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 V

 
 THE CRUCIFIXION" AND RESURRECTION. LAUriFNTIAN M.S., A.D. DJ
 
 THE ART TEACHING 
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH: 
 
 Jfnto* of Subjects, |]istoatntl ana (Emblematic. 
 
 REV. R ST. JOHX TYEWHITT, M.A.. 
 
 FORMERLY STUDEXT AMD TUTOR OF CHRIST CHURC3, OXFORD. 
 
 Published under the Direction of the Committee of General Literature 
 
 and Education appointed by the Society for Promoting 
 
 i iiristian Knowledge. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SOCIETY FOB PBOMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : ^£>£_> 
 
 77, On eat Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; 
 4, Royal Exchange ; 48, Piccadilly ; 
 
 and by all booksellers.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 I 
 
 010 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume contains some notes of the traditionary- 
 subjects of Early Christian art as far as the first 
 Italian Eenaissance. That period, it seems, may 
 be best marked by the name of Niccola Pisano. 
 Whatever the unknown artists of the earliest Lom- 
 bard churches may have done, the careful study 
 of Ancient or Attic-Greek models, as distinguished 
 from those of the Byzantine school, is held to 
 begin with that great master ; whose life marks 
 the commencement of Modern art. By his time, 
 the Gothic or Mediaeval choice of subject and treat- 
 ment was fully established. It is an object of this 
 work to point out some of the differences in these 
 respects, between mediaeval and primitive Church- 
 art, and to give, some notes of the progressive in- 
 trusion of legend and polytheism into the ancient 
 cycle of Scriptural art-teaching. 
 
 The various references have of course cost some 
 labour. For the Catacombs, the works of Bosio,
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 Arinffki, and Bottari are all clue to the labours of 
 the first, and his plates were used to illustrate 
 them all : Aringhi's Symbolic Index is a mine of 
 learned comment and reference. One book or the 
 other will generally be found accessible. Though 
 these plates give no idea of the present appear- 
 ance, or rather the gradual disappearance, of the 
 buried frescoes, they may probably be accurate 
 records of the subjects once represented. Cardinal 
 Bosio's integrity was equal to his enthusiasm, 
 and he had no polemical motive in his work of 
 re-discovery. It is therefore generally assumed 
 in this book, that his authority is sufficient to 
 prove that such and such subjects (of often un- 
 certain date within the first eight centuries) have 
 been found in Christian sepulchres, whether the 
 latter were of greater antiquity than their decora- 
 tions or not. 
 
 For modern text-books on this subject, Alt's 
 " Heiligenbilder," and Martigny's " Dictionnaire 
 des Antiquites Chretiennes," will supply the reader 
 with ample information, and open to him a vast 
 range of reference for more extended study, which 
 is sure to increase in interest, as the connection 
 between early art, archaeology, and history is better 
 understood.
 
 PEEFACE. Vll 
 
 For the present state of monuments and examples, 
 Mr. J. H. Parker's collection of Eoman and other 
 photographs stands by itself as a unique and in- 
 valuable addition to modern means of accurate 
 knowledge. 
 
 I have expressed my obligations to Professor 
 Westwood more than once in the text ; hut I 
 have to thank him particularly for access to his 
 large collection of ivories ; and for a sight of a 
 valuable monograph on Christian sculpture, by 
 Dr. Appell, of the South Kensington Museum. 
 
 E. St. J. T.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAQF. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELIGIOUS AST-HISTORY 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1CONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS 99 
 
 NOTE ON FRESCO-PAINTINGS AT. NAPLES, IN THE CATACuMBS 
 
 OF ST, JANUARIUS 134 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MOSAICS 137 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE 177
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE moss 193 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EUCHARISTIC SYMBOLISM AND REPRESENTATION .... 217 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE cnrciFix 229 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE LOMBARDS 255 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 GENERA! 290 
 
 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS OF SACRED 
 
 ART IN THE rUIMITrVE CHURCH 307
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PA UK 
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION Front. 
 
 THE GRAFFITO BLASFBMO 7 
 
 VINE HO. I. — t'ALLIXTINE I ATACOMK 3:2 
 
 THE STATION CBO88 AT MAYENCE 34 
 
 VINE NO. II. — CHAPEL OF GALLA PLACIDIA 67 
 
 CALMXTINE HEAT) OF CHRIST 98 
 
 THE TWO NOAHS 135 
 
 THE STATION CROSS AT MAYENCE (BACK VIEW) .... 136 
 
 STATUE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD 174 
 
 ADAM AND EYE. — FIGURES FROM SARCOPHAGUS . . . . 176 
 
 THE LATERAN CROSS 192 
 
 THE ASCENSION 306 
 
 EAGl.E SYMBOI
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The ancient relics and monuments of Christian 
 art are a portion of the history of the Primitive 
 Church. All historians acknowledge their impor- 
 tance as documents ; and several attempts are made 
 in these pages to illustrate their connection with 
 doctrine. But the chief practical object of this work 
 is to indicate and appeal to that tradition of sacred 
 art, for the plain purposes of Gospel education, which 
 the writer believes to have been continued in use in 
 the Church from her earliest paintings, — the " Ciclo 
 Biblico" of the Catacombs. 
 
 The religious paintings and carvings of any race 
 of men are, in fact, evidence of the belief of the 
 people, and let us know the actual thoughts and hopes 
 of ordinary persons about the faith they hold. The 
 Catacomb pictures are a standard of religious in- 
 telligence, which show us how people received and 
 understood the word preached and written. To a prac- 
 tical man, interested in, yet distressed by, the ways 
 of common life in any age, thoughts of the Christian 
 
 B <**.
 
 2 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 faith are inseparable from thoughts of death: and 
 in the earliest paintings we have the ideas which 
 martyrs and hearers of Apostles themselves dwelt 
 on and commended to others in the hour of death. 
 They attempted no description of Paradise or of 
 Heaven ; they did not, for centuries, dwell on the Glory 
 of Christ the Lord, as seen in Apocalyptic vision : 
 they scarcely appealed to the judgment to come, 
 they denounced no vengeance from Heaven on those 
 who sought their lives. These were not the great 
 and leading thoughts of the faith, which the early 
 Church desired plain men to dwell on in the most 
 solemn hours of life, and at its end. She continued 
 the teaching of St. Peter and St. Paul, and appealed 
 to the ancient Law and the Prophets, asserting the 
 connection of the Mosaic and the Christian dispen- 
 sations. If the multitude of the first Pentecost 
 believed the witness of the patriarch David about 
 the Holy One Who should not be suffered to see 
 corruption, they must repent and be baptized every 
 one in the name of Jesus Christ. If the Sanhedrim 
 would hearken, Stephen would tell them the history 
 of their fathers from Abraham, and its real meaning 
 for them. If King Agrippa believed the Prophets, 
 his place, in logic and right reason, was in the Church 
 with St. Paul. There had been, from the time of the 
 Fall, a promise of deliverance from corruption, evil, 
 and pain ; some great good had been determined by 
 God's fore-knowledge for man. Since Abraham, the 
 " lively oracles " concerning it had been in Abraham's 
 race, not dumb, but speaking. Accordingly the first 
 lesson of Apostolic preaching was sustained appeal to 
 the Old Testament, as typical and confirmatory of the
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 New. This was enforced by the earliest paintings ; 
 and St. Paulinus of Nola, about a.d. 400, wrote in 
 the spirit of the earliest Gospel when he said, " The 
 Ancient Law confirms the New, the New fulfils the 
 Old." 
 
 It seems to have been the special work of this 
 remarkable person to call the attention of the Italian 
 Church, in its hours of intense suffering and terror, 
 to those powerful means of instructive appeal to the 
 barbarian mind, which the relics of Graeco-Eoman art 
 yet afforded. 1 Accordingly we have evidence of the 
 
 1 His reasons for church painting are very simple — the poor 
 people understand the pictures, and can think about them, and so 
 learn better behaviour in church. 
 
 " Forte requiratur, quanam ratione gerendi 
 Sederit base nobis sententia, pingere sanctas 
 Raro more domos ammantibus adsimulatis. 
 
 turba frequentior hie est 
 Rusticitas non casta fide, neque docta legendi 
 Haec adsueta diu sacris servire profanis, 
 Ventre Deo, tandem convertitur advena Christo, 
 Dum sanctorum opera in Christo miratur aperta. 
 Propterea visum nobis opus utile, totis 
 Felices domibus pictura illudere sancta ; 
 Si forte attonitas h;ec per spectacula mentes 
 Agrestum caperet fucata coloribus umbra 
 Quse super exprimitur literis, ut litera monstret 
 Quod manus explicuit ; dumque omnes picta vicissim 
 Ostendunt releguntque sibi, vel tardius esca? 
 Sunt memores, dum grata oculis jejunia pascunt ; 
 Atque ita se melior stupefactis inserit usus, 
 Dum fallit pictura famem, sanctasque legenti 
 Historias castorum openim subrepit horcstas 
 Exemplis inducta piis; potatur hianti 
 Sobrietas, nimii subeunt oblivia vini : 
 Dumque diem ducunt spatio majore tuentes, 
 Pocula rarescunt, quia per mirantia tracto 
 Tempore, jam paucae superant epulantibus horse." 
 
 In Natal. Felic. poem ix. 
 On the Ark, &c. : 
 
 " Quo duce Jordanus suspenso gurgite fixis 
 Fluctibus, a facie divinse restitit arcae, 
 Vis nova divisit flumen ; pars amne recluso [Constitit 
 
 B 2
 
 4 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 energies of the Church, indomitable at the time when 
 all else was crushed by Alaric's capture of Rome, in 
 the great historical mosaics of St. Sabina, commenced 
 in 424, and those of St. Maria Maggiore in 432 ; the 
 litter setting forth the history of the Hebrew Law from 
 Abraham downwards. There can be no doubt that 
 the lost paintings by Paulinus in the Church of St. 
 Felix at Nola must be connected, as history, with 
 the mosaics of St. M. Maggiore. Among them were 
 scenes from the Old Testament ; the Passage of the 
 Red Sea ; Joshua and the Ark of God ; Ruth and 
 Orpah, as typical of the faithful and the backsliders 
 from faith. " These," says Milman, " must have 
 involved decided attempts at landscape, composition, 
 and expression." ' There can be no doubt to anyone 
 who has seen the Old Testament mosaics of St. M. 
 Maggiore, that if the spirit and vigour of those 
 works had continued in a succession of students, a 
 powerful school might have risen from them; as the 
 great school of Florence, in after days, struck its roots 
 in the Lombard work along the southern spurs of 
 the Alps from the 8th to the 11th century. And, 
 indeed, it is hard to say that these mosaics may not 
 
 Constitit, et fluvii pars in mare lapsa cucurrit, 
 Destituitque vadum : et validus qui forte fuebat 
 Impetus, adstrictas alte cumulaverat undas, 
 Et tremula compage minax pendebat aquae mons 
 Despectans transire pedes arente profundo, 
 Et medio pedibus siccis in riumine ferri 
 Pulverulenta hominum duro vestigia limo." 
 
 Orpah and Ruth: 
 
 " Quum gemina? scindunt sese in diversa sorores ; 
 lluth sequitur sanctam, quam deserit Orpa, parentem ; 
 Perfidiam nuras una, fidem nurus altera monstrat, 
 Praefert una Deum patriae, patriam altera vita;. "— Nat. F- ix. 
 
 1 See Parker's Photographs, and Ciampini's plates there repeated.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 have influenced the monk Jacobus, or Torrita, or the 
 various and undistinguishable authors of the Pisan 
 and Florentine inlayings. But the careful appeal of 
 the earliest art to Hebrew history and prophecy is 
 our main point ; together with the fact that it repeats 
 the arguments of St. Peter and St. Paul from the 
 Old Testament to the New. Their preaching was 
 argumentative and not emotional, as far as we know ; 
 aud the same remark applies to the early paintings. 
 Similar principles of teaching are greatly to be 
 desired in our own days. There is an unity of purpose 
 and of theology, which runs from the first century 
 to our own, and expresses itself in marble, mosaic, 
 and painting. For centuries it was altogether good 
 or harmless, while it expressed the faith of the people, 
 that God had come on earth as Man to deliver them 
 from evil, and had lately submitted to human life 
 and death with them and for them : that the New 
 Testament was the history of that endurance and 
 action, and the Old the record of the world's pre- 
 paration for it. 
 
 A parallel degeneracy in pictorial expression 
 marks the failure of the popular standard of faith. 
 Personal trust in Our Lord dies away ; saints, 
 martyrs, angels, and the Virgin Mother are invoked 
 to mediate with Him. His Form, first symbolized, 
 then painted with artless imaginations of human 
 beauty, recedes by degrees ; and constantly the 
 images of saints take His place, or He appears, after 
 the tenth century, as the unpitying Judge : while the 
 Christian ideal of Him becomes that of sad severity , 
 as if mourniug over the inefficacy of His own Act of 
 Iiedeniption. But yet again, with the early Eenais-
 
 6 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 sance of Pisa and Florence, the strength of young 
 Italy resumes much of the ancient hope and joy in 
 Him ; and by the side of His sufferings and His 
 judgment it is asserted, vividly and gloriously, that 
 He rose and ascended, and that His mercy endureth 
 for ever. 
 
 When Primitive Art is not historical, for narrative- 
 teaching of the facts of the Old and New Dispensa- 
 tions and their mutual relation, it is symbolical, for 
 enforcement of Doctrine ; — that is to say, of the facts 
 or truths in possession of the Christian soul, and 
 teachable by man to man. The Corruption or Fall 
 of man, and the Cross as the sign of the Redeemer ; x 
 sin, and deliverance by sacrifice — these were the key- 
 notes of Christian art for the people, because they 
 were the broad and fundamental truths which upheld 
 the personal hope of every individual of the people. 
 So it was in the earliest days, when Our Lord's 
 Person and Life were most dwelt on ; so in after 
 time, from the 6th century, when the manner of His 
 Death filled men's hearts ; and so it is, down to the 
 Sacramental instructions of Bishop Wilson, the 
 " Christus Consolator " of Ary Scheffer, and that im- 
 portant relic of mediaeval Christianity, the Passion- 
 play of Ammergau. The Christian use of art, graphic 
 or scenic, is not for emotion or sensation ; it is to 
 enforce the reality of History, and the permanence 
 of Doctrine. 
 
 1 Not, in the first instance, of the manner of His death. See 
 Chapter on Crosses and Crucifixes.
 
 Ca£w< 
 
 
 CRUCIFIX. — THE GRAFFITO BLASFBMO 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ^ 
 
 %/t>^- 
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 
 
 It is a remark of the late Dean of St. Paul's in 
 a note to his "History of Christianity," 1 that the 
 Iconoclasts had, probably, more influence in bar- 
 barising the East, than the Barbarians themselves 
 had in the West. The observation has all the in 
 
 1 Book iv. chap. iv. Compare "Christian Remembrancer," 
 vol. Iv. pp. 333-4, where the connection between Manicheism and 
 Iconoelasm is pointed out. The author calls attention also to the 
 sweeping nature of the destruction of Christian documents in the 
 eighth century, including great numbers of precious MSS. ; and to 
 the lconodulist influence, in Italy and the Western world, of the 
 great number of monastic artists who sought refuse from Eastern 
 persecution.
 
 8 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 terest which an apparent paradox by a great writer al- 
 ways possesses ; and it is, after all, highly probable as a 
 conjecture. The chief inference to which it leads is 
 the principle which justifies the writing, or compi- 
 lation, of this book. It is that no means of popular 
 education, religious or secular, is to be neglected ; 
 that to refuse means of right development and 
 instruction to one's neighbour, when it is fairly in 
 our power to give them, can come to no good ; and, 
 that instruction of the most varied and valuable 
 character is to be conveyed (and with especial force 
 and clearness in the case of rude and simple minds), 
 by means of symbols in form, or colour, or both. 
 They appeal to the imagination ; and through it 
 they set the mind in action, and supply it with 
 matter to work on. It is appointed for man, by his 
 Maker, that he should learn and teach through the 
 eye, through the sense of likeness and the sense of 
 beauty ; for likeness or resemblauce is the lowest 
 form of pictorial beauty, and the pleasure of observ- 
 ing a resemblance is really that of studying two 
 forms by comparing them. If this means of teaching 
 be neglected or forbidden, a means of instruction is 
 closed, which all Theists must consider Divinely 
 appointed. The world suffers accordingly ; men 
 are deprived of light, of sweetness, of fresh 
 and right thought. Iconoclasm, certainly, had this 
 result in the East, urged as it was to its results by 
 Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans ; and with the 
 more sustained violence, as the latter conquering 
 race insisted on it with the most crushing vigour ; 
 forbidding, even to this day, all the wholesome 
 secular uses of naturalist art in representing the
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 9 
 
 works of God on earth. I am unable to find this 
 definite prohibition in the Koran ; but it certainly 
 has been stringently carried out in the Mohammedan 
 world. The common derivation of the word arabesque 
 turns on it. The Lions of the Alhambra are an 
 exception to it, and are believed to be a dubious 
 indulgence in representative art; neither they nor 
 the building of which they form a part require 
 notice here. Much conventional ornament, founded 
 on nature, and executed by Greek mosaicists or 
 carvers, will be found in Saracenic work at Cairo, 
 Damascus, and Jerusalem. It is probable that the 
 rule of prohibition was originally adopted from 
 Hebrew law, and given in the Hebrew sense, which 
 admitted certain exceptions in practice, and, in 
 deed, in the text of Holy Scripture. 1 " It was con- 
 trary to the religion of the Arab to introduce any 
 animal form into his ornament, but though all the 
 radiance of colour, and all proportion and design 
 were open to him, he could not produce any noble 
 work without an abstraction of the forms of leafage, 
 in his capitals, and as the ground-plan of his chased 
 ornament." Eastern art perished or grew monstrous 
 by neglect of nature, for want of faithful study of 
 present beauty, through the merciless prohibition, 
 insisted on with all the vehemence of ignorance, to 
 record, at all or for any purpose, the form of any 
 living thing which God has made. 
 
 Though they seem to have given but little trouble, 
 the questions of religious art must have been 
 before the Church of Christ from the very earliest 
 times. Pictorial decoration of every kind, from the 
 
 1 See infra, and "Stones of Venice," vol. i., end of chap. xx y 
 
 B 3
 
 10 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 statues of gods and heroes to mosaics of ducks and 
 doves, and from thence again to the "inscripta 
 Iintea* of wine- shops and gladiators' schools, was 
 the rule of Greek and Eoman life. In the very- 
 earliest days of the Church, Christian congregations 
 must have met in decorated rooms, without noticing 
 or caring for their decoration. To the Pauline or 
 Gentile school of converts, filled, through long spaces 
 of life, with one all-sufficient idea, that their God 
 had come to them and was theirs, the graven image 
 was what it was to him of Tarsus — nothing at all. 
 The easy way in which Christians adopted heathen 
 ornament is noticed by writers of all views. " I 
 have constantly observed," says the Commendatore 
 de Eossi, " in the subterranean cemeteries, that the 
 early Christians possessed sculptured sarcophagi 
 which bear no sign of Christian faith, and seem to have 
 issued from Gentile workshops ; adorned with images 
 of the firmament, scenes of shepherd-life, agricul- 
 ture, the chase, games, &c. The Christian interpre- 
 tation given to agricultural or pastoral scenes, to 
 personifications of the seasons, to dolphins and other 
 marine creatures, is obvious and universally ac- 
 knowledged. When the faithful could not obtain 
 sarcophagi adorned with sacred sculpture, it is 
 evident that they took great trouble in selecting 
 those which contained nothing directly offensive to 
 the faith, and did not represent idolatrous rites, 
 images of false gods, or subjects too evidently 
 belonging to Pagan theogony." There was, how- 
 ever, another great class of Christians — perhaps, as 
 Milman suggests, it existed in every city — which 
 would feel differently. To the Hebrew Christian,
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 11 
 
 still zealous of the law, the representation of any 
 uncommanded and unprescribed form in any place 
 of worship would be matter for alarm and earnest 
 protest, at the least. And later on in time, the 
 austerer and harsher minds among Gentile Chris- 
 tians would object to picture-ornament as an 
 indulgence, as lust of the flesh and of the eye. 
 Tertullian's condemnation of all images and forms 
 whatever 1 seems connected with the natural severity 
 of his temper. There can be no doubt, however, that 
 the strictness of Hebrew rule and feeling against 
 idolatry would and did postpone the use of art by 
 the Church, even for instruction in historical pictures 
 of events. The well-known decree of the Council 
 of Illiberis forbids them generally (Can. 36), as it, 
 seems by way of caution : — " It is ordered, that there 
 be no pictures in Church, lest that which we worship 
 and adore (come to) be painted on the walls." 
 
 Still Hebrew usage itself had its well-remembered 
 exceptions, of which the brazen serpent is perhaps 
 the most striking. The cherubs, the oxen, the pome- 
 granates and flower- work of the ancient Temple were 
 doubtless repeated in that of Herod — they certainly 
 never could be forgotten by the Jewish people : and 
 thus the difference between symbolic ornament 
 (however significant) and idolatrous creature-wor- 
 ship, was virtually understood by the Hebrew. Even 
 Tertullian 2 is checked in his sweeping condemnation 
 of all representation whatever, by his recollection 
 of the serpent in the wilderness, which he 
 excuses as virtually a Christian symbol. But all 
 the casuistry of the subject, all the distinctions 
 1 "De Idolatria," c. iii. * Ibid. c. iv.
 
 12 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 between the use of emblems for instruction, their 
 misuse to excite feeling, and their final abuse as 
 objects of worship, must have been only too familial 
 to a race in whose history the calf- worship (or pro- 
 bably cherub-worship) of Jeroboam formed a part. 1 
 It seems likely that in his day the cherubs on the 
 veil and doors of the Temple, seen there daily with- 
 out harm by priests and people, were set up as 
 objects of worship in Dan and Bethel. It is pro- 
 bable, however, that in the first and second age of 
 the Primitive Church both Hebrew and Gentile. 
 Christians may have been accustomed to use vari- 
 ously decorated rooms without scruple. They may 
 have met, even for prayer and the Eueharistie 
 celebration, without giving a thought to the fact that 
 vines, or boys, or pictures of the seasons, or of 
 shepherds, may have been painted on their walls, 
 roughly or elaborately. This is virtually proved, 
 for the western world, by the quotation given above 
 from De Rossi, founded on the earliest known works 
 in the catacombs ; as in that of St. Prsetextatus, 
 a.d. 150.- It is admitted on all hands that Pagan 
 decorations were accepted, and invested with meaning 
 by the Christian imagination. There is little or no 
 doubt that vines and shepherds adorned Roman 
 chambers of all kinds before the Christian era : 
 there is no doubt at all that, after the Lord's words 
 " I am the Vine," " I am the Good Shepherd," 
 those images were repeated continually in all places 
 where Christians met to worship Him. But when 
 decorations began to be widely adopted by the 
 
 1 See Chapter on Symbolism. 
 
 1 Parker, 615, 1822, and Chapter on Catacombs.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 13 
 
 Church, we must believe that the Hebrew dread of 
 idolatry in all representations, at least in all por- 
 traits or images of mankind, arose in the earlier 
 Christian world, as it has existed ever since ; not as 
 an apprehension confined to the Hebrew or Semitic 
 mind, but as the reasoning scruple of all who, like 
 ourselves, are or should be zealous of the moral law. 
 The second commandment does undoubtedly stand 
 on primal revelation of God's will to man ; and it 
 was repeated and ratified to Moses on the Mount. 
 In the Christian Church, as among all worshippers 
 of One God, questions have arisen, and will for ever 
 arise, on this great point of conscience. It cannot, 
 in logic, right reason, charity, or common sense, be 
 absolutely ruled either way. There is no doubt 
 that from the second or third century the Christian 
 imagination began to employ itself in picture — first 
 for instruction and declaration of the faith, then for 
 splendour and for dedicative sacrifice ; that excesses 
 created alarm from time to time, though rarely at 
 first ; that sometimes an ornament may have been held 
 to express a wrong or false idea, as did the Gnostic 
 symbols ; that sometimes human or animal figures 
 may have appeared in themselves idolatrous. On the 
 other hand, few sects or parties have ever been able 
 to dispense long with pictorial means of teaching and 
 self-expression. Doctrinal formulae, definitions, and 
 developments, as well as error and heresy, began to 
 be set forth in decorative art, almost as soon as they 
 were expressed in forms of words. Had the printing- 
 press been in use in that age to express and propagate 
 opinion, Christianity, heresy, and Paganism would 
 have used it alike : and picture-symbols and letter-
 
 14 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 symbols are really different forms of the same thing ; 
 connected with each other by the derivation of 
 letters from drawings. 1 And exactly as the unde- 
 finable pleasure called beauty (to use the term in its 
 widest and vaguest sense) was sought for in picture- 
 teaching for the sake of impressiveness, as soon as 
 the artist was able to produce it ; so in all ages and 
 to all times beauty, so-called, of spoken or written 
 words will be used for the sake of power. At all 
 times, perhaps, scrupulous-minded and excellent men, 
 entitled to great attention, have expressed natural 
 suspicion or objection to pictorial beauty as an 
 abuse, while they adorned their philippics against it 
 with all the flowers of rhetoric ; and perhaps tampered 
 more with truth and the simplicity of the faith in 
 speech or writing, than those who wrote the Lord's 
 parables on the wall in colour, or carved His miracles 
 of mercy on their sarcophagi. 
 
 The existence, at a very early date, of many Gnostic 
 emblems need not surprise anyone who will take into 
 consideration the necessary secrecy so long practised 
 in the Christian Church. Orthodox Christianity 
 had its mysteries, too great and precious to the be- 
 liever to be freely named to the Gentiles. These were 
 embodied in Christian symbols as the Fish, the 
 Bread, and the Monogram — the Vine, the Lamb, and 
 countless others, being at the same time adopted 
 from Gentile fancy. But meanwhile all manner of 
 intricacies of Cerinthian and Gnostic opinion 
 flourished either just within or just without the 
 assembly of the Church ; and new brotherhoods 
 were formed, which in some degree imitated or 
 1 See Chapter on Symbolism.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 15 
 
 emulated the original brotherhood in Christ. These 
 would either submit to the faith in the end, or die 
 away without it, or take new forms of error : but 
 meanwhile there seems to have been a great variety 
 of Gnostic symbols and passwords, which are 
 enumerated and described with great learning by 
 Mr. King ; to whom Christianity seems to appear 
 rather in the light of a variety of Gnosticism, than 
 Gnosticism as a reflection of Christianity. 1 There 
 can be no doubt, however, that necessary secrecy was 
 a principal cause, alike of the Church's use of symbo- 
 lism, and its occasional adoption of heathen emblems. 
 There was another reason for the use of art which 
 had special application in Eome. Christians of all 
 nations and languages met in the central city of the 
 world ; and pictures of the Gospel history and the 
 Lord's preaching told their tale with equal force to all. 
 Art was an universal form of expression, and the 
 artist not only spoke in all men's tongues, but spoke 
 in them with a force of his own. The difference 
 between having a story told and having a scene 
 before one is very great to simple-minded people, to 
 all, in fact, whose minds are not vivid enough to 
 realize and represent the facts of history on the 
 retina of imagination. And this brings us to our 
 first and broadest division of Christian art, into 
 historical and symbolic representations. Of sym- 
 bolisms we must speak hereafter — for the present, 
 there are a few observations to be made on the 
 general use of pictorial art for historical teaching, 
 and educational purposes in general. We can then 
 give some account, either in the body of this work or. 
 1 "The Gnostics and their Remains." C. "W. King, M.A.
 
 1G PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 in its descriptive Index, of the historical pictures and 
 bas-reliefs of the early Church ; especially of that 
 large and important class of them which has 
 reference to prophecy, and those typical events in 
 Hebrew history which are specially connected with 
 the Christian faith in which they find fulfilment. 
 
 It has often seemed to us, that what clergy and 
 teachers of religious history are apt to complain 
 of as diluted scepticism, and haziness of belief in 
 facts, extends, in the British mind, to all history 
 alike. It is as if nobody thought there ever had 
 been any past at all. History, the bygone reality 
 of great and noble things and men, seems alto- 
 gether unlikely — in a country where all things grow 
 daily newer, meaner, more crowded and common, less 
 abiding or deserving of continuance. An age of 
 journalism, or of contemporary history told in party 
 interests, is sure to be fruitful in general scepticism 
 and disgust about history altogether. When every 
 daily sketch of daily events is coloured or distorted 
 by the political connections and interests of the day, 
 men cease, in fact, to believe each other. Con- 
 temporary history is universally written by political 
 attorneys or advocates ; and nobody in his heart ever 
 believes an advocate. Accomplished scholars and 
 students of history say it is a Mississippi of false- 
 hood. We are taunted with religious panic, because 
 Christian men are startled, and alarmed at each 
 other's alarm, about the literal truth of parts of the 
 sacred narratives. Their panic is really a sign of 
 faith : it proves the paramount importance which they 
 attribute to those narratives, as bearing on their own 
 lives. The Bible has a practical meaning for them, of
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 17 
 
 which they do not intend to be deprived. For secular 
 history, men let it slip altogether, and are content to 
 be not only incredulous but ignorant of it. One can 
 hardly be surprised, when one considers how it used 
 to be taught : for though great improvement has been 
 made by earnest and brilliant teachers, their efforts 
 are still isolated, and they have a heavy balance of 
 dulness against them. In our own day. at all events, 
 we were taught to "get up" history by rote, rather 
 than to make use of the feelings and the imagination 
 to assist the memory. \Ve had to try to remember 
 men and facts by the dates, instead of the dates by 
 the men and their great deeds. It is obvious that 
 if knowledge is to be acquired by the imagination, 
 which, as metaphysicians say, deals with individual 
 men and events, then pictures which represent 
 either are the most forcible means of impressing 
 the imagination into the service of knowledge. 
 When imagination is deficient, and the rote-memory 
 powerful, what we say does not apply ; but there can 
 be no doubt that in most schools the rote-memory is 
 or was encouraged at the expense of the imagination, 
 even in the study of history. A framework of dates 
 was insisted on, and the facts were to be learnt by 
 them : the dates were somehow got up, generally by 
 some hateful memoria technica of horrid misspelt 
 sounds, and we learnt to sort kings and heroes out 
 among them as well as we could. It certainly seems 
 to us now that it would have been better to remember 
 the period by the men than the men by the period : 
 first to possess the imagination with the sense of 
 good or heroic presences in history, doing and suffer- 
 ing great things ; then to group the events round the
 
 18 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 men, and let the chronological arrangement come 
 last. What is a name in a school-book now was once 
 a man ; and what he did or said may have something 
 to do with us still. To be taught early to realize the 
 personality of men, to have some image of the 
 actuality of an event, must be of unlimited advantage 
 to the student : and it is here that art bears so 
 strongly on historical knowledge. Every pilgrimage 
 to the scene of great events, or to the habitat and 
 faint visible traces on earth of some great one, is a 
 testimony to the power of imagination over the 
 understanding, and virtually of art over the imagina- 
 tion. It is true that the first lessons in the use of 
 the latter are best given, not in school, but in the 
 preliminary teaching of mothers and nurses; but 
 they, too, appeal indefinitely to pictures and prints, 
 to rhymed verses, to everything which can call out 
 the imaginative power ; and the impressions they 
 thus convey are often indelible. 
 
 " Pictures are poor men's books," says John 
 Damascenus ; and the principle of illustration 
 or illumination of books to help instruction and 
 memory was recognized in the first ages, in the 
 very infancy of Eecord, as well as now. It appears 
 certain, in fact, that if letters be universally derived 
 from hieroglyphics, as in Egypt, the pictorial records 
 are the earliest. Those Eastern travellers who have 
 visited the ancient turquoise, iron, and copper mines 
 of Wady Magharah, in the Desert of Mount Sinai, 
 will remember the great Egyptian tablets, beginning 
 with the earliest kings of the fourth or Memphite 
 dynasty, which are cut in the sandstone cliffs of that 
 strange and rough valley, neither eared nor sown. "We
 
 RELIGIOUS ART- HISTORY. 19 
 
 saw five in 1862, some near the mine and the traces 
 of the Pharaonic entrenched camp, others at some 
 distance up the valley. They are some of the most 
 ancient historical documents in the world, and their 
 authenticity is absolutely without dispute. They 
 are picture-hieroglyphics of considerable beauty ; 
 partly relating to the conquest of the country by 
 Egypt, partly to its zoology and metallic products. 
 Cheops and Kephren hew down their prisoners in 
 person, according to the prevailing tradition of Egyp- 
 tian record, which makes every king his own butcher. 
 Considerable graphic power and comprehension of cha- 
 racter are shown in the bas-reliefs of animals, which 
 are not for the most part intaglioed or engraven, but 
 raised in clear, sharp, and shallow projection. They 
 are done on tablets carefully prepared at considerable 
 height, and in situations specially chosen to avoid 
 those rapid eddies of the mountain winds, which, 
 carrying the sharp sand before them, act in the 
 course of years like a file on the plane surface of 
 the weathered rock, and make clean round holes 
 like an auger or centre-bit, wherever the polishing 
 medium is whirled round by eddies of wind. The 
 tablets were of course cut and smoothed in the 
 selected places first, and had their surface removed 
 according to drawings then made on it. The results 
 are so near being imperishable as to remain quite 
 intelligible to the present time ; and are still so far 
 distant from civilization and so difficult of discovery 
 that their still further endurance may be hoped for. 1 
 
 1 There is a cursory and imperfect account of these turquoise 
 mines in a paper by the author, in " Vacation Tourists" (1862, 
 Macmillan) ; but it is entirely superseded by the complete and 
 most raluable description (accompanied by admirable photographs
 
 20 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 It will be seen that the main principle of transi- 
 tion from picture-writing to letter-writing is to 
 make the picture of an object represent the initial 
 sound of its name. The picture sign can thus be 
 used for other words in which the same sound occurs. 
 The Hebrew 3 is the rude picture of a house, black 
 tent, or goat's-hair screen, such as is used in the 
 desert to this day. The corresponding name is Beth 
 in Hebrew, Beyt in Arabic. Let the picture stand 
 for its initial sound B ; it may then be used as a 
 letter to write down the names Bara, Ben, &c, and 
 any other words or names in which the B sound 
 occurs. It is like the all- important change from 
 printing-blocks to' movable type. 
 
 History then was all pictures in the earliest times, 
 and is now greatly assisted by such records in the 
 present, if she is not dependent on them. 
 
 It is not in our way now to consider how our 
 modern historical teaching seems to suffer from neg- 
 lect of the imaginative power. Indeed, that power is 
 now appealed to in education through poetry and 
 romance, and archaeology begins to be called to their 
 aid ; so it may be hoped that this book may fall in 
 with and supplement others. But that great depart- 
 ment of the world's records called Church History 
 is, was, and for ever will be, specially associated with 
 art ; if for no other reason, because many works of 
 art in churches or cemeteries are historical docu- 
 
 and drawings) lately issued by tlie authors of the Sinai Survey. 
 The change or progress from earlier to later hieroglyphic, arrange- 
 ment in columns, &c, is very interesting. A short and clear 
 account (with illustrations) of the transition from hieroglyphics 
 into characters, will be found in the Appendix to Kawlinson's 
 " Herodotus," vol. ii. book ii.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 21 
 
 ments of special value and indisputable genuineness. 
 There can be no doubt that the catacombs them- 
 selves, as places of Christian burial, and sometimes 
 of refuge and martyrdom, have had vast influence 
 on Christianity. 1 Their undiminished importance 
 to Christian thought in our own days rests on the 
 paintings they contain, which give us at least an 
 approximative idea of the personal hopes and ex- 
 pectations in death of whole generations of believers. 
 The credibility of history may depend on contempo- 
 raneous evidence of this kind, especially in our own 
 days, when the increase of knowledge appears to be 
 the increase of doubt, if not of sorrow. One may 
 judge of the value which time gives to picture-record 
 from the importance which the blasphemous scrawl 
 of some unknown slaye assumes, when treated as 
 what it really is, a decisive proof of Christian worship 
 of the Crucified Lord in the days of Severus or 
 Caracalla. 2 That a Pagan caricature of the rudest 
 
 1 "Dum essem Romae puer, et alibenilibus studiis erudirer, solebam 
 cum cieteris ejusdem aetatis et propositi, diebus Dominicis sepulcra 
 Apostolorum et Martyrum circumire ; crebroque cryptas ingredi, 
 quae in ten-arum profundo defossae, ex utraque parte ingredientium 
 per parietes habent corpora sepultorum, et ita obscura sunt omnia, 
 ut propemodum illud Fropbeticum eompleatur, ' Descendunt in 
 infernum viventes,' et raro desuper lumen admissum, horrorem tem- 
 perat tenebrarum ; ut non tam fenestram, quam foramen demissi 
 lurninis putes ; rursumque pedetentim acceditur, et caeca nocte 
 circumdatis, illud Virgilianum proponitur — 
 
 ' Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent. ' " 
 
 Continual pilgrimages, from St. Paulinas of Nola's time to the 
 11th century, testified to the interest of the Christian world in 
 these monuments of the early Church. 
 
 The above often-quoted passage from St. Jerome (Com. in Ezech. 
 xii. c. 40) applied to many besides himself, as he says. Migne, t. 
 xxv. p. 375. 
 
 2 See p. 7 : for festivals held in the cemeteries see the note on 
 Agapte, Chapter on the Catacombs.
 
 22 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 kind should become an interesting point of Christian 
 evidence, when its only intention was to express and 
 excite feelings of dull ridicule and hatred of the 
 Christian faith, is at least a remarkable coinci- 
 dence. 1 
 
 This rude appeal to passion may lead us to another 
 part of our subject ; which is that the principle of 
 early Christian art was instruction rather than 
 emotion ; and that commentless statement of the 
 facts of the faith, and pictorial repetition of the 
 Lord's words, furnish between them the whole 
 original stock of Christian subjects for artistic 
 representation. Beauty is faintly attempted ; the 
 workman does as well as he can for the work's 
 sake : but his motive is plain narrative. Such a 
 parable the Lord spoke about Himself, and it is 
 painted ; such a miracle of mercy He wrought, and 
 it is carved in bas-relief. To pursue beauty and the 
 associations which are connected with it ; to throw 
 out power and delight from one's own spirit and 
 appeal to others through delight — these are the gifts 
 and the aspirations of men who live in ages of 
 culture, of physical progress, of national energy. 
 But the Christian faith was made for all races, 
 periods, and conditions of the human mind and body ; 
 it was meant to avail man in his need, the weakest 
 of men and women in the most extreme need. Such 
 persons seem to have made use of the language of 
 picture in the primitive ages, for the sake of its 
 vividness, because it assisted oral teaching. What 
 
 i See Dr. Liddon's " Bampton Lectures," p. 396, ed. 1868, with 
 reference to the paper of Father Garrucci, Rome, 1862; aud compare 
 woodcut in this volume, p. 7.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 23 
 
 remnants of beauty in execution or design they 
 possessed, were really inherited from ancient Greece 
 and Eome. By the end of the sixth century, an 
 Eastern sense of colour and some faint relics of 
 graphic power, were all the gifts which were left 
 to Christian art from the heathen ages ; and men 
 made the best of these in preaching the faith they 
 held, exactly as St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine 
 may have obeyed the rules of the Ehetoric of 
 Aristotle and the Institutions of Quintilian. They 
 had no scruples in using the traditions of heathen 
 skill ; they were easily able to draw the dis- 
 tinction between Gentile and Pagan art — between 
 the witty inventions of human genius, itself the 
 gift of God, and their misapplication to image- 
 worship. They were willing to bury their dead 
 witnesses, and celebrate the Communion of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, surrounded by rude 
 paintings of shepherds and vintagers; which they 
 understood with reference to Him, and which the 
 heathen did not understand at all. But rather than 
 do reverence or burn incense to the marble Jove or 
 Apollo, they would face the lions and endure the 
 violence of fire. 
 
 We are concerned in this chapter with the his- 
 torical division of primitive art as distinguished 
 from the symbolical : and it has seemed best to include 
 in this volume a descriptive index of subjects of 
 Christian art, particularly of such representations 
 of persons and events in the Old Testament as are 
 and have been held to be typical of others in the 
 New. And the author must state a conviction here, 
 which liigher authorities have expressed before
 
 24 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 hini, 1 that the scope of primitive subject, so far 
 as the ancient cemeteries go, is almost entirely 
 Scriptural. The Monogram and the Anagram ; the 
 initials of the Lord's name, and the Fish, which 
 indicates the initials of His name and titles, are not 
 important as exceptions to this rule, though in them- 
 selves so deeply interesting. Xor, on the other hand, 
 is there any sign of trenchantly exclusive rule, forbid- 
 ding non-Scriptural subjects. As has been observed, 
 Greek and Roman Christians were well used to 
 ornament of all kinds, and seem for the first four 
 centuries to have habitually drawn the motives of 
 their pictures from Holy Scripture, without rejecting 
 any detail or ornament which was not obviously con- 
 nected with Polytheism. The progress from the sym- 
 bolical representation of Our Lord as Shepherd of 
 Israel to portrait forms of Him (though we can hardly 
 suppose that any actual likeness to His bodily coun- 
 tenance was ever attempted) — the surrounding Hi- 
 conventional portrait with choirs of angels and the 
 holy fellowship of the Apostles — the gradual intro- 
 duction of His Virgin Mother as a proper object 
 of worship, and hearer and grantor of prayer : 
 and, finally, the increasing definiteness given to 
 her cultus and that of the saints, until the media- 
 torial office of Our Lord Himself was forgotten, — 
 this is all matter of ecclesiastical history. Some 
 account will be found of this transition in the 
 Charter on Mosaics ; and the evidence given by those 
 monuments to a certain progress in the direction of 
 creature-worship is there in some degTee made out. 
 
 1 See De Rossi, Rom. Sott. part 1, with Mr. Wharton Marriott's 
 preface to " The Testimony of the Catacom l
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 
 
 difficult to say how far the introduction of 
 figures of saints like those of St Prassede and SMI 
 Pudentiana, was felt to be an innovation in churches 
 of the sixth century. It is probable that the Anglican 
 Church resembles the primitive, in permitting repre- 
 sentations of saints engaged in ministry, as actors in 
 historical pictures, or - ornamental forms — in 
 
 any position and gesture, in fact, save that of stand- 
 ing to accept the worship of the people, or, in the 
 mediatorial office, to receive and present their pr 
 before God. 
 
 The Portrait, whether its features be traditional or 
 ideal, is defended alike by Hindu and Italian inge: 
 as an assistance to devotional feeling. And had any 
 record been left in Holy Scripture of the outward 
 appearance of the Divine Man or of any of His 
 follov would have been doubtless both i _ 
 
 and advisable to rep^ if not theirs, in 
 
 temple of the faith ; such portraits would then have 
 been matter of historical record. It is matter of 
 likened Himself to the Shepherd of 
 Mankind; and we are right in setting forth the 
 likeness of the symbol. [tis nly repeating 
 
 >le about Himself. But to look for sacred 
 emotion from picture- g cession, and we 
 
 should like to know what it really means. In as far 
 as the pictui . the 
 
 mind md we defend it 1 
 
 conventional portrait figoif ssertsno historic fact and 
 s a doubtful proceeding either to stimulate 
 or allow baseless, or at least unreasoning, emotion in 
 the act of prayer, either to ourselves or others. The 
 beaut imarily, nothing I
 
 26 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 the matter, unless we are to adore the picture. To 
 allow oneself to feel, or persuade oneself that one feels, 
 greater devotion to Christ our Lord before a Eaffaelle 
 than before a Byzantine mosaic, or before a mosaic 
 than before nothing at all, is to make Eaffaelle or 
 the mosaicist our mediator with the Eedeemer. Prayer 
 is too serious a matter for this, to those who know 
 need and pain, and are really calling for help to body 
 and soul. In as far as a picture helps us to realize 
 facts of the faith, its function is historical, and the 
 mind may proceed from it as a theme of meditation, 
 and so wax earnest and aspire. But to make use of 
 a picture methodically and regularly to excite a 
 dubious devotion by its beauty must be a questionable 
 proceeding, for it involves the making the picture 
 a means of grace in itself. To ourselves, the real 
 principle of edification in pictures, considered as 
 beautiful things, seems to be the devout or earnest 
 spirit of the painter, if we can see it in his work. 
 Some of Angelico's or Perugino's works seem to 
 demonstrate that their author believed, with deep 
 happiness, in what he painted, so that his life and 
 being went into his hands and eyes, and every stroke 
 of his brush was like a pulse of delight. Some of 
 Botticelli's, in the Early Renaissance, show the 
 happiness of a Christian lay-mind of great power, 
 in joyfully repeating, by painted symbol, the main 
 facts of its own faith. Some of Michael Angelo's, 
 in the Late Renaissance, are the troubled and painful 
 utterance of a suffering and misled genius to a suffer- 
 ing Lord, to Whom he holds, and by Whom he 
 is held, against all trial. Of all modern .men, 
 perhaps, Holman Hunt has most in common with
 
 RELICIOUS ART-HISTORY. 27 
 
 the last. But all these men's sacred works appeal 
 to the emotions of the spectator, as it seems to us 
 in a perfectly right way, as follows. They show him, 
 beyond doubt that another man, of the highest powers, 
 has here and hereby given his heart to God : they plead 
 with the spectator, whatever be his humour for the 
 time, that a man like him, or abler than he, did exert 
 all the powers of his spirit, felt and was upborne 
 beyond his normal state of mind, in realizing thoughts 
 of sacred things, and writing them down for a record 
 to all men, in the universal speech of colour and 
 form. The picture is a monument of the soul's desire 
 of its author : sometimes it is an evidence that his 
 soul desired the Kingdom of God ; and so far it is 
 his witness on earth to that Kingdom. 
 
 All these men, however, excepting perhaps Peru- 
 gino, have principally left behind them historical 
 groups in action, records of what God has done, rather 
 than quasi-portraits of saints standing to receive 
 adoration. The distinctions between latria (worship), 
 veneration, &c, whether they were known to them or 
 not by any name or formula, may have been real 
 to their minds ; as indeed they may be to us in 
 the English Church, or to other Protestant bodies. 
 For those who believe in the existence of saints, and 
 in the Communion of Saints, cannot surely repudiate 
 feelings of reverence, at least, towards their elder 
 brethren in Christ. But it can hardly be right now, — 
 it certainly was wrong in the fifth and sixth centuries 
 of the Church, — to expect whole crowds of zealous 
 untaught people to hold by this distinction. Latria, 
 dulia, hyperdulia, "worship, serving, devotion," are 
 words invented for the exigencies of controversy, and 
 
 c 2
 
 28 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 point to shades of difference which the popular eye can 
 hardly see. Moreover, if these classifications of the 
 council and the library were rightly made "by the 
 people (as the teachers of the people assert them to 
 be, when pressed by controversy),. a change of things 
 would at once ensue which is simply incalculable. 
 Moreover, as has been hinted, parallel uses of the 
 Image-portrait are constant (and somewhat scandalous 
 and dreadful) in other than Christian countries ; the 
 setting up a signum or statue of the object of worship 
 being a simply human propensity. Hindu idolaters, 
 for instance, defend themselves as ably, and to a 
 certain extent as justly, as John Damascene himself 
 on this matter. " Let us hear," says Professor Max 
 Midler, 1 " one of the mass of the people, a Hindu of 
 Benares, who, in a lecture delivered before an English 
 and native audience, defends his faith and the faith 
 of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations " 
 as that Indian popular religion is idol-worship and 
 nothing else. " ' If by idolatry,' he says, ' is meant 
 a system of worship which confines our ideas of the 
 Deity to a mere image of clay and stone ; which pre- 
 vents our hearts from being expanded and elevated 
 with lofty notions of the attributes of God ; if this 
 is what is meant by idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and 
 deplore the ignorance or uncharitableness of those 
 who charge us with this grovelling system of worship. 
 But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence 
 of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in 
 the form of an image, any of His glorious mani- 
 festations, ought we to be charged with identifying 
 them with the matter of the image, when during 
 1 "Chips frcm .1 German Vforkshop," vol. i. prof. p. 17.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART-HISTORY. 29 
 
 those moments of devotion we do not even think oi' 
 matter ? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved 
 and venerated friend no longer existing in this world, 
 our heart is filled with sentiments of love and 
 reverence — if we fancy him present in the picture, 
 still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and 
 affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and 
 gratitude, should we be charged with offering the 
 grossest insult to him — that of fancying him to be no 
 other than a piece of painted paper ?'" 
 
 This, it will be seen, is a valid protest against the 
 accusation of fetich ism, or attributing virtue and 
 power locally to this or that particular image. It also 
 appears to involve an excuse for the idolater, which 
 his Master and ours will well know how to appre- 
 ciate, and which we have no further business with 
 than to remember that it exists. For ourselves, we 
 can only say that in the south of Europe, from the 
 fifth and sixth centuries, there has been frequent and 
 general identification of the matter of the image with 
 the saint, 1 and of the saint himself with God, as a hearer 
 of prayer. But let us, if we can, suppose that the 
 Hindu's heart is filled with sentiments of love and 
 reverence at beholding a dragon-bodied and many- 
 handed image ; hideous and degrading as it seems, alike 
 to us and to his Mohammedan kindred. Let this pass 
 for a sincere though clumsy symbolism of omnipotence. 
 Is it the same to all Hindus, educated and unedu- 
 cated ? and might not a devout Hindu, possessed of 
 the subtle power of mind which the Benares lecturer 
 showed, go so far as to dispense with the image 
 itself, and tell others like himself that they might 
 
 1 See passage from Milman, infra.
 
 30 PRIMITIVE CHUECII ART. 
 
 do so as well ? Was lie not addressing himself ad 
 homines, to the English part of his English and 
 Hindu audience ? While we ourselves acknowledge 
 the difficulties and temptations which led to the 
 error of Christians in past time, we cannot follow 
 them in error, from motives of historical charity ; 
 and we cannot but see that the use of the por- 
 trait-image has led, and leads, masses of the people 
 into a worship of the image as a present Deity. 
 For its beauty, that seems to have little to do with 
 the matter. In modern times, appeals have been 
 made to Beauty in religious art ; sometimes, as it 
 seems to us, in a luscious and abominably wicked 
 manner. There are impersonations of Saints and 
 Magdalens which we are thankful to pass, and not 
 look on. But as to the more beautiful picture excit- 
 ing the more devotion, or, at least, drawing the greater 
 crowds of worshippers, experience is practically against 
 it, as Goethe observed. Miraculous pictures are sel- 
 dom well painted ; nor are wonders of healing wrought 
 before the Dresden Madonna or the Paradise of Tin- 
 toret. The fact is that the idea of local and personal 
 virtue, inherent in the image, belongs to times and 
 states of society which are generally unable to under- 
 stand artistic beauty, or to ally it with religion 
 at all. 
 
 " Let the Pope and Cardinals reform the times," 
 quoth Michael Angelo, " and the times will reform 
 the pictures." It is so ; the spirit of pictures 
 depends on the spirit of the men who produce tin in. 
 The most elaborate and learned compositions may 
 be done in a religious spirit, as many of Overbeck's 
 and Ary Scheffer's works ; and then they have their
 
 RELIGIOUS AltT-HISTOBY. 31 
 
 value as efforts of devout intellect, whatever grade of 
 power that intellect may possess. And the simplest 
 and rudest image only proves that those who made 
 and who use it are rough and simple persons, not that 
 they are good Christians ; on the contrary, the most 
 elaborately insinuated blasphemy in modern polemics 
 does not spring from a fiercer hatred than the 
 scrawled graffito of the slave of Severus's household. 1 
 For ourselves, there is one sufficient ground for 
 the use of religious art/ that it instructs in the 
 facts and doctrines of religion. Further, where great 
 human genius, labour, and sacrifice have evidently 
 been applied to works in this department of intellect, 
 we are or ought to be edified ; because the painter 
 evidently desired to be, and ipso facto has made 
 himself, a Christian preacher. If this were generally 
 acknowledged and understood, as it is in part, how 
 great would be the encouragement and support in 
 heart and spirit, which such thoughts would convey 
 to the painter. To find that his daily work does 
 spiritual good ought, at all events, to make a man's 
 heart to sing for joy over it ; it should teach him the 
 greatness of life, in a way to make life happy ; and 
 that in the highest sense of the word happiness. 
 But such work is not done, nor such happiness gained, 
 by painting religious pictures for the market ; and 
 the path of sacred art is straiter and narrower than 
 it may seem. It is useless to dedicate impotence to 
 God's service instead of power; and of all distressing 
 things in the world, nothing can be more so than 
 mistaken ambition in this matter. A school of church 
 decoration possessed of some power and patronage, 
 1 See p. 7.
 
 32 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 and directed by critics alike able and just, well read 
 and technically skilled, would go far to adjust all 
 questions about the historic or instructive use of 
 religious painting for generations to come. 
 
 VINF. NO. 1. — CAI.LIXTlNi: CATACOMH
 
 C 6
 
 STATION CHOSS OF MAYEKOE
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 
 
 The word Symbol, av/x^oXov {avfi^dXKoi, to put 
 together, guess, conjecture), possesses a very wide 
 range of meanings ; through all which there seems 
 to run a leading notion of the av^i(3o\.ov, or present 
 and visible object, standing for something of greater 
 importance not actually producible. Ta av^^oXa were 
 strictly the two halves of a bone or coin, which two 
 gevoi, or any two contracting parties, broke between 
 them and preserved. The tickets given the Athenian 
 dikasts on entering a court, in exchange for which 
 they received their fee at the end of the day, bore 
 this name ; and it was applied to many similar uses : 
 thence it came to bear the meaning of a verbal 
 signal or watchword, like tessera in Latin ; and to be 
 applied at last to the Creed or Confession of Faith 
 of the Christian body, as their distinguishing mark 
 (Lat. symbolum), and generally, to any outward sign 
 of a conception or idea. In this sense symbolism, or 
 the use of such signs, has been employed in the 
 Church since the earliest times. Though verbal 
 symbolism and figurative expressions are of course 
 coeval with spoken language, and anterior to either 
 writing or painting, there can be no doubt that the 
 parable or metaphor corresponds to the carved or
 
 36 PRIMITIVE CHURCH AIIT. 
 
 painted symbol, and conveys ideas in the same 
 way, by analogy, or similar relation. It has been 
 observed that letters themselves are symbols based 
 on representative arts, and originally formed from 
 hieroglyphic pictures of objects. Again, as a matter 
 of fact, art has, from its very earliest periods, been 
 employed in symbolic teaching, almost entirely on 
 religious subjects. Further, the teaching of our Lord 
 by spoken parable involves His sanction to instruc- 
 tion by painted parable and allegory, which is virtu- 
 ally the same method. The connection between 
 hieroglyphics, or picture-writing, and phonetics, or 
 letter-writing, is perhaps not always clearly under- 
 stood, and may be again briefly repeated here. First 
 comes the hieroglyphic representing an object ; that, 
 in course of time, is taken to mean the initial sound 
 (t. e. the first letter) of the name of that object. 
 Beth or Beit is the name of a house ; and B, its 
 initial sound, is represented by 2, a rude sketch of 
 an Arab screen or tent, the house of the desert, as it 
 is still called. The camel's neck and foreleg remain 
 in the letter Gimel. Sin or Shin, S, is the coiled 
 and hissing serpent ; and so forth, till a limited 
 alphabet of written sounds has taken the place of 
 an endless quantity of rudely drawn signs. The 
 advantage is of course that the letters are inter- 
 changeable; and that the B sound, once represented 
 by a commonly- agreed sign, will do for Bara, for 
 Ben, and for" omne quod incipit in JB." 1 Yet though 
 letters are fittest for the intercourse of common life, 
 
 1 Ingenious symbolical meanings were added or deduced from 
 primary hieroglyphs ; as in Egypt the hawk stands for the Sun, 
 and the two lily-stems for Upper and Lower Egypt ; but this must 
 have involved great complication and inconvenience.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 37 
 
 pictures have still an expressive force of their 
 own ; and a few seem to have been used from a 
 very early time of the Church. There is no saying 
 on what principles, or by what steps of progress, 
 painted or carved objects were allowed in Christian 
 assemblies, or places of assembly for prayer and 
 Sacraments. Christians in the first instance met 
 where they could, and almost all halls and large 
 rooms were more or less ornamented by painting 
 or carving in the larger towns of Greece and Rome. 
 It is possible that most congregations of the Church 
 were early accustomed to pictures, with subjects 
 of every-day character, on the walls within which 
 they assembled. The question of decoration in the 
 Primitive Church was probably never raised at 
 all for two centuries; and it should be considered, 
 that during that time the faithful had grown tho- 
 roughly accustomed to the graceful, and perhaps, in 
 many places, somewhat unmeaning, grotesques and 
 flower-ornaments of ordinary Greek or Eoman life. 
 It is fully understood, how in the earlier tombs 
 and catacombs — as that of St. Domitilla, with the 
 catacomb attached to it, and particularly in the 
 catacomb of St. Prsetextatus — we have instances of 
 Gentile work invested with Christian meaning. The 
 same thing occurs very frequently in the earlier work 
 of other cemeteries, and it seems probable that the 
 vine mosaics of St. Constantia at Borne are instances 
 of the adoption of heathen imagery, to express Chris- 
 tian ideas. The transition from merely tolerating 
 heathen ornament as unmeaning, to this way of 
 utilizing it, was a natural one, and probably was 
 made very early. And this would probably be,
 
 38 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 correctly speaking, the origin of Christian art-sym- 
 bolism : that congregations long accustomed to ani- 
 mals, flowers, landscapes, and figures of all sorts on 
 the walls of rooms of all kinds, at length chose 
 special subjects of their own for decoration — such 
 as the Dove, Fish, Vine, or Shepherd — all gene- 
 rally known and favourite representations, which 
 awakened no particular attention on the part of the 
 heathen, and in fact must often have appeared to all 
 parties in the light of harmless concession. But 
 as greater attention, more thought and intellectual 
 power began to be applied to symbolic teaching, 
 both verbal and pictorial, so must various questions, 
 as to the clanger of approximation to idolatry, have 
 risen on the Christian mind. Some brief account 
 of these must be given in this chapter. What is 
 to be here noticed in this connection is that idolatry 
 is a matter of actual and direct representation ; and 
 that true symbolism represents an object of worship 
 indirectly. This distinction was made in the Hebrew 
 Church, and recognized from the first in the Chris- 
 tian symbolisms ; which appealed to the thoughts as 
 the actual or direct picture does to the senses. The 
 actual image is supposed to be like its subject, the 
 symbol is not. This distinction, that the supposed 
 portrait-image represents the outward form of its 
 subject, and the symbol makes you think of the 
 inner essence or being of its subject, is, we apprehend, 
 real and vital. But it is unsatisfactorily subtle, and 
 difficult of practical adjustment ; and it is continually 
 infringed on, and finally destroyed, when the aesthetic 
 spirit is abroad calling for visible images of objects 
 of faith ; as from the fifth to the fifteenth century ;
 
 RELIGIOUS AKT.— SYMBOLISM. 39 
 
 and at the present time in the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and of late in the Anglican. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, then, if in the first 
 and second centuries, the turn of the Churches' 
 practice in the Roman, or Grreco-Roman world, was 
 to tolerate, or perhaps enjoy trivial ornament; and 
 latterly to attach special meanings to such de tails^ /■ 
 of it as could be made into Christian tokens. And fV 
 here we enter on two distinctions, one of which will 
 have to be carried through the whole of this in- 
 quiry : between adopted and invented symbols, Scrip- 
 tural and non-Scriptural emblems, or visible signs. 
 It should be noticed, that the earlier Christian em- 
 blems were for the most part taken from the Lord's 
 mouth, and that it is a leading feature of His para- 
 bolic teaching to adopt the employments, the sights 
 and thoughts of ordinary life, and invest them with , / 
 spiritual meanin^J This is familiar to every school- ** 
 child ; and as our matured knowledge and experience 
 in spiritual matters does little more than enable us 
 to realize in part what we learnt as children, so it 
 is with the imagery of the Gospel. All remember 
 the awful contrast between the sheep and the goats, 
 and how it has impressed itself on the Christian 
 imagination : but few are aware of how vividly it 
 returns to the mind of the traveller, probably in his 
 very first day's journey through the land of Israel. 
 The terraces of the low hills are dotted with white 
 sheep and black goats ; so white and so black, that 
 their contrast of colour must attract even careless 
 eyes, and add force to our Lord's description of the 
 judgment. Again, on the way from Jaffa to Jeru- 
 salem, generally the first ride in the Holy Land, the
 
 40 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 wayfarer will probably see the flocks watered from 
 deep wells, like that of Sychar, where the hidden 
 fountain springs up unto life, and the thin limestone 
 strata are pierced through by living waters. The 
 ancient vines which are still dressed on the slope of 
 Olivet, recall the parable of the Vine, there delivered 
 to all Christian eyes ; the Shepherd and his stray 
 flock are everywhere in the hill-country and through- 
 out Palestine ; the Fig-tree, the Sower and his Seed, 
 the nets and fish of Tiberias, all point to Our Lord's 
 custom of adopting daily things to the purposes of 
 His teaching. Less frequently, He invented parables 
 or symbolic relations of possible events ; as those of 
 the Steward, the Talents, and the Wise and Foolish 
 Virgins, &c. — seldom or never descending to fable or 
 apologue, like Jotham, in his story of the Trees. Both 
 these classes of symbol were well known to the 
 early Church. A [any were adopted from the Lord's 
 own words, a few were invented, as the Ship, the 
 Anchor, and the Lyre. Some were adopted from 
 heathen or secular use, as the Peacock, Olive and 
 other trees, and much bird and flower decoration, 
 and these of course appear in the most ancient ex- 
 amples we possess. [The Monogram of the Lord's 
 name ; the anagrammatic Fish, IX0T2, of the ini- 
 tials of His name and titles; the palm-branch of 
 death in Christ ; and the adopted imagery of birds 
 and flowers, are the oldest Christian symbols yet 
 remaining. The Vine and the Good Shepherd 
 accompany them in the earliest paintings of the cata- 
 combs, though the brief and easily-cut letter-symbol 
 of the monogram is naturally more frequent in in- 
 scriptions. Setting this last aside, it may be repeated
 
 RELIGIOUS ART.— SYMBOLISM. 41 
 
 that the two former emblems were sanctioned by our 
 Lord's use of them with reference to Himself. 
 
 Considered as the substitution of a producible or 
 visible idea for another, verbal and pictorial sym- 
 bolisms are the same thing. It can hardly be denied, 
 that the symbolic picture of the Vine, or the Pastor 
 bearing the lost lamb, are simply picture-writing of 
 the words " I am the true Vine," or " I am the Good 
 Shepherd." They attempt to impress a personality ; 
 they call to mind certain Divine Functions of the 
 Divine Man ; they make no appeal to the emotions 
 through the eye ; only indicating to the spectator 
 the thought of the artist, and his desire that that 
 thought might pass through other Christian souls 
 also. The Lord's speech in parables, "because of 
 the hardness of the hearts " of his hearers, is strictly 
 an anticipation and a parallel of the use of pictured 
 symbols for gradual instruction, because of the dul- 
 ness and the weakness of men's souls. He has not 
 given to us to exchange ideas like pure intelligences ; 
 and the use of symbolism is a mere question of 
 language, of the conveyance and transmission of 
 ideas. Words are defined in logic as arbitrary signs 
 of things, or of our ideas of things. They pass 
 instead of things ; they manifest and communicate 
 ideas. Paper money is an arbitrary symbol of gold ; 
 leather might have been, and has been, used instead, 
 and has answered the purpose of being exchanged 
 for labour as well as gold. The words "five pounds" 
 cannot be substituted in the market for the things 
 they represent : nevertheless they manifest to the 
 hearer, that the speaker has the idea of that sum 
 before his mind. Words pass instead of things in the
 
 42 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 mind ; they cannot be used instead of things in fact. 
 And for this we have reason to be thankful, as other- 
 wise the truth of the comfortable maxim, that hard 
 words break no bones, might be seriously disputed ; 
 — and indeed it is so, by the lamenting bitterness 
 of the Psalmist's symbolism, " His words were 
 smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords." 
 
 Now, when the symbol stands instead of the 
 tiling symbolized as a word for a thing, or as a note 
 fur money, and is identified with it in the mind, it 
 may come under the imputation of idolatry, or of 
 approach to idolatry. When the symbol only mani- 
 fests to the mind of the spectator that the painter 
 intended him to think of the thing symbolized, that 
 imputation cannot hold. No man (probably) ever 
 fell down and worshipped a picture or image of a 
 Vine or of a Fish : no man for six centuries ever 
 worshipped the wood, stone, or metal of the Cross. 
 But the portrait-representation of Our Lord (not that 
 in symbolic form, of the Good Shepherd) became, 
 though it ought not logically to have become, the 
 first step in a course of image-worship. This will 
 be hereafter traced through the Eoman mosaics of 
 the Greek school. 
 
 There can be no doubt, moreover, that the ancient 
 Hebrew dread of the graven image, of every form of 
 idolatry or approach to it, was present, through the 
 first five centuries at least. As we shall hereafter 
 observe, this scruple is one of the points of diver- 
 gence between the Eastern and the Grseco-Eoman, 
 or afterwards the Gothic, mind; the Mediaeval Church 
 being more impressed by the value of eye-art and 
 picture-teaching, and also being led by her veneration
 
 EELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 4b 
 
 for Rome to follow, as Rome followed, the ancient 
 ( rreek tendency to Personification of the Deity or His 
 manifestations. The Eastern mind, and that of the 
 Byzantine,or later Greek Church, has, however, greater 
 facility in understanding the difference between sym- 
 bolism and personification in art, and in reducing 
 it to practice. That difference or distinction has 
 been already hinted at ; the symbol indicates the 
 thought of its object ; the personification calls up a 
 visible image of its object. Athene was thought of 
 by the earlier Greek races, perhaps, as the queen of 
 the air, or the breath of life and of thought, of the 
 health, spirit and wisdom of man. And so she was 
 thought of as a part of Zeus, the one supreme being ; 
 as something coming from him, springing unborn 
 from him, to be the guide and helper of man. Some 
 such thoughts and worship of the spirit of health 
 and wisdom, with a name, but without an image, are 
 conceivable, and probably were entertained for a 
 time by the earlier Aryan races. But the Greek 
 was impelled by the intensity of his perceptions and 
 conceptions, or by the very perfection of his senses 
 to desire, to see, and to touch. Like a child, he 
 desired to have in his own hands that which he 
 most desired ; and he would be content no more with 
 the majestic symbols of Egypt; he not only per- 
 sonified the powers of nature, but realized that per- 
 sonification in wood and stone, in his own image, 
 according to the fashion of the beauty of man. 1 
 The final compromise of Iconoclasm, 2 as the late 
 
 1 See Euskin, "Queen of the Air," and Max Miiller, "Chips 
 from a German Workshop," vol. i. 
 
 2 Milman's "Latin Christianity," chap. ix. book xiv. (ed. i. p. 
 597, vol. vi. ). It appears not how far sculpture had dared to embody
 
 44 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Dean of St. Paul's points out, may illustrate this 
 distinction. The carved image seems to have 
 been felt to be nearer to the idol ; as more solidly 
 and literally representative of its subjects, and in 
 fact more like a living being ; the picture appears 
 more in the light of an emblem, a purely sym- 
 bolic aid to thought and emotion. This distinc- 
 tion, however subtle, has been maintained thus in 
 the Eastern Church ever since the ninth century ; 
 and it leads us to notice the necessary inaccuracy 
 with which the words Greek and Eastern have 
 to be used on this and kindred subjects. There 
 is no doubt that the art of ancient Greece was 
 
 in brass or in marble the hallowed and awful objects of Christian 
 worship. * * * Probably statues of this kind were extremely rare ; 
 and when image-worship was restored, what may be called its song 
 of victory is silent as to sculptures. See Poem in the Anthologia, 
 XpicrtaviKct 'ETTiypapLfxara, Jacobs, i. 28. 
 
 'EAa,ui|(6f oktIs ttjs dA.r)06i'as ird\iv * * * 
 iSov yap avdis Xptaros eiKoi'MTfj.i'vos 
 Aa.fj.Trei irpus mj/os ryjs KadeSpas rov KpaTjvs * * 
 rijs elaoSov 8' vTrepOev, ais dela ttvKt) 
 <TTy]Xoypa(peLTai, Ka\ (J>i/Aa|, ?j TrapOeioi, &.C. 
 
 "The Lord, the Virgin, the angels, saints, martyrs, priesthood, 
 take their place over the portal entrance ; but shining in colours 
 to blind the eyes of the heretics. To the keener perception of the 
 Greeks there may have risen a feeling that in its more rigid and 
 solid form the image, was more near to the idol. At the same time 
 the art of sculpture and casting in bronze was probably degenerate 
 and out of use ; at all events it was too slow and laborious to 
 supply the demands of triumphant zeal in the restoration of the 
 persecuted images. There was, therefore, a tacit compromise : 
 nothing appeared but painting, mosaics, engraving on cup and 
 chalice, embroidery on vestments. The renunciation of sculpture 
 grew into a rigid, passionate aversion. The Greek at length learned 
 to contemplate that kind of lull representation of the Deity or the 
 Saints with the aversion of a Jew or a Mohammedan." See also 
 Bingham, xii. eh. 8, and chapter on Christian sculpture. 
 
 On Ferret's work, and the Catacomb paintings, see note in 
 Miluian, vol. vi. book xiv. chap. 9, p. 604.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 45 
 
 linked with idolatry, from the natural tendency of 
 the Greek to set forth to himself gods in his own 
 image. The unconscious personifications of the ele- 
 ments and their working, which are the basis of Aryan 
 mythology, were developed and realized by that 
 wonderful race, with their acute senses, their great 
 personal beaut} T , and their intense appreciation of 
 all outer loveliness. The root of Western idolatry 
 seems to be man's specially Greek tendency to set 
 himself up as an anthropomorphic sign of Deity, 
 rather than accept the signs already given — the rain 
 and sunset and sunrise which Our Lord Himself 
 pointed as the works of His Father. Greek art, then, 
 till the absorption of Greece into Rome, was idola- 
 trous, and the cause of idolatry. But after that event, 
 Borne adopts and imitates Athens, and the centre and 
 stronghold of the making and worship of the graven 
 image is in the central city. From the day of the 
 Empire, in fact, Greek or Graeco-Rornan art has repre- 
 sented the principle of idolatrous personification ; and 
 so far we speak of Greek work as that of ancient 
 Athens, modified by time, degeneracy, and transfer- 
 ence to Italy. But after Constantine, Greek means 
 Byzantine, as Byzantium gradually becomes the centre 
 of the Eastern part of the Church of Christ. It is 
 there, accordingly, that we may expect to see the 
 Eastern tendency to pure or non-representative sym- 
 bolism, in the first place ; and in the second, suppos- 
 ing symbolism to have degenerated into image- 
 worship, we may look to Byzantium for a revival of 
 the Hebrew protest against idolatry; which is, in 
 fact, found in the Iconoclasm of the eighth century. 
 The use of the word " Greek " for the Eastern Church
 
 46 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 is so immeasurably different from all its other uses 
 as to lead to confusion of ideas. One may say that 
 on the question of images the Eastern element in the 
 Byzantine Church was protesting against the ancient 
 Hellenic, or idolatrous Greek, for great part of the 
 eighth century. 
 
 But a further question has exercised the Christian 
 Church from the third or fourth century at latest, as 
 to the degeneracy of symbolism — that is to say, the 
 natural tendency of mankind either to turn symbols 
 into images or fetiches, or to substitute beautiful 
 personifications or supposed portraits of divine or 
 sacred persons, for ancient symbols of Deity and the 
 Presence of the Invisible Lord. Considering that 
 the distinction between symbolism and personifi- 
 cation, or actual resemblance, is not likely to be 
 rightly understood by large masses of the people, 
 who cannot see the difference between that which 
 indicates and that which represents, it is held best 
 by many to dispense with art and symbol altogether. 1 
 This is arguing from abuse of a thing to its disuse, as 
 is so frequently done; but the Church has never 
 yet consented to lose illustrative art or emblematic 
 means of instruction. 2 This prohibition, in its strictest 
 
 1 "Latin Christianity," book iv. vol. ii. p. 344, quoted in Chap. 
 iii. on Iconoclasm. 
 
 - Fairly argued thus by John Damascene. De Imag. Orat. ii. 
 p. 747, on /3i'/3Aot to?9 aypa.[x/j.a.TOLS eicriv al e'tKOVes eV drixv <pO)vfj t. 
 upwvras StSdaKovcrai, &C. Ovk euiropw fitlUKcav, ou trxoATji/ dyw vpos 
 rijv avdyvwcriv' flcTei/xi els ro koivov twv tyvx&v larpeiov, rrjv (kkKt]- 
 atav, wffirep dudvdcus ro7s \oyifffxo7s o-vvairviySfxevos' eAjcei /xe irpds 
 6euv rrjs ypa<pys to dvQos, na\ is A.€i,ua>p Tepnet tt}p opaffiv, &c. &C. 
 
 Pope Gregory II., in his letter to Leo Isaurian, enumerates a list 
 of subjects which instruct and edify him personally. All are. his- 
 torical and Scriptural: the Madonna and choirs of angels, The 
 Minnies of Mercy, Last Supper, Loaves in the Desert, Transfigu-
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 47 
 
 form, is more Mohammedan than Hebrew, and is by- 
 no means Scriptural ; for the distinction between 
 symbolic teaching and idolatrous representation is 
 recognized from the first under the Mosaic dispen- 
 sation. The cherubic forms used in the Ark, in the 
 Tabernacle, and in the Temple, are the earliest in- 
 stances of permitted or enjoined symbol ; and on 
 their use all Christian use of art in the same way 
 may rest. 1 
 
 First, the cherubic emblem or symbol was not 
 only permitted, but enjoined and dictated to Moses 
 on the Mount. No contradiction to the spirit of 
 the Second Commandment seems to have been felt 
 by the use of it, either during the period of the 
 Tabernacle or that of the Temple of Solomon. We 
 are led to suppose, also, from the vision of Ezekiel 
 (chs. i. and x.), that the forms represented, as well as 
 symbolized, real existences, glorious and awful created 
 beings superior to man. Still, it is probable that the 
 carved or embossed cherubs were understood as sym- 
 bols only by the people : though Ezekiel, who was a 
 priest, was able to recognize the hieratic Form, as it 
 may be called, which he had seen upon the Ark of 
 God. It will be remembered (see Numb. iv. 5, 19, 
 20) that this form was known only to the priests, 
 as the Ark was always covered threefold, and by 
 their hands, before it was moved. Its bearers might 
 
 ration, Sacrifice of Isaac, Pentecost, Crucifixion, and Eesurrection. 
 He appeals to the use of the Cherubic forms in the Hebrew Dis- 
 pensation . 
 
 1 For an exhaustive dissertation on this subject, reference should 
 be made to the word " Cherub " iu Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 
 by Dr. Hayman ; but some of its leading facts may be repeated 
 here.
 
 48 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 not enter till it was covered. Josephus says no one 
 can conjecture of what form (oirolai rives), these 
 cherubim of Glory were. This expression must 
 relate to those on the Ark ; since the larger forms of 
 those made by Solomon must have been seen by 
 both Levites and people, as well as the cherubs 
 on the Temple doors, along with the forms of lions 
 and palm-trees, and those which supported the 
 great lavers (1 Kings vii.). 
 
 This crucial example of enjoined and commanded 
 symbolism has, of course, been cited throughout all 
 the long Iconoclastic divisions of Christendom. It 
 was referred to throughout the second Council of 
 Nice ; and Gregory II. makes especial reference to it. 
 In the passages quoted in Milman's " Latin Christi- 
 anity," and repeated above, from that Pope, and from 
 Joannes Damascenus, the case in favour of some 
 use of painting for purposes of instruction is fairly 
 stated. The Dean seems, however, to have doubted the 
 possibility of maintaining the distinction between a 
 symbolic representation and an actual portrait-image 
 in an age of undiscriminating devotion. It had cer- 
 tainly ceased to be felt in the age he is describing, 
 when to all intents and purposes the image was the 
 saint. But it must be remarked that the Hebrews 
 were expected to understand and abide by it, even 
 immediately after their escape from the image-worship 
 of Egypt. Though graven images stood in their Holy 
 of Holies, they were forbidden to address them in 
 prayer, or to think of them as representing Him of 
 Whose state they were a part. And it would seem 
 that there were what may be called precautions which 
 secured the people from the danger of cherub-worship ;
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 40 
 
 at least till the time of Jeroboam, whose calves at 
 Dan and Bethel may be supposed to have partaken of 
 the cherubic form, most probably that known to the 
 people as represented on the doors of the Temple. 
 That form must have borne some relation or resem- 
 blance to the vast images of Assyria, and Egypt, and 
 Persia. There is no necessity for regarding it as a 
 mere Hebrew adoption of Egyptian ritual: it is 
 more like a special sanction of the use of a world- 
 wide symbol, which is represented in the imagination 
 of the Greek and Gothic races by the various forms 
 and stories of the Griffin or gryps. This word 
 is doubtless connected by its etymology with the 
 Hebrew MT3 Cherub ; and the universality of the 
 traditional idea of these composite creatures is a 
 highly significant fact. It would seem, in truth, that 
 all the chief races of men have been taught to set 
 forth to their own sight such mysterious forms, not 
 believing in them as existing beings, and therefore 
 without incurring the guilt of idolatry ; not wor- 
 shipping their vast images, but expressing to them- 
 selves by forms of bull, lion, and eagle, combined 
 with the human face of thought and command, some 
 of the attributes of the Divine Being. Some form 
 of this kind, of which the winged bulls or lions of 
 Nineveh, or the sphinxes of Egypt, may be taken as 
 types, must have been the popular form of the cherub 
 known to the children of Israel. They were guarded 
 from worshipping this form, though it was used as 
 a part of their ritual, partly by the fact that two 
 images, not one, were placed by command in the 
 Tabernacle : partly by these two being represented 
 as attending on and ministering to some actual and 
 
 D
 
 50 PRIMITIVE CHUKCH ART. 
 
 special Presence of God ; and again, probably, by 
 their appearing to be without share in human sym- 
 pathies. They stood forth as adoring, admiring, and 
 contemplating beings ; angels of knowledge, as Hebrew 
 tradition calls them, not, as like the seraphim, angels 
 of love and protection to mankind. Their number is 
 suggested as two or four in the Old Testament, as 
 the Apocalyptic creatures are four in the vision of 
 St. John. It will be remembered that in the Temple 
 of Solomon, the Ark, with its two cherubs of glory, 
 was overshadowed by a second pair of colossal size. 
 But when we come to the description by Ezekiel of 
 his visions of the glory of God, w T e are led further : ' 
 " In ch. i. he speaks of them as living creatures, 
 " animal forms. In ch. x., v. 14, the remarkable ex- 
 " pression ' the face of a cherub ' is introduced ; and 
 " the prophet refers to his former vision, and identi- 
 " fies these creatures with the cherubim. ' I knew 
 " ' (v. 20) that they were cherubim.' On the whole, it 
 " seems likely that the word cherub means not only 
 " the composite creature form of which the man, lion, 
 " bull, and eagle were the elements ; but, further, 
 " some peculiar and mystical form, which Ezekiel, 
 " being a priest, would know and recognize as the 
 " ' face of a cherub ' icar i^o^rjv, but which was kept 
 " secret from all others — and such, probably, were 
 " those on the Ark, which, when it was moved, was 
 " always covered, &c. This mysterious form might 
 " well be the symbol of Him "Whom none could behold 
 " and live. And as symbols of divine attributes, not 
 " as representations of actual beings (Clem. Alex. 
 " Strom, v. p. 241), the cherubim should be regarded." 
 
 1 See Smith's Diet, of the Bible, s. v. "Cherub."
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 51 
 
 This is exactly the saving distinction between sym- 
 bolism and idolatry ; that the symbol is fully under- 
 stood not to represent to the eye that which it calls 
 to the mind. It may be like nothing in nature ; but 
 at all events it must be such an image or form as 
 never can be supposed to possess or contain an actual 
 supernatural presence. It is a visible sign of the 
 Invisible : pointing onwards to Him, for ever teach- 
 ing things concerning Him, proclaiming itself not to 
 be Him. This is the principle of Christian sym- 
 bolism, and it appears to be identical with that laid 
 down for Hebrew worship. Xo one would ever think 
 of worshipping the Vine or the mystic Fish ; even 
 the Good Shepherd is not represented as standing to 
 receive the worship of His people. He is always 
 engaged in this work for them, laying them on His 
 shoulders or bearing them in His arms, and the 
 figures only repeat His parable of Himself as the 
 King and Shepherd of His people : that image also 
 being Homeric and universal, probably from the 
 earliest days of Aryan herdsmen. 
 
 As regards the Cherub form, connected as it is with 
 the Apocalypse, it is useless and idle to attribute it 
 to actual existences. Though the prophet seems to 
 have recognized them in his vision as beings far 
 above man, his description conveys no definite idea 
 to man. Xo Hebrew or Gentile can ever frame or 
 record images in words or on canvas, which shall 
 give clear conception of the fourfold faces and wings ; 
 or of the wheels in whom was the spirit of the living 
 creatures, to whom was said, Wheel. The great 
 cloud out of the north, the fire enfolding itself, the 
 shapes of fire and lightning, the firmament above as 
 
 d 2
 
 52 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 the terrible crystal, the brightness of amber and flame, 
 the likeness of a throne and One sitting thereon — 
 these are the expressions of a man who, having seen 
 the glory of God, finds his powers of conception and 
 expression, the thought of his brain and the language 
 of his fathers, all fail him together ; and if speech 
 failed the prophet, the language of art may well fail 
 also. Seldom, and rightly but seldom, has this sub- 
 ject been attempted. Raffaelle's attempt at the subject 
 confesses the inadequacy even of his gifts ; it is not a 
 failure of power — it is a misapplication of power ; and 
 one feels it to be beside the mark, a wondrous thing 
 of nought. One other attempt we remember, strange 
 and archaic, to many eyes probably too contemptible 
 for notice, the work of a Syrian ascetic of 1200 years 
 ago. It is in the great Medici or Laurentian MS. of 
 Florence, known by the name of its copyist, as the 
 MS. of Eabula the monk, dated 587. 1 We have 
 to refer to it frequently ; and quaint and extra- 
 vagant as the Ascension woodcut in this volume may 
 be, it gives, like all the other illustrations in the 
 MS., a very strong sense of the author's originality, 
 of his intensity of conception, vigour of thought, and 
 graphic power of expression, which anticipate, not 
 only the best MS. work, but the highest art of Europe. 
 As is observed in our Chapter on Mosaics, this MS. is 
 the type and highest example of the genius of Eastern- 
 Greek or Byzantine work, where it possesses any 
 genius. No one can doubt the connection of Byzau- 
 tine work and thought with Orgagna's ; nor of Or- 
 gagna's with that of Michael Angelo. 2 
 
 1 See Assemanni's Catalogue of the Laurentian Library and 
 woodcut facing Index. s See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, i. p. 447.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 53 
 
 It seems that safety is only secured in religious art 
 when this rule is made absolute; that pictures shall be 
 symbolic and not representative ; that they shall point 
 to that which they do not resemble; shall suggest 
 but not portray ; shall appeal to thought, and not 
 to emotion. Dean Milnian's view, quoted in Chapter 
 III., points to a rule of this kind. He looks for- 
 ward with hope to a time of greater intelligence 
 and greater faith and reliance on God's written 
 Word, when illustrations of it in form and colour 
 shall be no temptation ; when the artist shall be able 
 to appeal to all the emotions which the sense of 
 beauty can give the soul, without misleading or con- 
 fusing the soul. And he most rightly looks to the 
 prospect of an improvement, an elevation and puri- 
 fication in art, which may conduce to this. To follow 
 the line of thought thus indicated, is in great mea- 
 sure the purpose of this book. What seems best to 
 say in a popular work on the subject is said in its 
 last chapter. For the present — and speaking very 
 briefly — there is no doubt that religious painting 
 (symbolical or historical, for under these two heads 
 we include all right church decoration) ought at its 
 best to be a kind of artistic preaching, a proclama- 
 tion of truth in Christ. It is felt to be always an 
 appeal from -the spirit of the painter to the spirit 
 of the spectator. And if there has been true 
 desire of the glory of God in the painter, it will 
 somehow be felt by the spectator ; he will under- 
 stand, that is to say, that a man gone before him 
 has devoutly sought to serve God by his art : and 
 that feeling ought to be the chief value, if not the 
 chief beauty, of the picture to him. This is the
 
 54 PRIMITIVE CHURCH AET. 
 
 true emotion of religious art, the sense of the earnest 
 self-dedication and faithful work of the painter or 
 preacher. Like everybody else's faith and devotion, it 
 admits endless mixtures of motive, and is thwarted 
 by a thousand peculiarities and frailties ; but if the 
 spirit of devotion to God's service be in the painter, 
 he will some way or another show by his picture 
 that he was doing his best in that service. He will 
 have a definite purpose and a determinate idea ; he 
 will tell his tale and express his idea faithfully, 1 and 
 not be always appealing, straightforward or sideways, 
 to the critic's emotions about loveliness. The essence 
 of sacred art is not to work on the spectator, but at 
 the great Subject. It is well in all art to forget one- 
 self, but in this department it is indispensable. The 
 self-consciousness of learning, and natural egotism of 
 delight in his own skill, vitiate all the later works of 
 Eaffaelle, or indeed he fails in earnestness of motive 
 altogether. Laborious pride of science, and half- 
 conscious, unavoidable, incessant rivalry with others, 
 infected and harassed Michael Angelo through all 
 
 1 The latest confusion in which the words Idea and Ideal have 
 been involved seems to consist, first, in making Ideal excellence of 
 painting identical with technical excellence. Pictorial "noclurns" 
 and " symphonies " mean nothing, but are technically admirable 
 in the highest degree. Still, do not let us confound the ideal with 
 the unmeaning. We have somewhere seen Mr. Whistler's beautiful 
 studies of colour called ideal, whereas we should be inclined to 
 call them charming, but to say they contained no intellectual 
 conception or idea whatever. One hears, again, of ideal style 
 or manner of painting and the like, meaning for the most 
 part, that the painter in the given work realizes his fancies in a 
 charming way, like Sandre Botticelli in his Spring or Aphrodite, or 
 Mr. Burne Jones, or Mr. Spencer Stanhope. In this case the word 
 ideal seems to be in collision with the word imaginative, or even 
 passionate. At all events, Holbein's portrait of Wyatt, with all 
 its literal resemblance to an actual and most practical description 
 of man, is as ideal, in the wider sense of suggestive or expressive 
 of spiritual fact, as any picture that ever was painted.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 55 
 
 his long and glorious labours. At least, it is only 
 in Florence, and particularly in tbe great works of 
 the Medici Chapel, where he was undisturbed by 
 competition, that his highest spiritual powers are 
 seen in purity. 
 
 In many pictures, of the Madonna and St. John 
 in particular, all higher aims are sacrificed to beauty, 
 with disastrous effect. The work ceases to be sacred 
 at all, even in the eyes of the most ignorant or simple. 
 The painter has obviously no religious intention in 
 what he calls a religious work, and his work becomes 
 therefore not only neutral, but irreligious. And it 
 is really this which accounts for Goethe's celebrated 
 saying, that miraculous pictures are generally ill- 
 painted. He had learnt to think that no well- 
 painted picture could produce devotion, or conduce 
 to belief in. miracle. His idea of good painting was 
 probably formed on the works of Raffaelle or his 
 immediate followers in Germany or Italy: and his 
 remark is correct enough. Those who are capable of 
 believing in winking pictures, are persons for the 
 most part unable to appreciate Raffaelle, and there 
 is no special connection between beauty and super- 
 stition. A picture painted simply as a piece of 
 good painting falls short of high motive and inspi- 
 ration, and is not likely to awake emotion, or raise 
 influence of any kind. Those who can understand 
 its technical merits will consider them its main 
 object and purpose : those who cannot will have no 
 sincere feeling about it ; and its proper place is a 
 picture-gallery, and not a place of Avorship. It is 
 not our business now to consider what may be the 
 qualifications of miraculous works of art; we are
 
 56 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 rather concerned that no objects of the kind should 
 ever appear, by any accident or circumstance, within 
 the disciplinary range of the Church of this country. 
 Nor yet do we wish to pass any sentence on artists 
 who paint secular pictures, or who even treat sacred 
 subjects in a technical or academic spirit. For the 
 former, as every act of right-doing is also an act of 
 well-doing, their work is right and honourable, and 
 may probably be done in zealous service of God. 
 There is room for much casuistry in the matter, and 
 one finds some difficulty in accepting Etty's con- 
 viction of the sacredness of his displayed beauties as 
 exhibitions of the fairest divine work on earth. But 
 the faithful purpose to work with honest exertion 
 of power, and with sense of the workman's honour, is 
 enough to make any picture a good work, in the most 
 important sense. But he who has gone through the 
 usual artistic training of the school of this country, 
 — now a tolerably severe one — and who faithfully 
 gives himself up to realizing a subject from the Old 
 or New Testament, believing or desiring to believe 
 in his subject, and wishing to impress it on others, is 
 attempting a higher thing : and he is likely to have 
 success, whether he sees it or not, and whether it is 
 accompanied by personal applause and profit or not. 
 But there is another danger, or dangerous ten- 
 dency, in the use of symbolism, which we trust, for our 
 own Church and period, may be considered historical 
 rather than actual. Yet it is a risk the recurrence 
 of which is possible. It is true that symbols, in 
 the second or some subsequent generation, are apt to 
 become first conventional realisms, then personifica- 
 tions, then idols. It is well known, for instance, that
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 57 
 
 at one time in the Middle Ages, the Cross became a 
 personification and object of worship in itself, in- 
 stead of the Symbol of the Death of Christ for man. 
 The names of St. Cross and St. Sepulchre bear wit- 
 ness to this in our own country, as the Dean of St. 
 Paul's observes. The popular, or Gentile Cherub 
 — the " wise " or " mighty one," in all its varieties 
 of combination — aquiline, leonine, and human — may 
 have been originally a pure symbol of Divine Attri- 
 bute Next, and by easy transition, the composite is 
 supposed to have a real existence corresponding to it, 
 and resembling it, in the visible or invisible world. 
 It gets personified. From this may follow — indeed, by 
 the worship of the calves at Dan and Bethel, it 
 seems that there did in this instance follow — actual 
 worship of the graven image : still of the God of 
 Israel, but by means of prayer addressed to a Per- 
 sonified representation of Him. There is a kind of 
 Pagan's Progress, from the sign of Divine Attribute to 
 the fetiche or image worshipped for its own sake. 
 It has been too often made even in the Christian 
 Church, and it may be observed in full completion 
 in our own days. It seems to belong to all religious 
 systems in which a caste in any form is retained 
 or sought after ; where the priesthood are definitely 
 and absolutely separated from the people. The 
 real nature of the Symbol may be indeed remembered 
 and understood by an initiated caste, or by an edu- 
 cated or privileged class of persons. In Egypt, the 
 hieratic body retained a sense of the One God, leaving 
 the people to gross idolatries. In Greece, under 
 happier auspices, a philosophic laity, and a national 
 temper alike speculative and hard-headed, may be 
 
 D 3
 
 58 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 thought to have clung to the idea of a greater and 
 perfect Zeus, who was identical with Fate, and the 
 true Lord and Restorer of all things. 1 There is no 
 doubt, that to the educated priesthood, and perhaps 
 laity, of the Roman Catholic Church, the distinctions 
 of worship, service, and devotion, are intelligible 
 enough. They are probably an after-thought, a series 
 of differences set up to explain or palliate an evi- 
 dently indefensible state of things. There is no par- 
 ticular comment to make on them ; except that wor- 
 ship or Appeal of Prayer for help in need can only be 
 made by the soul to one object at a time ; and that, 
 consequently, to entreat a saint or saints to mediate 
 for us with Christ the Lord, is to refuse worship or 
 personal appeal to Him. Well-trained and thought- 
 ful priests or laity may possibly be able to maintain 
 such distinctions, and to keep the unseen Beings of 
 the spiritual world in some right relation to each 
 other in their creed. It may have been so under the 
 hieratic despotism of Egypt ; possibly afterwards, with 
 the higher and better spirits of the sophist or phi- 
 losophic teaching of ancient Greece. All these alike, 
 on close examination as to what the idol or image 
 was, before which they knelt, might perhaps have 
 answered, that to them the idol was nothing at all ; 
 nothing Divine, no Hearer of Prayer to Whom all 
 flesh should come. Yet there can be no doubt of the 
 absolute and degrading idolatry of the mass of the 
 town population of Egypt, Greece, and Rome ; or that 
 the personified and representative Image did really 
 receive worship and aspiration due to God, and 
 
 1 See Dr. Zeller's Essay in ' ' Contemporary Review," voL iv. p. 
 359 ; and compare Prof. Ruskin's " Queen of the Air."
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 59 
 
 debase the minds of the worshippers. We have 
 already referred to Prof. Muller's Brahmin, who 
 defends Hindu Iconodulism, and asserts the use 
 of images as portraits, disclaiming all fetichism 
 or belief in the efficacy of the wood and stone itself. 
 As an excuse for the untaught, as a consolation 
 to the Christian mind — sad because of the heathen, 
 and living in the hope of our Litany that it may 
 please God to have mercy upon all men — this justifi- 
 cation is weighty and most valuable. But it could 
 only be addressed to educated and thoughtful people, 
 and it is only true when said of or by the educated 
 and thoughtful. It is excellent ad hominem ; it puts 
 the Christian on his charity, and reminds him that 
 he is not to condemn the heathen. But in the first 
 place, to acquit our neighbour is as much an act of 
 judgment as to pronounce him guilty ; and we can but 
 state his case as it appears to us, and leave it to the 
 Judge of all the earth. And the plea is open to this 
 exception, that the portrait is a record of the appear- 
 ance of somebody who has been seen of men with 
 eyes, whereas no man hath seen God at any time. 
 If any authentic likeness of Christ the Lord remained 
 on earth, we cannot suppose that to look on it in 
 prayer to Him would be an act of idolatry. Having 
 been manifest in the flesh, He had a human body 
 and likeness. It is doubtless part uf His scheme 
 and care for men, that no such image should ever 
 have existed ; that His people may learn to face the 
 life-long difficulty of walking by faith and not by 
 sight. But a portrait of the Invisible Father of 
 Spirits is a contradiction in terms. If the Hindu 
 really believes in a hundred-headed being in the
 
 60 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 heavens, bearing dagger and axe, hurling quoits, and 
 brandishing skulls, and " wielding all weapons in his 
 countless hands " — his worship of the monstrous por- 
 traits of that Being can hardly be such as we can be 
 satisfied with ; we cannot leave him in it without such 
 protest as is possible, and such attempts at better 
 teaching as we can make. When the religious sym- 
 bolism of a highly intellectual race is very rude and 
 degraded, a natural suspicion arises that it is kept 
 so for the poorer and less informed by some govern- 
 ing class who know better. It is clear that a man 
 who could speak thus of the quasi-symbolic idols of 
 his race would be able to dispense with their use him- 
 self in prayer; while the vulgar would continue to 
 worship in abject fetichism. Would he say that a 
 large proportion of the Hindu population of India 
 understood the matter as well as he understood it 
 himself ? In short, the plea of symbolism may excuse 
 the idolater, but it does not justify idolatry. As soon 
 as the symbol is looked on as anything more than an 
 assistance to thought or understanding, invented by 
 man for man's convenience, without actual likeness to 
 God, it is on the way to become an idol, whether it be 
 set up in a Heathen Temple or in a Christian Church. 
 A brief account of the symbolisms most freely used 
 in the primitive Church may close this chapter. 
 They seemed to have been used entirely for instruc- 
 tion or suggestion of thought, and the beginnings of 
 idol- worship are to be traced, not to them, but to 
 the portraits, or supposed portraiture, of saints in 
 the various churches, especially of Eome. 1 
 
 1 See Chapter on Mosaics. For permitted symbols, Clem* Alex. 
 Pasdag. iii. c. 11.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART.— SYMBOLISM. 61 
 
 As has been already so often observed, the Vine, 
 the Dove, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, are the most 
 ancient emblems ; together with the Monogram of the 
 Lord's Name, the Fish in both its senses, and probably 
 the hastily-inscribed or engraved palm-branch of the 
 Martyr's or confessor's grave. The first four were 
 sanctioned or virtually prescribed in Holy Scripture 
 itself, and the others are sufficiently obvious images. 
 Thus the Fish, as an anagram, represents the Lord 
 Himself, and, as a symbol, the believer, according 
 to the parable of the net ; the Dove and the Lamb 
 are used both as signs of the Second and Third Per- 
 sons of the Trinity, and also to represent His faithful 
 followers. All these forms are found in the earliest 
 cemeteries and catacombs, sometimes with the most 
 archaic and barbarous treatment. In a few cases — 
 and those, of course, the most ancient — they are in 
 beautiful Grseco-Eoman fresco or stucco, admirably 
 composed in decorative patterns, and so well executed, 
 with scientific preparation of the wall-surface before- 
 hand, as to have lasted better than much more recent 
 work by less skilful hands. Such works are the paint- 
 ings in the tomb of Domitilla and the catacomb of St. 
 Prsetextatus. 1 The probability of their having been 
 executed by heathen hands is generally recognized ; 
 and, as has been suggested above, it seems not unlikely 
 that the Christian community accepted the decora- 
 tions of the halls and rooms in which they met, simply 
 as they found them ; and then began to make special 
 choice of ordinary subjects, as vines and doves, which 
 spoke a double language, and reminded them of events 
 in the Gospels or of words from the Lord's mouth. 
 
 1 See Chapter on Catacombs.
 
 62 PKIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Other emblems more rarely found, and not im- 
 mediately derived from Holy Scripture, the ship and 
 chariot, the anchor and lyre, the dolphin, phoenix, 
 peacock, and pelican, are all used on Christian sepul- 
 chres. From Scripture, the cock, stag, lion, dragon, 
 and serpent occur in various relations. The olive, 
 fir-tree, and fig-tree are rarely seen ; the palm is 
 found on all tombs, and on the sarcophagi it accom- 
 panies the subject of Our Lord's Entry into Jerusalem. 
 The various symbolic or parabolic events are men- 
 tioned in the Chapters on the Catacombs and on 
 Sarcophagi and Christian Sculpture, and in the index 
 of our subjects. The principal ones are the Agape 
 of bread and fish, or the Fish carrying loaves ; Adam 
 and Eve with the Serpent ; Noah in his square area 
 or chest ; the sacrifice of Abraham ; Pharaoh and 
 the Red Sea; Moses and the rock; Elijah in his 
 chariot ; Jonah with gourd or whale ; Daniel with 
 the lions; and once 1 administering the balls of 
 pitch and hair to the dragon, according to the nar- 
 rative in the Apocrypha. To these may be added, 
 from the New Testament, the adoration of the Magi, 
 the miracles of Cana and of the Multiplied Loaves, 
 and other miracles of mercy — in particular, the 
 Cures of the Talsy and of the Issue of Blood. These, 
 however, are historical rather than symbolical, and 
 records of actual events rather than suggestive of 
 the future. 
 
 Various attempts at setting forth the imagery of 
 
 the book of Revelation are spoken of in the Chapter 
 
 on Mosaics. The increasing alarms and distresses of 
 
 the declining Empire from the end of the fourth 
 
 1 Bottari. i. tav. 15.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 63 
 
 century naturally inclined men to think of the latter 
 days of Imperial Rome as indeed the beginning of 
 the world's end. It is no wonder if workmen, whose 
 style was formed in so stern a school as the Byzan- 
 tine period, should look willingly at the future world 
 rather than the present, and dwell in imagination 
 on spiritual hope ; being hopeless in this life. Still, 
 within a period of ten centuries there are no antici- 
 pations of judgment in authentic painting or carved 
 work ; the rejoicings of the saints in and with Christ, 
 in open vision in Heaven, are not as yet contrasted 
 with the torments of the lost : only with the state 
 of the faithful as sheep on earth, on the other side 
 of the mystic Jordan. 
 
 The most commonly-used symbolism of the Apo- 
 calypse, if we except the mystic Lamb, is of course 
 the fourfold sign of the Evangelists — the Tetramorph, 
 as it is called — when, as frequently happens in ancient 
 art, the four are combined in one form. They thus in- 
 volve a peculiarly impressive connection between the 
 beginning of the visions of Ezekiel and the first 
 unveiling of heaven to the Beloved Disciple. It can- 
 not be mistaken, though in the prophet's vision the 
 Living Creatures were not only four in number, but 
 each was fourfold in shape. " They four had the face 
 of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side ; 
 and they four had the face of an ox on the left side ; 
 they four had also the face of an eagle : " while in 
 the Apocalypse " the first beast was like a lion, the 
 second was like a calf, the third had the face of a man, 
 and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle." This con- 
 nection is said by Mrs. Jameson l to have been noticed 
 
 1 "Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 79.
 
 64 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 as early as the second century, though no representa- 
 tions are found till the fifth ; nor is it till the fifth 
 that the four creatures were taken to represent the 
 four Evangelists. It was not, indeed, till long after 
 that each was separately assigned to each writer. The 
 united Tetramorph connects them more closely with 
 the vision of Ezekiel, and is represented (evidently 
 with that connection present in the mind of the 
 workman) in the great MS. of Kabul a. (See woodcut.) 
 
 But the original emblem of the four Evangelists 1 
 is the four rivers of Paradise. These are found in 
 some of the earliest specimens of certainly authentic 
 Christian decoration, as in the Lateran Cross. 2 The 
 four books or rolls are also found in early art. 
 The stag is generally placed by the four rivers, 
 especially when they are united in the one Jordan 
 and combined with baptismal imagery ; as so fre- 
 quently happens. 
 
 The upraised hand of blessing, as a sign of the 
 presence of God the Father, is constant in the early 
 mosaics of Rome and Bayenna. Some account of 
 this and other Christian emblems will be given in 
 describing the places where they occur, as of the 
 Orantes or praying figures so often found in the 
 Catacombs. 3 
 
 It is difficult to lay down, or rather to suggest, 
 any rules or limitations for the use of symbolism in 
 the Anglican Church, nor would they probably have 
 much authority with any builder or decorator of any 
 sacred building, nor obtain much attention from that 
 
 1 See Aringhi, vol. ii. p. 285. 
 
 8 See Chapter on the Cross and Sacramental Emblems. 
 
 3 See Index.
 
 RELIGIOUS ART. — SYMBOLISM. 65 
 
 section of our clergy or people whose minds are most 
 employed on the aesthetic part of Christian worship. 
 But it is correct, at all events, to say that Scriptural 
 subjects, and those alone, contented the Church of 
 the first five centuries. It is not that others were 
 forbidden, for Christian Church ornament either 
 began, or was from the first mingled, with the deco- 
 rations of Pagan halls and Pagan cemeteries. But 
 in those days the Christian imagination could dwell 
 contentedly and continuously on a prescribed series 
 of images, within the ample limits of Scriptural 
 illustration. We earnestly desire to restrict Anglican 
 decoration within the same bounds as those of the 
 primitive Church, and may fairly ask if the histories, 
 emblems, and parables of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment are not, after all, enough to employ the mind 
 of an English worshipper in the intervals of church 
 service, or at times of private meditation in church ? 
 And, setting aside for a moment all the vast mass of 
 historical subject which invites the artist — and has 
 quite vainly invited the English artist, till very 
 lately — it may be said that Scriptural symbolism 
 will find quite subject enough to call out and to 
 reward the greatest efforts of the greatest man — 
 that is to say, of the greatest believing man ; for it 
 is not desirable that our sanctuaries be adorned with 
 the paintings of men who do not believe what they 
 paint, and who despise their own labour ; or even with 
 works whose technical excellence is their only appeal 
 to thought. Earnestly as we may admire Michael 
 Angelo and his great deeds, none of us can wash 
 (if such a thing were possible) ever to see another 
 Christian Church adorned entirely like the Sistine,
 
 06 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 where glorious histories and mighty ideals of Pro- 
 phet, Apostle, and Sibyl, are mingled everywhere 
 with problems in Titanic anatomy. If a poet wished 
 to form an idea of the noblest imagery conceivable, 
 and of its expression in the mightiest words, he 
 would at least see it in the prophecies of Isaiah 
 or Ezekiel. The words and diction should enter 
 into him, and be an element of strength to him, 
 though he would not think of imitation. The 
 thoughts and expressions, ever so imperfectly under- 
 stood, will certainly take possession of the reader, 
 and feed his imagination with ideas. The Scriptures 
 are to afford, as Mr. Arnold most weightily and 
 pithily tell us, the whole and sole intellectual cul- 
 ture of large masses of the people ; and they are a 
 part of it which no class of the English people can 
 spare, because they appeal with matchless power to 
 the imagination, which requires more culture than 
 any other spiritual faculty in our own race and 
 time. That which inspired the mighty poet, may 
 fill also with inspiration, with hope, and faithful 
 imaginings, the brains of poor men and women, 
 pupil -teachers and school-children. It may inspire 
 the painter also ; and the best men of our day 
 have known how to drink at the source of all this 
 strength. In short, the range of human imagination 
 working on God's Word is vast enough to supply 
 any painter or number of painters with happy work 
 for life ; if they be fit and willing men to undertake 
 any sacred subject at all.
 
 
 Tr^ 
 
 VINE NO. 2. — CHAPEL OF GALLA PLACIDIA. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATUliE-WOKSHIP. 
 
 The subject of pictorial or other representative 
 ornament in Christian churches has been made 
 specially difficult by the controversies of so many 
 centuries. It has probably been debated in one form 
 or another from the earliest times of patriarchal 
 worship ; but it would seem that the Church of the 
 first three centuries suffered as little from it as any 
 assembly of devout persons could possibly do. Their 
 art was artless and unexciting : their faith was both 
 art and poetry to them, because it kept continually 
 before their imaginations the highest subjects which 
 they could possibly aspire to. 
 
 The Hebrew and the Greek element in the Church 
 may have differed somewhat in this matter; but it
 
 68 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 seems very probable that symbolic ornament was 
 used in the earliest catacombs, even while the 
 strongest feeling against representative images, or 
 forms set up in church to assist devotion, was felt 
 and expressed on all hands. For the present it may 
 be said; that as (a.d. 180) Irenaeus 1 urges it against 
 the Gnostics that they made use of pretended portrait- 
 images of Our Lord ; while Celsus urged it against 
 the Faith 2 that Christians endured neither altars nor 
 images ; — the practice of image-worship, or addressing 
 any visible form in prayer, is contrary to the theory 
 and practice of the primitive saints. But painting 
 and sculpture may have been used for instruction, 
 and may have aided sermon and catechism, if not 
 prayer. We cannot say what was the date of the first 
 Good Shepherd, or Vine — both existed in heathen 
 art, and were adopted symbols, in which Christians 
 recognized the words of their Lord written in colour 
 by heathen hands. Tertullian 3 (a.d. 300) speaks 
 of a Good Shepherd on a chalice : and the sign of 
 the Cross 4 was used from the very first, as a badge 
 of Christ's followers, though it may have originated in 
 
 » Adv. Hser. i. 24 ad f., 25 ed. Migne. 
 
 * Origen contra C. viii. pp 396 Lat., 400 Gk. ed. 1605. 
 
 3 De Pudicit. c. 7. " Ovis perdita a Domino requisita, et 
 humeris Ejus revecta. Procedant ipsse picturse calicura vestro- 
 rum," &c, &c. The longer passage which immediately follows, 
 seems to apply to heathen imagery and its consequences. There 
 can be no doubt, either, of his view as to the nse of images for 
 devotion in churches ; but he lets Scriptural symbolism pass 
 without comment. Origen argues on the side of spiritual wor- 
 ship against Celsus, who seems to have raised the same artistic 
 objections against Christianity, for not having produced a Phidias, 
 which have been urged covertly or openly ever since. He says 
 man is made in the image of God, and is His best Agalma. Man 
 is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and His fittest abode. 
 
 4 See p. 6.
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 69 
 
 the Monogram. 1 So that, for a time, perhaps for nearly 
 300 years, Christian worship and Sacraments maybe 
 thought to have been conducted in spirit and in truth, 
 so far that the faithful needed no stimulus to their 
 devotion, and sought no other sign of God's presence 
 with them than the Sacraments of His ordaining. 
 
 The first public sign of alarm, or rather of pre- 
 caution, appears in the Council of Illiberis (Grenada) 
 in Spain, about 305. One of its canons ordains that 
 no picture shall be in the church, lest that which ia 
 worshipped or adored be painted on the walls. 
 At the end of the fourth century we find Paulinus 
 of Nola ornamenting his church of St. Felix, and 
 painting a catacomb with Scriptural histories, and 
 with pictures symbolic of the Holy Trinity. Nor 
 does he seem to have raised alarm, though it must 
 have been "nearly at the same time," says Bishop 
 Harold Browne, 2 " or a little earlier, that Epiphanius, 
 going through Anablatha, a village in Palestine, 
 found there a veil hanging before the door of the 
 church, whereon was painted an image of Christ, 
 or some saint, he did not remember which. 3 
 When he saw in the church of Christ an image 
 of a man, contrary to the authority of Scripture, 
 he rent it, and advised that it should be made 
 a winding-sheet for some poor man." This would 
 scarcely have happened in Italy ; and indeed the 
 distinction between history and symbolism on the 
 
 1 Minucius Felix, quoted in Chapter on the Cross. 
 
 2 Exposition of xxxix. Articles. Art. xxii. p. 507. Epiphanius' 
 letter is in Jerome. Ep. 60. 
 
 3 Epist. ad Johan. Hierosol. Bellarmine and Baronius dispute, 
 this passage as an Iconoclastic interpolation, but it is acknowledged 
 by Petavius. See Bingham, book viii. chapter viii. 6, 7.
 
 70 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 one hand, and emotional idolatry on the other, is 
 somewhat fine, though perfectly real; and has often 
 been sternly rejected in the East. The use of 
 pictures depends, for good or evil, on the characters 
 of the people who use and the artists who supply 
 them; a growing superstition in demand leads in- 
 fallibly to a supply of more and more dangerous 
 decorations. 
 
 In the fourth and fifth centuries, the instructive 
 use of pictures must have begun to be mingled with 
 picture-worship, as the tendency to adoration of 
 saints and martyrs declared itself. St. Augustine 
 says 1 there were many worshippers of tombs and 
 pictures in his day: that the Church condemned 
 them and strove to correct them. Chalices and 
 patens, he says, are gold and silver, the work of 
 men's hands ; there is no fear of their being wor- 
 shipped ; it is the lifelike form which has power 
 to make itself adored. And at the end of the 
 fourth century, Bishop Browne concludes, both 
 historical pictures, and, soon after, commemorative 
 portraits of Apostles, saints and martyrs, and even 
 of living kings and bishops, were hung up ; and the 
 use of statues followed. In the sixth century there 
 is evidently serious alarm among bishops and 
 thoughtful heads of the Church at the popular 
 devotion to these visible forms ; and Serenus, Bishop 
 of Marseilles, seems to have ordered all the images 
 in the churches of his diocese to be broken ; on 
 which Gregory the Great writes to him to say that 
 
 1 " Novi multos esse sepuloronim et picturarum adoratores quns 
 et ipsa (Ecclesia) condemnat,'' &e. (Aug. De Moribus Eccl. -1. c. 
 54, 74, 75).
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 71 
 
 he altogether approves of his forbidding image- 
 worship ; but blames him for breaking them, as things 
 harmless in themselves and useful for instruction. St. 
 Gregory clearly looked on them as historical pictures 
 of events, not as Personifications of the Creator. 1 
 
 A superstition resting on foundations so deep and 
 wide as the human longing for a sign from God 
 could have only been coerced by the determined 
 efforts of the whole clergy and conventual orders. 
 The latter in particular were the last persons to 
 make any attempt of the kind ; and the lamentable 
 struggle of Iconoclasm and Iconodulism in the 
 eighth century was a contest between military and 
 monastic power, which anticipated in the East the 
 papal contests with the House of Swabia in the 
 West. It is not here necessary to follow its course 
 historically. 2 Leo, the Isaurian, and his son Constan- 
 tine Copronymus were the great Iconoclast emperors ; 
 the Empress Irene lived to undo their work. The 
 Council of Constantinople in the reign of Coprony- 
 mus, a.d. 754, is called by the Greeks the Seventh 
 General Council ; but it is rejected by the Latins. It 
 condemned all worship and use of images. Thirty years 
 after, in the reign of Irene, the Second Council of 
 Nice reversed its decisions, ordaining that images 
 should be set up, but not adored with the worship of 
 latria ; which John Damascenus vigorously protests 
 had never been paid them. Charlemagne and the 
 Gallican bishops replied to Pope Adrian, who sent 
 
 1 Epp xi. 13. p. 1127 vol. 77 ed. Migne. 1849. 
 
 2 Alt's " Heiligenbilder," Leipsic, 1845. This work, with Dr. 
 Piper's " Einleitung in die Monunientale Theologie," Gotha, 1867, 
 are complete and exhaustive works.
 
 72 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 thein a copy of this decree ; allowing images for 
 ornament and history, but condemning all worship. 
 Their formal reply is called the Libri Carolini, and 
 was published by Charlemagne a.d. 790. 
 
 The British bishops fully confirmed this in 792, 
 abhorring the worship of images ; and Charlemagne, 
 two years after, assembled the Synod of Frankfort, 
 consisting of 300 bishops from France, Germany, and 
 Italy, who formally rejected the Synod of Nice, 
 declaring it not to be the seventh general council ; 
 nor was it received in the "Western Church, except 
 in churches specially under Eoman influence, for 
 five centuries and a half. 
 
 It is clear that the distinction between decorative 
 or even historical painting or sculpture, and use of 
 idolatrous objects for worship, was perfectly well 
 understood in the primitive Church, though there 
 was no necessity for express statements on the 
 matter. Tertullian's language * seems sweeping and 
 violent ; but he is addressing himself to Pagans or 
 their imitators, or, as it seems, to Christians in the 
 artistic employments, w T ho were in danger of being 
 led to seek gain by sculpture and painting of heathen 
 subjects. 
 
 " There was a time long past when the idol did 
 not exist ; the sacred places were unoccupied, and 
 the temples void. . . But when the devil brought 
 in makers of statues and images and all kinds of 
 likenesses on the world, all the raw material of 
 human misery, and the name of idols followed it. 
 And ever since then any art which produces an idol 
 in any way is the source of idolatry. It makes no 
 1 De Idolatria, c. iii.
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 73 
 
 difference whether the workman makes it in clay, or 
 a sculptor carves it, or if he weaves it in Phrygian 
 cloth, because it is of no consequence as to the 
 substance an idol is formed of, whether it be plaster, 
 or colours, or stone, or brass, or silver, or canvas." 1 
 
 Such is his trenchant and inclusive comment on 
 the pictorial or other representation of any human 
 form, and in his next chapter he adopts the language 
 of the second commandment, and seems to apply it to 
 the whole range of art; nothing is to be represented 
 at all. As he proceeds, however, on the grounds of 
 the Hebrew Law, he is reminded of the Brazen 
 Serpent ; and at once "justifies it as a symbol or 
 type of the coming Redeemer "Who should be lifted 
 up for mankind. Without seeming to be aware of 
 the logical bearings of the important exception he 
 has made, he returns to the charge to show that all 
 employments connected with idolatry or the temples 
 are forbidden, and then (ch. viii.) suggests various 
 trades or crafts to which the artists of his time (who 
 seem to have been numerous) might apply them- 
 selves. They may become painters and glaziers in 
 the literal sense — at most they can find other orna- 
 ments to paint on the walls than " simulacra " — 
 likenesses of human or animal life. It is pretty 
 
 1 " Idolum aliquamdiu retro non erat," he exclaims; "sola 
 templa et vaciue redes. . . At ubi artifices statuarum et imaginum, 
 et ormris generis simulacrorum diabolus seculo iutulit, rude illud 
 negotium human* calamitatis, et nomen de Idolis consecutum est. 
 Exinde jam caput facta est Idololatrise ars omnis quse Idolum quo- 
 quoniodo edit. Xeque enim interest, an plastes effingat, an 
 caelator ex(s)culpat, an Phrygio detexat ; quia nee de materia 
 refert, an gypso, an coloribus, an lapide, an aire, an argento, an 
 filo formetur Idolum." 
 
 The sentence of the Apostolical Constitutions on this matter, as 
 Alt remarks, is brief (viii. c. 32), 'Ei5a>A.o7ro<os irpoaiwv, -?; irawdjiw 
 i) d.TroflaAAe<r8w. " Heiligenbilder, " p. 45. 
 
 E
 
 74 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 clear that Tertullian meant to make the same 
 Eastern protest against all representative art which 
 Islam made after him. 1 Such arts had been 
 abused, therefore they were to exist no longer. 
 The fiery Father, in short, represents the views of 
 the remnant of the Hebraic party in the early 
 Church on this matter. 2 His idea is simply to 
 
 1 Koran 22, 31. " But depart from the abomination of idols * * 
 being orthodox towards God and associating (no other God) with 
 Him." Also eh. 25. See, however, infra, note 1, p. 16. 
 
 2 The expressions of Augustine, De Fide et Symbolo, vii., seem to 
 refer to images of God the Father. Seep. 102, ed. Frob. Basle, 1528. 
 He is speaking of the Lord's Placejatthe Right Hand of God : — -"Nee 
 ideo quasi humana forma circumscriptum esseDeurnPatremarbitran- 
 dum est. * * Tale enim simulacrum nefas est Christiano in templo 
 collocare, multo magis in corde nefarium est." This might seem to 
 throw serious doubt on the propriety of representing our Lord at 
 all in portrait-images, as if it would amount to a breach of the 
 second commandment ; but Augustine still (De Trin. book viii. 
 chap. 4) mentions the numerous and varied representations of Our 
 Lord without blame ; and acknowledges the universal tendency of 
 thought to picture to itself persons and events by imaginative effort. 
 It seems as if he recognized the distinction between symbolic like- 
 nesses of the Lord — not supposed to resemble His earthly features, 
 but necessary impersonations in pictures representing His acts and 
 life — and portraits intended to stimulate devotion by means of 
 beauty or otherwise. The argument in Damascenus and elsewhere, 
 that as He appeared in the Flesh His Flesh may be represented, 
 seems to hold good. His real likeness being unknown, the portrait 
 is after all but ;i symbol of His Humanity, and an acknowledg- 
 ment that He is real though unseen. "The likeness of our Lord 
 in the Flesh," says Augustine, De Trin. viii. 5, "is variously 
 imitated by diversity of innumerable minds ; but still it is what it 
 actually was." He is reasoning about the difficulty of believing 
 that things are, or have actually been, without an idea of what they 
 are or were like. Of St. Paul, or Lazarus, or Bethany, he says, 
 we may have wrong mental pictures, but the places are real, and 
 the mental picture is essential to our feeling of their reality. Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, Pa'dagog. I. iii. cap. 1 (ap. Molanum, cap. 49) thus 
 enumerates the Christian symbols in use in his time. " Sint nobis 
 signacula columba vel piscis vel navis quae celeri cursu a vento 
 fertur, vel lyra musica qua usus est Polycrates, vel ancora nautica, 
 quam insculpebat Seleucns. Si sit piscans aliquis, meminerit 
 Apostoli, et puerorum qui ex aqua extrahuntur. Neque enim 
 idolorum sunt exprimendie facies, quibus vel solum attendere pro- 
 hibitum est. Sed nee ensis nee arcus, iis qui pacem persequuntur; 
 nee pocula, iis qui sunt moderati et temperantes."
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 75 
 
 lay the axe well to the roots of the system of 
 Pagan worship and its abominations. It is strange 
 that the subsequent history of the Brazen Serpent 
 and its destruction by Josiah should not have led 
 him to consider that even things once ordained by 
 immediate revelation of God are capable of abuse 
 through lapse of time. It was Josiah's duty to 
 destroy the image which was one of the most im- 
 portant monuments of the long wanderings of the 
 fathers in the wilderness. But that does not prove 
 that it never ought to have been made by Moses in 
 the first instance. 
 
 The mind of Tertullian seldom rejoiced in dis- 
 tinctions. He knew what idolatry had been, and 
 what it was ; and felt that it was no time to talk of 
 art and beauty, when the charm of the graven 
 image was on the side of persecution. Men who 
 had seen their brethren and children tortured, not 
 accepting deliverance, before some indifferent Pallas 
 severely fair, may be excused for not appreciating 
 the artistic devotion of Caesarian Eome ; though, 
 St. Paul had charity, and on Mars' Hill, suggested 
 hope for the art of ancient Athens. Nor would the 
 beauteous scorn of the bow-lipped Apollo give any 
 comfort to those whose kindred were flogged to 
 death because they would not burn incense before him . 
 In the very earliest days of Christian art, it is true, 
 there seems to have been little severity of feeling. 
 But as the times waxed more evil, and trial deepened, 
 and the Lord delayed His coming, it is no wonder 
 if men's souls took a despondent turn. The monu- 
 ments of that special tendency in the early Church 
 are the hermitages and caves which now honeycomb 
 
 e 2
 
 76 PRIMITIVE C1IU11CH ART. 
 
 the rocks of Quarantania aud Mar Saba; and the 
 grim mosaics which give us our popular notion of 
 the art called Byzantine. 
 
 The Iconoclastic controversy, in fact, has never 
 ceased ; at all events since the earliest form of 
 patriarchal worship and communion with the Creator 
 has been lost to mankind. Ever since the open 
 vision of God and certain consciousness of His 
 Personal presence, in vision or otherwise, has been 
 withdrawn, man has unceasingly sought to find God, 
 and to be found of Him. And as a natural con- 
 sequence, men have always sought to be persuaded 
 that they have found their God in this world of sense ; 
 have sought after signs of Him ; and finally have 
 sought to make to themselves signs of Him ; and 
 indeed the word siijnum is Latin for statue or highly 
 relieved image. 1 More speculative or spiritual races 
 have been contented with symbols, which appealed 
 to their aspirations by the way of their intellect — not 
 desiring to see God, His image or His shape, yet 
 nourishing and illustrating their thoughts of Him 
 by the analogies of visible things, and setting forth 
 those analogies in visible forms and colour. So un- 
 doubtedly did the Church of the earliest ages. No 
 one, probably, ever knelt to worship in the cata- 
 combs before the figures of the Good Shepherd or the 
 Vine ; the remaining portraits of the Lord there are 
 not earlier than the seventh century ; 2 in any case 
 the use of His portrait-image in churches seems to 
 have been unusual till the sixth. But in all ages 
 the more creative, active, and energetic races of men 
 
 1 Virg. Georg. ii., "Stabunt et Parii lapides, spirant ia signa." 
 4 See, however, Chapter on Catacombs.
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CEEATUEE-WOESHIP. 77 
 
 have desired to possess some visible and beautiful 
 object of adoration, and not merely sought for abstract 
 beauty as an aid to the act of adoration. This is 
 the inner principle of Greek image-worship ; and 
 the contest between Iconoclasm and Iconodulism is 
 in one sense a contest between the Hebrew spirit and 
 the Greek spirit. The Symbol is felt by its authors,, 
 and their generation, to be a confession of human in- 
 firmity, an acknowledgment that language fails in 
 tilings unspeakable; it directs the mind of the spectator 
 onwards to greater things, for which it is substituted 
 for the time. It may become to other races an Idol ; 
 a tiling of man's work in which supernatural virtue 
 is believed to reside. The word Image (Imago), a 
 form, is taken in this book as corresponding with the 
 Greek Icon, or likeness ; and is meant to convey no 
 disparaging idea, but to be the harmless title of a 
 harmless object. Every visible representation is, in 
 our sense, an image, or combination of images. It 
 seems that the symbolic image becomes an idol, or 
 in the lower degradations of thought about it a 
 fetiche, whenever local and personal virtue is sup- 
 posed to reside in it, so that the mind of the 
 worshipper rests in it and goes no farther. While 
 no feeling, or aspiration, or hope in prayer is inter- 
 cepted by the visible object, it may give comfort to 
 the worshipper, and he may be borne with in using 
 it. Even then his use of it is a confession of weak- 
 ness, to be borne with, perhaps, but not without 
 renewed and sustained explanation and protest. 
 
 On this subject, as on so many others, the 
 massive learning and careful impartiality of Dean 
 Milinan are of the greatest value. On the one
 
 78 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 hand, he points out the danger of refined distinc- 
 tions, the incapability of untaught and busy men to 
 understand them, and the certainty that those who 
 begin by worshipping through an image will end by 
 worshipping the image itself; appealing simply to 
 the undoubted facts of the History of the Early 
 Church. On the other, he observes, with equal 
 truth, that the evil and abuse of Iconodulism arise 
 from the fault of the worshipper, and not of the 
 images ; and that the Church cannot break with the 
 line arts as means of instruction, or repudiate appeal 
 to the human imagination of truth. Finally, and 
 with what appears to us great insight and true 
 wisdom, he says — half apologizing for the words as 
 for a paradox — that the reconciliation between Eeli- 
 gion and Art really lies in Art ; that is to say, in the 
 artist, and in the greater learning, refinement, purity 
 of spirit, and singleness of aim of those who repre- 
 sent the graphic powers of an age. The following 
 extracts from " Latin Christianity " x will be found 
 to bear on this matter with particular force and 
 clearness : — 
 
 " This question, thus prematurely agitated by the 
 Iconoclastic emperors, and at this period of Chris- 
 tianity so fatally mistimed, is one of the most grave, 
 and it should seem inevitable, controversies arising 
 out of our religion. It must be judged by a more 
 calm and profound philosophy than could be possible 
 in times of actual strife between factions. On the 
 one hand, there can be no doubt that, with ignorant 
 and superstitious minds, the use, the reverence, the 
 worship of images, whether in pictures or statues, 
 
 1 Vol. ii. p. 343, ed. 1867.
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATUItE-WORSHIP. 79 
 
 invariably degenerates into idolatry. The Church 
 may draw fine and aerial distinctions between images 
 as objects of reverence and as objects of adoration ; 
 as incentives to the worship of more remote and im- 
 material beings, or as actual and indwelling deities ; 
 it may nicely define the feeling which images ought 
 to awaken ; but the intense and indiscriminating 
 piety of the vulgar either understands not, or utterly 
 disregards, these subtleties : it may refuse to sanction, 
 it cannot be said not to encourage, that devotion 
 which cannot and will not weigh and measure either its 
 emotions or its language. Image worship in the mass 
 of the people, of the whole monkhood at this time, 
 was undeniably the worship of the actual, material, 
 present image, rather than that of the remote spiritual 
 power of which it was the emblem or representative. 
 It has continued, and still continues to be, in many 
 parts of Christendom, this gross and unspiritual 
 adoration ; it is part of the general system of divine 
 worship. The whole tendency of popular belief was 
 to localize, to embody in the material thing, the 
 supernatural or divine power. The healing or mira- 
 culous influence dwelt in and emanated from the 
 picture of the saint — the special, individual picture. 
 Where the image was, there was the saint. He heard 
 prayer, was carried in procession to allay pestilence, 
 kc. He smiled or stretched his hand from the wall. 
 One image of the same saint rivalled another in 
 power. 
 
 " On the other hand, is pure and spiritual Chris- 
 tianity implacably hostile to the Fine Arts ? Is that 
 influence of the majestic and the beautiful, awakened 
 by form, colour, and expression, to be altogether
 
 80 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 abandoned ? Can the exaltation and purification of 
 the human soul through Art he in no way allied 
 with true Christian devotion? Is that aid to the 
 realization of the historic truths of our religion, by 
 representations, vivid, speaking, almost living, to be 
 utterly proscribed ? Is the idealism of Beverence to 
 rest solely on the contemplation of pure spirit? 
 Because the ignorant or fraudulent monk has ascribed 
 miraculous power to his Madonna or the image of 
 his patron saint, and the populace have knelt before 
 it in awe undistinguishable from devotion, is Chris- 
 tianity to cast off Eaffaelle and Correggio ? * * * 
 Religion must either break off all association with 
 these dangerous friends, and the Fine Arts abandon 
 their noblest field ; or their mutual relations must be 
 amicably adjusted. * * * The causes which may 
 be expected to work this sacred reconciliation may 
 be the growing intelligence of mankind; greater 
 familiarity with the written Scriptures; and, para- 
 doxical as it may sound, greater perfection in the 
 arts themselves, or a finer apprehension of that per- 
 fection in ancient as in modern art." 
 
 It is in the Church of England, if anywhere, 
 that some practical adjustment of this great con- 
 troversy must be worked out; and it may be a 
 sufficient apology for so long a quotation that it 
 contains or implies the principles on which this 
 may be done. It cannot be done by a Buritan, 
 or indeed Mohammedan, prohibition of all use of the 
 representative arts, which is simple Iconoclasm; nor 
 yet by allowing creature-worship in any form what- 
 ever. It is on the license of addressing prayer to 
 some saint gone before, because he is supposed to te
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CEEATUEE- WORSHIP. 81 
 
 nearer us than his Lord and ours, that Iconodulism 
 stands. Some distinctions the Church must draw, 
 and if possible they must not be too fine or aerial. 
 That between the arftus latrim and lower degrees 
 or intensities of devotion never can hold long, if 
 indeed it is intelligible at all. It is the refinement 
 of learned and subtle-minded persons, called upon 
 to justify a state of things on which their whole 
 personal power rests ; a system which they have 
 been born into, and have not themselves created ; 
 a system, as it seems to them, based on truth, 
 because based on devout and noble feeling ; a 
 system, as it seems to them, beneficial in its work- 
 ing, because it makes devotion and obedience easy 
 to the poor; and because, if it does not teach 
 absolute truth, it seems to make instruction un- 
 necessary. The distinction was intelligible, yet 
 the , multitude might be trusted not to understand 
 it. " It is one thing," says John Damascenus, " to 
 set forth service of actual worship ; another to 
 proclaim persons as possessors of some dignity, for 
 honour's sake." This is true ; and had the chief 
 advocate of Iconodulism held by his own distinction, 
 and had all the monks and preachers on his side faith- 
 fully impressed it on the people, the Iconoclastic 
 controversy would never have arisen, and the 
 course of the history of the faith would have 
 been altered for the better. But the plea is 
 evidently meant ad hominem ; it is addressed to 
 argumentative opponents, and was never meant to 
 moderate the zeal of fanatic supporters ; and from 
 his age to our own, the same use has been made of 
 the same refinement. Damascenus himself argues in 
 
 e 3
 
 82 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 his next oration, that it is manifestly absurd 1 to 
 make our Lord the sole object of portrait-images in 
 church. It is an act of confessed hostility to the 
 saints; if they suffered with Him, they are to be 
 glorified with Him, &c. His work, in fact, is full of 
 the unconscious Jesuitry of a difficult argument 
 addressed alike to unquestioning followers and un- 
 listening adversaries, in defence of a system which, 
 to his mind, ought never to have been questioned, so 
 that any answer seems good enough for the ques- 
 tioner. 
 
 Dean Milman's observation that the Church may 
 draw aerial distinctions in vain, seems at variance 
 with what he himself says 2 of the virtual and final 
 compromise of the Eastern Church between pictures 
 and statues. He there explains that the more contem- 
 plative and refined intellect of the East would see, and 
 be content with, the distinction between the painted 
 image on a plane surface, and that which possesses 
 projection, and solid or quasi-personal form. Subtle 
 as it may seem, this difference is felt and acted on 
 with the greatest strictness by the Eastern commu- 
 nions. 3 The fact is, that any distinction, faithfully 
 dwelt on, and expounded for what it is, will be 
 made intelligible at last, and must then stand or 
 fall on its merits. The reason why the cultus latria- 
 in the Western Church is not practically distin- 
 guishable from lower degrees of reverence is a 
 plain one — because the distinction has never been 
 
 1 " hominum absurditas ! nonne anirnadvertitis, vos plane 
 Sanctorum inimicos confiteri? Domini exercitus sancti sunt," &c. 
 De Imaginibus, Or. 2. 
 
 2 " Latin Christianity." Book xiv. chap. 9, quoted suprd. 
 
 3 See Chapter on the Crucifix.
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 83 
 
 enforced. We ourselves recognize a difference be- 
 tween Prayer and Eeverence, because it is pro- 
 claimed and taught to all English people. But 
 in the Church of the seventh century, the idiotcs 
 or unlearned person, was encouraged to call on 
 the saints for all he wanted, and to put them 
 in the place of the One God, Whom his instructors 
 nevertheless proclaimed they held the sole Object 
 of prayer. " Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee 
 shall all flesh come." This is one of the great texts 
 or standards of Monotheism — the appeal to One 
 Will, Omnipotent, Omniscient, and All Merciful. 
 Eeverence for the memory of a departed saint, the 
 communion in which we believe between the Church 
 Militant and Triumphant, are ideas quite consistent 
 with the view that God rules and hears prayer in 
 person, and draws all men personally to Himself, 
 that they may know Him and be His. 
 
 The principle of Instructive Decoration, to which 
 we shall appeal, is well set forth by John Damas- 
 cenus. Gregory II. also urges it in his Epistle 
 to Germanus. 1 The Eastern Father's argument is 
 contained in the words already quoted : 2 Pictures are 
 poor men's books. To treat pictures as books, and 
 to take them for what they mean, is a principle easy 
 to enunciate. But religious pictures will always 
 be taken for all which they can be made to mean. 
 It is the duty of a clergy who make use of painted 
 
 1 "Enarrent ilia et per voces, et per literas, et per picturas. " 
 A favourite authority was Basil's a y&p 6 \6yos -rrjs iffrop'tas Sio rrjs 
 dKorjs iraplcrrrjcri, ravra ypa<pr\ (Tiwiraxra Sia fj-i/x^aeccs Se'iKvvcri. So 
 J. D. Sirep rfj &Korj 6 \6yos, touto rfj opaxrti r) t'tKciv. Note, 
 Milrnan's " Lat. Ch." ii. 348, ch. iv. 
 
 2 Picture sunt libri idiotarum.
 
 8-4 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 images to take care that they convey no lessons 
 except those of the Faith. The most thoughtful 
 commentator will from time to time read his own 
 meanings into the text he expounds, and that 
 more probably if he is himself appealing to emotion 
 rather than to conviction. And this is the differ- 
 ence between pictures and books — that the appeals 
 to feeling made by the former are alike more subtle, 
 more forcible, and more popular. This is nearly 
 as much so in our own impatient days, when real 
 attention to a carefully expressed meaning is so 
 hard and rare to obtain. At times like those of 
 the first Gregories, and in conditions of society like 
 the lower strata of our own — at all events in the 
 schools of many missions * — pictures may be valu- 
 able books to convey ideas, and powerful means to im- 
 press them. The more reason why a living and teach- 
 ing Church should have a standard and a system for 
 their use, and should prevent their misuse. Symbols 
 which assert the doctrines of the faith, historical 
 paintings which describe the history of the gospel, 
 are pure narrative teaching ; the isolated figure of 
 the saint may be a harmless commemoration of his 
 work in the Lord ; but it is open to vague alarm and 
 objection, which will never apply to him if he be 
 represented engaged in that work ; if some real and 
 true event or action of his life be set up to commemo- 
 rate him, and God's work in him be made his monu- 
 
 1 The author was long ago requested by the Bishop of Nassau to 
 endeavour to make or collect a set of symbolic and historic illustra- 
 tions of the Apostles' Creed, to be used in oral instruction, and form, 
 as it were, a basis for realization in the barbaric mind. The use 
 made of art by Methodius in the ninth century, and his conversion 
 of Bogoris, king of Bulgaria, by the tenors of a picture of the 
 Last Judgment, are not disputed, and may be historical facts.
 
 ICOXOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 8o 
 
 ment ; instead of an imaginary portrait, totally unlike 
 him, done for the artist's pleasure, in robes which 
 he may never have worn, and surrounded by land- 
 scape which his eyes never beheld. 
 
 Let the picture-book in form and colour obey the 
 strict rule of truth, to which all books are bound 
 which are without those attractions ; and let us espe- 
 cially beware of error or falsehood, if conveyed in 
 the most delightful form. We do not rehearse the 
 Legends of the Saints in church, and the Apocrypha 
 is read with a certain protest. It is hard to say why, 
 after all, our church decoration should not be limited 
 to Scriptural subject, historical or symbolical. Our 
 artists can hardly ask for a wider range than the 
 History of the Eedemption of Man in the Old and 
 New Testaments ; or for deeper thoughts to express 
 'than those which fell from His lips, Who spake as 
 never man spake. The fact is, that the great events 
 of the Old Testament are as yet most incompletely 
 represented ; hardly attempted, as history, since 
 Eaffaelle's Vatican paintings, and the more forcible 
 work of Holbein. Historical pictures are painted, 
 frequently good ones — sometimes great ones ; but 
 they are scarcely read like good or great books, since 
 copies of them cannot be multiplied, and easel pic- 
 tures are sure to vanish, far too soon, into the mauso- 
 leum of some great private gallery. Years and years 
 ago, two of the best painters in England, Messrs. 
 Watts and Armitage, desiring, as it seemed, to dedi- 
 cate or do sacrifice of their great talent to God 
 Who gave it, brought this subject before the English 
 public, desiring employment in sacred work, virtually 
 as lay-preachers. Their offers have been but scantily
 
 80 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 accepted, though we may hope that the decoration o 
 our great city Cathedral may lead to the formation of 
 a school of fresco, or rather of broad though severe 
 mosaic. But on this question, as on all others con- 
 nected with religious doctrine, the chronic anxieties 
 and disputes of doctrine are brought to bear ; and 
 some degree of unnecessary alarm and suspicion of 
 mediaeval treatment and Iconodulism seems -to pre- 
 vail. Let us hope for better things and thoughts. 
 If the present writer must express his opinions as to 
 the position and principles of the Anglican Church 
 in this world-old controversy on the walk by faith 
 and the walk by sight, he does so with a diffidence, 
 which is none the less or less sincere because he 
 has no space to dilate upon it. This is hardly to be 
 desired ; for long study of ancient chronicle and 
 rhetoric seems to show that the most energetic 
 and voluminous professions of unworthiness and 
 self-condemnation are often the prelude to excessive 
 violence of statement, not unmingled with occasional 
 Jesuitry. It is the honourable distinction of the 
 best Anglican writers, to be tolerably free from 
 these last faults ; at all events those who on principle 
 avoid extremes should avoid extreme statement, and 
 a Church of moderation should use moderate language. 
 We are so continually reminded of this by those 
 who advocate our absolute extinction as a Church, 
 that one may hope in the far future for some re- 
 laxation of their intense bitterness of expression. 
 In any case, the Church of Christ in England 
 appears to stand in an unpopular position on this 
 question, as on all others which are argued by 
 popular advocates ; inasmuch as she leaves much to,
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 87 
 
 and consequently charges much upon, the individual 
 consciences of Christian people, and frequently 
 refuses either to commend or condemn. Much of 
 the language of Tertullian may he rightly adopted 
 hy her teachers ; for were Tertullian here at this 
 day he would be venerated and obeyed, if he could 
 be induced to restrain the passionate energy of 
 his language and logic of condemnation. And 
 nearly all the expressions of John Damasceuus 
 might pass in modern discourse or writing, were he 
 present, and willing manfully to declare his own 
 adherence to the worship of the Holy Trinity 
 alone. 
 
 The appeal of the English Church is not to popular 
 clamour, and it is not easy to adjust her usages to 
 the needs of the hour or the day. It has been said 
 of her that she is at least silent on things unspeak- 
 able. And why ? Because as a part of the national 
 system supported by the nation, she has never been 
 forced, for her very existence, to take up popular 
 cries, to encrust herself with petrified superstitions, 
 or to tamper with the madness or the dulness of the 
 people. To this principle, that the faith cannot be 
 altered to please the people, their representatives, or 
 their organs, she has clung in act and in principle ; 
 and her view of the modern iconoclastic question will 
 probably be determined by its bearings on the popular 
 creed ; that is to say, on the extent to which it 
 affects English people in their holding of the Nicene 
 Creed. In as far as it tends to withdraw the personal 
 devotion of one Christian from the Holy Trinity — 
 in so far as it tends to intercept and withhold from 
 Christ the Lord that personal seeking and reliance
 
 88 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 which He will have from every individual Christian — 
 so far His Universal Church has always forbidden it, 
 so far her representatives in national Churches are 
 hound to protest against it. 
 
 The history of the Church of Eome has often 
 been favourably contrasted with our own, because 
 she has always known how to employ vagrant 
 energies, and never lost valuable servants for 
 want of a sphere to employ and develop their 
 powers. The Church of Eome would have known, 
 we are told, how to keep Wesley, and Whitfield, and 
 Dr. Newman. Had she refrained from anathema- 
 tizing Dante, and known how to keep Luther, and 
 England ; had the genius and the devotion of 
 Newman been treated with less systematic neglect ; 
 this remark would be still more effective. It is 
 quite true that she has known when to adopt popu- 
 lar error, and stamp it with her sanction, and then, 
 if necessary, to enforce it by all conceivable methods 
 and severities : she has also, probably from real 
 kindness and charity in her representatives, in 
 all ordinary times and when no great interests' have 
 been concerned, known how to accept conformity 
 without credulity ; sometimes without faith. And as 
 this last has been more openly done by the English 
 Church (which at least never professed to smite 
 either with the sword of St. Peter or the dagger of 
 Eavaillac), laxity of doctrine is imputed to her whose 
 unchanging appeal has been and is to the primitive 
 faith. On the other hand, her representatives are 
 sometimes invited or challenged to waive all definite 
 doctrinal statements, and try the experiment of a 
 fold without gate or fences. The same unsatisfactory
 
 ICONOCLASM AXD CREATURE-WORSHIP. 89 
 
 answer has to be made — that the faith is a real 
 thing and an unchangeable thing. 
 
 The more Puritanic section of the Church of 
 England may be considered to have in great measure 
 withdrawn its objections to church decoration 
 within moderate limits. The question of admitting 
 or not admitting pictures into our temples has long 
 been virtually settled by the free use of stained 
 glass. Altar-pieces of the events of the Passion were 
 part of our church ornaments long before the Revival 
 of forty years ago. And it really seems that the dis- 
 tinction which seems to have been in the mind of St. 
 Augustine l and is sustained in this book — of using 
 pictures for instruction, making them illuminations 
 to the building, like illustrations to a book — might 
 be a basis of agreement to all parties. Xo legisla- 
 tion or fixed rule on the subject can be thought 
 desirable. It would hardly ever be effectually 
 carried out, and the subject is one on which all 
 sides alike would fret against control, and find 
 every means of evasion ; as indeed was done, mutatis 
 mutandis, by the persecuted Church of the earliest 
 ages. 2 But when religious pictures repeat Scriptural 
 symbolisms, or are genuine historical representations 
 of events, all is well. The former are no more than 
 texts written pictorially, and where the motive is 
 honestly to set forth to the imagination of the pre- 
 sent God's dealings in the past, the human actors in 
 those dealings are not presented as objects of worship 
 to their successors. 
 
 1 De Trin. viii. 
 
 * E.g., Ill assigning a Christian sense to Heathen symbols and 
 decorations. See Catacombs, Cross, &c.
 
 90 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 The real objection felt by our people to the use 
 of portrait-images, or visible personifications of 
 any kind in church, is in fact inherited from the 
 Hebrew dispensation. Nobody has any feeling 
 against the Lamb or the Dove, or Vine or Palm 
 ornaments, any more than the faithful Hebrew had 
 against the Cherub. The Cherubs did not mislead 
 the Hebrew ; since their form was prescribed of 
 God, and they were like no living thing. They 
 were not the image of anything that is in the 
 firmament, or on the earth, or in the waters under 
 the earth ; and they were not inventions of the 
 mind of man, set up in the place of God. They 
 were not, as Greek images were, gods in the image 
 of very handsome men and women : and the subtle 
 sin or danger of Greek image-worship appears to 
 have been the connecting human flesh, beauty, 
 parts, and passions indissolubly with the Creator 
 and Invisible Lord. This was the evil of all use 
 of images before the Lord's coming : that it made 
 men think of the Invisible Deity as He was 
 not, and as He would not be thought of. Since 
 He, the Second Person of the Trinity, has appeared 
 on earth as Man, there certainly can be no longer 
 any reason for prohibiting representations of Him 
 to those who desire them. This is John Damascene's 
 first plea, and it carries conviction as far as 
 it goes. But we cannot, as he does, extend it 
 gratuitously to the hagiology of all saints. They 
 may be represented in attendance on their Lord ; 
 the principles and practice of our own Church might 
 permit the symbolized Heaven, or Glory of the 
 Lord, which so often fills the apse and choir arch 
 of a Byzantine church. It might be permitted,
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE- WORSHIP. 1)1 
 
 whether desirable or not : but we rather think when 
 it is carried out in an English church, it should be 
 the concluding picture, as it were the consummation, 
 of a series representing the Lord's life on earth. It 
 is thus in St. Mark's at Venice ; where, through in- 
 describable splendour of material, and perfect beauty 
 of execution, the principle of Scriptural illustration 
 is faithfully adhered to. The following description 
 will probably be for many years a standard and 
 evidence of the powers of the English language in 
 the nineteenth century; and may perhaps lead 
 future ages to question that universal degeneracy 
 which so many writers and thinkers of our time 
 seem almost complacently to acknowledge. 1 
 
 The author begins — by showing how the main 
 lessons of the faith, the Apostles' Creed, and the 
 Sacramental doctrines are practically inculcated in 
 successive pictures which meet the eye of the newly 
 baptized catechumen, or believer of mature age, on 
 his entrance through the door of the baptistery, 2 — 
 in words which linger in the memory like the pas- 
 sionate notes of a clear trumpet. All its imagery 
 begins and ends with the Cross. " The contempla- 
 tion of the people was intended to be chiefly 
 drawn (in the main building) to the mosaics of 
 the centre of the church" (the Ascension or final 
 glory of the Lord in the cupola ; prepared for by 
 the Crucifixion and the Eesurrection on a wall 
 between the first and second cupolas). "Thus the 
 mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on the 
 main groundwork and hope of Christianity — ' Christ 
 is risen' and 'Christ shall come.' If he had time 
 
 1 "Stones of Venice," roL ii. pp. 114-117. 
 * See p. 6i).
 
 92 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 to explore the minor lateral chapels and cupolas, 
 he could find in them the whole series of New Testa- 
 ment history, the events of the Life of Christ, and 
 the Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally 
 the scenery of the Book of Eevelation ; but if he 
 only entered, as often the common people do to this 
 hour, snatching a few moments before beginning the 
 labour of the day to offer up an ejaculatory prayer, 
 and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the 
 altar screen, all the splendour of the glittering nave 
 and variegated dome, if they smote upon his heart, 
 as they might often, in strange contrast with his 
 reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote 
 upon it only that they might proclaim the two great 
 messages ' Christ is risen/ and ' Christ shall come.' 
 Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of the 
 sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile 
 and frowning palace were still withdrawn into the 
 night, they rose with the Easter voice of triumph, — 
 " Christ is risen ; ' and daily, as they looked down 
 upon the tumult of the people, deepening and eddy- 
 ing in the wide square that opened from their feet to 
 the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of 
 warning,—' Christ shall come.' And this thought 
 may surely dispose the reader to look with some 
 change of temper upon the gorgeous building and 
 wild blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now 
 perceives that it was in the hearts of the old Vene- 
 tian people far more than a place of worship. It 
 was at once a type of the Redeemed Church of 
 God, and a scroll for the written Word of God. 
 It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, 
 all-glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold ;
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATUEE-WOESHIP. 93 
 
 and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, 
 written within and without. And whether honoured 
 as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that 
 neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared in 
 the adornment of it ; that, as the symbol of the 
 Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be of 
 jasper, and the foundations of it garnished with all 
 manner of precious stones ; and that, as the channel 
 of the Word, that triumphant utterance of the 
 Psalmist shall be true of it, — ' I have rejoiced in 
 the way of Thy testimonies, as much as in all 
 riches ' ? And shall we not look with changed 
 temper down the long perspective of St. Mark's 
 Place towards the sevenfold gates and glpwing 
 domes of its temple, when we know with what 
 solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above 
 the pavement of the populous scpaare ? Men met 
 there from all countries of the earth, for traffic 
 or for pleasure ; but, above the crowd swaying for 
 ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst 
 of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the 
 temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear 
 or whether they would forbear, that there was one 
 treasure which the merchantman might buy without 
 a price, and one delight better than all others, in 
 the Word and the statutes of God. Not in the 
 wantonness of wealth, nor in vain ministry to the 
 desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those 
 marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those 
 arches arrayed in the colours of the iris. There is 
 a message written in the dyes of them, that once 
 was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes 
 of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of
 
 94 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Heaven, — 'He shall return, to do judgment and 
 justice.' The strength of Venice was given her so 
 long as she remembered this ; her destruction found 
 her when she had forgotten this ; and it found her 
 irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. 
 Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the 
 nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture 
 filled their temples with confused and hardly legible 
 imagery ; but for her, the skill and the treasures of 
 the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every 
 page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like 
 the star of the Magi. In other cities, the meetings 
 of the people were often in places withdrawn from 
 religious association, subject to violence and to 
 change ; and on the grass of the dangerous rampart, 
 and in the dust of the troubled street, there were 
 deeds done, and counsels taken, which, if we cannot 
 justify, we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of 
 Venice, whether in her palace or in her piazza, were 
 done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls 
 on which its testimony was written were separated 
 but by a few inches of marble from those which 
 guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the 
 victims of her policy. And when in her last hours 
 she threw oft' all shame and all restraint, and the 
 great square of the city became filled with the mad- 
 ness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much 
 her sin was greater, because it was done in the face 
 of the House of God, burning with the letters of His 
 Law. Mountebank and masquer laughed their laugh 
 and went their way ; and a silence has followed 
 them, not unforetold ; for amidst them all, through 
 century after century of gathering vanity and fester- 
 ing guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had uttered
 
 ICOXOCLASM AND CREATURE- WORSHIP. 95 
 
 in the dead ear of Venice, ' Know thou, that for all 
 
 these things God will bring thee into judgment.' " 
 
 * *" * * * * 
 
 The writer of this book speaks without authority 
 to commend any practical course in Anglican church 
 decoration. The rule of Scriptural subject, doc- 
 trinal and historical, is one to which he would gladly 
 conform and see others conform, and he has given 
 reasons why it seems best to him. Yet it will 
 certainly be unsatisfactory to many whom he would 
 gladly satisfy ; and they will, perhaps, be little better 
 pleased at being told that such a limitation to artis- 
 tic church-work is in the spirit of the Anglican 
 Church ; or that the spirit and practice of the Angli- 
 can Church, in such matters, is in accordance • with 
 that of the four primitive centuries, so far as we can 
 judge from the examples which are left us. Yet it 
 is not the same thing to lay down tentative rules 
 and limits, as to pronounce judgment against those 
 who transgress them ; and, though he would rather 
 not have any legendary subjects in an English 
 church, he would bear with them without protest 
 as an individual. There can be no doubt that 
 there is license given in our Church as by law estab- 
 lished, on the positive side as well as the negative 
 side. With the negative side, he is not concerned ; 
 but on the other, it seems indisputable that doc- 
 trines, and interpretations of doctrine, which may 
 legally or rightly be held in the English Church 
 — and legally and rightly are under present cir- 
 cumstances the same thing — may also be symbolized 
 in her edifices and services. The Communion of 
 Saints is an article of our Creed; and our sense of 
 that Communion, our spiritual thoughts of our
 
 96 PRIMITIVE CIIUECH ART. 
 
 elder brethren and sisters in the Church Trium- 
 phant, must needs he awed and reverent. It may 
 be so in the highest and deepest degree without any 
 creature-worship whatever ; therefore it certainly 
 may be expressed in churches with the full strength 
 of all the arts, without really and logically tending 
 to creature-worship. It should not be forgotten that 
 the sudden violence, and ill-timed impatience of the 
 Iconoclast emperors both spread and intensified the 
 popular devotion to idols ; because it blew furiously 
 on passions which already prevented men from hear- 
 ing distinctions, or understanding what they really 
 denied or upheld. The Church may make distinc- 
 tions in vain in one age, as Milman observes ; yet 
 they may be, after all, valid, and then another age 
 will be able to recognize them. Yet it seems that the 
 Communion of Saints may be sufficiently asserted 
 by representations of those whose names are written 
 in Holy Scripture. Many will repudiate such a 
 limitation just now, with the contempt of a rising 
 party which feels its own power, without having 
 held it long enough to have learned moderation in 
 its use. For these, there is nothing but patience and 
 some kind of mild caution as to the difference between 
 prayer to God and fraternal reverence for His saints ; 
 which is at all events as easily recognized in theory 
 as it is overstepped in practice. 
 
 But from the artistic, or painter's side, it is really 
 worth our while to understand the importance of 
 getting the best workman and setting him to the 
 highest subject ; and of seeking, wherever funds 
 permit us, to have works of enduring value in 
 our churches. In some situations and vehicles at 
 least, fresco is permanent— that is to say, with
 
 ICONOCLASM AND CREATURE-WORSHIP. 97 
 
 careful gaslight arrangements. Mosaic endures with 
 perpetual freshness, historic beauty, and the pas- 
 sionate appeal of colour to the colourist. Is it 
 not better to spend less on flowers and robes and 
 candles, and mere church furniture, for the sake of 
 permanent works which may appeal to generation 
 after generation, like the splendours of St. Mark's ? 
 We are not protesting against ritual, but urging its 
 more thoughtful, and in fact more spiritual, forms — 
 pressing the claims of art as against ceremonial. To 
 say that the lower part of ceremonial exercises wader 
 influence, is, in point of fact, to admit what the 
 adversaries of all ritual say, that it is only for the 
 weak, and so forth. It is not right, because ladies 
 understand lace, to spend hundreds on copes and 
 chasubles, when you ought to be carving or inlay- 
 ing the articles of your creed upon the church-walls. 
 and in that work developing perhaps the genius of 
 masters, certainly the talent of good workmen ; calling 
 Intellect, all the while, into her right place in the 
 Sanctuary ; that she may offer her incense also, 
 along with the Angels of Knowledge. If candles and 
 draperies and flowers are symbolic, they are so in a 
 less important way than those histories or emblems of 
 the faith which have been handed down from the 
 first centuries, which ought to be seen in every 
 temple of the faith. Let these at least come first, 
 for they express the faith ; when they are provided, 
 the sacrifice of thought and imagination, of the 
 aspirations of the soul and the cunning of the hand, 
 will have been made to the glory of God ; nor can 
 we conceive of any more precious offering.
 
 CALLIXTINE HEAD OF CHRIST.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEJE PAINTINGS. 
 
 " When I was a young man, and was studying in Rome, I was 
 in the habit, on Sundays, of visiting the graves of the Apostles 
 and Martyrs ; and often did we enter those vaults, which are exca- 
 vated deep in the earth, where the bodies of the buried are seen in 
 the walls on each side of the visitors, and all is so dark, that the 
 words of the prophet seem literally fulfilled : ' Let them go down 
 <[uick into hell' — where the gloomy darkness is seldom broken by 
 any glimmer from above, whilst the light appears to come through 
 a slit, rather than through a window, and you take each step with 
 caution, as, surrounded by deep night, you recall the words of 
 Virgil : ' Terrors appal thee thoroughly, above all terrible still- 
 ness.'" — Hierom. in Ezech xl. circ. A.D. 354. 
 
 The Roman Catacombs may be said to be the 
 grave of Grseco-Italian Art. Gentile or human 
 genius — what is called artistic power, be it what it 
 may — had culminated early in the great Phidian 
 school, and has never been surpassed ; yet its effects 
 have been always more and more widely spread. 
 And the emulous efforts of Rhodian, Ionian, and 
 Italian workmen, in successive ages, were at all 
 events of incalculable value to the culture and 
 life of the Graeco-Italian world. We know sadly 
 little of the painting of the ancient Athenian schools, 
 yet it is certain that between the period of Poly- 
 gnotus and of Apelles — between the Athenian and 
 Alexandrian wars with Persia (say 450 — 330) the 
 graphic art was developed in such a manner as to 
 
 F 2
 
 100 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 rival the successes of Greek sculpture. Those who 
 would pursue this subject will do well, in the first 
 place, to read Mr. Woruum's highly important article 
 on Painting, 1 and to follow, if possible, the authorities 
 there referred to. For ourselves, there is, and was, 
 the same connection, and the same repulsion, between 
 Greek and Christian art, as between Greek Nature- 
 worship and the service of Christ, as God made 
 Man. If, as the labours of Professor Max Miiller 
 and others seem to prove, the mythology of Greece 
 is a grand phantasmagoria of some original Aryan 
 worship of one God or Father, as recognized in the 
 workings of Nature and Life ; then Greek sculpture, 
 in its noblest forms — Theseus, Demeter and the Kore 
 — is the petrifaction of the grandest features of that 
 phantasmagoria. These are the noblest imageries 
 man could ever project before his fellows — of gods 
 made in Man's image ; in a way which was for- 
 bidden to races favoured with Eevelation or open 
 Vision, but, as Saint Paul says, was " winked at," as 
 the work of a time of ignorance. The heathen reli- 
 gious sentiment, or spirit of prayer, undoubtedly did 
 express itself in Greek sculpture and painting; and 
 so far there is relation between Greek art and the 
 religious art of Christendom. 
 
 Again, all the technical powers of Art — her 
 gathered knowledge of colour and form, her vast 
 inheritance of method and material — were derived 
 from Greece through Koine. The capture and 
 plunder of Corinth by Mummius in 125 B.C. is 
 the point of transference, when the art of Greece, 
 in a great degree plundered and destroyed, was trans- 
 1 Smith's "Greek aud Roman Antiquities."
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 101 
 
 ferred to Eome ; and, however brutal and barbaric 
 the change may have been, when " the soldier was 
 wont to break cups wrought by great masters, that 
 his horse might be decked with gay trappings," it 
 was then that Eome first applied herself to those 
 arts, whose decayed fragments yet retained a sus- 
 pended life in the Late Empire. In that state we 
 call them Byzantine art. Drawing and sculpture, 
 in short, came from Greece to Eome, and were 
 adopted by Eoman Christianity ; and when the day 
 of vengeance was come to Eome, when Alaric and 
 his Goths rushed in at the Salarian Gate, and 
 brought clown darkness on her for 600 years, spiri- 
 tual life and the seeds of culture survived, in the 
 relics of Greek art; and in the mosaics of the great 
 Churches, which succeed the Catacomb paintings as 
 exponents of the Faith of their time. There is no 
 doubt that the Christian faith owes great part of its 
 means of self-expression to Greek art, in the same 
 sense that it owes them to the printing-press. The 
 Creed, and the Histories of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, meeting in Christ as type and antitype, have 
 always been taught by means of art in some form 
 or sense, and the revival of all art after the de- 
 struction of the Empire is as certainly due to the 
 Christian Church, as the origin of Western art is 
 due to Athens. 
 
 The repulsion between Greek and Christian art, 
 again, is that of a higher and a lower morality. It 
 is the contrast between the impurities of Nature- 
 worship — which, as Mr. Disraeli said, " always ends 
 in an orgie" — and the continued effort and appeal 
 for deliverance from evil — that is to say, from one's
 
 102 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 own personal sins and impurity. The one side 
 justifies indulgence, denies the existence of cor- 
 ruption, treats the world as very good against the 
 facts, and fails accordingly; the other tends to 
 asceticism, regards the world, first, as under curse 
 and corruption, then as utterly accursed — and so 
 becomes a yoke too heavy to bear. We must, if 
 possible, return to this subject; for the present a 
 short account of the Catacombs themselves will be 
 useful before we go into the subject of the " Biblical 
 cycle" of paintings therein contained — to use the 
 admirable expression of the Commendatore de Eossi. 
 There are three standard works in particular on 
 this subject, all founded on the labours of the inde- 
 fatigable Oratorian, Cardinal Bosio, which will be 
 found, we presume, in most public libraries. One 
 or other of them, at least, must be in many private 
 collections. A diligent use of any one will give the 
 reader a good idea of the nature of the subterra- 
 nean cemeteries, and of the character of the pictures 
 which adorned so many of their chambers. They 
 are as follows : — The book of Bosio, who died in 
 1600, completed by Severano ; a translation of it 
 into Latin by the Oratorian Aringhi ; and the "Scul- 
 ture e Pitture Sagre" of Bottari, 1737-54, in which 
 Bosio's plates are used again. These three, or indeed 
 one of them, with the learned work of Boldetti, the 
 fruit of thirty years' labour, will give a perfectly 
 good account of the condition of the cemeteries and 
 paintings at their date. The magnificent "Eoma 
 Sotterranea " of De Eossi is a book of the same cha- 
 racter and equal merit, and his work, as well as 
 theirs, has the unspeakable merit of impartially
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 103 
 
 recording what is found, without endeavour to con- 
 struct more. The latter part of Dr. Xorthcote's 
 version of De Eossi's volumes is complained of, by 
 the late Mr. Wharton Marriott and others, as full 
 of attempts to read distinctively Roman doctrine in 
 records which are simply those of primitive Christi- 
 anity, and do not contain it. This is, of course, 
 natural in a convert, and is one of several modern 
 instances in which propagandist zeal for a new-found 
 creed has somewhat disguised the real aspect of facts. 1 
 The works of De Eossi, and the smaller but pre- 
 eminently useful Dictionnaire des Anticpiites Chre- 
 tiennes, by M. l'Abbe Martigny, are either perfectly 
 impartial and accurately honourable, or, which is 
 the next thing to it, are written with an avowed 
 and well-considered bias. Our references have been 
 confined, as far as possible, to these works, with 
 Mr. Parker's ; but a few have been added to photo- 
 graphs in the portfolios of South Kensington. Mr. 
 Parkers photographs, and the accompanying text, 
 
 1 Dr. Xorthcote displays an humorous daring, which does him 
 the greatest credit, in accusing Anglican inquirers of this frailty. 
 He instances an unfortunately ingenious guess about Pliny's doves 
 in mosaic, of an English describer who took them for a Christian 
 work, and thought they symbolized the admission of the Laity to 
 partake of the cup in the Eucharist ! It certainly may have been 
 a mistake to consider the Capitoline Doves a Christian work, as 
 they can hardly be a copy ; but there can be no doubt that 
 doves signify lay members of the Christian Church, or that 
 the symbol of two doves with a chalice, so frequent on the sar- 
 cophagi, has reference to the Holy Communion. One or two of 
 Dr. N.'s own statements are given, with elucidations, by Mr. 
 Marriott, and they seem rather worse than this. He will have 
 it, that all Oranti mean the Blessed Virgin, never mentioning that 
 there are male Oranti. He says the Orante is a companion to the 
 Good Shepherd, in an instance where four of them are found sur- 
 rounding Him as central figure on a vault : he treats the Adorations 
 of the Magi as, in fact, portraits of the Blessed Virgin, " the 
 Infant being only added to show who she is ;" and so forth.
 
 104 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 are a profoundly valuable addition to the literature 
 of ancient Rome, Christian and Heathen. Their 
 architectural department is the special work of the 
 author, on his own subject. Mr. Vaux has under- 
 taken the antiquities, and Professor "Westwood gives 
 an account of the few Christian statues, and the 
 larger and more important subject of the bas- 
 reliefs. Mr. Parker asked the present writer for 
 some observations on the Catacomb-frescoes, and 
 Church mosaics aboveground ; and he has also 
 had the kindness to allow him to repeat them, in 
 great measure, in this book. In the course of his 
 reading, the writer observes, with feelings of mor- 
 tification, and also of satisfaction, that the Rev. 
 Wharton Marriott's works have anticipated much 
 information which he has himself exhumed in the 
 course of study, and of which he could have wished 
 to be a modern reproducer. In any case, he can 
 now bring it forward with confidence. 
 
 One of the earliest names of visitors inscribed 
 in the Catacombs, after their re-discovery in the 
 fifteenth century, is that of Raynuzio Farnese, father 
 of Paul III., in 1490. This is found in the Cal- 
 lixtine cemetery ; its appearance seems to be one of 
 the coincidences of that time of invention and dis- 
 covery. The entrances to the subterranean passages 
 had been forgotten, even by the clergy ; and the at- 
 tention of the world was not re-directed to them till 
 late in the next century, by new lights from science 
 and history. They had probably ceased to be visited 
 for prayer, or meditation at the martyrs' tombs, late 
 in the thirteenth century. Their generic name applies 
 to one of them in particular, and is of uncertain
 
 THE CATACOMBS AN'D THEIR PAINTINGS. 105 
 
 derivation; 1 whether from Kara and cumbere, Kara 
 and tv/jl(3o<;, or the Spanish cedar (to see), as Dr. 
 Theodore Mornnisen suggests. " The early Christian 
 burial-vaults," he says (near the Porta S. Sebastiano), 
 * in which, according to tradition, the bones of the 
 Apostles Peter and Paul rested for a year and seven 
 months before they were removed to the spot where 
 the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul now stand, 
 were designated as the vaults ad catacumbas. It was 
 in the ninth century that this designation first began 
 to be more commonly applied to other Christian 
 burial-vaults ; and the present use of the term 
 gradually grew up." The earliest date in them, or 
 rather on a sarcophagus most unfortunately removed 
 from its proper place in them, now unknown, is A.D. 72. 
 lb is a consular date, and satisfactorily certain, about 
 the fourth year of Vespasian. There are two consular 
 inscriptions in St. Lucia of 107 and 110 a.d. "The 
 Catacomb of St. Priscilla," says Mr. Hemans, " entered 
 below the Salarian Way, and belonging to the mother 
 of that Christian senator, Pudens, who received 
 St. Peter — also those of St. Nereus and Achilleus 
 near the Appian Way — have been referred to an 
 antiquity correspondent with the Apostolic Age : 
 and if those called after St. Callixtus were indeed 
 formed long before that pope's election in 210 a.d., we 
 may place them second in chronological order." With 
 this, in great measure, agrees the view of Prof. 
 Mommsen ; and those of the Commendatore De Eossi 
 and Mr. J. H. Parker are at no great distance of 
 
 1 Mr. Marriott says this derivation is unquestionably from a root 
 traceable in the Greek Kv/ifiaKov ; Lat., cymba ; Eng., coumb or 
 hollow : Sansc, kuinbhas, pit. 
 
 F 3
 
 106 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 opinion on these leading questions. It is agreed in 
 any case, that the Catacombs preserve for us some 
 of the last efforts, the feeble and dying palpitations, 
 of Grseco-Boman painting and sculpture, adopted by 
 the Faith of Christ, which, could not breathe fresh 
 vigour into them, yet retained the germs of their 
 life, as seed from withering flowers. It is agreed 
 that, whatever number of martyrs perished in 
 Borne, 1 whatever exaggeration may have been at- 
 tempted, they did perish in great numbers, and are 
 frequently buried here : at times, possibly, with 
 Gentile corpses also ; with strange, scattered relics of 
 secular as well as religious life ; with the histories 
 and memories, known to God only, of 350 miles of 
 human sepulchres. 2 It is agreed that these vaults 
 contain a Scriptural cycle of historic and symbolic 
 paintings ; and it is an object of this book to show 
 that such ornamentation, based on Holy Scripture, 
 and having for its end to illustrate the fulfilment of 
 Old Testament type and prophecy by the historical 
 events of the New Testament, is the decoration best 
 suited to the Anglican Church ; especially desirable 
 at this time ; and calculated to develop religious 
 feeling and intellectual power. It cannot be alien or 
 painful — it must be delightful — to the feelings of any 
 man who believes that God in Christ lived and died 
 for men, and that men and women were made strong 
 to die for their belief in Him ; to know, what all admit, 
 that these relics of record of the martyrs' Faith still 
 
 1 On this question see Milman's note to Gibbon, eh. xvi. fin. 
 with references to Dodwell and Ruin art, &c. 
 
 2 This is alow estimate of the length of the various passages of 
 the Catacombs. Father March] thinks it amounts to not less than 
 soo or 900 miles. See Mr. Hemans's Essay.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 107 
 
 exist in caves of the earth ; that these men's minds 
 dwelt continually on the Lord's Parables concerning 
 Himself, as Vine of Souls and Shepherd of Mankind ; 
 and that they insisted always on the ancient Law, 
 Prophets, and history of Israel as typical of Him ; on 
 the miracles of mercy as representing His life, and 
 on the Cross which points to His death. Thus much 
 is, at all events, indisputably proved by the Catacomb 
 paintings and sculptures. And the creed of the Piornan 
 martyrs ought not to be neglected by the Protestant 
 world, only because they were martyred in Eome. 
 
 It may be as well to explain a few words which 
 are constantly used in all writings on this subject. 
 Passing by the word catacomb, already discussed, we 
 come to cemetery (kol/mtjt^piov, accvMtorium), the bed 
 or sleeping-place, in which it is promised that the 
 saints shall rejoice. Cryptum (kpvtttco) is the original 
 name for these graves, from which the modern Italian 
 grotto, and the adjective grotesque, appear to be de- 
 rived. A loculus is a single grave; a larger one, 
 where the rock is hollowed into an apse, or half-dome, 
 above a sarcophagus, is called an arcosolium. GvM- 
 cula are square chambers, surrounded with tombs in 
 the thickness of their walls ; and they were, no doubt, 
 places of worship, the Eucharist being generally 
 celebrated on the grave of a martyr. Here, then, the 
 skill of Christian painters, sometimes of Gentiles, was 
 employed to set forth the symbols of the Faith. 
 
 Other terms, like columbarium, cella memoriae, and 
 the like, take us back to that connection between 
 Christian and Gentile burial, which is best dwelt on, 
 perhaps, by Dr. Mommsen ; with whose views those 
 of Mr. Parker fully coincide, as we believe. The
 
 108 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 columbaria, or pigeon-cotes, were the places in which 
 the ashes and burnt relics of the middle and lower 
 classes of the Eonians of Christian ages were stored 
 in ollcc, or vases, along the shelves of subterranean 
 pits ; in small pigeon-holes, or cells, after which the 
 pits were named. These were the receptacles of the 
 burned heathen — at least, of the middle and lower 
 classes ; and the Christians always preferred burial, 
 rejoicing in all the ideas of death as a rest, and of 
 the body expecting its resurrection. Yet burial was a 
 heathen custom also, although the high price of land 
 about Kome must have made burning more frequent, 
 as a convenience which superseded the ancient cus- 
 tom of burial. A Christian writer, of the time of 
 Severus, says, with good reason, " that the Christians 
 did not hold the foolish belief that the burning of the 
 body was incompatible with its resurrection, but that 
 they preferred the older and better fashion of burial, 
 liking to consider the dead body as a tree, which 
 during the barrenness of winter still hides in itself 
 the hope of a spring to come." But though burial 
 was a heathen, as well as Christian custom, public 
 burial with members of the same faith, and excluding 
 others, was a specially Christian custom in the primi- 
 tive Church, as it had been a Jewish custom before. 
 At first, everyone, Christian or heathen, who pos- 
 sessed a piece of land was buried in it ; there his 
 mausoleum, or cclla memoriae, was erected ; and there 
 his descendants and friends assembled for solemn 
 funeral feasts, from which the Christian Agape, or 
 love-feast, was difficult of distinction — so difficult that 
 the custom had to be discontinued altogether. 1 The 
 
 1 See infrd.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 109 
 
 chapels dedicated to the memory of the Apostles and 
 martyrs were undoubtedly buildings of this kind, and 
 the origin of the catacomb may frequently have been 
 one of these burial-vaults, where some distinguished 
 martyr or confessor was laid ; and where many who 
 had known him desired to lie around him, as round 
 an accredited servant found faithful to the end. 
 
 Such a one is that of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, 
 which Professor Mommsen chooses as an example of 
 undoubted authenticity and antiquity. It will be 
 described immediately ; but before doing so it remains 
 to point out that the catacomb, or underground ceme- 
 tery, cannot have taken its rise from the mere sand, or 
 puzzolana pit, in the first instance. The favourite 
 soil in which these sepulchres were made is the soft 
 tufa rock, or volcanic mud, cooled and hardened ; 
 and the beds of the puzzolana, or building-stone, are 
 avoided, as too hard and difficult. So is all marshy 
 ground, for obvious reasons. And the arrangement of 
 these sepulchres is inconsistent with the idea of their 
 having been puzzolana pits. The narrow passages, 
 three-quarters or half a metre in breadth, and inter- 
 secting at right angles, cannot be quarried-out space 
 from whence stone has been obtained ; nor do they 
 afford roads or wide passages for leading it in carts, 
 when cut in the quarry. " These vaults have been 
 devised for one object only, to get as much wall as 
 possible, in a given space, of such depth as to admit 
 of tombs on each side. In some instances, the real 
 sand, or stone pits, have been found within the cata- 
 comb, very differently arranged, with broad passages 
 and conveniences for carrying the sand to the sur- 
 face ; but these pits are evidently more ancient, and
 
 110 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 either shut off altogether by the builders of the cata- 
 comb, or utilized for their purpose by intermediate 
 walls. The enormous space occupied by the burial- 
 vaults of Christian Eome, in their extent not surpassed 
 even by the system of cloacae, or sewers, of Republican 
 Eome, is certainly the work of that community which 
 St. Paul addressed in his Epistle to the Eomans — 
 a living witness of its immense development." It 
 cannot, of coiu'se, be proved — nor is it very material to 
 prove — that no heathen graves exist among the masses 
 of Christian dead ; but the Christian insistence on 
 common burial of all brethren holders of the faith, 
 so that the Ecclesia or Church of the Faithful on earth 
 might be continued and organized, as it were, among 
 the dead, would go very far to prevent heathens being 
 associated with it in death. The heathen cultus of 
 the deceased members of families was a part of that 
 ancient hearth or household-worship which has been 
 lately described by M. de Coulanges in " La Cite An- 
 tique ; " 1 and we shall be reminded of it by details 
 connected with the early Agapae. 
 
 It was simply the value of the ground, and the 
 nature of the ground, which gave the subterranean 
 system so great a development in Eome. In Africa, 
 for instance, Christian burials took place in open 
 graveyards, or areae. Tertullian relates of the Car- 
 thaginians, in the reign of Severus, that in some 
 tumult against the Christians, the wrath of the mob 
 was directed against the Christian burial-jDlaces, 
 with the cry, " Arcce non sint" and Dr. Mommsen also 
 quotes an inscription from Caesarea in Numidia:— 
 
 1 See Translation by Rev. T. C. Barker, 1871. Parker, 377, 
 Strand.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. Ill 
 
 "A follower of the word gave this burial-ground, and 
 built the chapel (cello), all at his own cost : he has 
 left this memorial to the Holy Church. Euelpius 
 bids you hail ; brothers of pure and simple heart, 
 born of the Holy Spirit" At Alexandria, again, 
 there are remains of catacombs, which the present 
 writer has inspected ; and due rei'erence will be made 
 to those of Naples. 
 
 As has been said, Professor Mommsen's chosen ex- 
 ample of an ancient burial-chamber, extending itself 
 into a catacomb, or gathering subterranean additions 
 round it till a catacomb was established, is that of 
 the Cemetery of Domitilla, and the Catacomb of 
 SS. Xereus and Achilleus, on the Appian and Ardea- 
 tine Way. 
 
 These vaults are attributed to a granddaughter 
 of Vespasian, who bore the first of these names. 
 She was accused of Christianity, as a Jewish super- 
 stition, in the reign of Domitian, a.d. 95, along with 
 T. Flavius Clemens, her husband, or, possibly, her 
 brother, the Consul of that year. He was sentenced 
 to death, and his fate, of course, created strong excite- 
 ment, and must have added very greatly to the in- 
 fluence of the faith ; though he is said to have been a 
 man of somewhat too retiring or indolent character. 
 But St. Domitilla was sent, after his death, to the 
 island of Ponza, where she probably ended her days 
 in exile. The rooms she occupied there, says Professor 
 Mommsen, were still visited by pious persons in the 
 fourth century. He is not quite satisfied that Sig. 
 Gianbattista de Eossi's opinion is clearly proved, 
 that the burial-vaults near SS. Xereus and Achilleus 
 were originally called Ccemeterium Donritilla? ; but
 
 112 PRIMITIVE CHUECH AET. 
 
 her name, ever since the time of Constantine, had 
 been connected with the traditions of the martyrdom 
 of Nereus and Achillens. He says, a heathen tomb- 
 inscription mentions Flavia Domitilla as the donor 
 of the bnrying-place. In any case, the crypt which 
 Eossi ascribes to her is one of the oldest in Eome. 
 Dated tiles found there belong to the times of Hadrian 
 and Pius, 117-161 : and Domitian was slain in 96 : 
 so that the distance of time is not more than twenty 
 years from a Flavian Emperor. "The vault," says 
 Professor Mommsen, " is no cemetery, according to its 
 original modest circumference — it is still a private 
 burial-place for the founder and his nearest relations. 
 The entrance to the later catacombs, though not 
 exactly concealed, is shown as little as possible. 
 The stone beds, or loculi, which peculiarly belong to 
 the later catacombs, do not appear at all. On the 
 other hand, great niches are excavated in the walls 
 for the reception of sarcophagi. At a later time, 
 narrower passages were certainly broken through the 
 walls, and stone beds in their side-walls ; but, as if 
 to mark their transition (from vault to catacomb), 
 these stone beds in the passages broken in the walls 
 are surrounded with a cornice, which gives them the 
 form of sarcophagi. The remains of the frescoes, 
 ivhich clearly are of the same time as the original 
 building, are the sole proof that this grave did not 
 belong to any of those heathens who abstained from 
 burning, but that it was really, from the beginning, a 
 Christian foundation. They are, especially in the 
 mere ornaments, of rare beauty ; and no decorative 
 artist of the Augustan age need be ashamed of the 
 vaulted roof in particular, with its exquisite garlands
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 113 
 
 of grapes, and the birds pecking at them, and the 
 winged boys gathering and pressing out the fruit. 
 There are also small landscapes, which are never 
 found in the later Christian graves. The groups 
 drawn on the side-walls are less perfect. Among 
 those still preserved, the most remarkable are Daniel 
 standing between two lions — the Good Shepherd — 
 Noah's Ark, with the Dove — and the representation 
 of a supper, which differs but little, on the whole, 
 from the usual antique treatment of the subject. Two 
 men are represented sitting on the dinner-sofa, &c, 
 yet clearly showing the Christian influence in the 
 bread placed round the fish on the dish. These are 
 the beginnings of the ancient Christian graves." 
 
 We have thought it best to go the length of mak- 
 ing a brief list, or index, of all the principal subjects 
 of Christian decoration, to which we may refer in our 
 descriptions of Catacomb-paintings. But a few words 
 remain to be said about the materials and vehicles in 
 which they were paiuted, though our statements will 
 scarcely be of any importance. Still, it is better for 
 readers not accustomed to the accurate use of terms 
 in art, to explain that these works are called Frescoes, 
 under limitation, and with doubt. Fresco means 
 painting on freshly-laid plaster ; with water-colour, 
 and pigments not subject to injury by contact with 
 the lime. The processes of early Christian art, 
 as has been observed, are simply those of the later 
 Grseco-Eoman period, and accurate information on 
 the subject is greatly to be desired ; but it may be 
 taken for certain that both fresco-painting on the 
 wet and fresh plaster, and distemper, or tempera- 
 painting on the dry coatings, were freely made use
 
 114 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 of. The latter method must have been, of course, 
 employed iu the various re-touchings or re-paintings, 
 which have probably taken place from time to time 
 since the days of St. Paulinus of Nola, and which 
 throw doubt over the authenticity of some of the 
 earlier decorations, considered as documents. The 
 following extracts from Mr. Wornum's article in 
 Smith's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities bear on 
 this part of the subject. 
 
 "Fresco" 1 was probably little employed by the 
 ancients for works of imitative art; but it appears 
 to have been the ordinary method of simply colouring 
 walls, especially among the Romans. The walls were 
 divided into compartments or panels, which were 
 called abaci (a/3a«e?) : the composition of the stucco, 
 and the method of preparing the walls for painting, 
 is described by Vitruvius (vii. 3). They first covered 
 the wall with a layer of ordinary plaster, then three 
 other layers of a finer quality, mingled with sand ; 
 above these still, three layers of a composition of 
 chalk and marble-dust, the upper one laid on before 
 the under one was quite dry, and each succeeding 
 coat being of a finer quality than the preceding . . . 
 
 1 A few technisal words may perhaps be explained here. Starting 
 from the popular and quite inaccurate use of the word fresco for all 
 wall-painting — the distinctions branch according to the ground used 
 for the colours, and the medium or vehicle used with the colours. 
 Tempera means simply medium, and tempera-painting is the use of 
 any medium with the colours, on old and dry plaster. Fresco proper 
 is water-colours on wet plaster of silver- sand and lime. Gesso 
 means simply chalk or plaster of Paris, and is used iu all dry 
 painting for canvases, tablets, walls ; all alike are prepared with 
 it. Intonaco is the last coat of surface on which the painting is 
 done. Dry fresco is on old plaster, re-wetted. Distemper is on 
 a dry wall, or with opaque colours, made up with size, egg, milk, 
 or gum, in which last ease it is called guazzo. Painting a putrido 
 is when the e«" gets bad.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 115 
 
 Colouring al fresco, in which the colours were mixed 
 simply in water, as the term implies, was applied 
 while the composition was still wet (udo tectorio), 
 and on that account was limited to certain colours, 
 exactly as in fresco at the present day, where the 
 artist is confined to the use of such colours as are 
 unaffected by lime, &c." He goes on to say that the 
 care and skill required to execute a work in fresco, 
 and the tedious and expensive process of preparing 
 the walls, must have effectually excluded it from 
 ordinary places. The majority of the walls in 
 Pompeii are in distemper ; but those of the higher 
 class of houses, especially if they were intended to 
 be the grounds of pictures, were in fresco, both at 
 Pompeii and in Rome. " The pictures themselves, on 
 the coloured grounds thus prepared, are apparently 
 all in distemper of the highest kind, in what is 
 called guazzo, or gum-medium, &c. &e. Distemper, 
 it need not be said, implies the use of a glue or 
 size-medium with water, and is one of the most 
 ancient methods of painting in existence, many of the 
 Egyptian bas-reliefs of early date being so coloured." 
 The special advantages belonging to modern fresco, 
 of figures approaching to the life-size, were not thought 
 of by the early Christian artists ; and could not have 
 been obtained in subterranean galleries, or cubicula, 
 by any method of work. They all centre in the lumi- 
 nousness and imperishable nature of the painting ; 
 but the fresco grounding, with designs in distemper, 
 painted on it when dry, would have answered all the 
 purposes of the Primitive designers. As soon as 
 they obtained countenance, and were freely supplied 
 with means, mosaic (musivum ojncs) seems to have
 
 116 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 been their favourite work. 1 This seems to have been 
 a natural preference on the part of men who had 
 been accustomed either to subterranean paintings 
 seen by torchlight, or to small cells or mortuary 
 chapels on a level with the soil, from which 
 light and heat were somewhat closely excluded; 
 as the gold or white-glass grounds of the inlaid 
 work introduce light into dim cupolas and vaultings. 
 The highly-prepared panels inserted in the walls 
 of the richer houses of Pompeii, and bearing, as has 
 been said above, nine or ten coats of variously 
 compounded covering, or ground, are not found in 
 Christian subterranean decoration to our knowledge. 
 Several examples occur to us of the earliest 
 Vine-paintings, which may be compared, with great 
 advantage, with those of the Domitilla vault. 2 
 The first is of almost equal antiquity, the Vine-frescoes 
 of the Catacomb of St. Praetextatus. Then comes the 
 great Vine of the Callixtine, which surrounds the 
 " Dispute with the Doctors " (Bottari, vol. ii.). In all 
 these the style may be called simple naturalism of 
 the highest kind ; the vines being simply and ably 
 drawn, to the best imitative power of the workman, 
 yet bent arbitrarily into decorative shape. Next to 
 these, with the same naturalism, but somewhat in- 
 ferior grace, come the vintage-mosaics of St. Constan- 
 tia in Eome, described in the chapter on Mosaics. 
 Of intermediate date, near the end of the second 
 century, as we should conjecture, are the very 
 beautiful stuccoes described and illustrated by Bot- 
 
 1 See Mosaic. 
 
 2 The latter are represented in woodcut, and fully described in 
 Dr. Northcote's book, and may be taken as tlie standard example.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 117 
 
 tari. 1 If they are compared with the Callixtine Vine, 
 or that of the Dornitilla tomb, it will be seen that, 
 though the leaves, grapes, and boys are as freely 
 and beautifully drawn, the branches are more severely 
 twisted into an S form, and a more arbitrary arrange- 
 ment prevails. Lastly, the fifth- century vaulting of 
 the Church of Galla Placidia bears a vine in which 
 Graeco-Koman art has reached the Byzantine stage 
 of high conventionality, still retaining great beauty ; 
 and the same degree of subordination to decorative 
 pattern may be seen in the mosaic of the Vine on 
 the front of St. Mark's at Venice. 2 There is little 
 doubt that these vine-pictures, and many others, were 
 adopted by Christians as repetitions of the Lord's para- 
 ble of Himself, and the more freely because heathen 
 eyes were accustomed to them, and they awakened 
 no special attention. And it seems, certainly, that 
 it was not till the fifth century, at least, that the 
 stiffer and more ecclesiastical figures now seen in the 
 Catacombs made their first appearance. The unmis- 
 takeably early works of St. Dornitilla and St. Praetex- 
 tatus, the Vine of St. Callixtus, and so on down to 
 those of St. Constantia for the fourth century, are 
 enough to prove, when compared with Gentile deco- 
 ration of the best or Augustine period, that the 
 ruder and more barbaric w T orks of the Catacombs 
 are of later date : however confusing it may be 
 to compare the rudest work of a good artistic time 
 with the comparatively careful and earnest work of a 
 later and bad time. Some of the late work, indeed, 
 gives an idea of wilful carelessness or indifference. 
 
 1 Vol. ii. pp. 92, 93. 
 
 2 "Stones of Venice," vol. ii. ; plate, "The Vine, Free ami in 
 Service."
 
 118 PKIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the recent photo- 
 graphs taken and published by Mr. Parker give 
 evidence of re-touching on many of these paint- 
 ings. Stronger and less correct markings occur over 
 fainter and better forms. Of course, no imputation 
 of deceptive intent need, or ought to be made, on the 
 repairers, from the time of John or Paschal I. to 
 the present day. "When a painting has reached a 
 certain point of decay, it must vanish, so far as the 
 handiwork of the original artist goes : but the record 
 of its existence ought to be preserved, and that is 
 best done, on the whole, by faithful restoration, 
 which really amounts to no more than an attested 
 inscription on the wall, giving careful account of the 
 original fresco. This has been done, from time to 
 time, in the Catacombs — from the most ancient times, 
 probably, to the present. Had it been done by dis- 
 honest hands, or in a spirit of imposture, the ancient 
 re-touchings, often in themselves venerable, though 
 often grotesque, would have had a far different 
 appearance now. Even modern restorations are 
 justifiable; but they should be avowed and regis- 
 tered. One or two will have to be referred to in 
 this chapter, certainly without thought of blame. 
 Whatever any of us may think of the present state 
 of the actual documents, which is only to be seen 
 in the photographs, there can be no doubt that the 
 Vine and the Good Shepherd were continually before 
 the eyes of the Primitive Church, as symbols of her 
 Lord ; that Noah, Daniel and Job, Abraham and 
 Jonah, Moses and Elias were always set forth as 
 symbolic representatives of Him ; that His miracles 
 of mercy were carved on the sarcophagi ; that the
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 119 
 
 Monogram of His name faced the spectator every- 
 where, with His nativity, His manifestation to 
 the Kings of the East, His portrait-image in bas- 
 relief, with an occasional ideal of His features in 
 painting ; that The Three Children encouraged the 
 spirits of His martyrs ; or that a long list of sym- 
 bolic objects pointed to Him and the Word He 
 taught. The Agape, too, repeatedly bade His fol- 
 lowers, then as now, remember His last Supper 
 with the Apostles, representing more immediately 
 the last repast at the Lake of Tiberias — for it must 
 always be uncertain what further eucharistic mean- 
 ing it may have conveyed. The Bread so frequently 
 seen must refer to the Bread of Life, and the sixth 
 chapter of St. John. The unique picture of the Fish 
 bearing Loaves, in De Bossi and Mr. Northcote, is 
 of the greatest interest in this connection ; but it is 
 necessary to have an exact facsimile of it in its 
 present state, if we are to assert with these gentle- 
 men and Abbe Martigny, that a vial of wine is 
 represented in the basket. No Anglican need have 
 any theological objection to its doing so, and a 
 certain record would be a subject of congratulation. 
 These subjects, and others of the same kind, form 
 the Biblical cycle of the Catacombs. It is to be 
 remembered that the photograph, taken with magne- 
 sium-light on the spot, gives, in all probability, quite 
 as accurate an idea of the real record, as it now is, 
 as ordinary inspection on the spot, amidst flicker- 
 ing and smoking torches and tapers, in uncertain 
 lights or darkness visible. Mr. Parker adds to 
 his collection of photographs many specimens of 
 secular wall-ornament of the best ages, from
 
 120 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Pompeii, from the newly-discovered works at the 
 Doria Pamphili Villa, the Villa of Hadrian, and 
 other places. They are not only beautiful in them- 
 selves, but of the greatest value as standards of 
 ancient ornament. They- strongly resemble the St. 
 Prsetextatus frescoes in their correct realism of bird- 
 and-flower drawing, which they combine with careful 
 subjection to pattern. It is, of course, the perfec- 
 tion of decorative-painting, that everything should 
 be placed where the artist wants it, for contrast, 
 harmony, and proper subordination to architectural 
 structure ; while at the same time the decorative 
 objects are not only in their right places, but 
 rightly painted from nature. In these works, boys, 
 birds'-nests, and grapes are charmingly and vigor- 
 ously done, without any of that gloomy indif- 
 ference to nature which is so prevalent soon after, 
 marking the long coma of the arts up to the time 
 of the early Florentine and Pisan Iienaissance. 
 One rather favourable characteristic of the Eoman 
 middle classes seem to appear in them — a great 
 taste for domestic pets. It would be difficult to 
 find better animal-painting in a simple way than 
 the half-erased porcupine, crocodile, and palm-tree, 
 the pheasant and spoonbill. 1 The Pompeian frescoes 
 are generally square or oblong pictures, of more or 
 less merit, painted on the wall, without much atten- 
 tion to display of architectural forms. It is pro- 
 bable that the beautiful series of painted stuccoes 
 from the sepulchre of the Via Latina, in Mr. 
 Parker's work, are of the same class and period 
 with the Good Shepherd and Vine stuccoes in Bottari," 
 
 1 Parker's Photographs 2,700, 2,703, 2,705. * See ii. t. 22.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 121 
 
 which are said to be copied from one of the same 
 tombs. If this be the case, the interest of the latter 
 is very great, as the photographed examples cannot 
 be later than the early second century. But, as has 
 been said, their severer subjection to intricate pat- 
 terns inclines the present writer to think they must 
 be as late as the end of that age. 
 
 One remark has to be made on the subject of 
 the frescoes of St. Clemente in Home, which have 
 recently attracted so much attention. That of the 
 Assumption of the Virgin in the subterranean church 
 is fully ascertained, by its inscription, to be of the 
 date of Leo IV. (845-855), if not of Leo IX. (1048- 
 1054). Some of the figures are tonsured, which 
 puts their date into the sixth century ; the square 
 nimbus of one is quite mediaeval ; and they also 
 differ absolutely in style alike from the mosaics and 
 the earlier frescoes, having much more Gothic 
 quaintness and singularity. Large numbers of 
 photographs are circulated by propagandist members 
 of the Eoman Catholic Communion, taken from 
 restorations of these frescoes — that is to say, from 
 carefully-made copies, in which the ravages of time 
 are repaired. So far all is well, and these tran- 
 scripts are exact enough ; but we think they ought 
 not to be vaguely described, as at present, as Ima- 
 gines VdustissimcB ; as this tends to induce simple 
 people to think such late works the work of primitive 
 ages, and imagine that the vestments and functions 
 represented in them are of the first four centuries ; 
 which is contradictory to the whole art and litera- 
 ture of the Catacombs. 
 
 These cemeteries, in fact, with their sarcophagi 
 
 G
 
 122 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 and inscriptions, contain a body of primitive doe- 
 trine, set forth in symbols of form and colour, earlier 
 than any others, and distinct from all others. The 
 mosaics at Borne — scarcely those at Eavenna — 
 point to a period of development, of indulged popu- 
 lar opinion and emotion, leading towards Icono- 
 dulism and the deification of the Saints. Had the 
 sarcophagi and inscriptions which now adorn the 
 Boman museums been left in their places, and not 
 been arranged arbitrarily by the guardians and 
 literati of different times, the Christian world of the 
 nineteenth century would have been greatly assisted 
 in understanding the minds of Christian people of 
 the third and fourth, perhaps of the second. But, 
 even as it is, the Scriptural cycle of ornament 
 has been most wisely and honourably set apart by 
 De Bossi from any other. Its range in symbolism 
 and history alike is very wide; and it would be 
 matter of great rejoicing to the present writer to 
 think that it should become an order of decoration 
 for the Anglican Church, and that its objects should 
 be multiplied in many of her temples, calling out the 
 skill of believing artists in silent lay-preaching of 
 their belief. To this subject he must return, well 
 aware as he is of the general futility of all counsels 
 of moderation, caution, or mutual respect or in- 
 dulgence, between the very active organizations 
 which now divide Anglican opinion and practice 
 between them. Mild talk only irritates both parties, 
 " Lambs' bleating makes wolves keen." x Still it 
 is true, that in the Catacomb-paintings is found 
 an exposition of the facts most earnestly believed 
 
 1 " Acuuntque lupos balatibus agnL"
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 123 
 
 by, and considered by, the Church most essential 
 to the faith of the great mass of martyrs and 
 confessors. 
 
 The definition or development of Sacramental 
 Doctrine is represented in the Catacombs by the 
 various Agapae, or Love Feasts ; by representa- 
 tions of the Lord's Baptism ; and (probably at a 
 date as early as most of the subterranean paint- 
 ings) by various Baptismal Crosses, of which the 
 Lateran Cross, so called, is the great surviving speci- 
 men. 1 The Catacomb of St. Pontianus on the Via 
 Portuensis contains a regular Baptistery, with two 
 of the most frequently-examined portraits of Our 
 Lord ; and a representation of His Baptism, which 
 is of exactly the same type as those of Ravenna, 
 and their many successors, and as that in the cele- 
 brated MS. of the library of St. Mark, at Venice. 
 It is probable that the fresco, in its present state, is 
 considerably later than the Ravennese Baptisteries, 
 as Anastasius 2 records the restoration of the Cata- 
 comb by Pope Adrian I. a.d. 772 — 775 ; and the 
 character of the work agrees with his statement. 
 On carefully inspecting one of Mr. Parker's photo- 
 graphs, it appears to the present vriter that the 
 harsh outlines of the upper part of the Baptist's 
 arm and shoulder are drawn over a more careful 
 and correct figure. The biceps, deltoid, and pec- 
 toral muscles seem to have been quite clearly and 
 properly marked in an older underlying picture 
 of the same subject ; and they are neglected in the 
 outline of the restoration. The stiffness of the 
 present picture, the white eyes of the figures, and 
 1 See chapters on Cross and Crucifix. - In St. Adriano, § 33G. 
 
 a 2
 
 124 PRIMITIVE CHUKCH ART. 
 
 their heavy, incorrect drawing, point to a date as late 
 as Nicolas I. or Adrian I. The treatment is familiar 
 to us by countless repetitions. Our Lord stands half 
 immersed, as the Baptist performs his office, with 
 the Holy Dove hovering above Him ; an angel holds 
 the Lord's robe ; and the stag, which represents 
 the Gentile Church, is drinking ■ of the waters of 
 Baptism below. The Head of Christ in this Catacomb 
 (St. Pontianus) is said by Abbe Martigny to be a 
 reproduction of the time of Hadrian I. ; and 
 Boldetti, he says, found a similar picture in the 
 Callixtine cemetery, which fell to pieces when an 
 unfortuDate attempt was made to remove it from the 
 wall. We have already regretted the distressing taste 
 for removal ; but this must be remembered, that it was 
 forced on early Popes by fear of the Lombards, devoted 
 as the latter were to " relic-conveying." No attempt 
 seems to have been made to preserve any part of these 
 cemeteries in its original state ; and Dr. Northcote 
 remarks strongly on the destruction which has been 
 wrought in frescoes since Bosio's time, in which even 
 D'Agincourt seems by no means blameless. The 
 loss of these later ideals of Our Lord's appearance — 
 for they can be no more than traditional ideals — 
 is, of course, no vital matter, yet is greatly to be 
 regretted; and still more is it to be lamented that 
 the more ancient portrait in the 4th cubiculum of the 
 Callixtine, 1 attributed with great verisimilitude to 
 tllie second century, should be now lost. It represented 
 Our Lord on a medallion ; and, if Bosio's plate be 
 correct, as is most probable, was a finely-drawn head 
 and shoulders, with the long hair, oval face,- fine 
 1 Bosio, p. 253.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 125 
 
 beard and moustache, arched eyebrows, and regular 
 features, which have been repeated throughout 
 Christian Art to this day. The face itself must have 
 worn a look of gentleness and melancholy, but it 
 seems to have been placed on a neck and bust of 
 somewhat massive and athletic proportions. Whether, 
 and in what sense, the portrait of Our Lord was used 
 at all in the first three centuries must be held doubt- 
 ful, even in spite of this beautiful work, which may, 
 no doubt, have been of the same date as the enlarge- 
 ment of the Catacomb. i Stamped bricks of Marcus 
 Aurelius, a.d. 161, 180, have been found in it. 
 
 But the well-known passage in Augustine 2 proves 
 distinctly that no actual transcript, even from 
 memory, of the real appearance of Jesus Christ, 
 both God and Man, existed in his day. Had there 
 been a record-portrait, entitled to the least attention, 
 the fact must have been known to the Father ; and 
 it would certainly have changed, not only the words, 
 but the whole drift of the passage. It is quoted 
 in a note to the chapter on Iconoclasm in this book, 
 where reference is also made to an illustrative 
 passage from Irenaeus, relating to Gnostic portraits 
 of our Lord, which were said to be copies of a 
 supposed likeness taken by order of Pontius Pilate. 
 These frescoed heads in the Catacombs, 3 of which 
 
 1 This is one of the earliest of the Catacombs, and the upper part 
 of it must be of great antiquity; Mr. Parker thinks probably of 
 the first century. The staircase and lower part of the Catacomb 
 were an enlargement. " De Rossi found both Pagan sarcophagi 
 and Pagan inscriptions in this Catacomb, in excavations made under 
 his own eyes. — Rom. Sotteran, vol. ii. pp. 169, 281, 290." 
 Parker, " Antiquities of Rome," Catacombs, p. 17, note. 
 
 2 De Trinitate, viii. 4, 5. 
 
 3 The spurious letter of Lentulus, describing Our Lord as fairest 
 of the sons of men, is an expression of this ideal.
 
 126 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 the lost one in St. Callixtus must have been the 
 most ancient are clearly ideals, as must be the 
 painting on ivory of the same type in the Museum 
 of the Vatican, which De Eossi considers most 
 ancient of all representations of the Lord. 1 The 
 portraits mentioned by Eusebius, 2 as probably derived 
 from the image at Cresarea Philippi, must have been 
 matter of the imagination or skill of the artist. 
 " The outward appearance of the Lord's person." says 
 St. Augustine, 3 " is variously represented by the 
 diversity of conceptions without number." And it 
 appears as if two classes of these ideals existed, until 
 the period of darkness after the eighth century, when 
 sculpture and fresco alike were lost, and even mosaic 
 suspended for awhile. The religious imagination 
 takes one of two turns, according to individual 
 character and circumstances : it pictures facts to 
 itself with pleasure or with pain, in joy of heart or 
 in sorrow. In the first case, it takes the view of the 
 religious artist ; in the second, that of the ascetic. As 
 Dean Milman says, " the Christian Faith is its own 
 poetry" in ages early and late — and in a sense also it 
 is its own painting : for the habitual use of devout 
 imagination goes on with the same vigour in high- 
 wrought spirits, whether they ever look at a picture 
 or not. There can be no doubt that if the spirit 
 of a thoughtful person dwells passionately on the 
 actualities and details of any subject, ideas on that 
 subject will pass through his brain; and in many 
 
 1 See the valuable chapter by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 
 " Hist, of Modern Italian Art," vol. i. See also Martigny, " Jesus 
 Christ," with woodcut. 
 
 2 Hist. Eccl. vii. IS. 
 
 3 " Dominica? facies Carnis, innumerabilium COgitationum diver- 
 sitate variatur et fiimitur."
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIE PAINTINGS. 127 
 
 cases they will be so vivid as to be like pictures, and 
 to crave, as it were, for pictorial representation. 
 And hence arose a twofold ideal of the bodily 
 appearance of Him "Who is our Lord. One invested 
 Him with every possible attribute of human beauty, 
 not excepting strength of body — for this, too, has been 
 made His repeatedly, from the Callixtine Catacomb 
 to Michael Angelo ; — the other dwelt on the words, 
 " He hath no form or comeliness," as the former on 
 " Thou art fairer than the children of men." l This 
 inquiry, which is not, in fact, very useful or edifying, 
 certainly need not occupy us now. There can be no 
 doubt that the distresses of Italy during the period 
 from Alaric to Attila, and again to the settlement of 
 the Lombard race in the northern plains, were great 
 enough to give a specially ascetic turn to the 
 thoughts of the monks and cloistered clergy, who 
 alone were able to keep up the practice of any 
 branch of art. The ascetics who looked forth on the 
 ravages of Alboin had little spirit of enjoyment or 
 thought of corporeal beauty, even when Alboin 
 spared their lives and convents. Generation by 
 generation, they thought less of beauty, because of 
 anguish of spirit and cruel bondage : it seemed to 
 them partly a snare, and they often lost both the 
 wish and the power to produce it. And as they 
 looked more and more for the day of the Lord, when 
 He should come to end the fury of the oppressor, 
 
 1 The Fathers are divided on this point. Justin and Clement of 
 Alexandria. (Dialog, cum Try ph. 85 — 88, and Psedagog. 1. iii. c.l.), 
 Stromata (1. iii. ), Tertullian (De Carne Christi adv. Jud. xiv. ), 
 SS. Basil and Cyril of Alexandria — are for the uncomely ideal. 
 SS. Gregory of Nyssen, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, 
 and Theodoret, are on the side of beauty. (Molanus' Hist. SS. 
 Imag. p. 403, &c. )
 
 128 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 they thought of Him more and more as an Avenger 
 and unsparing Judge. His face, they thought, could 
 not but have resembled the worn and piteous — often, 
 perhaps, the ill-favoured and austere countenances 
 of the brethren they knew. Their hearts were failing 
 them, for the Faith seemed at length to be falling- 
 like a divided house. Conventual severities, too, 
 deprived their own bodies of all sacredness or beauty 
 in their eyes. So that Christian art seems for cen- 
 turies (at least in painting and mosaic) to shrink 
 from representing our Lord as fairest among men. 
 His face grows more severe ; He is the Judge and 
 Avenger only. The mirror of the world is too dark 
 for men to see Him in. " After the tenth century," 
 says Mr. Lecky, " the Good Shepherd which adorns 
 every chapel in the Catacombs is no more seen ; the 
 miracles of mercy are replaced by the details of the 
 Passion and the terrors of the Last Judgment. From 
 this period Christ appears more and more melan- 
 choly, and truly terrible: He is indeed the Rex 
 Iremendw majestatis of a Dies Irce." Those who 
 are able to consult Mr. Parker's photographs will 
 have no difficulty in tracing this change from the 
 Catacombs, and through the Church-mosaics, to the 
 ninth century. The vast images, awful in their ex- 
 pressionless abstraction, which fill the tribunes of 
 Pisan and Florentine, Sicilian and Venetian churches 
 from the eleventh century, are derived from, but do 
 not really resemble, the works of the Eoman de- 
 cadence or bathos of art : there is all the difference 
 between them in feeling and character which one 
 observes between evening twilight and morning 
 twilight. These we must pass by ; but the Eoman
 
 THE CATACOxMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 129 
 
 churches of SS. Cosmo and Damian, St. Prassede and 
 others, furnish examples of the ascetic and for- 
 bidding treatment in its maturity, — examples not 
 ignoble or ordinary, but full of severe feeling ; 
 while the works at Eavenna, from the fifth to the 
 seventh century, illustrate the gradual transition 
 from beauty to repulsiveness. The Christ of St. 
 Apollinare Nuova, in particular, Who sits to receive 
 the long procession of Saints presenting their crowns 
 to him, has a face, large-eyed and sad indeed when 
 closely inspected in a photograph, but gravely beauti- 
 ful in the original as seen from the floor of the 
 church. And the Good Shepherd of a century 
 earlier, in Galla Placidia's chapel, is a work of great 
 splendour, where vigorous and successful efforts 
 have been made at personal beauty of face and 
 form. In many cases, in fact, the ascetic transition 
 seems to be simply barbaric. 
 
 The Callixtine Catacomb is the one most frequently 
 visited in modern Borne. From dated bricks of the 
 time of M. Aurelius and of a.d. 161-180, in addition 
 to the original vaults, it must have existed before 
 161. Callixtus, Bishop of Borne in 117, is said to 
 have been entrusted with the cemetery by Zephyrinus, 
 his predecessor, before he himself became Pope or 
 Bishop ; the cemetery including, probably, all 
 Christian burying-places and rites. Pagan inscrip- 
 tions have been found there, some evidently brought 
 by Christians, as old marble to be used as palim- 
 psests, others as original parts of sarcophagi belong- 
 ing to the Catacomb. 1 As the burial-place of many 
 early Bishops of Borne, it has always attracted a 
 
 1 Rossi, R.S. ii. pp. 169, 281, 290.
 
 130 PRIMITIVE CHURCH APT. 
 
 great deal of attention. But this seems to have had 
 one unsatisfactory result, that its frescoes have been 
 re-touched and restored, and sometimes, as it seems, 
 at great distance of time, and by very careless and 
 incompetent hands. The publication of Mr. Parker's 
 photographs will now give everyone an opportunity 
 of inspecting the actual state of these paintings ; 
 probably with greater certainty about them, as 
 has been said, than could be obtained without re- 
 peated opportunities and lengthened study on the 
 spot : and few things can be more disagreeably 
 surprising, or surprisingly disagreeable, than the 
 apparent rudeness, not to speak of the artistic 
 defects, of the painter or restorer. The Agape of 
 seven persons is undoubtedly an ancient subject, 
 representing, as it really does, one of those points of 
 contact between Gentile and Christian observance 
 which may have greatly assisted many Heathen 
 in their studies of the Christian Faith. There is 
 almost a parallel picture in the so-called Gnostic 
 Catacomb, where seven Priests of Mithras are re- 
 presented holding a solemn feast. But in both 
 pictures alike the workmanship is so grossly rude 
 and careless, that one is led to suspect that ancient 
 re-touchings have taken place, at some time in the 
 bathos of art ; and the addition of the coarsest 
 outlines, both on the lighted and shaded side of 
 the objects, seems to show that the original painting 
 had nearly vanished from the wall when some well- 
 meaning and totally ignorant restorer made an 
 attempt at securing its meaning. 1 Some account 
 
 1 See Parker, Photog. 1614 : and the Callixtine Agapae in De 
 Rossi and Bottari.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 131 
 
 of the Agapse will be found in the chapter on 
 Sacramental Decoration. It need only be observed 
 here that the Feast of Bread and Fish, referring 
 as it does to St. John xxi. and the last Eepast 
 by the Lake of Tiberias, falls naturally into the 
 Scriptural cycle of subjects, with which alone the 
 Primitive Christian Catacombs were ornamented. 
 
 When re-touchings and restorations are spoken of, 
 no more is meant, of course, than that the original 
 and nearly effaced subjects have been renewed ; but 
 still the reader should, if possible, refer to some of the 
 newly-issued facsimiles of the present state of the 
 paintings, that he may form an idea of the difficulty 
 of framing anything more than general premisses of 
 argument from such data. After some study of them, 
 and of the various standard works on the subject, the 
 present writer — who regrets not to have visited the 
 Eoman Catacombs sincel859 — feels convinced of what 
 is generally admitted — that the figures of Saints, as 
 of Abdon and Sennen, and SS. Marcellinus, Pollio 
 and Petrus, in the Catacomb of St. Pontianus, are all 
 of the New-Greek or Byzantine period. As regards 
 such relics as the Good Shepherd, the Madonna and 
 Magi in St. Xereo, the Agape above mentioned, and 
 the same subjects in the Catacomb of SS. Saturninus 
 and St. Thrason, it is impossible that they can either 
 be or resemble originals of any early date, while the 
 least power of drawing remained in Piome. The un- 
 naturally-sized heads of the figures ; the loss of all 
 clearness of outline and of sense of form in the 
 accessories — such as birds, flowers, &c, are decisive 
 on this point, and painful enough. Yet the restorers 
 must have worked in good faith, and probably re-
 
 132 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 peated the subjects they found below. In some 
 instances, as in the Orantes, from St. Saturninus, 1 — 
 also that in St. Priscilla — a certain grandeur prevails 
 over extraordinary disproportions of drawing ; based, 
 as it seems, on sincerity and power of feeling in 
 the mind of the ill-taught artist. In others, as in 
 the picture called the " Madonna and the Prophet 
 of Bethlehem," 2 some attempt at beauty has been 
 made. The figure, apparently addressing the Virgin- 
 Mother, was probably intended for a ministering 
 angel. 
 
 The highly interesting picture of the Fish bearing- 
 Bread, and possibly Wine, is found in the Callixtine 
 only ; and given in De Rossi and by Dr. Northcote. 
 Whether the wine-flask can be traced in the basket 
 or not may be uncertain ; but it is immaterial, as the 
 symbolic connection of the picture with St. John vi. 
 is obvious. 
 
 Of the Seasons of SS. Nereus and Achilles, the 
 Dolia, or Wine-casks of St. Priscilla, and other va- 
 rious birds — doves and peacocks for the most part 
 — which are found in various cemeteries, some 
 account is given in the Index of Subjects. The 
 various figures of the Oranti in all parts of the 
 Catacombs 3 lead us to make a few remarks on the 
 subject of the representation and treatment of the 
 Mother of Our Lord. That progress in her cultus 
 which gradually converts her from Creature into 
 Deity is partly traced in the chapter on Mosaics ; 
 and references are there given to photographs from 
 
 1 1470, Parker and Bottari. 
 
 2 Parker, Catacomb of St. Priscilla, 1467, and in Dr. Northcote's 
 and Mr. Marriott's works. 3 See Index, s.v.
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 133 
 
 the originals. But it is not begun in the Cata- 
 combs. The Blessed Virgin is, to all appearance, 
 represented only as the Mother of Our Lord, 
 presenting the Holy Child to the Magi for their 
 adoration; nowise claiming it herself. In some 
 cases, female Oranti may possibly be taken to repre- 
 sent her in prayer. In one example only, a single 
 Orante is placed by the side of the Good Shepherd 
 as if in the position of a companion. That example 
 is simply pronounced by Bosio to be "una donna 
 orante;" and the picture of a scourge, originally 
 placed beside her, points to its being the portrait 
 of a martyr. 1 But the change in the Blessed 
 Virgin's position in Christian decoration, advances, 
 of course, in a parallel line with her actual cultus; 
 both having their rise together in the reaction 
 from Arianism, and exclusive contemplation of the 
 Divinity of Our Lord. " The more absolute deifica- 
 tion, if it may be so said, of Christ ; the forgetful- 
 ness of His humanity induced by His investment 
 in more remote and awful God-head, created a want 
 of some more kindred and familiar object of adora- 
 tion. The worship of the intermediate Saints 
 admitted that of the Virgin as its least dangerous, 
 most affecting, most consolatory part." 2 
 
 The progressive signs of intensified devotion to 
 the worship of the Virgin are ably traced through 
 the art of the Early and Mediaeval Church by Mr. 
 Marriott, and we are not concerned with them here. 
 
 1 See Sir. Wharton Marriott, "Testimony of the Catacombs." 
 Male Oranti are frequent; as Leo (Aringhi, K.S. t. ii. p. 135) and 
 others given by Mr. Marriott, Vestiarium Christianum (pi. vi. pp. 
 109, 183, 247, 257). 
 
 Milman, "Hist. Latin Christianity," vol. i. p. 180.
 
 134 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 The thesis of this work may be in great part expressed 
 by De Rossi's expression of the Scriptural cycle of 
 the Catacombs. We must proceed to consider certain 
 additions of Baptismal and Eucharistic symbolism. 
 They will be found necessary, perhaps, as concessions 
 to that earnest aesthetic feeling and passionate desire 
 for visible signs which characterizes modern devo- 
 tion. But we cannot but feel that those limits of 
 representation and of symbolism within which the 
 Church of the first four centuries abode and pre- 
 vailed ought to content us in our own day; and that 
 artistic imagination of the highest flight, and creative 
 skill of the mightiest vigour, may find scope and sub- 
 ject enough in the records of the History of Man's 
 Creation and Eedemption. 
 
 NOTE ON FRESCO-PAINTINGS AT NAPLES, IN 
 THE CATACOMBS OF ST. JANUARIUS. 
 
 The Rev. C. F. Bellermann, late Chaplain to the 
 Prussian Embassy, published, in 1839, some good 
 coloured plates of these paintings, with text. The work 
 was entitled " Ueber die altesten Christlichen Begrab- 
 nisstatter und besonders die Katakomben zu Neapel mit 
 ihren Wandgemalden " (4to. Hamburg, 1839). See, 
 also, DAgincourt, Hist, de l'Art., &c. pi. 11, No 9 : and 
 several photographs taken with magnesium-light by J. 
 H. Parker, Esq. 
 
 Their subjects include the usual peacocks, doves, and 
 flowers. There is an Adam and Eve, beautifully drawn, 
 and a curious picture of three female figures engaged in
 
 THE CATACOMBS AND THEIR PAINTINGS. 
 
 135 
 
 building a wall, illustrative of the Shepherd of Hernias. 
 There are also anchors, dolphins, a jewelled cross, and 
 another with the A and w, and figures of St. Paul with 
 St. Laurence, of Oranti, of St. Januarius, &c. A picture 
 of Christ is on one of the vaulted ceilings, with the 
 Nimbus. Bellermann observes that this picture has 
 suffered much by being painted over, at a later date or 
 dates ; and this remark applies more or less to all the 
 subterranean frescoes. 
 
 THE ROMAN AND LOMBARD NOAH. 
 (CALLIXTINE CATACOMB.) (GATES OF ST. ZENONE, VERONA.)
 
 THE STATION CROSS AT MAYENGE. 
 (BACK VIEW.)
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 MOSAICS. 
 
 The use of Mosaic, as applied to buildings dedicated 
 to the service of God, may be said to be an espe- 
 cially Christian branch of fine art. It is connected 
 in most minds with the Greek Church in parti- 
 cular; and almost all the great works of earlier cen- 
 turies which will be referred to in this chapter are 
 found near the shores of the Mediterranean and the 
 Adriatic, or in countries where a Greek element yet 
 remains, and in which the Greek influence can be 
 distinctly traced even at the present day. The 
 subject is, of course, a wide one, and the waiter 
 . cannot undertake to speak from personal knowledge 
 in every case ; but he has inspected many mosaics in 
 Home and Eavenna, as well as those of St. Sophia 
 at Constantinople, and the curious works to be 
 found in the Convent of the Transfiguration at 
 Mount Sinai ; with a fair proportion, at least of the 
 later pictures, found at Venice, Pisa, Florence, and 
 throughout the north of Italy. A certain acquaint- 
 ance with the original mosaics is of some import- 
 ance to anyone who wishes to study them from the 
 photograph. And here it seems necessary to make 
 two remarks on copies of works in colour made by 
 the camera ; the first is, that for the purposes of
 
 138 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 theology or history, they are the only absolutely 
 reliable documents which are accessible to the 
 public at home. But in the second place it must be 
 observed, that though their value is unmistakeable 
 and their testimony conclusive, whenever their 
 authenticity is fully ascertained ; still, that photo- 
 graphic copies, in indifferent light and shade, can 
 give no notion whatever of the beauty of their 
 originals as art. Considered as a document, a 
 photograph direct from a mosaic or fresco is a 
 decisive evidence of its present state ; and though 
 many modern drawings, and photographs made from 
 drawings, have been well and conscientiously done, 
 still there is a difference between an original and 
 a restoration. And it must be observed that the 
 photographs circulated in Eome from the frescoes 
 of St. Clemente, with a large proportion of drawings 
 or photographs from the Catacombs, are restorations. 
 Frequently, indeed, as regards the Catacombs, they 
 are restorations of paintings already renewed by re- 
 painting, in situ on the wall, at early dates. The 
 mosaics have considerable advantage over the Cata- 
 comb-frescoes as to their authenticity ; but restor- 
 ations have taken place in very many cases ; often, 
 as in the celebrated Church of St. Pudentiana at 
 Rome, on an almost unlimited scale, and by artists 
 of the greatest skill. Mosaic-paintings, however, are 
 necessarily left in their original positions, with few ex- 
 ceptions, of which the above-named picture appears 
 to be one. It may be taken as an example of ad- 
 mirable restoration, made in perfect good faith, and 
 involving the assertion of no specially Eoman doc- 
 trine. But it would be altogether wrong to speak
 
 MOSAICS. 139 
 
 of it as a work of the fourth or any earlier century, 
 though it may contain fragments of the earliest date 
 of Christian mosaic. There are grave reasons to 
 believe that it is not now on the walls which origi- 
 nally bore it; and its archaeological value is dimi- 
 nished in proportion. 1 
 
 The same remark applies with still greater force 
 to the Eoman habit of collecting bas-reliefs, and 
 especially inscriptions, in museums, under more or 
 less conjectural dates and classification. It is ob- 
 vious that such documents in their original place are 
 evidence of twice the weight and interest which 
 they bear in a museum, in a place assigned by 
 
 1 Careful inspection of photographs in Mr. Parker's published 
 collection (Nos. 1416 — 1419) inclines the writer to believe that 
 Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle are quite within the truth when they 
 pronounce that no real or impartial judgment can be formed as to 
 the real date of this mosaic from its present state. (" History of Paint- 
 ings in Italy," vol. i. chap. i. ) Restorations appear to have been made, 
 in fact, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and with so 
 high a degree of skill and sense of beauty as to amount to a re- 
 creation of the original picture or pictures. The ox symbol of 
 St. Luke appears not to be in mosaic at all — at least, a strong glass, 
 which shows each separate tessera in the certainly restored Pace of 
 the Lord, does not enable the writer to distinguish any inlaying in 
 the ox's head, which is more like distemper or oil-painting. Some 
 mosaic is, however, left in the throat and wings. The noble 
 Roman face of St. Peter is worthy of Raffaelle's Stanze in the Vatican, 
 but the delicacy of the mosaic is unlike any earl}- Christian work 
 the writer is acquainted with ; and great part of the work seems to 
 be too Christian for the Augustan age , and too skilful for any other 
 period until the Eaffaellesque. It is difficult to believe that the 
 seventh-century Cross stood originally as it stands in this mosaic : 
 the Nimbus round Our Lord's head is not round, but awkwardly 
 flattened on one side : His right arm is too long, and has been 
 restored with rather less care in the drapery of the arm, which 
 ends in an abrupt, irregular edge without going over the limb. 
 Speaking from the photograph, which gives very decisive testimony, 
 under the magnifier, as to fomis and interruptions in the work, one 
 would say that this mosaic, in many respects the most beautiful in 
 Rome, is little more than a number of fragments admirably pieced 
 and renewed.
 
 140 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 modern opinion. It is, of course, a natural bias, or 
 tendency of mind, with what may be called the 
 Roman party in the archaeology of Borne (with 
 which, of course, we are greatly concerned) to throw 
 back the chronology of inscriptions or paintings 
 which seem to be evidence in favour of distinctively 
 Roman usage or doctrine ; and it appears to the 
 writer that an unnecessary haziness on the subject 
 may result in the popular mind. It seems to him 
 an inaccuracy, as has been said, to circulate photo- 
 graphs (from correct and conscientious restoration- 
 drawings) of the newly-discovered frescoes in St. 
 Clemente, describing them as vetustis-nmce imagines 
 — pictures of the greatest antiquity. The work, or 
 gift, of Beno de Bapiza, in the eleventh century, 
 ought to be distinguished somehow, at least, from 
 the fifth-century mosaics of St. Constantia, or St. 
 Maria Maggiore. 
 
 Our second observation has reference to treat- 
 ment, and artistic power over beauty, shown in these 
 ancient works. As has been said, the photograph 
 gives an inadequate and unfavourable notion of all 
 works in colour; and the mosaics naturally suffer 
 more than the Catacomb-frescoes, because their 
 colour is extremely beautiful, and because they re- 
 tain that brilliant effect of half-reflected light, which 
 is peculiar to tessellated-work, and in some degree 
 resembles the bold and skilful stippling of a consum- 
 mate workman in water-colours. It is to be feared 
 that these great works must be inspected in their 
 places before they can be understood to any purpose; 
 because photography only gives the student notions 
 of stiffness and ugliness which vanish altogether in
 
 MOSAICS. 141 
 
 the glory of the actual hues — at least, to the eyes 
 of a colourist. As accurate record of subject and 
 meaning, the sun-picture may appeal with Virgil to 
 the sun — ""Who can gainsay the (sun's) light." l But it 
 cannot give that sometimes quite unspeakable beauty 
 of colour, which redeems the rigidity of ancient 
 mosaics ; and in fact justifies it, in decorative images 
 subordinate to architectural form. There is a con- 
 trary extreme, which appears to the present writer 
 infinitely worse than the ghastly figures of Sinai 
 or Torcello. The frescoes of Sir James Thornhill in 
 St. Paul's, London, or the ceiling of the Sheldonian 
 Theatre at Oxford, are surely not more desirable 
 models of architectural ornament than the roof of 
 the Baptistery at Florence ; 2 and the advocate of 
 Italian Romanesque Gothic, or Byzantine ornament ; 
 may appeal to a certainly large number of travellers, 
 who have looked with pleasure on the walls and 
 cupolas of St. Mark's at Venice. The spectator must 
 judge, if, after all, the quaint Old Testament histories 
 of the Atrium, and the gaunt and solemn forms in 
 the Baptistery, are not better ornament than the florid 
 images of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 which gesticulate and attitudinize on the central 
 vaultings. There is a Law, or Rationale, or Reason 
 for decorative stiffness and conventionality ; and if it 
 is exaggerated in Byzantine work of old days, it is cer- 
 tainly altogether lost sight of in the eighteenth century 
 allegory, and in the naturalism of the nineteenth. 
 The art which is now called Mosaic consists in 
 
 1 "Solem quis dicere falsura audeat." 
 
 2 See the novel of "Eomola," chap. iii. for a good sketch of the 
 Renaissance or quasi-classical view of thirteenth-century Christian 
 work.
 
 142 PKIMITIVE CHURCH AET. 
 
 forming pictures of small cubes in stone, or marble, 
 or tile, or earthenware, or glass of different colours ; 
 and has been called by the various names, opus 
 musivum, musaicum, mosaicum, or museum ; also, 
 opus tcssellatum, vcrmiculatum, reticulatum, alba- 
 rium, and scctile. The last means, in particular, 
 that class of work which is not formed of small 
 tesserae, but of larger pieces of marble of different 
 colours, cut out very carefully in larger sizes (and 
 probably in irregular forms adapted to the work) and 
 so carefully put together as to form a picture ; or 
 with incised lines filled up with colour. Of this 
 kind is the celebrated group of the Tigress and Calf. 1 
 The original and some similar figures are now pie- 
 served in the Church of St. Antonio Abbate at Rome. 
 This method evidently requires great sculptural skill. 
 knowledge of form and colour, and wealth in mate- 
 rials. Opus tcssellatum appears to be the ordinary 
 term for what we still call tessellated pavements. 
 Vermiculatum is probably similar work in small 
 patterns, white predominating; and albarium seems 
 to be much the same. All these varieties, except 
 sectile, which is hardly mosaic at all in the modern 
 sense, apply to floorings ; and Pliny's general term 
 for them is lithostrotum, or pavement; Gabbatha 
 being no doubt the corresponding Hebrew term for 
 a tessellated hall in the house of Pilate. 2 Musivum 
 and its kindred words apply to the pictures re- 
 
 1 Parker, "Photographs of Ancient Mosaics in Piomo.'' 
 - St. John xix. 13, Gabbatha or \iQ6arpwTov. See Mr. Grove's 
 article in Smith's Dictionary of the Bihle, where it is further 
 suggest<-'l that the tessellated pavement may have been a portable 
 such as we arc told by Suetonius (Caesar 46) Julius Caesar used 
 to cany with him on his expeditions, to give the Bema or Tribunal 
 its conventional elevation. It is singular that the Gabbatha being
 
 MOSAICS. 143 
 
 presented within a tessellated frame or border, 1 that 
 frame being often very large and beautiful, and being 
 called HtJiostrotum. Pliny 2 attributes the origin of 
 mosaic pavement to the Greeks, though they pro- 
 bably derived its use from Syria and the East ; and 
 in fact the passage in Esther, i. 6 3 proves that 
 mosaic was in use in Persia at a very early date. 
 Its introduction into Eome is said to date from the 
 time of Sylla ; and at all times it seems to have been 
 in the hands of Greek workmen. It is sufficient, for 
 the present, to mention one or two of the best-known 
 and most beautiful relics of mosaic of the earliest 
 date, or at least of unknown antiquity ; such as 
 the great Pompeian mosaic called "The Battle of 
 Issus," discovered in 1831. 4 The celebrated picture 
 called Pliny's, or, the " Capitoline Doves," so well 
 known by various copies, is supposed to be a copy 
 of the " Cantharus of Pergamus," attributed to Sorus. 
 Another curious Pergamene mosaic is mentioned by 
 Pliny, which was called asarotos cecos, " The Unswept 
 Hall," because it represented the unremoved relics 
 of a banquet strewn on the tessellated floor of the 
 rooms of a palace. With these works may be com- 
 pared the beautiful inlaid picture of birds — the 
 
 evidently without the Preetorium, and the actual scene of M. Dore's 
 enormous picture, so skilful an artist should have missed the only 
 feature of the building mentioned in the Gospel narrative ; and 
 this, too, while he treats tlie public to range on range of imaginary 
 architecture. 
 
 1 See Smith's Dictionary, s.v. "Hous 
 
 - Ep. xxxvi. 60. 
 
 3 Esther, i. 6 : " Upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white 
 and black marble." The evident use of colour here may remind 
 us of the uniformly bright or rich colours of Byzantine mosaic, 
 deriving from the East. 
 
 4 Museo Borbonico, viii. 6, 30 — 45.
 
 144 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 ducks in particular — found in the Callixtinc Cata- 
 comb, and probably of the second century. 1 
 
 Two observations should be made here, which seem 
 of some importance. One of them relates to the great 
 difference (well understood, doubtless, but not gene- 
 rally enough insisted on) between works of the 
 Roman decadence, which follow Grceco-Roinan tra- 
 ditions of art, in drawing and composition; and 
 those of the Byzantine Renaissance, which dates 
 from the sixth centur} r . Secondly, attention should 
 be paid to the change and treatment of subjects in 
 the earliest Mosaics, from the regular subjects of the 
 Catacomb-frescoes. Though there are many Byzan- 
 tine paintings in those cemeteries, they are of com- 
 paratively later date ; and the most ancient works 
 contain figures wearing old Roman secular dresses ; 
 not the stiff and gorgeous vestments of Eastern- 
 Greek art, but the tunic, with the single-striped 
 tocra over it, which bears so marked a resemblance to 
 our own surplice and stole. 2 
 
 The first of these distinctions will be frequently 
 repeated or appealed to in the following pages ; but 
 the present seems to be the best place to go into the 
 second. One prominent and important subject dis- 
 appears from Christian Art when it issues from the 
 Catacombs : that of the Agape, or Love-feast. 3 Piefer- 
 ences may be made to SS. Augustine, 4 Ambrose, 5 
 
 1 Parker, Photographs, No. 1384. 
 
 2 See Mr. Wharton Marriott's work on the Catacombs. 
 
 :! The chapter on the Catacombs will contain an account of the 
 Agapse there represented, .and some remarks on their connection 
 witli St. John vi., and xxi in particular. 
 
 4 St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesire : Novi eos esse, qui caliees in 
 sepulchra deferant, et epulas ostentautes cadaveribus super sepul- 
 tos se ipsos sepeliantur. 5 St. Ambrose, de Elia et Jejunio.
 
 MOSAICS. 145 
 
 Paulinus of Nola, 1 &c, for the irregularities which 
 in all probability caused the discontinuance of these 
 celebrations, being found inseparable from them. 
 Converts from heathenism must have had almost 
 inveterate recollections of their habits of funeral or 
 commemorative feasting, and have been too closely 
 reminded of the ancient hearth-worship, and past 
 banquets to the Lares of their families. So it is, in 
 any case that no representation of an Agape occurs 
 in the mosaics; though highly important symbolic 
 reference is made, in the earliest of them, to the Sacri- 
 fice of the Death of Christ, and in instances of the sixth 
 century to the actual celebration of the Eucharist. In 
 SS. Cosmas and Damianus, at Rome, the Lamb is seen 
 on an altar "as if slain ;" in St. Vitale, at Eavenna, 
 the sacrifice of Abel is placed in the same picture 
 with that of Melchisedek, in the act of offering the 
 memorial sacrifice before an altar. The latter work is 
 of the time of Justinian. But there is a further change 
 of subject in the mosaics, which consists principally in 
 calling greater attention to the glorified condition of 
 the saints, as engaged in continual worship of the Lord, 
 though not presented as objects of worship themselves. 
 It is true that the mosaics, like the frescoes, may be 
 classed as either symbolical or historical; and also 
 that the same leading subjects are repeated in both 
 alike. The connection is established by the repetition 
 of the Good Shepherd in the chapel of Galla Placidia 
 
 1 He gives as a reason for painting the walls of a catacomb, that 
 there are nightly meetings and feasts of country people there, whose 
 devotion is sincere, but whose conduct is often disorderly. He 
 hopes that the subjects on the walls, being properly explained to 
 them, will give a more solemn tone to their thoughts and be- 
 haviour, or at least occupy their time in an orderly way. — Poema 
 xxvii. de St. Felicis Natal, quoted supra, p. 3. 
 
 H
 
 146 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 (Ravenna, A.D. 450 — 60) ; with the Vine, Lamb, ami 
 other subjects, as the Miracles represented in St. 
 Apollinare Nuova, in the same city. The distinction 
 is, that Our Lord begins to be more frequently repre- 
 sented as seated in Glory, or in the arms of the 
 Virgin Mother, receiving the offerings of the Magi ; 
 less often as the Shepherd, though the faithful on 
 earth are still constantly symbolized as His Sheep. 
 But as early as the seventh century there are portraits 
 or commemorative pictures of Saints in Heaven, 
 presented to the Redeemer by Apostles in person, 
 and the symbols of the Four Evangelists date as 
 early as the fifth. The darkness and sufferings of 
 the times on earth seem to have forced men to seek 
 comfort in imaginations of the glories of the world 
 to come. It is a difficult, and somewhat painful task, 
 to trace how the pious remembrance of men and 
 women who had lived saintly lives and died the 
 martyr's death gradually changed to adoration, so 
 that the Apostles' caution was reversed, and the love 
 of brethren whom men had seen on earth took the 
 place of personal devotion to their Lord, Whom they 
 had not seen. But such progress did take place; 
 and it is necessarily marked by changes in the 
 mosaic-pictures of the Roman churches; since in 
 Ravenna there are but few and unimportant signs 
 of it. It would seem that a real and spiritual 
 meaning attaches to the words of God concerning 
 Himself, that He is jealous ' of Man's devotion ; that 
 having Personally taken on Himself Manhood, He 
 
 1 Jealous, Kanna, Gesenius. "Used of God, as not bearing 
 any rival : the severe avenger of departure from Himself." Exod. 
 xx. 5.
 
 MOSAICS. 147 
 
 will not share with any created being the rule and 
 possession of man's inner spirit ; but will permit one 
 misdirection of devotion or one misuse of art to 
 lead to another. Men passed from loving comme- 
 moration of Saints to prayer for their intercession ; 
 and so the feeling gained on the people that these 
 great brethren gone before were easier of access 
 than the God Who is Man. Thus He was gradually 
 deprived of His mediatorial position in the minds of 
 the untaught or unthoughtful ; and, as has been the 
 case so often since, the madness or dulness of the 
 people was gradually condoned and tampered with, 
 and, in short, prevailed over the sounder doctrine 
 of those who should have been their guides. Nor 
 can there be any doubt that many early mosaics 
 bear witness to tendencies of this kind. There is a 
 marked change in their subjects, from the Scriptural 
 teaching, symbolic or historic, which prevails in the 
 Catacombs. The Lord Himself is no longer repre- 
 sented in symbols of His own dictation, as the Shep- 
 herd of souls ; the idea of literal representation 
 of Him seems gradually to have prevailed. Acute 
 and spiritual minds, in that day also, may have felt 
 that the grand and colossal Icons which filled the 
 apses of their temples were no more, in intention, 
 than symbols of His Presence in the midst of 
 His gathered congregation. Nevertheless, prevailing 
 ignorance, lapse of years, and the influx of simpler 
 and more literal-minded worshippers, unprotected 
 by those relics of the old Hebrew dread of graven 
 images which were never lost in the Eastern Church, 
 — seem to have had their full work in the West, by 
 the second Council of Nice in 784. The distinc- 
 
 H 2
 
 148 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 tion between historical pictures, or repetitions in 
 picture of Scriptural symbolism and portrait-images 
 as objects of worship, was felt and understood ; it is 
 visible from time to time, especially in the Libri 
 Carolini, or answer of Charlemagne's bishops to the 
 second Council of Nice. 1 Our own view of the 
 subject must stand on it ; and it may be maintained, 
 if anywhere, in the Church of Christ in England. 
 But it did not prevail with the mass of mankind ; 
 instead of a fundamental principle, it was treated as 
 a compromise of principle between parties; and then, 
 as always happened, the more numerous, dull, and 
 powerful party interpreted it all its own way in the 
 Western Church. It is not without thought and 
 study of ancient works and records that the writer 
 of this book is led to assert, as the main principles 
 of Christian Church-art, that its subjects should be 
 chosen entirely from the symbolisms or the histories 
 to be found in Holy Scripture. As in the best days 
 of Venice, let the walls of the Temple be as the 
 illuminated pages of the Evangeliary or the missal. 
 The artist whose genius leads him to other subjects 
 may go to them freely, and his work may be as truly 
 dedicated to his Lord as that of a church-painter : 
 but no artist who holds any form of Christianity can 
 complain that the Old and New Testament give him 
 too narrow a range of subject. 
 
 The typical or representative mosaics of the Primi- 
 tive Church, between the days of Constantine and that 
 period of dissolution and desolation which is marked 
 by the irruption of Attila in 450, may be said to be 
 three in number. They are the decorations of St. Con- 
 1 See Harold Browne, "Articles," p. 609.
 
 MOSAICS. 149 
 
 stantia, at Bome; the Chapel of Galla Placidia, at 
 Ravenna ; and the Old Testament histories of the Church 
 of St. Maria Maggiore. All these are old Roman, not 
 Byzantine, and works of the Decadence rather than 
 of the earliest Renaissance. Each has its special im- 
 portance ; the Ravennese chapel, because it contains 
 a Good Shepherd, and other pictures which directly 
 connect mosaic ornamentation, as to subject, with 
 the primitive work of the Catacombs ; the works of 
 St. Maria Maggiore, as purely historical and instruc- 
 tive pictures (a.d. 432-440) ; — and the earliest church 
 of the three, St. Constantia, at Rome, is of world-wide 
 celebrity as containing tessellated work, in all proba- 
 bility little later than the reign of the first Christian 
 Emperor. It is a round church, supposed by 
 Ciampini and others to have been a temple of 
 Bacchus, purified and consecrated by order of Con- 
 stantine ; or it may have been built by him or 
 his immediate successors, making free use of the 
 materials of an ancient temple. The mosaics are in 
 the vaults of the aisles, — that is to say, those of the 
 fourth century, the later ones of the eighth century 
 are not to be compared with them. One series 
 represents the culture of the Vine, from ploughing 
 with oxen, J and the treacling in the vine- press. 
 This is thought to be Gentile-Roman work invested 
 with Christian meaning from St. Johnxv: " I am the 
 vine, ye are the branches." The forms are not of high 
 merit, but quite naturalistic in their style, with little 
 reference to pattern or architectural form ; the figures 
 are quite Grreco-Roman ; naked, or clad in tunics, 
 and in full action ; without any of the stiffness or 
 1 "Flectere luctantes inter vineta juveneos" (Georg. II., 318).
 
 150 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 conventionalism of Byzantine works. The difference 
 between old and new Eoman art is well illustrated, 
 by comparing with these the eighth-century mosaics 
 of Hadrian I. over the doors. Eoman art may be 
 said to expire here ; and except in St. Maria Mag- 
 giore, all Christian work henceforth, till the earliest 
 Lombard churches of the seventh century, is due to 
 Byzantine hands, or influenced by Byzantine instruc- 
 tions. 
 
 We have to notice, then, in the mosaics from the 
 sixth century, a gradual advance of Iconodulism 
 upon the ancient symbolic picture-teaching ; as well 
 as to give an account of its ordinary subjects and treat- 
 ment. Many of these appear to us unobjectionable, 
 and in fact desirable for use in our own churches, or 
 at least in all round-arched ones, whether Byzantine, 
 Romanesque, or Norman. The first and more painful 
 part of our observations may be dealt with first. 
 It is in the church of St. Agnese, without the walls 
 of Eome, that the patron saint for the first time 
 takes the central place in the apse, and the form of 
 Our Lord is omitted. In this case the Hand, repre- 
 senting the First Person of the Trinity, is placed 
 directly above the Saint, who is abstracted in prayer, 
 with clasped hands, and does not as yet stand neces- 
 sarily as an object of worship. This church was 
 built by Constantine, rebuilt by Pope Symmachus, 
 and adorned with mosaics by Pope Honorius, A.D. 
 626 — 638. One cannot but notice that true Icono- 
 dulism, the undue use of the Image of the Creature, 
 begins with these works. Hitherto the portrait- 
 symbol of the Lord has been presented as the 
 dominant idea of every worshipper ; here, and again
 
 MOSAICS. 151 
 
 in St. Maria in Navicella, created beings take His 
 place. The colossal image, without human beauty, 
 intended only as a token to men that God became 
 Man, is in this instance displaced ; and a church, ap- 
 parently for the first time, dedicated to the memon* 
 of created Saints and Popes. Pure symbolism has 
 gone before, in the pictures of the Vine and the 
 Pastor ; pure historical painting has gone before, in 
 those of the Miracles and the Hebrew history ; 
 pictorial interpretation of type and symbolic event 
 has gone before, in the frescoes and bas-reliefs of 
 Noah, Moses, Elins, Jonah, and Daniel. These are 
 the first indications, in the ornaments of Christian 
 temples, of man's yet unconquered tendency to make 
 to himself a sign of Deity, and to have a visible 
 image in the place of the Redeemer risen and gone. 1 
 In St. Maria in Dominica, or Navicella, which 
 dates from Paschal I., a.d. 820, the Blessed Virgin 
 sits in the centre of the apse, holding the Lord on 
 her knees. He is represented rather as a small man 
 than an infant. The Church probably shrank as yet 
 from open worship of her as mediatrix with her Son, 
 or holder of authority or special influence with Him. 
 At all events, she is not represented as an object of 
 worship without Him. This figure, as painful in its 
 technicalities as in its subject, is nevertheless the 
 precursor of all the blue-veiled Madonnas of the 
 Middle Ages down to the Borgo-Allegri picture of 
 Cimabue. Many of them, as those of Torcello and 
 Murano, are very impressive and beautiful, and the 
 description 2 of them is hardly to be forgotten. 
 
 1 The theoretic defence set up for portrait-images is briefly 
 discussed in Chap. I. 
 
 8 " Stones of Yenice," vol. U.
 
 152 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 A further step remains, and it is made in St. Maria 
 in Transtevere. *• It is to place the Mother of the 
 Lord by His side on His throne of Glory, as God 
 made man. Her face is regular and beautiful, and 
 of extremely delicate mosaic — as fine as that of the 
 copies of pictures in St. Peter's. It may possibly be 
 a restoration, and should be compared through a 
 good glass with the bolder mosaic of the other faces 
 (excepting our Lord's). As the Navicella Madonna 
 is the type of the Venetian and Florentine tradition, 
 so here we see the anticipation of Orgagna's fresco at 
 Pisa, followed as it is, in this feature at least, by 
 Michael Angelo in the Sistine. The consummation 
 seems to be reached in the two last pictures. In the 
 mosaic the Blessed Virgin sits as assessor and medi- 
 atrix for men, with her Son, Who has taken the place 
 of His Father as Lord of all men. In the Late- 
 Renaissance work, she is interceding in vain; the 
 mediatorial office of the Lord is utterly lost sight 
 of; He is represented as the Final Judge without 
 pity, and His present function of Intercession is 
 ignored altogether. 
 
 For the primitive and central teaching of the 
 Roman Church in mosaic, we must turn backwards 
 to the Churches of SS. Cosmas and Damianus, of St. 
 Venantius, and especially of St. Prassede. All these 
 display the higher qualities of the GraDco-Oriental 
 imagination, dwelling on the Future of the spiritual 
 world ; with all the Byzantine defects and excellences 
 in form and colour. Whatever may have been the date 
 of the regular establishment of a Greek School of 
 Mosaicists in Rome (and it may probably be post- 
 1 Parker's Photographs, No. 1915.
 
 MOSAICS. 153 
 
 poned till late in the course of the Iconoclastic 
 controversy), there can be do doubt of the type of 
 Eastern asceticism which prevails in these ancient 
 and awful figures. They may be taken as a type of 
 the early decoration of the eastern end of a Bomano- 
 Bvzantine church ; glorious in colour, stern in form 
 and expression. Their drapery is still Eoman, with- 
 out the overloaded splendour and jewellery of later 
 work. The Apostles wear the toga with its stripes, 
 which so greatly resembles the Anglican surplice and 
 stole, as Mr. "Wharton Marriott observes. The figure 
 of Our Lord standing on the firmament, and coming 
 with clouds, is indescribably grand. He is here, 
 come to His sanctuary, specially present with the 
 congregation, and He is in Heaven with the Church 
 triumphant; therefore the Apse, and the upper part 
 of the Arch of Triumph, represent Him in glory, 
 with His own. But at their feet 1 flows the mystic 
 Jordan, the river of Baptism into His death, the 
 Lethe of life and death, pre-figured by Egyptian, 
 Greek, and Eoman ; and it separates the glorified 
 Church in Heaven from the sheep below, yet militant 
 on earth. Six, or twelve, or a larger number of 
 sheep, those of the Gentile Church issuing from the 
 city of "Bethlehem," the Hebrew fold from "Hieru- 
 salem,'" are found in almost all these great symbolic 
 pictures. 2 The Eiver symbolizes the Sacrament of 
 Baptism ; and in St, Prassede the Lamb is placed on 
 the altar before the Cross, " as it had been slain " 
 (Eev. v. 6.), ana ,-nadows forth the commemorative 
 
 1 In SS. Cosmas and Damianus, also in St. Prassede. 
 
 2 Those at St. Apollinaris in Classe, at Iiavenna, at the base of t'i& 
 great mosaic of the Transfiguration, will be remembered. 
 
 H 3
 
 154 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 sacrifice of His Body and Blood. In SS. Cosmas and 
 Damianus, the Lamb, crowned with a nimbus, stands 
 on the earthly side of Jordan, on a rock from 
 whence spring the four rivers of Paradise. In the 
 later church, on the broad spandrils of the Arch of 
 Triumph, the Army of Martyrs is kneeling before the 
 Lord, all casting their crowns before Him with a 
 grandly-conceived unity of action, robed in glowing 
 white, and placed against a gold ground, like the great 
 Processions of St. Apollinare Nuova, at Ravenna. 
 
 The probable derivation of the Cross from the 
 Monogram of the Lord, and its development into 
 the modern crucifix, will be the subject of other 
 chapters of this book. It is sufficient for the present 
 one to say that the earliest crosses of the period of 
 Constantine, like that called the Lateran Cross at the 
 present day, seem to have been constantly associated 
 with the idea of Baptism, and primarily to have 
 represented the Person and whole Humanity of the 
 Lord, and His Death as a part of His Humanity. 
 The Cross is always richly jewelled and ornamented 
 in mosaic, and is frequently accompanied (especially 
 after the rise of Arianism) by the letters A to : the 
 minuscular co being invariably used. Sometimes the 
 form of the Lord bears the Triumphal Cross ; but very 
 frequently, and especially at Eavenna, it represents 
 Him as if it were the Monogram. 
 
 The changes in Christian thought and doctrine, 
 between the earlier Catacomb-frescoes and the culmi- 
 nating period of the mosaics in the ninth century, 
 is both evident and striking, and might almost be 
 judged of from pictorial documents only. The choir 
 and apse of a church from the earlier sixth century
 
 MOSAICS. 155 
 
 are made to represent heaven and earth in symbol : 
 the new Heaven of Glory, and the renewed Earth of 
 the Soul regenerated in Baptism. The Presence of 
 the Lord, and of witnesses who had seen Him on 
 earth, is no more a thing of memoiy, hut of history : 
 the age of miracle has ceased, and affliction and 
 distress continue, so that the spirits of pious men 
 are more than ever longing for some sign of the 
 Lord's return, in belief that the great troubles 
 coming on the earth are indeed the troubles of the 
 earth's latter days. Accordingly the imagination of 
 the artist is directed greatly to the Apocalypse, and 
 he strives to realize for the Christian imagination, 
 amidst the trials that are, something of the glory 
 that shall be. The Miracles of the Gospel, and the 
 fulfilment of prophetic types, are less frequently 
 insisted on than in the Catacombs. The long ages of 
 error, of heresy, rebuke, and blasphemy have begun, 
 to continue to the end ; and accordingly the theolo- 
 gical symbols and definitions, conveying the Church's 
 interpretation of the doctrines committed to her, 
 appear in her graphic arts as well as in her literature. 
 There is no mistaking, either at Eome or Eavenna, 
 the pictorial assertions of the Eternal Trinity, the 
 Incarnation and Sacrifice of God for man, Baptism 
 unto His Death, Communion of Saints, the Re- 
 surrection and Glorification of the Body. The 
 Sacrifice is yet typified by the Lamb, crowned, or 
 bearing the Cross ; the descent of the Holy Spirit by 
 the mystic Dove. 1 The Cross directs thought to the 
 
 1 As has been observed in the chapter on the Catacombs, the Dove 
 represents the Holy Spirit in pictures of the Lord's Baptism, 4c, 
 and is more commonly used as a symbol of the soul of the believer. 
 When added to the figure of Noah, it appears, of course, in a third
 
 156 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 fact of Christ's death, but men are not yet invited to 
 dwell on the manner of it, or on the nature of His 
 Bodily sufferings. 
 
 Enough has been said, perhaps, in all works which 
 treat of the Byzantine period of Art, of its severity, 
 morose asceticism, and generally monastic tone. It 
 must be remembered, that at the time of the Schola 
 Graeca in Borne, it was hardly possible for any art to 
 be practised except in convents, and that the monks, 
 after all, kept alive some traditions of painting and 
 sculpture ; and, in fact, began a faint though beautiful 
 Eenaissance of their own in the centuries of desola- 
 tion. It was not till the great Lombard race, half 
 subdued by Charlemagne, had won back its stormy 
 liberty from the House of Swabia, that its transcen- 
 dent power of imagination and hand-work broke out 
 in Pisa and Florence. The faults of Byzantine art 
 are the necessary consequence of the sorrows of the 
 time, which certainly should not be charged by 
 implication on the only men who really made head 
 against them. Nor has any modern writer, except 
 the author of the " Stones of Venice," dwelt properly 
 on that great Oriental gift of colour which the 
 monastic workmen possessed and transmitted to 
 their more brilliant successors. The cathedrals and 
 
 or simply natural sense. All birds are originally Gentile or secular 
 symbols, and Roman painters seem to have bad a rather simple 
 and amiable pleasure in representing them with their utmost skill, 
 and studying their forms, hues, and manners direct from Nature. 
 The Callixtine mosaic and the Doves of Pliny have been mentioned; 
 there are bird-frescoes of great beauty in the Catacomb of St. Prse- 
 textatus, which can hardlybe latcrthantheendof the second century. 
 The ancient relics of the St. Paolo-fuori-le-Muri mosaics will be 
 remembered, with the vaultings of St. Constantia. The best, perhaps, 
 in execution will be found in the mosaics of St. Vitale, at Ravenna. 
 (See chapters on the Catacombs and Index.)
 
 MOSAICS. 157 
 
 baptisteries of Florence and Pisa, whether Tafi 
 or Torrita be one person or many, or whether or 
 not they be real persons at all, were executed under 
 Eastern instruction and inspiration through Venice. 
 Soon after, Mosaic is merged in fresco-painting ; for 
 with Cimabue and Giotto, Italian art breaks alto- 
 gether from Byzantine rule and monastic subject, and 
 for a while in the early Renaissance, in the hands 
 of Sandro Botticelli beyond all other men, combines 
 the fervour of the Faith with much of the renewed 
 knowledge and innocent delight of Old Greek art. 
 
 Those who wish to understand what efforts the 
 unarmed and helpless heads of the Italian Church 
 made to protect her people, will do well to study the 
 letters of intercession written by Gregory the Great 
 to Agilulf and Theodolinda, the Lombard rulers of 
 Italy in his time ; and the results, immediate and 
 consequent, of the conversion of the Lombard race 
 to the Faith. If an example be required of the 
 unspeakable relief, and calm approaching to happiness, 
 afforded by the convent to a world-wearied soldier, 
 courtier, and captive, the history and works of Paul 
 Warnefrid, the Lombard deacon and historian, who 
 closed his chequered life at Monte Casino about the 
 end of the reign of Charlemagne, are to be found in 
 Muratori, and are well worth studying by the historian, 
 the poet, or the painter. But if the artist wishes to 
 form an opinion of the religious vitality of graphic 
 art, he should consider its life-in-death during the 
 fifth and sixth centuries in particular. Twenty-two 
 years after the sack of Rome by Alaric, the vast 
 range of historical mosaics of St. Maria Maggiore 
 must have been begun ; and those of St. Sabina were
 
 158 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 eight years earlier. Even while the hoofs of Attila 
 tread over the north of Italy, the lovely sepulchral 
 chapel of Galla Placidia rises, to connect the art of 
 the Catacombs with the later mosaics. In the rally 
 of the Eastern Empire, under Belisarius and Narses, 
 the great Church-works commanded by Justinian ex- 
 tended from Eavenna to Constantinople, and thence 
 to Mount Sinai. In the agonies of the Lombard 
 invasion in 568, the wrath of Alboin is half 
 appeased by the entreaties of the clergy, and he 
 spares Pavia for their works' sake, — for the Duomo of 
 that city was, in all probability, begun before his 
 time. 1 
 
 Those who believe in a real use of Church-art for 
 Christian instruction, and those also who desire to 
 give the Christian artist an open career for dedicated 
 work, will understand what great assistance his efforts 
 may give to the oral teaching of the clergy. And 
 many of us, who have had our share of the world 
 and its ways, may sympathize with the Art-preachers 
 of old, for whom the convent was the only refuge 
 and the only field of progress ; who, having their 
 share of the painter's spirit, rose on it as on the wings 
 of a dove, and got them away afar off, because of the 
 stormy wind and tempest. To the wildernesses of 
 Egypt, or the Apennine, and in spirit beyond the 
 wilderness, to the desired Paradise, they fled away : 
 they looked to that world where alone they had hope 
 or comfort, and they came to look on mankind only 
 in relation to that hope ; whether they symbolized 
 
 1 There is a passage in Paul the Deacon (De Gestis Longobardo- 
 rum, book i. 27) which speaks of improvements made in work and 
 design during Alboin's reign, though especial progress was of course 
 made in the manufacture of arms.
 
 MOSAICS. 159 
 
 them as the sheep of Jerusalem, their first Fold, or of 
 Bethlehem, the " House of the Flesh" of God, Who 
 took on Him our flesh — or if they represented the 
 Gentile catechumen, or faithfully-hearing heathen, 
 as the wild hart desiring the water-brooks of 
 Baptism. 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER ON MOSAICS. 
 
 The yet remaining Churches in Rome and Ravenna, 
 which contain the most important of these works, 
 may be thus arranged chronologically. Those of 
 St. Sophia and the Convent of the Transfiguration at 
 Mount Sinai are of the period of Justinian (died 
 569). The great Norman-Saracenic works of Sicily, 
 the alike-mingled work of Venice, and the probably 
 contemporaneous art of Pisa and Florence, all be- 
 long to the middle, and not the primitive ages. 
 
 ROME. RAVENNA. 
 
 Century IV. Century IV. 
 
 a. St. Constantia. — Vine mo- In St. Agatha. — The Lord in 
 saics and ornaments of vault- Glory, with two angels, a.d. 
 ings. 378. Lost ; supposed to have 
 
 b. Apse, or tribune of the been carried to Russia, 
 ancient church of the Vatican, 
 
 preserved in record by Ciampini. 
 (Vet. Monumenta.) 
 
 Century V. Century V. 
 
 St. Sabina, 424, restored 795 ; Baptistery of St. John. 
 
 completion of mosaics, probably Chapel of Calla Placidia. 
 
 by Eugenius II., in 824. ' Ancient mosaic in San Gio- 
 
 St. M. Maggiore, 432-440. vanni. Apparently Gothic : r»- 
 
 Oratory of St. John Evange- sembles Bayeux tapestry. 
 
 list, 461-467. 
 
 1 See Parker, "Mosaics of Rome and Ravenna," p. 4.
 
 lf.O PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 ROME. RAVENNA. 
 
 Century VI. Century VI 
 
 SS. Cosmas and Damianus. St. Apollinare in Classe, 567. 
 
 St. Lorenzo, f. m., 577-590. St. Apollinare Nuova neUa 
 
 Citta, 570. 
 
 Baptistery, afterwards St. 
 Maria in Cosmedin. 
 
 St. Michael, 545. — Christ 
 holding a jewelled cross. 
 
 St. Vitale, 547.*— Historical, 
 symbolic, and naturalistic sub- 
 jects in mosaic. 
 Of this century is the Transfiguration at Mount Sinai. 
 
 Century VII. — Rome. 
 
 St. Agnes, built by Constantine, rebuilt by P. Symmachus. 
 Mosaics by Houorius, 1628-38. Popes themselves in the mosaic. 
 St. Stephen.— Jewelled cross. 
 
 St. Venantius, 642. — Many saints, busts of our Lord and angels. 
 St. Peter ad Vincula. — St. Sebastian. 
 
 Century VIII. 
 
 St. Mary in Cosmedin. 
 
 St. Theodore.— The hand of God holding a crown over the head 
 of Christ, Who is seated on a globe holding a jewelled cross. SS. 
 Peter, Paul, and Theodore. 
 
 St. Pudentiana, i ,771-791. — Christ enthroued, cross, and saints. 
 
 SS. Kerens and Achilles, 796. Transfiguration, and Madonna 
 addressed by angels. 
 
 St. Susanna, 797. Leo III. — Christ and Apostles : monogram 
 of Leo. 
 
 Triclinium of St. John Lateran. — Saints and Charlemagne. 
 
 Century IX. 
 
 St. Maria in Navicella or Dominica. — The blessed Virgin en- 
 throned with the Infant as a diminutive man. He is seated also 
 over the arch. 
 
 St. Praxedes, or Prassede. — 7th chapter of Apocalypse. The 
 Holy City (S18, by Paschal I., who also set up the great mosaic of 
 SS. Cosmas and Damianus, Chapel of St. Zeno), Jordan, &c. &c. 
 
 Church of St. Cecilia, also by Pope Paschal. 
 
 Church of St. Mark (Pope Mark I. founded it, 337).— Mosaics 
 added by Hadrian I., then (on entire rebuilding of church) re- 
 newed by Gregory IV., 828. Jordan, &c. Jerusalem and L'eth- 
 lehem. 
 
 St. Maria Nova? Urbis, 858. Rebuilt by Leo IV. ; mosaics by 
 Nicholas I., 858-68. The Virgin enthroned, as in St. Maria in 
 Dominica.
 
 MOSAICS. 161 
 
 The first period of Roman, and also of Byzantine 
 mosaic — with the first period of Christian art — may 
 be said to close at the end of the ninth century. 
 There is almost an entire blank here for two centuries, 
 and the art seems to have taken refuge once more in 
 Byzantium, where the compromise between Icono- 
 clasm and Representative art had been by this time 
 effected according to their present limits. The 
 regular establishment and recognition of a Greek 
 School in Rome seems to date from the Iconoclastic 
 movement in the eighth century ; but the Byzantine 
 or Oriental influence as gradually prevailing over 
 Roman art, dates, as has been said, from the sixth. 
 
 RAVENNA. 
 
 The great historical mosaics of St. Maria Maggiore 
 at Rome are connected with the earlier works of 
 Ravenna, in the Chapel of Galla Placidia and 
 the Baptisteries, by the fact of their being art of 
 old Rome, perhaps rightly here called Romanesque, 
 rather than Byzantine or Constantinopolitan. This 
 distinction has been already noticed, perhaps more 
 at length than it deserves. Still we think it may be 
 of use in a rather popular work, as many well-edu- 
 cated persons, not interested in ancient art, seem to 
 have difficulty in recognizing it and bearing it in 
 mind. As might be expected, the Ravennese mosaics 
 are superior to the Roman, alike in their state 
 of preservation ; in their originality of idea and 
 treatment; in architectural arrangement as decora- 
 tions of a building; in the technical skill of the
 
 162 PRIMITIVE CHURCH A.RT. 
 
 mosaicist,and, above all, in their incomparable beauty 
 of colour. As an almost inaccessible fortress— thanks 
 to its morasses and lagunes — Ravenna was often and 
 for long the safe residence of powerless Emperors, 
 while Italy was overrun and Rome itself besieged. 
 
 The city was once a seaport, or rather possessed 
 one. It is a stranded Venice, situated at the 
 southern extremity of the great horse-shoe, or delta, 
 which is formed by the Po and its tributaries from 
 both Alps and Apennines. Venice is at the other 
 extremity, and pretty continual labour on her system 
 of canals is required to prevent her divorce from the 
 Adriatic, to which she used to be solemnly wedded 
 year by year. The conditions of her existence 
 greatly resemble those of Eavenna, since the one is 
 a fortress protected by the lagunes, the other a city 
 of refuge, built on their islands. Romanesque and 
 Byzantine art meet in both cities, though Old Greek 
 and New Greek, Classical and Christian, work 
 cannot be compared in either as in Rome. What 
 was once the port in which rode the Adriatic fleet 
 (classis) of Rome, from Augustus to Alaric, is now 
 the pretty Maremma-looking village of St. Apollinaris 
 in Classe; and the sea is only visible from the 
 campanile of its church — the only campanile in 
 Ravenna which was considered safe to ascend in 
 July, 1871 — so, at least, the writer was informed 
 on making inquiries for a high point of view, 
 which is generally a curious person's first care in 
 a flat country. The following sketches of mosaics 
 found in this and the city churches are taken for 
 the most part from notes made on the spot 
 
 M. Vitet puts the distinction between Old-Roman
 
 MOSAICS. 163 
 
 and Byzantine work very clearly and the sam& 
 point is of course well understood and clearly 
 brought out by Kiigler, and by Messrs. Crowe 
 and Cavalcaselle. 1 It is best, perhaps, to insert a 
 brief description of these great historical mosaics 
 in this place. They are represented in Ciampini's 
 plates, which have been photographed by Mr. J. H. 
 Parker, and form an admirable key to his parallel 
 series of photographs from the actual state of the 
 original mosaics. The two last ones have been 
 broadly and skilfully restored in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, and appear to be very good models for mosaic- 
 work in large churches in our own time and country ; 
 combining severity of form with breadth and power 
 of execution in large tessellation. The series is of 
 forty Old Testament subjects, from the history of 
 the Patriarchs down to the Exodus and the wars of 
 Joshua. It is situated in the nave, over the arches 
 and under the clerestory windows. 
 
 "The name of Pope Sixtus III." (432-440), says 
 M, Vitet, " is in the mosaic at the top of the arch, 
 and seems to apply to the whole series of pictures, 
 not only those on the arch, but those on the side- 
 walls also — of which twenty-seven original pictures 
 are said to remain ; some have been restored in the 
 sixteenth century. The figures retain the antique 
 Eoman type and costume : the head3 are much the 
 same as those on the Column of Antoninus, and the 
 toga preserves its cut and its ancient folds ; but the 
 heads are too large for the bodies. They are thick, 
 short, and clumsy ; the lines are undecided, the 
 composition confused. Nevertheless, real art still 
 1 Ch. L voL L "History of Early Italian Art"
 
 1G4 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 appears here and there ; thus, in the second picture, 
 Abraham separating from Lot, the arrangement of 
 the scene is not unskilful ; the figures express well 
 what they are about, and one feels that the two 
 groups are separating. The fourth picture, Isaac 
 blessing Jacob, has almost the same pose as Eaffaelle 
 has given to it in one of the compartments of the 
 Loggia. The taking of Jericho and the battle with 
 the Amalekites also have details which are not 
 without a certain interest. Everything is not lost, 
 therefore, in works of this period: there remain 
 some gleams of spirit and truth, some traces of the 
 old traditions, mixed up with negligence, clumsi- 
 ness, and ignorance almost incredible." 1 
 
 As has been observed, the mosaics of Placidia's 
 chapel in Eavenna correspond to these in date, and 
 in their obedience to ancient traditions of art, cos- 
 tume, and composition. But they are so superior 
 in colour, drawing, and workmanship, to the Eoman 
 pictures, that the somewhat severe words at the 
 end of M. Vitet's criticism by no means apply 
 to them. And though St. Vitale is one of Justinian's 
 churches in the next century, its ornament certainly 
 follows ancient Roman or Primitive tradition rather 
 than the more severely ecclesiastical or Byzantine, 
 representing birds and flowers with a charming 
 naturalism. The Lamb is also repeated very fre- 
 quently on capitals of columns and elsewhere, 
 strangely conventionalized, and with muscular limbs 
 and long neck, so as to have no slight resemblance 
 to a small horse, for which the present writer at 
 first mistook it. 
 
 i Index to Photographs, Centuries iv\ and v. Parker.
 
 MOSAICS. 165 
 
 The historical mosaics in this church, and the 
 highly important sacramental subject of Melchisedek, 
 will be described elsewhere. The following sketch 
 of some of the church pictuies and decorations of 
 Ravenna has been compared with and verified by 
 Mr. Parker's valuable account of them. The leading 
 difference in doctrinal import between these mosaics 
 and those of Rome, seems to be that there is no 
 instance here of either the Blessed Virgin or any 
 created saint being made the chief person in a 
 church, or occupying the vault or tribune of an apse, 
 so as to take the place of the Lord as Head of the 
 Church. 
 
 The justly celebrated church of St. Vitale is richly 
 decorated with mosaics of the time of Justinian. 
 On the vault of the tribune is the figure of Christ, 
 seated on the globe, with an archangel on either side, 
 introducing St. Vitalis, and Ecclesius, Bishop of 
 Ravenna, 541 — who carries a model of the church 
 in his hand. He is the only figure without the 
 nimbus. The Lamb is on a round medallion in 
 the centre of the vault. There are four cherubim 
 at the top of the walls of the vault, the surface 
 of which is covered with a flowing pattern of 
 foliage, very similar to that afterwards used in the 
 thirteenth century. Round the edge of the arch in 
 front of this vault are fifteen heads on round 
 medallions — Christ and the Twelve Apostles; the 
 two lowest heads bear the names of Gervasius and 
 Protasius, saints of the fourth century. The apse is 
 lighted by three windows, and on the jambs of the 
 two side windows are the Evangelists, each with his 
 symbol ; under each of these windows is an altar in
 
 166 
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 an arched recess or tribune, and over each altar the 
 mosaics are thus arranged : — 
 
 SIDE. 
 
 St. Mark, with Lion on rock, 
 desk, and open book 
 
 NORTH 
 St. Matthew, with Angel, 
 desk or leggio, and basket of 
 
 parchments. in hand 
 
 Angels supporting medallion bearing the monogram, with A <». 
 
 In In 
 
 Spandril. ^ _ Spandrit,. 
 
 Moses loosening 
 his shoe. 
 
 Moses (or 
 St. Peter?.) 
 with 
 sheep. 
 
 Melchisedek \ 
 offering bread 
 and wine yiouse 
 
 on a 
 small altar. 
 
 Isaiah standing 
 
 or leaning 
 mournfully by 
 a wall, with 
 a pillar 
 and 
 crown 
 on it. 
 Is. xxviii. 1. 
 
 SOUTH SIDE. 
 
 Similarly arranged, except that the angels with the monogram ire 
 within the arch, not above. 
 
 Spandrils. 
 
 St. John, with Eagle. 
 Jeremiah, with crown of Jeru- 
 salem on pillar. 
 Jer. xiii. 18. 
 
 St. Luke, with Ox. 
 
 Moses in the Mount, with 
 
 the Hand of God above him. 
 
 People below (doubtful?). 
 
 Angels. 
 
 Within the Arch. 
 
 Abraham attending on the Three, bearing a very small calf on a 
 dish (Gen. xviii. 7). Sarah is at the tent door. Opposite is 'Abra- 
 ham raising the knife to slay Isaac, the haud stretched from 
 heaven to stay him, and the ram at his feet. 
 
 This last mosaic is highly remarkable for the skilful 
 naturalism of the tree under which the three Holy 
 visitors are seated ; and for a decided and successful 
 attempt at afternoon or evening effect, by intro- 
 ducing a strong light against which the tree-branches
 
 MOSAICS. 167 
 
 are relieved ; and also by small clouds with their 
 lower edges brightly illuminated. 
 
 The walls on each side of the choir contain two 
 large historical pictures with nearly life-size figures, 
 of the greatest interest as records of costume. Jus- 
 tinian is the centre of one, Theodora of the other — 
 both are richly dressed and crowned, and both bear 
 the nimbus. Maximianus, Bishop of Ravenna in 547, 
 precedes Justinian. He consecrated the church, and 
 these pictures may be a memorial of the ceremony. 
 
 The tomb of Galla Placidia is contained in a 
 small brick chapel in the form of a Greek cross. 
 The whole surface of its vaults and upper part of 
 its walls are covered with mosaic, chiefly in gold 
 patterns on dark-blue ground ; the gold being of 
 specially rich tone of colour, alike from time and 
 its nearness to the eye ; and the blue being artfully 
 varied with black, green, and purple, so as to have a 
 kind of imperial or Tyrian effect, which the writer 
 never observed in any mosaics except those of Ra- 
 venna. The central dome has a blue ground with 
 gold stars, a cross in the centre, and the emblems of 
 the Evangelists at the four corners. On the sup- 
 porting walls are eight figures of prophets, and here, 
 too, as on so many of the Ravennese sarcophagi, 
 appear the two birds drinking from a vase or chalice, 
 which recur in all good Byzantine work of the more 
 decidedly Eastern type. 1 
 
 i See " Stones of Venice," vol. ii. plate ii. " Byzantine Sculpture," 
 for peacocks and other birds drinking. It is possible that a recollec- 
 tion of these symbolisms may have occasioned the ingenious but some- 
 what overstrained conjecture that the antique Gentile mosaic of 
 Pliny's Doves was a Christian emblem of the universal participation 
 in both kinds of the Holy Sacrament. The notion is not right, but 
 it is highly excusable. There are endless authorities for Doves as
 
 168 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Few monuments of ancient art equal this in pure 
 original authenticity of structure and ornament, and 
 accordingly it has special value, as has been remarked, 
 as a connecting link, in its subjects and in their treat- 
 ment, between the Greco-Roman work of the Chris- 
 tian Church and the strictly new-Greek or Byzantine, 
 between the fresco subjects of the Catacombs and 
 the mosaics of Eoman churches. Messrs. Crowe and 
 Cavalcaselle point this out with their accustomed 
 vigour and clearness. It mav be added to their re- 
 marks, that the Good Shepherd in Flacidia's chapel 
 strongly resembles a Catacomb painting of Orpheus 
 in its composition.- 1 
 
 " Christian art," says Mr. Crowe, " had not yet 
 been illustrated by so noble a representation of 
 the Good Shepherd, as that which now adorned the 
 monument of Galla Placidia. Youthful, classic in 
 form and attitude, full of repose, He sat on a 
 rock in a broken hilly landscape, lighted from 
 a blue sky, grasping with His left hand the cross, 
 and His right stretching aslant the frame to caress 
 the Lamb at his sandalled feet. His limbs rested 
 across each other on the green sward. His nimbed 
 head, covered with curled locks, reposing on a 
 majestic neck, and turned towards the retreating 
 forms of the lambs, was of the finest Greek type and 
 contour. The face was oval, the eyes spirited, the 
 brow vast, and the features regular. The frame was 
 beautifully proportioned, classical and flexible. The 
 
 emblems of the faitbful : and the drinking Doves must be a sacra- 
 mental emblem, at least, when they drink from, or are placed near 
 a chalice, as in the church of St. Apollinare Nuovn, in Ravenna. 
 See Bottari, i. p. 118, where one of the mosaics of St. Clemente ia 
 represented, twelve doves on a cross. 
 1 Bottari, tav. lxx.
 
 MOSAICS. 160 
 
 blue mantle, shot with gold (lights beautifully put in 
 with gold tesserae), was admirably draped about the 
 form. A warm sunny colour glanced over the whole 
 figure, which was modelled in perfect relief by broad 
 masses of golden light, of ashen half-tones, and brown- 
 red shadows. No more beautiful figure had been 
 created during the Christian period of the Eoman 
 decline, nor had the subject of the Good Pastor been 
 better conceived or treated than here. 
 
 " As in the rise of the Faith the symbolic type of 
 the Saviour must necessarily be youthful, so in its 
 triumph it was natural that the Redeemer should 
 have the aspect of one mature in years. In the choir 
 of this chapel He was represented in the fulness of 
 manhood, majestic in attitude, bearded, with an eye cf 
 menace, His flying white draperies expressing energy 
 of movement, His diadem, the cross on the right of 
 His shoulder and the book on His left, being emble- 
 matic of the triumph of the Gospel and the Church. 
 Eight and left of Him, a case containing the Gospels 
 (names on tire books), and a grate, in which heretical 
 works are burning (see also Acts xix. 19), indicated 
 the end of the Redeemer's mission. His figure was 
 as grand, as fine in conception and execution, as that 
 of the Good Pastor ; nor were the prophets conversing 
 in couples, round the arches of the cupola, less worthy 
 of admiration. The ornaments of the chapel were 
 completed by a cross in the centre of the dome, by 
 the symbols of the Evangelists on red clouds, relieved 
 on a blue ground, spotted with stars ; by rich foliated 
 ornament on blue enlivened with figures in the thick- 
 ness, and by the Greek initials of the Saviour in the 
 keys of the arches. A mysterious and sombre light 
 
 i
 
 170 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 trickled into the edifice through four small windows 
 in the (fiat) dome." 
 
 An effect of colours, if possible more complicated, 
 daring, and beautiful, is found in St. Apollinare 
 Nuova ; the following account is from the writer's 
 notes on the spot : — 
 
 " The purple and white (?) marble columns of the 
 central aisle of the basilica support on each side a 
 processional frieze, in mosaic, of male and female 
 saints on the opposite sides : ended on the male side, 
 at the eastern end, with the Lord in Glory ; a head 
 and face of great beauty at its distance from the eye, 
 though with something of the sadness of later and 
 fuller art : on the female side, by an Adoration of the 
 Magi, exactly like some in the Eoman Catacombs. All 
 the figures are white-robed, and stand on emerald- 
 green turf, separated from each other by palms bearing 
 scarlet dates. The palm, it may be observed, is used 
 in Rome as in Eavenna, but the Eastern workmen 
 seem always to insist on the fruit, which is generally 
 omitted in Rome. The white procession are all shod 
 with scarlet, and bear small crowns in their hands 
 lined with the same colour. The background is of 
 gold, not bearing a large proportion to the size of the 
 figures ; but there are white single figures above with 
 ample golden spaces ; giving the effect of a lighter 
 story or loggia over a more solid wall : and a third 
 course of singular representations of New Testa- 
 ment subjects runs round just below the roof, with 
 backgrounds of alternate gold and black ; black, or 
 the darkest purple, also prevailing in the roof, fully 
 relieved with gold. The splendid and jewelled effect 
 of the whole is beyond praise, and its brilliant light-
 
 MOSAICS. 171 
 
 ness makes it especially suitable to the dark aisles of 
 a great city." 
 
 The two Baptisteries resemble each other in the 
 decoration of their domical-vaulted roofs — the Bap- 
 tism of the Lord in the centre, and the figures of the 
 Apostles surrounding it on the vault, separated by 
 palms. This subject will be more conveniently 
 dealt with in the chapter on Sacramental Symbolism. 
 The church now named St. Maria in Cosmedin is said 
 to have been built for the Arians by Theodoric the 
 Great, but purified by Archbishop Agnellus in 553. 
 It is an ancient basilica rebuilt in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, as Mr. Parker informs us ; having the old marble 
 columns with Byzantine capitals used again. In 
 the Chapel of St. Bartholomew, now a vestry, at the 
 eastern end of this church, a very curious pavement 
 of ancient mosaic has been preserved from the old 
 church and built into the walls. There are Scriptural 
 and historical subjects, figures of animals, conven- 
 tional palm-trees, grotesque heads, a mermaid, &c, 
 all of the quaintest and most barbaric character. 
 Some of the historical compartments, however, are 
 of the greatest interest, and their highly successful 
 attempts at character make them amusing in the 
 extreme. One in particular appears to represent the 
 approach of Theodoric the Great to Constantinople 
 in 487, when the Emperor Zeno induced him to 
 divert his invasion to Italy and Odovakar. On one 
 side Theodoric the Great advances in a long coat of 
 mail and pointed helmet, which remind us of the 
 Bayeux pictures. His straight and pointed sword is 
 uplifted, and his countenance truculent in a degree 
 which'the modern spectator can hardly help contem* 
 
 i 2
 
 1 72 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 plating in the most comic light ; but which must 
 certainly have been anything but a joke to the 
 OONSTANTINOPOLITANI (so inscribed in Eoman 
 letters) — bishops, who are advancing to meet him 
 with right hands outstretched, dalmatics and mitres. 
 Their faces express a cheerful confidence by which 
 the Gothic King appears for the present unconvinced, 
 if not unmoved ; and it is satisfactory to be informed 
 by history that they and their Emperor came un- 
 harmed out of the transaction. 
 
 These mosaics, however, are scarcely equal in his- 
 torical and doctrinal importance to the great works 
 in the apse and choir of St. Apollinaris in Classe. 
 Photographs of all of them may be obtained in 
 London, excepting, we believe, those of the St. 
 Giovanni pavement. But the picture in the church 
 of Classe must be compared with the great seventh- 
 century mosaics of SS. Prassede and Pudentiana in 
 Pome, possessing as it does the great advantage of 
 undisputed date, about a.d. 567. The wall of the 
 Arch of Triumph above the apse is divided threefold 
 down to the lower corners of the spandrils. In the 
 first, clear of the top of the arch, is a medallion of 
 Our Lord, with the four symbols of the Evangelists, 
 bearing their gospels. Next comes the well-known 
 picture of the Hebrew and Gentile Church, repre- 
 sented by six sheep on a side issuing from the two 
 Houses of the Old and New Dispensation, named 
 HIERUSALEM and BETHLEEM. The corners of 
 the spandrils are occupied by two palm-trees, skilfully 
 inlaid from nature, as it would seem. Within the vault 
 is a representation of the Transfiguration, not unlike 
 that of nearly the same date at the Convent of Mount
 
 MOSAICS. 1 , 3 
 
 Sinai. The Presence of God the Father is repre- 
 sented by the Divine Hand, the sky indicated by 
 streaks of light. Half-length figures of Moses and 
 Elias are on either side, and in the centre of the half 
 vault a large Cross, jewelled and ornamented to the 
 full power of the mosaicist, stands for the Person of 
 the Lord. The three Disciples present at the Trans- 
 figuration are represented by three sheep of larger 
 size, contemplating the Cross. The mystic Jordan is 
 not given, but below the Cross round the dome are 
 twelve more sheep among lilies and other vegetation, 
 St. Apollinaris standing in prayer in the midst, — the 
 whole evidently symbolizing the condition of the 
 Church or Fold on earth. 
 
 Such are the great mosaics of Ravenna ; and they 
 give decisive evidence of what the richest and most 
 gorgeous decoration of the Church was, to the end of 
 the sixth century, in the protected stronghold of Italy ; 
 in a city midway as it were between the influence 
 of the Eastern and "Western Empire ; unhaunted by 
 the traditions of temporal power — untempted by the 
 ignorant devotion of barbaric pilgrims; free as yet 
 from the antagonism of East and West, which forced 
 on Iconodulism in Eome, chiefly because it was con- 
 demned in Constantinople. Throughout the mosaic- 
 works of Ravenna there is no image which could ever 
 invite, or indeed permit, the worship of any creature 
 in any degree. Their symbolism is as mystic and 
 severe in its avoidance of idolatry, as it is grand and 
 lovely in form and colour. Of all existing works of 
 religious art, these appeal most strongly, with the 
 solemnity of fourteen centuries, to the great instinct 
 of colour. All that is noble, spiritual, and purify-
 
 174 
 
 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 ing in that sixth sense of hue, which is to the eye as 
 music to the ear, is brought into religious service in 
 these temples. No idea of them can be conveyed by 
 description, none has been attempted yet by painting, 
 and the best would be inadequate ; but few who have 
 seen them are likely either to forget or under-rate 
 them. 
 
 STATUE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
 
 
 ! : i ' i ~ s ,— -.'l_--,h'!.. i -..■.■■ I,. 
 

 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 
 
 The distinction already quoted from Dean Milman L 
 as a basis of tacit compromise at the end of the 
 Iconoclastic controversy, appears to have been in 
 some degree felt in the earlier days of the Church ; 
 that is to say, with regard to solid and separate 
 figures or images. At the end of the long and 
 lamentable divisions which had begun with Leo's in- 
 tended reform, pictures were restored, but not images ; 
 and this gradually became a fixed and unbending 
 rule in the Eastern Church ; the statue or separate 
 figure asserting more of a personality, and approaching 
 nearer to the graven idol, than a picture or even a 
 bas-relief. For, whatever the feeling of the Eastern 
 Church may have been in later days, the eyes of 
 early Christianity seem to have looked on a bas-relief 
 simply as a picture in light and shade. Doubtless, 
 also, the further difference made itself felt, that a 
 bas-relief, representing an event or events, with 
 groups of figures, gives no opportunity or temptation 
 for idolatrous emotion, or adoration of any of its 
 characters. At any rate, the bas-reliefs are almost 
 universal in Christian art, and statues so very rare, 
 that we may suppose that but few of them ever were 
 
 1 " Latin Christianity," ch. ix. book xiv. 
 
 I 3
 
 178 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 made. The Good Shepherd of the Lateran, and the now 
 lost St. Peter, taken from Berlin by the French, and 
 never returned or discovered, are in fact almost the 
 only known specimens. 
 
 This abstinence may not have been maintained from 
 any special scruple. Primitive Church-art arose, like 
 any other healthy and natural form of art, suitably 
 to the spiritual or domestic needs of its producers ; and 
 as the object of all Christian sculpture was to decorate 
 sepulchres, and all its works were intended to be seen 
 only by faint torchlight, or perhaps by feeble gleams 
 from the luminaria, statues were scarcely more effec- 
 tive than reliefs. The decaying power of the artists 
 is certainly to be taken into consideration ; but still we 
 must suppose that the carvers of such sarcophagi as 
 that of Junius Bassus, or Probus and Proba, were able 
 to produce at least fairly good isolated figures, if they 
 had been desired. The Hebrew feeling of the Early 
 Church would be strongly moved against such works 
 in the earliest times ; and the gathering uneasiness 
 and uncertainty about image-representation of any 
 kind, to which Epiphanius's proceedings with the 
 embroidered curtain bear witness, would be awakened 
 irresistibly by a statue in solid form. 
 
 At all events, with the few following exceptions, 
 early Christian sculpture is entirely sepulchral. An 
 excellent small statue of the Good Shepherd is pre- 
 served in the Lateran Museum ; which can hardly be 
 later than the early part of the fourth century. 1 
 
 The statue of St. Hippolytus, probably of the fifth 
 
 1 See wood-cut, p. 174, with reference to llartigny's Dictionary ; 
 — s. v. Pasteur. Two other statues of the same subject exist, in 
 Rome ; one of them represented in Perret, vol. iv. pi. 4.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 179 
 
 century, will be found in D'Agincourt. 1 The in- 
 scription on the chair is not later than the sixth 
 century. 
 
 The statue of St. Peter, in St. Peter's at Pome, is 
 attributed to the fifth century, and said to have 
 been recast by Leo I. (about 440) from a bronze 
 Jupiter in the Capitol. 2 The Berlin statuette of St. 
 Peter is engraved by Bartoli, and Martigny gives 
 it in a wood-cut. 
 
 The simplest form of the early Christian grave 
 was the narrow loculus, or stone cell, like a bed- 
 place in a cabin, cut in the cemetery-wall. This 
 would be, for the most part, ornamented with little 
 more than a hastily-cut inscription, the Monogram, 
 Fish, Anchor, and Palm, or one or more of the birds 
 in which Poman Christians, and indeed Gentiles 
 also, seem to have taken a natural and amiable 
 delight. But in the days of martyrdom, the custom 
 naturally arose of celebrating the Eucharist on 
 the graves of martyrs ; and the constructive modi- 
 fication followed, of hollowing out a space above 
 the loculus or actual grave, leaving a slab above the 
 corpse. This formed the arcosolium, half-dome or 
 apse ; and the sarcophagus or massive chest of stone, 
 originally cut in the living rock, faced with sculpture 
 and with the arcosolium above, variously rilled with 
 ornament, is the ideal of the early Christian tomb. 
 As has been mentioned in the case of the tombs in 
 the Vault of Domitilla, the ornamental sarcophagus 
 had been of old the accustomed resting-place of 
 
 1 "Histoire de 1' Art-Sculpture," pi. 3, No. 1. It is represented 
 in Bunseu's "Life." See also Hunter's "Sinnbilder," part ii. 
 pi. 13, No. 92. 
 
 a Lubke " Gesckichte der Plastik," ed. 2, v. 1, p. 325.
 
 180 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Romans of the higher orders. And the Christian 
 custom of celebration on the altar-tomb, giving occa- 
 sion, of course, for ornamenting it in every possible 
 way, seems to have been connected in later times 
 with an increasing tendency to Saint-worship. The 
 martyr lay below ; his sarcophagus was carved with 
 symbols of the faith for which he had died ; his own 
 figure, or a memorial portrait of him, would in process 
 of time appear in the apse above. It happens, 
 accordingly, that we are best able to trace the pro- 
 gress of polytheistic tendencies in the Church by the 
 mosaics, since that kind of ornament is peculiarly 
 suited to vaultings. The founders, or persons spe- 
 cially commemorated, are presented to the Redeemer, 
 Who occupies the centre of the apse ; as in SS. Cosmas 
 and Damianus, St. Lawrence, and elsewhere ; and 
 the inferiority of the minor saints is shown by their 
 etligies being of small stature : a founder of a church 
 bears the model of his building in his hand, as early 
 us Pope Felix IV. in SS. Cosmas and Damianus, 
 526-53 ).' 
 
 It may be said, then, with certain limitations, that 
 Christian Church-art begins at the east end of every 
 church, with its altar and apse ; and that, like every- 
 thing else in the Faith, it directs the attention to 
 Death as the desired and hopeful end of all be- 
 lievers. It is no wonder that none of the sarcophagi 
 contain melancholy emblems of death or corruption, 
 or give any sign of the fear of dissolution. In the 
 declining days of Eome it was, perhaps, easy for 
 poor men to think death better than life : but there 
 
 1 See, however, Chapter on Mosaics ;is to the 'late of these 
 ■uo'-ks, ami Parker, "Antiquities of Rome."
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. LSI 
 
 can be no doubt, from the actual documents of their 
 sepulchral ornaments, that the Christian had also 
 a positive and personal hope and desire to depart 
 and be with Christ. It is no doubt incident to a 
 period of decay and hopelessness that good men 
 should direct their hopes too exclusively to the spirit- 
 ual world. To be active and laborious in improving 
 the state of the living world around us, is rightly our 
 own leading idea; for that, too, is specially enjoined 
 by the Author of our Faith. But the far greater suf- 
 ferings, and utter powerlessness, which so many men 
 must have felt in the earlier ages, gave them far 
 greater reason for withdrawing in thought, and some- 
 times altogether in the body, from intercourse with 
 a world which they could not mend : and this, and 
 the general expectation of the Lord's speedy return 
 to judgment, is doubtless, as has been so often obser- 
 ved, the secret of the anchoritism of the second and 
 third centuries, and the monastic or ccenobitic life 
 which has prevailed up to the present time. 
 
 The subjects of the sarcophagi, then, continue the 
 lessons of the Catacombs — that to die is gain, because 
 of the gospel of Christ, Who has overcome death. A 
 larger number of decorative subjects come before us ; 
 but they are most of them repeated with a constancy 
 which makes them no less than a body of doctrine 
 expressed in bas-relief. And we find the prophets 
 and typical persons of the ancient dispensation con- 
 tinually referred to in connection with the Gospel. 
 The ancient Law confirms the New, the New fulfils 
 the Old. 1 We must once more quote St. Paulinus 
 of Xola's rough hexameter; since it contains the 
 1 " Lex antiqua novam firmat, vetercni nova complet."
 
 182 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 principle of all sound Church ornament from the 
 beginning. But it is quite clear that the pupil of 
 St. Ambrose expressed a principle of popular teach- 
 ing which has lasted from his time l to ours, and 
 must endure while the faith has to be taught. Nine 
 generations of Gospel teaching had passed by his 
 time, and able and thoughtful men felt that they 
 must tread the old paths in teaching the Gospel, and 
 begin, as their Lord had begun, with Moses and the 
 Prophets. And now, that is to say from the fourth 
 century, there would seem, by all this decoration, to 
 have been a more general study of the Old Testa- 
 ment, almost from end to end, in the light of the 
 New. The Fall of Man, with the Serpent, and the 
 tokens of the curse of Toil on the earth, is one of 
 the most frequent subjects, only excelled in number 
 of repetitions by Daniel between the disarmed lions 
 and the three Children unhurt amidst the flames : 
 Abraham, Noah, and Jonah are as common as in the 
 frescoes. But it may be better to describe, or at 
 least enumerate, a few of the chief relics of the kind 
 which are now accessible. 
 
 The earliest sarcophagus given in Bottari (the 
 earliest known by its consular date) is the far-famed 
 one of Junius Bassus, a.d. 359. It shows that the 
 habit of emblematic expression, which Paulinus and 
 others developed into a system of teaching, had made 
 progress since the earliest work of the Catacombs ; 
 still adhering to Scriptural subject, with the excep- 
 tion of the various portraits or commemorative figures 
 now introduced, which indeed appear as Oranti, as 
 in the frescoes. Sometimes the front only of -the 
 1 A.D. 353— 431.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 183 
 
 sarcophagus is ornamented with figure-subjects, some- 
 times the front and back, in some cases the ends 
 also. Frequently the ends, or the ends and back 
 are strigillated ; that is to say, covered with spiral 
 channels or lines cut in the stone. The stone chest 
 itself may be made to contain one body also, or two, 
 three, or even four (bisomus, &c). "When no other 
 ornament is given, the Monogram of Christ is seldom 
 omitted. Sometimes one range of figures occupies 
 the front or back ; more often there are two, 
 one above another. As works of art the earlier bas- 
 reliefs are often of great merit in balance of compo- 
 sition, and choice of the right size and number of 
 subjects in a row, and of figures in a subject. The 
 tomb of Junius Bassus 1 displays this in a special 
 degree. There is uniformity enough in the subjects, 
 and indeed in their treatment, to make us suppose 
 that a traditional school of Christian art existed, re- 
 taining much of the skill of its Gentile predecessors 
 in sculpture, and having a well-defined body of 
 doctrine to enforce by means of art. "We do not 
 observe either the crowding and imperfect composi- 
 tion, or the energy, the character of feature, and 
 indescribable originality, of the early mediaeval work 
 of ^Northern Italy from the eighth to the thirteenth 
 century; but considerable grace of arrangement is 
 shown, and there is no want of fulness in, or 
 devotion to, the work. On the front of the sar- 
 cophagus of Junius Bassus, for example, besides ten 
 figure-subjects divided by beautifully-cut columns, 
 with varied and elaborate borders, the spandrils 
 between the columns and low arches of the recesses 
 
 i Bottari, tav. xv„, and see wood-cut, supra, p. 176".
 
 184 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 are filled with symbolic Lambs variously employed 
 in acts of ministry or of miracle. In the great 
 sarcophagus from the Vatican, 1 the Lambs appear at 
 the base, below the feet of the figures, headed by one 
 greater Lamb. The introduction of this emblem of 
 our Lord with His Church probably synchronizes 
 with the insistence on the Apocalyptic Lamb in the 
 mosaics, and also with the increasing tendency to 
 dwell on the Sacrifice of the Lord's death, by joining 
 the Lamb to the Cross. The Eock, the Vine, the 
 Phoenix in a highly conventionalized Palm, and two 
 small portrait-figures, occur in this elaborate and 
 beautiful work. The mosaics, and such bas-reliefs 
 as these, at all events prove that Church-art died 
 harder, as it revived earlier, than any other form of 
 art in the Dark Ages. 
 
 The subjects of the tomb of Bassus are arranged 
 in two rows or tiers of five, separated by columns 
 of the height of the whole sarcophagus. Beginning 
 at the spectator's left in the upper row, we have the 
 interrupted sacrifice of Isaac ; at a small classical 
 altar, with the Hand of God withholding Abraham's 
 arm, and a hornless Earn behind Abraham. Next 
 comes a dubious subject, conjectured by Bottari, 
 somewhat vaguely, to be either the Denial of St. 
 Peter, or Joseph and his Brethren. Next to this 
 is the central group, the Dispute with the Doctors ; 
 a singular figure, always said to represent Uranus 
 or the Firmament, being placed below Our Lord's 
 Feet. The fourth subject is again uncertain, and 
 may represent Our Lord led before Herod. The 
 last is certainly Pilate washing his hands. All these, 
 
 i Bottari, tav. xxxviii.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 185 
 
 except the first, consist each of three full-length 
 figures. The lower range begins with Job, his wife, 
 and one of his friends ; Adam and Eve and the Ser- 
 pent, with the Lamb on Eve's side, probably in the 
 emblematic sense of the Woman's portion of toil on 
 the earth, as Adam receives the sheaf of corn. 1 In 
 the centre is the Entry into Jerusalem, adding also 
 Zacchanis in the sycamore, and thus combining the 
 beginning with the end of Our Lord's last journey. 
 Daniel follows between two lions, with two other 
 figures ; and the last may be either St. Peter led to 
 prison, or possibly St. James, as the soldier who 
 precedes him is drawing his sword. 
 
 This bas-relief, with that which follows in Bottari, 
 from the tomb of Probus and Proba (a.d. 395), may 
 be taken as representative specimens of Christian 
 sculpture in the fourth century. The latter has 
 saints and Apostles arranged in pairs on its front 
 and ends, full-length figures of the whole height of 
 the sarcophagus. Between the central pair on its 
 front is the Lord, bearing a Cross of triumph of the 
 Western form, and standing above the others on 
 the Bock of the Four Pavers. Pound arches cover 
 these groups, and their shallow spandrils are filled 
 with doves feeding from the same baskets of small 
 loaves which occur so frequently in the Catacomb 
 paintings. The back is partly strigillated, with two 
 portrait-figures of wife and husband, weeping and 
 bidding farewell. 
 
 The period of these sarcophagi is fixed exactly 
 by their consular date. But others exist of un- 
 doubtedly greater antiquity, and one in particular 
 
 1 See Index, s. vv. Adam and Eve, Corn, &c.
 
 186 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 deserves careful notice in this place, as it is in every 
 respect a parallel to the especially-important Vintage- 
 Mosaics of St. Constantia. 1 It is the porplvyry coffin 
 of Constantia, daughter of Constantine and Helena, 
 and is somewhat rudely carved with huge triumphal 
 wreaths or scrolls : the hardness of the material 
 must have greatly hampered the workman. With 
 these are vines, and boys engaged in grape-gathering, 
 and at the wine-press : three in particular are treading 
 it at one of the ends. Peacocks are also introduced, 
 and finally the Lamb. There is scarcely anything to 
 be called composition in the work, but the Lamb 
 cannot have been added to the rest of the decoration 
 without decisively Christian meaning. This most 
 interesting work, doubly important as a point of 
 junction between the mosaics and the sculptures, 
 still remains in the Hall of the Greek Cross in the 
 Vatican, with those before-mentioned; and was the 
 temporary resting-place of Pope Zosimus (d. 417), 
 and afterwards occupied by Damasus II., 1048. 
 Bottari gives another, 2 which contains the miracles 
 of Cana, the Blind and the Issue, the Loaves 
 and Pishes, (perhaps) Lazarus, and the curious 
 Apocryphal subject of Daniel with the Serpent or 
 Dragon. 
 
 There are ancient fluted sarcophagi in the church 
 of St. Prassede ; but the new Lateran Museum con- 
 tains some of the most important examples yet re- 
 maining. The largest is given by Martigny in wood- 
 cut, and described by Dr. North cote. It is assigned 
 to the fourth century, and contains two rows of 
 closely-arranged figures, beginning with (as it ap- 
 
 1 Bottari, tav. cxxxii. • See tav. xix.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 187 
 
 pears) the Holy Trinity engaged in the Creation of 
 Eve (the human pair, of minute proportions) ; then 
 the Fall, and the delivery of the Corn-ears and 
 the Lamb to the First Parents ; next the Miracles 
 of Mercy, which complete the upper range of 
 carvings. Below are the Adoration of the Magi, the 
 Cure of the Blind, Daniel with the lions and Hab- 
 bacuc, the Denial of St. Peter foretold and ac- 
 complished, and (as Martigny says) Moses striking 
 the Kock. This most important work of Christian 
 sculpture was found among the foundations of the 
 ciborium of the altar of the church of St. Paul- 
 without-the-walls. Another in the same Museum, 
 one of the oldest known examples, was found before 
 the gate of St. Sebastiano, and represents grape and 
 olive gathering. There is a photograph of it in the 
 Art Library at South Kensington, A third of great 
 antiquity is represented in Aringhi 1 and Bottari, 2 
 and will be distinguished at once by the clever com- 
 position of the double Whale of Jonah, by its quaint 
 natural history of snails, cranes, fishes, and lizards — 
 by its angler and Good Shepherd. Dr. Labus, as 
 Martigny informs us, thinks so highly of the com- 
 position of this relief, that he cannot place it later 
 than the end of the third, or first years of the fourth 
 century. The ingenuity of the doubled and reversed 
 dragon-monster, which receives Jonah to the left 
 and returns him to the right, is certainly very great, 
 and seems to have a dash of the comic grotesque. 
 The angler of course represents St. Peter, and all 
 fishers for souls. Many will remember how con- 
 stantly that pursuit is represented in ordinary 
 1 II. 620. 2 Vol. I. tav. xlii.
 
 188 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Eoman wall-frescoes. 1 It is only one instance of 
 the easy-gliding adaptations, by which common 
 objects of life and their symbols were invested with 
 Christian meaning, mainly on Scriptural authority. 
 If our Lord told Peter he should become a Fisher 
 of men, this way of adopting Gentile ornament is 
 as strictly Christian as the use of human grammar 
 and rhetoric, or of Gentile paint, brushes, or chisels, 
 for the operations of fresco and sculpture. 
 
 A fourth or fifth century relief in this Museum is 
 very rare and remarkable, as containing undoubted 
 subjects from the Passion of our Lord. In one group 
 He is before Pilate bearing the Cross ; in another He 
 is crowned — but with something like flowers. This 
 is of great interest, and in particular to the author of 
 these pages, who thinks it possible that the same 
 idea may have struck the workman which he re- 
 members to have occurred to him in many walks 
 about Jerusalem ; that the Crowning with Thorns 
 was not an additional torture, but only a wreath 
 made in mockery from the wild hyssop which springs 
 from the ruined walls of Solomon at this day, and 
 may have grown there as freely, except among 
 Herod's restorations, on the central day of the 
 History of the world. 
 
 A celebrated group, Elijah in the Chariot, almost 
 certainly copied from a relief of Helios, is in this 
 Museum. 2 And this, with a sarcophagus in the Capi- 
 toline Museum, and the marble bas-relief in the 
 Apollinare College of the Good Shepherd, bearing 
 the pedum or crook in his left hand, from the Cata- 
 
 ' See Parker, S. v. " Fisherman " in Index of Subjects. 
 2 See Aringhi, vol. ii. pp. 305, 309.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 189 
 
 comb of St. Agnes, must complete our slight account 
 of the remains of early Church sculpture in Eonie. 
 A classic portrait-figure of the youthful Christ occurs 
 on an ancient tomb in Perugia. 1 The usual subjects 
 occur upon works at Fermo, Ancona, Florence, and 
 Pisa ; and the less common one of the Deliverance 
 of St. Peter at the first-named place. 
 
 As the Catholic stronghold of the falling Empire, 
 with no history of persecution and concealment, 
 Eavenna may be expected to equal or excel Eome in 
 the beauty of her mosaics ; as is indeed the case. 
 But it is by no means so with sarcophagi and sepul- 
 chral relics. The five marble tombs of the fifth cen- 
 tury, in Galla Placidia's chapel, include her own and 
 those of Honorius, her half-brother (d. 423 at Ea- 
 venna), and Constantius III. (d. 421). Her own is 
 of the date of the building, about 450. It is without 
 sculpture ; but the holes which remain prove that 
 it was covered with golden or other metallic imagery. 
 The subjects on the other tombs are, as usual, the 
 Lamb of God ; the two doves resting on the Cross ; 
 the drinking doves ; palms ; and the Lamb on the 
 Eock of Four Eivers. The Monogram and Cross, 
 with lambs and peacocks, are on the alabaster altar. 
 The Magi adorn the Exarch Isaac's tomb in St. Vital e ; 
 and St. Apollinaris in Classe, besides other works, 
 possesses a bas-relief of the youthful Eedeemer be- 
 tween St. Paul (with the Volumes of the Gospel) and 
 St. Peter with Cross and Key. On one of these sar- 
 cophagi there is a singular combination of acanthus 
 and vine. 
 
 The Christian sepulchral remains iu France are 
 1 Eumolir, Ital. Forsch., vol. i. p. 16S.
 
 190 PRIMITIVE CHUECH AET. 
 
 very numerous and important — especially, of course, 
 in the South. One sarcophagus of the fourth or fifth 
 century, now to be seen in the Louvre, was brought 
 from the Villa Borghese. It has a bearded figure 
 of Our Lord on the Kock of Four Bivers, bearing 
 the volumen or roll of the Gospel. Elijah is at one 
 end, leaving his mantle for Elisha ; the four Evan- 
 gelists are at the other. 
 
 An excellent sketch of the sculpture of Southern 
 Gaul will be found in Martigny. 1 A few examples 
 occur, he says, more frequently in Southern France 
 than in Italy — as the History of Susanna, and one 
 or two subjects from the Passion of our Lord. This 
 may be specially commemorative of, or allusive to, 
 Arian persecutions ; at all events, there is reason 
 to believe that Susanna is the emblem of the per- 
 secuted Church. 2 The Passion carvings seem of 
 later date, probably not earlier than the sixth cen- 
 tury. They do not go farther than the representa- 
 tion of Our Lord before Pilate. The Betrayal by 
 Judas is on a great sarcophagus in the Museum at 
 Aries. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Miracles 
 of Cana, the Loaves, and Bartimseus, Job, Jonah, 
 Susanna and the Elders, Moses, Abraham, and 
 Daniel are also represented. Aix contains a sar- 
 cophagus with carvings of Israel leaving Egypt, 
 the overthrow of Pharaoh, Moses and the Piock, 
 and the Quails. In the crypt of -St. Maximin there 
 are carvings of these usual subjects, with St. Peter 
 raising Tabitha, and the rare one of the Massacre 
 
 1 His chief book of reference for this part of the [service is 
 Millin's " Voyape dans les Depart em ents du Midi." 
 '• See s. v. in Index.
 
 CHRISTIAN SCULPTURE. 191 
 
 of the Innocents. At Avignon, the still more un- 
 common Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter occurs on 
 an early tomb ; and the Marseilles Museum contains 
 a sarcophagus ornamented with figures of Apostles, 
 with serpents and doves, and with stags drinking at 
 the waters of the Rock. 1 
 
 There is a tomb of the fourth or fifth century with 
 the usual Old and Xew Testament subjects as types 
 and antitypes, at Toledo ; and one nearly similar at 
 Astorga, in the Cathedral. Others are scattered over 
 Spain — as at Barcelona, Zaragoza, and probably 
 elsewhere. 
 
 It would be a subject of great interest for the 
 student of modern or mediaeval history to trace the 
 development of later tombs, in Venice and Florence 
 in particular, from the typical or original sepulchres 
 of the Catacombs. This has been partly done, in a 
 rapid and masterly sketch by Professor Paiskin. 2 
 
 1 Millin, Atlas, pi. 584. 
 
 2 " Stones of Venice," vol. iii. See also Aratra Pentelici, p. 76, 
 sec. 80.
 
 THE l.ATKKAN r'KM
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CROSS. 
 
 In giving such an account of the chief of all Christian 
 symbols as shall amount to an endeavour to trace it 
 with certainty from its earliest use in the Christian 
 Church, we have nothing to do with the earlier uses 
 of the decussated figure, or of various symbols, which 
 are more or less reasonably supposed to have repre- 
 sented the Cross, or to have been mysteriously con- 
 nected with it, before the sera of the Lord's Visible 
 Presence on earth. The subject possesses considerable 
 interest, of a somewhat vague character. There can 
 be no doubt that the Egyptian, or Tau-Cross, with- 
 out the upper limb, is a pre-Christian emblem ; and 
 as such, connected with pre-Christian meanings. 
 We ourselves have to do with the Cross as the 
 Symbol of God's having become Man for man, sub- 
 mitting finally to death as Man. The earlier mean- 
 ings, either of the Tau or the decussated or intersect- 
 ing symbol, may be arranged, perhaps, in two 
 classes, as far as we are concerned, and so dismissed. 
 They will be: 1. Such interpretations of specula- 
 tive minds in all ages as connect the Tau-Cross with 
 Egyptian nature -worship, through the Crux Ansata : 
 which will probably include all the Ophite and 
 Gnostic uses of the symbol, and account for its 
 
 JC
 
 194 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 connection with the Serpent, as a sign of strength, 
 wisdom, &c. 2. Interpretations of Hebrew origin, 
 or coming to ns through the Old Testament ; found 
 therein in typical senses, and thus connected with 
 the Christian Faith ; as the wood borne by Isaac, 
 and the Tau or Cross on which the Brazen Serpent 
 was suspended. Our Lord's own allusion to this 
 event justifies a remark, made we believe by Didron, 
 that the Tau is the anticipatory Cross of the Old 
 Testament. 1 
 
 We have to do with the Christian Cross. And 
 the first question which arises as to its decorative use, 
 as a symbol to be painted, carven, engraved, inlaid — 
 to be set up in public or worn on the person, as a sub- 
 ject of constant contemplation — is : In what sense 
 does it belong to that cycle of Scriptural symbol and 
 history, to whose limits we wish that Church Scrip- 
 tural art may ultimately confine itself ? Was it used 
 originally as a Sign of the Lord's Death, or simply 
 of His Person and Human Life on Earth ? or did it 
 from the first convey both these meanings ? The 
 answer to these questions must, of course, depend on 
 what we know of the earliest uses of the Cross ; and 
 though it may doubtless have been commonly em- 
 ployed in private life as a sign of fellowship, made 
 by gesture or motion, or expressly named among 
 brethren, its official, public, or avowed use seems to 
 begin with Constantine, however familiar it may 
 have been to Christian thought before. In the Ca- 
 tacombs and their inscriptions, and in all the earliest 
 
 1 Much interesting and erudite speculation on the pre-Christian 
 cross, or decussated figure, will be found in the text and references 
 of an article in the Edinburgh Review of April 1870.
 
 THE CROSS. 195 
 
 records, it is constantly used in combination with 
 the Monogram of Christ, and can hardly be said to 
 have a separate existence from that. This seems to 
 point to the double meaning in the use of the symbol 
 from the earliest times. As derived from or joined 
 with the Monogram, which is certainly one of the 
 earliest of Christian symbols, especially in its first 
 or decussated form, % , the Cross, denotes the name 
 and person of Jesus Christ simply. As used with 
 the somewhat later or transverse Monogram, i? , or 
 when separated from the Monogram and used by 
 itself, it directs special attention to the sacrifice and 
 death of the Lord, and, as it were, avows and glories 
 in the manner of His death. " The triumph of 
 Christianity," says Martigny, "was announced on 
 this ensign more openly, by means of the Mono- 
 gram, as expressive of the name of Christ, than 
 by the idea of the Cross." 1 This use of it as the 
 symbol of His Person is certainly of the greatest 
 antiquity, 2 though it may have been in some mea- 
 sure discredited by the quasi-personification of 
 the symbol in later days, after the publication of 
 the Legends of the Cross ; when churches were de- 
 dicated to it as St. Cross, and it became an object 
 of prayer. This has to do wdth the distinct sub- 
 ject of the Sign of the Cross. What may be the 
 date of the earliest concealed Crosses, worn on 
 rings or seals, is impossible to say ; more particularly 
 as the Cross first appears in combination with the 
 
 1 " Le triomphe de la Christianisme s'arffichait bien plus ouverte- 
 ment sur cet insigue (the Labarum) au moyen du Monogramme, 
 comme exprimant le Nom du Christ, que par l'idee de la Croix." 
 
 2 See Ciarnpini, "Vet. Mon." t. ii. pp. 81, 2. tab. xxiv. and c. 
 viii. tab. xvii. D. 
 
 K 2
 
 196 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Monogram. But there certainly were Christian adap- 
 tations of pre-Christian Crosses at a very early date. 
 The annexed forms are called by Martigny "disguised 
 Crosses," or ancient symbols adopted by Christians, 
 C\jn rn as sufficiently like the Cross or Tree 
 (P\$T r*i t °f punishment to convey to their 
 ^^ minds the associations of the Lord's 
 
 Sufferings, without proclaiming it in a manner which 
 would shock heathen prejudice unnecessarily. 
 
 Constantine appears to have felt that a time 
 was come when his authority could enforce a 
 different feeling with regard to the death of the 
 Lord for men. It must have been more fully 
 understood, after the Council of Nice, that the 
 perfection of His Humanity involved human sub- 
 mission to death ; and after crucifixion had ceased 
 to exist as a disgraceful punishment, it was at once 
 sanctified as the manner of the completion of the 
 Sacrifice of the Humanity. Constantine, at all events, 
 seems to have set the example of public as well as 
 private use of the Cross. He impressed it on the 
 arms of his soldiers, and erected large Crosses on 
 the Hippodrome and elsewhere in Constantinople. 
 The form of his standard or Labarum is well known. 1 
 " It was a long lance, plated with gold, and having a 
 transverse piece like the Cross. Above this, at the 
 end of the lance, and pendent from it, was fixed a 
 crown of gold and jewels. In the centre of the 
 crown was the sign of the Saving Name, that is to 
 say, a monogram designating this sacred name by 
 its two first letters, combined as above, the P in the 
 centre of the X. The Emperor assumed the habit 
 1 Eusebius, Vita Con8t. 1. i. p. 39.
 
 THE CROSS. 197 
 
 of wearing these same letters on the front of his 
 helmet from that time ; and on the transverse piece 
 of the Labarum, which was obliquely crossed by the 
 lance, a kind of veil was hung, a purple web enriched 
 with precious stones, arranged in artistic patterns 
 and dazzling the eye with their splendour, and 
 with magnificent gold embroidery. This veil was as 
 long as it was broad, and had at its upper end, in 
 golden threads, the bust of the Emperor, beloved of 
 God, and those of his children. The Emperor always 
 made use of this preserving standard as a protect- 
 ing sign of Divine power against his enemies, and 
 he had ensigns of the same kind borne in all his 
 armies." x 
 
 Eusebius also refers 2 to the triumphal Cross made 
 and set above the Dragon by Constantine. 3 What- 
 ever degree of Christian knowledge, or of purity 
 of religious motive, may be allowed to the Chris- 
 tian Emperor, it seems to have required at least 
 a sincere belief in Christ, founded on just ideas of 
 His mission and nature, to induce the Roman lord 
 
 1 Prudentius describes the Labarum thus, Contra Symmach. 1 : — 
 
 " Christus purpureum, gemmanti textus in auro, 
 Signabat labarum : clypeorum insignia Christus 
 Scripserat : ardebat summis crux addita cristis." 
 Medals, generally speaking, place the Monogram on the veil, some- 
 times with the words of Constantine's supposed vision, 'Ev tovt$ 
 vIku ; the Monogram took the place, on the banner-spear, of the 
 dragon or serpent, which had become an usual ornament of the 
 Roman ensigns, having been adopted from Greek or rather Syrian 
 standards. Hence Draconarius was the title of a standard-bearer ; 
 "vexillifer, qui fert vexillum ubi est draco depictus" (Du Cange, 
 ad verbum). The term passed into Christian usage, and was applied 
 to the bearer of the Labarum in battle, and also to Cross-bearers in 
 Church-processions. The Italian gonfalon, gonfaloniere, &c. , are 
 said to be derived from the custom of bearing the Labarum. 
 
 2 Vit. C. iii. 3. 
 
 3 See also Bingham, Antiq. s. v. Crucifix.
 
 198 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 of the world with one hand to suppress the punish- 
 ment of the Cross, owning its infamy ; and with the 
 other to adopt the symbol of Christ's death, and as 
 far as he could, to share the infamy of the Cross. 
 His mind was probably encumbered with the wrecks 
 of Pagan mythology and unsatisfying philosophies. 
 It seems hardly to follow that he meant to adore the 
 Sun because it appears on his coins with the title of 
 Invictus ; and his refusing to persecute the Pagans 
 of his time seems to be the principal reason for his 
 being claimed by their successors in our own day. 
 In any case, it seems to have been the idea of a 
 believer, as well as of a successful soldier, to make 
 a despised and dreaded symbol the token of union 
 for his vast empire. 
 
 The words of Tertullian may suffice to show the 
 general use of the Cross in private, in his time. 1 
 " Wherever we go, or whatever we attempt, in all 
 coming in or going out, at putting on our shoes, at 
 the baths, at table, at candle-lighting, at bed-time, 
 in sitting down to rest ; whatever converse we are 
 employed in, we impress our foreheads with the sign 
 of the Cross." This is paralleled by the words of 
 St. Chrysostom : " The cross is found everywhere 
 with rulers and people, with women and men ; in 
 the camp and in private chambers, on silver plate 
 and in wall-paintings." 2 The Pagan feeling against 
 the Cross after Constantine's time is shown by 
 
 1 "Ad omnem progressum atque promotum ; ad omnem aditum 
 atque exitum ; ad calceatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad 
 oubilia, ad sedilia — qusecunque nos eonversatio exerceat, frontem 
 cruris signaculo terimus. " (De Cor. Mil. c. iii.) 
 
 iravraxoC ibplaKtffQai (t. aravpov) irapd. apxuvfft, napd apxop.4voi$, 
 wapcL yvvat^l, irapd dfSpaai . . . . ti> ovKois Kal iv waffTaaiv, £v 
 aKfuecrtu dpyvpoTs, iv toixw ypcupais.
 
 THE CROSS. 199 
 
 Julian reproaching the Christians for making ges- 
 tures in the air of the sign of the Cross on their 
 foreheads — aKiaypacpovvre^ iv to> fiereoTrw — and by 
 the accusation of worshipping it as a fetiche. See 
 the words of the Pagan Caecilius : " They also tell us 
 wondrous tales of a man who suffered capital punish- 
 ment for his crimes, and (that they adore) the doleful 
 tree of his Cross with solemn rites — a tree befitting 
 such wretches and villains ... so that they wor- 
 ship that which they deserve." 1 He is answered 
 simply : " We neither worship nor desire the Cross." 2 
 This is referred to also by Molanus, 3 which, with 
 many other passages, is enough to show that Con- 
 stantine, in accepting the Cross as his symbol 
 and personal cognizance, was assuming a despised 
 and unpopular emblem to which he need not have 
 given prominence, and which he would hardly have 
 felt compelled to retain, but by understanding the 
 importance of the Death of the Lord in Whom he im- 
 perfectly believed. He avowed to the Pagans, and 
 therefore more vigorously enforced on Christendom, 
 the sacrificial act of death for man. The office of Christ, 
 marked by the Cross, was now distinguished from 
 His Person, marked by the Monogram. And though 
 the further advance from the purely symbolic cross 
 which indicates the Lord's Death, to the Crucifixion- 
 picture which attempted to represent it, and s-till 
 further to the portrait Crucifix, may have taken 
 nearly 300 years, as it did, that advance seems highly 
 
 1 "Etqui hominem suramo supplicio pro facinore punitum, et 
 cruris ligna feralia eorum cseremoniis fabulantur, congruentia 
 perditis sceleratisque . . . ut id colant quod merentur." (Minucius 
 Felix Octav. cc. ix. and xxix. ) 
 
 2 "Crucem nee colimus nee optamus." 3 " De Picturis," c. v.
 
 200 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 natural. With whatever reverence the Lord's cor- 
 poreal sufferings may have been veiled in symbolism 
 — though reticence and distant contemplation of that 
 awful subject may have been as desirable then as it 
 is now — the progress of large sections of the Church 
 to actual representation of Him in the act of death 
 seems to have been logically and practically certain, 
 from the time when His execution as a malefactor 
 was avowed and proclaimed to the heathen. The 
 transition from the symbol to the representation 
 will be traced out, in the several steps of which we 
 have evidence, when we come to speak of the Crucifix. 
 What is principally to be said here is, that as the 
 words Cross and Crucifix are in great measure 
 confounded in their popular use in most European 
 languages, the following distinction may be taken 
 between them, generally speaking ; — that a Cross 
 with any symbol or other representation of a Victim 
 attached to it or placed on it, passes into the cruci- 
 ficial or sacrificial category. 
 
 The usual threefold division of the form of the Cross 
 into the Crux Decussata, or St. Andrew's Cross ; the 
 Crux Commissa, Tau, Egyptian or patibulary, Cross ; 
 and the Immissa, or upright four-armed Cross (Greek 
 or Latin), seems most convenient. It is probable that 
 the distinction between the Greek or Latin, Eastern 
 or Western symbol, belongs to the time succeeding 
 the Iconoclastic controversy. The Latin Cross, as all 
 know, has the upright of greater length than the 
 transverse limb : the Greek is equal in all four 
 limbs. The Latin mind continued to insist specially 
 on the Cross as the actual instrument of the Lord's 
 Death, and carefully selected that particular form of
 
 THE CROSS. 201 
 
 it on which in all probability He suffered. The 
 symbol of intersecting bars was enough for the 
 Greek, who stood at more reverent and mystic 
 distance from the manner and details of the Event, 
 and viewed the Cross as a symbol of Eedemption, or 
 of the Person of the Lord in full Humanity. Perhaps 
 the chief examples of this wide, and in fact truly 
 Catholic meaning are to be found in the sixth and 
 seventh centuries. At that time, speaking generally, 
 the symbolism of the Cross seems to have been 
 nearly as follows: — The Cross itself represented the 
 Second Person of the Trinity in His Divinity and 
 Humanity, as God made Flesh, even to the death 
 appointed for all flesh, for the salvation of all men. 
 We find it accordingly, as in some examples given 
 below, ornamented to the utmost power of the 
 mosaicist or painter ; and if it occur in sculpture, it 
 begins to be varied in form, or is borne in triumph 
 by the Lord Himself, or an Apostle, affording the 
 earliest examples of what is called the Triumphal 
 Cross, the Sign of His accomplished work, which 
 is often placed in the hand of figures of Christ at 
 the present day. It seems to have been to every 
 believer the sign of the whole New Covenant, and of 
 his own personal share in it. It had also been asso- 
 ciated (as will be seen almost immediately) with 
 Baptism since the time of Constantine, so that the 
 leading idea of Death, with which it was still con- 
 nected, was that of Christian baptism into Christ's 
 death. Consequently, though now long separated 
 from the Monogram, and confessed as the penal 
 Cross, it only developed the idea of the Monogram, 
 and was expressive of the Lord's Work, as that 
 
 k 3
 
 202 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 expressed His Name. Meanwhile pictures of the 
 Crucifixion, and Crosses bearing the Apocalyptic 
 Lamb, were coming into use, and formed another 
 class of symbols with further import, leading to deve- 
 lopments of meditation, if not of doctrine, on the 
 Manner and Nature of the Death of the Sacrifice for 
 Man. Still the Cross itself meant that and more ; 
 for it stood for Christ and all His work. The best 
 example of this is the great mosaic of St. Apollinaris 
 in Classe, near Eavenna, a.d. 545, so often referred to 
 in these pages. Its subject is the Transfiguration, and 
 photographs of it are to be had in this country ; but 
 it is sufficiently represented in Ciampini's " Vetera 
 Monumenta." It covers the vault of an apse, and 
 is described in the chapter on Mosaics. Its Cross is 
 of the Western form, lightly widened (pattee) at the 
 extremities, and so tending towards what is called 
 the Maltese form. It is ornamented in colour as 
 brilliantly as possible, and at its intersection appears 
 (for perhaps the first time) a Face of our Lord. It 
 is scarcely discernible in Ciampini's small engraving, 
 but it is clearer in the photograph, and the author 
 has personally verified it. It seems to import no 
 more than the name or Monogram ; but it is found 
 again on the oil-vessels of Monza. 1 
 
 The figure of St. Apollinaris in this mosaic con- 
 nects the upper and lower divisions of the composi- 
 tion in the beautiful and time-honoured arrangement 
 which may be observed in Orgagna's Last Judgment, 
 in Michael Angelo's (in tripled form), and (in its 
 frankest and most beautiful shape), in Titian's As- 
 sumption of the Virgin. The ascent of the mountain 
 1 See Martigny, s. v. Crucifix et infra.
 
 THE CROSS. 203 
 
 is indicated by trees and birds, accompanied by the 
 sheep of the Gospel. The Holy Dove is not repre- 
 sented, the mosaic having reference to the Trans- 
 figuration only, as described in the three first Gospels. 
 Above the Cross are the letters 1MDUC, which 
 Ciampini interprets as " Immolatio Domini Jesu 
 Christi." Below it is "Salus Mundi." Didron 
 however asserts, in " Christian Iconography," 1 that 
 the upper inscription is really the usual IX9T2, 
 on the authority of M. Lacroix, who has given 
 particular attention to the Church of St. Apol- 
 linaris in Classe. A very curious silver cross in 
 the Duomo of Eavenna, composed of medallions, is 
 referred to the sixth century, and called the Cross 
 of St. Agnello. The central medallion is larger than 
 the others, and represents Christ seated in Glory 
 in the act of blessing. He is standing with the 
 same gesture on the back of the same piece of 
 metal. 
 
 In the Pontifical, or Bishop's Office-book, of 
 Ecbert, brother of Eadbert, King of Northunibria 
 (consecrated Archbishop of York in 732), there 
 
 1 Diction. Icon. Christ, vol i. 367. Bohn. " Christ is embodied 
 in the Cross as He is in the Lamb, or as the Holy Spirit in the 
 Dove * * * In Christian iconography, He is actually present 
 under the form and semblance of the Cross. The Cross is our 
 crucified Lord in person, &c. &c." In the ninth century the praises 
 of the Cross were sung as of a god or hero, and expressions of this 
 kind descend into modern hymns. Hrabanus Maurus, the pupil of 
 Alcuin and Abbot of Fulda, wrote a poem in honour of the Cross, 
 de Laudibus Sanctse Crucis. See his complete works, fol. Col. 
 Agrippinse (Cologne), 1626, vol. i. pp. 273 — 337. He quotes St. 
 Jerome's comparison (Comment, in Marcum) of "species crucis 
 forma quadrata mundi," — embracing the four quarters of the 
 universe ; and of the birds, who, when they fly, take the form of 
 the Cross in mid-air — of the swimmer, of a person in prayer, of the 
 ship with squared yards. "The letter T," he continues, "may 
 be called the sign of the Cross and of our salvation,"
 
 204 PKIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 is an office for the dedication of a Cross, which 
 makes no direct mention of any human form thereon. 1 
 " We pray Thee to sanctify to Thyself this token of 
 the Cross, which the religious faith of thy servant 
 hath set up, with all devotion of his spirit as for 
 a trophy of Thy victory and our redemption. Here 
 let the splendour of the Divinity of Thy only- 
 begotten Son be bright in the gold ; may the glory 
 of His Passion shine forth from the Tree, may our 
 redemption from death burst forth in the Blood, and 
 in the brightness of the jewel- work ; may (He or It) 
 be the protection of His own, their certain confi- 
 dence of hope ; may it confirm them {suorum appears 
 to be restricted to clergy) in the faith, along with 
 nobles and commons ; may it strengthen in hope, and 
 make fast in peace ; may it increase their victories, 
 enlarge them with prosperity, avail them for ever in 
 time, and unto the life of Eternity." 
 
 This passage indicates a curiously mingled state of 
 thought or feeling. The Cross is a symbol of Christ 
 and a token of His victory : it is of material wood, 
 gold, jewels, &c. ; but a sacramental power seems to 
 be considered as adherent to the symbol ; its conse- 
 cration gives it personality ; and it is to be addressed 
 in prayer as if possessed of actual powers. For a 
 time this state of ideas might do but little harm, at 
 
 1 (V. Surtees Society, 1853, pp. 111—113.) " Quaesumus ut 
 consecres Tibi hoc signum Crucis, quod tota mentis devotione 
 famuli tui religiosa tides construxit trophseum scilicet victoriae 
 tuae et redemptions nostra. Radiet hie Unigeniti Filii Tui 
 splendor divinitatis in auro, emicet gloria passionis in ligno, in 
 cruore rutilet nostras mortis redemptio, in splendore cristalli 
 nostra mortis redemptio, ut suorum protectio, spei certa fiducia, 
 eos simul cum gente et plebe fide confirmet, spe solidet, pace con- 
 societ ; augeat triumphis, amplificet secundis, proficiat eis ad 
 perpetuitatem temporis et ad vitam asternitatis," &c. &c.
 
 THE CROSS. 205 
 
 least among the educated clergy ; but one cannot help 
 seeing in it the germs, not only of idolatrous repre- 
 sentation of a person, but of gross fetichism, in sup- 
 posing virtue inherent in the wood and metal. If 
 the Cross were once allowed to be sacred for any 
 reason except its meaning, the worship of Christ 
 would be obstructed, as it were, and directed to the 
 material image. And this is tested, as in the case 
 of different statues of the Blessed Virgin, by the 
 fact of one statue being popularly preferred to 
 another, as more blessed, or sacred, or powerful for 
 good. 
 
 THE CROSS OF BAPTISM. 
 
 The Cross, of course, conveyed, to the earliest 
 Christians as to ourselves, the personal lesson of 
 sacrifice, or self-dedication to Christ, and the thought 
 of His command to " take up the Cross." Hence 
 doubtless its constant use in times of actual or 
 remembered persecution, when the idea of Death in 
 Christ was a terribly practical and familiar one, and 
 when baptism into His death had a literal meaning 
 of personal danger, and of sharing His sufferings. Ac- 
 cordingly we find the earliest Crosses associated with 
 all ideas involved in the rite of Baptism. As the 
 sign of the Lord's life and humanity, the Cross is 
 connected with both the Sacraments ; but the con- 
 tinual and exclusive contemplation of it as a sign of 
 sacrifice, which is involved in the use of the Crucifix, 
 tends to forgetfulness of its close connection with 
 Baptism. This, however, is observable, in particular, 
 in the ancient and celebrated Lateran Cross, so called; 
 which is referred to the time of Constantine, and
 
 206 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 apparently accepted as of that date by Archbishop 
 Binterim. 1 A reproduction of the frontispiece of this 
 volume, representing the Cross in question, is given 
 at p. 192. The original was in mosaic, and though 
 restored by Nicolas IV., was not probably modified as 
 to subject. It is a plain cross, with flattened and 
 widening extremities, having a medallion of the Lord's 
 Baptism at its intersection. The Holy Spirit, in form 
 of a Dove with the Nimbus, hovers above ; and from 
 Him seems to proceed the baptismal fountain, which 
 at the Cross-foot becomes the source of the Four 
 "Rivers, Gihon, Pison, Tigris, Euphrates. Between 
 the rivers is the Holy City of God, guarded by the 
 archangel Michael, behind whom springs up a palm- 
 tree, on which sits the Phoenix (with the Nimbus) 
 as a symbol of Christ. Two stags below, near the 
 waters, represent the heathen, seeking baptism ; and 
 three sheep on each side stand, as usual, for the 
 Hebrew and Gentile Churches. This relic should 
 be compared with a similar one given by De Bossi, 2 
 where the Cross stands on a hill, and the four 
 rivers and spring form its foot, with stags, &c, and 
 also with the Baptism-painting in the Cemetery of 
 St. Pontianus (eighth century), and the similar collec- 
 tion of emblems on a seal or medallion, given by 
 Dr. Northcote. 3 All have special reference to Bap- 
 tism, and connect the Cross with the Baptism of 
 the Lord, rather than with His death. In later 
 times, Crosses were made like that of Mainz, orna- 
 mented with elaborate metal-work, and containing 
 
 1 " Denkwurdigkeiten, " vol. iv. parti. , 
 
 2 "De Titulis Carthageniensibus. ' 
 
 3 Iu " Horna Sotteranea. "
 
 THE CROSS. 207 
 
 almost the whole Biblical cycle of Old and New 
 Testament images, type and antitype answering to 
 each other. 1 
 
 The familiar image of the Kiver or Pavers of 
 Baptism of course reminds us of the actual stream 
 of Jordan. It is well worth the consideration of any 
 thoughtful person of our own day, how Hebrew eyes 
 have looked on that strange river, since the feet 
 of the priests touched it in the days of Joshua ; and 
 then how, since the Priest and Sacrifice of Humanity 
 entered it for Baptism, it has drawn to it the thoughts 
 of all His followers ; so as to continue to this day 
 the symbol of Death and the new birth ; even to the 
 Puritan mind, in its peevish rejection of all the his- 
 torical Past of the human Church and the human 
 race. Overwork and idleness, mutiny and oppres- 
 sion, vice and monotony, and the unspeakable and 
 unavoidable dulness of their lives and thoughts, 
 have not taken away entirely, either from the 
 British artizan and ploughman, or the transatlantic 
 negro, some glimmering of strange hope in the 
 name of the mystic Jordan. It represents to them 
 the greatness of Death without his terrors. It is 
 the river they yet hope to pass in the Spirit, 
 when they shall be gone forth to the presence of 
 Christ, from the dull and terrible world in which 
 they have to look for Him unseeing. In their 
 imaginations Jordan is the boundary stream between 
 penal labour and the rest of reward, — between the 
 promised land and the outer Edom. Associations of 
 this sort have at all times directed the thoughts of 
 Christians in all places towards that separated and 
 
 1 See account below of the Station-Cross of Mainz.
 
 208 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 unknown river, so far away from and so unlike any- 
 other stream : not charged, like any other stream, to 
 fulfil the common wants of man and bless him with 
 ordinary blessings, but having its source and its 
 outflow, and all the line of its tortuous and violent 
 wanderings in desert places where no man dwells. 
 It may be said with but little exception, that no 
 permanent habitation of man .gver stood beside 
 Jordan, no home except the tent of the shepherd 
 and the robber ; that scarcely any boat ever floated 
 on its waters ; that none except wild men who have 
 never seen the world, or hermits who have quitted 
 it for ever, or travellers and pilgrims for a season, 
 ever drank of them or bathed in them. Yet to this 
 day it is the special Water of solemn Baptism ; and 
 the whole Greek Church desires immersion in its 
 waters, without which pilgrimage to Jerusalem is 
 incomplete. The traveller observes the curious 
 analogies of its appearance, which remind him of 
 the life and death of man ; how it flows through 
 desert lands and falls into a desolate sea, ending to 
 all appearance all in vain and in bitterness, as life 
 so often does. He notices that feature which the 
 ancient illuminators dwell on with special energy 
 of drawing, the strange tortuousness of its course ; 
 and in particular, how the many turns of its whirling 
 and vehement stream appear from time to time sud- 
 denly at his horse's feet, like the coils of a snake 
 gliding through cover, so that the Eiver of death 
 opens before hirn as a pitfall ; how the cliffs of its 
 steep banks allow no passage or landing for the 
 strongest swimmer. Thus it always has impressed 
 those who have seen it : it is one of the most
 
 THE CKOSS. 209 
 
 striking and important natural objects in the world, 
 because, perhaps more than all other objects, it 
 bears witness to the visible Presence of God of old, 
 and to His interference in the world. It is like no 
 other river ; no other place or thiDg is to this day in 
 the same sense and degree a Sign to men. 
 
 The use of the ribbon-like stream of Jordan in the 
 ancient mosaics has been fully described in the chapter 
 on that subject, as the death-stream separating the 
 Church militant from the Church Triumphant. In 
 these, too, the Cross represents the person of our Lord ; 
 as in the great picture of the church of St. Puden- 
 tiana at Ronie. Another baptismal Cross worthy of 
 special notice is that of the catacomb of St. Ponti- 
 anus, where it is found as one of the chief ornaments 
 of a regular baptistery, with the A and a> hung from 
 its arms, and flower-work on each side. Near it is a 
 Baptism of the Lord in Jordan, which appears to 
 have been restored in the eighth century, but, to 
 judge by the photograph, gives signs of a more 
 ancient and able picture below. 
 
 It is- now an unanswerable question whether the 
 Christians of the primitive or martyr 1 ages made use 
 of th« Cross in private ; that is to say, on rings or 
 gems, or by wearing actual Crosses for ornaments. 
 Martigny refers to Perret l for certain stones ap- 
 parently belonging to rings, on which the Cross 
 is engraved, and which appear to be of date prior 
 to Constantine. At that time, perhaps, the prin- 
 cipal distinction between the Cross and the com- 
 plete Monogram, was that the Cross was felt to 
 remind the believer of the prospect of suffering for 
 1 " Catacombes de Rome," iv. pi. xvi. 74. m
 
 210 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Him Whose name the Monogram expressed. The 
 Tau-Cross is combined with the Monogram, in an 
 engraved stone of the earliest epoch, given by Didron. 1 
 The serpent is coiled round the cross foot, the 
 A and a> are on each side above, and two doves 
 below with the word SALVS. The general use of 
 the Cross in all times of public and private suffering 
 is well described by Tertullian (above) and by St. 
 Paulinus of Nola, who placed the following inscrip- 
 tion under a cross at the entrance of the church 
 of St. Felix : — " Behold how the crowned Cross stands 
 above the vestibule of the house of Christ the Lord, 
 promising high wage for hard toil. Take thou the 
 Cross, who wouldest fain bear the Crown." 2 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting small Cross for per- 
 sonal wearing now in existence is the pectoral or 
 ijK6\7TLov in gold and niello, last described by M. St. 
 Laurent. 3 It is said to contain a fragment of the wood 
 of the true Cross, and bears on its front EMANOTHA 
 NOBISCVM DEVS ; on the back, " Crux est vita 
 mihi ; mors, inimice tibi ; " in the same characters. 
 It must date from near the time of the Empress 
 Helena, when many like Crosses began to be worn. 
 
 There is a passage from Severus Sanctus Endel- 
 echius or Entelechius, a Christian poet, 4 probably of 
 
 1 " Iconographie Chretienne," vol. i. p. 396. 
 
 2 " Cerne coronatam Domini super atria Christi 
 
 Stare crucem, duro spondentem celsa labore 
 Pmemia. Telle crucem, qui vis auferre coronam." 
 
 ' (See Binterim, vol. iv. part i. and Molanus De Imaginibus, s. v. 
 De Ficturis.) 
 
 3 Didron's " Annales Archeologiques," vol. xxvi. p. 7. 
 
 4 Seyerus Sanctus Endelechius. Poema de Mortibus Bourn, an 
 eclogue in choriambic metre. Gottingen, 8vo. The editor appears 
 to consider the authenticity of the poem and the personality of its
 
 THE CROSS. 211 
 
 Aquitaine, in the latter part of the fourth century, 
 where a Christian shepherd has secured his flock from 
 disease, by planting or marking between their horns or 
 on their foreheads (signum mediis frontibus additum) 
 the Cross of "the God whom men worship in the great 
 cities." " The sign which they tell us is that of the 
 Cross of the One God Who is worshipped in the 
 great cities, Christ, the glory of Eternal Deity." l 
 
 This is interesting in more than one particular, as 
 it confirms, accidentally to all appearance, what we 
 know of the prevalence of the faith in the cities of the 
 empire rather than in the country, so that Pag anus 
 came to mean an untaught believer in the old gods ; 
 and also, supposing the works of Entelechius to 
 be genuine, the passage illustrates the tendency of 
 the first disciples to seek for a sign, or expect 
 miraculous tokens of God's presence with them ; and 
 further, that lingering heathen propensity to call for 
 special interference in everyday matters, which arose 
 from the ancient belief in the local deity of ^Nymphs, 
 Sylvans, Penates, and the like, and which re-appeared 
 in after-time in the universal appeal to patron-saints. 
 
 Count Melchior de Vogue 2 gives a highly interest- 
 ing account of the ruins, or rather the scarcely injured 
 remains, of four ancient Christian towns, on the left 
 bank of the Orontes, between Antioch and Aleppo. 
 They contain many ancient crosses, and were pro- 
 author sufficiently well ascertained. St. Paulinus of Nola mentions 
 him (Ep. ix. or xxviii. Ad Sulp. Severum) as " benedictuiu , i.t. 
 Christianuni virum, amicum meum Entelechium. " 
 
 " Signum, quod perhibent esse crucis Dei 
 Magnis qui colitur solus in urbibus 
 Christus, perpetui gloria numinis," &c. 
 
 1 "Revue Archeologique, " vol. vii. p. 201.
 
 212 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 bably deserted at the same time, on the first Mussul- 
 man invasion. " We are transferred," he says, " to 
 the centre of a Christian society : it is no more the 
 hidden life of the Catacombs, nor an existence of 
 humiliation and fear, yet in its infancy : the tone 
 of these sculptures is that of a period not far 
 removed from the triumph of the Church. . . The 
 ' graffito ' of an obscure painter, who, in decorating a 
 tomb, has traced on the inner surface of the rock, 
 Monograms of Christ, to try his brush and in the 
 enthusiasm of a Christian freeman writes, altering 
 the motto of the Labarum, ' This conquers.' " 
 
 We have already glanced at the feeling of subdued 
 triumph with which the Cross was regarded in the 
 earliest times, as a symbol, first of the Lord's life and 
 death, and then of man's life and death, of hope in 
 Him. It is evidenced by the constant addition of 
 flowers and leaves to the emblem. As late as the oil 
 vessels preserved at Monza, it is represented as a 
 twining and budding tree ; and the cross of the 
 baptistery of St. Pontianus, which is probably at no 
 great distance of time from them, breaks out in 
 golden or silver flowers half way up its stem. 
 
 It is very difficult to assign a date for the public 
 display of the Cross, out of Constantinople ; at least 
 for the time when its display became an ordinary 
 
 1 "On est transporte au milieu de la societe Chretienne, 
 non plus la vie cachee des catacombes, ni l'existence humiliee, 
 
 timide, infante ; inais une vie large, opulente, artistique 
 
 Des croix, des mono-grammes du Christ sont sculptes en relief 
 sur le plupart des portes ; le ton de ces inscriptions indique une 
 epoque voisine du triomphe de l'Eglise. . . . Le graffito d'un 
 peintre obscur, qui decorant un tombeau, a, pour essayer sou 
 pinceau, trace sur le paroi du rocher des monogrammes du Christ, 
 et dans son enthousiasme de Chretien emancipe ecrit, en paraphra- 
 eant le labarum, toito ui/ca, Ceci triomphe."
 
 THE CKOSS. 213 
 
 matter. Boldetti gives an instance of a Tau-Cross, 
 dating A.D. 370, according to the Consuls; but this is 
 after the earlier sarcophagi. This question cannot be 
 decided in the Catacombs, from the unfortunate re- 
 moval of the sarcophagi for arbitrary arrangement 
 in museums, and from the fact that pilgrims of all 
 ages and nations, have habitually inscribed Crosses 
 on the walls of the subterranean cemeteries. The 
 Tau appears in the Callixtine Catacomb, in a sepul- 
 chral inscription referred to the third century, thus : 
 ireT^e. This is frequent. 1 It occurs in black marble 
 mosaic of early date. 2 The Tau is certainly earlier 
 than the Eastern or Western Cross, and may have 
 been used even by Christians, in its pre-Christian 
 sense as the emblem of the future life. In many 
 ancient crucifixions, it is appropriated to the robbers. 
 St. Paulinus of Nola, whose life closes the fourth 
 and extends far into the fifth century, speaks 
 of the Cross as displayed or set up on the ship which 
 was to convey Nicetas, bishop of Daria, on his 
 return voyage from Italy. 3 But from the passage 
 it seems a little doubtful whether Paulinus may not 
 have been thinking, with Jerome, that the squared 
 yard of a Roman vessel under sail was a vivid re- 
 presentation of the Cross : — " And thou shalt go 
 forth victorious, safe from waves and winds, in thy 
 ship, furnished (in or on) its yard-arm with the 
 Token of Salvation." 4 
 
 The idea of the Cross as Anchor of the Christian 
 
 1 De Rossi, Bullet. 1863, p. 35. 
 
 2 Boldetti, lib. ii. c. iii. p. 353. 
 
 3 See Gretzer de Cruce, c. xxiv. 
 
 4 " Etrate armata Titulo salutis 
 
 Victor antenna Crucis ibis undis 
 Tutus et Austris."
 
 214 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 soul is found very early, and carried out in numerous 
 inscriptions, gems, &C. 1 Its earlier and freer use in 
 Africa is spoken of by M. Laurent, who quotes De 
 Eossi, 2 where fourth-century marbles are mentioned 
 as bearing the Cross. That of Probus and Proba, we 
 believe, is the only sarcophagus within that age on 
 which the Western Cross appears. 
 
 The Monogram in its older form, with the decussated 
 Cross, appears on the reverse of a medal bearing the 
 name and laurelled bust of the younger Licinius, 
 which must therefore be earlier than 323, the date of 
 the victories near Byzantium which terminated his 
 father's reign. 3 The Cross alone appears, probably for 
 the first time, in the hand of a Victory on the reverse 
 of a coin of Valentinian I. : — the upright Monogram 
 J^ on that emperor's sceptre about 364. 
 
 Both Greek and Roman Crosses, and in particular 
 cruciform Churches, 4 sometimes possess one or two 
 additional cross-limbs, shorter than the main or 
 central one. The upper additional bar is supposed 
 by Didron to stand for the title over the head of the 
 Crucified One. If this be so, the lower one may be 
 taken to represent the suppedaneum, or support for 
 His feet. In cases where the shorter limbs are both 
 placed above the main cross-bar, as in Boldetti, 8 
 they certainly represent the crosses of the male- 
 
 1 See "Annales Archeologiques" (Didron aine), vol. xxvi. , 
 frontispiece. 
 
 2 " De Titulis Christianis Carthageniensibus." 
 
 3 See Father Garrucci, Appendix to his works on gilt glasses of 
 the Primitive age — " Numismatica Constantiniana, portante segpi 
 di Christianismo." 
 
 4 Constantine's ancient Churches of St. Peter, St. Paolo fuori della 
 Mura, and Sta. Maria Maggiore, were all built in the form of the 
 Cross : in the last, the apse alone projects from the upright bar. 
 
 * Lib. 1. cii. p. 271.
 
 THE CEOSS. 215 
 
 factors. There are two coins of Yalens and 
 Anthemius 1 one of which, a nummus cereus, has three 
 crosses, the other has one with two smaller cross- 
 beams under the larger one. 
 
 The term Station-Cross is derived from the Eoman 
 military term Statio, and is applied to a large Cross on 
 the chief altar, or in some principal place in a Church, 
 which may be removed or carried in procession to 
 another place, which it then constitutes a special 
 place of prayer. 2 The distinction between the Tri- 
 umphal and the Passion Cross is connected with this ; 
 the former of course symbolizing the victory gained 
 by the sufferings which the other commemorates. 
 
 The statement of Bede 3 relating to the four kinds 
 of wood of which the Cross of our Lord was made — 
 the upright of cypress, the cross-piece of cedar, the 
 head-piece of fir, and the suppedaneum of box — 
 departs from the tradition that the smaller parts were 
 respectively of olive and of palm. For this, Curzon * 
 refers to the apocryphal Gospel of Mcodemus. It 
 is part of the Legend of the Cross ; beginning with 
 Adam's prayer at the gates of Paradise for a branch 
 of the tree of life in his last sickness, which was 
 planted on his grave, and from whose wood, in the 
 fulness of time, the Cross was made. With this, 
 or the mediaeval history of the Cross, when the sign 
 became more to men than the event it represented, 
 we are not now concerned. 
 
 The only remarks to be made by way of conclusion 
 
 or summary of this chapter are much as follows. 
 
 Whatever the various meanings of the decussated 
 
 1 Angelo Rocca, Bibl. Vaticana, vol. ii. p. 253. 
 
 2 See above on the subject of the Labaruro. 
 
 3 Binterim, vol. iv. i. p. 501. 
 
 4 "Visits to Monasteries," &c, p. 163.
 
 216 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 symbol may have been in Egypt and elsewhere, before 
 the Lord's coming, the cross letter X was the initial of 
 His Name or Title. As such, it came to mean, as we 
 say, or recall to the Christian mind, all the thoughts 
 and associations which that Name can awaken — and 
 stood in the place of a portrait-figure, as a symbol 
 of the God-Man. For a time it was, as it were, all 
 things to all men. To the first members of the 
 Church it represented their Master, Who was all in all 
 to them : and in that view, a somewhat wider and 
 happier one than any of later days, it represented all 
 the Faith; the Person of Christ; His death for Man; 
 and the life and death of man in Christ. The 
 Lateran and other Crosses point to Baptism and all 
 its train of Christian thought, without immediate 
 reference to the manner of the Lord's Death. Con- 
 stantine indeed 1 seems to have attached the symbolic 
 Lamb to the Baptist, and the Sacrament he adminis- 
 tered; as well as to the Lord's Supper and the shewing 
 forth of Christ's Death. The tendency of Christian 
 feeling towards special or exclusive contemplation of 
 the Lord's suffering and death is matter of ecclesias- 
 tical history: — and its effect on Christian emotion, 
 and therefore on Christian art, is the transition 
 from the Cross into the Crucifix. That transi- 
 tion seems to have been a certainty, from the 
 substitution of the penal Cross in the Monogram ; 
 and from that earnest meditation on the sacrifice of 
 the Apocalyptic Lamb, to which the great mosaics 
 bear special witness. 
 
 The use of the Crucifix, or representations of the 
 Crucifixion, in the Early Church, is matter for a 
 subsequent chapter. 
 
 1 See Anastasius, Vita Pontificum, Sylvester.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EUCHARISTIC SYMBOLISM AND REPRESENTATION. 
 
 The Cross has been connected in the last chapter, 
 as it undoubtedly was in the earliest art of the primi- 
 tive church, with the Sacrament of Baptism. Being 
 the symbol of our Lord's Person, and of His death 
 it stood also for our Baptism unto Death in Him. 
 Before we enter on the history of the Crucifix, or the 
 various crucifixion-scenes in painting or sculpture 
 which remain from the earliest date of such works, 
 it seems best to answer, as well as we can, the ques- 
 tion ; — what examples are left us of attempts at re- 
 presenting Eucharistic rites, or the earliest Breaking 
 of Bread, the repetition of the Lord's Supper, accord- 
 ing to His command, and the commemorative sacri- 
 fice of His Body and Blood ? It may be repeated 
 here, though it has been repeatedly observed before, 
 that the key-note and connecting principle of Primi- 
 tive Church Art is the interpretation of the Old 
 Testament by the New, and the confirmation of the 
 New by the Old. Accordingly, the promise to 
 Adam at the fall, the sacrifice of Isaac, the de- 
 liverance of Joseph from Egypt, the Eock stricken 
 in the Wilderness, the Brazen Serpent, the history of 
 Jonah, and the' deliverance of Daniel, with many other 
 subjects, are again and again insisted on as directly 
 
 L
 
 218 PRIMITIVE CHUECH ART. 
 
 prophetic of the coming and the sacrifice of Jesus ' 
 Christ of Nazareth. These pictures were indisputably 
 drawn among the graves of martyrs, or witnesses to 
 death, by other men of like creed and temper ; who 
 were prepared to die in attestation of their belief that 
 these episodes of Hebrew history were meant, as God 
 would have it, to shadow forth the Life and Death of 
 His Only Begotten Son. That is their witness to us. 
 We have now to consider what symbolical images or 
 adumbrations of the Paschal Supper are left to us. For 
 if anything in the ancient covenant is symbolical of 
 the new, it is that. And though the Death of the 
 Lord closed and sealed the testimony of anticipatory 
 Sacrifice, it becomes, for that reason, of the greatest 
 interest for us to know in what form the Church took 
 up and obeyed His plain and unmistakeable command 
 to repeat the breaking of the Bread and outpouring 
 of the Cup in remembrance of Him. 
 
 The Agape, so frequently represented in the Cata- 
 combs, is of course the first thing in early art which 
 appeals to our notice on this subject. These meet- 
 tings undoubtedly took place in apostolic times 
 (1 Cor. xi. 20) and may be for the present, described 
 as suppers which preceded the actual Eucharistic 
 breaking of bread at that early date. For it is at 
 least to be presumed that at solemn assemblies to 
 obey the Lord's commemorative injunction, the order 
 of His Last Supper would be followed ; and that the 
 celebration, the breaking and pouring forth, took place 
 after the meal, and towards its end. 1 The two latter 
 passages seem only to prove that when the Church 
 was assembled in private houses, the Eucharist was 
 
 1 See St. John xii. 2. 4 ; Acts ii. 46 ; xx. 11.
 
 SACRAMENTAL PICTURES. 219 
 
 celebrated in them. The real question, of course 
 only to be answered with grave limitations, is what 
 constituted such a congregation or assemblage of the 
 Church as had a right to hold the Agape ; supposing 
 that it was always a prelude to the Eucharist, which 
 in all times of Apostolic purity and discipline it must 
 have been. No doubt the presence of an Apostle, or 
 of the bishop, or chief person in a given church would 
 be required. St. Ignatius's letter to the Srnyrnean 
 Church says, "It is forbidden either to baptize 
 or to hold Agape without your bishop." 1 Doubt- 
 less, in all their churches there would be a ten- 
 dency to irregular f eastings of this description, 
 chiefly from old heathen habit. For though Mar- 
 tigny justly calls attention to Hebrew 7 customs of 
 funeral festivity, and argues that the Christian 
 assemblies were derived entirely from them, there 
 can be no doubt of the close resemblance of Hebrew, 
 Christian, and heathen funeral feasts alike. This 
 is M. Eaoul Eochette's view, and it is fully con- 
 firmed by Prof, Mommsen's essay. 2 It is possible 
 that in the days of persecution this resemblance may 
 have been welcome to the Christian congregations, as 
 avoiding dangerous observation. And, from among 
 the various representations we possess, there is no 
 disputing the close resemblance between the Agap& 
 of the St. Domitilla catacomb, or those of St. 
 Callixtus, and the certainly heathen or gentile ban- 
 quet of the seven priests in the Gnostic catacomb. 
 In the earliest times the Agapoe naturally began to 
 
 1 " Xon licet sine episcopo, neque baptizare, neque agapen cele- 
 brare, noielv." Cap. viii. 
 
 2 "Coutemp. Review," May 1871. 
 
 L 2
 
 220 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 be celebrated in the Catacombs, the tombs of martyrs 
 being used as altars, having arcosolia hollowed out 
 above them. Consequently, as might be expected, 
 the Agape is freely represented in the catacomb of St. 
 Domitilla, as has been said ; and repeatedly in that 
 of St. Callixtus. Nor can there be much doubt 
 that Eucharistic celebration is implied. Yet it seems 
 that the last repast of the Lord with the six disciples 
 (St. John xxi. 2) was present in the mind of the 
 designer ; as well as the last paschal supper of the first 
 Eucharist ; since bread and fish are invariably placed 
 on the table (seven or more baskets of the former). 
 In one instance in the Callixtine, a man is in the act 
 of blessing the bread. Again, it is probable that 
 the Vine, so early and so often represented, was con- 
 nected in Christian thought not only with St. John 
 xv., where the Lord speaks of Himself as the True 
 Vine, but with the Eucharistic blessing, where He 
 speaks of the fruit of the Vine as His Blood. If, 
 as we cannot well avoid doing, we connect the in- 
 stitution of the Lord's Supper with the equally 
 mysterious language of St. John vi. — it is difficult 
 not to connect the similitude of the Vine with both 
 of them. In St. John vi. 5, 6, 8, He speaks of His 
 followers eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood ; 
 in the words of consecration, He says the bread is 
 His Elesh, and the fruit of the vine His Blood. 
 We cannot suppose that His earliest followers failed 
 to notice this ; and if so, it follows of course, that 
 their symbolical vines and grapes had Eucharistic 
 meaning. But so it is, that until the sixth century 
 and the Melchisedech picture of St. Vitale at Ravenna, 
 all representations of the memorial banquets seem to
 
 SYMBOLISM. 221 
 
 point rather to the Agape or commemorative love- 
 feast, than to the memorial sacrifice of bread and 
 wine. It may have been possible that the feast of 
 bread and fish was allowed to be eaten in more pri- 
 vate meetings, without the presence of a bishop or a 
 priest, for whom the sacrificial act was, of course, 
 reserved. This would imply a separation of the 
 Agape from the Eucharist ; but there can be no 
 doubt that such separation took place when the Agap« 
 were discontinued ; and, in all human probability, it 
 had taken place long before, wherever the Agapre had 
 become hopelessly ill-regulated and disorderly, as we 
 shall find below they did become. Moreover, it is 
 forcibly argued by the Eev. M. F. Sadler, 1 that a 
 tradition existed (orally preserved, we must suppose, 
 as a mystery of Christian mysteries) of some directing 
 words of our Lord's, concerning the rites of the prin- 
 cipal act of His worship. For this he relies on the 
 annexed quotation from St. Clement of Borne, 2 
 and it certainly seems to prove well-known and fixed 
 customs dating from Apostolic times, if not preserved 
 to us in Holy Scripture. These, and their celebra- 
 tion, would of course be reserved to the higher orders 
 of the Church ; while there evidently was a tendency 
 to hold love-feasts in a less regular manner. " It 
 behoves us," says St. Clement, " to do all things in 
 order which the Lord has commanded us to per- 
 form at stated times. He has enforced these offer- 
 ings and services to be performed {rdahe 7rpoa<popd<; 
 Kal XeLTovpyias eTnTeXecaOcu) and that not thought- 
 lessly or irregularly, but at the appointed hours and 
 
 1 "The Church and the Age," First Series, p. 275. 
 
 2 Ep. ad. Cor. I. xl.
 
 222 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 times. Where, and by whom He desires these 
 things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His 
 own supreme will; in order that all things, being 
 piously done according to His good pleasure, may 
 be acceptable to Him. They, therefore, who present 
 their offerings at the appointed times are accepted 
 and blessed ; for, inasmuch as they follow the law 
 of the Lord, they sin not." 
 
 In Church art, at all events, it seems that a sense 
 of mystery and awe, — a pious reticence which for the 
 present seems to have vanished from the Christian 
 consciousness — was strong enough, at first, to prevent 
 representations of the Lord's act of typical Self- 
 Sacritice. Eepresentation of His actual fulfilment, 
 in Death, of that and all other types of His Death, 
 was long delayed; even to the sixth century, in 
 which the first Eucharistic celebration-picture is 
 found. That is in St. Vitale, and dates from the 
 latter years of Justinian, about a.d. 550 ; 1 while the 
 earliest known crucifixion-picture is that of the 
 Eabula, Laurentian or Medici MS., dated a.d. 587 
 by its writer. The increasing demand for Eepresen- 
 tation, Personification, and the sight of doctrines 
 which Faith was failing to hold, was prevailing over 
 the Church by that time. 
 
 The subject of the Agapse, and the disorders to 
 
 which they sometimes gave occasion, even from St. 
 
 Paul's time, is admirably treated by M. Eaoul 
 
 Rochette. 2 These repasts may account, he thinks, for 
 
 the relics of cups and platters, knife-handles and 
 
 egg-shells, &c, found in Christian sepulchres. 3 He 
 
 1 St. Vitalis was archbishop in 541. 
 
 - Mem. de l'lnstitut. Inscr. et Belles Lettres, T. xiii. p. 715. 
 
 3 Boldetti, lib. ii. xiv. tab. 5, 59, 60.
 
 SYMBOLISM. 223 
 
 implies, moreover, that old Etruscan custom or in- 
 stinct may have made survivors bury with their dead 
 many objects they had used in life. The disorders are 
 matter of recurrent complaint, from Apostolic times 
 downwards. * " I know many," says St. Augustine, 
 " who hold luxurious drinking bouts over the dead ; 
 and setting dainty meats before corpses, bury them- 
 selves (in intoxication) above the buried, and make 
 their own voracity and drunkenness a matter of re- 
 ligious observance." 2 St. Ambrose, again, speaks of 
 drunken revels in the crypts, and exclaims against the 
 folly of men who thought drunkenness could be a part 
 of sacrifice. 3 That great development of church deco- 
 ration by symbolical and historical painting and 
 mosaic which has St. Paulinus of Nola for its most 
 prominent institutor, was connected, as he says, 4 
 with his wish to give an untaught congregation sub- 
 jects of religious meditation during vigils or festivals, 
 when no special service was going on in church . The 
 picture teaching was no doubt developed in his day, 
 for country-people; as it undoubtedly was for the 
 pilgrims to Eome after the ninth century. 
 
 Be that as it may, one of the earliest representa- 
 tions of the Eucharistic offerings is certainly that of 
 the central-sixth-century mosaic of St. Vitale. On 
 one side of it Abel is standing with hands raised in 
 prayer, clad in tunic and cloak. He has just issued 
 from a house. It is possible that this, with the 
 
 1 1 Cor. xi. 20. 
 
 2 ' Novi multos esse, rpiiluxuriosissime super mortuos bibunt, et 
 epulas cadaveribus exhibeutes super sepultos se ipsos sepeliant, et 
 voracitates ebrietatescpic suas deputeut religioni." (De Moribus 
 Ecclesise, ch. xxxiv.) 
 
 3 De Elia et Jejun. c. xxvii. 
 
 4 Poema xxvi. al. xxxv.
 
 224 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 streaked sky of the mosaic, may indicate a morning 
 or evening sacrifice. At all events, the presence of 
 Abel connects the other figure of the Priest-King, 
 Melchisedech, with the idea of the Sacrifice of the 
 Lamb ; of the death of the sinless for sin, which is 
 involved in the very idea of sacrifice, and therefore 
 with the Death of our Lord. Melchisedech stands 
 before a small oblong altar-table, totally unlike the 
 Roman altar at which Abraham is sometimes re- 
 presented. 1 On it are a chalice, and two loaves of 
 bread. His hands are raised in prayer, not in the 
 act of blessing, and he is clad in apenulaworn over a 
 long tunic and girdle. This mosaic is obviously of 
 great doctrinal interest, when considered as connect- 
 ing the symbolic Bread and Wine with the symbolic 
 Lamb, and substituting the former for the latter. Tt 
 is also an important illustration of the principal and 
 sustained effort of Christian ornament, to impress the 
 fulfilment of the Old Testament by the New as deeply 
 and widely as possible on the mind of the people. 
 
 The Fish so constantly introduced in the Cailix- 
 tine and other pictures of Eucharistic (or at least 
 memorial) repasts, must be connected in thought 
 with the anagrammatic use of the word t^fli"? for our 
 Lord, as well as with His words in St. John v., or the 
 last repast of Gennesaret in the last chapter of that 
 Gospel How thoroughly that occasion was con- 
 nected with the Last Supper may be well understood 
 from the words of Bede ad locum (in Joannis xxi.) 
 " Piscis assus, Christus passus." A glance at the 
 plates of De Rossi's " Eoma Softeranea" will show how 
 this theme is followed out on the walls of St. Callixtus. 
 1 Sarcophagus of Junius Bassn?, Bottari, tav. xv.
 
 SYMBOLISM. 225 
 
 A certain probability of repainting attaches to this 
 catacomb in the minds of many antiquarians. Still, on 
 careful inspection of Mr. Parker's best photographs, 
 the supposed retouches themselves appear to the 
 writer, in most cases, of great antiquity ; and if, 
 as that gentleman is inclined to think, repaintings 
 took place in the time of St. Paulinus of Xola, the 
 original subjects must have been faithfully repeated, 
 and the fifth century gives, at all events, a highly 
 respectable antiquity to these records. 
 
 Martigny argues, from what he considers a general 
 consensus of the Fathers expressed in Bede's rhyme ; 
 and also on a quotation from St. Augustine, 1 that 
 the Agape is to be considered identical with the 
 Eucharist, and the bread and fish the same objects 
 as the bread and wine ; the Body and Blood of 
 Christ in the Transubstantiative sense. This is, 
 of course, arbitrary ; but an important painting re- 
 mains to be described, which has already been 
 alluded to in these pages. Its subject is the mystic 
 Fish bearing a basket of loaves on its back. They 
 are not decussated or crossed, as is most frequently 
 the case in these pictures, but bear a central mark ; 
 which connects them, as Martigny thinks, with the 
 Eastern or Jewish offerings of cakes made from first- 
 ripe corn, which were called mamphula, or Syrian 
 bread. The Fish bears also another object in the 
 basket which is supposed to represent a bottle of 
 wine. It may probably be so, but the pictures in 
 De Rossi and Dr. Xorthcote are so evidently and 
 markedly restored as to be of doubtful authority ; 
 and a good photograph or really close drawing from 
 1 Tract xii. in Joanneni vi. 
 
 L 3
 
 220 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 the original fresco is greatly to be desired. But the 
 reference to St. Jerome, '• None richer than he who 
 bears the body of the Lord in a basket woven of 
 twigs, and His blood in a vial of glass," 1 corresponds 
 in the most interesting and impressive manner with 
 the painting. There can be no doubt that it repre- 
 sents the Lord offering the Bread of Life to mankind. 
 
 These paintings are in the crypt named from St. 
 Cornelia ; near it is the Agape of seven persons, with 
 bread and fish, in seven baskets — having reference, of 
 course, to the feast of Gennesaret, and also to the mira- 
 cle of the seven loaves. 2 It should be remembered, 
 in dwelling on this and the former emblem, that the 
 anagrammatic Fish, though a symbol of the greatest 
 interest, and antiquity, is not a Scriptural emblem, 
 but a grammatical accident. Our Lord never likened 
 Himself or His Flesh to fish as to bread ; and His own 
 use of the fish in parable makes them representative 
 of His Church, and by no means of Himself. Never- 
 theless, His act of blessing and breaking the fish, on 
 three distinct occasions, must always connect them, at 
 least by association, with the Eucharistic banquet. 
 
 The decussated Loaves re-appear on the sar- 
 cophagus of Junius Bassus, as offered to Job by 
 his friends. They are also carried to Daniel by 
 Habbacuc, on the sarcophagus found near the altar 
 of St. Paolo F. M. at Home. 3 The Manna and the Rock 
 are also, and more properly, connected with sacra- 
 mental imagery. But it is a somewhat gratuitous 
 
 ' Ep. ad Rustic, n. xx. 
 
 2 There is, it should be remembered, an Agape of six in the 
 catacomb of SS. Marcellinns and Peter ; Bottari, tav. cxxvii. and 
 woodcut in Martigny. 
 
 3 See chapter on Sculpture, and Martigny's woodcut, s.v. Sar- 
 eophages.
 
 SYMBOLISM. 227 
 
 supposition that they were originally carved with 
 that view. So also with reliefs of the Miracle of 
 Cana. In mediaeval times, since Giotto's picture in 
 the Arena chapel, if not earlier, it has always been 
 held to possess an Eucharistic signification, and to 
 have been so intended by its author ; and thus 
 it no doubt is. 1 But in the very frequent and 
 early representations of the Miracle, it must be 
 observed that the Saviour does not raise His hand 
 in the act of blessing, as the artist might have 
 been expected to make Him do, had there been 
 any design of connecting the miracle with the Last 
 Supper. He is not so represented on the ivory tablet 
 of the Duomo of Eavenna, 2 nor on the beautiful silver 
 urceolus, given in wood-cut by Martigny. 3 It is im- 
 possible to recognise any meaning in these works, as 
 documents of a certain date, except such ideas as 
 their authors clearly meant to convey; and there 
 is great improbability and unreason in crediting 
 the artists of Eavenna or Byzantium in the sixth 
 century with knowledge of, or care for, the realist 
 definitions of the Middle Ages. There can be no 
 doubt that the last miracle of the Galilean lake, and 
 its feast of bread and fish, occurring so soon after the 
 institution of the Eucharist, must have special rela- 
 tion to that event. Yet it has as vivid a connection 
 to all appearance with the first miraculous draught of 
 fishes, and the first charge to St. Peter ; both of which 
 were repeated, as if to restore the fisher-brethren to 
 the well-remembered days of their first faith. But 
 to suppose it was a re-institution of the Eucharist, 
 
 1 See Prof. Ruskin's account of that building in the Arundel 
 Society's papers. 
 
 2 See Bandini, De tab. eburnea. Florence, 1746. 
 
 3 S.V. Eucharistie, and supposed of the fourth century.
 
 228 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 changing bread and wine into bread and fish : — to 
 take it for, granted that the Church of the second 
 or third century took this for granted — on the 
 strength of the Callixtine paintings of Agapse, is 
 altogether gratuitous. To attribute a reserve of 
 meaning to the paintings is something very like 
 claiming the right of reading our own meaning into 
 them. By the historical enquirer, paintings, like other 
 documents, must be held to mean what they say. To 
 the imaginative or polemical student they may mean 
 whatever it pleases Heaven and himself. 
 
 It is not likely that the questions which have arisen 
 as to the authenticity of most of the Catacomb paint- 
 ings will ever be absolutely decided, though they may 
 lapse as the paintings perish. It may still be said 
 that these works maintain the same reverent and 
 mysterious view of the Central Act of Worship as 
 seems also to have been adhered to in the writings of 
 the first ages : — the pictured love-feast serving instead 
 of any representation of the consecration of the Ele- 
 ments. As to the supposed Callixtine picture of 
 the celebrating priest and Oranti, the actual meaning 
 of the figures seems somewhat uncertain, as well as 
 their genuineness. It seems that, as far as graphic 
 representation went, the early Church refused to set 
 forth the celebration of her mysteries before the 
 public eye ; nor does it seem a thing to be rejoiced 
 at that this reserve should ever have been waived. It 
 remains for us to trace the developments of subject 
 in art, which give evidence of the setting of all the 
 currents of popular attention and emotion towards 
 the manner of Our Lord's Death and its special 
 sufferings.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish, in treating this im- 
 portant feature of early if not Primitive Church- 
 decoration, first, between its symbolic and realistic- 
 treatment, secondly, between Crucifixes and Repre- 
 sentations of the Crucifixion. It may be said to be 
 one of the few subjects of Art in which Eeligion 
 should not avail herself of the assistance of Art 
 to the full stretch of technical power. Whatever 
 be the value of the higher gifts of imagination, 
 in realizing the event and its bearings, the literal 
 working out of all its details in a picture is certainly 
 to be avoided : and in many cases, ancient and modern, 
 detail has not been avoided, but rather pursued as an 
 object. The highest subjects of course call forth the 
 greatest energies of the painter or sculptor, and there- 
 fore betray most decisively and painfully the frailties 
 or even degradation of his mind. How many Cruci- 
 fixes or Crucifixions seem to have been looked on by 
 their producers simply as anatomical studies ; how dif- 
 ficult it seems for the artist to avoid dwelling solely 
 and entirely on the physical Agony of the Redeemer ; 
 how easy, and how strangely pleasant, to appeal to 
 what are called the popular emotions by writhing 
 limbs and streams of blood. It is not that these are
 
 230 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 modern offences in particular, for we find them from 
 the very first, though in the earliest instances the 
 Blood of the Lord is dwelt on, apparently, with 
 sacramental allusion. There may be said to be 
 three stages of realism in the treatment of this 
 great subject: and it might have been well, perhaps, 
 if the Church could have rested in the earlier. 
 The first is the combination of the Lamb with the 
 ornamented or emblematic Cross ; the second is 
 the clothed and crowned Crucifix, symbolical of the 
 Priesthood and Kingdom of the Sufferer, and repre- 
 senting the event of Christ's Death for man, and not 
 the piercing of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The 
 third stage of representation is that in which actual 
 details are dwelt upon to appeal to emotion ; and 
 teach the beholder, too literally, to look on Him 
 Whom he has pierced. These classes of represen- 
 tation range as widely as the countless degrees of 
 religious imagination or executive power; and in 
 proportion as the one or the other prevails in the 
 artist, his work is successful, in the artistic sense, or 
 in that of religious teaching. Either his imagination 
 of the event will prevail over all his technical skill in 
 execution, or it will not. If it does, it may prevail 
 over either a low or a high degree of skill and power. 
 One is the case of Angelico, or Fra Bartolomeo, 
 where belief and devotion are great, and executive 
 power is not so great. The other is best exem- 
 plified in the Crucifixion of Tintoret in the Scuola di 
 San Eocca at Venice; where the subject is indeed 
 beyond human reach, but the effort at realization is 
 alike so colossal in power, and so pure from self- 
 display or taint of meaner motive, as to claim the
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 231 
 
 same feeling of reverence from highly-taught, per- 
 haps over-educated Christians, which simpler souls 
 may have felt harmlessly and rightly before the rude 
 mosaics or frescoes of earlier ages. In proportion as 
 self-display enters into the mind of the artist, or as 
 lie begins to forget his subject in his work, it will 
 probably gain in realism, and lose in symbolic power. 
 His soldiers will be well disciplined and his popu- 
 lace outrageous, his Pharisees malevolent, and his 
 disciples mournful : but if he be not a Christian in 
 heart after all, those who look at his work will feel 
 that it is but a capital picture of soldiers, crowd, and 
 Pharisees. "Where, as in Tintoret's case, a mind of 
 vast originality and a hand perfectly trained become 
 the exponents of an intense imagination, possessed 
 with a sense of the reality of the scene and the event, 
 as a fulfilment of Prophecy, or at least a culminating 
 point in all men's history ; the result may well be, 
 as in his picture it is, one of the great achievements 
 of the world. 
 
 The distinction between the Crucifix as an instru- 
 ment of devotion, and a picture of the Crucifixion 
 as a scene, is one of principle as well as convenience. 
 Every variety and combination of the arts of sculp- 
 ture, mosaic, painting, and engraving has been 
 applied to this great subject from the earliest times ; 
 and to all parts of it. P>ut the modern Crucifix and 
 its use form no part of our subject. Within the 
 limits of our period, all representations of the cruci- 
 fied Form of our Lord alone — as well as pictures, 
 reliefs, and mosaics, in which that Form is the central 
 object of a scene — may be considered alike sym- 
 bolical; without historical realism, or artistic appeal
 
 232 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 to emotion. There is doubtless a divergence in the 
 direction of realism ; and appeal to feeling by actual 
 representation is begun, -whenever the human figure is 
 added to the symbolic Cross. 1 The use of the sculp- 
 tured, moulded, or enamelled crucifix or crucifixion 
 in early times, is a development of that of the cross, 
 and the transition between them may have been a 
 certainty from the first ; but the rude efforts of earlier 
 days, with which alone we have to do, can neither 
 call on the imagination by vivid presentation of the 
 actual event, nor awaken passion by appeal to the 
 sense of beauty, nor distress by painful details of 
 bodily suffering. While the primitive rules of repre- 
 sentation were adhered to, as they are to this day in the 
 Greek Church, the picture or Icon dwells on the mean- 
 ing of the event rather than on its resemblance, and 
 shadows forth, rather than represents, the God-Man 
 in the act of death for man. These rules were first 
 infringed by, or naturally collapsed in the presence 
 of, increased artistic power. The paintings of Cima- 
 bue and Giotto, and the reliefs of N. Pisano, brought 
 the personality of the artist into every work, and 
 introduced human motive and treatment, in the 
 artistic sense of the words. To those whose minds 
 
 1 De Rossi (vol. ii. tav. v. p. 355) gives a Cross, with two lambs 
 apparently contemplating it, below one of the usual pictures of the 
 Good Shepherd. Aringhi, "Rom. Subt." ii. 478 (see his index, s.v. 
 Crux): "Crux, cum Chris to illi tixo, neutiquamefiigiariolimsolebat." 
 The Crucifixion he calls " mysticis res coloribus aduinb rata. . . . 
 emblematicis figuratisque modis ; sub innocui videlicet agnijuxUt 
 crucis lignum placide consistentis typo." See Bottari, taw. xxi. 
 xxii. See, however (ib. tav. cxcii.), the crucifix found in the 
 tomb of St. Julius and St. Valentine in the Catacombs, which so 
 much resembles the mosaic crucifix of John VIII. that it can 
 hardly be of very early date. It is generally assigned to Pope 
 Adrian, about 880.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 255 
 
 are drawn to ascetic thought and practice, it has 
 always been natural to meditate, and to communicate 
 their thoughts, upon the bodily Death of the Saviour 
 of mankind. This was done by Angelico and other 
 painters naturally and freely before the Eeformation ; 
 since that period a somewhat polemical and artificial 
 use has been made of this line of thought ; and paint- 
 ing and sculpture have been applied to embody it 
 accordingly, in the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 It may be remarked, before retiring within our 
 proper limits of time, that the use of blood by Giotto 
 and his followers down to Angelico, has doctrinal 
 reference to the Holy Communion, and to Scriptural 
 promises of cleansing by the blood of Christ. 1 Giotto 
 is less inclined to dwell for terror's sake on the bodily 
 suffering of the Passion, than to dwell with awe on its 
 mystery as a sacrifice for Man. But the rise of medi- 
 aeval asceticism, and its attribution of sacramental 
 efficacy to bodily pain, carried painters along with 
 it as well as other men. And in later times, when 
 Christian feeling on the subject was lost, many men 
 seem to have considered the final scene of the 
 Eedemption of Man chiefly as a good opportunity 
 of displaying newly-acquired powers of facial ex- 
 pression and of a knowledge of anatomy. 
 
 If Hallam's division of periods be accepted, which 
 makes the end of the fifth century the beginning of 
 the Middle Ages, the public representation of the 
 Crucifixion may be said to be a mediaeval usage in 
 
 1 As in the Crucifixion over the door of the convent of St. Mark's, 
 Florence, where the blood issues from the feet, in a conventional 
 form, as a crimson cord, which is twined strangely beneath about a 
 skull. Ruskin, "Mod. Paint." vol. ii. p. 125.
 
 234 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 point of time. Further, Martigny * claims for France 
 the honour of having possessed the first public 
 crucifix painting which ever existed ; for which he 
 refers to Gregory of Tours, 2 and which he says 
 must have been at least as old as the middle of 
 the sixth century. But he says above, probably 
 with great correctness, that all the most eminent 
 Crucifixes or Crucifixions known were objects of pri- 
 vate devotion ; instancing the pectoral Cross of Queen 
 Theodolinda, and the Syriac MS. of the Medicean 
 Library at Florence, both hereafter to be described. 
 The official or public use of the Cross as a symbol 
 of Redemption begins w T ith Constantine, though 
 of course it had been variously employed by all 
 Christians at an earlier date. 3 Crucifixes, according 
 to Guericke, did not appear in churches till after 
 the seventh century. Such images, probably, in 
 the early days of the Church, would produce too 
 crude and painful an effect on the Christian imagi- 
 nation ; and to that of the more hopeful Pagan 
 they would be intolerable ; not only because his 
 mind would recoil from the thought of the punish- 
 ment of the Cross, but from superstitious terror of 
 connecting the Infelix Arbor with a Divine Being. 
 This feeling is very frequently referred to, and is 
 described in Dr. Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 4 in 
 relation to the Palatine Graffito, a wood-cut of which 
 will be found in this volume. 5 " It is the scrawl of 
 some Pagan slave in the earliest years of the third 
 
 1 Diet. desAntiq. Chretiennes, p. 190, s.v. 
 
 2 De Glor. Martyr, i. 23. 
 
 3 See chapter on the Cross. 
 
 4 Page 397, ed. 1868. 
 B See p. 6.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 235 
 
 century. A human figure with an ass's head is 
 represented as fixed to a cross, while another figure 
 in a tunic stands on one side, in the customary Pagan 
 attitude of adoration ; underneath runs a rude in- 
 scription : " Alexamenos adores his God. " 
 
 This is a work of heathen malevolence : but 
 Christian teachers may have refrained from any 
 addition to the Cross, as a symbol of divine 
 humiliation and suffering, from purely charitable 
 motives. The Cross itself may have been felt to be 
 temporarily unwelcome to persons in certain stages 
 of conversion. If we set aside the various Mono- 
 grams of His name, and the emblematic Fish, which 
 is an anagram of it, there are but two classes of 
 representations of Our Lord — those which point to 
 His Divinity and lordship over all men, and those 
 which commemorate His Humanity and sufferings 
 for all men. The earliest of the former class is the 
 Good Shepherd ; the earliest of the latter the Lamb ; 
 and both are combined in the painting given by T)e 
 Eossi. 1 The symbolic Lamb, as will be seen, 2 con- 
 nects the Old Testament with the New, and unites 
 in itself all types and shadowings of Christ's sacrifice, 
 from the death of Abel to St. John's vision of the 
 slain victim. It is well said by Martigny to be the 
 Crucifix of the early times of persecution, and its 
 emblematic use grows more significant as time ad- 
 vances. The Cross is first borne by the Lamb on its 
 head, in the monogrammatic form, about the latter 
 half of the fourth century. 3 The simple Cross occurs 
 
 1 Vol. ii. tav. v. 
 
 s Gen. iv. 4, xxii. 8 ; Exod. xii. 3, xxix. 38 ; Is. xvi. 1 ; 1 Pet. 
 i. 18 ; Rev. xiii. 8. 
 
 3 Bottari, tav. xxi. v. 1.
 
 236 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 thus in the fifth century. 1 In the sixth century the 
 Lamb bears the Cross, 2 and rests sometimes on 
 a book, sometimes at the foot of an altar, 3 above 
 which is the Cross ; and then it is represented " as 
 it were slain," with evident reference to the Pas- 
 chal feast. 4 Towards the end of the sixth century 
 the Wounds of the Cross are represented on the sides 
 and feet of the Lamb. The Lamb is raised on a 
 throne, itself bearing resemblance to an altar-table. 5 
 The famous Vatican Cross 6 is the sixth- century type 
 of symbolic representation. A medallion of the Lamb 
 bearing the Cross, and with a nimbus, is placed at 
 its central point of intersection, and it is accom- 
 panied by two half-length figures of our Lord, with 
 the cruciform nimbus, at the top and foot of the 
 vertical limb. Two others at the horizontal ends 
 are supposed to represent Justin II. and his Empress 
 Sophia. The upper half-length of the Lord holds a 
 book in the left hand, and blesses with the right ; 
 the lower one holds a roll and a small Cross. The 
 embossed lily-ornaments are of some beauty, and 
 
 1 Bottari, tav. xxii. 
 
 2 Ariughi, ii. lib. iv. p. 559, " Roma Subterranea. " 
 
 3 Campiani, "Vetera Monument a," vol. i. tab. xv. p. 26; vol. 
 ii. tab. xv. p. 58. 
 
 4 Ibid. vol. ii. tab. xv. xlvi. 
 
 5 Ciampini, " De Sacris yKdificiis," tab. xiii. 
 
 6 For which, and for the Cross of Velletri, see Cardinal Borgia's 
 monographs, Rome, 4to, 1779 and 1780. The Cross of Velletri, 
 which Borgia attributes to the eighth or tenth century, contains 
 the symbols of the four Evangelists. The Vatican Cross is photo- 
 graphed inM. St.-Lanrent's paper in Didron's Revue Archeologiipie 
 (vol. xxvi.). The result reflects great credit on the accuracy of 
 Borgia's illustration; and M. St. -Laurent speaks highly of Ciam- 
 pini, as does Mr. Parker. The integrity and accuracy of the elder 
 Roman antiquaries is of great importance, as their works are valid 
 testimony on the subject of Catacomb paintings in their day. 
 Great destruction has since taken place.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 237 
 
 there is an inscription on the back. 1 As it is 
 impossible to determine which is the earliest re- 
 presentation of the Crucifixion or Crucifix now in 
 existence or on trustworthy record, a few of the 
 oldest known may be briefly described here. They 
 will be found in woodcut in Angelo Eocca, 2 though 
 the copies have been made by a draughtsman skilled 
 in anatomy, who has quite deprived them of the 
 stamp of antiquity which their originals undoubtedly 
 possessed. The first and second are said by Eocca 
 to be the workmanship of Nicodemus and St. Luke. 
 The first is evidently of the time of Charlemagne. 
 The Crucified is clothed in a long tunic, and bears a 
 crown of radiating bars, closed at top, rising from 
 the circlet. A chalice is at its feet, and A co is on the 
 title overhead. This appears to be a copy of the 
 great Lucca Crucifix, to be described immediately. 
 If the separate Crucifix be systematically made 
 use of in the Church of England, we would plead 
 earnestly for the employment of this symbolic form 
 of it ; which both represents the manner of the 
 Lord's death as far as is desirable, and also insists 
 on His Divinity and Office of Priest and King of all 
 men. The head of the second of these Crucifixes, attri- 
 buted to St. Luke, is crowned and surrounded by a 
 nimbus. It is almost entirely naked, — the waist- 
 cloth, at least, seems to have been purposely con- 
 tracted : this of itself would place it at a later date. 
 
 The third example is historical; it is called the Cru- 
 cifix of John VII., and is or was a mosaic in the old 
 
 1 Which Borgia reads thus : — 
 
 " Ligno quo Christus humanum suhdidit hostem 
 Dat Romae Justiuus opera " (et sociat decorem ?). 
 
 2 "Thesaurus Poutificiarura Rerum," vol. i. p. 153.
 
 238 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Basilica of St. Peter's. Eocca dates it 706. It bears 
 the cruciform nimbus with the title I.N.R.I. It is 
 clothed iu a long tunic, the form and folds of which 
 are most graceful; and bears a great resemblance to the 
 painted Crucifix found in the Catacombs, assigned to 
 Pope Adrian III., 884. The fourth is the celebrated 
 Crucifix of Charlemagne, given to Leo III. and the 
 Basilica of St. Peter's, and dated 815 ; it is clothed in 
 an ample waistcloth, the wound in the side is repre- 
 sented, and the head surrounded by a cruciform 
 nimbus. Four nails are used in all these Crucifixes. 
 A Crucifix is described by the Piev. F. H. Tozer 
 which, as he thinks, has a decided claim to be con- 
 sidered the most ancient in existence, and which he 
 saw in the monastery of Xeropotami at Mount Athos. 
 It is a reputed gift of the Empress Pulcheria (414-453), 
 and has been spared, no doubt, for that reason. It 
 is a supposed fragment of the true Cross ; and consists 
 of one long piece of dark wood and two cross-pieces, 
 one above the other, the smaller intended for the 
 superscription. The small figure of our Lord is of 
 ivory or bone. Near the foot is a representation of 
 the Church of the Ho]y Sepulchre ; in gold plate, and 
 set with diamonds and sapphires of extraordinary 
 size and beauty. Below that, the inscription Kov- 
 (navrivov Ev<fipocrvvr)<; kgl\ tcov retevcov. Another 
 exists at Ochrida in Western Macedonia, disused 
 and of unknown history. Mr. Tozer considers that 
 it belonged to a disciple of Cyril and Methodius, 
 and may probably be connected with the latter. He 
 mentions a third, also probably connected with the 
 Apostles of Bohemia, in the Museum of Prague, 1 
 
 1 See Murray's Handbook of South Germany.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 239 
 
 and another as existing in Crete. 1 These are the 
 only Crucifixes he knows of as existing in the 
 Greek Church. The Iconoclastic controversy, he 
 observes, took the same course with the Crucifix as 
 with other representations, painted or carved ; and 
 when it died away into compromise on the distinc- 
 tion between Icons and images, the Crucifix was 
 treated as an image. This does not necessarily apply 
 to pictures in MSS. ; but the carved form may 
 have been the more easily dislodged in the Icono- 
 clastic controversy of 720, because it had not been 
 long introduced, since it did not exist till the end 
 of the seventh century. " To the human perception 
 of the Greeks, 2 there may have arisen a feeling that in 
 its more rigid and solid form the Image was nearer 
 to the Idol. There was a tacit compromise " (after 
 the period of Iconoclasm) ; " nothing appeared but 
 painting, mosaics, engravings, on cup and chalice" 
 (this, of course, accounts for works like the Cross of 
 Yelletri, the Diptych of Eambona, and others), " and 
 embroidery on vestments. The renunciation of sculp- 
 ture grew to a rigid passionate aversion . . . as of a 
 Jew or Mohammedan." There can be no doubt that 
 the first step in a progress which has frequently 
 ended in idolatry was made in the Quinisext. Council, 3 
 or that in Trullo, at Constantinople in 683. It is 
 the challenge to Iconoclasm. It decrees that, as the 
 antitype is better than type or symbol in all repre- 
 sentation, the literal representation of the Lord shall 
 take the place of the symbolic Lamb on all emblems 
 of His sacrifice, and ordains thus : — " We pronounce, 
 
 1 See Pashley's Travels. 
 " Milnian's "Latin Christianity," vi. 413. 
 s The author can remember no representation of the Crucifixion as 
 existing either at the Convent of Mount Sinai, or that of Mar Saba.
 
 240 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 that the Form of Him who taketh away the sin of the 
 world, the Lamb Christ our Lord, be set up in human 
 shape on images henceforth, instead of the Lamb 
 formerly used." 1 
 
 A very early Crucifix of the sixth century seems 
 to be mentioned in the following passage (which is 
 produced by Binterim, 2 without reference, but which 
 he may have seen in some unpublished record). He 
 is speaking of the church of Hoye, in the bishopric 
 of Liege, destroyed by the Huns in the fourth cen- 
 tury, and restored A.D. 512, at the time of the first 
 synod of Orleans. This church "is rebuilt by its 
 townsfolk, and extended lengthways towards the 
 east, to the steps of the choir, under the crucifix ; 
 the ancient altar, however, being still left there." 3 
 Further, he quotes iEgidius as stating that Robert, 
 Provost of Liege, was buried under the Crucifix. 
 This only proves the existence of Crucifixes at the 
 time of the writers, especially as the original altar 
 is spoken of as remaining, without mention of 
 Cross or Crucifix, at the end of the choir Which 
 contained it. Had the name or date of the author 
 of the passage quoted been known, it would have 
 been of great importance ; but it may be, and 
 its Latin might indicate that it is, from some late 
 chronicler, familiar with the appearance of the church, 
 and using the words as meaning no more than 
 '•' under the present Crucifix, or rood above the altar- 
 screen." Dr. Binterim urges no argument as to the 
 
 1 Tdv tov aXpovros tt)i/ dfxapriau Koff/xov, ^Ajjlvou Xpiarov rod Qeov 
 VfJiHv, Kara tov dvBpdiirivov x a 9 aKr ^)p a J K0 ^ svtois cIk6o~iv and tov vZv, 
 dvr\ tov waXaiov d/j.vod, dvao~rr]\ovcr8aL dpl^o/xev. 
 
 - Denkwiirdigk. iv. part i. 48. 
 
 3 "A suis civibus re-edificatur, et in longum versus Orienteni 
 extenditur usque ad gradus Chori sub crucifixo, altari tamen antiquo 
 semper remanente," etc.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 241 
 
 date of the German change from Cross to Crucifix, 
 and the passage may be let pass. 
 
 The " Santo Volto," " Vultus de Luca," or Cru- 
 cifix of Lucca (corrupted by William Eufus, for 
 imprecatory purposes, into the "Face of St. Luke"), 
 is carved in cedar-wood, and is attributed to 
 Nicodemus, and supposed to have been conveyed 
 miraculously to Lucca in 782. It is said to be of 
 the sixth century, and is certainly one of the earliest 
 Crucifixes now remaining. It bears the Lord crowned 
 as King, and vested in a long pontifical robe as 
 priest, and thus combines symbolic treatment with 
 realism, perhaps in the way afterwards intended 
 by the Council in Trullo. The idea is that of 
 the Crucified King of men, and the work is an 
 assertion of the combined Deity and Humanity, 
 and of the submission to death, of the Lord of 
 humanity. A Crucifix greatly resembling this was 
 found during some operations at Christ Church, 
 Oxford, and is now preserved in the Bodleian ; it 
 was probably an outer ornament of some Evange- 
 liarium. We understand M. St.-Laurent to consider 
 these copies to date from the twelfth century. 1 
 
 The steps of the progress from symbolic to literal 
 representation will be noticed immediately ; but two 
 more Crucifixions of great and undoubted antiquity 
 (the first having a claim to be considered the most 
 ancient in existence) remain to be briefly noticed. 
 
 1 Icouographie de la Croix et du Crucifix ; Didron's " Annales 
 Archeologiques," t. xxvi. and t. xxviL, a most valuable and ex- 
 haustive summary of this subject, admirably illustrated. See 
 also Dr. Heinrich Otte's article, "Zur Ikonographie des Cruei- 
 fixus," "Jahrbiicher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden," &c, 
 heft 44, p. 214. 
 
 M
 
 242 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Both confirm, to a certain extent, the remark insisted 
 on or suggested by many Roman Catholic writers, 
 that the private use of the Crucifix in devotion dates 
 from very early times. The first is in the famous 
 Syriac Evangel iariurn of the Medicean Library, at 
 Florence, and is widely known for the probably 
 unique detail of the soldiers not casting dice, but 
 playing at the world-old game of " Mora" on their 
 fingers, for the garment without seam. 1 The whole 
 MS. is one of the most interesting documents in the 
 world, with many illuminations, performed with 
 that indescribable grimness of earnestness, which 
 was the root of Eastern asceticism, and which still 
 lingers in the handiwork of the stern Arcagnuoli, or 
 the brothers Orgagna. Assemanni calls it "the oldest 
 codex in the library ; " and it is described by Trot. 
 Westwood, in his " Palaeographia Sacra," and dated 
 586 by its writer, the monk Eabula. The Crucifixion- 
 picture is composed with instinctive skill in two 
 groups, upper and lower. At the top are the sun and 
 moon ; one a face, the other a crescent. The upper 
 group, which is semicircular or rather cycloidal in its 
 shape, consists of the three Crosses, supported on 
 their right by the Virgin Mother and another female 
 figure, on the left by three more women. The soldiers, 
 with the spear and the sponge, stand on each side, 
 next to the central and largest Cross. Over the head 
 of the former is the name \o< IXO C. The Lord wears 
 the long robe; the thieves have waistcloths; and large 
 drops of blood, in conventional form, are falling from 
 their hands. Four nails are used throughout. At the 
 
 1 It is reprcseutcd in Assemanni'a " Catalogus Bibl. Medic," 
 Florence, 1742, tav. xxiii.
 
 THE CPaJCIFIX. 243 
 
 foot of the Cross the upper and lower group are joined 
 by the soldiers playing for the coat. In the centre, 
 below the Cross, is a Holy Sepulchre, represented in 
 all early Byzantine and Italo- or Gothic-Byzantine 
 work, as an upright structure of much the same 
 shape as a sentry's box. It is supported on the left 
 by a woman, the Blessed Virgin, and an angel ; on 
 the other by St. John, another Apostolic figure in the 
 act of blessing, and other adoring women. The base 
 of the composition, as it were, is formed by a group 
 of soldiers, overthrown by the stroke of visible sub- 
 stantial rays from the sepulchre ; the stone also lies 
 on the left. The designer seems to have thought 
 much of the fact of its being rolled away, and he has 
 accordingly drawn it as a disk like a grindstone. 1 
 Grotesque and archaic as it is, this work is composed 
 exactly like Orgagna's or Michael Angelo's "Last 
 Judgment," Titian's "Assumption," or Eaffaelle's 
 ' Transfiguration " — i.e. of two great upper and lower 
 groups, tied together and supported on both sides ; 
 nor could any work better illustrate the lingering 
 of Byzantine tradition in sacred subjects. A full 
 description is given by Professor Westwood. 2 Of 
 the four Crucifixions given by Gori, 3 that at p. 203, 
 called the " Diptych of Bambona in Picenum," is the 
 most ancient and extraordinary. It contains a medal- 
 lion of the First Person of the Trinity above, with the 
 sun and moon below on the right of the cross, personi- 
 fied as figures bearing torches. There are two titles, 
 
 1 It may possibly be intended for a round shield. 
 
 2 In his " Palaeographia Sarra," also by Dom Gucrnngrr, " Inst. 
 Liturgiques," vol. ii. app. 
 
 3 In vol. iii. of his "Thesaurus Diptychorum," pp. 116,128,203, 
 216. 
 
 M 2
 
 244 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 EGO SUM IHS NAZAEENUS, in rustic capitals, 
 with a smaller label, EEX IUDEOEUM, over the 
 cross. The nimbus is cruciform, the waistcloth reaches 
 almost to the knees, the navel is strangely formed 
 into an eye. The Virgin and St. John stand under 
 the arms of the Cross. But the distinguishing detail 
 is the addition of the Eoman wolf and twins below 
 the Cross, with the words EOMULUS. ET REMUS 
 A LUPA NUTEITI, in rustic characters also. This 
 wonderful ivory is now said to be in the Vatican 
 Museum, and is in the most ancient style of what may 
 be called dark-age Byzantine art, when all instruction 
 and sense of beauty are departed, but so vigorous a 
 sense of the reality of the fact remains as to render the 
 work highly impressive — as in the Medici MS. 
 
 Professor Westwood 1 enables lis to refer to a 
 Crucifixion found in an Irish MS. written about 800. 
 It is in the Library of St. John's College, Cambridge, 
 and is partly copied from the Palseographia by Mr. 
 Buskin, 8 who selects one of the angels above the 
 Cross as a specimen of absolutely dead and degraded 
 art. This is perfectly correct, and the work is a 
 painful object of contemplation, as it displays the 
 idiotcy of a contemptible person instructed in a 
 decaying style, rather than the roughness of a 
 barbarian workman, like the carver of the diptych. 
 The absurd interlacings and use of dots, the sharpen- 
 ing of fingers into points, and the treatment of the 
 subject entirely as a matter of penmanship, without 
 either devotional sense of its importance or artistic 
 effect to realize it, make the MS. most disagreeably 
 interesting as far as this miniature is concerned. 
 
 1 " Pal. Sac," pi. 18. » " The Two Paths," p. 27.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. . 245 
 
 The plea or hypothesis of Roman Catholic writers, 
 that actual images of the crucified body of the 
 Lord may have been used in the very earliest times 
 for private devotion, is open to the obvious remark 
 that none of them can be produced ; whereas symbo- 
 lical memorials of the Crucifixion are found in regular 
 succession, and in forms both mural and portable. 
 Father Martigny argues that the Graffito may be a 
 caricatured copy of some undiscovered crucifix used 
 for Christian worship. Father Garucci's description 
 of it, 1 and the remarks which accompany it, are 
 most important, as they show "the more intel- 
 ligent and bitter hostility of Paganism to the Church, 
 since the apostolic martyrdoms a century and a half 
 before, when converts had also been made in Csesar's 
 household." He shows also, incidentally, that it cau 
 hardly have been derived from any Christian emblem, 
 as the ass's head connects it evidently with the Gnostic 
 invective, which attributed to the Jews the worship 
 of an ass. This Tacitus mentions, 2 and Tertullian 3 
 notices Tacitus' confusion between Jews and Chris- 
 tians, and appeals to his account of the examination 
 of the Jewish temple by Pompey, who found " no 
 image " in the Temple. 4 
 
 The relics of the treasury of the Cathedral of 
 Monza, described and partly represented in wood- 
 cut by M. Martigny, are valuable examples of the 
 
 1 " II Croeifisso Graffito in casa dei Cesari, "' is given by Canon 
 Liddon iii his Seventh Bampton Lecture, p. 397. 
 - Hist. v. o. 4. 
 
 * Apolog. 16. 
 
 * For proof of the confusion of the early Christians with the 
 Jews by the Pagan world, Dr. Liddon refers to Dr. Pusey's note 
 on the above passage in Tertullian, in the Oxford Library of 
 the Fathers.
 
 24(5 PEIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 transition between symbolic and actual represen- 
 tation of the Crucifixion. One of the ampullae 
 for sacred oil is said to have been presented by 
 Gregory the Great to Theodolinda, wife of Autharis, 
 king of Lombardy, probably some time soon after 
 590, and about ninety years before the Council in 
 Trullo. It is circular ; and the head of the Lord, 
 with a cruciform nimbus, is placed at the top. 
 Below, to right and left, are the two thieves, with 
 extended arms, but without Crosses ; and below 
 them two figures are kneeling by a Cross which 
 seems to be budding into leaves. Two saints or 
 angels are on the extreme right and left, and the 
 usual Holy Sepulchre below, with an angel watch- 
 ing it on the right in the act of benediction ; while 
 St. John and St. Mary Magdalene are (apparently) 
 approaching it on the other side. Another vessel 
 bears a figure of the Lord, clothed with a long robe, 
 with the nimbus and extended arms, but without 
 the Cross. Finally, the reliquary of Theodolinda, so 
 called, has the crucified Form, with the nimbus 
 and inscription IC. XC, clothed in the long tunic, 
 with the soldiers, two figures apparently mocking 
 Him, and the Virgin and St. John on the right and 
 left. The clothed figure indicates symbolical treat- 
 ment, since it must have been well known that the 
 Roman custom was to crucify naked ; and Martigny 
 argues that the Graffito, which is clothed, must there- 
 fore have been copied from some Christian picture. 
 But from this time, or from that of the Council of 
 685, the artistic or ornamental treatment begins. 
 The earliest Crucifixions are narrative, not dramatic ; 
 the Resurrection being frequently introduced into
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 247 
 
 the same composition, as if without it the subject 
 would be altogether too painful for Christian eyes. 
 And, indeed, till the first efforts of Pisan sculpture 
 and Florentine painting, the importance of the event 
 represented withdrew all attention from the person- 
 ality of the artist. In works of after days the 
 painter's power is all. Their range of excellence is as 
 wide as the difference between the tender asceticism 
 of Fra Angelico, the mighty sorrow of Michael 
 Angelo, and the intense power, knowledge, and 
 passion of the great canvas of Tintoret in the Scuola 
 di San Eocco at Venice. The treatment of this 
 picture resembles that of the most ancient works. 
 All its consummate science is directed to bringing 
 every detail of the scene into a great unity, while 
 attention is expressly withdrawn from the face of 
 the Lord, which is cast into deep shadow. 1 In all 
 ancient work the Lord's face is abstracted and expres- 
 sionless : any attempt to represent His bodily pain 
 belongs to modern work of the baser sort, which forms 
 no part of our present subject. For the details and 
 accessories of the Crucifixion, whether things or 
 persons, they have been for the most part enume- 
 rated and described. The nails are always four in 
 number in ancient works, two for the feet and two 
 for the hands. The crossed legs, and single large 
 nail or spike, belong to the artistic period. 2 St. 
 Cyprian, he says, had seen the punishment of the 
 cross. The suppedaneum, or rest for the feet, occurs 
 in the crosses of Leo III. and of Velletri, not in the 
 
 1 See Ruskin, " Modern Painters," vol. ii. 
 
 2 Martigny refers to St. Cyprian (De Passion. Dni. inter Opuse. 
 p. 83, ed. Oxon), as speaking of the nails which pierced our 
 Lord's feet, in the plural number.
 
 248 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Diptych of Kauibona. The Graffito indicates its 
 presence. It seems to have been occasionally left 
 out, in deference to those passages in Holy Scripture 
 which refer to the disgrace or curse attaching to one 
 " hanging " on the tree. The title of the Cross, which 
 is given with slight differences in St. Matt, xxvii. 37, 
 Mark xv. 26, Luke xxiii. 38, John xix. 9, varies 
 greatly in different representations. It is omitted 
 in the crosses of Lucca and Velletri. Early Greek 
 painters reduce it to the name of Christ, IC.XC, or 
 substitute the A and <w. The sign 4> (<£&>?) occurs, 
 as well as LVX MVNDI, frequently accompanied 
 by the symbols of the sun and the moon, as a red 
 star or face and crescent, or in the Rambona ivory 
 as mourning figures bearing torches. They are in- 
 troduced as emblematic of the homage of all nature, 
 or in remembrance of the darkness at the Cruci- 
 fixion. The Blessed Virgin and St. John appear in 
 the Medicean MS. and very frequently in older 
 works ; the soldiers rather less so, though they occur 
 in the above MS. and in the reliquary of Monza. 
 The typical figure of the first Adam rising from 
 the earth as a symbol of the resurrection of the 
 body, with the Hand of Blessing above indicating 
 the Presence of God, is given in Ciampini. 1 The 
 skuli, whether human or that of a lamb, placed 
 at the foot of the cross, either as an emblem of 
 sacrifice or in reference to the place Golgotha, is 
 of late use ; and is almost the only late addition of 
 symbolic detail. The rare addition of the soldiers 
 casting lots on their fingers is said to be found in 
 an ivory of the eighth century from Cividale in 
 1 De Sacr. Aedif. tabl. xxiii. p. 75.
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 249 
 
 Friuli. 1 The only other representation of it is in the 
 Medici MS. The wolf and twins are in the Bam- 
 bona diptych alone. The types of the four Evan- 
 gelists are on the back of the Cross of Velletri, 
 in the Gospel of Egbert of Trier, and on numerous 
 Crosses of later date. 
 
 Some additional inscriptions have been mentioned, 
 as well as the addition (in the Vatican Cross) of 
 medallion portraits. Considerable liberty in this 
 matter seems to have been allowed in the earliest 
 times, as is indicated by Constantine's introduction 
 of the words of his Vision ; and still more strongly 
 in an instance referred to by Borgia, in Anastasius, 2 
 of a cross given by Belisarius to St. Peter — " by the 
 hand of Pope Vigilius" — of gold and jewels, weigh- 
 ing 100 lbs., "on which he wrote his victories." 
 
 But even the Vatican Cross yields in interest to 
 two German relics of the same character, lately 
 described and well illustrated. 3 The first of these 
 is the Station-Cross of Mainz. It is of gilded bronze, 
 of the Western form (commissa), and rather more than 
 one foot in height. Herr Heinrich Otte refers it to 
 the end of the twelfth century, a date far beyond 
 our period. But its interest is paramount; more 
 particularly from the evident intention of the de- 
 signer to make it embody a whole system of typical 
 instruction, and to leave it behind him as a kind of 
 sculptured document, or commentary, connecting the 
 Old and New Testaments. Thus, at the middle or 
 
 1 Mozzoni, " Tavole Crouologiche della Clriesa Universale," 
 Venezia, 1856-63. 
 
 2 Tom. i. li. 2 ed. Vigilii. 
 
 8 In No. 44 of the " Jahrbucher des Verehis von Alterthums- 
 freunden im Rheinlande," p. 195, Bonn, 1868. 
 
 M 3
 
 250 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 intersection of the arms of the Cross, the Lamb is 
 represented in a medallion, his head surrounded 
 with a plain nimbus. On the back of the Cross 
 in the same place there is a square plate, with an 
 engraved representation of Abraham offering up 
 Isaac, the angel, and the ram. Eound the latter is 
 the beginning of a hexameter line — Cui patriarcha 
 mum — which is completed round the medallion of 
 the Lamb in front, thus : Pater offcrt in cruce 
 natum. In like manner, four engravings on each 
 side at the extremities of the Cross refer to each 
 other, and are described by corresponding halves of 
 hexameters. The New Testament subjects are all 
 in front, with the Lamb in the centre, as antitypes ; 
 the Old Testament or typical events or persons are 
 at the back. Thus on the spectator's left at the 
 back of the Cross is an engraving of Moses receiving 
 the Tables of the Law on Mount Sinai, with the 
 words Qui Moysi legem. Corresponding to it on the 
 right front is the Descent of the Holy Spirit, with 
 dat alumnis Pneumatis ignem. The remainder as 
 under — 
 
 IIKAD. MOTTO. 1 
 
 l; "n^S ijah ." ,rried . up . t0 S ** ievat Eiiam - 
 
 Front-The Ascension j P™1™\ sublimat usiam 
 
 Back — (right hand of spec-) 
 
 tator) Samson, and gates of > Que portas Gaze. 
 
 Gaza ) 
 
 Front — (left ditto) The descent ) . p , i T i 
 
 into Hades j vis aufert claustra Jehenne, 
 
 Foot. 
 Back -Jonah and the Whale.... Qua reJit absumptus. 
 
 Front— Resurrection surgit virtute sepultus. 
 
 ' Elias and Ascension. — He who uplift Elias, raises on high 
 His own Substance. Gates of Gaza and Descent. — The pow< .
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 251 
 
 The decorative scrollwork is rather sparingly dis- 
 posed, with great judgment, and on the spike, ferule, 
 or metal strap, probably intended for fixing the Cross 
 on a staff for processional or other purposes, is an 
 engraving of the probable designer and donor. The 
 graphic power and exceeding quaintness of the 
 Scriptural engravings are those of the finest miniatures 
 of the twelfth or thirteenth century. 
 
 The second of these most interesting works, inferior 
 as a work of art from its barbaric wildness, and the 
 preference for ugliness so often observed in Northern- 
 Gothic grotesque, is of even greater interest as a 
 transitional Cross; especially when viewed in relation 
 to the changes enforced by the decree of the Council 
 in Trullo. This is the Station Cross of Planig, 
 near Kreuznach, of the same size and form as 
 that of Mainz, but referred by Otte to the tenth 
 century. The ancient symbol of the Lamb is pre- 
 served on the back of this Crucifix, which is of 
 bronzed copper, and displays the human form in 
 front, as in many other Eomanesque Crosses. On 
 this combination — perhaps a compromise between the 
 feeling of older times and the more modern spirit of 
 the Quinisextine Council — Otte quotes Durandus : 
 " For the Lamb of God ought not to be represented 
 in the chief place on the Cross : but when the Man 
 is placed there, there is no objection to depicting the 
 Lamb on the lower part or on the back." * He also 
 
 which destroys the gates of Gaza destrc^'S the bolts of Gehenna. 
 Jonah and Resurrection. — The Buried One rises by the same power 
 as the devoured. 
 
 1 "Non enim agnus Dei in cruce principaliter depingi debet : 
 sed homine depicto, non obest agnum in parte inferiori vel pos- 
 teriori depingere." (Rationale, lib. i. c. 3, n. 6.)
 
 252 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 gives the express words of Adrian I., in his letter to 
 Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in 785 : "There- 
 fore we give orders that the true Lamb, our Lord J. C, 
 be represented on the images in the human form, 
 instead of the Lamb as of old." * He refers also to 
 a splendid work on Rhenish antiquities 2 for the Essen 
 and other roods, which much resemble those of 
 Kreuznach aiid Mainz; combining the Lamb with 
 the human form, and adding personifications of the 
 sun and moon which remind us of the Diptych of 
 Eambona ; and the symbols of the four Evangelists, 
 as in the Crucifix of Velletri. Space forbids us to 
 give accounts of these most interesting relics, but 
 the subject appears to be treated with exhaustive 
 fulness and illustrated to perfection in the two 
 German works referred to. The Planig-on-Nahe 
 rood, however, is entitled to a briefly-detailed de- 
 scription. In front is the Crucified Form, severely 
 archaic in treatment ; the long hair is carefully 
 parted and carried back ; the head is without nimbus ; 
 and the limbs are long, stiff, and wasted, the ribs 
 being displayed, as is so commonly done in mediaeval 
 Crucifixes, to complete the illustration of the text, 
 " They pierced My hands and My feet : I may tell 
 all My bones." A triple serpentine stream of blood 
 runs from each hand, and also from the feet, being 
 there received in a cup or chalice, the foot of which 
 is a grotesque lion's head. The back of the Cross 
 bears on its centre the Lamb with cruciform nimbus ; 
 
 1 "Verum igitur agnum Dominum nostrum J. C. secundum 
 imagincm humanam a modo etiam in imaginibus pro veteri agDO 
 dcpingi jubemus." (De Consecr. Dist. iii. c. 29; Labbe, vi. 1177.) 
 
 * " Kunstdenkmaler des Chiistliehen Mittelalters," by Ernst 
 aus'm Werth, Leipzig (Weigel), 1857, taf. xxiv.-vi
 
 THE CRUCIFIX. 253 
 
 below it is a medallion of the donor, " Euthardus 
 Gustos;" and four other bas-reliefs, now wanting, 
 occupied the four extremities of the arms, and 
 almost certainly represented the four Evangelists. 
 As in the Diptych of Eambona, the navel resembles 
 an eye. 
 
 Scarcely inferior to these is the tenth-century 
 miniature of a single Crucifix with the title IHS 
 NAZAEEX EEX IUDEOEUM; the sun and moon 
 are above the Cross-beam, within circles, and re- 
 presented with expressions of horror, seated in 
 chariots, one drawn by horses, the other by oxen. 
 It is impossible to omit the Crucifixion-picture from 
 the Gospel of Bishop Egbert of Trier, 975— 993, 1 
 now in the Stadtbibliothek there. Here the Lord is 
 clad in a long robe to the ankles ; the robbers are 
 also clad in loose tunics girded so close to the form as 
 to give the appearance of shirt and trousers. Above, 
 are the sun and moon hiding their faces. The Cross 
 has a second Cross-piece at top, forming a Tau above 
 the western Cross. The robbers are on Tau Crosses ; 
 suspended, but with unpierced hands ; the passage 
 in the twenty-second Psalm being referred to the 
 Eedeenier alone. Their names, Desmas, the penitent, 
 and Cesmas, the obdurate, are above their heads. 
 The Virgin-mother and another woman stand on the 
 right of the Cross, St. John on the left. The soldier 
 " Stephaton " is presenting the sponge of vinegar ; 2 
 two others are casting lots below. This detail re- 
 minds us of the great Florentine miniature of the 
 
 1 Mooyer's " Onomasticon Chronographicon Hierarchic Ger- 
 manicae," 8vo. Minden, 54. 
 
 ' Longinus is always the lance-bearer. See Medici (Laurentian) 
 Crucifix, supra.
 
 254 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 monk of Eabula, excepting that the game of Mora 
 is there substituted for dice. These works are some- 
 what beyond our period: yet as a chapter on Crucifixes 
 must contain some account of the things whose 
 name it bears, and the first eight centuries supply 
 us with so few examples of what are popularly 
 called Crucifixes, a short inroad into early medie- 
 valism may be allowed. The Iconodulist transition, 
 formally made at the Council in Trullo, was well 
 suited to the Northern mind, and to the sacra- 
 mental theory of pain ; but it fell in also with that 
 tendency to 'personification advancing on symbolism, 
 which the Western races inherit, perhaps, from 
 ancient Greece ; and which Mr. Kuskin, in his late 
 Oxford Lectures, points out as the idolatrous ten- 
 dency of Greek art. With Cimabue and Giotto, 
 and from their days, artistic skill and power over 
 beauty are brought to bear on the Crucifix, as on 
 other Christian representations, for good and for 
 evil. Of the cautious and gradual compromise of 
 the Greek Church we have already spoken.
 
 UHAPTEE X. 
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 The important distinction between definition and 
 development, of objects of faith and doctrine, is 
 marked, as might be expected, by modifications in 
 Church Art. After the Council of Nice, certain 
 symbols, as the A to, the Cross as representing the 
 Second Person of the Trinity, and the Dove for the 
 Third — mark the effect of the definitions of the Great 
 Council. In the next two centuries we observe, and 
 have partly described, the advance from the Mono- 
 gram, or from the Good Shepherd ; and we have 
 followed the advance from those symbols to the 
 Crucified Form, as representations of the Saviour ; and 
 have implied that such a change points to new habits 
 of thought concerning Him. It would not have 
 taken place, unless men's minds had turned to the per- 
 severing contemplation of His Death rather than 
 of His Life, and of the Manner and Sufferings of 
 His Death rather than of its Efficacy. The extra- 
 ordinary distresses and depression of the Christian 
 world, which made Death a familiar and welcome 
 subject of meditation for the whole Church, seem 
 to have been the chief cause of this transition. 
 It may be said to be the work of the dark ages, so 
 called as ages of affliction; because it synchronised
 
 256 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 with them, it was completed by the time they were 
 over, and it was in a great degree the reflection of 
 their darkness. Parallel with this change from 
 Primitive to Mediaeval faith, and from Primitive 
 to Mediaeval 'art, is another great development in 
 both, which has had an almost equal effect on the 
 religion of the whole Christian Church ; and which 
 certainly brought art to bear on men's personal reli- 
 gion and faith with extraordinary power, though with 
 dubious or evil result. This was the worship of the 
 Saints, and of the Blessed Virgin as Chief of Saints, 
 and finally, as a Divine Person. Speaking generally, 
 it may be said that this misdirection of the prayers 
 and spiritual hopes of mankind makes the main and 
 crucial difference between Primitive and Mediaeval 
 faith ; and this book is happily not concerned with 
 the endless and distressing task of following its 
 progress beyond the sixth or seventh century. 
 
 The dawn of the earliest Eenaissance, or revival 
 of art, through the means and under the auspices of 
 the Christian Faith, is like an Eastern sunrise, begin- 
 ning with a false dawn while it is yet deep night. 
 A faint reflection appears in the east, and departs, 
 and for a while all is as dark as ever. The rule of 
 Theodoric at Ravenna, and his willing encourage- 
 ment of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine workmen 
 there, gave an appearance of revival to the expiring 
 genius of form and colour, which died away and 
 vanished with him. It was not till the greater 
 desolations of the Lombard conquest were fulfilled, 
 till Autharis and Theodolinda were seated on the 
 throne of Alboin, that it was found that the new con- 
 querors and colonists of Northern Italy possessed a
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 257 
 
 cenius of their own. and were barbarians who could 
 learn and improve upon the lessons they found in 
 ancient models. This extraordinary race of men 
 have furnished almost a majority of the chief 
 masters of Christian art, if not poetry ; and a Chro- 
 nicler of their own blood has written the early 
 history of his people, as far as he himself knew it. 
 He claims a Scandinavian origin for them, yet con- 
 siders German to be the generic name which they 
 shared alike with the Gepidee and the Eastern and 
 Western Goths. Like Jornandes, who speaks of the 
 North as the quiver i of races and forge of nations, he 
 has a general idea of the shores of the Baltic and 
 the Northern Ocean (Septentrionalis plaga) as the 
 original hive of Goths, Wendels, Heruli, Eugii, and 
 all the younger races of Europe. But his geogra- 
 phical information is vague, and goes but little 
 further north than Scandia or Gothland ; an island 
 or peninsula which he conceived of as sufficiently 
 extensive to be the birthplace of his nation. He 
 thinks the Northern cold favourable to health and 
 population, having, perhaps, seen with sorrow that 
 the Italian sun had diminished the energies of his 
 countrymen, and made them an unequal match for 
 the West Franks. He had shared in the retributive 
 calamities which befell them from Pepin and Charle- 
 magne. 2 He had lived at the Court of the three 
 last Lombard kings at Pavia, being a gentleman of 
 
 1 Vagina nationum et officina gentium. De Rebus Geticis, c. 4. 
 
 1 See Muratori's Preface. It is useless to revive the extinct 
 controversy, -whether the Lombards were Brandenburghers (see 
 Cluverius), or Northmen (as Grotius). Sismondi says, " lis se 
 oroyaient originaires de la Scandinavie, mais depuis 42 ans (before 
 Narses' invitation to Alboin in 567) habitaient la Pannonie : " 
 whieh seems sufficient.
 
 258 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 the blood of Alboin, with whom Leuphis (?), his 
 great-grandfather, had crossed the Eastern Alps. He 
 was taken prisoner by Charlemagne after the final 
 defeat of Desiderius or Didier; and was long im- 
 prisoned in France, for faithful adherence to the 
 latter. On his final deliverance or escape, he 
 became a Benedictine of Monte Casino, where he 
 seems to have written his chronicle and many 
 ingenious copies of Latin verses, to the praise and 
 glory of his patron, and the not inconsiderable wonder 
 and amusement of their infrequent students. " I 
 have framed a list of his (St. Benedict's) miracles 
 one by one, in separate couplets of elegiac metre, as 
 follows," says the Deacon : — 
 
 " Where, holy Benedict, shall I begin thy triumphs ? 
 Thy heaps of virtues, where shall I begiu V 1 
 
 and so on for about a hundred and forty lines. Also 
 a hymn in Iambics, not unlike Prudentius. The 
 introduction of his chronicle is enough to show that 
 he was neither careless of knowledge like a bar- 
 barian, nor incurious like an ascetic, but a man 
 who sought and accumulated information, and had 
 formed habits of observation and inference. He 
 appears to have heard of reindeer ; he speaks of his 
 ancestors as inhabiting some Arctic region, and being 
 accustomed to the use of snow-shoes, or perhaps 
 skates : and this, and their skill in the manufacture 
 of arms, seems to establish their Scandinavian origin. 
 It is a curious coincidence, supposing this great race 
 to be descendants of the hammer-men of the North, 
 
 1 " Singula ejus miracula per singula disticha Elegiaco metro 
 hoc modo contexui : — 
 
 " Ordiar unde tuos, sacer Benedicte triuniphos ? 
 Viitutum cumulos ordiar unde tuos?"
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 259 
 
 cunning in all iron-work, that they should have shown 
 such early and vigorous taste for sculpture. Yet it 
 seems likely that a nation of smiths should make the 
 easy transition from hammer and anvil to hammer 
 and chisel. They were probably accustomed to rude 
 carving in wood. Like the Franks and Ostrogoths, 
 they showed their superiority to the Huns and lower 
 races of barbarians by willingness to learn, even from 
 the Romans wdiom they despised. Their final con- 
 version to orthodox Christianity may be placed in 
 the time of Autharis and Theodolinda, whose Bap- 
 tism both by immersion and aspersion, in a large 
 laver or " pelvis," was commemorated in an extra- 
 ordinary mosaic, of which a plate will be found in 
 Ciampini's " Vetera Monunienta. " 2 It seems as if 
 they had but few ideas on the subject of art beyond 
 the making of goblets from the skulls of their enemies, 
 before they passed the iSToric Alps, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Forum Julii or Friuli. One singularly grim 
 relic of that kind the Deacon tells us he has him- 
 self seen — the identical " Scala," or goblet made by 
 Alboin from the head of Cunimund, and mounted 
 in gold. 2 " Let not this seem impossible to any 
 man. I speak the truth in Christ. I have seen King 
 Rachis holding that cup in hand, to display it to his 
 guests on a certain feast day." 3 This early history of 
 Turismond and his knighthood of Alboin is very 
 remarkable ; as one of the earliest instances of 
 chivalric institutions, and also of the highest chival- 
 
 1 Tab. iii. part i. p. 20. 
 
 1 De Gestis Longobardorum, II. 28. 
 
 3 Hoc ne cui videatur impossibile : veritatem in Christo loquor, 
 ego hoc poeulum vidi, in quodam die festo, Rachis (sic) principem, 
 ut illud convivis suis ostentaret, inanu tenentem.
 
 1>G0 I'KIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 ric feeling, in the midst of ferocity and brutality. 
 The name and memory of Alboin seem to have 
 been especially dear to his descendants in the 
 Deacon's time ; and his occasional acts of clemency 
 are specially dwelt on by his Chronicler. But the 
 great progress for the better in Lombard civilization 
 may be best estimated by comparing the foul and 
 murderous story of his valiant life and death with 
 that of the first and, indeed, the second wooing 
 of Theodolinda. She was daughter of Garibaldus 
 (of all names in the world), — King of the Bajoarii 
 or Bavarians. Autharis of Lombardy is courting 
 her : he comes disguised as his own ambassador 
 to her father's Court, to ask her in marriage. 
 She pours out his wine at the feast; he takes 
 her hand and passes it gently over his own face. 
 She consults her nurse on the subject of such a 
 strange liberty ; and is told that none but the King, 
 her future husband, could have dared to take it. 
 The pretended ambassador is honorably escorted to 
 the frontier of his own land ; and as he crosses it, 
 he swings his heavy battle-axe and drives it deep in 
 a pine trunk, saying, " Such a blow deals the King 
 of Lombards." Meanwhile it is prophesied to 
 Agilulf, who rides in his train, that the King's 
 bride shall be his bride. Happier and better times 
 begin with the reign of Autharis and Theodolinda, 
 and on his death the voice of her nobles and people 
 invites her to remain on the throne, and choose 
 another spouse. She consents, and her peers do her 
 homage in succession, with some feudal ceremonial 
 which includes kissing her hand. And her choice 
 is made known for the first time to its object, Agilulf
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 261 
 
 of Turin or Taurini, by her bidding him proceed to 
 her lips, for he was the chosen of Lombardy and 
 of herself ; her Lord and King. 1 The story is certainly 
 charming; and the lady appears to have been still 
 more so, almost throughout her long life. At a 
 period like the present, when the civilizing influence 
 of Christianity is roundly denied, and its precepts 
 of self-denial and purity pronounced on the whole 
 mistaken and deleterious, Christian writers may be 
 permitted to call attention to the difference between 
 the history of Alboin and Eosamond, and that of 
 Agilulf and Theodolinda. It is certainly as if the 
 savage conqueror had determined the conditions and 
 character of his race, when he spared Pavia after 
 his three years' siege, moved by the black monks' 
 prayers. At all events, in less than twenty-five 
 years occupied in the settlement of Northern Italy, 
 the change of character in the rulers of the con- 
 quering race is very strongly marked. 
 
 The earliest specimens of Lombard art still in 
 existence, or on record, date from the reign of 
 Theodolinda. Her second marriage took place in 
 599 ; according to Gibbon ; — the year of Gregory I.'s 
 accession to the Popedom : and his earnest and 
 pathetic appeal to her husband and herself, setting 
 
 1 The story of Theodolinda's wooiug is thus related in Rose's 
 " Biographical Dictionary," vol. i. p. 149 i "Without announcing 
 her intentions, she requested the pleasure of his (Agilulf s) company 
 at her court. She touk with her an escort to meet him as far as 
 Somello. When they met, she called for a cup of wine, and 
 having drunk half of it, she offered the other to the Duke. On 
 returning the cup, he kissed her hand as a mark of respect ; w r hen, 
 turning to him covered with blushes, she said, ' That is not the 
 salute I ought to expect from my lord and husband.' She then 
 acquainted him with the wishes of the Lombards, and her own 
 choice — and the Duke became a king."
 
 262 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 forth the misery of Italy, and their power for good 
 or evil, seems to have been the beginning of an 
 influence over them which must have been as bene- 
 ficial as it was uninterrupted. Some curious and most 
 interesting vessels, which once contained sacred oil, 
 sent by Gregory to the Lombard queen are still pre- 
 served in the treasury of Modcetia or 5Ionza, with the 
 reliquary which accompanied them. Both are de- 
 scribed in our Chapter on the Crucifix ; and the vessels 
 are represented in Martigny's Dictionary under that 
 word ; and on a larger scale and with greater clearness 
 by M. Grimoard de St.-Laurent. 1 Another relic of 
 the same age, of world-wide reputation, is the famous 
 Iron Crown ; this, with the plain diadem worn by 
 Theodolinda herself, is represented in Muratori's 
 edition of Paul the Deacon- But a still more in- 
 teresting record of that age is his plate of the bas- 
 relief (tabula marmorea) which once stood over 
 the door of the ancient Duomo of Monza, dedicated 
 to St. John Baptist by the Lombard king and 
 queen. A basrelief we presume it to have been, 
 though the original building (entirely renewed in 
 1396) was Byzantine, and some of the figures bear a 
 certain resemblance to the mosaics of Ravenna. It 
 seems to have filled the tympanum of the great 
 doors. There is little composition or arrangement 
 of the symbols and figures. Agilulf kneels in prayer 
 on the spectator's left, wearing a long tunic appar- 
 ently over his mail, and what seem to be rowdlnl 
 spurs. There are jewelled crosses over royal crowns, 
 and an eagle with an ampulla. Theodolinda is 
 offering her crown on the other side ; there are other 
 
 1 In "Annates Archeologique?," vol. xxvi. 
 ! "Scriptores Italici," vol. i.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 263 
 
 Crosses resting on chalices, and the singular and in 
 part unique symbol of the Hen and Chickens. In 
 such a place, one cannot hut suppose that this is an 
 allusion to St. Luke xiii. 34, — in which case the 
 Chioccia, or silver-gilt hen of Theodolinda (still pre- 
 served in the Cathedral treasury) must have the same 
 meaning, rather than a mere reference to the arch- 
 priest of Monza or the seven Lombard Princes. The 
 lower range is flanked by St. Peter with the keys and 
 St. Taul bearing a sword: in the centre is the Bap- 
 tism of Our Lord with an attendant angel, the water 
 rising pyramidically up to the middle of His Body . 
 on either side, the Blessed Virgin and (most pro- 
 bably) St. John the Evangelist. This carving must 
 have been of the greatest interest, as a specimen of 
 Byzantine work done under Lombard patronage ; as 
 the figure of Theodoric at Pavia, and many Eavennese 
 carvings and mosaics, were produced lor Ostrogoths. 1 
 The Deacon appeals to this, or to another carving, in 
 Theodolinda's palace, as an interesting record of the 
 dress of his ancestors, and their manner of cutting 
 their hair short behind and wearing longer front and 
 side-locks. " Their garments," he says, " were loose 
 and of linen, such as English Saxons are wont to 
 wear, ornamented with borders (institis) woven 
 in divers colours. They had sandals open almost to 
 the end of the great toe, and kept on by lacing with 
 leathern thongs (laqueis corrigiarum alternatim). But' 
 
 1 Paul the Deacon, iv. 22. This latter was certainly a mosaic 
 (mensa tessellis ornata), and it, or another similar portrait of 
 Theodoric, is mentioned by Procopius, de Bello Gallico, xxiv., as. 
 " Ex lapillis compacta, minutis admodum, et versicoloribus fere 
 singulis." Its head fell away just before Theodoric's death, the 
 middle at Amalasuntha's, and the legs and feet crumbled at the 
 coming of Belisarius.
 
 264 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 afterwards they began to wear hose (hosis uti) ; over 
 which when on horseback they used to put on 
 " tubrugi birrei " — which last singular expression 
 seems to denote red or tan-leather overalls. 1 But it 
 is of importance to observe so early an example of 
 the Lombard insistence, in pictures, on the dress 
 and arms of their own life. They were evidently 
 from the first determined to have an art-school 
 of their own. The church of St. Michele at Pavia, 
 mentioned by Paul the Deacon as a sanctuary in 
 661, is one of their earliest works, and must be 
 placed in the seventh century, with the Church of 
 St. Ambrose of Milan. Their naturalism and in- 
 sistence on fact, their vigorous imagination of truth, 
 and wild play of fancy in fiction, their delight in 
 action, motion, and contest, their taste for hunting 
 and battle, their irresistible or unresisted taste for 
 the humorous grotesque, are described by a master- 
 hand.' 5 But Professor Kuskin also notices in this 
 passage (a knowledge of which is almost essential to a 
 good understanding of Italian- Gothic or Eomanesque 
 architecture) how rapidly the Lombard character toned 
 down, as it were, under their new civilization and in 
 their new climate. That their conversion to the 
 Faith had even more to do with the change, we 
 can see no reason whatever for doubting. But in the 
 seventh century the condition of the Lombard artist 
 seems to have been one of continued excitement, the 
 feeling of one of a conquering race which has just 
 won its land. "The Arab feverishness," says Pro- 
 fessor Euskin, " impels the Lombards in the South, 
 
 1 Birrei = irv^ai. Muratori. 
 
 1 In Append. 8 to Vol. I. of "The Stones of Venice," and there' gra- 
 phically contrasted with the Byzantine work of St. Mark at Venice.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 265 
 
 showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a 
 refreshing firmness and order. The excitement is 
 greatest in the earliest times, most of all shown in 
 St. Michele of Pavia, and I am strongly disposed to 
 connect much of its peculiar manifestation with the 
 Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially 
 his carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times 
 seems to have been exactly what a tiger would be, if 
 you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagi- 
 nation, a strong sense of justice, fear of hell, know- 
 ledge of northern mythology, a stone den, and a 
 mallet and chisel. Fancy him pacing up and down in 
 the same den to digest his dinner, and striking on 
 the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn ; 
 — and you have the Lombardic sculptor. As civiliza- 
 tion increases the supply of vegetables, and shortens 
 that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes ; it is 
 still strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and 
 Rouen ; it dies away gradually in the later Gothic, 
 and is quite extinct in the fifteenth century." 
 
 But the most complete and important example of 
 the earlier Lombard style 1 is St. Zenone at Verona. 
 The excitability and grotesque humour of the older 
 workmen are still there, in considerable force ; but 
 the characteristic of the sculpture which covers the 
 whole facade of the Church, and is lavished on 
 every part of its interior, is historical realism. The 
 instruction which is conveyed in the Book-Temple 
 of Venice by means of mosaic, at Verona is given 
 in sculpture. Mr. Buskin's Oxford Lectures on 
 
 1 Called Romanesque from the roiuid arches which it derived 
 from Old Rome, as Byzantine takes its name from Byzantium, 
 New Rome or Constantinople. 
 
 N
 
 266 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Sculpture contain an excellent photograph of this 
 wonderful Church front ; particularly happy in its 
 absence of heavy shadow and clearness of detail; 
 even to the castings of the wonderful bronze doors 
 which anticipate Ghiberti. They show an imagin- 
 ative realism in their rendering of Old and New 
 Testament history, like nothing which precedes them, 
 excepting only the mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore. 
 The choice of subjects is particularly interesting, 
 inasmuch as we find the ancient Scriptural cycle 
 of the Catacombs almost complete in it, though 
 expanded into a pictorial History of the Redemption 
 of Man from both Testaments. There is less pure 
 symbolism, and more attention to type and pro- 
 phecy : — the Good Shepherd is no longer to be seen, 
 nor the Vine, nor the various emblems of Dove or 
 Lamb which shadowed forth the relation of Man to 
 God in the earliest days of faith, with yet unde- 
 veloped doctrine. But Adam and Eve are sent forth 
 from Paradise, as on the sarcophagi — Cain fells Abel 
 with a short bludgeon ; Abraham sits under the tree 
 with the Three Guests ; and in another compartment, 
 the Angel is staying Abraham's hand (armed with a 
 formidable Gothic war-sword, straight and pointed), 
 from sacrificing his only son. The Brazen Serpent is 
 also crucified on a Tau Cross. But the most curious 
 instance of derived treatment, connecting the new 
 barbaric Christianity with the old classic teaching, 
 is the Lombardized Noah ; standing in his square 
 " area " or chest, as of old, but now tossed on a rather 
 stormy sea, in a tabernacled and gabled structure, 
 and stretching forth his hands to a dove, of the 
 size of an albatross, and drawn with the skill of
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 267 
 
 one who must often have watched the falcon's flight. 
 The Divine Lamb is on the keystone of the round 
 arch which forms the high porch ; and in the low 
 gable, or pediment above, is the Hand of Blessing. 
 Tall Corinthian pillars support this porch, based on 
 lions or griffins. In the lowest course of sculpture 
 on the facade, now entirely destroyed by wanton 
 mischief, was once the strange allegory called the 
 Chase of Theodoric ; the hunter striking his quarry, 
 and himself watched for by the Evil One. "Within 
 the church, quaint grotesques, and knights in combat, 
 alternate with Scriptural subjects : the transition 
 from devotion to jest seems to have been as easy 
 to the first Lombards, as to Florentines in Giotto's 
 day, and centuries after. It is through this Church 
 of St. Zenone and the Veronese Gothic in general, 
 that the relationship of the thirteenth-century work 
 of Florence, and the after glories of the early Re- 
 naissance, can best be traced to their real origin. 
 
 After the close of the ninth century darkness settles 
 over Rome for ages more, and mosaic seems to have 
 been attempted no further. The name of Beno de 
 Rapiza occurs in the eleventh century, in a charter 
 of 1080. 1 An inscription on one of the rude paint- 
 ings of the legend of St. Clement, in the Church 
 bearing that Saint's name in Rome, records that it 
 was his donation and his wife's : EGO BENO DE 
 RAPIZA CVM MARIA VXORE MEA PRO 
 AMORE DOMINI ET BEATI CLEMENTIS. The 
 pictures in this church are eleventh century; with the 
 exception, perhaps, of the paintings on the outer wall 
 of the south aisle, representing the Ascension, the 
 
 1 Parker, " Church and Altar Decorations," p. 58. 
 
 N 2
 
 268 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Crucifixion, and the Descent into Hades, which 
 appear to be considerably earlier. There is with 
 them a Madonna apparently of the seventh century, 
 about the same time as the mosaic picture in the 
 apse of St. Agnes. 
 
 The family of Cosmati were the great Eoman 
 
 mosaicists of the thirteenth century and worked also 
 
 in cities of northern Italy. The name of Buschetto is 
 
 connected with the Cathedral of Pisa in the eleventh 
 
 and twelfth centuries : those of Niccola and Giovanni 
 
 Pisano with the sculpture of the thirteenth. In these 
 
 great Italians the Lombard energies began to be 
 
 trained by the study of ancient models of Greek art ; 
 
 and it is with them that the true Eevival or Eenais- 
 
 sance of art begins. This book does not enter on the 
 
 subjects of Gothic or Mediaeval art, further than to 
 
 assert what will be universally admitted — that the 
 
 primitive, typical, historical, and symbolic teaching 
 
 was not discontinued, but overlaid and obscured by 
 
 legendary painting ; by the increasing attention paid 
 
 to subjects connected with the Passion of our Lord 
 
 and the Last Judgment ; and by the rise of the lay 
 
 or artistic spirit. Art ceased to be conventual, 
 
 because monks were no longer the only artists. 
 
 But art was still religious ; first because its chosen 
 
 subjects were of a religious character, and secondly 
 
 because the painters were men of definite Christian 
 
 belief. However non-religious, or anti-religious, or 
 
 abominably sensual, or profane, art may have since 
 
 become, her historical connexion with the Christian 
 
 Faith cannot be disputed. 
 
 It seems to us that the same tradition of Christian 
 graphic art remains through all the Lombard works,
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 269 
 
 though changed by innovations in subject. History 
 and doctrine were still taught in form and colour ; 
 the illuminated church stood instead of the painted 
 Evangeliary, for men who perhaps could not read, or 
 whose reading, like children's in our own day, was 
 greatly assisted by pictures. It needs but little 
 acquaintance with ancient MSS. to understand how 
 difficult, through the varieties of hand, character, and 
 contraction, the art of reading must have been, even 
 to the comparatively few who knew lines and letters 
 at all. Meanings imperfectly apprehended from the 
 written page might often be mastered with the help 
 of the inlaid walls or sculptured porches and columns ; 
 and the poor would have the assistance of sermons or 
 catechizings, which would probably instruct them in 
 the Scriptural account of their own condition and 
 hopes ; at least while the clergy cared to teach it them, 
 or until mere legend had superseded it. 
 
 To inquire how far this really took place would re- 
 quire volumes of somewhat disputable statement. But 
 there can be no doubt that a body or substratum of 
 Christian history and doctrine was always taught in 
 Italy and Germany ; nor yet that art was employed to 
 express and impress it, as in former days. Men could 
 not worship Mary without some instruction concerning 
 the Son of Mary, nor adore the Saints without know- 
 ing \Vhose Saints they were. The advancing cultus 
 of the Blessed Virgin has been traced in the Roman 
 mosaics in our chapter on that subject : for a fuller 
 account of it, illustrated both from history and from 
 other monuments of early art, we must refer to the late 
 Rev. "Wharton Marriott's valuable work. 1 The effects 
 1 "The Testimony of the Catacombs."
 
 270 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 on painting and sculpture of the ever-increasing de- 
 votion to the Mother of the Lord, and of the easier and 
 more familiar worship of patron Saints, appear to us 
 specially lamentable. Not only severity, but earnest- 
 ness, seems to have been gradually withdrawn from 
 religious art ; Church painting was conventionalized 
 more and more ; the Virgin became a Queen of 
 Heaven, and the hagiology of Saints a mythology of 
 inferior deities, with special tastes and employments. 
 It was often found easier and more attractive to the 
 painter to range at will in legend, and indulge princes 
 and people with unattested miracles and martyrdoms, 
 than to continue in the ground of Scriptural narra- 
 tive, and walk in the old paths of symbolism or 
 history. As the people's taste went after Legends 
 and Last Judgments, Infernos and Assumptions, the 
 painters showed themselves no wiser or stronger 
 than the people. Their work was often paid chiefly 
 by abbots and priors, who were compelled to minister 
 to the people such religion as seemed to please them 
 best. They would often require religious pictures 
 which were, or represented, incredible nonsense. It 
 was a lamentable consequence that the painter lost 
 faith in religious work. He had to paint what he 
 did not really believe : and in consequence, the sub- 
 jects of his art seemed less and less to him, and he 
 could but rest on its technicalities. Mauy would 
 (for a time) live happily on the subtle and delicate 
 pleasures of colour and form, not caring what they 
 painted : as Botticelli or Benozzo Gozzoli. But as 
 soon as it was understood that the end of art was 
 pleasure, without reference to religion, evil enjoy- 
 ment and sensual subjects were certain to break in
 
 THE LOMBAKDS. 271 
 
 overpoweringly, and they did so. The course of our 
 own days is not a very different one ; but the object 
 of this book is not polemical. "Whether art be openly 
 or consciously dedicated to the service of God or not, 
 it will depend, after all, on the character of the artist 
 whether its effects be Christian or atheistic, godly or 
 godless. No Theist can feel what is most rightly 
 called the inspiration of art, without asking whence 
 it comes, and answering himself that, being so good 
 a thing, it must come from the Giver of all good 
 gifts, and be one of the choicest of the ordinary 
 or natural gifts of the Spirit. He who thinks thus 
 of his work may yield to natural passion, or stumble 
 over that impalpable barrier which divides the 
 artist's taste in beauty from the sensualist's. But 
 he will return and repent ; and until he has finally 
 .cast off the Giver, he cannot use the gift pur- 
 posely for suggestive temptation. Michael Angelo 
 yields to, or boldly asserts, natural passions from 
 time to time : but no man ever yet was led to impu- 
 rity or lowered in tone of honour by studying him. 
 And why not ? In the end, because the vehement 
 and misled master desired through all, and in spite 
 of all, to serve Christ with his great gifts. 
 
 There is a connection, last worked out in Dr. 
 Woltmann's admirable Life of Holbein, but not un- 
 noticed by former writers, between the Church art of 
 the fourteenth and the sixteenth century — between 
 the Reformation and the post-Reformation workers, 
 between Orgagna and Holbein. It goes back, indeed, 
 to the mosaics of Torcello, 1 or even to the unknown 
 painting of Methodius for Bogoris of Bulgaria. It 
 1 See Index, s. v. "Last Judgment."
 
 272 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 consists in the habit of dealing with thoughts of 
 Death ; in attempts to realize the final change, the 
 separation of soul and body, with all its pangs and 
 dismal outward signs ; and in the efforts to realize the 
 Final Judgment as a scene. All attempts of this kind 
 fall, naturally, under the head of the Grotesque ; be- 
 cause strangeness and imperfect conventionality must 
 necessarily be the result, where a subject beyond 
 human thought is essayed by human hands and con- 
 ceptions. But in the hands of powerful men their 
 impression is powerful at all times. There can be no 
 doubt that such representations were an innovation ; 
 not earlier than the eighth century, or probably than 
 the eleventh ; beginning at a time when all adherence 
 to the ancient Scriptural cycle of the early frescoes 
 and carvings had long ceased. Yet the subject of the 
 Judgment is not unscriptural, while St. Matt. xxv. 
 and the book of the Revelation are part of the Canon. 
 It seems that that increasing attention paid to illus- 
 trations of the Apocalypse, which has been noticed in 
 the chapter on Mosaics, would necessarily lead artists 
 to try to represent those parts of it which involved 
 the strongest personal terror and warning : and such 
 attempts once made, would have great power on the 
 minds of barbarians accustomed to scenes of horror 
 and desolation ; and perhaps would have an un- 
 confessed attraction for polemical disputants, who 
 desired to terrify their opponents with Hell as the 
 penalty of their errors, if not to doom them to it 
 finally. Certain it is that the Fire-stream or Eiver 
 of God's Wrath, and the worms which die not, are 
 strangely and rudely inlaid at the west end of the 
 Duomo of Torcello. Whether that church dates
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 273 
 
 from Attila, or from Alboin's invasion (both which 
 seem improbable) — or from after the destruction of 
 Altinum in 641 by the Lombards, or from the 
 general restoration in 1008, mentioned by the 
 Marchese Selvatico — the mosaics must be part of 
 its original ornaments. 1 But from this mosaic of 
 Judgment there begins a succession of such like 
 representations ; down to Giotto's frescoes at Padua, 
 or Orgagna's in the Campo Santo of Pisa ; and from 
 Orgagna again to Holbein's Dance of Death, or of 
 the Dead. As we by no means desire to have this 
 subject perpetuated in our Sacred Buildings — mainly 
 because the Primitive Church refused it, under cir- 
 cumstances which might seem to point specially to 
 its use — there is no reason for dwelling on it at 
 length : but one or two special observations may be 
 permitted. 
 
 In the first place, the Torcello representation is 
 still symbolic. The Fire and the Worm are ideas 
 drawn from the written word of Holy Scripture ; but 
 they are accepted as they are given, and only, as it 
 were, repeated verbally in the painting. The work is 
 Eastern, ascetic and contemplative : its severity is 
 sharpened by the sense of corruption in the Christian 
 life itself, by painful strife with heresy and schism, 
 and by external distress. The treatment of the subject 
 
 1 See "Lectures on Christian Art and Symbolism," by the 
 author of this work, pp. 88-95. A critic in the Saturday Review 
 calls attention, with much irritation, to the contradiction between 
 passages, where two of these dates are suggested. It really arises 
 from the fact that it is impossible to say whether any original 
 church was built at Torcello by those who fled before Alboiu in 
 568. If so, it formed a part of the duomo of the next century ; 
 with its mosaics, if any. At all events, those which are there 
 now must be of the same date as the original part of the present 
 church, and may be earlier. 
 
 N 3
 
 274 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 develops in Lombard or Frank hands, and becomes 
 wildly grotesque, horrible, grand in despair and agony 
 of expression, loathsome in details of torment ; as 
 Giotto's work, in a great degree, and still more in 
 Orcrasna's, who seems to have thrown himself into 
 his Infernos ' with a sort of enjoyment which casts 
 a disagreeable kind of firelight on the faith of the 
 Middle Ages. One is inclined to think that men 
 who handed their neighbours over, in deliberate 
 thought, or even in elaborate jest, to eternal 
 torment; or who played with the idea of so doing, 
 cannot have had much conviction of its reality, or 
 of the fearfulness of actual judgment of men for 
 their deeds. Orgagna might perhaps plead the ex- 
 ample of Dante for placing his political or private 
 enemies in the Inferno ; but it is clear, if any 
 attention whatever is to be paid to Vasari, that he 
 stood accused of a kind of personal malice, which 
 was never attributed to the author of the Divine 
 Comedy. A personal Inferno, or anticipation of 
 the Judgment of God, by either poet or painter, 
 really appears to be an act of presumptuous wicked- 
 ness ; which He may doubtless pardon, but which 
 ordinary men are bound to protest against. There 
 does, and must, remain in all spiritual thought of the 
 future, a certain fearful looking for of indignation 
 which no faith or definite form of religion ever denies 
 or avoids. The Christian Church of the first three or 
 four centuries seems certainly to have dwelt less on 
 
 1 In the Campo Santo, at Pisa : that in Sta. Maria Novella in 
 Florence has been repainted, it is believed by Ghirlandajo 
 (Vasari, vol. i. p. 204. — Andrea Orgagna); that in Sta. Croce 
 has perished.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 275 
 
 this subject than on any other popular creed. But it 
 was never denied or ignored. The sense of future 
 justice and judgment is human, inevitable, and irre- 
 sistible ; and it is, to say the least, inaccurate, to talk 
 as popular writers do now, about Christian priests 
 having fabricated a penal doctrine, which every priest 
 on earth would gladly deny, if he could, in the name 
 of his Master. However, this penal doctrine is a 
 subject unfit to be dwelt on by art, as the temporal 
 inflictions of disease, famine, or legal punishment 
 are unfit for her : — but if it must be set forth, the 
 grim vagueness and terrors of the Torcello mosaic 
 are sufficient. There is great difference between 
 emblematic pictorial repetition of the Lord's words, 
 letting them mean what He meant by them, and 
 painting law-officers in hell, for having been engaged 
 against one. 1 One might suppose that this kind of 
 revenge indicated levity or scepticism rather than 
 deliberate malice, and probably amounted to little 
 more than the profane oaths in which the last gene- 
 ration of English gentlemen indulged so freely. Still, 
 the elaborate painting of a picture like the Inferno of 
 Pisa is a proceeding far more deliberate than any 
 verbal curses ; and it must remain, while the plaster 
 and colours last, one singular monument out of many 
 among the moral contrasts of mediaeval character. 
 It is humbling to reflect that the author of the 
 mighty Presence of the flying Death, and the great 
 angels of Judgment, could endure to labour over such 
 
 1 See Vasari, Orgagna, 210. ed. Bohn. Whether this fresco be 
 the work of Orgagna or the Lorenzetti of Siena has nothing to do 
 with this volume. (See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. L ; also 
 Vasari, Orgagna, 310, ed. Bohn.)
 
 276 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 filthy and hideous details of torment. Things which 
 are unnameable ought at least to be unpaintable. 
 Something may be attributed to what are called the 
 habits of the time, and its butcheries of public 
 execution and private murder ; and much to the 
 deadly enmities of Florence. To this day her glorious 
 architecture bears the ancient tokens of a city divided 
 against itself, house against house; marked by the 
 gloomy strength and heavy windowless rustications 
 of the outer walls of her palaces, meant to defy siege, 
 and harbour garrisons for offence and oppression. 
 Orgagna died before 1376-7; and two years after 
 that date broke out the desperate struggles of the 
 Albizzi and the Parte Guelfa, with the Eicci and 
 other Arnnioniti or disfranchised families — followed 
 by the contest of the middle classes against the 
 Minor Arts and the Ciampi. The names of Silvestro 
 da Medici, Filippo Strozzi the elder, Benedetto 
 Alberti, and not the least of Michael Lando, the wool- 
 carder who saved the state, are among those of the 
 chief actors of the time. 
 
 It is singular, and certainly points to the uncon- 
 trollable, yet sometimes fatal fierceness of Italian 
 temper, that Michael Angelo himself was guilty of 
 the same profane folly as Orgagna, in painting his 
 enemies or foolish critics among the condemned, in 
 the Last Judgn nt of the Sistine. And as almost 
 every weakness or error of the great masters has been 
 
 1 The remarkable passage in Hallam's "Middle Ages," vol. i. 
 pp. 240 249, ed. 1846 (chap. iii. parti.), may be read with advan- 
 tage "u this point. Ii speaks of the "dark long-cherished hatreds, 
 and that implacable vindictiveness which distinguished the private 
 manners of Italy. . . . Forrevenge she threw away the pearl of 
 great price, and sacrificed uvea the recollection of liberty," &c.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 277 
 
 religiously imitated, while their great deeds are inimit- 
 able and unrecognized, this absurdity has been re- 
 peated by no less excellent a follower than Cornelius 
 of Diisseldorf and Munich; who showed his zeal for the 
 Papacy by introducing a corpulent caricature of Luther 
 among the lost, in the great fresco of the Ludwig's 
 Kirche in the latter city. Few artistic errors can be 
 more demoralizing to the painter, or better calculated 
 to make a thoughtful spectator infer that he believes 
 in no future state or judgment whatever. 
 
 Orgagna's subject of the Triumph of Death may 
 be taken as heading the long list of Dances of Death 
 or of the Dead, or " Danses Macabre," led by the great 
 Egyptian ascetic Macarius, who presides in Orgagna's 
 work. 1 That at Lucerne on the old w r ooden bridge 
 is still in existence ; and there is an elaborate 
 one preserved in the French " Histoire des Arts du 
 Moyen Age." 2 But the Dance of Death is always 
 associated with the memory of Hans Holbein, 
 who. though his name is less generally beloved, and 
 less popular than Eaffaelle's in sacred-decorative art, 
 is greater as a guide and model, from his matchless 
 invention and energy of graphic power. It is better, 
 too, to close this work with some account of a part 
 of his labours ; first from his connection, through 
 Orgagna, with the earliest pictures of Judgment, and 
 so with the early mosaics of the Apocalypse ; secondly 
 because, as the first and greatest of Protestant painters, 
 
 1 The derivation of the word Macabre is uncertain. Dr. AVolt- 
 maun thinks that " Machabseorum chori" is the real etymology. 
 
 2 Chap. viii. p. 35. De Sommerand. Album 5" — 7° serie. 
 Illustration of a " Danse Macabre " in a MS. belonging to Anne of 
 Bretagne (sixteenth century), "Oh est demonstre tous etats estre 
 du bransle de la mort."
 
 278 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 he marks a final stage in the history of Sacred or 
 Keligious Art' ; when it became polemical as well as 
 theological. For the first three or four centuries, in 
 the time of the Biblical cycle, Church art repeats 
 and strives to impress the teaching of Holy Scripture. 
 As doctrine is defined, art becomes theological. As 
 developments of doctrine are demanded by the 
 people, and accepted, and enforced by the failing 
 fulers of the Church, she becomes ecclesiastical ; 
 and is claimed accordingly by the Roman system, 
 as a kind of property or private engine of its own. 
 With the Eeformation, art is made polemical 
 on both sides : — and its first employment thus, or 
 perhaps rather the most noticeable of its early ap- 
 plications in this direction, is the work of Hans 
 Holbein. For his are the great wood-cuts which 
 express to our minds at this day, as to the minds of 
 all the German people at his period, the thoughts of 
 the religious laity of northern Europe on the subject 
 of the Eeformation. The three works of his, the 
 Dance of Death, the Indulgence-mongers, and Christ 
 the True Light, seem to claim precedence in descrip- 
 tion, even before the great Passion subjects, from 
 that vast mass of Scriptural illustration in all forms, 
 which exercised his immeasurable imagination. 
 
 His Dance of Death, or of the Dead, comes first, 
 with its Last Judgment. It is not with the frescoes 
 on the cloister walls at Basle that we are concerned, 
 but with that wonderful series of wood-cuts of his 
 drawing (cut probably by Lutzelburger the admirable 
 " form-schneider ") which will carry down his name 
 for ever in connection with the contrast of Death and 
 Life. Two or three of these cuts have been repro-
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 279 
 
 duced for Prof. Euskin by the exceeding skill of Mr. 
 Burges, and are facsimiles utterly undistinguishable 
 from the original print. 1 As in all the more solemn 
 Dances of Death, Holbein's is accompanied by his 
 foreshowing of the Judgment of Mankind. And he 
 alone seems to have formed, and to acknowledge the 
 thought, that though condemnation be real, and 
 Tophet assuredly prepared of old, it does not become 
 a painter to let his imagination run riot on horrors 
 he has not seen. And as in the great Pisan fresco, 
 Hell seems to have the better, and few are saved, so 
 in the last of Holbein's wood-cuts, the just alone 
 stand before their Lord rejoicing. Yet he goes on 
 warning throughout, by one threatening text after 
 another, that the sinner risks dying in his sins, 
 even to infinite loss or perdition unless he repent. 
 " What will ye do in the end thereof ? " 2 is the motto 
 of the whole work. But there is a tone of half humor- 
 ous reflection through it all, on the grand equality 
 of Death, so just and mighty, subtle and searching. 
 There is no democratic spitefulness, though the diffi- 
 culty and piteousness of the great change to the fair 
 and luxurious is steadily dwelt on. But the starving 
 hind and his worn-out horses are in deadly terror at 
 the grim unknown, who strides to them across the 
 heavy furrows, bringing rest, " bringing pleasant time 
 to weary team ; " 3 and the poor pedlar, with his 
 heavy pack, is hurried off as pitilessly, and goes as 
 unwillingly, as the stern old noble who turns on the 
 Destroyer, sword in hand, and rejoices once more in 
 fierce unavailing battle. Indeed, in some of the later 
 
 1 See "Fors Clavigera," No. 4. 
 
 2 Gedenk das End — Memorare novissima. 
 
 s " Bobus fatigatis amicum tempus agens."
 
 280 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 verses, which are supposed rightly to express the 
 painter's mind, Death speaks kindly to his valiant 
 victim, " Come thou with me, good sword and true." 
 But go we all must, quoth the painter; and each will 
 go from his daily life, from ploughing or grinding 
 at the mill ; and undoubtedly, ye shall go from the 
 midst of your sins, if ye will practise them. 0, king 
 and emperor, cardinal and pope, burgher, soldier, old 
 crone and little child, painter, scholar, apothecary, 
 ploughboy, thief; and you, all-privileged Fool — you 
 must depart for good or evil. And therefore — what? 
 Do not, as Orgagna says, turn hermits and live on 
 hind's milk, but do justly, love mercy, walk humbly in 
 Christ's name ; and above all, fear not. There lingers 
 in Holbein's mood the same defiance of death which 
 the Lombards learnt from their Scandinavian fathers. 
 It is the spirit of the wanderer, Viking or Varang, 
 who rose up ready to seek another land ; and faced 
 the last enemy like an earthly foeman, with scornful 
 welcome; meeting the inevitable as Antar the Arab 
 met his enemies, "even as the ground receives the first 
 of the rain." Allowing for changes of period, race, 
 circumstance, and instruction, there is much in this 
 which is nearly allied to the spirit with which 
 Christians of the Martyr-ages seem to have looked 
 on death. Willingness to depart, through hope in 
 Christ, is more pronounced, of course, in those who 
 were preaching His name within memory of actual 
 witnesses who had seen and handled, than in men 
 accustomed to be told that Alexander VI. and Leo X. 
 were Vicars of Christ. Yet the early symbolisms of 
 the anchored ships or unyoked chariot, the flower- 
 wreaths, and winged creatures rejoicing in liberty,
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 281 
 
 and the absence of inquiry about the sensations and 
 phenomena of their change : the general and unde- 
 fined hope in Christ for all who repent and believe 
 in Kim, seem to have been nearly the same in the 
 martyrs of the Empire, as in the martyrs of the Curia. 
 The invention of wood-cutting and copper-en- 
 graving has had this important bearing on church 
 decoration, that it has withdrawn the absolute. 
 necessity for wall-paintings of the Sacred Histories. 
 Not only are there more books, but those books may 
 be illustrated, and appeal vigorously to the learner's 
 imagination : and this not only here and there, at 
 great expense, through manuscript illumination, but 
 by all the countless devices of the Press, with at 
 least some excellence, and at the cheapest rate. This 
 seems to us in no sense to diminish the value of 
 instructive decoration in churches, only to make it 
 more necessary that the Primitive standard and a 
 list of subjects involving Primitive doctrine, should 
 be thoroughly recognized in our own Church. But 
 if Holbein were a far less remarkable man, he would 
 be remembered in Religious Art, perhaps for ever, by 
 the originality and power of his Protest in wood- 
 cut, 1 The True Light dates 1524, and Holbein was 
 in London in 1527, the year before Diirer's death. 
 
 1 The word " Protestant " has many meanings in our own day, 
 varying greatly with the matter which a person may protest 
 against. Aggressive infidelity claims the title, for the purpose of 
 exciting popular passion against High Anglicanism. In one man's 
 mind, Protestantism seems to mean personal religion; in another's, 
 personal irreligion. Speaking as Christians, we use it in the sense 
 of the ancient Christian brotherhood of the early English Refor- 
 mation, about 1526. There is a Protestantism of the German and 
 English Reformation, and another of the French Revolution ; the 
 one against the Pope, the other against the existence of God. And 
 it is time for Anglicans, in their turn, to protest against atheistic 
 assumptions of Puritan language.
 
 282 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Six years before, the tale had come to Antwerp of 
 Martin Luther's imprisonment, and had provoked 
 the great Nureinberger's prayers and lamentations 
 over his supposed danger. We have Dlirer's protest 
 in that bitter and pathetic outburst x — it is that of 
 personal belief in Christ as God and Lord ; nor do we 
 recognize the word Protestantism in its negative sense. 
 Holbein's declaration of what he held, and what he 
 did not hold, in the day of spiritual trial and con- 
 fusion, is recorded in the Indulgence-shop and the 
 True Light. In the one, the sale of pardons is 
 going on. Those who can pay for forgiveness of 
 sins are paying, and money down is the strict order 
 of the day : those who cannot pay are left in their 
 sins : there they may stay unforgiven. The real 
 sting of the picture is not that the rich man is fined 
 for his offences, or that the monk gets the money ; 
 but that the poor man, for as much as he has not to 
 pay, shall not be frankly forgiven. But Holbein's is 
 no merely negative Protestantism ; for on the other 
 side, and apart from the dealer, the " Offen Synder," 
 the repentant man, self-convicted, and avowing his 
 sin, is following David and Manasses, who kneel 
 before Christ, and is making his prayer, not unheard. 
 This is the practical side of the Reformation, and a 
 simple assertion of personal reliance on the Redeemer 
 for forgiveness. In the True Light, we have the 
 speculative side of the renewed faith, as it appeared 
 to painters, burghers, and nobles, weary of the Papacy 
 but by no means weary of the Faith. The Lamp of 
 
 1 See Mr. Scott's " Life of Diirer. - ' The passage is fouud in 
 Weale's folio work, London, 1846. See Contemporary Review, 
 vol. ii. p. 398.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 283 
 
 Truth divides the picture in two. By it stands the 
 Lord, with willing followers crowding to Him, of all 
 sorts ; laity, clergy, and women. He is opening 
 their eyes, and they receive sight from Him. On 
 the other side, popes, cardinals, monks, and doctors 
 are leading each other away from the Lord among 
 dark mountains, which remind one of the fate of the 
 Hypocrite in the Pilgrim's Progress, who stumbled 
 and fell, and rose no more. Plato and Aristotle are 
 the leaders of the blind ; the former has just fallen 
 into a pit, and the other, turbaned like a " malig- 
 nant " Turk, is following him straightway. This is 
 the protest of energetic lay-thought ; of newly-gained 
 knowledge of nature ; of fresh enterprise and desired 
 learning, against the Aristotelian limits and barriers of 
 thought. " Men saw," as Mr. Maurice has said, " that 
 the popes were governed by the doctors, and the 
 doctors by the Categories." The Categories were 
 classifications of all things for the purposes of formal 
 logic, and men found that they themselves, and a 
 vast number of newly found thoughts and things, 
 could not be thus arranged and dealt with secundum 
 artem any longer. They rose and said : On many 
 new things we must have truth, if God will. We 
 must have new arrangements of new phenomena, 
 and inferences will follow from them. Let us look 
 at facts as we find them ; either at human facts of 
 old, at the Greek language, at its literature, and at the 
 remnants of its art; or more particularly at the 
 present facts of nature ; at all which God has given 
 lis to know on earth of earth. In evil hours and 
 for evil reasons, through worldly interests which could 
 not be avowed, and for selfish or panic terrors which
 
 284 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 should not have been felt, Theology was set against 
 Knowledge ; and the quarrel has never been healed. 
 But for all that it never should have existed ; and 
 firm ground will be reached for its adjustment, when 
 rival professors of spiritual and natural science 
 shall mutually concede to each other (as in many 
 cases they are beginning to do) that both the results 
 of physical experiment, and the facts of spiritual 
 experience, are after all true and real things. 
 
 With Eaffaelle and with Holbein the higher sym- 
 bolism and the historical testimony of Church art 
 seem both to have passed away, or to have run wild ; 
 on the Eoman Catholic side into polemical assertion 
 of the Deity of Mary, and of prayer to Saints and 
 Angels, aided by every kind of luscious appeal to 
 beauty ; or into the unscrupulous exploitation of the 
 doctrine of the material purgatory, by general repre- 
 sentation of souls in torment. The German Catholic- 
 art revival, though the work of highly instructed and 
 conscientious men, has not altogether escaped this ; 
 but there can be no doubt that it has done infinitely 
 more good than harm. On the Protestant side, art 
 has run astray into foolish unmeaning allegory ; and 
 altogether fallen into disuse and suspicion as a means 
 of Christian instruction. If a course of subjects, 
 directed to illustration of the Primitive Faith and the 
 fufilment of prophecy, and to reverent realism of the 
 events of Holy Scripture, were either defined and 
 laid down, or tacitly accepted for Church decoration 
 — to be treated of course as the different genius of 
 different artists should direct them — that would 
 be the foundation of an English school of high- 
 aimed art. It may be visionary to hope for one ;
 
 THE LOMBAEDS. 285 
 
 but it must be said that loftiness of aim appears to 
 be at present the great want of English artists. The 
 contemplation of the highest subjects of human 
 thought can at least do them no harm. 
 
 Two papers, one on Liturgical Books, the other 
 containing some remarks on Miniatures and Illumi- 
 nation, have been added to the Index of Subjects ot 
 Primitive Art. They hardly form a part of this book, 
 considered as an account of the decorative principles 
 and records of the Early Church. The works of 
 Professor Westwood, so frequently referred to, are 
 the best source of information which is generally 
 accessible. But it is probably the case that most 
 persons who are interested in early art, and read this 
 book, would, rather than not, have a few few facts on 
 the subject of early caligraphy and book-ornament : 
 and the addition has been made accordingly. The 
 arts of illumination and of architectural carving, 
 preserved in the dark ages, and fostered in their 
 mediaeval infancy under shade of convent walls, 
 always remained in full practice. They had their chief 
 professors still, in monastic workshops and scriptoria, 
 while fresco, oil-painting, and sculpture broke into 
 artistic liberty, and then advanced to the license of 
 the later Renaissance ; so that for a time art passed 
 into the service of pleasure instead of religion. 1 
 But this work would be incomplete without some 
 brief allusion to a deeply interesting relic of the 
 Later Middle Ages, which not only throws a 
 favourable light on the Christian teaching of the 
 
 1 Those times of transition are best commented on in Prof. 
 Buskin's works, especially in volumes iii. and v. of " Modern 
 Painters ; " — best described, perhaps, by Messrs. Crowe and Caval- 
 caselle, and in the works of Kiigler, Liibke, and Woltmann.
 
 286 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 German peasantry in very early ages, but preserves 
 and repeats many of the subjects of the Catacombs 
 and Sarcophagi, with reference to Messianic type and 
 prophecy — we mean of course the Passions-Vorstel- 
 lung of Ober-Ammergau. Its music and mise en 
 schie are its only modern features ; and it possesses 
 the deepest interest from the light which it throws 
 on the lay-religion of the German peasantry. So 
 many accounts have been given of it that we can 
 but refer to the Eev. Malcolm McColl's as the 
 standard one ; and to a highly interesting article 
 signed Karl Blind in " The Dark Blue Magazine." * 
 The latter points out its truly Catholic or non-Papal 
 character, which was certainly and fully maintained 
 when the author visited it in 1871. Those who 
 would understand it fully should read the article 
 on German literature in Prof. Max Mtiller's " Chips 
 from a German Workshop," which points out a thing 
 difficult to understand, the German maintenance 
 of pure Scriptural teaching, in spite of ignorance and 
 neglect, before the Information. He attributes it to 
 the lower clergy, and — to their great credit — to the 
 fraternization of the preaching friars with the people 
 against the higher clergy. " The people were hungry 
 and thirsty after religious teaching. They had 
 been systematically starved or fed with stones. 
 Part of the Bible had been translated for them ; 
 but what Ulfilas was free to do in the fourth cen- 
 tury was condemned by the prelates assembled at 
 the Synod of Trier in 1231. Nor were the sermons 
 of the itinerant friars in towns and villages always 
 to the taste of bishops and abbots. Brother Bert- 
 1 July 1871.
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 287 
 
 hold (died 1 272) was a Franciscan. He travelled 
 about the country, and was revered by the people 
 as a saint and a prophet. The doctrine he preached, 
 though it was the old teaching of the Apostles, was 
 as new to the peasants who came to hear him as it 
 had been to the citizens of Athens who came to 
 hear St. Paul. The saying of St. Chrysostom, that 
 Christianity had turned many a peasant into a 
 philosopher, came true again in the time of Eckhart 
 (d. 1329), and Tauler (1361;. Men who called 
 themselves Christians had been taught, and had 
 brought themselves to believe, that to read the 
 writings of the Apostles was a deadly sin. Yet in 
 secret they were yearning after that forbidden Bible. 
 They knew that there were translations ; and though 
 those translations had been condemned by Popes 
 and Synods, the people could not resist the tempta- 
 tion of reading them." 
 
 The character of German Catholicism is still 
 moulded, after all changes, by the reading of the 
 Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels. Xor could 
 anything prove this more vividly than the Ammergau 
 exhibition, which is in fact an acted homily on the 
 connection of the Old and Xew Testaments ; of type 
 with antitype, and Messianic prophecy with the 
 Messiah. The same subject supplied motives of 
 ornament for the Catacomb-paintings and carven 
 tombs. Paulinus of tola's motto x would be a 
 suitable motto for the performance, theologically 
 speaking. It begins;- — as the history of Piedemp- 
 tion begins ; — as the Catacomb-cycle begins ; — 
 as the time-honoured Sacramental instructions of 
 
 1 "Lex antiqua novam firmat,veterem nova complet."
 
 288 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 Bishop Wilson begin — with the fall and corruption 
 of man and the institution of sacrifice ; it ends with 
 the Crucifixion and Eesurrection. The Fall, the 
 Promise of the Bedeemer, and the Sacrifice of Isaac, 
 are its first tableaux from the Old Testament; and 
 they are followed at once by the opening of the 
 Passions-spiel proper, with the Lord's Entry into 
 Jerusalem. The Bock and the Manna are compared 
 with the Lord's Supper ; the thirty pieces of silver, 
 and the sale of Joseph are set over against each other. 
 Daniel's condemnation to the Lions followed by the 
 Lord before Pilate ; Moses, Aaron, and the Scapegoat 
 by the " Ecce Homo ; " the Brazen Serpent by the 
 actual Crucifixion ; Jonah by the Eesurrection ; the 
 passage of the Eed Sea, by the Ascension, as the 
 return of our Forerunner where He was before. All 
 these illustrations of type and prophecy, with others, 
 are in the Passions-spiel; and nearly all the subjects 
 will be found in the Primitive cycle. The doctrines 
 of Incarnation and Sacrifice govern both : and both 
 illustrate the convergence of the Christian- mind of 
 all races and ages on the central and primaeval 
 doctrine of Salvation in the life and death of Christ 
 for Man. In spite of evil, man hopes for all things 
 through the Lord's life and death ; he has had that 
 hope from the beginning of evil ; and Christian art 
 and symbolism are one great means of its expres- 
 sion. It never fails, it reaches all minds. It labours 
 for ever at its manifold answer to the great question, 
 " Cur Deus Homo," from the earliest paintings of the 
 martyrs' graves, through Eavenna and the fall of old 
 Eome, and the rise of Byzantium ; through the irrup- 
 tion and conversion of the Lombard race; through
 
 THE LOMBARDS. 289 
 
 the Pisan and Florentine outburst of intellect, and 
 poetry, and graphic powers, from Xicolo Pisano 
 and Cimabue to Michael Angelo ; and from Bellini 
 to Tintoret and Veronese in Venice ; — even to its last 
 regularly descended offset, the multitudinous pageant 
 of the Bavarian Highlands. This adds to primitive 
 subjects the actual representation of the Crucifixion, 
 and so far rests on sixth-century precedent. But no 
 one word in it that we ever heard speaks of prayer 
 to Mary or to Saints, of the deity of Mary, of pur- 
 gatory, or of legend. Each scene of the New Testa- 
 ment was preceded by its typical scene from Hebrew 
 history, expounded in recitative or choric hymn, with 
 noble voices and modest gesture : and the argument 
 was still the Whole Humanity for man's sake, to 
 atone for and do away with evil. Its logical gist or 
 argument was exactly that of Bishop Wilson's first 
 chapter on the Holy Communion, reasoning from the 
 Fall to Sacrifice for sin, and from typical sacrifice to 
 the conclusive sacrifice. 
 
 Few scenes — at least in Europe — can better illus- 
 trate the difference between things of the senses, 
 which seem so real, and yet change hour by hour, 
 and things of the spirit, which endure — than the 
 ancient Passion-play, set forth in the solemn presence 
 of the blue pine-woods of the Ammer-thal, under the 
 frown of its steep unchanging hills. Unchanging as 
 men call them, they crumble and alter under storm 
 and frost, and the quaint ceremonial marks new 
 decades, and actors and audience pass away from the 
 shows of things into silence and reality. What is there 
 that will last ? — At least, the Argument of the Play 
 alters not, for the word of the Lord endureth for ever. 
 
 o
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 GENERAL. 
 
 The modern system of divided labour possesses 
 great advantages for production, and perhaps for 
 scientific research, though men's minds appear to be 
 often somewhat cramped and narrowed by exclusive 
 study. It has been remarked — we believe by Mr. 
 Fitzjames Stephen — that the principle of division 
 of labour is now being carried on so quickly in 
 almost every department of thought, that it seems 
 probable that we may at last arrive at a state of 
 things in which the claim to any other sort of 
 knowledge than a microscopic acquaintance with 
 some particular department of some one branch 
 will be regarded as an absurd presumption. This, he 
 apprehends, and so do we, would have very little 
 tendency to elevate and enrich the minds of the 
 possessors of these separate stores of mutually un- 
 intelligible discovery. But in fine art, where the in- 
 ventive faculty has so much to do with combination 
 and composition, separate and exclusive studies have 
 already done harm enough. They have led to the 
 great decorative difficulty of the present day, that 
 architects on one hand, and painters and sculptors 
 on the other, are always at variance in Church 
 ornament. The necessity that a great architect 
 should also be a sculptor, and indeed a painter, has
 
 GENERAL. 291 
 
 already been expressed, not in vain, by Professor 
 Ruskin in this country ; but we are glad to refer to 
 Dr. Liibke's and Herr Burckhardt's "Geschichte der 
 Renaissance" for a parallel observation. Ghiberti's 
 remark, on the all-embracing Giotto, is quoted; 1 and 
 the authors observe on it that " the many-sidedness 
 of the earlier artists, which is quite a riddle to our 
 age of division of labour, was of extraordinary value 
 in architecture .... when architects were also 
 sculptors, painters and carvers in wood ; accustomed 
 to express form in every way." 
 
 Venturing no further at present on this grave 
 matter, than to express the hope that our architects 
 will at least become students of organic form, and 
 more especially of colour ; and that our painters will 
 remember that the construction of a building is its 
 organic form, which they are to express and embellish 
 under the architect's direction, and not to thwart him 
 by disguising — we still take leave to set down here 
 a few distinctions and reflections for the popular 
 mind, which may help the building public, sub- 
 scribers, promoters, and well-wishers to Church art, 
 to understand what they really wish for or ought to 
 desire ; and how much of that they ought to have 
 according to their funds ; that is to say, according 
 to their willingness to sacrifice money to education, 
 spiritual and temporal. 
 
 It seems to us, in the first place and of course, that 
 the decoration of every consecrated building should 
 be planned from the first by the architect in subject, 
 colour, and form, or thoroughly arranged by him, 
 
 1 Quando la natura mole concedere alcuna cosa, la coneede 
 seuza veruiia avarizia. " When it pleases Nature to grant a tiling, 
 she bestows it without any manner of grudging." 
 
 o 2
 
 292 PRIMITIVE CHURCH AET. 
 
 with painters and sculptors, as to its execution ; and 
 with employers and clergy, as to its subjects and 
 purpose. The practical object of this book has 
 been to suggest to clergy and laity the ancient 
 standard and list of subjects represented in the first 
 six or seven centuries. But whatever choice may be 
 made in the matter, we think there are a few remarks 
 to be made about things to be understood on both 
 sides. Let us start with the assumption that sub- 
 jects of Church ornament have been arranged between 
 subscribers, architect, artists, and clergy ; and that a 
 style has been selected. Then, for internal decora- 
 tion, we think it at least convenient to begin with 
 the consideration of colour. For the selected style, 
 whatever it may be, determines in a great measure 
 where the sculpture is to come ; and the powers and 
 acquired knowledge of the architect will be shown 
 in its proportions and arrangement. But he should 
 know, and ought to be able to convey the idea to his 
 patrons, how much colour he will have, and where, 
 and on what means he will rely for introducing it. 
 
 Colour, as we take it here, is either solid or trans- 
 parent ; you either see light through it, or you do not. 
 You must either get the charm and glow of varied 
 hue into your stone building through painted 
 windows, which is using transparent colour ; or 
 obtain them by fresco or mosaic, or opaque glass 
 work on the walls, which is using opaque colour. 1 
 
 Now — architects will excuse the utterance of tru- 
 isms for popular use — 
 
 1 Transparent pigments may, of course, be used in wall-painting. 
 All we can regard here is, that the wall is not transparent, only 
 reflecting light, while the window transmits it.
 
 GENEEAL. 293 
 
 First, in northern, or high-gabled, or " vertical " 
 architecture — French, German, or English — more 
 light is, on the whole, desirable than in a round- 
 arched, Eoman, or " horizontal," or low-gabled 
 building — for the round arch is Eoman, and so is 
 all that is built therewith. All such work is derived 
 from the vaultings of baths and cloacse. 
 
 Secondly, and in consequence, your windows will 
 be more important features, in construction and 
 decoration, in Gothic than in Byzantine or Eoman- 
 esque ; and in French Gothic than Italian Gothic. 
 
 Thirdly, you will have to make up your mind 
 whether the colour shall come in through the win- 
 dows, or be laid or inlaid on the walls ; that is to say, 
 whether you will call chief attention to the one or 
 the other. Both cannot go first as vehicles of colour ; 
 they must be harmonized, and that by subduing the 
 one in favour of the other. I have known the other 
 principle asserted ; of exaggerating hue in wall-paint- 
 ing, because brilliant windows were used in the same 
 building ; and that by an able architect of great and 
 deserved name ; but I remain totally unable to under- 
 stand him, so far. • 
 
 Fourthly, in Northern Gothic you will have to 
 insist on the windows for colour ; and as they there- 
 fore, infallibly, will draw the eye to them, you must 
 put your most important subjects, the principal 
 arguments of your art-preaching, in your principal 
 windows. And your walls should not be made to 
 rival them, but toned down to equal richness, with 
 less brilliancy. 
 
 Fifthly : If your architecture is to be that of the 
 hotter countries of Europe, where excess of light is
 
 294 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 to "be avoided, rather than where every ray of it 
 must be courted, you will have small windows and 
 large surfaces of wall. In this case you will rely on 
 your spaces of wall for colour and subject; the 
 colour of your church will be opaque ; you will 
 use fresco or mosaic; and have to deal with the 
 far greater difficulties of treatment which are in- 
 volved in their use. But in any case the help of an 
 educated painter or professional colourist is highly 
 necessary, unless the architect be one himself. 
 
 On this subject, we are inclined to think that 
 decorators, as a rule, seem hardly sensible of the 
 value of the natural tints of the materials they em- 
 ploy. One of the great beauties of Saracenic structure 
 is its banded architecture, as observed in Cairo and 
 Damascus ; in red and white, or red, black, and white 
 material. It has been well imitated in this country, 
 as in Mr. Butterfield's chapel at Balliol College, Ox- 
 ford ; but internal colour as well might be bestowed on 
 the cheapest buildings, by lining them with red and 
 white bricks in the barred form, and simply omitting 
 the plaster. Great attention, we hope, is now being 
 bestowed on moulded brick and terra-cotta ornament 
 for such interiors. Mere repetition of patterns in paint 
 is not satisfactory; and until fresco-painters are more 
 numerous, and fresco-colours more decidedly perma- 
 nent, there is reason for effort to do all which can be 
 done with the natural hues of brick, stone, and tile. 
 The author would prefer them, in all cases, to merely 
 decorative forms without symbolical or historic mean- 
 ing. Moreover, in our large and smoky cities, he 
 hears strong complaints against all paint whatever ; it 
 fouls and will not clean. Those who have seen the
 
 GENERAL. 295 
 
 little chapel at Lynmouth, North Devon, will see 
 how much can be done at slight expense in a land 
 of granite and red sandstone, without a touch of 
 paint or a line of gilding. The latter means of orna- 
 ment would take a book to itself ; and the mention of 
 paint opens up the whole subject of interior decora- 
 tion, religious and domestic. But thus much he may 
 say to church-builders- — spare paint and plaster alto- 
 gether; study the star-and-cross pattern of the Doge's 
 Palace, and try it in limestone and sandstone, or 
 even in good red and white brick. Compare it with 
 the barred Egyptian work : have bands if you will, 
 or pattern if you will, but beware of both together. 
 The repetition of an easy idea is the secret of simple 
 pattern, where no high thought is expressed; and 
 the popular eye is too indolent to follow pattern, if 
 interrupted and complicated by stripes and stars. 
 Gilding, as the richest form of ornament, should be 
 on the leading lines, and direct the eye. But we 
 have not yet seen how much may be done by incrus- 
 tation and the use of tile-mosaic and opaque glass. 
 There is no reason why moulded tiles should not be 
 used as freely as moulded bricks : on walls as well 
 as pavement. And, with really good designs, sym- 
 bolic or other, an honestly- built church, lined with 
 these materials and rejoicing in well-arranged hues 
 of its own structure, ought to be felt to be successful 
 and beautiful, whether light and clearness, or dark- 
 ness and richness, be its tone of colour-decoration. 
 
 Again, if the artistic effect of the whole thing is 
 not to suffer grievously and continuously, some un- 
 derstanding ought to exist as to the use of violent 
 colour in temporary decorations, such as flowers,
 
 296 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 hangings, altar vestments, and the like. If colour 
 
 © © ' 
 
 is used in the ceremonial of our Christian worship, 
 it must be used well or ill. If well, it proves that 
 time, thought, and artistic effort have been faithfully 
 devoted to God's service ; and it gives a lofty and 
 true pleasure to all. If ill, it at least vexes or 
 distracts those worshippers, few or many, who are 
 not protected by colour-blindness, real or acquired. 
 To have a large light church with all the colours of 
 the rainbow in its windows, as in a Xorman Gothic 
 cathedral — to add to this fresco and mosaic, excel- 
 lent of their kind, but adapted from the colours of 
 Venice or Ravenna, contending desperately with 
 showers of transmitted hue at every gleam of morn- 
 ing or evening sunshine — and then to put in altar- 
 cloths and hangings in different styles and tints, with 
 niediseval vestments, variegated flowers, and gilding 
 regardless of expense — supposing, moreover, that the 
 colours employed include the metallic greens and 
 acrid mauves and magentas of modern glass work and 
 weaving; — this is to make a picture by sitting on 
 a set palette. Whereas if you will have plenty of 
 grisaille in your windows, and study harmonies of 
 one or two colours in them, rather than contrasts 
 of many — if you will avoid violent greens as you 
 would deprecate a steam whistle in an orchestra ; 
 if you would try what could be done in a small window 
 with olive-greens and ivy-greens, white and yellow 
 alone, allowing sparks of the emerald tint, or one touch 
 of crimson, in fear and trembling — then, at all events, 
 the immediate effect would be chastened and soft- 
 ened. Such windows, too, especially if placed low 
 on church walls, would not interfere with the opaque
 
 GENEKAL. 297 
 
 colours of the interior. The use of rich brown 
 varied to purple, and olive to green, with a small 
 quantity of crimson, excluding all other colour, is 
 much to be desired. In blues all violent mazarines 
 and " university" " colours are to be avoided, except 
 in their faded form, in which indigo takes part : but 
 even the deep hues of Eavenna mosaic are unsuited 
 for window colours, through which light passes ; 
 though the varied play of their own hue is so very 
 striking. 
 
 The present writer has just had the pleasure of 
 contemplating the progress of some tolerably well- 
 guided, though very quiet church decorations for 
 Easter. He has been struck with the good effect 
 of green ivy or even box wreaths, studded with white 
 and yellow immortelles in little bundles. He observes 
 that daffodils alternating on green with primroses 
 have a delightful effect. He has succeeded in exclud- 
 ing any colours from the reredos except white, two 
 or three greens, and pale crimson azaleas. He 
 is thankful to have seen the altar of a well-beloved 
 church not loaded with tier on tier of ill-arranged nose- 
 gays like an inn sideboard. And it occurs to him that 
 any part of a congregation (more especially any sister- 
 hood, numbering among them ladies well trained in 
 embroidery or painting) might greatly assist the 
 decorations of chancels and altars all over England 
 by framing a good set of rules for natural-flower 
 ornament ; founded on the succession of ordinary 
 and " country " blossoms, such as they can best 
 obtain, as 
 
 ' ' The daughters of the year, 
 Each garlanded with her peculiar flower, 
 Dance into the light, and die into the shade." 
 
 o 3
 
 298 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 He cannot help thinking that throughout the or- 
 dinary year crimson and white should be the only 
 colours of flowers used on the altar. Of course, 
 every variety of shade and hue in one colour should 
 he used. Eed berries and white immortelles, in not 
 too large quantity, would supply the need in Autumn, 
 if scarlet geranium, white aster, or chrysanthemum, 
 or Christmas-rose, failed. Violet or even blue, well 
 combined or mixed with black (violets, dark hya- 
 cinth or pansies), would be substituted for crimson 
 in Lent. Yellow, white and orange would be a chord 
 of colour to admit the early spring flowers — and 
 red roses and white pinlp would last the summer 
 through. Green leaves, he thinks, will be better 
 round or behind the altar than upon it, unless in 
 fringes to distinguish the white flowers from the 
 snowy coverings. The quantity of blossoms is highly 
 unimportant, if they be rightly massed and opposed 
 to each other, and he would plead for a few vessels of 
 white opaque glass or alabaster to contain them. 
 Great mingled bunches of hyacinths, primroses, 
 peonies, wallflowers, anemonies and daffodils will 
 doubtless be observed at this season — stuck in brass 
 chimney ornaments, and backed by thickets of box 
 and laurel ; disguising the reredos of many an English 
 church, and vying with masses of candles to eclipse 
 or hide the vessels of the Eucharist altogether. 
 
 It is supposed, of course, in these remarks, that 
 flowers are admissible on, or above, or around An- 
 glican altars, or credence tables. It seems strange 
 that when whole churches have been decorated with 
 flowers time out of mind, their presence in that part 
 of the church should call for protest or legal inter-
 
 GENERAL. 299 
 
 position. The actual state of law on the subject is 
 hard to define ; but treating the question as a matter 
 of archaeology, there is no doubt that flowers were the 
 ornaments of the earliest Christian sepulchres, and 
 that the earliest sepulchres were frequently used as 
 altar tables for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, 
 whatever rite may have been used. The use of red 
 and white flowers, or of violet and white in Lent, 
 seems equally harmless and appropriate. 
 
 If it were possible to employ ladies in mosaic 
 work instead of embroidery, the results of their 
 labours in church ornament would be more per- 
 ceptible to the grosser sex, and, as the author 
 thinks, more valuable. Educated labour of this kind 
 will assuredly increase rapidly in value ; for if 
 churches are ever to be decorated on the Venetian 
 model, having the principal events of the Old Testa- 
 ment at the west end, and their fulfilment in the 
 New, to the east ; — or, if in others, the ancient sym- 
 bolisms are to be set forth that men may remem- 
 ber that their Church and her services are really 
 not things of yesterday, but an inheritance from 
 Apostolic days — then art work of high character 
 must be cheapened, for it will be needed in great 
 quantity. The evidence of Messrs. Watts, E.A., and 
 Armitage, E.A., before the late Eoyal Academy 
 Commission, is very weighty and apposite on this 
 subject. Both assert, with immaterial differences, 
 that designs of high merit would be willingly sup- 
 plied by some of our leading artists at a moderate 
 rate ; and that each might be executed by students 
 (properly trained, we presume, either in the school 
 of the Eoyal Academy, or in the higher grades of
 
 300 PRIMITIVE CHUECH AET. 
 
 the departmental instruction) under the superinten- 
 dence of some one competent man. The only reason, 
 Mr. Watts thinks, why the taste for mural decoration 
 in churches and schools does not rapidly increase 
 in the country is because such things are not enough 
 seen ; they are only executed where the public do not 
 see them. " To employ students upon them, and to 
 scatter them abroad as much as possible, is what is 
 wanted in the first instance. The Eoyal Academy 
 should, by way of developing taste, do something to- 
 wards placing before the eyes of the public at large 
 the best specimens of art. . . . The students of the 
 Eoyal Academy who made good designs and gained 
 medals should be given a set of designs, and, with 
 a certain small allowance, required to carry them 
 out on the walls of some public building." 
 
 We cannot but hope that somewhat of a British 
 school of fresco and grand mosaic may arise from the 
 national contribution to the decoration of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. The preliminary difficulties are very 
 great; strong rivalries must necessarily be involved ; 
 and personal friendship and interests must hamper 
 great works now, as heavily as in the days when 
 Ghiberti was set up against Brunelleschi, or when 
 Bramante pitted Baffaelle against Michael Angelo. 
 But in those days, at all events, the immortal 
 labour was accomplished ; and we will hope for the 
 best now. 
 
 Another means of national progress in graphic art, 
 specially adapted to Gothic or Romanesque archi- 
 tecture, and to which the great mediaeval churches 
 owe most of their sculpture, is the formation of a 
 class of artist workmen ; by proper instruction in
 
 GENERAL. 301 
 
 drawing and modelling, which, is now accessible, 
 we are most thankful to say, in all our cities and 
 considerable towns. No one has spoken so elo- 
 quently on this point, nor with such practical 
 acuteness and fulness of suggestion, as Prof. Euskiu, 
 in his dissertation on the Nature of Gothic. 1 The 
 following observation appears specially important 
 with relation to the large number of artizans and 
 their sons who might in time form schools of orna- 
 mental sculpture which might adorn not only our 
 cathedrals, but our country churches : — " It is perhaps 
 the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools 
 of architecture that they thus receive the results of 
 the labour of inferior minds ; and out of fragments 
 betraying imperfection in every touch, indulgently 
 raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. To every 
 spirit which Christian architecture summons to her 
 service, her exhortation is, do what you can and 
 frankly confess what you are unable to do : neither 
 let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor 
 your confession silenced for fear of shame/' 
 
 It certainly seems to the writer a possibility that 
 English artisan-art may yet culminate in works like 
 the stony hawthorn of Bourges, or the bossy figure- 
 sculpture of St. Zenone. "We shall not see it : — yet art 
 would lose all its interest for lovers of our England, 
 if it were not for the hope that it will yet do some- 
 thing to teach and elevate the poor, and all the 
 others " whose souls cleave to the dust " either for 
 want of means, or for greed of money. To get men 
 lifted into the art-world seems in fact as great a 
 matter even as the production of great isolated works 
 
 1 In " The Stones of Venire," vol. ii., 2nd period, chap. i. p. 158.
 
 302 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 of art. And it certainly does appear, that if any 
 places be specially fitted to convey the teaching of 
 beauty to poor English people much in need of it, 
 it is the churches which are their own ; whose doors 
 invite them continually, from which no man can be 
 shut out ; which appeal by painting or sculpture, 
 without letter or line, straight to the heart and 
 understanding. 
 
 One suggestion only we have to make about 
 sculpture; and that especially to artist-workmen 
 and their employers — to be specially careful and 
 sparing of deep cutting and black shadow, in diffused 
 lights like those of most of our own great churches. 
 New builders ought to remember the singularly 
 unconsidered truism that their buildings cannot be 
 old, or have the deep-marked features of age, all 
 at once. Let them be patient, and have large 
 faith in time and dirt. We really have often 
 noticed, in the many criticisms on new buildings 
 which have reached our ears in the last decade or 
 so, that a class of critics exists who seem to think 
 a thirteenth-century cathedral can be built with the 
 grey honours of all its ages, in a few years' work in the 
 nineteenth. They decline to remember that the thir- 
 teenth-century Gothic, when it was new, looked new ; 
 and that it would not have been impressive by reason 
 of historical connections and hoar antiquity to us, if 
 we had seen its first stones laid. So we hear very 
 good modern Gothic virulently abused, not because 
 it is ill-designed or ill-cut, but because it does not 
 produce all the same varied associations of thought 
 which old and historical work necessarily does, 
 whether it be good art or bad. Every builder worth
 
 GENERAL. 303 
 
 his salt, works for posterity ; others shall enter into 
 his labours, as he has gained his inspiration and his 
 science from those who have gone before. 
 
 The Slade Professor's "Aratra Pentelici" 1 ought to 
 be read with great attention on this subject, and 
 the beautiful thirteenth engraving carefully studied. 
 Perhaps no other work can give so clear and 
 prompt understanding of the immense power of 
 good drawing, as distinguished from deep cutting. 
 Depth and shadow of relief, the mere vulgar 
 pleasure of seeing white against black, are very 
 unimportant indeed when balanced against power 
 and Tightness of line. The bas-relief is to all in- 
 tents and purposes a light and shade picture ; and 
 it is as wrong to force the pitch of shade, without 
 good reason, in the one as in the other. More- 
 over, time and its stains always act in favour of the 
 artist's light and shade, as the projecting parts get 
 worn white with exposure, and dust accumulates in 
 the hollows. Another and highly important reason 
 for shallow cutting in exterior carvings, is its far 
 greater solidity and the enduring nature of the 
 work. Far too much modern English Gothic bears 
 witness sadly, by its premature decay, to the zealous 
 and misapplied ambition of the workman ; who has 
 honestly wished to do his work thoroughly, or in- 
 dulged vanity in his manual skill, and so under-cut 
 everything to obtain dark shadow (when an outline 
 incised round each object would make it tell quite 
 sufficiently), treating stone as if it were as tough 
 as bronze, to its certain destruction in years or 
 even months. Steady practice of animal-drawing, 
 
 1 Prof. Ruskin, Fifth Lecture, pp. 164-175.
 
 304 PRIMITIVE CHURCH ART. 
 
 where the slightest incisions mark the play of 
 broad surfaces of muscle, would probably be the 
 best discipline to cure the pupil of too constant 
 search for edges and shadows. 
 
 This book has reached a sufficient length, and the 
 writer is unwilling to encumber it here with remarks 
 on several works of modern artists, which appear to 
 him to give evidence, in various grades of sacred 
 art, of power of high character and degree. 1 But 
 one painting he has been allowed to see, to which 
 the public is now admitted, and which seems to 
 him a work of the gravest import. It is the chief 
 result of five years' labour; — by one of the men 
 strongest to labour in all toiling England. It is 
 Holman Hunt's picture, called " The Shadow of 
 Death." Our Lord rises from toil in the late after- 
 noon, in the carpenter's shop at Nazareth, stretching 
 His arms lightly on each side with a natural gesture 
 of slight fatigue ; and the slant rays of the early 
 sunset, bathing a wonderfully realised landscape of 
 the thymy terraces of the Galilean hill-sides, enter 
 the wide open window, and cast the shadow of the 
 Crucified on the opposite wall. The Virgin-Mother 
 kneels below at an open chest, which contains the 
 presents of the three kings w T ho had come to the 
 brightness of His rising. She may be recalling 
 words of theirs, or thoughts of that time, and asking 
 Him about the fulfilment of His Father's business. 
 We must altogether decline description or criticism 
 of any part of this picture, and most of all of the 
 face with which He looks towards her. But it falls 
 
 1 For this he may refer to an essay in the First Series of ".The 
 Church and the Age," pp. 15i, 155.
 
 GENEEAL. 305 
 
 in with what we have already said 1 to make one 
 observation on this great work : — that, beyond any 
 others with which we are acquainted, it unites 
 in harmonious realism the two great schools or 
 styles of ideal representation of the Son of Man. 
 On both sides of the Alps there has always been 
 the classical or quasi-traditional ideal of Him, 
 which endowed Him with the greatest beauty of 
 face and form which the artist could picture to 
 his invention, or embody by his graphic skill. On 
 the other hand, among Byzantines in the East 
 and German Goths in the West, the ascetic ideal 
 has been followed, which passed from melancholy 
 grace to grimaces of feature and unsightly emacia- 
 tion or convulsion of body. Mr. Holman Hunt's 
 great skill and experience, and a peculiar happi- 
 ness, in this instance, in the selection of his 
 model, have enabled him to produce a face of su- 
 preme beauty and power, and a form alike ascetic 
 and athletic ; where brilliancy of skin and low con- 
 dition of flesh produce all necessary effect of delicacy 
 on the long, grandly- formed and sinewy limbs of 
 the Fairest of all men. To an archasologist the 
 appearance of this picture is an era : what it is 
 to the painter only a skilled painter can tell. 
 Whatever it is or may become to the Christian 
 spectator, this work is the thought and object to 
 which five years' labour has been dedicated by 
 the first painter of sacred subject which this gene- 
 ration has produced. 
 
 1 See the chapter on tlie Catacombs, and the Index article on 
 Portraits of the Lord.
 
 THE ASCENSION. FROM MS. OP THE MONK RABULA.
 
 INDEX 
 
 HISTORICAL AND EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS 
 
 Sacrcb %xi in iln ipriimtita Chtrtjj. 
 
 A and w. 
 
 Of these symbolic letters the w is always given in the 
 minuscular or " small" form. They are generally ap- 
 pended to the Monogram of Christ, or suspended from 
 the arms of the Cross, whether from the St. Andrew's or 
 decussated symbol, or the later upright or penal Cross. 
 For the first see De Rossi, Inscr. Xo. 776 ; for the 
 latter Bottari, tav. xliv. This is a sixth or seventh 
 century Cross in the Catacomb of St. Pontianus, and 
 is given in photograph of its actual present condition 
 by Parker. 
 
 These letters are found, with or without the Monogram, on 
 all kinds of works of Chx-istian antiquity ; on sepulchral 
 monuments, especially those of ancient France (see Le 
 Blant's " Monuments Chretiennes de la Gaul," passim);
 
 308 IXDEX OF HISTOEICAL AND 
 
 on cups (Boldetti, from Callixtine Catacomb, tav. iii. 4, 
 p. 191) ; on rings and sigils (v. Martigny, " Diet, des 
 Ant. Chretiennes," s. v. Anneaux) ; and on coins (Do. 
 Numismatique), immediately after the death of Con- 
 stantine. 
 Their use amounts to a quotation of Rev. xxii. 13, and 
 a confession of faith in Our Lord's assertion of His own 
 Infinity and Divinity. See Prudentius, Hymnus Omn. 
 Hor. 10, Cathemerinon, ix. p. 35, 
 
 " Corde natus ex parentis ante mundi exordium, 
 Alpha et co cognominatus, Ipse fons et clausula 
 Omnium quce sunt, fuerunt, quaeque post futura sunt." 
 
 No doubt the symbol was more common after the outbreak 
 of Arianism ; but it seems pretty clear from the above- 
 mentioned cup in Boldetti, and from the inscription by 
 Victorina to her martyred husband Heraclius (Aringhi, 
 i. 605), that it was used before the First Nicene Council. 
 It will be found (see "Westwood's "Palseographia Sacra") 
 in the Psalter of Athelstan (703) and in the Bible of 
 Alcuin, both in the British Museum. 
 
 Abel, Cain and 
 
 See Bosio, III. v., p. 159, on a sarcophagus from the 
 Cemetery of Lucina, and not unfrequently in bas-relief, 
 Bottari, tav. exxxvii. Abel offers the Lamb ; and Cain 
 ears of corn, or a bunch of grapes. The presentation of 
 the Lamb by Abel may doubtless have been an Euchar- 
 istic symbolism in the mind of the artist : whether the 
 grapes are substituted for the corn in the above-quoted 
 picture with the same idea seems doubtful. 
 
 Abei, in the act of Sacrifice. 
 
 With Cain, see Bottari, tav. exxxvii. 51, and vol. iii. p.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 309 
 
 41. x See Mosaics of Kavenna, by Parker, and Chap. 
 vii. on the Sacramental Picture in St. Vitale, of Abel 
 and Melchisedech. 
 
 Abraham. Bottari, tav. xv. Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, 
 also xl. cxi. xxxvii. &c. 
 Most frequently with Isaac, in the interrupted Sacrifice, as 
 in St. Vitale at Ravenna, where the Visit of the Three 
 Angels is also represented. Both Abraham and Isaac 
 are generally clad in tunics ; in Bottari, tav. lix., Abra- 
 ham wears a long tunic, and Isaac the pallium. In 
 tav. clxi. Abraham is clad in high-priest's robes. As 
 might be expected, this is a very frequent subject in the 
 Catacombs : occurring in the earliest and least disputed 
 parts of the Callixtine. It is of course repeated through- 
 out all Christian illustrative art, in all MSS. &c. tfcc. ; and 
 finally, is one of the first pictures of the Ammergau 
 representation. 
 
 Adam and Eve. 
 
 Among the earliest subjects of Christian sculpture : on 
 the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, Bottari,, vi. tav. xv., 
 also on that in taw. xxxi. xxxvii. xl. No. 2. Some- 
 times, as Aringhi, pp. i. 613, 621, 623, the ears of corn, 
 or the mattock, are delivered to Adam, the distaff 
 or lamb to Eve. The motto of Jack Cade, " VThen 
 Adam delved and Eve span," may be connected with 
 mediaeval repetitions of this treatment. The serpent 
 appears in Bottari, taw. xxxi. li. and lxxx. 
 
 Agape. See chapter on Sacramental Representations. 
 
 Agnes,' St. See chapter on Mosaics. 
 
 1 This seems rather dubious : two young men are offering, one 
 ears of wheat, the other a lamb, to a seated Person, not advanced 
 in years. Another face is dimly seen behind — possibly Adam's,. 
 as Bottari interprets.
 
 310 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Anchor. 
 
 A frequent emblem on tombs, conveying tbe idea of rest 
 in hope. De Eossi (" De Monum." IxOvg, p. 18) 
 thinks that it is used as a symbol of the names Elpis, 
 Elpidius, &c. ifec. The mystic fish is often added to it. 
 See Bottari. 
 
 Its form is constantly associated with that of the Cross. 
 See De Eossi, vol. i. pi. 18, 20. 
 
 Angels. See Cherub, chapter on Symbolism. 
 
 The Abbe Martigny admits that few, if any, represen- 
 tations of Angels are to be met with before the fourth 
 century. The genii and winged boys (Aringhi, ii. p. 
 29, 167), see also Bottari, ii. taw. Ixxiv. and xciii., and 
 the catacombs of St. Prsetextatus, *fec. &c. cannot be 
 thought to have represented the heavenly hierarchy in the 
 mind of their painters or their first spectators. The figures 
 in the fresco in St. Priscilla (D'Agincourt, Peinture, pi. 
 vii. n. 3) may represent the Angel with Tobias : but Mr. 
 Parker's photograph of the present state of the fresco 
 makes this a matter of the merest conjecture. Again 
 (Aringhi, ii. 297) there is a picture of a wingless Angel 
 of the Annunciation. In Sta. Maria Maggiore (fifth 
 century), and in St. Vitale at Eavcnna in the sixth, the 
 Three Angels are appearing to Abraham. From early 
 times of Neo-Eoman or Byzantine art, two Angels 
 supporting a medallion have been a symbol of the 
 special presence of the First Person of the Trinity. 
 This is the case in St. Vitale, and also in the well-known 
 diptych of Eambona, representing the Crucifixion. See 
 Gori, " Thesaurus Diptychorum." Angels wear the pal- 
 lium, and are often represented as of gigantic stature, like 
 the Apostles. This simple distinction between mortal 
 and supernatural presences extends into the Byzantine 
 and even Gothic art of Venice. Euskin, " Stones of
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 311 
 
 Venice," vol. iii. p. 78. " Aratra Pentelici," p. 75, 
 and plate. 
 
 Annunciation. 
 
 Found in the Cemetery of St. Priscilla, Bottari, tav. clxxvi., 
 and in the fifth-century mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore, 
 on the Arch of Triumph. Ciampini, "Vetera Monu- 
 menta," vol. i. tab. ii. p. 200. D'Agincourt gives a 
 sixth-century miniature from the Laurentian Library 
 at Florence. Peinture, pi. xxvii. No. 2. In a diptych 
 published by Bugati, a tradition is repeated, which is 
 familiar to most visitors to Nazaretb, where the Well of 
 the Virgin is named in accordance with it. It is that 
 the Annunciation took place, not in the house of the 
 Virgin, but when she had gone forth to draw water. 
 
 Apocalypse. See chapter on Mosaics, and Bio, "L'Art 
 Chretienne," Introd. p. xliv. 
 
 Apostles. 
 
 In the earliest Church-art the Apostles may be said to be 
 represented without personal distinction or character- 
 istics. SS. Peter and Paul are the first to be specially 
 designated, the first in particular by his keys. Martigny 
 names two examples which he places in the fourth 
 century ; one of these is in Bottari, tav. xxi. 5 ; for the 
 other he refers to Perret's plates, vol. i. p. 7. Tbe 
 date of both is somewhat uncertain, as the drawings are 
 virtually restorations, and the unhappy removal of the 
 sarcophagi from their places in tbe cemeteries makes 
 their real period matter of the vaguest conjecture (see 
 chapter on Catacombs, &c.) On a vase of uncertain date 
 (Bottari, i. 185), St. Peter is receiving one key from our 
 Lord. He is apparently presenting them before the Lamb 
 in the mosaic of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin at Ravenna.
 
 312 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 The Apostles are frequently symbolized as twelve doves 
 or sheep, often representing the Church of believers 
 (with reference also to Luke x. 3 : "I send you forth 
 as lambs among wolves.") See Ciampini, " Yet. Mon." 
 vol. ii. tav. xxiv. for the great mosaic of St. Apollinaris ; 
 and Parker's photograph for those of SS. Cosmas and 
 Damiau and St. Prassede at Rome. The same is 
 repeated on various sarcophagi (Bottari, tav. xxviii. <fec), 
 and very frequently a thirteenth Lamb is placed on a 
 rock in the centre, often bearing the Cross on its fore- 
 head, and having the four rivers of Paradise flowing 
 from beneath its feet. The twelve doves were painted 
 to represent the Apostles in St. Paulinus's church at 
 Kola : and the mosaic cross of St. Clemente at Eome 
 is well known (Bottari, vol. i. p. 118). In their 
 human form, they are present on almost all the sarco- 
 phagi, and wherever the miracles of Our Lord are repre- 
 sented. (See Bottari, xxi. xxv. xxx. et alibi). The 
 two Baptisteries at Ravenna are magnificent examples 
 in mosaic ; the dome of each being occupied by the 
 Twelve, separated by palm-trees. Or they are arranged 
 by pairs, in remembrance of our Lord's having sent 
 them forth " two by two before him " to preach the 
 Gospel. Their dress is almost always the striped 
 pallium and tunic of old Rome. The specially ecclesi- 
 astical robes of later Byzantine art, extending to the 
 eleventh century and beginning of mediaeval art, are 
 not part of our present subject-matter. 
 
 Apples. See De Rossi, " R. S." vol. i. tav. xxx. 
 
 Ark. See Church. 
 
 For the symbolic Ark or square Chest in the Catacombs, 
 and in the doors of the Lombard St. Zenone at Verona, 
 sec Bottari, passim, and chap. x. on the Lombards. -
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 313 
 
 Ascension of OrR Lord. 
 
 Found in the MS. of Rabula, see woodcut, p. 306, and 
 s. v. Evangelists, symbols of. Like the events of the 
 Passion, this great subject is not touched in the Cata- 
 comb frescoes, and rarely, if ever, on sarcophagi, 
 though of constant occurrence in mediaeval Church art ; 
 which may be said to begin, in principle, with especial 
 calls of attention to the final sufferings of our Lord. 
 
 Baptism of our Lord. See chapter on Sacramental sub- 
 jects of art. 
 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 Represented in several ancient mosaics as the mother-city 
 of the Gentile Church, as distinguished from " Hieru- 
 salem," from which the sheep of the Hebrew covenant 
 are issuing. See, for the great picture of St. Apolli- 
 naris in Classe at Ravenna, Ciampini, V.M. ii. 24, 
 and pp. 153, 173. There is a Nativity with Adoration 
 of the Shepherds in Bottari, tav. xxiv. but the cattle- 
 shed of modern art is substituted for any attempt at the 
 cave or buildings of Bethlehem. Jerusalem and Beth- 
 lehem both appear on the singular Cup of the Vatican 
 collections, Northcote, No. 32. 
 
 Bird (as symbol). 
 
 The birds represented in the earliest Christian art are 
 generally distinguishable by their species, as Dove, 
 Peacock, Eagle, &c. This is often the case in early 
 sarcophagi and frescoes of the Catacombs, and is specially 
 remarkable in some of the early Lombard work of the 
 North of Italy (see Ruskin, "Stones of Venice," Ap- 
 pendix, vol. i. Byzantine and Lombard Carvings). But 
 in the earliest tombs (see Aringhi, vol. ii. 324, &c. 
 De Rossi almost passim, Bottari, tav. clxxiv. &c.) birds 
 
 ?
 
 314 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 assignable to no particular species are introduced, 
 clearly with symbolic purpose. They may occur often 
 with the palm-branch, and be taken as images of the 
 released soul seeking its home in heaven. Aringhi 
 recognizes this in a passage of some beauty (ii. 324). 
 He takes the lightness and beauty of the bird as a 
 symbol of the aspiration of faithful spirits. He refers 
 to Bede, who says, " Volucres sunt qui sursum cor 
 habent, et caelestia concupiscunt," looking on the bird 
 as a sign of the resurrection. Note the curious analogy 
 of the Psyche-butterfly, and of Hadrian's dying address 
 to his soul, " Animula, vagula, blandula," as to a winged 
 thing of uncertain flight. Caged birds are occasionally 
 found in paintings, *fec. (Boldetti, tav. vi. p. 154), 
 and may represent the soul imprisoned in the flesh, 
 imprisoned martyrs, &c. 
 The symbolism of the Cross by a bird's outspread wings is 
 St. Jerome's ; and Herzog, we believe, refers it also to 
 Tertullian. It may have occurred to many. For the 
 pairs of drinking birds in Veneto-Byzantine art, see 
 Dove, Peacock, &c. and chapter on Mosaics. 
 
 Blind, Cure of. 
 
 As one of the Miracles of Mercy, this is very frequently 
 represented on the sarcophagi, Bottari, taw. xxix. xxxii. 
 xlix. also xxxix. A single blind man is generally re- 
 presented, intended probably for the man blind from his 
 birth. But in tav. xxxix. the two, Bartimaeus and 
 his fellow-sufferer, are represented. At tav. lxviii. an 
 engraving is given of the cure of a single blind man, 
 which, from its Raffaellesque though imperfect drawing, 
 has somewhat the appearance of a late restoration ; and 
 which represents the afflicted person as of the same full 
 stature with our Lord. In nearly all other representa- 
 tions of this miracle the human sufferers are of purposely
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 315 
 
 dwarfed size. This naive method of calling attention 
 to the Divinity of the Healer was continued to the 
 earlier days of Venetian art : see Angel, supra. 
 
 Bread. See in text p. 217, 222. 
 
 For representations of bread or loaves as part of an 
 Agape, see De Rossi, " Roma Sott.," vol. ii. taw. xvi. 
 xviii. ; also Parker's Photographs of the Callixtine 
 Agapse, for the actual present state of these paintings. 
 For the Miracle of the Loaves, see Bottari, taw. Ixiii. 
 and Ixxxix. For the Fish bearing loaves-, see De 
 Rossi, I. tav. viii. The bread represented either in the 
 pictures of Agapae, or in those of the Miracle (as 
 Bottari, taw. Ixxxv. clxiii.) is generally panis decus- 
 satus, crossed cakes, like those made on Good Friday 
 at present. 
 
 Calf. 
 
 Irrespectively of its meaning as the symbol of an Evange- 
 list (see that word), the image of the calf or ox is 
 held by Aringhi (lib. vi. ch. xxxii. vol. ii. p. 320) to 
 represent the Christian soul, standing to Christ in the 
 same relation as the sheep to the shepherd. He also 
 takes the calf or ox to represent Apostles labouring 
 in their ministry, quoting various Fathers, and finally 
 St. Chrysostom's idea, that the oxen and fatlings spoken 
 of as killed for the Master's feast are meant to repre- 
 sent prophets and Martyrs. The calf or ox, as a 
 sacrificial victim, has been taken to represent the 
 Lord's sacrifice ; for which Ariughi quotes a comment 
 on Num. xviii. These similitudes seem fanciful, and 
 pictorial or other representations hardly exist to bear 
 them out. A calf is represented near the Good Shep- 
 herd, in Buonarotti(' ; Vetri," tav. v. tig. 2) ; and Mar- 
 tigny refers to Allegranza (" Mon. Antiche di Milano," 
 p. 125) for an initial letter at Milan, where the animal 
 
 p 2
 
 316 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 is represented playing on a lyre : typifying, he thinks, 
 the subjugation of the human nature to the life of the 
 faith. He also refers to St. Clement of Alexandria 
 (" Psedag." lib. i. c. 5) for a comparison of young 
 Christians to sucking calves (/j.oax<*l na ya\ddr]va), 
 connected perhaps in the Father's mind in the same 
 way as in his own ; though, as Bishop Potter remarks 
 in his note (ad loc.) no such comparison exists in 
 Scripture. The plate in Allegranza is of considerable 
 interest, being: from a " marmo " belonging to the 
 ancient pulpit of St. Ambrogio. The calf is lying 
 down, and turning up its forefoot to hold the lyre, or 
 "antica cetra." It is engraved in the loop of an 
 initial D. The preceding " rnarmo '' is a representation 
 of an Agape, from the posterior parapet of the pulpit ; 
 and Allegranza considers the calf to be a symbol 
 connected with the Agape. See above, Clem. Alex. 
 " Pcedag." i.5. The Lyre, as an instrument, has been 
 held typical of the human body in its right state 
 of harmony with, and subjection to, the divinely-guided 
 soul. For Calf in connection with Cherub, see chapter 
 on Symbolism, and s. v. Evangelist. 
 
 Camel. 
 
 A picture of a camel occurs in Bottari, taw. lxiii. and lxxi., 
 among the animals which surround the symbolic Orpheus, 
 or Shepherd collecting his Flock; and with the Magi, 
 on a fragment of a sarcophagus in the Lateran Museum, 
 in a Nativity, above the Ascension of Elijah. 
 
 Cana, Miracle of. 
 
 Representations of this miracle frequently present them- 
 selves in Christian art. It was early supposed to be 
 typical of the Eucharist ; indeed, Theophilus of
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 317 
 
 Antioch, so far back as the second century, looks on the 
 change of the water as figurative of the grace com- 
 municated in baptism (comment in Evang. lib. iv.) 
 Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. xxii. 2) says it represents 
 the change of the wine into the Blood of the Lord in 
 the Eucharist ; and this idea has been applied, with 
 eager inconsequence, to the support of the full dogma 
 of transubstantiation. The miracle is represented on 
 an ivory, published by Mamachi, Bottari, and Gori, 
 which is supposed to have formed part of the covering 
 of a throne belonging to the exarchs of Ravenna ; and 
 is referred to the seventh century. The writer saw it 
 in the sacristy of the Duomo, in June 1871. Bandini 
 ("In Tabulam eburneam Observationes," 4to. Florentiae, 
 1746) gives a plate of it. In Bottari, taw. xix. and 
 xxxii., our Saviour, wearing the ordinary tunic, and toga 
 over it, touches or points respectively to three and two 
 vessels with a rod. In tav. li. five jars are given, as 
 also in lxxxviii. ; four in tav. Ixxxix. The vessels or 
 hydria) are of different and generally humble forms, on 
 these sarcophagi. Bottari remarks that the sculptors 
 may have been hampered by knowing the water-vessels to 
 have been large, containing a " metretes." But those on 
 Bandini's ivory are gracefully-shaped amphorae. Here 
 the Lord bears a Greek cross on a staff, and motions 
 with the other hand to the bridegroom, or a servant, 
 who is carrying a cup to the master of the feast, gazing 
 steadily at it, and extending his left hand towards the 
 Saviour. The first quoted of these plates (xix. and 
 xxxii.) of Bottari's, are from sarcophagi found in the 
 Vatican, and of high merit in an artistic point of view. 
 The later ones, not much inferior, are from the cemetery 
 of Lucina, in the'Callixtine Catacomb ; or from a sarco- 
 phagus dug up in 1607, in preparing foundations for 
 the Capella Borghese at Sta. Maria Maggiore.
 
 318 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Car, Cart. Chariot, <fec. 
 
 Ilerzog ("B.eal-Encyclop'adie fiir protestantische Theologie 
 u. Kirche," 8vo. Gotha, 1861, s. v. « Sinnbilder ") 
 mentions a sculpture in St. Callixtus, which contains a 
 chariot without driver, with pole turned backwards, and 
 whip left resting on it. This, as he says, appears 
 evidently intended as a symbol of the accomplished 
 course of a life. In Bottari, tav. clx., two quadriga? 
 are represented at the base of an arch (covered with 
 paintings of ancient date) in the second cubiculum of 
 the catacomb of St. Priscilla on the Salarian Way. 
 The Charioteers carry palms and crowns in their hands, 
 and the horses are decorated with palm-branches, or 
 perhaps plumes ; which connects the image of the 
 chariot with St. Paul's imagination of the Christian race 
 (1 Cor. ix. 24 ; 2 Tim. iv. 7). (See Martigny, s.v. 
 " Cheval.") Guenebault refers to a sculpture from an 
 ancient Gothic or Frank tomb at Langres ("Univ. Pitto- 
 resque Prance," pi. xlv.) and to a cart or waggon on one 
 of the capitals in the crypts in St. Denis (pi. Iv. vol. ii. 
 in A. Hugo, "France Pittorepque et Monumentale"). In 
 Strutt (" View of the Inhabitants of England," Lond. 
 1774, 4to. vol. i. p. 5. fig. 6.) there is a chariot of the 
 9th century, so presumed. See also DAgincourt. 
 Peinture, pi. clxiv. No. 14, and pi. clvii. In the cata- 
 comb of St. Praetextatus (see Perret, "Catacombs," vol. i. 
 pi. lxxii.), there is a somewhat powerful and striking re- 
 presentation of the chariot of Death, who is taking a 
 departed woman into his car. 
 
 Cask. (Dolium.) 
 
 Church. (Symbols of.) 
 
 Early representations of the Church of Christ are very 
 numerous, and may be divided into (A) personifications 
 and (B) symbolisms; both of the highest antiquity.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 319 
 
 Those derived from Holy Scripture may be taken first. 
 (A) ]. The Lord's comparison of Himself to the Good 
 Shepherd, constantly represented in the Catacombs, 
 and supposed to be the most ancient of purely Christian 
 emblems in painting or sculpture, has generally united 
 with it, pictures of two or more sheep at His feet, 
 besides the one carried on His shoulders. The word 
 " fold " represents the Church, exactly as the word 
 " church " the congregation of Christ's people. (Lamb, 
 Good Shepherd, &c.) The fresco in the Callixtine Cata- 
 comb (Bottari, tav. Ixxviii., and Aringhi, vol. i. lib. 
 iii. ch. xxii. p. 327, ed. Par. 1657), of the Shepherd 
 sitting under trees, and surrounded by sheep, or sheep 
 and goats, as here, may be taken as one example out of 
 many. See also that at tav. xxvi. In another (Bott. 
 vol. ii. tav. cxviii.) the sheep are issuing from a small 
 building, seeming to stand for a town, at whose gate the 
 Shepherd stands, or leans on His staff. The sheep 
 of the Gentile and of the Jewish Churches are dis- 
 tinguished in the mosaic from St. Apollinaris in Classe, 
 where two flocks are issuing from separate towns or folds, 
 Hierusalem and Bethleem, and moving towards our 
 Lord. In many mosaics in Bome and Bavenna, He 
 stands in or by the banks of the mystic JOBDAKES, 
 with His sheep, and with the stag for the Gentile Church. 
 In a mosaic at St. Sabina's, Bome, the two Churches 
 are represented by two female figures, standing, each 
 with an open book in hand. (See also Aringhi, lib. iii. 
 c. xxii. p. 327.) Over one is inscribed "Ecclesia ex 
 circumcisione," and St. Peter stands above her ; the 
 other is named "Ecclesia ex gentibus," and above her is 
 placed St. Paul. (See Gal. ii. 7.) The same subject 
 occurs in a compartment of the ancient gates of the 
 Cathedral of Verona, treated with somewhat of the 
 quaintness of Lombard fancy, but quite intelligible.
 
 320 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 The twofold Church is represented by two women, shaded 
 by trees; one suckling two children, the other two fishes. 
 (Fish.) Martigny gives a woodcut from Father 1 Gar- 
 rucci, Hagioglypt. p. 222. It represents two lambs look- 
 ing towards a pillar, which symbolizes the Church, and is 
 surmounted by the Lamb bearing on his back the decus- 
 sated Monogram of Christ, From it spring (apparently) 
 palm branches ; and two birds, just above the lambs, may 
 be taken for doves. The figures of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 with their division of the Church into Jewish and Gentile, 
 seem to be represented in the fresco given by De Rossi 
 (vol. ii. Tav. d'Aggiunto A.); but are almost destroyed 
 by the opening of a tomb, which has been broken into 
 through the fresco, as so frequently happens. There 
 can be no doubt that the Oranti, or praying female 
 figures in the Catacombs, are frequently personifications 
 of the Church. (See Bottari, tav. xxxviii., Orante with 
 doves placed next to the Good Shepherd.) In the corners 
 of the square ceiling of the well-known Crypt of Lucina, 
 in the Callixtine Catacombs (De Rossi, R. S. tav. x.) the 
 Orante alternates with the Good Shepherd. 
 2. A few representations exist of Susanna and the Elders 
 as typical of the Church and its persecutors, Jewish and 
 Pagan. Martigny names three sarcophagi as the only 
 certain examples of this subject in old Italian art. 
 For one he refers to Buonarotti, " Vetri," p. 1. Of the 
 two others,- one is from the Vatican, the other from St. 
 Callixtus. They are found in Bottari, taw. xxxi. and 
 Ixxxv. sarcoph. from St. Callixtus. In Southern Gaul 
 they are more numerous (Millin, " Midi de la F." pi. lxv. 
 5; lxvi. 8; lxviii. 4). All these are bas-reliefs con- 
 taining the Elders as well as Susanna ; and the third 
 represents them as eagerly watching her from behind 
 trees. Martigny gives an allegory in woodcut drawn 
 
 1 Parker's Photographs.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 321 
 
 from vol. i. pi. lxxviii., of M. Perret's work, of a sheep 
 between two wild beasts : "Susanna" and " Sinioris" 
 are written above. 
 
 3. The Woman with the Issue of Blood has been considered 
 as a type of the Gentile Church, which would account 
 for the frequent representations of that miracle to be 
 found on ancient sarcophagi. See Bottari, taw. xix. 
 xxi. xxxiv. xxxix. xli. lxxxv. ix. cxxxv. So St. Ambrose 
 (lib. ii. in Luc. c. viii.). She is always of small stature, 
 like the other subjects of our Lord's miracles. 
 
 (B) Symbolisms of the Church (it is not generally observed 
 how important the distinction between symbolism and 
 personification is) begin with the ark of Noah ; passing 
 by easy transition to the ship of souls and the ship of 
 Jonah in the storm. It is singular that our Lord's 
 similitude of the net is rarely found illustrated by the 
 graphic art of early Christendom. The idea of the 
 Lord's drawing forth the sinner from the waters, as with 
 a hook and line (see Bottari, xlii.,De Rossi, <fcc), seems 
 to have prevailed over that of the sweeping net. The 
 net is perhaps assigned to St. Peter in the Vatican 
 sarcophagus represented (Bottari tav. xlii.). A small 
 net is used on one side of the bas-relief (Net, Fish, Ship 
 Jonah, <fec). 
 
 The ark is very frequently used as a type of the Church 
 militant. On tombs it is held to imply that the dead 
 expired in full communion with the Church. In 
 Bottari, tav. xlii., an olive-tree stands in the ark, in 
 the place of Noah. It is of a square form, a chest in 
 fact (Bottari, taw. xl. cxx. clxxi'. &c.) ; and in tav. 
 cxviii. it is placed in a boat or ship. The clove appears 
 with the olive branch in almost all these, or is repre- 
 sented by itself : in Bottari, tav. cxxxi. it is placed on 
 the poop of the ship of Jonah. In tav. xxxvii. Noah 
 stands in a square chest on the shore, receiving the dove 
 
 p 3
 
 T>22 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 in his hands ; Jonah is being thrown from a boat into 
 the sea next him. This is one of the most frequent of 
 all symbolic works in the Catacombs, no doubt on account 
 of the Lord's own comparison of Himself to the Prophet. 
 For representations in the Catacomb of Callixtus and 
 elsewhere, see De Rossi and Bottari, passim. The ship 
 " covered with the waves," is represented in Martigny, 
 from a fresco lately discovered in St. Callixtus. A man 
 stands in the waist, or near the stern, of a sharp-prowed 
 vessel with a square sail, such as are used in the Medi- 
 terranean to this day. The waters are dashing over her 
 close to him, and he is in an attitude of prayer ; far off 
 is a drowning man who has made shipwreck of the faith. 
 The vessel in full sail (Boldetti, pp. 360, 362, 373) is 
 also common as the emblem of safe-conduct through the 
 waves of this troublesome world ; that with sails furled, 
 as quietly in port resting after her voyage (as in Boldetti, 
 pp. 363, 366), is the symbol of the repose of individual 
 Christians in death. An even more interesting symbol- 
 ism is where not only the ship is painted as analogous to 
 the Church, but the actual fabric of a Church is made 
 like a ship. This was the case with some of the early 
 Romanesque churches, where the apse which completed 
 the basilica had the bishop's throne placed in the centre, 
 as the steersman's place, with semicircular benches below 
 for the clergy ; so that a real and touching resemblance 
 followed. See the memorable passage in Ruskin's 
 "Stones of Venice," vol. ii., on the ancient churches of 
 Torcello, the mother-city of Venice, and a passage in 
 the Apostolical Constitutions (ii. 57) l to the same 
 effect, — the bishop being likened to the steersman, and 
 the deacons to seamen. " First, let the building he 
 
 1 Kal irpSirov (x.tv & oIkos o<ttq> iiri/xrfK7]s, Kar' dvaro\as rerpanfitvos 
 . . . ScrTii eoi/ce vt)1. KiiaOw 8e /iteVoy 6 rov eiriaKSwov 6p6vos nap' 
 c-Karepa 8e avTov KaQf£t<rQu> rh irpeofivTipiov, na\ ol StaKovot irapia- 
 jaftwaav . . . eot/carrj yap vaurais na\ toix&PX ois -
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 323 
 
 turned lengthways to the East, 1 ... it is like a ship. 
 And let the bishop's throne be set in the midst ; and on 
 each side of him, let the presbytery be seated : and let 
 the deacons stand beside : for they are like to sailors 
 and their petty-officers." 2 The ship placed on the 
 back of a fish is found in a signet illustrated by 
 Aleandre (" Nav. Eccle3. referent. Symb." Eomse, 1626 ; 
 see also s. v. Fish). A jasper given by Cardinal Borgia 
 ("De Cruce Velitern." p. 213 and frontispiece) places the 
 Lord in a galley of six oars on a side, holding the large 
 steering oar. This rudder-oar — or rather two of them 
 — are inserted in the rudest ship-carvings, where other 
 oars were omitted. 
 Cock. 
 
 Representations of this bird occur frequently on tombs 
 from the earliest period. When not associated with the 
 figure of St. Peter, as Bottari, tav. lxxxiv., or placed on 
 a pillar, as Boldetti, p. 360 ; Bottari, taw. xxxiv. xxiii. 
 «fcc, it appears to be a symbol of the Resurrection, our 
 Lord being supposed by the early Church to have broken 
 from the grave at the early cock-crowing. A peculiar 
 awe seems always to have attached to that hour, at 
 which all wandering spirits have through the Middle 
 Ages been supposed to vanish from the earth. " Hamlet," 
 and the ancient ballad, called " The Wife of Usher's 
 Well," occur to us as salient examples of a universal 
 superstition. Prudentius' hymn, "Ad Galli Cantum " 
 ("Cathem." i. 16), adopts the idea of the cock-crowing 
 as a call to the general judgment ("Nostri figura est 
 judicis"), and further on (45 seqq.) he says : — 
 ' ' Hoc esse signum prsescii 
 Noverant promissse spei 
 Qua nos sopore liberi 
 Speramus adventum Dei." 
 
 Or, " somewhat long-shaped and turned to the East." 
 a Toi'xapx oy ) the boatswain, who gave orders to the " wall," or 
 bank of oars on each side.
 
 324 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 And again, 65 seqq.: — 
 
 " hide est, quod omnes credimus 
 I Ho quietis tempore, 
 Quo gallus exultans canit, 
 Christus redisse ex inferis." 
 
 See Aringhi, vol. ii. pp. 328-9, for a complete list of 
 animal symbols. Fighting-cocks (see the passage last 
 quoted) seem to symbolize the combat with secular or 
 sensual temptations. The practice of training them for 
 combat has probably always existed in the East, and 
 certainly was in favour at Athens (cf. Aristoph., Av. alpt 
 Trkrj^Tpov, el /ja\et). For a symbol drawn from such a 
 pastime, compare St. Paul's use of the word vTruiridZw 
 (1 Cor. ix. 27). See Bottari, tav. cxxxvii. Two cock9 
 accompany the Good Shepherd in Bottari, tav. clxxii. 
 (from the tympanum of an arch in the cemetery of St. 
 Agnes). 
 
 Corn, ears of. 
 
 Corn is not so often used in early Christian art as might 
 be supposed. (Bread, Loaves, &lc.) The thoughts of 
 early iconographers seem to have gone always to the 
 Bread of Life with sacramental allusion ; as Bottari, tav. 
 clxiii. vol. iii. et alibi. In Bottari, vol. i. tav. xlviii., 
 the corn and reaper are represented in a compartment 
 of a vault in the cemetery of Pontianus. Again, in vol. 
 ii. tav. lv. the harvest corn is opposed to the vine and 
 cornucopia of fruit (Callixtine Catacomb). The more 
 evidently religious use of the ears of corn is in various 
 representations of the Fall of Man. On the Sarco- 
 phagus of Junius Bassus (supp. a.d. 358), Bottari, 
 vol. i. tav. xv. 9, Adam and Eve are carved ; the 
 former bearing the corn, in token of his labour on the 
 earth (see Bread). 
 
 Cnoss. See text.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 325 
 
 Crucifix and Representations of the Crucifixion. See text. 
 Daniel in the Lion's Den. 
 
 One of the most common as well as the most interesting 
 subjects of the earliest art. Like the deliverance of the 
 three children in the Furnace, it is evidently chosen in 
 times of persecution and suffering for the Truth. It is 
 found in the earliest frescoes in the Callixtine Catacomb, 
 and on most of the sarcophagi. See Bottari, passim. 
 Daniel is generally placed between two lions, and some- 
 times he is receiving food from the prophet Habbacuc, 
 as in a curious sarcophagus at Brescia, of which Dr. 
 Appel gives a woodcut: in another (Bottari, tav. xix.) he 
 is represented in the act of administering the balls of 
 pitch and hair to the Dragon, according to the narrative 
 of the Apocrypha. 
 
 Death, symbolically represented either by birds, denoting 
 the deliverance of the soul from evil (see Bird), or by 
 a vessel with furled sails (see Ship), or by an unyoked 
 chariot (see s. v. Car). The skeleton forms of death 
 are unknown to primitive Christian art ; but the 
 wreaths and ornaments of flowers on the early tombs 
 were willingly adopted from Gentile decoration. The 
 skulls and worms in the Judgment of Torcello, eighth 
 or eleventh century, are the earliest examples of the 
 terrors of death. With Giotto's crowned skeleton at 
 A—isi, and the Triumph of Death by Orgagna at Pisa, 
 a whole pictorial course of ascetic exhortation begins, 
 which took a new form with Holbein and the transalpine 
 Dances of Death or the Dead, Danses Macabres, &c, 
 &c. See Text, Chapter X. 
 
 Doctors, dispute with. See Bottari, tav. xv. Tomb of 
 Junius Bassus, a.d. 358, and taw. xxx. and liv. from the 
 Callixtine Catacomb. Also taw. cxlvi. clxxviii.
 
 326 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Our Lord is generally represented as seated on a 
 cathedra in the centre • in the Callixtine pictures with 
 rolls or books at His feet. On the sarcophagi, the figure 
 raising its veil, and representing the firmament, is at 
 His feet. 
 
 Dolium or Cask. See Boldetti, pp. 164, 368. Bottari, 
 tav. Ixxxiv., <fcc. and Parker's Photographs, for present 
 state of paintings. 
 Seven men with a Dolium or wine-cask, and two other 
 such vessels, are here represented. Abbe Martigny 
 (Diet., s. v.) collects various interpretations of this not 
 uncommon symbol. It may be the empty cask, the 
 body laid up at rest when the soul has departed ; the 
 wine may be the blood of martyrdom. But Martigny 
 is inclined to suspect a play on the word Dolere ; and 
 quotes an inscription from Mamachi, IVLIO FILIO 
 PA TEE, DOLIENS, which seems conclusive. 
 
 Dolphin. 
 
 An ornament adopted from Gentile art, as are the Peacock, 
 and, in a great degree, the Vine and Dove (see Fish). 
 On the Tomb of Baleria or Valeria Latobia (Bottari, 
 tav. xx.), it is supposed to symbolize conjugal love. Com- 
 bined with the Anchor-Cross, it may symbolize either 
 the Crucifixion, or the soul's adherence to the Faith. 
 See Martigny, " Dauphin," Diet. Ant. Chre't. 
 
 Dove. 
 
 Like the Lamb and the Fish, the Dove has several mean- 
 ings, all of early date. In its highest use, as the symbol 
 of the especial presence of the Holy Spirit, it is found in 
 all representations of the Lord's Baptism, as in the 
 Baptisteries of Ravenna, in that of the Catacomb of St- 
 Pontianus at Rome, and passim. (See chapter on
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 327 
 
 Sacramental subjects of art.) It is also represented as 
 hovering over the Lateran Cross. (See plate in Arch- 
 bishop Binterim's "Denkwiirdigkeiten," v. i.) Our Lord's 
 words in Matt. .x. 16 propose the dove as an emblem of 
 Cbristian meekness, and it is used to symbolize other 
 virtues, probably as gifts of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Its second symbolic meaning is certainly tbat of the faith- 
 ful disciple, of whatever rank and condition. St. Paul- 
 inns of Nola, Ep. xi., declares that twelve doves were 
 used to represent the Apostles in his Church ; and 
 the mosaic Cross (Bottari, i. p. 118) bears twelve doves 
 also. A pair of doves is represented in Didron's "Icono- 
 graphie Chretienne," v. i., p. 396 ; also Gori, " Thes. 
 Diptych." iii. p. 160, apparently contemplating the 
 Tau-Cross and Monogram ; a serpent is twined round 
 its lower limb. If this latter is an allusion to the 
 Brazen Serpent as uplifted on the Cross, it must be 
 connected with the undoubtedly sacramental emblem of 
 two doves with the chalice, which passed from Roman 
 into Yeneto-Byzantine art, and seems to have become 
 merely ornamental, peacocks and nondescripts being 
 constantly used in the same way. For the symbolic 
 meaning of the Peacock, however, see that word. Doves 
 are constantly represented on sarcophagi and added to 
 inscriptions. In the monuments of Southern France 
 they occur constantly, see Le Blant, " Inscr. Chret. de la 
 Gaule," and the letters A w are very frequently added. 
 
 For the Dove of Noah, see Bottari, tfce. passim, and in 
 Chapter IV. woodcut. 
 
 Dragon. See Serpent, and under Daniel, Bottari, xix. 
 
 Ducks. 
 
 Are frequently represented in the MS. of Babula (see 
 Assemann's Catalogue of the Laurentian Library at
 
 328 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AKD 
 
 Florence) : and by one of the most beautiful of ancient 
 mosaics — the small picture of birds from the Callixtine 
 Catacomb. (Parker's Antique Photographs.) 
 
 Eagle. (See vignette at end.) 
 
 It is probably an instance of the careful exclusion of all 
 Pagan emblems or forms which had been actual objects 
 of idolatrous worship, while merely Gentile or human 
 tokens and myths were freely admitted, that the form 
 of the Eagle appears so rarely in Christian ornamenta- 
 tion, at least before the time of its adoption as the 
 symbol of an Evangelist. (See Evangelists). Aringhi 
 (vol. ii. p. 228, c. 2) speaks of the Eagle as representing 
 the Lord Himself: and this is paralleled by a quotation 
 of Martigny's from a sermon of St. Ambrose : where 
 he refers to Ps. ciii. (" thy youth is renewed like the 
 eagle's") as foreshadowing the Resurrection. Le Blant 
 ("Inscr. Chret. de la Gaule," i. 17, No. 45, in 
 illustrations). Bottari gives a plate of a domed ceiling 
 in the sepulchre of St. Priscilla, where two eagles 
 standing on globes form part of the ornamentation. He 
 refers it evidently to some general or legionary officer (vol. 
 iii. tav. clx.). Triumphal chariots fill two of the side 
 spaces, but they and the eagles can hardly be considered 
 Christian emblems, though used by Christians. 
 
 Egg. 
 
 There seems some diversity of opinion as to the use of the 
 Egg as a Christian symbol. Boldetti (p. 519) speaks of 
 marble eggs found in the tombs of St. Theodora, St. 
 Balbina, and others : these were of the size of hen's 
 eggs. Egg-shells are occasionally found in the loculi of 
 martyrs, and Raoul Pochette refers them to the Agapae 
 so frequently celebrated there (see Eucharist). But 
 Martigny is inclined to think that the Egg signified the
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 329 
 
 immature hope of the Resurrection. " Ilia enim gallina 
 divina Sapientia est : setl assumpsit carnem, &c. Ovum 
 ergo nostrum, id est, spem nostram, sub alis illius gallinae 
 ponamus." " For that hen is the Divine wisdom, but He 
 took on Him the Flesh. . . . Therefore let us place our 
 egg, that is, our hope, under the wings of that Hen." 
 Aug. Serm. cv. 8. Migne, vol. xxxviii, p. 623. The use 
 of eggs at Easter has no doubt reference to this idea : 
 but whether the idea was really attached to the object 
 or not, in a generally symbolic sense, seems still a 
 dubious matter. 
 
 Egypt, Flight into. 
 
 It is difficult, if not impossible, to name any earlier repre- 
 sentation of this event than the bronze casting on the 
 doors of St. Zenone at Verona, which is at all events 
 one of the earliest known Christian works in metal. 
 
 Elias. 
 
 The translation of Elias, as a typical event relating to 
 the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord, is a very 
 common subject of early art. See Aringhi, v. i. pp. 
 305, 309, 429, and Bottari, tav. xxvii. The prophet's 
 mantle is always cast behind him, and he holds the reins 
 of two or four horses. On the Station-Cross of Mayence, 
 whose bas-reliefs are a body of doctrine, the translation 
 of Elias is at the back of the Cross, opposed to the 
 Ascension on the Front, with the following hexameter 
 " Qui levat Eliam (at the back of the Cross), propriam 
 sublimat usiam" l (in front). 
 
 Elias occurs with Moses in the mosaic of the Trans- 
 figuration at the Convent of Mount Sinai, and in the 
 very important one of the same subject in St. Apollinaris 
 in Classe at Ravenna. Few things in ancient picture-
 
 330 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 instruction are more remarkable than the way in which 
 the Doctrines of the Testimony of both the Law and 
 the Prophets to the coming Redeemer, are insisted on 
 in this great work. See chapter on Mosaics. 
 A remarkable Ascension of Elijah in a Sarcophagus in the 
 Lateral! is evidently copied from a Pagan model of 
 Helios in his chariot, as Dr. Appel observes. See Art 
 Library, S. Kensington (portf. 406, No. 41) and Mar- 
 tigny, p. 23. Also Bottari, taw. xxvii. and xxix. 
 
 Elizabeth, St. 
 
 There is a salutation, evidently modern, in the Cemetery 
 of St. Julius (Pope) or of St. Valentine, on the Flaminian 
 Way. Bottari, tav. cxci. 
 
 Entky into Jerusalem. 
 
 This event in our Lord's life is very frequently represented 
 in the earlier art of the Christian Church, occurring on 
 some of the first sarcophagi, though not, as far as the 
 present writer knows, in fresco or mosaic in the Cata- 
 combs or elsewhere, excepting in an ancient mosaic of the 
 Vatican (Bianchini, "Demonstr. Hist. Sac." I. tav. ii. 
 No. 17), and one from the basilica at Bethlehem (Count 
 de Vogue,"Les Eglises de la Terre-Sainte," pi. v.) See 
 woodcut in Martigny, s.v. Jerusalem ; the picture is of 
 the twelfth century, probably from an older model. 
 
 The earliest MS. representation of it is probably that in 
 the Rabula or Laurentian Evangeliary. The treatment 
 is almost always the same ; the Lord is mounted on the 
 ass, sometimes accompanied by her foal, and the multi- 
 tude with their palm-branches follow or lay their gar- 
 ments before Him (Aringhi, t, i. 277, 329, ii. 159, 
 and passim), Bottari, tav. xxi. His right hand is 
 generally raised in the act of blessing. In one of the 
 oldest MSS. of the New Testament in existence, the 
 Gregorian Evangeliary of St. Cuthbcrt (" Palreographia
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 331 
 
 Sacra") the Lord is represented mounted on an ass, and 
 bearing a large whip, evidently with reference to the 
 scourge of small cords used in the expulsion of buyers 
 and sellers from the Temple. There is a certain variety 
 in the examples taken from different carvings. In 
 Bottari, I. taw. xv. xxii. xxxix. Zaccheus is represented 
 in the fig, or sycamore tree, behind the Lord, as if to 
 call attention to the beginning of His last journey to 
 t. Jericho. In the last example the sycamore and palm- 
 branches are carefully and well cut. In I. tav. xl. the 
 garments are being strewn before the Lord (as in the 
 others). See also vol. II. taw. lxxxviii. lxxxix., III. 
 tav. cxxxiii. In one instance without Zaccheus the colt 
 accompanies the ass; III. cxxxiv. The small stature 
 of Zaccheus is often dwelt on. Or the figure may repre- 
 sent a person in the act of cutting down branches. 
 
 Epiphany. See Magi. 
 
 Evangelists, Symbolic Representations of. (See vignette 
 at end.) 
 
 We find from Aringhi, vol. ii. p. 285, that the four sym- 
 bolic creatures are not, as might be expected, the origin- 
 al emblems of the Four Evangelists. The four rivers 
 of Paradise are undoubtedly intended to represent the 
 Gospel, and the distinct channels of its diffusion through- 
 out the world ; Gen. ii. These are found in some of the 
 earliest specimens of unquestionably authentic Christian 
 decoration ; as in the Lateran Cross (see art. Cross), 
 where the Lamb and Stag are introduced. 
 
 The four Books, or Rolls, are also found in early works, Ciam- 
 pini, "Vetera Monumenta," I. tab. lxvii., Buonarotti, xiv. 
 2. In some instances, as in the Baptism of our Lord, in 
 the cemetery of St. Pontianus (Aringhi, 275, 2 ; also at 
 end of Bottari), the animals are introduced drinking in the 
 Jordan. In this case either the mystic river is identified
 
 332 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 with the four rivers of Paradise, and made to accompany 
 the ornamented Cross, representing the Gospels, as in 
 the Lateran Cross. Or the Cross in St. Pontianus 
 helow the Baptism-picture, represents the Lord's Death, 
 and Baptism thereinto. Mr. Parker gives an admirably 
 clear photograph of the present condition of this im- 
 portant work, which he dates from a.d. 772. The 
 Lateran relic is supposed to be similar to the Crosses 
 of the time of Constantine. The adoption of the four 
 creatures of the Apocalypse (iv. G) as images of the 
 Evangelists, does not seem to have taken place generally, 
 or is not recorded on Christian monuments, before the 
 fifth century. It involves of course the peculiarly im- 
 pressive connection between the beginning of the visions 
 of Ezekiel and the first sight of the unveiling of 
 Heaven to the eyes of St. John. This is unmistakeable, 
 although in the prophet's vision the living creatures were 
 not only four in number, but each was fourfold in shape. 
 '' They four had the face of a man, and the face of a 
 lion, on the right side ; and they four had the face of 
 an ox on the left side ; they four also had the face of an 
 eagle." While in the Apocalypse the first beast was like 
 a lion, the second like a calf, the third had the face of a 
 man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. This 
 connection is said by Mis. Jameson ('"Sacred and Legend- 
 ary Art," p. 79) to have been noticed as early as the 
 second century, though no representations are found till 
 the fifth. Nor was it till long after the four creatures 
 had been taken as prefiguring the Four Evangelists, that 
 a special application was made of each symbol to each 
 writer. This may be referred to St. Jerome on Ezekiel 
 i. St. Matthew has the man, as beginning his Gospel 
 with the Lord's human genealogy; St. Mark the Lion, 
 as testifying the Lord's royal dignity ; or as containing 
 the terrible condemnation of unbelievers at the end. of
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 333 
 
 his Gospel ; St. Luke the Ox, as he dwells on the I 
 Priesthood and Sacrifice of Christ ; St. John the 
 Eagle, as contemplating the Lord's divine nature. In- 
 genuity and devotion have done their utmost on this 
 subject for centuries, with little result. An ivory 
 diptych of the fifth century, given by Bugati (" Memoire 
 di S. Celso"), is the earliest known representation of 
 this emblem, which does not occur in the glass devices 
 recorded by Garrucci, or Buonarotti. The well-known 
 representation of the four Creature-symbols in the great 
 mosaic of the Church of St. Pudentiana at Borne must, 
 we think, be left out of reckoning altogether as an his- 
 toric document. See Mr. J. E. Parker's Photographs, 
 and the articles thereon in his " Antiquities of Borne" 
 (text, p. 139). See also Messrs. Crowe and Cavalca- 
 selle, " Early Italian Art," vol. i. chap. i. (remarks on the 
 present state of the mosaic). The symbols are placed 
 above a seventh-century Cross, and, on close inspection of 
 the photographs, appear to have been repaired in fresco, 
 or painting of some kind. The appearance of the whole 
 mosaic in fact is that of a quantity of material of dif- 
 ferent ages, some doubtless very ancient, and of great 
 merit, combined as a whole by a painter and mosaicist 
 of the greatest skill and power in the sixteenth century. 
 However, the use of the quadruple symbols is universal ; 
 East and West, and throughout the Christian woild, in 
 every kind of situation, and by use of all vehicles aud 
 methods. They are very frequently placed on Crosses of 
 the seventh century, about the same time that the change 
 took place from the Lamb at the intersection of the 
 limbs of the Cross to the human form crucified. They 
 occur on the Cross of Velitra?, and on an ancient 
 German Cross mentioned in chap. ix. as the Station- 
 Cross of Plauig. But the most interesting sixth-century 
 representation of them known to us is the quaintly, but
 
 334 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 grandly-conceived, Tetramorph of the Rabula MS. 
 which represents the Lord at the Ascension mounting a 
 chariot of many wings and cherubic form (see woodcut). 
 It shows that the Syrian miniaturist had a most vivid 
 imagination, and the highest power of realizing his con- 
 ceptions ; as appears in so many parts of that extraordi- 
 nary work. The wheels of the chariot, as well as the 
 cherubic forms, connect the Vision of Ezekiel with the 
 Griffins of Lombard Church-art ; as at Verona. Mrs. 
 Jameson gives a very interesting Tetramorph, or cherubic 
 form, bearing the Evangelic symbols, from a Greek 
 mosaic. This symbol is certainly not of the age of 
 the earlier Catacomb paintings, and occurs first with fre- 
 quency in the tessellated apses and tribunes of Byzantine 
 Churches ; it is of course specially worthy of note as ex- 
 plaining the connection between the Vision of Ezekiel and 
 that of St. John. The four animals separately represented 
 occur passim, both in Eastern and Western Churchwork. 
 See Ciampini, "V. Mon." I. tab. xlviii. There are grand 
 examples in the spandrils of the dome of Galla Placidia's 
 Chapel in Ravenna, as in St. Apollinaris in Classe. 
 Extraordinary illuminations of this subject occur in the 
 Evangeliary of Drogon, son of Charlemagne ; but the 
 Hours of that Emperor and the MS. of St. Medard of 
 Soissons also contain whole-page emblems of the Four. 
 For these see Count Bastai'd, " Peintures des Manu- 
 scrits," vol. ii. In St. Vitale at Ravenna the symbols 
 of the Evangelists accompany their sitting figures. St. 
 Matthew has the man, St. Mark the (wingless) lion ; 
 the calf, also wingless, belongs to St. Luke, and the 
 eagle to St. John. The nimbus is sometimes added, 
 and sometimes the creatures bear the Rolls or Books 
 of the Gospel (Ciampini, " V. Mon." II. tab. xv. in St. 
 Cosmo and Damianus). See also ibid. ii. 24. for St. 
 Apollinaris in Classe.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 335 
 
 There is a very strange missal-painting referred to by 
 Martigny, where the human forms of the Evangelists in 
 Apostolic robes are surmounted by the heads of the 
 creatures. This occurs also, he says, in an ancient 
 Church of Aquileia. 
 
 Two examples are given in woodcut by Mrs. Jameson, 
 (" Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 83). One is by Fra 
 Angelico ; and the hands, feet, and drapery of the 
 other, which is not dated, seem too skilfully done to be 
 of early date. But the four creatures occur alike in 
 bas-reliefs on altars, or sacred vessels and vestments, 
 and even on bronze medals. It may be supposed 
 that where the Lord is surrounded by Saints and 
 Apostles, the bearers of books are intended for the 
 Evangelists, especially if they are four in number, 
 though on the Sarcophagus in Bottari, tav. cxxxi. only 
 three are represented, probably St. Matthew and St. John 
 with St. Mark, as companion and interpreter of St. Peter. 
 Four figures in the baptistery at Ravenna, holding books, 
 and placed in niches of mosaic arabesques, are con- 
 sidered of doubtful meaning by Ciampini, " V. Mon." I. 
 tab. lxxii. ; but Martigny is perfectly satisfied that the 
 Evangelists are intended by them. 
 
 Firmament. 
 
 The male figure observed in various representations, as of 
 the Dispute with the Doctors, Bottari, tav. xv. on Sar- 
 cophagus of Junius Bassus, a.d. 358, and tav. xxx. is 
 said to be meant for Uranus, or the firmament of 
 Heaven. It is always raising a veil or cloth over its 
 head ; symbolical, we presume, of the Heavens raised 
 as a curtain. 
 
 Fir-tree or Pine. 
 
 See Aringhi, vol. ii. p. 632. 3. " Prater Cupressum 
 Pinus quoque et Myrtus pro Mortis sjmbolo, &c. Et
 
 336 INDEX OF HISTOKICAL AND 
 
 pinus quidem, quia semel excisa nunquam reviviscit et 
 repullulascit." See the threat of Croesus to the people 
 of Lampsacus, Herodotus, vi. 37. These are rather 
 general or human reasons for choice of the pine as an 
 emblem of death, than as conveying any specially 
 Christian thought. But the Fir, or some tree much 
 resembling it, accompanies the figure of the Good 
 Shepherd, Aringhi, ii. 293, from the Cemetery of 
 St. Priscilla ; also at pp. 75 and 25 : and is certainly 
 intended to be represented among the trees which 
 surround the same Form in vol. i. 577. This latter 
 painting is from the Callixtine, and is certainly an 
 adaptation from the common fresco subjects of Orpheus. 
 The Shepherd bears the Syrinx or reeds, but sits in a 
 half reclining position, as Orpheus with the lyre : and 
 various trees are surrounding Him. This association 
 of the Fir or Pine with the Good Shepherd, and of 
 both with Orpheus, would account for the introduction 
 of different species of " trees of the wood ; " the fir 
 being also characteristic of the mountains or wilderness 
 in which the lost sheep is found. Herzog thinks it was 
 placed on Christian (as well as other) graves as an 
 evergreen tree, and therefore a symbol of Immortality ; 
 which is by no means unlikely. 
 
 Fish. (See Catacombs, Symbolism, Eucharist.) 
 
 The Fish is a symbol of almost universal occurrence in the 
 painting and sculpture of the primitive Church. Like 
 the Dove or the Lamb ; it is used in more than one 
 sense ; and its non-scriptural or anagrammatic meaning 
 is perhaps the most popular at the present day. In 
 Matt. xiii. 47 ; Luke v. 4 — 10 it is used in the 
 parable of the net, and our Lord there assigns it its 
 significance ; His parabolic use of it is frequently 
 imitated in early Christian Art, where the fishes in the
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 337 
 
 Church's net, or caught by the hook of the fisher, 
 correspond exactly to the lamhs of the fold, or to the 
 Doves which also represent the faithful on many Chris- 
 tian tombs and vaultings. See Tertullian de Baptismo, 
 sub i 111 1. u Nos pisciculi secundum l^Hvy Nostrum in 
 aqua nascimur." This anagrammatic sense appears to 
 have been in very early use, derived, as all know, from 
 the initials of the words 'Irjoovg Xpiaroc ®eov Yloc 
 H,wTi)f). This appears to be recognized by St. Clement of 
 Alexandria ("Paedag." iii. 10G ; see also St. Augustine, de 
 Civ. Dei, xviii. 25), and to have been so well understood 
 in his time as to have required no explanation, since he 
 recommends the use of the symbol, on seals, and rings, 
 without giving an explanation of its import. The other 
 devices he commends are the Dove, Ship, Lyre, and 
 Anchor. At so early a period as the middle of the 
 second century, and under the continual dangers of perse- 
 cution, the use of such a symbol for the Person of the 
 Lord is perfectly natural, as it wo"kl attract no notice 
 from the outer world : and in the same manner, for even 
 more obvious reasons, the form of the Cross was frequently 
 disguised up to the time of Constantine (see Cross). 
 Bat the mystic senses assigned to this emblem by various 
 Fathers often seem to the modern mind somewhat gra- 
 tuitous and ill-founded. They strain their imaginations, 
 apparently, to find reasons in the nature of things for 
 what is simply an ingenious arrangement of initial 
 letters ; seeming to assume that there must be real 
 analogy between the Lord and the Fish, because the 
 initials of the Name and titles of the One made the 
 Greek name of the other. The pleasure derived from 
 the anagram, or the facility it may have given for con- 
 cealing Christian doctrine from the heathen, seems 
 occasionally to have overcome the thought that the 
 Lord Himself had used the Fish as an emblem of His 
 
 Q
 
 338 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 people only, not of Himself; of the Sheep, not of the 
 Shepherd. Aringhi dwells more naturally on the 
 Scriptural meaning, and the various examples he gives 
 (vol. ii. p. 684, II. p. 620, also that from the inscrip- 
 tion made in Stilicho's consulship, a.p. 400, vol. i. 
 p. 19), all speak in the same sense. The lamp at II. 
 620 has the Monogram on the handle, and the two 
 Fishes on the central part. He refers to the Dolphin 
 as King of fishes, speaking of its reputed love for 
 its offspring (see the tomb of Baleria or Valeria 
 Latobia, now in the Vatican). Martigny states that 
 because Christ is man, He therefore is a Fish of His 
 own net : and gives prophetic significance, following 
 Aringhi, to the stoiy of Tobias, and of the Fish which 
 delivered him from the power of the evil spirit. He of 
 course accepts and follows the various attempted con- 
 nexions of the anagram with the Fish of the last Repast 
 at the Sea of Galilee, and sees in them the sacramental 
 representatives of the Body of our Lord ; quoting St. 
 Augustine, Tract, cxxiii. in Joannem xxi. and Bede's 
 rhymed citation of the same passage, Piscis assus 
 Christus est passus (see Eucharist, Representation of). 
 These analogies are difficult to follow, especially when 
 we consider the scriptural use of the emblem from the 
 Lord's own mouth. 
 The Fish as the believer, St. Ambrose, L. iv. in Luc. 
 v., Hexemeron, v. 6, is more frequently represented on 
 the hook of the Gospel-Fisherman than in the net of 
 the Church. Bread and fish are the universal viands of 
 the representations of earlier Agapse, as frequently in 
 the Callixtinc Catacomb. The genuineness of some, at 
 least, of these paintings is generally allowed ; and Dr. 
 Theodore Mommsen mentions in particular an Agape 
 with bread and fish, in the vault named after Domitilla, 
 the grand-daughter of Vespasian, on the Ardeatine
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 339 
 
 way, and near the ancient church of SS. Nereus and 
 Achilles. In this, so impartial and accurate an observer 
 as Dr. Mommsen has full confidence, as coeval with the 
 vault ; though he thinks the case for the vault itself 
 being so early as 95 B.C. incomplete : and observes that 
 the painting of this subject, as of those of Daniel, Noah 
 and the Good Shepherd, is less excellent than that of the 
 Vine in the vaultings of the original chamber of Domi- 
 tilla without the catacomb, which is quite like a work 
 of the Augustan age. 
 The use of this emblem is connected by Martigny with, 
 what he styles, the Secret Discipline, or teaching of 
 the early Church. There can be little doubt that 
 reverent mystery was observed as to the Eucharist ; 
 and that in ages of persecution till Constantino's 
 time, no public use of the Cross, as a sign of the 
 Person of the Lord, was made. Till then the Fish- 
 anagram was perhaps in special and prevailing use, 
 and it may have yielded its place from that time ; 
 the Cross being the sign of full confession of Jesus 
 of Nazareth ; supposing the special use of the F;sh 
 to have been concealment from the heathen. The 
 secrecy of discipline, or doctrine, after Constantino, 
 seems to have consisted mainly in the gradual nature of 
 the instructions given to catechumens, and in the fact 
 that for a time the chief doctrines of the Faith were 
 not brought before them. 
 
 Fisherman. 
 
 Our Lord or His disciples are frequently represented as 
 the Fishers of Men in ancient art. St. Clement of 
 Alexandria uses the simile for both. "Psedag." III. 
 106. See also Aringhi, IT. 620. St. Augustine. 
 Tract, xl. in Joannem ; St. Ambrose, Hexemeron, v. 6. 
 Martigny gives a woodcut s.v. Pecheur, represent-
 
 340 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 ing a man clothed in the skin of a fish, bearing 
 a spata, or basket : which may, as Polidori supposes, 
 represent the divine or apostolic Fishes, or the Fish of 
 the Church's net. The net is more rarely represented 
 than the hook and line, hut St. Peter is represented in 
 an ancient ivory (in Mamachi, "Costumi I." Prefaz. p. 1 ) 
 casting the net. The net of St. Peter, with the Lord 
 fishing with the line, is a device of the Papal Signets. 
 In the Callixtine Catacomb (De Rossi, "Roma Sott.," 
 vol. i. tav. xv. n. 4), the fisherman is drawing forth a fish 
 from the waters which flow from the Rock in Horeb. 
 See also Bottari, vol. i. tav. xlii. At St. Zenone in 
 Verona, the patron Saint is thus represented ; and 
 this subject, with those of Abraham's Sacrifice, Noah's 
 Ark, and others on the bronze doors and marble 
 front of that most important church, are specially 
 valuable as connecting the earlier Lombard carvings 
 with the most ancient and scriptural subjects of 
 primitive church-work. 
 
 Fossor. 
 
 The Fossores (fodere, to dig) were a class of men em- 
 ployed in the offices of Christian sepulture, and in 
 opening fresh graves and catacombs. They must have 
 been very numerous, considering the great extent of the 
 subterranean world of Rome, which is calculated at from 
 330 to 900 miles of passages, at various distances from 
 the surface. These are all hollowed in the soft tufa-rock 
 with the pickaxe or mattock : and an instrument of 
 this kind, or a small lamp, is always placed in the 
 hands of the memorial pictures near the graves of 
 these men. As the extent of the catacombs went on 
 increasing, the number and importance of the Fossores 
 must have increased ; their acquaintance with the 
 dark and labyrinthine passages of the various' cata-
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 341 
 
 combs must have made them guides to places of refuge 
 in time of persecution. A woodcut in Bottari ' (vol. ii. 
 p. 126) gives us the portrait of one of these men, 
 perhaps of superior rank in his craft. The shoulder 
 and skirts of his long tunic are marked with a peculiar 
 cross, of one of the shapes called formes dissimulees by 
 Father Martigny (s.v. Croix, " Diet, des Antiquites 
 Chret."): he wears long boots, carries a heavy pickaxe, 
 and is surrounded by other tools of his occupation. He 
 is placed under a dark arch, on which are two doves 
 with the epitaph : 
 
 Diogenes. Fossor.in. pace, depositus 
 Octabu. Kalenuas. Octobris. 
 
 Father Martigny discusses the question of how far the 
 Fossores were considered clerical persons. This seems 
 difficult to decide, as he admits, from the fact that the 
 offices of sepulture in the catacombs were various, and 
 devolved on different classes of men, styled lecticarii, 
 libitinarii, copiatse, decani, &c. Of their organization 
 under Constantine, he sajs, " The Emperor Constantine 
 assigned special places of call to the fossores, in dif- 
 ferent parts of Rome: and we possess the epitaphs of 
 some of these Church-officers, which inform us of the 
 neighbourhood to which they were attached — as, for 
 example, ' Junius, Fossor of the Aventine, made (this 
 crave) for himself.' " 2 
 
 The importance of these men's labour may be judged 
 bv the greatness of their work, and on this Dr. 
 Theodore Mommsen makes the following observation, 
 
 1 "Fossores" are represented at plates xciv. and ci. vol. ii., 
 ami nlxxi. vol. iii. 
 
 2 •' L'empereur Constantin assigns aux 'fossores' des habitations 
 speciales (officinas), daus les aifferents quartiers de Koine ; et nous 
 avons des epitaphes de quelques-uns de ces fouctionnaires de 1'Eglise, 
 qui indiquent la region a laquelle ils etiient attaches ; par exeiuple, 
 celle-ci ; ' lunius. Fossor. Aventinus. fecit, sibi.' "
 
 342 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 after allowing for the existence of non-Christian cata- 
 combs. " The enormous space occupied by the burial 
 vaults of Christian Rome, in their extent not surpassed 
 even by the system of cloacae or sewers of Republican 
 Rome, is certainly the work of that community which 
 St. Paul addressed in his Epistle to the Romans ; a 
 living witness of its immense development." 
 
 Fountain or Well. (See Rock in Horeb ; and Evan- 
 gelists.) 
 Our Lord is represented (in Bottari, tav. xvi., Buonarotti, 
 " Vetri." tav. vi.et passim) as the Source of the Gospel 
 and Eons Pietatis, from under Whose- feet flow the Four 
 Rivers of Paradise (see Paradise, Four Rivers). In 
 the Lateran and other Baptismal Crosses, the Holy 
 Dove is the Fount or Source from which the sacred 
 rivers flow. The Well, springing in the wilderness, is 
 rather a Hebrew, Arab, or universally Eastern image, 
 than a specially Christian one. In some early Baptisms 
 of Our Lord, as that in the ancient Baptistery of 
 Ravenna, the River-God, or presiding deity of the 
 Source of the Jordan, is introduced. For the fountain 
 or stream flowing from the Rock of Moses and fishes 
 therein, see articles Fisherman and Rock in Horeb. 
 
 Furnace. (See Three Children.) 
 
 Goat or Kid. 
 
 In Bottari, tav. clxxix. there is an engraving from a picture 
 in the Cemetery of St. Priscilla, on the Via Salaria, of 
 the Good Shepherd bearing a kid, with goats and sheep 
 alike looking to Him. This is perhaps the earliest 
 existing allusion to the Last Judgment: but the 
 shepherd bearing the kid seems to be a thought 
 consonant with the prayer for all men permitted in- our
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 343 
 
 Litany. See Prof. Arnold, " New Poems." See also 
 Bottari, tav. lxxviii. 
 
 God the Father, Eepresentations of. 
 
 (Most representations of the Divine presence have their 
 proper place under the word Trinity). For the first 
 four centuries at least, no attempt was ever made at 
 representing the actual presence of the First Person of 
 the Trinity. It was indicated invariably by the sym- 
 bolic Hand, proceeding from a cloud. Martigny quotes 
 the words of St. Augustine, Epi?t. cxlviii. 4 : " When 
 we hear of His Hand, we ought to understand His 
 Working," 1 from which it would seem that the great 
 Western Father foresaw a tendency to anthropomorphic 
 misapplication of the words, Hand, and Eye, or Ear of 
 God, as they are frequently used in the Old Testament. 
 The distinction between analogy and similitude has been 
 so often neglected, that bodily parts as well as passions 
 (like those of anger, repentance, <fc:c.)are often attributed 
 to the Incorporeal and Infinite Being. This has been 
 n peatedly noticed, and last by Drs. Whately and 
 Mansei. St. Augustine's expressions show that he was 
 thoroughly awake to the misconception, and consequent 
 irreverence, which is involved in the forgetful use of such 
 terms as the Divine Hand, or Eye, for the Divine Power 
 or Knowledge. "When thou thickest of these things, 
 whatever notion of bodily likeness may have occurred to 
 thee, reject it, deny it, refuse it, shun it, fly from it." '- 
 The symbolic Hand appears in Christian represen- 
 tations of several subjects from the Old Testament, 
 principally connected with events in the lives of 
 Abraham and Moses. The two are found corresponding 
 
 1 " Quum audimus mammi, operationem intelligere debemus." 
 
 2 " Quidquid dum ista cogitas, corpurea? siinilituuinis occur- 
 rerit, abigc, abnue, ni'ga, respue, luge.''
 
 344 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 to each other in Bottari, vol. i. tav. xxvii. also vol. i. tav. 
 lxxxix. Moses is receiving the Book of the Law, so 
 also in vol. ii. tav cxxviii. Abraham alone, vol. ii. taw. 
 lix. and xxxiii. from the Callixtine Catacomb. In vol. 
 iii. tav. xxxvii. (from Cemetery of St. Agnes) the Deity 
 appears to be represented in human form. He is de- 
 livering to Adam and Eve respectively the ears of corn 
 and the lamb, as tokens of the labour of their fallen 
 state, and their sentence " to delve and spin," See also 
 Buonarotti, p. 1. In Bosio, p. 159, Cain and Abel are 
 apparently making their offerings* Cardinal Bosio, and 
 M. Perret (vol. i. 57 pi.) give a copy of a painting of 
 Moses striking the Rock, and also in the act of loosening 
 the shoe from his foot. Ciampini's plates, " Vet. Mon." 
 tav. ii. pp. 81, 82, tav. xxiv. tav. xvii. D. are important 
 illustrations of this symbol, more especially those of 
 the mosaic of the Transfiguration in St. Apollinaris in 
 Classe, and of the Sacrifice of Isaac in St. Vitale. The 
 Hand proceeding from clouds appears in the Sacra- 
 mentary written for Drogon, Bishop of Metz, and son 
 of Charlemagne, above the Canon of the Mass. The 
 Creator is represented in the MS. of Alcuin. See 
 Westwood's " Palaeographia Sacra." 
 
 Gourd. (See Jonah.) 
 
 Hand. (See supra. Representations of God the Father.) 
 
 The boy who represents Spring among the four seasons 
 frequently carries a hare in his hand. The idea of 
 speed in the Christian course was associated with it. 
 It is sometimes connected with the horse (Perret, v. Ivii.) 
 or with the Palm. Boldetti, 506. Its appearance may 
 be connected with the Roman taste for pet animals, 
 which had much to do with their ornament. See p. 120.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 345 
 
 Horse. 
 
 Attending on the Orpheus-Shepherd. Bott. taw lxxi. with 
 the Magi, tav. cxxxiii. Two bearing Crosses, tav. lxiii. 
 Tlie Horse occurs, of course, in the frequent representa- 
 tions of the translation of Elijah found in the Sarcophagi 
 and elsewhere. (See Elias, ) The horses of Egypt are 
 commemorated by a rider as well as a chariot, in re- 
 presentations of Pharaoh and the Red Sea. Aringhi, 
 p. 331. 
 
 House. 
 
 In Aringhi, i. p. 522, ii. 658, are woodcuts of houses from 
 ancient tombs. This either refers to the grave as the 
 House of the Dead, Boldetti, p. 463; even Domus 
 Sterna (Perret, v. pi. 36, x. 110), or to the deserted 
 House of the Soul, the buried body (2 Cor. v. 1), "For 
 we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were 
 dissolved, we have a building of God," <kc. &.c. There is 
 in Aringhi (sub verbo, ii. 658) a House of the Grave 
 with a small mummy — Lazarus, laid up alone, as it 
 were, to abide the Resurrection. The Houses of Jeru- 
 salem and .Bethlehem, representing the Jewish and 
 Gentile Churches, occur frequently in early Mosaics. 
 
 In\:>ci:nts. the Holy ; Massacre of. 
 
 Represented in the mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and in 
 two ivories, one of which (from a diptych in the Cathe- 
 dral of Milan) is given by Martigny, sub verbo. Also 
 on a Sarcophagus at St. Maximin, South of France. 
 
 Issuk of Klood. 
 
 The cure of the woman thus afflicted is repeated on many 
 Sarcophagi. See Bottari, taw. xix. xxi. xxxiv. xxxix. xli. 
 lxxxiv. lxxxv. lxxxix. cxxxv. She has been taken to repre- 
 sent the Gentile Church, specially by St. Ambrose (Lib. 
 
 Q 3
 
 346 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 ii. in Luc. c. viii.). She is of small stature in the carvings, 
 like the other subjects of our Lord's miraculous cures. In 
 Euseb. "Ec. Hist."vii. 18, mention is made of the bronze 
 statue of our Lord, supposed to have existed at Ca^sarea 
 Philippi, Dan (or Baneas at this day), attributed to this 
 woman, who was represented kneeling at its feet. 
 
 Jerusalem. (See Bethlehem and House.) 
 
 Jesus Christ, Representations of. See chapters on Cata- 
 combs, Mosaics, the Monogram, Cross, and Crucifix. 
 
 Job. 
 
 Pictures of Job occur in the cemeteries of Domitilla, St. 
 Callixtus, and SS. Marcellinus and Peter " inter dims 
 lauros." They are attributed to the third century, but 
 a certain uncertainty hangs over these paintings. 
 However, their antiquity is confirmed by a carving of 
 Job (on the dunghill or heap of ashes, with his wife 
 and one of his friends), on the sarcophagus of Junius 
 Bassus, a.d. 359. This is of high merit, like the rest 
 of the tomb. It insists on the painful and offensive 
 suffering of the Patriarch ; his wife is covering her nose 
 and lips with her garment, while she offers him a pain's 
 decussatus, or cross-cake, at the end of a stick. Tins 
 is Martigny's conjecture, fully borne out by the sculp- 
 ture, and far more satisfactory than Pere Garrucci's 
 (" Hagioglypt." p. 69, note) that she is preparing to 
 beat her husband witb her distaff. 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 Is represented, passim, in the Catacombs and on the 
 Sarcophagi. He is either cast into the sea, or ejected 
 by the Whale on the shores of Joppa, or reclining under 
 his gourd. Aringhi, i. p. 315, ii. 143, i. 533, ii. 5i), Ac.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 347 
 
 Botfari, tav. xlii. lvi. As a parable or figure con- 
 cerning Himself, from our Lord's mouth, the greatest 
 reverence must always have been felt for this subjeet, 
 and it is repeated constantly, in consequence, espe- 
 cially in the earliest times, as His solemn promise of the 
 Resurrection. St. Augustine (Ep. ad Deo gratias qmest. 
 vi. De Jona) carries the typical resemblance much fur- 
 ther, and affords a most ingenious and harmless, though 
 perhaps not perfectly satisfactory, example of comment, 
 out-running the words of our Lord, instead of contem- 
 plating them. "Christ," he says, " passed from the Wood 
 of the Cross, as Jonah from the ship, to the whale (or 
 power of Death) ; the endangered crew are the human 
 race battered by the tempests of the world — and as 
 Jonah preached to Nineveh after his return to life, so 
 the Gentile Church only heard the Lord's word after 
 His Resurrection." The fresco at Bott. tav. lvi. from 
 St. Callixtus is perhaps the best typical representation 
 of this subject. 
 For the Whale, or Fish, all manner of draconic, hippo- 
 campic and other forms are assigned it, which are not 
 very important to our purpose; nor yet is the controversy 
 as to whether the Hedera of St. Jerome, or the Cucur- 
 bita of the Vulgate, be the proper term for the plant 
 which overshadowed him. The early Church painters 
 seem to have adhered to the later idea of it. 
 
 JORDAN. (See chapter on Sacramental Emblems.) 
 
 The Jordan is often personified as a River-God, as in 
 Bottari, tav. xxvii. with Elias ; in the Baptisteries of 
 Ravenna, on the Borghese sarcophagus at the Louvre, 
 and in various early MSS., particularly that of St. 
 Mark's Library at Venice. Its violent windings are 
 generally dwelt on, and sometimes two of its sources, 
 named according to the fanciful etymology of its name
 
 348 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 (Jor or Gh6r? and Dan) are inserted. The four 
 Evangelical Rivers sometimes unite in the Baptismal 
 •Jordan, as below the Lateran Cross. (Woodcut, p. 
 192, and pp. 153 and 207.) 
 
 Jordan, as River God. 
 
 Represented, Bottari, tav. xxix. from a sarcophagus from 
 the Vatican Cemetery, in an Ascension of Elijah. Also 
 in various Baptisms of Our Lord, as in the Baptisteries 
 at Ravenna. 
 
 Joseph, Saint. 
 
 Appears in the Nativity, the Adoration of the Shepherds 
 and of the Magi, and in the discovery of Our Lord in 
 the Temple, Bottari, taw. lxxxv. and xxii. 
 
 Joseph, the Patriarch. 
 
 As a typical person standing for the God Man, rejected 
 and sold by his brethren to the Gentiles for thirty pieces 
 of silver, we might expect that Joseph would be more 
 frequently represented in early art than he is. But he 
 is hardly seen on mural decoration or on the Sarcophagi. 
 There is a painting given by D'Agincourt (Atlas, pi. 
 19. Peinture) from a MS. in the Imperial Library at 
 Vienna, which seems to represent the Blessing of 
 Ephraim and Manasseh. Another dubious fresco 
 (Bottari, tav. Mi.) from the Callixtine Catacombs is 
 considered by him and Aringhi to represent the funeral 
 of Jacob. The ivory chair in the Duomo at Ravenna 
 contains events of Joseph's history ; but it is not till 
 the Mosaics of the Atrium of St. Mark's at Venice 
 that it is fully dwelt on. 
 
 Judgment, Last. 
 
 It may also be said that representations of this tremendous 
 subject hardly belong to early Christian art, that is to
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 349 
 
 say, to that period of Christian art which ends with the 
 death of Charlemagne. The great mosaic of the 
 Duomo at Torcello, the mother-city of Venice, still 
 exists ; and if (as is Mr. Ruskin's opinion, agreeing with 
 that of the Marchese Selvatico) the present Duomo is 
 identical with the earliest building in 641, the mosaic 
 cannot be considered of much later date. It was in 
 that year that Altinum was finally destroyed in the 
 Lombard invasion ; the first flight to the Lagoons 
 having been from Attila in the tilth century. (Appen- 
 dix 4 to vol. ii. of " Stones of Venice.") The original 
 Duomo of Torcello was restored in 1108 ; and certain 
 carvings appear to have been altered, as also the pulpit 
 and chancel screen j but the mosaics are supposed to 
 form part of the Church as first built. That of the Last 
 Judgment is quite an anticipation of the conceptions of 
 Giotto and Orgagna, the latter of whom certainly gave 
 an inspiration, by his works in the Campo Santo at Pisa, 
 to Michael Angelo for his Sistine frescoes. The 
 Torcellese mosaic is of the rudest, yet most forcible, 
 description. Skulls are in the foreground with worms 
 issuing from the eyes, enforcing the victory of Death 
 over our flesh ; and there is this peculiarity about the 
 conception of the Everlasting Fire, that it is not re- 
 presented as a conflagration, or monstrous prison-house, 
 as in other works, but as a red stream issuing from 
 beneath the Throne of God. This work is perhaps the 
 earliest known pictorial imagination of the Judgment. 
 If it be of the early twelfth century, it is of course 
 posterior to the celebrated painting of Methodius for 
 Bogoris of Bulgaria, 853-861. This would seem to 
 have been a direction of art untried before; as the 
 King's taste for pictures of battles, and other exciting 
 subjects, is said to have given the painter-apostle of 
 Bohemia the idea of representing the puuishment of the
 
 350 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 wicked to him. Whatever we may think of the direc- 
 tion thus given to sacred art, there is no duuht it has 
 heen followed too eagerly, and with deplorable result. 
 And it is remarkable that the first paintings of this 
 nature, entirely different in spirit from the peaceful 
 works of praise, faith, and rejoicing found in the 
 Catacombs, should be found at the corner of Europe, 
 where Eastern theology, and asceticism, found their 
 first and strongest bearing on the animal fierceness 
 of the Teutonic races. The monk's indifference to 
 suffering and the Gothic recklessness of infliction seem 
 united in many Last Judgments. (See Orgagna's 
 Triumph of Death, Inferno, &c. in Kiigler, and 
 Lasinio's Campo Santo of Pisa, and elsewhere ; also 
 Lecky's " History of Rationalism," ch. iii. ^Esthetic 
 Social, and Moral Developments, &c.) The present 
 writer remembers no representation of the Last Judg- 
 ment at Mount Sinai, and the one or two at Mar 
 Saba seem of late date. There are many at Mount 
 Athos, but Mr. Tozer considers them entirely out of our 
 period. A heathen painting of Judgment or Presentation 
 of the Soul after death to the Lower Powers has been 
 found in the Catacomb of St. Prsetextatus. See Perret, 
 i. 73. Diespiter and Mercurius Nuntius are named in 
 it, as also Alcestis. See also the " Inductio Vibies" in 
 the Gnostic Catacomb, which certainly represents the 
 Presentation of the buried Vivia to some assembled 
 Divinities. 
 
 Lamb. 
 
 As the sheep accompanying the Good Shepherd, and 
 the doves, stand for human members of the Church, so 
 the Lamb is the emblem of the Lord submitting to 
 death for man ; the victim "Whom every Paschal sacrifice 
 prefigured. In this sense it occurs most frequently
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 351 
 
 in Sarcophagi and mosaics after the time of Constantine. 
 It was not, perhaps, till the triumph of the Cross under 
 Constantine, when the upright or penal Cross had taken 
 the place of the decussated symbol (which really was 
 the Monogram, or name of Christ) — that the Lamb, as 
 the victim of the Cross, came to be an object of constant 
 contemplation ; and its image was frequently combined 
 with the Cross. See chapter on the Cross ; also 
 Ciampini, de Sacr, ./Ed if. tab. xiii. where the Lamb is 
 represented "as it were slain" bearing the nimbus, and 
 with the chalice receiving His blood. This begins as 
 early as the first part of the sixth century, and about 
 this time the Lamb is placed in a medallion at the inter- 
 section of the limbs of crosses, as the celebrated 
 Vatican Cross. See Borgia, de Cruce Vaticano. 
 
 On the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. or rather on its 
 pillars, there is a most curious sculpture of the symbolic 
 Lamb performing miracles and acts, mystically selected 
 from the Old and Xew Testament. He is striking 
 water from the Rock, multiplying the Loaves, adminis- 
 tering baptism to another Lamb, touching a mummy 
 with a wand, as Lazarus, and receiving the Tables of 
 the Law. 
 
 As accompanying representations of the Fall of Man, see 
 Adam and Eve. The Apocalyptic Lamb occurs 
 frequently in the great mosaics of Home and Ravenna, 
 in St. Frassede for example (see chapter on Mosaics), 
 and in the Sarcophagi of the chapel of Galla Placidia. 
 
 Lazarus, Raising of. 
 
 This great miracle, amounting to anticipation of Our Lord's 
 final Triumph over Death, is one of those most frequently 
 represented in all kinds of Christian art, alike in sculp- 
 ture, mosaic and fresco painting. Metallic or ivory 
 images were fastened to the outer doors or lids of tombs
 
 352 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 with actual or symbolical representations of it (Boldetti, 
 "Cirnit. di Santi Morr. et antichi Christ, di Roma," p. 
 523.) Lazai'us is generally represented as a small figure 
 swathed in linen, exactly like a mummy ; as in the re- 
 presentations of other miracles the human figures present 
 are often made much smaller than that of Our Lord, 
 Who sometimes touches Lazarus with a wand, some- 
 times (Bottari, tav. xxviii. 42) holds a volume, or 
 blesses him with the Latin benediction (two fingers 
 raised), Aringhi, ii. 121; sometimes the hand is laid on 
 the head, Aringhi, ii. 183. In this as in many of the 
 earliest representations of the Crucifixion, the sepulchre 
 is represented as a small house ; sometimes it is 
 hollowed in natural rock, Aringhi, ii. 331. In several 
 instances, Aringhi, i. and 335, 323, 423, Bottari, tav. 
 xlii. Martha with Mary, or one of them alone is present ; 
 generally kneeling before the Lord, and of small stature. 
 The idea of a Chrysalis, Aringhi, i. 565, is supposed by 
 Martigny to be attached to one of these representations 
 (in a cubiculum of the Callixtine). The allusion to the 
 Resurrection is obvious, as the little mummy-figure 
 recalls that of an infant in swaddling clothes. 
 Moses and the Rock are frequently opposed to this miracle 
 on Sarcophagi. 
 
 Letters on Apostolic Ronrcs. 
 
 In some of the Roman mosaics of Byzantine type, and 
 particularly in the Baptisteries of Ravenna, it will be 
 observed that letters are placed on the skirts of the 
 figures of Apostles and Saints. The reason is very 
 doubtful ; the only probable conjecture is Aringhi's, that 
 they involve a reference to Ezekiel, ix. 4. But as the 
 mark there mentioned is set on the foreheads of the 
 mourners for iniquity, the passage cannot be thought 
 an explanation of the symbol. He refers to Origen,
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 353 
 
 Serm. 8, De Epiphania; and also to the beginning of 
 Boethius de Consolationc, where the heavenly visitant 
 has the letters P and T on her robe. H, A, N, and Z 
 occur at Ravenna, and T is spoken of by Aringhi as 
 most frequent of all, representing the Cross, " Rum. 
 Sott." ii. 592. The fossor or grave-digger in Bottari, vol. 
 ii. p. 126, certainly bears a Cross on the skirt of his long 
 vestment, though of irregular or disguised form. 
 
 Lion. 
 
 The earlier ideas connected with this animal appear to 
 regard principally the nobler qualities generally attri- 
 buted to him. He is taken to symbolize watchfulness, 
 and vigour, or authority in the faith. Until Raffaelle's 
 St. Margaret, he is rarely coupled with the Dragon in 
 art, or made symbolic of the Evil One, as in Ps. x. 9. 
 and xci. 13. See however Gori, " Thes. Diptychorum," 
 vol. ii. His head appears, of course, as an ornamental 
 carving, in all work, Christian and Gentile, Bottari, 
 ii. lxix; Boldetti, 369. As a supporter to columns 
 of ambons (see Ciampini, i. tab. xvii. and many later 
 Lombard carvings) it is to be hoped that he was not 
 needed or used in early times as a hortatory symbol of 
 wakefulness. He appears with Daniel very frequently 
 on the Sarcophagi, and in mosaics as the symbol of St. 
 Mark (see Evangelists). For his form as compounded 
 with other animals, see the description of the Lombard 
 Giitiins in "Modern Painters," vol. iii. p. 106. 
 
 Liturgical Books, Decoration of. 
 
 Kvangeliaries or MSS. of the Gospels, with the P.-alters, are 
 stated by Dom Gueranger ("Institutions Liturgiques," 
 8vo. Le Mans, 1840) to be the earliest examples 
 of ecclesiastical decorative art now in existence. The 
 Rabula or Laurentian MS. is one of the very first (see 
 Miniatures, Crucifix, &c). This work, invaluable in
 
 354 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 every respect, is particularly so in a historical point of 
 view, as a premonitory sign of the divergence of Eastern 
 and Western art. In Eastern MSS. as Professor 
 AVestwood remarks (" Palajographia Sacra," In trod.) the 
 miniatures are of rectangular form let into the text, and 
 unconnected with the writing ; whereas in Western work, 
 miniature-art begins as decorative writing ; and is, in 
 all the best early examples, associated with it and 
 dependent on it. (See s. v. Miniature). The greater 
 number of the richer MSS. are not at very early dates 
 decorated with miniatures, but written altogether on 
 purple or azure vellum in letters of gold. The Evan- 
 geliary of Ulfilas, on purple vellum, and those of Brescia, 
 Verona, and Perugia, are all referred to the sixth 
 century ; as also the Psalters of St. Germain des Pies 
 and Zurich ; these are all in gold or silver writing on 
 purple vellum, though the Psalter last mentioned has 
 faded into a kind of violet tint. Silver- ink MSS. are 
 much rarer than the chrysographs. The MSS. of 
 Ulfilas, of Verona, and Brescia are examples, gold 
 being used for the initials. Other very ancient works 
 still in existence are the Greek Evangel iary of St. 
 John de Carbonara of Naples, now in the Library 
 at Vienna, of the eighth century, the Antiphonary of 
 St. Gregory at Monza, which once belonged to Queen 
 Theodolinda ; one belonging to Charlemagne at Aix- 
 la-Chapelle, and another of his, now at Abbeville. 
 The purple vellum begins to be economized in or before 
 the ninth century, as in Charlemagne's Psalter presented 
 to Adrian VIII. about the end of the eighth (now at 
 Vienna). This MS. has a limited number of purple 
 pages. Evangeliaries of this time are still purple 
 throughout. The use of this colour, however, may be 
 said to go out in the tenth century. There is in the 
 Bodleian a purple vellum MS. of the eleventh century,
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 355 
 
 which contains whole-page miniatures. Of chrysographs 
 on white vellum, in gold and silver characters, the 
 Evangeliary of St. Martin des Champs,' of the time of 
 Charlemagne, and that of St. Mtdard of Soissons, are 
 mentioned with great admiration by Gueranger, as also 
 that of the monastery of St. Emmeran, near Ratisboa, 
 now at Munich. Gold writing in great measure dis- 
 appears in the eleventh century, gold backgrounds 
 taking its place. Iu the Western Church, miniature 
 ornament (see s. v.) begins, and runs parallel with 
 splendour of caligraphy, from the eighth century. In 
 the ninth, design begins to prevail, as in the Missale 
 Francorum. The stories of Alfred's being inclined to 
 learn to read by the beauty of an illuminated book, and 
 of Charlemagne's vigorous but unsuccessful attempts to 
 learn the art of caligraphy himself, are in all proba- 
 bility well founded: for the latter, see Egiuhard, "De 
 Vita et Gestis Caroli Magni," cap. 25. " Tentabat et 
 scribere, tabulasque et cudieillos ad hoc in lectulo sub 
 cervicalibus circumferre solebat, ut cum vacuum tempus 
 esset, manum effingendis Uteris assuefaceret. Sed pariini 
 prospere successit labor prueposterus et sero inchoatus." 
 " He used to try to write, and was wont to carry 
 about tablets and pocket-books in his bed, under his 
 pillow, that when he had spare time he might accustom 
 his hand to shaping the letters. But it was vexatious 
 labour, and begun too late, and did not turn out 
 successfully." 
 Desijm and miniature of course be^an with the initial 
 letters. The " Sacramentaire de Gellone," ninth cen- 
 tury, contains a miniature of the Crucifix iu the Canon 
 of the Mass ; the Cross forming the T m tue words Te 
 igitur. In the same MS. the Mass of the Invention 
 
 1 The MSS. of St. Medard and St. Martin are beautifully illus- 
 trated iu Count Bastard's first volume.
 
 356 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 of the Cross has in its initial letter the figure of a 
 man squaring a tree-trunk, as if to form the upright 
 stem. The "Leofric" Sacramentary, ninth century, in 
 the Bodleian, has highly ornamented initials in the 
 Canon of the Mass, but is without figures. There are 
 whole-page Illuminations of the Four Evangelists in 
 the Hours of Charlemagne ; and in the Evangel iary 
 of St. Medard, Our Lord sits in the initial of the 
 word Quoniam, with which the Gospel of St. Luke 
 commences. Such are the earliest steps of the transition 
 from caligraphy to painting, and Lange's remark 
 appears a valuable one, that the labours of the later 
 miniaturists or illuminators who worked from nature, 
 gave much originality and confidence to the rising efforts 
 of the fresco or panel painters ; who were very commonly 
 skilled in MS. decoration, as well as iu their special 
 work. So late an example as Angelieo'a may prove 
 how both branches of art went together. 
 
 A point of interest on this subject is the frequent use of 
 ancient consular diptychs as bindings of service-books, 
 &c. The "Diptychon Leodiense " of the Consul 
 Flavins Astyrius was made into one of the side covers 
 of an Evangeliary ; so also that of Flavius Taurus 
 Clementinus, now at Nuremberg. But the most in- 
 teresting of these adaptations occurs in the well-known 
 Antiphonary of Monza, where the two consular figures 
 of the fifth century have been altered into represen- 
 tations of David and Gregory the Great, by means 
 of cutting the names in the ivory. A tonsure has 
 also been pratique, as Gueranger calls it, on the 
 head of the consul who represents the Pope. See 
 Gori, "Thes. Diptych.," t. ii. tav. vi. 
 
 A grotesque Eagle of the early ninth century at the end 
 of this book is traced from Count Bastard's second 
 volume. See Miniatures.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 357 
 
 Lyre. 
 
 A symbol of the human body and physical frame, to he 
 kept in harmony with the precepts and duties of the 
 Faith. The Lyre of Orpheus (Aringhi, ii. 562) is 
 likened to the Cross of Christ, as "drawing all men unto 
 Him." See article Calf. The lyre is of course in the 
 hands of Orpheus and, as an ornament adopted from 
 common use, is often, perhaps, without meaning 1 . Bottari 
 gives many different forms of the instrument. 
 
 Magi. 
 
 The representation of the Three Sages or Kings of the 
 East, who were led to the presence of the Sayiour soon 
 after His birth, is very commonly found in fresco 
 and on the sarcophagi. It was evidently felt to be 
 an assertion alike of the Divinity of Our Lord, and 
 of His Incarnation; and it introduced the Virgin Mother 
 in the most impressive manner, without setting her forth 
 with Divine attributes as a Receiver of Prayer. As an 
 Epiphany also, or manifestation of the object of their 
 Faith to the Gentile Church in particular, it must also 
 have claimed attention from the first. The pictures and 
 carvings greatly resemble each other and are described 
 in the chapter on the Catacombs. See Bottari, pxssim, 
 especially tav. lxxxii, where the Magi wear boots and 
 spurs, and exxxiii. &c. where they lead their horses. 
 They almost always wear the Phrygian cap and ana- 
 xyrides, or leggings, or Roman caligse ; and are com- 
 monly of youthful appearance. Martigny refers to Perret, 
 vol. ii. pi. 48, for their appearance before Herod, from a 
 fresco in St. Agnes : on a Sarcophagus given by Millin 
 ("Midi de la France," pi. 70), and on the gates of 
 St. Zenone they are observing the star. The great pro- 
 cession of Holy Women in St. Apollinare Nuova at 
 Ravenna ends at the altar-end of the church with an
 
 358 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 adoration of the Magi, evidently intended to introduce 
 the Blessed Virgin, as Mother of the Lord, and blessed 
 among women on the female side of the Church. 
 
 Milk or Milkpail. 
 
 Often represented in the Callixtine Catacomb in connection 
 with the Eucharist. Bosio, p. 249 : third Cubiculum 
 of St. Callixtus ; also in De Rossi, "Roma Sotteranea," 
 with apparent allusion to the Good Shepherd, and 
 the pastoral life of the ministry. 
 
 Miniatures. 
 
 This term, in its modern sense, signifies only portrait 
 painting on ivory, or on a small scale. It is derived 
 from minium or red lead, the pigment universally made 
 use of, in the earliest days of ornamental writing, in 
 order to decorate the capital letters, titles, and margins 
 of various MSS. This is a parallel etymology to the 
 word Rubric ; as the service-books, which employed the 
 attention of the most skilful copyists, were generally 
 must freely ornamented. The use of this term indicates 
 the principle, long sustained in the best illuminations, 
 that the pictures they contained were to be considered 
 only as ornamental adjuncts to the writing, by no means 
 as earnest attempts to represent real scenes or things. 
 The beautiful work of Count Bastard contains every 
 necessary gradation of examples of the progress made 
 in the first eight centuries, from simple writing in red 
 letters, with dotted borders or strokes, — to ornamented 
 letters, — then to letters composed of natural objects, or 
 grotesques of them, — finally to completed pictures of 
 persons or things. The term miniature also serves to 
 distinguish two classes of the most ancient MSS., those in 
 which colour is used for the ground of the page, and 
 those in which the letters and ornaments are in metallic
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 350 
 
 or coloured relief on a white page. For some of 
 the earliest service books on purple or azure vellum, see 
 Art. Liturgical Books, and Dom Gueranger 's work on 
 Liturgies. 
 
 The Chrysograph of St. Medard of Soissons in the Biblio- 
 theque Nationale, a purple MS. of extreme beauty, is 
 mentioned by Gueranger as containing architectural 
 drawings of great interest, affording much information 
 on Byzantine buildings, and displaying curious feelings 
 after perspective. This Evangeliary contains, as he says, 
 various "gracieux et etonnants edifices." The "Menologe 
 de Basile" he says, is the store-house of examples of 
 Byzantine architecture, resembling the buildings found 
 in some of the earliest Italian paintings, as in Giunto's 
 of Pisa at Assisi (in the lower Church of St. Francis). 
 The necessity for arrangement in columns, in Liturgical 
 books, gave great occasion for the use of architectural 
 forms in decoration. These will be found in Count 
 Bastard's work, passim, and in the MS. of Rabula ; for 
 a full account of which see Dom Gueranger, " Instit. 
 Liturgiques," vol. iii. Appendix. A beautiful copy in 
 colour of the Miracle of Bethesda in this MS. will be 
 found in Professor Westwood's " Palaeographia Sacra." 
 The division of subjects by columns and arches, Arc. 
 may be connected with the carvings on ancient Sarco- 
 phagi ; see Bottari, passim. 
 
 The strict distinction between the terms miniature and 
 illumination seems to be that the latter word applies to 
 the earliest realist miniatures, or representations of 
 natural objects. It cannot indeed be denied that the 
 Eastern Church used actual picture miniatures, or re- 
 presentations of events, from a far earlier date than the 
 "Western, as the Laurentian MS. abundantly proves. 
 The Illuminators (enlumineurs) and their system of 
 realist decoration date from the ninth century. Their
 
 360 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 subjects for ornament were not confined to flowers, fruits, 
 leaves, insects, <fcc, as there arc important figure subjects 
 in MSS. of Charlemagne's period. With these began 
 a school of miniature which had advanced into painting 
 of all kinds by the time of Cimabue and Giotto. 
 These works are beyond the range of our period, but a few 
 remarks and examples, chosen principally from the books 
 of Count Bastard, and Professor Westwood, mav be 
 allowed with reference to caligraphy and miniature. 
 The former illustrates the principal French MSS. 
 now in existence ; the latter is our chief authoritv for 
 Saxon and Irish work. Count Bastard virtually gives 
 us access to all the riches of the Bibliotheque Royale, 
 beginning with a splendid purple page in gold and silver 
 from the sixth-century Psalter of St. Germain des I Yes. 
 Red initials seem to have been used from the first, at all 
 events they appear in a fifth-century MS. of Prudentius 
 (Bast. vol.. i.), but the earliest ornament of red and black 
 dots seems to be in an uncial MS. (Bast. i. 5 ) of the 
 Merovingian type (sixth century). Next is a treatise of 
 St. Ambrose, c. vii. uncial with capitals; the colours used 
 are red. green, and brown, and the interlaced ornament 
 which prevails, for centuries after, over all Northern 
 work has already begun. See also the St. Augustine 
 MS. of the Abbey of Corbie. The first architectural 
 ornament is in a fragment of the Canons of Eusebius, 
 of the early seventh century. 
 But the earliest ornament which indicates a glance at 
 nature in the caligraphist is in a MS. of extracts from 
 St. Augustine of Hippo, seventh century (second half) 
 the property, in the eighteenth century, of Ubri Obrecht, 
 Preteur Royal de Strasburg. Birds and flowers (daffo- 
 dils carefully observed and drawn) are used here ; and 
 from this point, Frank fancy runs stark distracted in 
 every form of grotesque combination ; of birds, fishes,
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 361 
 
 and faces in particular. Flowers and beasts come rather 
 later in Carlovingian work, eighth centuiy. The colours 
 are still red, green, and brown, with purple and yellow, 
 and interlaced work prevails. 
 But a Merovingian MS. of the second half of the seventh 
 century (Bast. vol. i. ; a Eeceuil des chroniques de St. 
 Jerome, d'Idace de Lamego, Coll. des Jesuites) possesses 
 special interest from the beautiful and spirited work of 
 the true scribe-draugbtsman. Its capitals are drawn 
 brilliantly and precisely with the pen, without colour 
 (lettres blanches ou a jour) and point to the real origin and 
 principles of miniature very admirably. So also some of 
 the best Carlovingian MSS., where the pen breaks out 
 vigorously in all manner of grotesques, ornithographic, 
 zoographic, ichthyographic, and even anthropomorpho- 
 graphic (such, inherited from Benedictine comment, 
 are Count Bastard's formidable adjectives). The 
 most amusing triumph of penmanship ever attained 
 we apprehend to be an initial portrait of a monk- 
 physician in a lettres-a-jour MS. of the medical 
 works of Orbaces, Alexander of Tralles, and Dios- 
 corides. (Bast. vol. i. eighth cent.) Gothic humour 
 can hardly go farther. No offensive or outrageous 
 allusion or idea occurs anywhere in these records, as 
 might be expected. In the examples of Visigothic decora- 
 tion, however, a crucifixion with angels occurs in an early 
 Sacramentary of the eighth or ninth centun r , Abbaye 
 de Gellone, where much blood is used, and the drawing is 
 very inferior. It soon recovers, however, in the Visigothic 
 MSS. where many human figures and angels are repre- 
 sented, and which may, perhaps, be distinguished from 
 the earlier works by the number of beasts of chase re- 
 presented in them, boars and hares in particular. These 
 are drawn with the greatest spirit, but the strange north- 
 ern taste for distortion begins to prevail in the human 
 
 R
 
 362 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 figures. Count Bastard's work only gives one example 
 of a thoroughly Italian-Lombard MS. It is conspicuous 
 by the absence of interlaced work, and by a tendency to 
 geometrical arrangement, which is a marked feature in the 
 French-Lombard examples. They are more numerous, 
 but all dwell much on interfacings. Some of the most 
 delightful and valuable of the earlier illustrations are 
 those given from the great MS. of St. Medard of 
 Soissons, written for Charlemagne. The mystic fountain, 
 which occupies a whole page of this great work, is 
 probably a reminiscence of Constantine's fountain of 
 Baptism. (See Dove, Stag, Baptist, Jordan, &c.) 
 The dove, stag, and peacock occur here, and the swan, 
 stork, and other birds are added. Another picture is the 
 Church as a building ; the Lamb above with circular 
 nimbus, and light radiating from Him to the four 
 Evangelists below ; then come the walls, windows, and 
 pillars. At the base are the words: Qui Erat et Qui 
 Est et Qui " Enturus" est. 
 
 The use of gold and scarlet in the Charlemagne MS. of 
 St. Martin des Champs is very brilliant, and new 
 " Initiales fleuronnees,'' with evidence of fresh study 
 from nature, occur in Drogon's Sacramentary. 
 
 The importance of ancient miniature as representing archi- 
 tecture, ceremonial, anil costume cannot be overrated : 
 but some MSS. contain actual portraits. The Emperor 
 Lothaire is represented in his Evangeliary, and Emma 
 his wife. Also Henry III., and the Empress Agnes. 
 A MS. is said to be now in the Escurial which contains 
 portraits of Conrad the Salic and Gisela, and the 
 Countess Matilda is depicted in her Evangeliary in the 
 Vatican. 
 
 The connection between Miniature and Glass painting is 
 still maintained by some of the best or most promising 
 of our modern artists. In the early times it was even
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 363 
 
 more strict, since the same men used the same colours 
 in both branches of art, whether for transparent or 
 opaque effect. The entirely conventional use of colour, 
 both in illuminated pages and illuminated windows ; 
 absence of effort after any pictorial effect ; and the simple 
 wish to tell a story or represent an event in pleasant 
 colour without regard to correct form, and with endless 
 play of grotesque fancy, are the principal characteristics 
 of the best periods of both book and glass-painting. 
 Attempts at absolute realization, correct chiaroscuro, and 
 glass copies of great canvasses, are happily far distant 
 from the period on which we are employed. 
 Professor Westwuod's "Palasographia Sacra," and his larger 
 " Illustrations of Irish and Anglo-Saxon MSS." are 
 standard works which contain, or give references for, the 
 whole subject of early caligraphy and miniature in this 
 country \ and the first of them is universally accessible. 
 The author's able and apparently valid plea for the 
 antiquit}' of MSS. such as the Gospels of Moeil Brith 
 MacDurnan, and the " Book of Kells," and that of St. 
 Oolumba, gives us reason for commending the account of 
 them in " Palajographia Sacra " to the student of our 
 period. They seem to date from the earliest out-spread- 
 ing, under St. Columba, of Irish or Gaelic Christianity ; 
 which may be said to be connected with the Anglo- 
 Saxon Church, after the colonization of Lindisfarne from 
 Iona in G34, forty years after Columba's death. The 
 Gospels of Lindisfarne and St. Chad are probably of the 
 seventh century, and mark this connection. Without 
 entering on the characteristics of the miniature-art of 
 our own islands, however, reference must be made to the 
 Gregorian Gospels of St. Augustine and St. Cuthbert, 
 with others described in " Palseographia Sacra," and now 
 preserved,' one in the library of Corpus Christi College, 
 Cambridge, No 286, the other in the Bodleian Library, 
 
 R 2
 
 364 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Oxford. These Westwood believes to be original 
 Gregorian-Augustinian MSS. 1 Their ornament is 
 purely Romano-Byzantine. Four miniatures are given 
 in " Pal. Sac. " ; besides a large one of St. Luke from the 
 Cambridge MS. They are of the highest interest, as 
 probably the oldest known specimens of this kind of 
 Roman pictorial art now in this country or elsewhere ; 
 probably a few years anterior to the great Syriac 
 Florentine MS. of Rabula. With the exception of a 
 leaf of a Gospel of St. Luke in Greek, with miniatures 
 of the Evangelists, preserved at Vienna, together with 
 the illuminated Greek Pentateuch of the fourth century ; 
 they are held to be the oldest remaining specimens of 
 Roman-Christian iconography written or painted. The 
 Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, the 
 Capture of our Lord, and the Lord bearing His Cross 
 are four of the twelve subjects of the Cambridge MS. 
 Three of them correspond to those so frequently repeated 
 in the Catacomb-paintings, and on various Sarcophagi. 
 (Bottari, &c. passim.) The initial letters are plain red, 
 and the writing a fine uncial. 
 
 Considering the Anglo-Saxon school of miniature orna- 
 ment as derived rather from Irish, than from directly 
 Romano-Byzantine instruction, we may quote from 
 Prof. Westwood a few of the characteristics of Irish 
 work of the sixth and seventh centuries. They pre- 
 vail also in the Anglo-Saxon, and of course in some 
 degree in all northern ornaments. 
 
 The first is the constant use of interlaced decoration : traced 
 variously to Gothic hurdles, British wicker-work, Runic 
 knots, Saxon leg-bandages, &c. However, the type 
 of this ornament is found also in Eastern or Byzantine 
 
 1 The Golden Gospels of Stockholm (sixth to ninth century) 
 should be taken in connection with the Augustine Gospels. 
 Westwood, " Fac-similes of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Gospels," 1-868.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 365 
 
 architecture (" Stones of Venice,'' vol. ii.) and originated 
 possibly in the chequer-work of the Temple of 
 Solomon. 1 It is universal in northern miniature and 
 writing, Merovingian, Carlovingian, Lombard, and 
 Visigotbic, and in the " Book of Kells," &e. reaches a 
 wonderful and distressing intricacy. The use of purple 
 and green colour in tbat book is very beautiful, as some 
 of the azure and green ornament in Brith MacDurnan. 
 It is paralleled in the Bavenna mosaics only, as far as 
 the present writer has observed. With this intricacy of 
 crossed patterns is combined every variety of ribboned 
 and spotty ornament, and the use of lacertine or 
 ophidian heads everywhere. Tbis seems to have 
 offended the Benedictine authors of the " Xouv. Traite 
 de Diplom." (ii. 122) as they complain rather acrimo- 
 niously of the " imaginations atroces et melancoliques" 
 of Anglo-Saxon MSS. Some echo or reflection of 
 contests with ophidian worship, or Gnostic symbolism, 
 may perhaps have given occasion to work of this kind ; 
 but it seems to have more to do with the Gothic tendency 
 to put wrong heads in right places, as manifested 
 from Pavia and Lucca to Iona and Lindisfarne. The 
 initials in Irish works are generally of great size, with 
 intricate spirals within spirals, and circles within circles. 
 Altogether, as the Crucifixion in the St. John's Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, MS. proves, 2 art expires in colour- 
 complication. 
 Tiie principal accessible works on this subject, besides 
 those quoted from, are Astle's volume on the " Origin 
 and Progress of Writing," about seventy years old, with 
 31 plates the works of Shaw and Strutt ; and on the 
 
 1 Interlaced work does not appear in the Syriac (Florentine) MS. 
 of Ranula ; though it contains chevrons, lozenges, zigzags, flowers, 
 fruit, and hirds. See also Count Bastard's Louibard-Roinau 
 illustration. 
 
 2 See chapter on the Crucifix.
 
 366 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Continent, D'Agincourt's " Histoire de l'Art par les 
 Monuments," Willemin's " Monuments Francais inedits, 
 pour servir a l'Histoire des Arts," and more especially 
 Silvestre and Champollion, " Palseographic Universelle ;" 
 and finally Ct. Bastard ; though the enormously high 
 price of the last two works makes them somewhat 
 difficult of access, except in the largest public libraries. 
 In interest, splendour, and accuracy of reproduction, 
 Professor Westwood's works yield to none. 
 
 Monogram. See chapter on Cross, and all records of ancient 
 Christian sepulchral inscriptions, passim. 
 
 Moses as a Type of Christ. 
 
 One of the earliest and most constantly insisted on of all 
 typical persons in the Old Testament History, various 
 actions of his life being selected. He is represented : 
 
 1. Kemoving his shoe from his foot (Exod. iii. 5) at 
 God's command from the Burning Bush. The presence 
 of God is signified by a Hand issuing from a cloud 
 (see Bottari, tav. Ixxxiii. and Ciampini from Bavenna 
 " Vet. Mon." II. tab. xxi. 3). Martigny refers to 
 Laborde for a mosaic of this subject in the Convent of 
 Mount Sinai, which contains a Chapel of the Burning- 
 Bush on the supposed spot of its appearance. 1 
 
 2. The Passage of the Red Sea is, on the whole, less 
 frequently represented than might have been sup- 
 posed from its universal acceptation as a figure of 
 our Baptism, 1 Cor. x. 1 and 2, "All (our fathers) 
 were baptized unto Moses in the Cloud and in 
 the Sea." Augustine, Enarratio in Ps. 80. p. 861. 
 c. ed. Ben. Par. 1590. " Nihil aliud tunc in figura 
 
 1 This the present writer regrets to have failed to observe, but it 
 is represented in the late Ordnance Survey, vol. i. illustrations 
 at end.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 367 
 
 portendebat transitus populi per mare nisi transitns 
 fidelium per Baptismum." " The passage of the People 
 through the Red Sea meant nothing else than the 
 passage of the faithful through Baptism. " This subject 
 is more frequent, however, in the ancient Christian 
 monuments of the South of France. 
 The Manna is represented, Bottari, tav. Ivii. Nos. 3 
 and 5, but Moses striking the Rock is far more frequent 
 (1 Cor. x. 4). This is one of the most frequent 
 subjects in early Christian art, and is generally set 
 opposite to a corresponding picture of Our Lord raising 
 Lazarus from the dead, the drapery of His Form being 
 made to correspond in its lines to that of Moses on the 
 other side, Bottari, tav. cxxix. The Rock has been made 
 to represent St. Peter, instead of Christ, in late Roman 
 art and comment; against which the .Abbe Martigny 
 wisely protests. 
 
 The Book of the Covenant is perhaps given on a sarco- 
 phagus from the Vatican Cemetery (Bottari, tav. xl.) 
 See Exodus, xxiv. 7. Moses is receiving the Tables of 
 the Law, above the great Transfiguration at Mount 
 Sinai, in the Church of the Convent now named after 
 St. Catherine. See Bottari, xxvii. lxvii. clxi. The 
 following events of the Scriptural Life of Moses are 
 given in the great Mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore. 
 1. The Delivery of Moses to his mother by the daughter 
 of Pharaoh. 2. Marriage of Moses and Zipporah ; with 
 her flock (also in St. Vitale at Ravenna). 3. His 
 Return to Egypt with the Wand, and meeting with 
 Aaron. 4. The Quails. 5. The Golden Calf. 6 and 
 7. The battle with the Amalekites at Rephidim. 8. 
 and 9. The Revolt of Korah and the delivery of the 
 Book of Deuteronomy to the people. These mosaics 
 are represented in Ciampini's " Vet. Monumenta," but 
 his plates have been reproduced in photograph by Mr.
 
 368 INDEX OF HISTOEICAL AND 
 
 J. H. Parker, who also gives the originals in their pre- 
 sent state, to be compared with them ; with profoundly 
 interesting results. 
 For Moses' presence at the Transfiguration, the only early 
 representations of it of which we are aware are : 1. 
 That at the Convent of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. 
 2. That of St. Apollinaris in Classe at Ravenna. 
 
 Nativity. Bottari, taw. Ixxxv. and lxxxvi. 
 
 In the first, Joseph stands behind the Madonna ; on the 
 left the Magi are presenting their offering, the Holy 
 Child alone as a new-born in swaddling clothes is on the 
 right, with the shepherds, an Angel, and the heads of 
 the ox and ass. The Magi lead their horses. In lxxxvi. 
 the three Magi approach, on the spectator's left ; St. 
 Joseph and the Blessed Virgin are on the right ; the 
 Cradle and Infant, with the animals at full length, in the 
 centre. In a fragment in the Lateran a camel accom- 
 panies the Magi. (See Camel.) 
 
 Nimbus. 
 
 Originally a heathen symbol of divinity or glory ; though 
 appendages resembling nimbi, and called priviaricoi, are 
 supposed to have been attached to the heads of statues 
 to protect them from birds. Schol. Aristoph. " Aves,'' 
 1114. Trajan bears it in the bas-relief of the Arch of 
 Constantine, and Antoninus Pius on the reverse of one 
 of his coins. Constantine also bears it on a coin, and 
 Justinian, and Theodora at Ravenna in St. Vitale. The 
 Emperors of Constantinople adopted it on their statues, 
 and it even passed to some figures of the Merovingian 
 kings, said to have existed in time past at St. Germain 
 des Pres. Mabillon, "Annal." Benedict, ann. 577. On 
 cups,&c. Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin are frequently 
 adorned with the nimbus. Its constant use seems to begin
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 369 
 
 with the mosaics, those of St. Constantia in particular. 
 The Phoenix has it on a cup in the Vatican (Northcote). 
 
 Olive. 
 
 This tree is represented (to all appearance) among the 
 trees which surround the mystic Orpheus, or Orpheus- 
 Shepherd. Bottari, lxi. In taw. cxviii. exxv. and others, 
 it seems to accompany the Good Shepherd, at least the 
 trees represented are very like young olives, or willows ; 
 and in exxv. the olive is distinctly drawn. Less attention 
 however seems to have been paid to St. Paul's allegory 
 on the tree than might have been expected. The olive- 
 branch is borne by Noah's Dove (see Noah), and olive 
 crowns occur in some of the mixed or Gentile ornament 
 of the sarcophagi. I can find no representation of 
 Zechariah's vision of the Two Olives and Candlestick. 
 
 Oranti. 
 
 The figures which bear this name, and are so frequently 
 found in the Catacomb-frescoes, are generally to be 
 described as male or female forms in the Eastern 
 attitude of prayer. The former of course more fre- 
 quently represent or symbolize some special personage 
 or character. They are for the most part in a standing 
 position, with the arms extended. In some instances 
 they may be taken as symbolizing the Church of believers ; 
 but most frequently they appear to be portraits, or 
 rather memorial pictures, of the dead. The celebrated 
 one in SS. Saturninus and Thrason, somewhat grand in 
 form and conception, though grotesquely ill-drawn, is 
 seen in its present state in Parker's Photographs, 469 
 and 1470, also in Bottari, tav. clxxx. Others are on 
 taw. clxxii. clxxxiii. and elsewhere. Female Oranti 
 are often represented in rich garments, and pro- 
 fusely adorned with necklaces and other jewellery. See 
 Parker's Photographs, 467, 475-6, 1751-2, 1775, 1777, 
 
 R 3
 
 370 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 and the mosaics of SS. Prassede and Pudentiana, 1481- 
 2, Parker. This Martigny rightly explains, " Ces vete- 
 ments soraptueux sembleraient au premier abord consti- 
 tuer une contradiction ou une contraste avec la modestie 
 bien connue des femmes Chretiennes de la primitive 
 Eglise. Mais en decorant ainsi leur image, on avait 
 bien moins pour but de retracer aux yeux ce qu'elles 
 avaient ete dans la vie, que d'expliquer allegoriquement 
 la gloire dont elles jouissaient dans le ciel. Dans les 
 sepultures de tout genre, l'Orante, placed ordinairement 
 entre deux arbres, etait le symbole de Fame devenue 
 l'epouse de Jesus Christ, et admise a. ce titre au festin 
 celeste." " These rich dresses would seem at first sight 
 to indicate contrast or contradiction to the well-known 
 modesty of the Christian women of the Primitive 
 Church. But in thus decorating their pictures, the 
 object was much less to represent to the sight what they 
 had been in life, than to give an allegorical idea of the 
 glory they enjoyed in heaven. In graves of every kind, 
 the Orante (commonly placed between two trees) was 
 the emblem of the soul become the spouse of Jesus 
 Christ, and admitted by that title to the Heavenly 
 Feast." (Compare Buskin, " Modern Painters," vol. iii. 
 p. 49, for similar treatment of the Blessed Virgin by 
 Francia and Perugino, with comments.) 
 
 Orpheus. 
 
 There are two or more fresco-paintings in St. Callixtus, 
 Bottari, VIL tav. Ixiii. and vol. ii. lxxi., which represent 
 Orpheus surrounded by the listening animals. It is 
 apparently a heathen subject, favoured and adopted by 
 Christians. The camel, horse, lion, and peacock, are 
 prominent among the creatures ; and the composition of 
 one or both of the pictures reminds us of the celebrated 
 mosaic of the Good Shepherd in the Chapel of Galla
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 371 
 
 Placidia. Orpheus is clad in a sort of Phrygian tunic 
 and anaxyrides, not unlike the dress in which the 
 Three Kings are frequently represented at Kome and 
 Ravenna. See chapter on Catacombs. The connection 
 in the Christian imagination between the mythical 
 Orpheus and the historic Saviour is not difficult to 
 understand, and is very ancient. See De Rossi, 
 vol. ii. chap. 14, p. 357. The association may have 
 arisen from the Lord's promise to draw all men 
 to Himself. It is highly interesting, to say the least ; 
 because it shows how well the Christian mind was 
 prepared to look back on the myths of the Greek 
 fathers, as well as on Hebrew history, in the light of 
 the Gospel. It does not seem to have been done only 
 to exercise Neo-Platonic ingenuity in mythical interpre 
 tation ; far more likely, it was a natural and right 
 yielding to feelings of common charity and hope for 
 Gentile forefathers, who might be believed to have 
 looked for the coming Redeemer of mankind in their 
 comparative darkness. The earlier habit of christianizing 
 the myths seems to be, in part, the habit of indulging 
 a Christian hope of the salvation of the fathers. 
 
 Palm. 
 
 The palm-branch occurs everywhere in Christian sepulchral 
 inscriptions, often accompanied by the Dove or other 
 birds. The tree is common on sarcophagi, and in the 
 mosaics, particularly at Ravenna, as in St. Apollinaris in 
 Classe, and the sarcophagi of Galla Placidia's Chapel. 
 See descriptions of the mosaics, in Gbap. V., and Bottari, 
 taw. xix. xxii. Ixxviii. &c In xxii. it is beautifully 
 used as a pillar to divide compartments. For the Army 
 of Martyrs with Palms in St, Pra?sede, see chapter on 
 Mosaics. See also the Peter and Paul Cup of the 
 Vatican Museum, given in woodcut by Northcote, where
 
 372 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 the Phceuix sits, bearing the nimbus. Also woodcut of 
 the Lateran Cross, facing Chap. VIII. 
 
 Paralytic Man, Healing of. 
 
 Universally represented, in fresco and mosaic, by sculpture, 
 and on diptychs, and glass. The healed man is always 
 in the act of carrying away his bed. Our Lord 
 raises His hand in the act of blessing, and the cure is 
 effected. Whenever He is present, difference of stature 
 is insisted on, but in some instances the miracle is simply 
 represented by the patient carrying that whereon he lay. 
 In Bottari, tav. xxxi. a Scribe is present (John v. 10). 
 
 Peacock. 
 
 A favourite ornament in Gentile work, for the sake of its 
 colours and graceful form ; for which reason ducks and 
 other birds are represented in mosaic and illumination. 
 It is found in the Jewish Catacombs, and in nearly all 
 the others. In St. Callixtus peacocks are very beauti- 
 fully arranged as an ornament of a round vault. It was 
 willingly adopted by Christian decorators, and treated 
 as a symbol of the Resurrection, from the bird's annual 
 loss and renewal of his beautiful feathers. See Aringhi, 
 II. book vi. c. 36, p. 612. It is found in SS. Mar- 
 cellinus and Peter, Bottari, II. tav. xcvii., and in St. 
 Agnes, Bottari, III. tav. clxxxiv. In tav. lxiii. it is one 
 of the animals grouped around the symbolic Orpheus. 
 
 Pharaoh and Passage of Eed Sea. Aringhi, p. 331. 
 See Moses. 
 
 Phcenix. 
 
 As the Phcenix is certainly represented on coins and 
 medals of Constantine, it may be supposed that a 
 strange bird occasionally found in mosaics, placed on the 
 palm-tree or branch, and sometimes wearing the nimbus
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 373 
 
 (as in the mosaics of St. Cecilia at Eorae), is intended for 
 it. It is connected with Baptism, as a type of Death, 
 and Resurrection. Clement, Epp. 1 Cor. xxv. It is 
 found in the mosaics of SS. Cosmas and Damianus at 
 Rome, and also in St. Prassede ; Ciampini, " Vet. 
 Monumenta," II. tav. xlvii. li. and tav. xvi. A Phoenix 
 with the nimhus is placed in one of the palm-trees by 
 the side of the curious Peter and Paul Cup in the 
 Vatican, given in woodcut by Dr. Northcote ; p. 316. 
 See Lateran Cross, p. 192 in text. 
 
 Pilate. 
 
 Our Lord's appearance before Pilate is almost the only 
 scene of His Passion to be found on the Sarcophagi, or 
 indeed anywhere in very early Christian art. See 
 Bottari, xxiv. Pilate is seated on a curule chair, 
 John xix. 13. Bottari, taw. xv. xxii. xxxiii. xxxv. 
 An expression of anxiety and reluctance is generally 
 given to Pilate, and in some instances water is being 
 brought for his hands. 
 
 Portrait of our Lord. See chapter on Catacombs, in 
 text, and woodcut from the Callixtine Catacomb, p. 98 ; 
 also p. 305. 
 
 Portraits. 
 
 The majority, perhaps, of the Oranti or praying figures 
 in the Catacombs (male or female) may be supposed to 
 be portraits or memorial figures of the dead. Two 
 medallion portraits, one of them apparently of con- 
 siderable merit, occur in the Cemetery of St. Priscilla. 
 Bottari, taw. clx. and clxi. Both apparently com- 
 memorate military men, and Bottari mentions a con- 
 jecture, without giving any opinion of his own, that 
 seventy-two soldiers, martyred in the reign of Nume-
 
 •174 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 nanus, with Claudius their tribune, may have been 
 buried here. The first and most striking example cer- 
 tainly contains a medallion of a young man of appa- 
 rently Gothic countenance, and mould of neck, and 
 shoulders, with short hair and beard ; and ha8 a chariot 
 on each side of the half dome of the apse or arcosolium 
 on which the paintings are. No specially Christian 
 imagery is introduced. The other has a medallion of 
 an older man armed with a spear, with Abraham in a 
 girded and striped tunic, on his left, and Moses, pro- 
 bably, on his right. Many figures in the mosaics are 
 undoubtedly portraits, as those of Justinian and 
 Theodora, in St. Vitale ; and possibly at Mount Sinai ; 
 and the marked countenances of many saints of the 
 Byzantine and Eastern woiks can hardly be ideal. 
 
 Rock. 
 
 See Moses, Bottari, tav. xliw etc. also Lazarus, Bott. 
 exxix. The ancient artists seem rather to have dwelt 
 on Moses, as a type of Christ in the office of Leader 
 and Lawgiver, than on St. Paul's words, " That Rock 
 was Christ." At least, I do not know where the Rock 
 appears alone in early art, unless, which is probable, the 
 Lord's standing on a Rock from whence flow the Four 
 Rivers of the Gospel is meant to call attention to that 
 text. Rocks are often represented in Baptismal 
 pictures. 
 
 Samaria, "Woman of. 
 
 Bottari, tav. xxiii. and tav. exxxvii. from Sarcophagi, and 
 tav. lxvi. from a fresco in St. Callixtus. Also Perret, 
 i. pi. 31. The well, and the figures of Our Lord and 
 the woman, seem to leave little or no doubt of the 
 intended subject of these works.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 375 
 
 Seasons, Four. 
 
 Pictures of the Seasons are among the adopted subjects of 
 Christian art. They had long been a favourite subject 
 of Roman decoration, and one of the most pleasing 
 kind ; so that the Church speedily invested them with 
 a meaning of her own. To the heathen they were a 
 subject of contemplation on natural growth, and change ; 
 in Christian thought the hope of the Resurrection was 
 • added. 1 " All this rolling order of things bears 
 witness to the Resurrection." Accordingly, as Martigny 
 remarks, the Good Shepherd accompanies the pictures of 
 the Seasons almost invariably. The Seasons of the 
 Domitilla Catacomb are photographed in their present 
 condition in Mr. Parker's collection. They appear to 
 have been retouched or repainted, as they must be of 
 considerable antiquity. The recently discovered frescoes 
 of the Catacomb of St. Prsetextatus are more beautiful, 
 and almost to a certainty in their primitive condition 
 (see text, chapter on Catacombs). Agricultural work 
 corresponding to the four seasons is combined with 
 decoration in four vegetable forms, vines, laurels, 
 corn, and roses. See Parker's Photographs, Bottari, 
 tav. lv. and where the seasons are represented on the 
 small ends of the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Bott. 
 vol. i. p. 1). Youths or boys are the usual personifica- 
 tions. 
 
 Serpent, Brazen*. 
 
 Aringhi in his "Roma Subt." vol. ii. p. 453 (book iv. 4) 
 says that the Brazen Serpent (the original, as broken by 
 Kezekiah) was given to Arnulf, Bishop of Milan, by 
 Nicephorus of Constantinople (probably Nicephorus 
 III. about 973, scarcely Phocas). It is preserved to 
 
 See Tertullian, De Resurrect, xii. " Totus hie ordo revolubilis 
 rei'UTii testatio est resurrectionis mortuoruro."
 
 376 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 this day in St. Ambrogio, he continues, with apparent 
 gravity and conviction. It may be an Alexandrian 
 talisman. For that at Constantinople, see De Quineey. 
 " Miscellanies," Modern Superstitions, p. 345, vol. 1 854, 
 Hogg, Edinburgh. 
 
 Serpent. (See s. v. Dragon.) 
 
 There is this distinction between representations of the 
 Serpent and the Dragon in Christian symbolism, that 
 the former represents the evil power in its tempting 
 office as inviting to sin, 1 and the latter generally points 
 to Evil, or the Evil One in the destructive function, as 
 the permitted agent of punishment. A gem given by 
 Gori, Thes. Diptych, vol. iii. p. 160, represents the 
 Serpent twined about the Cross, and apparently tempting 
 two doves. Whether the serpent on the Cross may 
 not in this instance have reference to the Brazen 
 Serpent (Numbers xxi. 9, St. John iii. 14) seems 
 doubtful. In Bottari, Vol. I. tav. xix. Daniel is 
 ottering the destructive cakes to a serpent, which has 
 here taken the place of the Dragon of the Apocrypha. 
 The serpent is of course a part of most representations 
 of the Fall of Man, Boldetti, p. 200, book i. also 
 Bottari, tav. xv. 9 (tomb of Junius Bassus, a.d. 358), 
 and taw. clvi. lxxx. Continual use is made of the 
 serpentine or lacertine form in Irish and Anglo-Saxon 
 ornament from the earliest date; see "Palasographia 
 Sacra" on the " Book of Kells," and other ancient MSS. 
 This is of course in great part a result of the northern 
 taste for plaited and interlaced ornament, and the forms 
 to which snake-heads are attached are generally mere 
 ribbons. The MS. of Alcuin contains one of the 
 latest in our period, Westwood " Pal. Sac." Prof. 
 Westwood appears inclined to connect their continual 
 1 See the various representations of the Fall of Man in Bottari.
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. 37? 
 
 recurrence with symbolism of Temptation, the Fall of 
 Man, and his spiritual enemies ; and perhaps also to 
 traditions of ancient ophidian worship. A very curious 
 illustration in this direction will be found in the " Alpine 
 Journal," vol. iv. p. 173 (by the Rev. T. G. Bonney, 
 M.A., F.G.S., &c. Fellow of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge). A strange woodcut is given of the Abyssinian 
 Saint Tekla Haimanout, who founded the Monastery of 
 Debra Damo on a mountain near Axum. It is so 
 situated that those who go to it are obliged to be drawn 
 up by a rope : but the saint was originally raised to the 
 summit by hanging on to the tail of a mighty serpent. 
 There is a singular analogy between these dragon and 
 serpent stories, and there is little doubt of their ancient 
 symbolical meaning and Eastern origin. " Profane 
 sceptics," says our author, " may perhaps say that this 
 story is only to the mountaiueer symbolical of the use 
 of the rope." Those who are acquainted with the illus- 
 trations of Hindoo mythology may remember the forms 
 of Vishnu suffering, and Vishnu triumphant ; in the 
 one case folded in the coils of a serpent who bites 
 his foot, in the other stamping upon the head of the 
 defeated monster. 
 
 Sheep. (See Lamb.) 
 
 Two sheep very frequently accompany the Good Shepherd 
 besides the one generally laid on His shoulders. They 
 are often represented looking to Him with an expression 
 of awe and affection. His Hand is sometimes raised to 
 bless them. In Bott. tav. xxi, a Lamb stands beside Him 
 bearing the Cross-monogram on its head. In tav. xxii. 
 there are six, and the seventh has the simple Cross. 
 For the twelve sheep around the greater Lamb, see 
 Bott. tav. xxviii. (See in particular Martiguy's "Etude 
 aitbeologique sur l'Agneau, et le Bon-Pasteur.")
 
 578 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Ship. (See Church.) 
 
 The Navicella of Giotto is one of the chief modern 
 
 examples of the symbolism of the Church by a vessel at 
 sea. The emblematic architecture of some of the early 
 Greek churches, as that at Torcello, is mentioned under 
 the same head, supra. A ship with furled sail* is a well- 
 known sign of the accomplished voyage of Life (see 
 Death). The Ship occurs of course in all the repre- 
 sentations of Jonah, and in some mosaics, as in the 
 ancient seaport from the Callixtine Catacomb (Parker, 
 Photographs, Antique Mosaics). Theophylact (on 
 Jonah, ii.) says the ship is a type of our Flesh, which 
 the Antitype of Jonah " went down into," and took upon 
 Himself, and again, that it stands for the Jewish syna- 
 gogue in the same relation. Aringhi, tav. ii. p. 507. 
 
 Stag. See chapter on Sacramental Representation. 
 
 St. Paul. 
 
 Generally associated with St. Peter ; he appears with St. 
 Lawrence in the Neapolitan Catacombs. 
 
 St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 
 An early sarcophagus at Avignon, perhaps of the fourth 
 century, as Dr. Appell informs us, contains the Deliverv 
 of the Keys to St. Peter. Some principal examples of 
 portraits or commemorative pictures of the two Apostles 
 are on glass cups or drinking vessels, Boldetti, p. 
 202, tav. vii. 22, Northcote, p. 316. The statue in St. 
 Peter's at Rome, and the lost statuette of St. Peter, are 
 mentioned in the chapter on Sculpture, p. 178. St. 
 Peter appears in some of the Roman mosaics of early 
 date, e.g. that of St. Pudentiana. Ciampini, " Vet. 
 Mon." I. tab. xviii. ; and several of the sarcophagi 
 given in Bottari represent the two Apostles. Their
 
 EHBLEMAT3C SUBJECTS. 379 
 
 appearance is, generally speaking, distinguished by 
 
 the greater age and stature of St. Peter, who bears 
 originally one, and afterwards two keys. St. Paul often 
 holds a roll (volumen) or book (liber). In Greek 
 portraits, says Martigny, both Saints are represented 
 bald, which distinguishes such pictures from the ideals 
 of the "Western Church. 
 
 The Good Shepherd. 
 
 See chapter on the Catacombs, and all illustrations of 
 Christian paintings. The antiquity of this symbol of 
 Our Lord, dictated as it is by His own mouth, is quite 
 undisputed ; and it is the most frequent of Christian 
 images in painting, or mosaic, and perhaps in bas- 
 relief. One marble statue from the Lateran Museum 
 is given by Martigny, and still exists (see wood- 
 cut in this volume, p. 174); a work of really great 
 beauty, and probably of very early date. For the con- 
 nection of this symbolic figure with that of Orpheus, see 
 that name. It occurs in the South of France (Millin, 
 " Midi," p. 65), and in Africa and Cyrene. " Annal. 
 Archeologiques," vi. ann. p. 376. As an allegory of 
 Divine, or Kingly care, the symbol dates probably from 
 the earliest patriarchal life. Compare Miiller ("Chips 
 from a German "Workshop. '* vol. L). The 22nd Psalm, 
 Isaiah xliv. 28, Ezek. xxxiv., points to its Hebrew 
 use ; and its Homeric application to Kings, as Shep- 
 herds of the people, will be remembered. D'Agin- 
 court considers (" Hist, de la Peinture," t. v. p. 20) that 
 one of Bosio's prints of this subject is taken from an 
 original of the end of the second century. As an 
 image not infrequent in Gentile decoration, it would 
 be more likely to be used in the early days of perse- 
 cution.
 
 380 INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND 
 
 Three Children. 
 
 Bottari, tav. clxix. (with attendant bearing logs and 
 perishing in the flames), tav. clxxxi. in a kind of 
 Phrygian dress with braccse ; clxxxvi. 6, standing in a 
 regularly built smelting furnace, with striped pallia. 
 Also cxcv. cxliii. cxlix. and passim. The original 
 state of one of these, from the Catacomb of SS. Mar- 
 eellinus, tfcc., is given in Parker's Photographs. Also 
 Bottari, xli. and xliii. from St. Pontianus. The Furnace 
 is always literally insisted on. In one instance there 
 are only two youths ; and in another, Bottari, tav. 
 clxxxi. Noah's Dove, with the Olive-branch, is hovering 
 above them. 
 
 Triangle. 
 
 A not frequent symbol, more commonly used after the 
 fourth century, like the A w ; with which it is frequently 
 combined, as in Aringhi, R.S. 1, p. 605. M. de Kossi 
 has collected six or seven examples, two or which are 
 from Lyons, and one from Africa. See Martigny, 
 and Boldetti, " Cimiteri," &c. p. 402. Three fishes 
 disposed in the form of a triangle are represented, 
 Hunter's " Symbolica," p. 49, tab. i. 26. (See next 
 article.) 
 
 Trinity, the Holy. 
 
 It is impossible to separate the Doctrine of the Holy 
 Trinity from that of the Divinity and Incarnation of 
 Our Lord. Accordingly we find that the symbolic 
 Triangle is almost invariably combined with the Mono- 
 gram, and seems to have special relation to the Second 
 Person of the Trinity. The central mystery of the 
 Faith was hardly a subject for graphic art ; but the 
 various representations from Genesis xviii. of the ap- 
 pearance of the Three to Abraham have always been
 
 EMBLEMATIC SUBJECTS. $81 
 
 considered as adumbrations of it. See Ciampini, "Vet. 
 
 M." tab. b. 1, from the mosaics of Sta. Maria Maggiore 
 
 at Rome, and Parker's photographs of the actual state 
 
 of that picture, and of the more beautiful one of St. 
 
 Vitale at Ravenna. In all Baptismal pictures, as in the 
 
 Form of Baptism, the Trinity is represented by the 
 
 Hand, the Cross, or Present Person of the Saviour, 
 
 and the Dove. St. Paulinus of Nola thus describes 
 
 the type of all these paintings: — "The Trinity appears in 
 
 full mystery of brightness ; Christ stands in the river ; 
 
 the voice of the Father thunders from heaven, and the 
 
 Holy Spirit glides down in the dove." 
 
 " Pleno coruscat Triuitas mysterio, 
 Stat Christus amui ; vox Patris celo tonat 
 Et per columbam Spiritus Sanctus ihiit. " 
 
 Ulysses and the Sieens. 
 
 Sec chapter on Catacombs (De Rossi, " Roma Sott." vol. i. 
 tav. xxx. p. 5) for a fragment of bas-relief evidently 
 representing the hero's escape with his crew, symbolic of 
 temptation. 
 
 Virgin Mary, the Blessed. 
 
 See in text, chapters on Catacombs and Mosaics ; and Mr. 
 Hemans's article, "Contemporary Review," vol. iii. 1866, 
 p. 155. Also Rev. Wharton Marriott, " Testimony of 
 the Catacombs." 
 
 Vine. 
 
 Perhaps the most ancient of all symbols of the Lord, or of 
 His Church ; see examples and illustrations in the 
 chapter on the Catacombs. The vintages, &c. in St. 
 Constantia at Rome are some of the most ancient 
 Christian examples in mosaic; and the vines in St. 
 Prsetextatus, Bottari, vol. ii. tav. lxxiv. in fresco. 
 The beautiful stuccoes in the Cemetery on the Latin
 
 582 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Way, Bottari, II. tav. xcviii., must also be of groat 
 antiquity. The Vine which covers the roof of the 
 Chapel of Galla Placidia is another grand example; and 
 so on to St. Mark's at Venice, and the constant modern 
 use [of the symbol. On Sarcophagi, see Bottari, tav. 
 iii. p. 19. The massive porphyry Sarcophagus of St. 
 Constantia (daughter of Constantine, died 354) lias 
 bas-reliefs of boys treading out grapes. 
 
 R. St. J. T. 
 
 EAGLE SYMBOL. 
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