3-021-010 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Bible and the Monk," by J. Pettie, in the Winter Exhibition, Suffolk-Street, 1865. Engraving of a painting set during the Reformation. 'The monk is the very impersonation of that spiritual pride and arrogance which too commonly characterise the priestly profession...he stands resenting as a personal insult the attempt to defy or escape from his authority; he scouts it as a heinous sin; he is prepared to consign to everlasting perdition the tenderest and most innocent of his fellow-creatures...The enormities of the "Inquisition," so ominously suggested in the title, are but the logical and natural consequences of such a spirit as this. The poor girl, so interesting in her sweet, intelligent beauty and gentleness, must needs quail before the monk's domineering energy; nor can she steel herself to a mother's agonised entreaty, or be insensible to those habitual instincts of submission and reverence proper to her sex. The aged mother...is only the slave and instrument of the "holy man's" will and pleasure. In representing a young female instead of a man as possessed of the forbidden bible, the artist has doubtless wished to indicate the all- powerful influence and blind submission which priests everywhere exert over and exact from women'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.