Compendium's cover

I received in the mail today my copy of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (order yours today, here!).  It looks to be a rich and inspiring resource.  The introduction describes nicely the foundation for the whole enterprise -- an "integral and solidary humanism," one oriented to the "full truth about man." 

As much as the introduction, though, I really like the cover.  It's the Allegory of Good Government, a fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, which is in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy.  (There is also, in the same room, the Allegory of Bad Government.)   Professor Nicole Garnett opened a recent paper of hers, "Ordering (and Order in) the City," with this:

The walls of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, are graced with Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s striking frescos contrasting the effects of “good government” and “bad government” on fourteenth-century city life. In the city under good government, men work to repair stately buildings, women socialize in the streets, and merchants sell their wares in a busy marketplace. In the city under bad government, the buildings are crumbling, men stand idle (save one crafting weapons), bandits terrorize the innocent, and the bodies of murder victims lie in the streets.  The goals of urban policy, it appears, have not changed in over six hundred years.

The frescoes' messages seem consonant with the renewed interest, particularly among Christians, in urbanism, and also with Joel Kotkin's dictum that cities were, and should be, "sacred, safe, and busy."