1165. ST. HIPPOLYTUS AND ST. CATHERINE.
Il Moretto (Brescian: 1498-1555). See 299.
Two saints who were not divided in the manner of their martyrdom, and who are united therefore on the painter's canvas. Each holds the martyr's palm. St. Catherine places her left hand on the hilt of a sword—the instrument by which she was ultimately beheaded, whilst her foot rests upon the wheel on which she was to have been torn to death, had not an angel from heaven broken it. St. Hippolytus's death was not unlike that which had been devised for St. Catherine. He is clad in armour, for he was the soldier stationed as guard over St. Lawrence (see 747), but he is represented as bareheaded, and with his face upturned in reverence, for that "he was so moved by that illustrious martyr's invincible courage and affectionate exhortations that he became a Christian with all his family." Wherefore he was tied to the tails of wild horses and torn to death. On the fragment of stone in the foreground is an inscription in Latin, telling by what death the two saints glorified God—"Membris dissolvi voluerunt ne vinculis divellerentur aeternis:" they chose to be torn limb by limb rather than by renouncing their faith to be thus torn hereafter by eternal chains. The members of the body are the chains of the soul, and the martyrs freed themselves from temporary fetters rather than submit to the fetters of everlasting punishment.