The arrangement of the drapery differs greatly in these paintings. In the tenth century the form of the divine victim is entirely clothed with a long robe with sleeves, the hands and feet alone being uncovered. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the robe becomes shorter and the sleeves disappear; in the thirteenth it is reduced to a short tunic; and in the fourteenth it is little more than a narrow girdle about the loins, at which stage it has since remained. The suppedaneum, or support for the feet, is generally represented. It is frequently in the form of a globe, or of a chalice. The support for the body is never shown in art. Sometimes the sepulchre, with the angel and the two Marys, is seen in the background. One example, in St. John’s Lateran, exhibits the gate of paradise and the tree of life.
The expression of the face also underwent a change—a dire eclipse of woe—no less painful to behold. In the earlier pictures of the crucifixion the countenance of the Redeemer is still gentle and benign, the type of tenderness and truth; but it gradually becomes more and more strongly marked with the expression of sorrow and physical anguish, till all the divine fades away, and only the human agony of the wan and furrowed face remains. The serene and joyous aspect which, as
we shall see, the representations of Our Lord always wore in the Catacombs, vanishes, and he is depicted as the “man of sorrows,” crushed with hopeless grief, crowned with thorns, transpierced with nails, and stained with dropping blood from the ghastly spear-wound in his side. Art exhausted its power in delineating the intensest forms of anguished suffering, sinking lower and lower in the depths of a brutal materiality and ferocity of treatment of this sacred theme. Even the genius of Michael Angelo only renders more painful the contrast between the tender and pitiful Good Shepherd of the Catacombs and the relentless Judge of the Sistine Chapel, menacing the guilty with the thunderbolts of wrath—a pagan Zeus rather than the Christian God of Mercy. This striking change but too faithfully represents the corresponding degradation and materialization of religious belief.
The crucified Christ was not only depicted in his dying agonies on earth, but this human anguish is even introduced into representations of heaven, bringing gloom upon its glory and sadness amid its joy. The Divine Father is frequently portrayed as sitting on the throne of his majesty, and holding in his hand a cross on which hangs the agonized body of his Son.[470]
In the East the development of image worship seems to have been earlier than in the West.[471] During the eighth century its corruptions provoked the iconoclastic zeal of the Isaurian Leo; and a general council condemned as idolatrous all symbols of Christ except the holy Eucharist.[472] Their destruction was rigorously prosecuted
in the Eastern Empire; but Gregory II. became the champion of image worship in the West, and Italy, adhering to her ancient pagan instincts, substituted this new idolatry for that which she had abandoned.
The development of the graven representation of the passion was more gradual than its treatment in graphic art. This was the work of the sculptors. At first the figure of Our Lord was merely painted on a flat surface of wood or metal. This was afterward incised in outline, and exhibited in low relief, as on an ivory diptych of date A. D. 888 in the Vatican Museum. In this the sun and moon, as genii, hold torches above the cross; and by a singular association of ideas, Romulus and Remus, suckled by the wolf, appear at its foot, probably in allusion to Christ’s spiritual subjugation of the Roman Empire.[473] The treatment of this sacred theme passed gradually through the stages of basso, mezzo, and alto relievo, becoming more and more detached, till, in the fourteenth century, the figure of Our Lord upon the cross stood out, the completed and portable crucifix.[474] From this, through rapid stages, we arrive at the gross and ghastly images which abound throughout Roman Catholic Christendom; in every church and at every shrine; in the homes alike of prince and peasant; at the street corners and by the way side; often in popular apprehension endowed with the power of weeping, motion, speech, and working miracles.[475] By such gradations
between the soul of man and the living Saviour came the image of the dead Christ, diverting the thoughts from the faith in a living Lord to an idolatrous veneration of a lifeless symbol.
Thus, as Dr. Maitland remarks, in painting sight superseded faith, and in sculpture touch superseded sight. But still another resource of sensuousness was to be discovered; and in the year 1223, “when the world was growing cold,”[476] as the Roman Church, with a deeper meaning than it knew, asserted, Saint Francis of Assis is feigned to have received the stigmata of the five wounds of Christ, and thenceforth to have borne about in his body—a living crucifix—the marks of the Lord Jesus. This miracle was afterwards frequently repeated; but the Church, seeking amid the growing darkness of the times to walk by sight and not by faith, wandered ever further and further from the central source of light and power, and lost all ability to communicate to a cold and dying world any spiritual life and warmth.
The sad lesson of the history we have been tracing is but too plain. In the early ages, and in the fervent glow of primitive faith, no outward symbol was necessary to reveal to the soul the presence of the Divine, or to interpret the profound meaning of the atonement. The Church required no sensuous image of Him, whom having not seen she loved, to prevent that love from growing cold. As the fervour of faith failed she relied more on the visible sign to quicken her languid