| Oriental influence. |
Oriental influence.It appears to have been the gloomy Oriental influence that gradually introduced scenes of martyrdom, with horrors of every description into Christian art, which originally had been imbued with a far healthier and more cheerful spirit, a survival from the wholesome classical treatment of death and the grave. Hell with its revolting horrors and hideous demons was an invention of a still later and intellectually more degraded period.
| MSS. of the Gospels. |
MSS. of the Gospels.Evangeliaria or manuscripts of the Gospels. One of the most important classes of Byzantine manuscripts, and the one of which the most magnificent examples now exist are the Books of the Gospels already mentioned at page [46] as being occasionally, either wholly or in part, written in letters of gold on leaves of purple-dyed vellum.
| The four Evangelists. |
The four Evangelists.These Imperially magnificent manuscripts are usually decorated with five full page paintings, placed at the beginning of the codex. These five pictures represent the four Evangelists, each enthroned like a Byzantine Emperor under an arched canopy supported on Corinthian columns of marble or porphyry. Each Evangelist sits holding in his hand the manuscript of his Gospel; or, in some cases, he is represented writing it. In the earlier manuscripts, St John is correctly represented as an aged white-bearded man, but in later times St John was always depicted as a beardless youth, even in illuminations which represent him writing his Gospel in the Island of Patmos, as at the beginning of the fifteenth century Books of Hours. Next comes the fifth miniature representing "Christ in Majesty," usually enthroned within an oval or vesica-shaped aureole; He sits on a rainbow, and at His feet is a globe to represent the earth, or in some cases a small figure of Tellus or Atlas with the same symbolical meaning.
| The Canons of Eusebius. Sasanian style. |
The Canons of Eusebius.Other highly decorated pages in these Byzantine Gospels are those which contain the "Canons" of Bishop Eusebius, a set of ten tables giving lists of parallel passages in the four Gospels. These tables are usually framed by columns supporting a semicircular arch, richly decorated with architectural and floral ornaments in gold and colours. Frequently birds, especially doves and peacocks, are introduced in the spandrels over the arches; they are often arranged in pairs drinking out of a central vase or chalice—a motive which occurs very often among the reliefs on the sarcophagi and marble screens of early Byzantine Churches both in Italy and in the East[[36]]. These birds appear to be purely ornamental, in spite of the many attempts that have been made to discover symbolic meanings in them. Other birds, such as cocks, quails and partridges, are commonly used in these decorative illuminations, Sasanian style.and this class of ornament was probably derived from Persia, under the Sasanian Dynasty, when decorative art and skilful handicrafts flourished to a very remarkable extent[[37]].
Among the most sumptuous and beautiful illuminations which occur in these Byzantine Gospels are the headings and beginnings of books written in very large golden capitals, so that six or seven letters frequently occupy the whole page. These letters are painted over a richly decorated background covered with floreated ornament, and the whole is framed in an elaborate border, all glowing with the most brilliant colours, and lighted up by burnished gold of the highest decorative beauty[[38]].
| Textus for the High Altar. |