Yet the symbols of the Catacombs, though often rude and uncouth, must not provoke our contempt. They fulfilled their purpose no less fully than the triumphs of art in the Camera Raphaele or the Sistine Chapel. They were addressed not to the external sense, nor to the critical taste, but to the inner eye of the soul and to the sublime faculty of faith. They were not mere representations of the outward semblances of things, but suggestions of eternal verities which transcend the limits of time and space. The rudely scratched anchor told of a hope that reached forward beyond this world and laid hold on the great realities of the world to come; the dove spoke of the brooding peace of God, which kept the heart and the mind amid persecution and affliction
with the power of an everlasting life; and the palm was the symbol of the final victory over death and hell.
When the age of persecution passed away, this childlike and touching simplicity of Christian art gave place to a more ornate character. Called from the gloomy vaults of the Catacombs to adorn the churches erected by Constantine and his successors, it gradually developed into the many-coloured splendour of the magnificent frescoes and mosaics of the basilicas. It became now more personal and historical, and less abstract and doctrinal. The technical manipulation became less understood, and the artistic conception of form more and more feeble, till it gradually stiffened into the immobile and rigid types which characterize Byzantine painting. It exhibited the weakness not of infancy but of decrepitude, and might almost be called the last sigh of art till its revival after the long slumber of the Middle Ages. It is of importance, however, as enabling us to trace the development of religious error, and the introduction of unorthodox additions to Christian belief, and as showing the slow progress toward image worship. It demonstrates the non-apostolicity of certain Romish doctrines, the beginning of which can be here detected. It utters its voiceless protest against certain others which are sought for in vain in the places where, according to the Roman theory, they should certainly be found. Where still employed in the Catacombs, art shared the corruption and degradation above described.
It is to this period that most of the condemnations of art, or rather of its abuse, in the writings of the primitive Fathers must be referred. Toward the close of the fourth century Augustine inveighs against the superstitious reverence for pictures, as well as the growing devotion to the sepulchres, which he says the church
condemned and endeavoured to correct.[347] His contemporary, Epiphanius, stigmatizes the employment of painting as contrary to the authority of Scripture.[348] About the same time Paulinus of Nola made use of biblical pictures for the instruction of the rude and illiterate multitude who visited the shrine of Felix. “Perhaps it may be asked,” he says, “for what reason, contrary to the common usage, I have painted this sacred dwelling with personal representations?... Here is a crowd of rustics of imperfect faith, who cannot read, who before they were converted to Christ used profane rites, and obeyed their senses as gods. I have, therefore, thought it expedient to enliven with paintings the whole habitation of the saint. Pictures thus traced with colours will perhaps inspire those rude minds with astonishment. Inscriptions are placed above the paintings in order that the letter may explain what the hand has depicted.”[349]
The feeblest intelligence might rise through the material
to the conception of spiritual truth.[350] But this ecclesiastical employment of art speedily became the source of religious corruption and the object of superstitious worship. At length it provoked the stern iconoclasm of the Isaurian Leo and his successors, and was formally prohibited by the general Council of Constantinople in the eighth century. Even early in the fourth century the Council of Elvira, as if with a prescience of the dire result that would follow, prohibited the use of pictures in the churches, “lest that which was worshipped and adored should be painted on the walls.”[351]
The iconoclastic spirit, however, was principally directed against graven images, which were regarded as the special objects of idolatry. The earliest examples of these have been attributed to the Gnostics, who so strangely blended the doctrines of Christianity with pagan superstition. They claimed to possess contemporary images of Christ from the collection of
Pontius Pilate! But doubtless, like the alleged statue of Christ at Cæsarea Philippi, mentioned by Eusebius,[352] even if they had any reference to Our Lord at all, they were of much later date. According to Augustine,[353] the Carpocratian heretics had similar images; and Marcellina, who belonged to that sect, exhibited in the Gnostic church at Rome figures of Christ, Paul, Homer, and Pythagoras. In a similarly eclectic spirit the emperor Alexander Severus placed among his lares the images of Our Lord and Abraham, with those of Orpheus and Apollonius.[354]
Mosaic, which in classic times was used only for the decoration of floors, was employed in Christian art in the more honourable task of adorning the walls of the stately basilicas and churches. This intractable material was not adapted for the delineation of objects requiring delicacy of expression, but was admirably suited for representing strongly pronounced types and solemn figures of Christ and the saints, analogous to those in the stained-glass windows of gothic cathedrals and minsters. Hence the mosaics, and gradually all Byzantine art, stiffened into an expression of severity and gloom, filling the mind of the beholder with solemnity and awe.[355] This character is still strikingly seen in the art of the Greek