human
What is the meaning in the cloisters, before the brother occupied in reading, of those ridiculous monsters, those deformed beauties, those beautiful deformities? What do they there, those unclean apes, those fierce lions, those monstrous centaurs, those figures half man, half beast, those striped tigers, those fighting soldiers, those huntsmen who sound the horn? On one side, I see many heads on a single body; on the other, many bodies with a single head; here a beast with a serpent's tail; there a fish with an animal's head. Half a horse ends in half a goat; a horned animal bears a horse's croup. Everywhere appears a multitude of varied and uncouth forms. More pleasure is taken in reading on marble than in books; we choose rather to pass the whole day in looking upon these pictures than in meditating upon the Divine Law. Great God, though we blush not at such follies, let us blush, at least, at the sums they cost!