Examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely to prove how slow but sure was this gradual self-assertion of the type that was compatible with Christian values, and the early period of mediæval art is well described by Woltmann and Woermann as one in which the classical cast of figure and features gets swallowed up in ugliness.[14] Finally, in the seventh century, the most daring and most extraordinary artistic feat of all was accomplished. The greatest paradox the world had ever seen--a god on a cross--was portrayed for men's eyes to behold. The Crucifixion became one of the loftiest subjects of Christian art, and the god of the Christians was painted in his death agony. I will not dwell upon the manifold influences exercised by this class of picture; I simply record the fact, in order to show with what steadily increasing audacity the Church ultimately realized and exhibited its type. For, the fact that Christian Art was didactic, as all art is which is associated with the will and idea of a fighting cause, and which is born on a soil of clashing values, nobody seems to deny.[15] Paulinus of Nola, Gregory the Great, Bishop Germanus, Gregory the Second,[16] John of Damascus and Basil the Great were all agreed as to the incalculable worth of images in the propagation of the Christian doctrine, and their attitude, subsequently adopted by the Franciscans and Dominicans, lasted, according to Milman, until very late in the Middle Ages. When it is remembered, moreover, that illuminated manuscripts, which were destined to remain in the hands of single individuals, retained the classical mould of body and features much later than did the work for church decoration, it is not difficult to discover the strong motive which lay behind the production of public art.[17] With Roman culture and art, the western and northern provinces of Gaul, Spain, Germany and Britain thus received their religion and their ideal type; and if to-day, in our ball-rooms and drawing-rooms we are often confronted with tenuous, flamelike, swan-necked creatures, that recall Burne-Jones, Botticelli, Duccio and Segna to our minds, we know to which values these people owe their slender, heaven-aspiring stature, and their long, sensitive fingers. For the attitude of the Christian ideal to Life, to the body, and to the world was an entirely negative one. The command from on high was, that the deeds of the body should be mortified through the Spirit. All beauty, all voluptuousness, smoothness and charm were very naturally regarded with suspicion by the promoters of such an ideal; for beauty, voluptuousness and shapeliness lure back to Life, lure back to the flesh, and ultimately back to the body.