328 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
and the Christian are mingled in strange confusion.! Insufficient as 
they are, these few references will show how widely, and with what 
a variety of motives, the story of the Psychomachia was transmitted 
through medieval literature. 
Without any additional evidence from sources more remote, it is 
interesting to read the same story of the opposition of vice to 
virtue as it was written in stone by the sculptors of the cathedrals. 
On account of the medium in which they worked, their rendering 
of the moral struggle was static, gaining its effect by visible contrast 
rather than by action. The virtues and vices are grouped in pairs, 
the former represented as dignified women, sitting composedly, as 
though filled with the peace of God, the latter as men or women 
under the sway of some uncontrolled passion. For example, Faith 
is seated on a bench holding a shield emblazoned with her sym- 
bols, a cross and a chalice. Opposite her is Idolatry—a man worship- 
ing a monkey-shaped idol. Charity is represented in the act of 
giving her clothing to the poor, while Avarice greedily fills her 
treasure-box. Still more directly did the sculptors draw from the 
text of the Psychomachia for their image of Pride, whom they 
represented falling from a stumbling horse. In a second group of 
allegorical medallions on the north portal of the cathedral of Chartres, 
the triumphant virtues stand over the prostrate forms of their van- 
quished foes, as if in illustration of the close of the separate combats 
of the Psychomachia. So the contrasted virtues and vices are 
depicted in pairs on the facades of the great cathedrals, virtue being 
represented in its essence, and vice by its lamentable effects.” 
For this method of contrast, which at first seems peculiar to pic- 
torial art, one can find theological authority. In the instructions for 
the adaptation of discourse given in the Pastoral Care, Gregory 
placed side by side the psychological extremes—the lowly nature 
with the haughty, the peaceful with the quarrelsome, the kind with 
the envious. In a more vivid manner Isidore of Seville contrasted 
the virtues and the vices in pairs, Abstinence and Lust, Envy and 
Charity, and the like, with a brief exposition of each.? Likewise in 
the treatise, De Conflictu Vitiorum et Virtutum, which has been at- 
tributed to a half-dozen different churchmen, the author enumerates 
the full list of opposed virtues and vices. He then steps aside to 

1 Assembly of Gods, especially 603 ff. 
2 See Male, 1832-59. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the 
vices as well as the virtues were personified instead of being represented 
by their effects. See Male?, 2. 1. 
3 Sententiarum Libr? Tres, Patr. Lat., 83. 638 (2. 37). 
