men.[537] She is endowed with the faculty of omniscience and ubiquity, and is made almost to thrust the Eternal from his throne by her usurpation of his divine prerogatives.[538] But this impious blasphemy seems to have culminated in the Italian frescoes of the fifteenth century, in which the infamous Giulia Farnese is exhibited in the character of the Madonna, and Pope Alexander VI., the execrable Borgia, kneeling as a votary at her feet. The Florentine churches, too, were desecrated by portraits of well-known harlots, flaunting their meretricious beauty as the 321 personations of the mother of Our Lord. For his denunciation of these profanations and of other impieties Savonarola perished at the stake.[539] The rapid development of Mariolatry, the great corruption of Christianity, as Hallam has justly called it, may to some extent be regarded as a reaction against the harsh and austere character which was given to Our Lord both in art and dogma. He was enthroned in awful majesty as the dreadful Judge of mankind. Removed from human sympathy, inspiring only terror to the soul, he was no longer Christ the Consoler, but Christ the Avenger.[540] Religion was darkened by dismal bodings of endless doom, and embittered by the fierceness of polemic strife; and the moral atmosphere seemed lurid with the hurtling anathemas of rival sects. To the yearning hearts of mankind; to the multitude of the weary and the heavy laden, to whom the Saviour’s voice, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest,” was inaudible amid 322 the conflicts of the times; and especially to those bowed down with a sense of sin and sorrow, and trembling at the thought of the severe, inexorable Judge, the gentle gospel of Mary came with a sweet and winning grace that found its way into their inmost souls. All images of tenderness and ruth surrounded her. The blending Of mother’s love with maiden purity[541] touched the hidden springs of feeling which exist in the rudest natures, and made the worship of Mary a religion of hope and consolation. She became the new Mediatrix between the sinful human soul and the Father in heaven. Those who shrank from God fled for succour to the virgin mother. The pitifulness of her human nature was esteemed a stronger ground of confidence than that infinite compassion and everlasting love which was manifested in the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane and the cross and passion of Calvary. Hence Mary has often been regarded as a sort of tutelar divinity by the ferocious brigand who stained with blood the scapular which he wore as a sacred talisman; and by the daughter of shame who, in strange blending profligacy and devotion, cherished her image in the very lair of vice.