I received your letter and its contents all quite right and hold the balance 11 francs 30 cts. at your disposition.
I am glad to hear of the revival of the Palm Sunday Procession[1] and hope it may only be no. 1 of a series of revivals.
I should like the ballads in whatever style you think would be most likely to become popular.[2]
The Manual[3] is getting on pretty well[4] and I hope to set the printer at work ere long, but Casterman is rather slow, but I on the other hand am perhaps too impatient.
I will try & find out about Jan Praet. I am very glad Mr Lefevre is pleased; if he wishes to have the interior & the shutters painted I will gladly make him a design. I should however like to know what he means to put inside a crucifix or a Madonna as the diapre ofp2the centre should be in harmony therewith on exterior of shutters. I would suggest scrolls with legends. I shall probably run down & see you next week & will talk this over. Meantime I enclose the crosses for decorations.
I am afraid that many of your clerical confreres will be startled with my pamphlet[5] that I shall be looked upon as a dangerous man by those who like things to go on quietly. I have shown it to several friends who all say they think it must do good but fear it will not meet with approval of authority.
I commence by thanking Alb. Thijm for his defence of iconographical principles & show that the greater the authority of the writer who puts forth an error the more necessary it is to support the tradition of Christian art against novelties. After this I speak of modern artists, how little they care about putting their production in harmony with church requirements, how little they know of symbolism or rubrics. p3Then I speak of consequences of this neglect of what I hold to be their bounden duty to inform themselves on . I then describe the actual state of our churches as constrasted with what they were. I then give a description of a grand high mass. Then I quote 2 or 3 persons on the decay of reverence & religion in Belgium, try to show the causes of this. Show that it is impossible to have Christian art without Christian Education. Show the evil results of Pagan Education. Who its patrons were & who opposed it. Their lives contrasted. Paganism in life produced Pagan art. Quote Bishops who recommend preceptors to teach youth morality out of Plato &c rather than out of Bible, the former persuading to virtue while the latter is apt to disgust by its simplicity & severity. Show that this love of prettiness is at bottom of all modern ideas. Our artists quite at ease when you ask for a painting or statue of Mercury God of thieves, Mars god of war, Jupiter god of adulterers. Venus goddess of love &c but know nothing of Saints.-. The state to which Renaissance has brought us. Dangers at present day. Means to avoid them. Picture of what p4Europe would become if Christian principles were generally adopted.
Now what will not be liked are the fearful proofs - all irrefutable - of Pagan lives of all the chief promoters of Renaissance. Popes Emperors Cardinals Bishops, downwards. But this I believe to be a sad necessity. I think that even you will be astonished at the length to which I prove the Renaissance people dared to go; E.g. representing Our Beloved Lady in an Assumption under the form of Venus with nothing on but a gauze girdle and the bracelet of that impure goddess. Yet this basrelief exists in the Church of St. Denis. I believe that my pamphlet will be eventually productive of good. Our principles must win. It is impossible to win the fight if we are not armed with Christian weapons.