The earliest type under which the Four Evangelists are figured is an emblem of the simplest kind: four scrolls placed in the four angles of a Greek cross, or four books (the Gospels), represented allegorically those who wrote or promulgated them. The second type chosen was more poetical—the four rivers which had their source in Paradise: representations of this kind, in which the Saviour, figured as a lamb holding the cross, or in his human form, with a lamb near him, stands on an eminence, from which gush four rivers or fountains, are to be met with in the catacombs, on ancient sarcophagi preserved among the Christian relics in the Vatican, and in several old churches constructed between the second and the fifth century.
At what period the four mysterious creatures in the vision of Ezekiel (ch. i. 5) were first adopted as significant symbols of the Four Evangelists, does not seem clear. The Jewish doctors interpreted them as figuring the four Archangels,—Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel; and afterwards applied them as emblems of the Four Great Prophets,—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. By the early Oriental Christians, who typified the whole of the Old Testament, the transfer of the emblem to the Four Evangelists seems obvious and easy; we find it alluded to as early as the second century. The four ‘Beasts’ of corresponding form in the Revelation (chap. iv. 7), which stood round the throne of the Lamb, were likewise thus interpreted; but it was not till the fifth century that we find these symbols assuming a visible form, and introduced into works of art. In the seventh century they had become almost universal, as distinctive attributes.
The general application of the Four Creatures to the Four Evangelists is of much earlier date than the separate and individual application of each symbol, which has varied at different times; that propounded by St. Jerome, in his commentary on Ezekiel, has since his time prevailed universally. Thus, then, 1. To St. Matthew was given the Cherub, or human semblance, because he begins his gospel with the human generation of Christ; or, according to others, because in his gospel the human nature of the Saviour is more insisted on than the divine. In the most ancient mosaics, the type is human, not angelic, for the head is that of a man with a beard. 2. St. Mark has the Lion, because he has set forth the royal dignity of Christ; or, according to others, because he begins with the mission of the Baptist—‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness’—which is figured by the lion: or, according to a third interpretation, the lion was allotted to St. Mark, because there was, in the middle ages, a popular belief that the young of the lion was born dead, and after three days was awakened to vitality by the breath of its sire; some authors, however, represent the lion as vivifying his young not by his breath, but by his roar. In either case the application is the same; the revival of the young lion was considered as symbolical of the resurrection, and Mark was commonly called the ‘Historian of the Resurrection.’ Another commentator observes that Mark begins his gospel with ‘roaring’—‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness;’ and ends it fearfully with a curse—‘He that believeth not shall be damned;’ and that, therefore, his appropriate attribute is the most terrible of beasts, the lion.[101] 3. Luke has the Ox, because he has dwelt on the priesthood of Christ, the ox being the emblem of sacrifice. 4. John has the Eagle, which is the symbol of the highest inspiration, because he soared upwards to the contemplation of the divine nature of the Saviour.
But the order in which, in theological Art, these symbols are placed, is not the same as the order of the Gospels according to the canon. Rupertus considers the Four Beasts as typical of the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension; an idea previously dwelt upon by Durandus, who adds, that the man and the lion are placed on the right, because the incarnation and the resurrection are the joy of the whole earth; whilst the ox is on the left, because Christ’s sacrifice was a trouble to the apostles; and the eagle is above the ox, as suggestive of our Lord’s upward flight into heaven: according to others, the proper order in the ascending scale is thus—at the lowest point on the left, the ox; to the right, the lion; above the ox, the eagle; and above all, the angel. So in Raphael’s Vision of Ezekiel, the angel gazes into the face of the Holy One, the others form his throne.
I have dwelt on these fanciful interpretations and disquisitions, because the symbols of the Evangelists meet us at every turn; in the mosaics of the old Italian churches, in the decorative sculpture of our old cathedrals, in the Gothic stained glass, in the ancient pictures and miniatures, on the carved and chased covers of old books; everywhere, in short, where enters the idea of their divine mission—and where is it not? The profound thought, as well as the vivid imagination, exercised in some of these early works of art, is beginning to be appreciated; and we should lose the half of what is poetical, and significant, and venerable in these apparently arbitrary and fanciful symbols, if we merely seized the general intention, and not the relative and appropriate meaning of each.
I will only add (for I have restricted myself to the consideration of the mysteries of faith only so far as they are carried into the forms of Art) that these symbols of the Four Evangelists were in their combination held to be symbolical of the Redeemer, in the fourfold character then universally assigned to him, as man, as king, as high-priest, and as God; according to this Latin verse:
Quatuor hæc Dominum signant animalia Christum:
Est Homo nascendo, vitulusque sacer moriendo,
Et Leo surgendo, cœlos aquilaque petendo;