CHAPTER II.
The Development of the Crucifix.
We have already seen that the Christians of the first centuries were deterred by circumstances from any general use of the figure of the Cross. It follows naturally that the Crucifix was still later in coming into existence. Indeed, long after Christianity had become the acknowledged religion of the empire, there were reasons which made its use inexpedient. The faithful, though now protected from insult and persecution, were still a minority surrounded by the adherents of paganism; and as the influence of the Church gradually spread to the barbarian tribes beyond the confines of the empire, she was constantly being brought face to face with fresh forms of idolatry in Northern Europe, in Africa, and in Asia. It needs but little acquaintance with folk-lore to recall illustrations of the fact that heathenism died hard; even when active opposition had been overcome, and the bulk of the people had, perhaps, as was not seldom the case, almost by whole tribes at a time, outwardly accepted the faith, yet old customs, old superstitions lived on. Thus to the present day the druidic regard for the mistletoe has a traditional existence in England after eighteen centuries of Christian teaching, and in Cornwall and elsewhere mid-summer night sees the hilltops ablaze with bonfires that, meaningless now, once proclaimed the fire-worshippers’ devotion. If such things are still found amongst us, innocent indeed now of any idolatrous intent, but eloquent of the vitality of the customs of idolatry, it is easy to divine the result that would have followed the introduction of the Crucifix into a world almost wholly heathen. It has been alleged that the Roman Senate offered to admit the Christ to the pantheon of the state, and similarly the Crucifix might have simply become the companion of the hammer of Thor, or the sun-crowned Phoebus, of the sacred ibis of Egypt, or the winged monsters of Assyria; or at best a mere substitute for them. Guided by a Divine instinct, the Church showed a wise self-restraint; and it was only as the decay of idolatry in the West removed this danger, that she allowed herself to contemplate the image of the Redeemer.
From the first, nevertheless, a yearning for the help towards devotion which the eye can give was felt, although the necessity of prudence and caution confined the faithful to the use of symbolic, rather than of historic, figures. Thus even in the days of the catacombs the Vine, the Dove, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd are found, with a meaning obviously Scriptural in origin; and again the Fish, specially recommended with the above emblems by S. Clement of Alexandria as a device for seals and rings, was frequently employed, as setting forth in an anagram, by means of its name in Greek, the words Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. These were all common forms, calculated to suggest Christian teaching to the believer, without exciting comment from the heathen. Meanwhile the simple cross was growing yearly more familiar to the people as the emblem of the Christian religion. Its earliest form seems to have been that known as the fylfot, like four Greek gammas joined at the base; a design that served, equally with the emblems just described, to suggest the sign to the Christian without offending others. But so rapid was the change that took place consequent on the conversion of Constantine, that so early as the papacy of John I. (who died in the year 400) crosses were carried in the processions of the Church.
The next step was the natural one of combining with the cross one or other of the emblematic figures which were already accepted as referring to the Crucified. The Lamb with the cross, therefore, became a common symbol of the Crucifixion during the first six centuries. In its most restrained form we find simply above the head of the Lamb the sacred monogram as used on the labarum of the Christianized empire; and occasionally the figure becomes not so much a type as a representative of the Saviour, by having five bleeding wounds in its feet and side. Later the same emblem appears, often with a cruciform nimbus about its head, carrying a slender cross on a tall shaft, or a banner charged with a cross. Similarly a long cross-staff is sometimes placed, instead of the pastoral crook, in the hand of the Good Shepherd. In all these the emblem of Christ is the prominent feature of the assign, the cross being entirely subordinate. As it became possible to be less guarded in displaying the “ensign of the faith,” this order was to some extent reversed. On the tomb of Gallia Placida at Ravenna, of the fifth century, the Lamb stands on a mount—the “Lamb standing on Mount Sion” of the Apocalypse—with behind it a cross, from the arms of which depend the Alpha and Omega. Again, the Lamb lies at the foot of the cross, an arrangement apparently referred to by S. Paulinus of Nola in the words, “Christ in the lamb stands ’neath the Cross all gleaming with His blood.”
AN EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT WIRKSWORTH