The Catholic Church has no forms—that is, meaningless ceremonies used to impress and awe the multitude; but she has symbols—that is, “signs by which things are distinguished one from another.”[136] According to the original meaning of the word, these symbols, the aggregate of which has come to be an outward and universal profession of faith, have each one a deep significance, sometimes even a double sense, and are, in fact, a silent compendium of the history as well as the doctrines of Catholic Christianity. But it cannot be too much insisted upon that their worth is entirely relative, depending solely on their authorized interpretation, and losing all their value if disconnected from it. Thus we can recognize no symbols, but mere forms, in the ritual of Anglicanism, Lutheranism, etc. Not only is their value relative, but their use is almost optional in the church—we mean as regards the use made of them by the individual soul. The church has “many mansions,” and sympathizes with the severe taste of the Northern races, as well as with the superabundant love of the gorgeous in observance, of the Southern and Eastern nations. Sprung from an Eastern people, her ritual is as manifold and dignified as that of her Hebrew precursor; but, deputed as she is to the universal world, and having built her later development upon the broad basis of the Gothic and Scandinavian natures, her exterior admits of the austere simplicity so dear to the last-mentioned races.
Still the principle of outward forms being a fitting expression of inward belief is so obvious and so wedded to the requirements of human nature, that it would need a second deluge to destroy it. When “forms” (so-called) were dethroned by the Reformation, they crept in again in real earnest among the reformers themselves. The phraseology of Cromwell and his Roundheads, the speech and garments of the Quakers, the splits among the Baptists and Anabaptists upon the “form” of administering what they did not even believe to be a sacrament, were so many involuntary acts of homage to the time-honored principle of symbolism. Of the good effect produced on all sorts of minds by the outward expression of the doctrine of Christ, we will quote two examples, taken from very opposite sources. In a note to the preface of Moehler’s Symbolik, we read: “There is at Bingen, on the Rhine, a beautiful little Catholic church dedicated to St. Roch, to which Goethe once gave an altarpiece. ‘Whenever I enter this church,’ he used to say, ‘I always wish I were a Catholic priest.’ In the great poet’s autobiography we also find an interesting description of the extraordinary love for the Catholic ritual and liturgy that had captivated his heart in boyhood.”
The other example is from the writer’s own experience among the agricultural poor of England. A poor and infirm woman, having come for the first time to a Catholic chapel, said afterwards that, often as she had read in the Bible the history of Our Lord’s Passion, she had never understood it so well as she did by once looking at the crucifix over the altar. This was the beginning of her conversion.
Of the great religious revival in Germany and the labors of Count Stolberg (the period which answers in time, as also in result, to the Tractarian or Oxford movement in England) the preface to Moehler’s Symbolik also says: “As the avenues that led to the Egyptian temples were bordered on either side by representations of the mystical sphinx, so it was through a mystical art, poetry and philosophy, that many minds were then conducted to the sanctuary of the true church.” Mrs. Jameson bears witness to a similar process within her own consciousness concerning the saints of the monastic orders. “We have in the monastic pictures a series of biographies of the most instructive kind.... After having studied the written lives of St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Clare, and St. Dominic, to enable me to understand the pictures which relate to them, I found it was the pictures which enabled me better to understand their lives and character.”[137] The same thought is expressed by a learned English antiquarian, speaking of the symbolical paintings of the Catacombs: “Moreover, because they [the artists] desire that the mind of those who see these paintings should not retain the outward semblance of the scene, but be carried forward to its hidden and mystical meaning, they always depart more or less from its literal truth, e.g., we never find seven or twelve baskets (the miracle of the multiplication of loaves), but eight; nor six water-pots of stone (marriage of Cana), but seven. It was the symbol of a religious idea they aimed at, not the representation of a real history.”[138] In a word, symbolism is as old as creation, and there never was a time when men did not make for themselves a language of signs. Heathendom was only a corruption of signs into realities; Judaism was a religion of signs carefully interpreted in view of the later and fuller revelation. Our faith is the realization, in part, of the Hebrew types; but since we are still clogged with mortality, and therefore still under an imperfect law, it follows that through symbols we must still be taught. An unsymbolical religion would be unscriptural, for Christ himself tells us he has come to “fulfil, not to destroy the law.” And this is not incompatible with the command to “worship God in spirit and in truth”; for without the spirit, of what use would be the form? It would be as valueless as words from the lips of a maniac, words which have no weight because the mind does not direct them. But who would contend that because the random words of a madman are meaningless, all speech is so? Even so, though mere forms would be idolatrous, forms hallowed by doctrinal and scriptural meaning are holy and venerable.
Having premised thus much, we will attempt some description of a few of those symbols most anciently used by the church, and of the significance of certain acts and ceremonies which usually are but superficially examined by our opponents, and, perhaps, not fully appreciated by Catholics themselves.
The Catacombs, where the ecclesiastical life of the church was first brought into shape, furnish the most interesting material on the subject of Christian symbolism. The times required great caution—here was one motive for secret and hieroglyphic instruction; the first converts were Jews, Orientals deeply imbued with the love of imagery and poetry—here was a second reason for the rapid development of symbolism; our Lord himself had deigned to use figures and parables in his teaching—here was also a model and a permission for the copious use of signs. Almost the earliest, and certainly the most interesting, Christian symbol was the fish. The Greek word for fish contained five letters, Ἰχθύς, each of which was the initial of the following words: Jesus, Christ, Son (of) God, Saviour. Dr. Northcote says of it: “It became a profession of faith, as it were, both of the two natures, the unity of person and the redemptorial office of our Lord.”[139] Besides this ingenious meaning, the fish signified “the human soul in the first or natural creation, the same soul as regenerate or created anew, and Christ himself as uniting the two creations of nature and grace. In the first or natural creation, life began in the waters and from the waters, of which the fish is the inhabitant. In the spiritual or new creation, all life begins from the waters of baptism.”[140] The fish also bears a reference to the story of Tobias, where the application of its entrails “defeats devils and restores sight.”[141] In three or four instances the fish is depicted bearing a ship on its back, and this combination naturally suggests to us Christ upholding his church.[142] The epitaph of St. Abercius, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia at the end of the second century, has the following allusion to the symbolic fish: “Faith led me on the road, and set before me for food from the one fountain the great and spotless fish which the pure Virgin embraced; and this fish she (Faith) gave to friends to eat everywhere, having good wine, giving wine mixed with water, and bread. May he who understands these things pray for me.” In a fresco in the crypt of Santa Lucina is seen a fish carrying on its back a basket of bread, the latter being of an ashen color, like that offered by the Jews to their priests on festival days, and in the midst of the bread appears something red, partly effaced, but resembling a cup of red wine.[143] This, of course, was intended for the Holy Eucharist, as we shall see further on. In the work of Aringhi on the Catacombs, we find it mentioned that a sarcophagus was found of the date of the very earliest centuries, whereon the story of the paralytic is represented (a very favorite simile in the Catacomb list of subjects). The bed of the subject of the cure is shaped like a fish.[144] The baptismal font first received the name of “piscina,” and the Christians often called each other “pisciculi,” little fishes, as we learn from Perret. He also tells us too that this emblem reminded the early Christians of the very scenes of the Gospel connected with Christ’s miracles, the apostles’ calling, and the establishment of the church; Christ walking on the waters; preaching from a bark; allaying the tempest; causing a miraculous draught of fishes to be taken; finding the coin of the tribute in the mouth of a fish—all this was suggested by the simple figure of a fish. St. Jerome says that “the fish that was taken in whose mouth was the coin of the tribute was Christ, the second Adam, at the cost of whose blood the first Adam and Peter, that is, all sinners, were redeemed.” Origen speaks of our Lord as “he who is figuratively called the fish.” This symbol leads naturally to that obvious one of the loaves, which typifies the Holy Eucharist. Abundant proof of this is found in the writings of the fathers. The types of this sacrifice and sacrament are unmistakable. In the cemetery of St. Callixtus is a painting representing the mystical supper (not the historical one) of the Eucharist. “The seven disciples seated at the table represent all the disciples of Christ. The number seven signifies universality. The two fishes on the table remind us of the multiplication of the five loaves and two fishes. The seven baskets are filled with whole loaves, not fragments, and the addition of an eighth hints that we are not to think of the literal history, ... but of that ulterior and spiritual sense to which they all (the three occurrences represented in this one fresco) point, and in which they all unite, that is, the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist.”[145] A lamb carrying a milk-pail on its back is sometimes used as an eucharistic emblem. The Acts of St. Perpetua give us her dream, or rather vision, in which the Good Shepherd gave her the curds to drink, after he had milked his flocks. She received it with her arms crossed on her breast, while all the assistants said “Amen”! These words and posture were those used during the administration of the Blessed Sacrament. Milk is perpetually used in Scripture to denote the good things of God; and in early times, according to Tertullian and St. Jerome, milk and honey were given with this meaning to newly baptized infants or adults. The practice was continued, on Holy Saturday at least, as late as the ninth and tenth centuries. This symbol of the milk-pail is, however, rarer than any other, and is by no means on the same level as that of the fish, the lamb, and the loaves.[146]
The Good Shepherd is a pictorial symbol that has never fallen into disuse, and that of Orpheus with his lute or pipe is analogous to it. The adaptation of the heathen myth of Orpheus training wild beasts by the sweet sounds of his lyre to the hidden meaning of Christ curbing men’s passions by his doctrine, is vouched for by St. Clement of Alexandria. In a painting of the Good Shepherd in the cemetery of St. Saturninus, a goat appears in place of the lost sheep. “This,” says Dr. Northcote, “was intended as a protest against the hateful severity of the Novatians and other heretics who refused reconciliation to penitent sinners.” In some of these representations, we see several sheep at the feet of Jesus, in attitudes pregnant with meaning; some “listening attentively, not quite understanding as yet, but meditating and seeking to understand; others turning their tails—it is an unwelcome subject, and they will have nothing to do with it”;[147] or, again, “one of the two sheep is drinking in all that he hears with simplicity and affection; the other is eating grass—he has something else to do; he is occupied with the cares, pleasures, and riches of this world.”[148]
Dr. Northcote says that as the sheep represent the flock of Christ in life, so the dove is more especially the symbol of the soul after death. It is primarily a type of the Holy Ghost, as the Scriptures suggest and the writings of the fathers assert. They call the Holy Spirit figuratively “a dove without gall,” the expression which is found repeated on some of the sepulchres of children, as indicative of their innocence. Later on, we find the soul of St. Scholastica appearing to her brother, St. Benedict, under this form. A dove pecking at grapes denotes the soul’s enjoyment of the fruits of eternal happiness.[149] Tertullian calls the dove “a herald of peace from the beginning,” and, when painted with an olive-branch in its mouth, it is to be taken in this sense. It is a symbol that we use in our own times. Noah’s ark, a type of the church often seen in the Catacombs, is connected with the dove. Perret tells us of a picture, noticed by Bottari in his Sculture e Pitture, of Noah in the ark, and the ark again within a ship. The form of the ark, according to Hebrew calculations, was a long square, but it is generally represented in the Early Christian paintings as a cube, a figure suggestive of greater stability.[150] This system of departure from the literalness of history is too universal not to be intentional. For instance, none of these representations of the ark are without a dove, but in some a woman appears instead of Noah. Tertullian in his work on baptism says that this symbol meant the general doctrine of “the faithful, having obtained remission of their sins through baptism, receive from the Holy Spirit [the dove] the gift of divine peace [the olive-branch], and are saved in the mystical ark of the church from the destruction of the world.”
The resurrection of Lazarus, and Moses striking the rock, are both types of the resurrection and eternal life, and are often seen in juxtaposition. In one of these paintings, Lazarus is like a little child, and is clothed in bands that more resemble swaddling-clothes than a winding-sheet. Our Lord also is quite boyish. The apostles likewise are often represented as young men, so is Moses in many instances. This is thought by Perret to be symbolical of the immutability of heavenly glory. Among other types often found in the Catacombs are the anchor with a cross-shaped handle, the symbol of hope from time immemorial; the palm, a sign of victory; and the ship, the invariable type of the church of Christ. The Scriptures themselves suggest this latter idea, as they also do that of the rock, petrus. This subject is fully treated in some frescoes of the cemetery of St. Callixtus. The rock (Christ) pours down streams of living waters, which two apostles join their hands to catch and collect for the benefit of the world. In other compositions, the rock does not pour forth water spontaneously (this was a reference to the day of Pentecost), but emits it at the touch of the rod held by Moses (the type of Peter); and in other paintings, two men appear carrying away from it baskets of bread, which are then touched with a rod by a figure supposed to be Christ. This would denote the sacramental change from bread to the flesh of Christ.[151] Thus one type is always presupposing another or merging itself into another. In a fresco of several subjects, all referring to the Holy Eucharist, found in an ancient Christian cemetery at Alexandria, there is written over the heads of several persons assembled at a feast these words: “Eating the benedictions of the Lord.”
Now, the Greek word here used is the same that St. Paul uses (1 Cor. x. 16) to denote the communion of the body and blood of Christ, and, furthermore, is the identical word by which St. Cyril of Alexandria denotes the consecrated elements.[152]