[463] Agnus ut innocua injusto datur hostia letho.—Paulin., Epis. xxxii.
[464] Christi Dei nostri humana forma characterem etiam in imaginibus deinceps pro veteri agno erigi ac depingi jubemus.—Concilium Quinisextum, Canon 82.
[465] Das sind die ältesten Bilder von dem Ende des irdischen Lebens Jesu und seiner Erhöhung.... Bald darauf kommen sie hin und wieder auch in Abendlande vor.—Ueber den Christlichen Bilderkreis, pp. 26, 27.
[466] Est et apud Narbonensem urbem pictura quæ Dominum nostrum quasi præcinctum linteo indicat crucifixum.—De Glor. Mar., i, 23.
[467] Crux benedicta nitet Dominus qua carne pependit.—Carm., lib. ii, 3.
[468] The earliest example of a dead Christ is in a MS. of date A. D. 1059. The oldest mural picture of this awful theme, now so common throughout Roman Catholic Christendom, and which was prescribed as necessary for every altar by Benedict XIV, 1754, is the Church of Urban at Rome, and bears the date A. X. R. I. MXI.—Anno Christi 1011. Few of those in the Italian churches are older than the fourteenth century.
[469] The inclination of the apse from the axial line in some churches is said to represent this drooping of the head.
[470] Didron, Iconog. Chrét., pp. 226, 505.
[471] Die also dem Morgenlande entstammen, says Professor Piper.—Ueber den Christlichen Bilderkreis, p. 27.
[472] The Council of Constantinople, A. D. 754.