|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: goodness of the Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet,
though the Vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost
the rod of its lightning, it is better for the artist not to live
with Popes. It was a Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of
Cardinals that common laws and common authority were not made for
men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust Cellini into prison,
and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and created unreal
visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his room, and
grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept out
from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed
himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and
|
