![]() ![]() Their influence continued into Christendom, albeit baptized, and thus sometimes chastened, but ubiquitous nonetheless. It was, as the theologians say, his person and work that are front and center for the community that arose in his wake.Īnd yes, before the stable in Bethlehem, there were others who could claim a portion of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle chief among them. Nor was his influence a function of his thought. Oh, there are others, not least the master they served, Jesus of Nazareth, who (they said) converted each of them, one on the road to Damascus and the other in a Milan garden, to an allegiance so singular it has long inspired and frightened less zealous hearts. The world they created - the world those poets inherited - we call Western Christendom, and they divide it between them: there is no third. Eliot once suggested, the ancient world belongs not to two poets but to two saints: Paul and Augustine. ![]() ![]() IF THE MODERN WORLD belongs to Dante and Shakespeare, as T. ![]()
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