Art and Science 



pagando il danaro si pud scegliere. It rests 

 not with history or with the Church to say 

 whether the Madonna and Child were black 

 or white, but you may settle it for yourself, 

 whichever way you please, or rather you are 

 required, with the acquiescence of the Church, 

 to hold that they were both black and white 

 at one and the same time. 



It cannot be maintained that the Church 

 leaves the matter undecided, and by tolerating 

 both types proclaims the question an open 

 one, for she acquiesces in the portrait by St. 

 Luke as genuine. How, then, justify the 

 whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels ? 

 If the portrait is not known as genuine, why 

 set such a stumbling-block in our paths as to 

 show us a black Madonna and a white one, 

 both as historically accurate, within a few 

 yards of one another? 



I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing 

 that the Church must have an explanation to 

 give, if she would only give it, and as my- 

 self unable to find any, even the most far- 

 fetched, that can bring what we see at 

 Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony 



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