A POET'S

LIFE OF
OUR LORD
By Fr. J. H. Crehan, S.J.
SON OF MAN, by Leslie Paul (Hodder & Stoughton, 21s.).
VROM poetry and philosophy Mr. Leslie Paul has turned to the life of Our Lord. He has spent considerable periods in Palestine and can describe the lakeside scene and the Judacan hills with the poet's eye for shape and movement if not for colour.
The purple ploughlands of Esdraelon and the green water of Jordan where it flows out of the lake seem to have escaped him.
There are places where a Catholic would disagree with his presentation.
Clear tradition THUS it is not simply Christian sentiment that demands belief in the continuing virginity of Mary but a clear tradition of the Church. Again, while Mr. Paul accepts John the Apostle as author of the fourth gospel, he provides him with a Greek philosopher as shadow, to account for what he calls the Platonic meditation of chapters 13 to 17; this ignores the Hebraic, Johannine character of those chapters which do not stand out from the rest like a patch on a garment.
On the watch mR. PAUL is sound on the Resurrection, the confession of Peter and so much else, and he writes with reverence and alertness.
He uses the gospel narrative skilfully, and is not content to be just a compiler: personal reflection counts for something with him, as when he conjectures that the owner of the Cenacle on Mount Sion may have been a seller of water. whose men with their pitchers would have been a familiar sight in the city, and whose house may have been quite well placed for using the aqueduct.
THE Piazza del Popolo in Rome, one of the most imposing squares in the world. is a stronghold of the baroque. Two baroque churches, S. Maria in Montesanto and S. Maria del Miracoli with symmetrical façades. dominate it. and S. Maria del Popolo. a church whose origins date back to the eleventh century. hut which was restored to a baroque splendour in the fifteenth, is so filled with works of art it is almost like a museum.
The Chigi chapel, illustrated here, was designed by Raphael and the sculptures are by Lorenzetto and Bernini who was invited hy Pope Alexander VII to restore the whole Chigi chapel his family's monument in the baroque style.
The Pope was well pleased with Bernini' s work in S. Maria del Popolo and Bernini was employed to add the façade and gallery to Castel Gandolfo, still the summer residence of the Popes. and then to build the great colonnade around the piazza of St. Peter's.
Iris Con lay