the faith, of baptism, and of the church, seem then to have been inseparable in the minds of writers and preachers from the mention of St. Peter, on whom Christ had founded that origin and that unity; that those who impugned the validity of baptism administered by heretics considered that they urged an irrefragable argument against their adversaries as often as they invoked the prerogative of Peter and the undoubted unity of the rock whence alone all pure waters flowed; finally, that the earliest writer in whom we find the waters of baptism spoken of as flowing from the rock (Tertullian) was a frequent visitor at Rome about the very time when some of the most remarkable paintings in which they are so represented—those in the so-called sacramental chapels in the Catacomb of San Callisto—were being executed; i.e., at the very commencement of the third century.
We conclude, then, that the paintings and other monuments of ancient Christian art belonging to the Catacombs, when placed side by side with the language of contemporaneous and succeeding Christian writers, mutually explain and confirm one another; and that it is impossible not to recognize in the perfect agreement of these important witnesses the faithful echo of a primitive tradition—to wit, that to St. Peter was given the authority to draw forth the true living waters of sacramental grace from the Rock of ages, and to distribute them throughout the whole church.
There is yet one more incident in the life of Moses which ancient Christian art has reproduced, and with a distinct reference to St. Peter—viz., the receiving of the law from the hand of God. This is a subject very commonly repeated
on the sarcophagi of the fourth and fifth centuries, but there is not, so far as we know, any emblem attached to these sculptured representations which obliges us to refer them to the apostle. Other monuments, however, of the same or an earlier date, supply what is wanting. We find both paintings and ancient gilded glasses in which St. Peter receives from our Lord either a roll or volume, or sometimes (as if to make the resemblance more striking) a mere tablet with the inscription Lex Domini, or Dominus legem dat. Now, in pagan works of art the emperors were sometimes represented in the act of giving the book of the laws or constitutions to those officials whom they sent forth to govern the provinces, and the magistrates receive the book, for greater reverence, not in their bare hands, but in a fold of their toga. Compare with this a Christian sarcophagus, belonging to an early part of the fourth century, and published by Bosio. In it we see Christ, already ascended and triumphant, having the firmament under his feet, giving the book of the New Law to Peter, who in like manner has his hands covered with a veil, that he may receive it with due reverence. It is as though Christ were visibly appointing him his Vicar and representative upon earth, and making him the expounder and administrator of his law. And the same scene is represented, without any essential alteration, in a number of monuments of various kinds, frescoes, sculpture, glasses, and mosaics. By and bye, in some artists’ hands, it lost something of its precise original signification; at least, in two of the later monuments (one of them undoubtedly by a Greek artist) it is St. Paul who receives the law, instead of St.
Peter. But then there is, of course, a certain sense in which this might be as truly predicated of St. Paul, or of any other member of the Apostolic College as of St. Peter himself. Sometimes, also, all the apostles appear together with St. Peter when he receives the law—only he receives the volume opened; they stand each holding a closed roll in his hand. In some monuments, as in the mosaic of Sta. Costanza, the legend is Dominus dat pacem instead of legem. This, however, is hardly an essential difference. It is only through his law that Christ gives peace, and peace or unity of the church is a primary dogma of his law. Hence this interchange of the two words: the substitution of one for the other, or occasionally even their union, as on the cover of a Book of the Gospels at Milan, which is inscribed Lex et pax.
But it is time to draw this paper to a close. Let it be remembered that it is not an attempt to prove the papal supremacy by means of inscriptions or other monuments from the Catacombs, but an answer to an oft-repeated challenge upon
one point at least which lies at the root of that subject; and incidentally it throws light upon some other points also, more or less closely connected with it. And we claim to have established against these controversialists that there is evidence to be gathered from these subterranean cemeteries; that those who made and decorated them were conscious of a special pre-eminence belonging to St. Peter over the rest of the apostolic body; that they knew him to be in a certain singular manner the representative of his divine Master, whose rod of power or staff of rule he alone was privileged to bear; that it was his prerogative to be the head of the Christian church, its leader and its teacher, having received the law from the hands of Christ, and the commission to feed and govern his flock; that he had the special guardianship of the fountain and river of living waters, only to be found within the church, and special authority to draw them forth and distribute them throughout every region of the thirsty world.
[139] “Testimony of the Catacombs to Prayers for the Dead and the Invocation of Saints,” The Catholic World, Dec., 1876.
[140] R. S., ii. 307.
[141] Inscr. Christian., i. 80, 100.