Fig. 95.—The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.
The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes is a theme of frequent treatment in early Christian painting and sculpture, and was regarded in the writings of the Fathers as a eucharistic type of Him who, as the true Bread from heaven, gave his body to be broken for the life of the world. Sometimes, as on a sarcophagus in the Lateran, Our Lord stands between two disciples blessing with either hand the food which they hold. Occasionally, as in the foregoing fresco from the cemetery of St. Priscilla, the scene is represented by a group of disciples kneeling on the ground as if they had just received the food so marvellously multiplied. At their feet are seen the loaves and fishes, and in the foreground stand the seven baskets full of fragments that remained.
Fig. 96.—Christ Opening the Eyes of the Blind.
The miracle of opening the eyes of the blind, which was at once a fulfillment of the ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah and a type of that moral illumination which he should impart, appropriately found a place on the tombs of those who had been called from darkness into God’s marvellous light. The preceding example is from the Catacomb of Callixtus.
Figure 97.—Our Lord blessing a little Child.
Our Lord laying his hand in blessing on the head of a little child, or probably teaching humility and rebuking the ambition of his disciples by setting a child in their midst, is a frequently recurring subject in this primitive cycle. It was a lesson which the early Christians of Rome had often to learn: that he that would be greatest among them must be the servant of all; that exaltation of office was only pre-eminence of danger and of toil. The example above given is from the Catacomb of Callixtus.