church, especially in Russia, where there is an intense. and superstitious reverence for pictures, known nowhere else. Many of the churches are completely covered with paintings, which are valued, not for their execution, for they are often hideously ugly, but as a sort of talismans on account of their supposed religious sanctity.* Thus art, which is the daughter of paganism, relapsing into the service of superstition, has corrupted, and often paganized, Christianity, as Solomon's heathen wives. turned his heart from the worship of the true God to the practice of idolatry. Lecky attributes this degra dation of style to the latent Manicheism of the dark ages, to the monkish fear of beauty as a deadly temptation, and to the terrible pictures of Dante, which opened up such an abyss of horrors to the imagination. But by means of this medieval art, imperfect, and even grotesque as it often was, would be brought vividly before the minds of the people of a rude and barbarous age an intense conception of the scenes of Christ's passion, and a realistic sense of the punishment of the lost.

It will be convenient to treat the art of the Catacombs under the two heads of symbolical and biblical paintings, and to discuss separately the gilt glasses and other objects of interest found in these crypts. De Rossi divides the subject into symbolical, allegorical, biblical, and liturgical paintings; but some of these divisions, as for instance, the last, assumes the whole question of the purport and interpretation of these pictures.

* Stanley's Eastern Churches, passim.

CHAPTER II.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE CATACOMBS.

PRIMITIVE Christianity was eminently congenial to religious symbolism. Born in the East, and in the bosom of Judaism, which had long been familiar with this universal oriental language, it adopted types and figures/ as its natural mode of expression. These formed the warp and woof of the symbolic drapery of the tabernacle and temple service, prefiguring the great truths of the Gospel. The Old Testament sparkles with mysterious imagery. In the sublime visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, move strange creatures of wondrous form and prophetic significance. In the New Testament the Divine Teacher conveys the loftiest lessons in parables of inimitable beauty. In the apocalyptic visions of St. John the language of imagery is exhausted to represent the overthrow of Satan, the triumph of Christ, and the glories of the New Jerusalem.

The primitive Christians, therefore, naturally adopted a similar mode of art expression for conveying religious instruction. They also, as a necessary precaution in times of persecution, concealed from the profane gaze of their enemies the mysteries of the faith under a veil of symbolism, which yet revealed their profoundest truths to the hearts of the initiated. That such disguise was not superfluous is shown by the recent discovery of

a pagan caricature of the Crucifixion on a wall beneath the Palatine, and by the recorded desecration of the

eucharistic vessels by the Apostate Julian.* To those who possessed the key to the "Christian hieroglyphs," as Raoul-Rochette has called them, they spoke a language that the most unlettered as well as the learned could understand. What to the haughty heathen was an unmeaning scrawl, to the lowly believer was eloquent of loftiest truths and tenderest consolation.

Although occasionally fantastic and far-fetched, this symbolism is generally of a profounaly religious significance, and often of extreme poetic beauty. In perpetual canticle of love it finds resemblances of the Divine Object of its devotion throughout all nature. It beholds beyond the shadows of time the eternal verities of the world to come. It is not of the earth earthy, but is entirely supersensual in its character, and employs material forms only as suggestions of the unseen and spiritual. It addresses the inner vision of the soul, and not the mere outer sense. Its merit consists, therefore, not in artistic beauty of execution, but in appositeness of religious significance-a test lying far too deep for the apprehension of the uninitiate. It is perhaps also influenced, as Kugler remarks, in the avoidance of realistic representation, by the fear which pervaded the primitive church of the least approach to idolatry.

Great care must be observed, however, in the interpretation of this religious symbolism, not to strain it beyond its capacity or intention. It should be withdrawn from the sphere of theological controversy, too

* When persecution ceased, this veil of mystery was thrown off and a less esoteric art employed; but even when Christianity came forth victorious from the Catacombs, symbolical paintings celebrated its triumph upon the walls of the basilicas and baptisteries which rose in the great centres of population.

+ Mémoire sur les antiquités Chrétiennes des Catacombes. (Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscr., XIII.)

often the battleground of religious rancour and bitterness, and relegated to that of scientific archæology and dispassionate criticism. An allegorizing mind, if it has any theological dogma to maintain, will discover symbolical evidence in its support where it can be detected by no one else.*

One of the most striking circumstances which impresses an observer in traversing these silent chambers of the dead is the complete avoidance of all images of suffering and woe, or of tragic awfulness, such as abound in sacred art above ground. There are no representations of the sevenfold sorrows of the Mater Dolorosa, nor cadaverous Magdalens accompanied by eyeless skulls as a perpetual memento mori. There are no pictures of Christ's agony and bloody sweat, of his cross and passion, his death and burial; nor of flag

* Sometimes this superzealous interpretation leads to absurd mistakes. Aringhi devotes two folio pages to the explanation of certain figures which occur in the inscriptions of the Catacombs, which he calls representations of the human heart. He illustrates the subject with much sacred and profane learning, and with many quotations from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and classic authors. Another archæologist, Boldoni, suggests that the figures signify the bitterest sorrow of heart-dolorem cordi intimum; and another believes them to be representations of a heart transpierced with a thorn, the symbol of profoundest grief. These mysterious figures, whose hidden meaning was sought with such empty toil-arcanam significationem inani laborë investagarint, says De Rossi—were, however, nothing more than the leaf-decorations employed in both pagan and Christian inscriptions by way of punctuation! See the following example:

BERPIO IN PACE

*

Fig. 32.-T> Berpius, (or Verpius,) in Peace.

ellations, tortures, and fiery pangs of martyrdom, such as those that harrow the soul in many of the churches and picture-galleries of Rome.* Only images of joy and peace abound on every side. These gloomy crypts are a school of Christian love and gentle charity, of ennobling thoughts and elevating impulses. The primitive believers, in the midst of their manifold persecutions, rejoiced even in tribulation. "There is no sign of mourning," says d'Agincourt, "no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all breathes of gentleness, benevolence, and love." "To look at the Catacombs alone," says Rochette, "it might be supposed that persecution had no victims, since Christianity has made no allusion to suffering." There are no symbols of sorrow, no appeals to the morbid sympathies of the soul, nothing that could cause vindictive feelings even toward the persecutors of the church; only sweet pastoral scenes, fruits, flowers, palm branches and laurel crowns, lambs and doves; nothing but what suggests a feeling of joyous innocence, as of the world's golden age.

The use of pictorial representations appears often to have been a matter of necessity. Many of the Christians could understand no other written language. Numerous inscriptions, by the extreme ignorance mani

* See especially the church of S. Stefano Rotondo, where is a chronological series of martyrdoms, represented in all their direst horrors, from the crucifixion of Our Lord to the reign of Julian. Among other grotesqueries is a picture of St. Dionysius walking in full episcopal robes at the head of a procession, holding his head, streaming with blood, in his hands!

The desire to find martyrs has led over-zealous antiquarians to discover instruments of torture in the implements of trade commonly represented on the gravestones of the Catacombs. The adz and saw of the carpenter are made to do duty in some sensational tale of chopping and sawing of a Christian sufferer, and the baker's corn measure is transformed into a martyr's fiery furnace.