religions, it received incalculable support from policy and ceremony, it never wholly became, like those religions, a merely political and ceremonial institution.
The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as Machiavelli has remarked, the era of a great revival of this extraordinary system.

The policy of Innocent,--the growth of the Inquisition and the mendicant orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans of the East, and the unfortunate princes of the house of Swabia, agitated Italy during the two following generations.