Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus “taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his Iconographie Chrêtienne, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.
We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English writers in what spirit [pg 383] all the grave questions of theology connected with subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome, the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.
“Gran Latinà
Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira
Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”
And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos, loquebar pacem de te.”
Beating The Air.
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great magician.
“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”