SOURCE: "Gill, Chesterton and Ruskin: mediaevalism in the Twentieth Century," in The Chesterton Review, Vol. IX, No. 1, February, 1983, pp. 15-30.

In the following essay, Corrigan traces the connection between Gill and G. K. Chesterton, both Catholic, and John Ruskin, who distanced himself from Catholicism.

G.K. Chesterton's ready talent for perceiving life in terms of paradox had at least one remarkable lapse. When he and fellow Catholic, Eric Gill, became the most outspoken disciples of Ruskinian mediævalism in the twentieth century, Chesterton failed to see the joke. Perhaps, in this instance, he saw not a contradiction but a cure. Ruskin, after all, had suffered from what Chesterton once termed a "splitting headache" which distorted his vision to the extent that he recognised all parts of a Gothic cathedral except the altar.¹ Through a sustained series of historical contortions, Ruskin managed more successfully than any of his contemporaries...