Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

THE IDEAL ROMAN FIGURE OF CHRIST

The portrait head of Jesus in the Sancta Sanctorum.

Ancient writers have left but little information about the personal appearance of the Saviour; and the vagueness of their accounts proves the absence of a type which was universally recognized as authentic. Many documents concerning this subject must be rejected as forgeries of a later age. Such is the pretended letter of Lentulus, governor of Judæa, to the Senate, describing the appearance of Jesus. In the same way we should regard the images attributed to Nicodemus and Luke, and those called acheiropitæ (not painted by human hands), like the famous one of the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum,[167] the first historical mention of which dates from a. d. 752, when Pope Stephen II. carried it in a procession from the Lateran to S. Maria Maggiore, to obtain divine protection against Aistulphus. Garrucci questions whether it may not be that of Camulianus, described by Gregory of Nyssa; or a copy of the image alleged to have been sent by the Saviour himself to Abgar, king of Edessa,[168] with an autograph letter. Must we consider these and other portraits, like the "Volto Santo" in the Vatican, as fanciful as the old youthful Roman type of the Good Shepherd? There can be no doubt that in some provinces of the East, like Palestine, Syria, and Phœnicia, the oral traditions about the personal appearance of the Saviour were kept for many generations. It is also probable that the tradition was confirmed by some work of art, like the celebrated group of Paneas (Bâniâs). With regard to this, Eusebius says that the woman with the issue of blood, grateful to the Saviour for her cure (Mark v., 25-34), caused a statue, representing Him in the act of performing the miracle, to be set up in front of her house; that it still existed when he wrote, and was held in great veneration throughout Palestine and the whole East. Sozomenos adds that Julian the Apostate substituted his own statue for it, but that the imperial image was struck by lightning. This excited the wrath of the pagans to such an extent that they destroyed the group of Christ and the Woman, which Julian had caused to be removed. Cassiodorus, Rufinus, Kedrenos, and Malala, assert that the head was saved from destruction. It has been suggested that the group did not represent the woman at the feet of the Saviour, but a conquered province kneeling before the Roman emperor and addressing him as her Saviour (ΣΩΤΗΡΙ). But this explanation seems more ingenious than probable, because it implies that Christians, Eusebius included, had mistaken the portrait of a Roman conqueror for that of Christ, which would have been so different in type, dress, and attitude. At all events, the belief that the group of Bâniâs was a genuine likeness was general in the fourth century. Eusebius contributed to make it known in the Western world; and to this diffusion we probably owe the second type of the Saviour's physiognomy, the bearded face, the large impressive eyes, the hair parted in the middle, and falling in locks on the shoulders.[169]

To this type belongs the bust discovered four years ago in the "locus ad catacumbas." According to an ingenious hypothesis of Bottari, adopted by de Rossi, the Paneas group is represented on the Lateran sarcophagus, engraved by Roller in the second volume of his "Catacombs," plate 58.

The Cemetery of Cyriaca. This, the principal cemetery of the Via Tiburtina, was excavated in the hill above the basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura. It is the one with which I have had most to do, because the building of the new Camposanto, together with the sinking of the foundations of the new tombs, has been the occasion of frequent discoveries. One of the characteristic features of Cyriaca's cemetery is the large number of military inscriptions from the prætorian camp which were used to close the graves, the name of the deceased Christian being engraved on the blank side of the slab. On December 23, 1876, a landslide of considerable extent took place along the southern face of the rock in which the catacombs are excavated, in consequence of which many loculi, arcosolia, and painted cubicula were laid open. I happened to witness the accident, and was able to direct the exploration of the graves. Among the objects discovered, I remember a pair of silver earrings, a necklace of gold and emeralds, sixteen inches long, clay objects of various kinds, gladiatorial and theatrical lamps, and nine Christian tombstones. One of them was engraved on the back of a slab from the prætorian camp, containing the roster of one hundred and fifty soldiers from the twelfth and fourteenth city cohorts (cohortes urbanæ). Each individual has his prænomen, nomen, and cognomen, carefully indicated, together with the names of his father, tribe, and country. The men are grouped in companies, which are indicated by the name of their captains, such as the "company of Marcellus" or the "company of Tranquillinus," with the consular date of the year in which Marcellus and Tranquillinus were in command of that company. Another part of the same roster, engraved on a slab of the same marble and size, and containing many more names, was found a century and a half ago in the same place, and removed to the Vatican Museum.