William Blake: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.”

We recently observed the Law part of that elegantly stated double dialectic. The uncovering of the second was, perhaps, inevitable:

Two women were arrested on suspicion of prostitution after seven rooms were found in a building close to Sretensky Monastery where sexual services were offered from 1,750 roubles (£35) per hour.

Father Tikhon, the abbot of the monastery, is said to be a religious counsellor to Mr Putin, who is a confirmed Russian Orthodox believer.

There were conflicting reports over the ownership of the brothel, found in one of a chain of mini-hotels called Podushkin.

Life News, a popular muckraking website with close ties to the police and security services, said the building where the brothel was located on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard had been rented out by the monastery.

And so Blake’s proverb folds back on itself. Not for the first time.

[H/t Anonymous]