immense number of the pictures in the catacombs which may be
ascribed to the first three centuries, scarcely one has been found
of a painful or sad character. The sufferings of the Saviour, his
passion and his death, and the martyrdoms of the saints, had not
become, as in after days, the main subjects of the religious Art of
Italy. On the contrary, all the early paintings are distinguished by
the cheerful and trustful nature of the impressions they were
intended to convey. In the midst of external depression, uncertainty
of fortune and of life, often in the midst of persecution, the Roman
Christians dwelt not on this world, but looked forward to the
fulfilment of the promises of their Lord. Their imaginations did not
need the stimulus of painted sufferings; suffering was before their
eyes too often in its most vivid reality; they had learned to regard
it as belonging only to earth, and to look upon it as the gateway to
heaven. They did not turn for consolation to the sorrows of their
Lord, but to his words of comfort, to his miracles, and to his
resurrection. Of all the subjects of pictures in the catacombs, the
one, perhaps, more frequently repeated than any other, and under a
greater variety of forms and types, is that of the Resurrection. The
figure of Jonah thrown out from the body of the whale, as the type
that had been used by our Lord himself in regard to his resurrection,
is met with constantly; and the raising of Lazarus is one of the
commonest scenes chosen for representation from the story of the New
Testament. Nor is this strange. The assurance of immortality was to
the world of heathen converts the central fact of Christianity, from
which all the other truths of religion emanated, like rays. It gave
a new and infinitely deeper meaning than it before possessed to all
human experience; and in its universal comprehensiveness, it taught
the great and new lessons of the equality of men before God, and of
the brotherhood of man in the broad promise of eternal life. For us,
brought up in familiarity with Christian truth, surrounded by the
accumulated and constant, though often unrecognized influences of
the Christian faith upon all our modes of thought and feeling, the
imagination itself being more or less completely under their control,--
for us it is difficult to fancy the change produced in the mind of
the early disciples of Christ by the reception of the truths which he
revealed. During the first three centuries, while converts were
constantly being made from heathenism, brought over by no worldly
temptation, but by the pure force of the new doctrine and the glad
tidings over their convictions, or by the contagious enthusiasm of
example and devotion,--faith in Christ and in his teachings must,
among the sincere, have been always connected with a sense of wonder
and of joy at the change wrought in their views of life and of
eternity. Their thoughts dwelt naturally upon the resurrection of
their Lord, as the greatest of the miracles which were the seal of
his divine commission, and as the type of the rising of the
followers of Him who brought life and immortality to light.
The troubles and contentions in the early Church, the disputes
between the Jew and the Gentile convert, the excesses of spiritual
excitement, the extravagances of fanciful belief, of which the
Epistles themselves furnish abundant evidence, ceased to all
appearance at the door of the catacombs. Within them there is
nothing to recall the divisions of the faithful; but, on the contrary,
the paintings on the walls almost universally relate to the simplest
and most undisputed truths. It was fitting that among these the
types of the Resurrection should hold a first place.
But the spiritual needs of life were not to be supplied by the
promises and hopes of immortality alone. There were wants which
craved immediate support, weaknesses that needed present aid,
sufferings that cried for present comfort, and sins for which
repentance sought the assurance of direct forgiveness. And thus
another of the most often-repeated of the pictures in the catacombs
is that of the Saviour under the form of the Good Shepherd. No
emblem fuller of meaning, or richer in consolation, could have been
found. It was very early in common use, not merely in Christian
paintings, but on Christian gems, vases, and lamps. Speaking with
peculiar distinctness to all who were acquainted with the Gospels,
it was at the same time a figure that could be used without exciting
suspicion among the heathen, and one which was not exposed to
desecration or insult from them; and under emblems of this kind,
whose inner meaning was hidden to all but themselves, the first
Christians were often forced to conceal the expression of their faith.
This figure recalled to them many of the sacred words and most
solemn teachings of their Lord: "I am the Good Shepherd; the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." Often the good shepherd was
represented as bearing the sheep upon his shoulders; and the picture
addressed itself with touching and effective simplicity to him whom
fear of persecution or the force of worldly temptations had led away.
When one of his sheep is lost, doth not the shepherd go after it
until he find it? "And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his
shoulders, rejoicing." "There is joy in the presence of the angels of
God over one sinner that repenteth." How often, before this picture,
has some saddened soul uttered the words of the Psalm: "I have gone
astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy
commandments"! And as if to afford still more direct assurance of the
patience and long-suffering tenderness of the Lord, the Good
Shepherd is sometimes represented in the catacombs as bearing, not a
sheep, but a goat upon his shoulders. It was as if to declare that
his forgiveness and his love knew no limit, but were waiting to
receive and to embrace even those who had turned farthest from him.
In a picture of very early date in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, the
Good Shepherd stands between a goat and a sheep, "as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his
right hand and the goats on his left." But in this picture the order
is reversed,--the goat is on his right hand and the sheep on his left.
It was the strongest type that could be given of the mercy of God.
Sometimes the Good Shepherd is represented, not bearing the sheep on
his shoulders, but leaning on his crook, and with a pipe in his hands,
while his flock stand in various attitudes around him. Here again
the reference to Scripture is plain: "He calleth his own sheep by
name, and leadeth them out;... and the sheep follow him, for they
know his voice." Thus, under various forms and with various meanings,
full of spiritual significance, and suggesting the most invigorating
and consoling thoughts, the Good Shepherd appears oftener than any
other single figure on the vaults and the walls of the catacombs. It
is impossible to look at these paintings, poor in execution and in
external expression as they are, without experiencing some sense,
faint it may be, of the force with which they must have appealed to
the hearts and consciences of those who first looked upon them. It
is as if the inmost thoughts and deepest feeling of the Christians of
those early times had become dimly visible upon the walls of their
graves. The effect is undoubtedly increased by the manner in which
these paintings are seen, by the unsteady light of wax tapers, in
the solitude of long-deserted passages and chapels. In such a place
the dullest imagination is roused, troop on troop of associations
and memories pass in review before it, and the fading colors and
faint outlines of the paintings possess more power over it than the
glow of Titian's canvas, or the firm outline of Michel Angelo's
frescoes.
Another symbol of the Saviour which is frequently found in the works
of the first three centuries, and which soon afterwards seems to
have fallen almost entirely into disuse, is that of the Fish. It is
not derived, like that of the Good Shepherd, immediately from the
words of Scripture; though its use undoubtedly recalled several
familiar narratives. It seems to have been early associated with the
well-known Greek formula, [Greek: iaesous christos theon uios sotaer],
Jesus Christ the Saviour Son of God, arranged acrostically, so that
the first letters of its words formed the word [Greek: ichthus], fish.
The first association that its use would suggest was that of
Christ's call to Peter and Andrew, "Follow me, and I will make you
fishers of men,"--and thus we find, among the early Christian writers,
the name of "little fish," _pisciculi_, applied to the Christian
disciples of their times. But it would serve also to bring to memory
the miracle that the multitude had witnessed, of the multiplication
of the fishes; and it would recall that last solemn and tender
farewell meeting between the Apostles and their Lord on the shore of
the Sea of Tiberias, in the early morning, when their nets were
filled with fish,--and "Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and
giveth them, and fish likewise." And with this association was
connected, as we learn from the pictures in the catacombs, a still
deeper symbolic meaning, in which it represented the body of our
Lord as given to his apostles at the Last Supper. In the Cemetery of
Callixtus, very near the recently discovered crypt of Pope Cornelius,
are two square sepulchral chambers, adorned with pictures of an
early date. Those of the first chamber have almost utterly perished,
but on the wall of the second may be seen the image of a fish
swimming in the water, and bearing on his back a basket filled with
loaves of the peculiar shape and color used by the Jews as an
offering of the first fruits to their priests; beneath the bread
appears a vessel which shows a red color, like a cup filled with wine.
"As soon as I saw this picture," says the Cavaliere de Rossi, in his
account of the discovery, "the words of St. Jerome came to my mind,--
'None is richer than he who bears the body of the Lord in an osier
basket and his blood in a glass.'"
In the same cemetery, very near the crypt of St. Cecilia, there is a
passage wider than common, upon whose side is a series of sepulchral
cells of similar form, and ornamented with similar pictures. In one
of them a table is represented, with four baskets of bread on the
ground, on one side, and three on the other, while upon it three
loaves and a fish are lying. In another of the chambers is a picture
of a single loaf and of a fish upon a plate lying on a table, at one
side of which a man stands with his hands stretched out towards it,
while on the other side is a woman in the attitude of prayer. It
seems no extravagance of interpretation to read in these pictures
the symbol of that memorial service which Jesus had established for
his followers,--a service which has rarely been celebrated under
circumstances more adapted to give to it its full effect, and to awaken
in the souls of those who joined in it all the deep and affecting
memories of its first institution, than when the bread and wine were
partaken of in memory of the Lord within the small and secret chapels
of the early catacombs. To the Christians who assembled there in the
days when to profess the name of Christ was to venture all things for
his sake, his presence was a reality in their hearts, and his voice
was heard as it was heard by his immediate followers who sat with him
at the table in the upper chamber. [1]
[Footnote 1: The Cavaliere de Rossi, in his very learned tract,
_De Christianis Monumentis [Greek: IChThUN] exhibentibus_,
expresses the belief that these pictures, besides their direct and
simple reference to the Lord's Supper, exhibit also the Catholic
doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The bread he
considers as the obvious material symbol, the fish the mystical
symbol of the transubstantiation. His interpretation is at least
doubtful. The bread was to be eaten in remembrance of the Lord, and
the fish was represented as the image which recalled his words, that
have been perverted by materialistic imaginations so far from their
original meaning,--"This is my body which is given for you." But the
date of the origin of false opinions is a matter of comparative
unimportance.]
There are several instances, among these subterranean pictures, of a
symbolic representation of the Saviour, drawn, not from Scripture,
but from a heathen original. It is that of Orpheus playing upon his
lyre, and drawing all creatures to him by the sweetness of his
strains. It was a fiction widely spread soon after the introduction
of Christianity among the Gentiles, that Orpheus, like the Sibyls and
some other of the characters of mythology, had had some blind
revelation of the coming of a saviour of the world, and had uttered
indistinct prophecies of the event. Forgeries, similar to those of
the Sibylline Verses, professing to be the remains of the poems of
Orpheus, were made among the Alexandrian Christians, and for a long
period his name was held in popular esteem, as that of a heathen
prophet of Christian truth. Whether the paintings in the catacombs
took their origin from these fictions must be uncertain; but driven,
as the Roman Christians were, to hide the truth under a symbol that
should be inoffensive, and should not reveal its meaning to pagan
eyes, it was not strange that they should select this of the ancient
poet. As he had drawn beasts and trees and stones to listen to the
music of his lyre, so Christ, with persuasive sweetness and
compelling force, drew men more savage than beasts, more rooted in
the earth than trees, more cold than stones, to listen to and follow
him. As Orpheus caused even the kingdom of Death to render back the
lost, so Christ drew the souls of men from the very gates of hell,
and made the grave restore its dead. And thus from the old heathen
story the Christian drew new suggestions and fresh meaning, and
beheld in it an unconscious setting-forth of many holy truths.
A subject from the Gospels, which is often represented, and which
was used with a somewhat obscure symbolic meaning, is that of the
man sick of the palsy, cured by the Saviour with the words,
"Arise, take up thy bed, and go to thine house." It belongs,
according to the ancient interpretation, to the series of subjects
that embody the doctrine of the Resurrection. It is thus explained
by St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and others of the fathers. They
understood the words of Christ as addressed to them with the meaning,
"Arise, leave the things of this world, have faith, and go forward
to thy abiding home in heaven." Such an interpretation is entirely
congruous with the general tone of thought and feeling exhibited in
many other common paintings in the catacombs. But later Romanist
writers have attempted to connect its interpretation with the
doctrine of the Forgiveness of Sins, as embodied in what is called
the power of the Church in the holy sacrament of Penance. They lay
stress on the words, "Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee,"
and suppose that the picture expresses the belief that the delegated
power of forgiving sins still remained on earth. Undoubtedly the
painting may well have recalled to mind these earlier words of the
narrative, as well as the later ones, and with the same comforting
assurance that was afforded by the emblem of the Good Shepherd; but
there seems no just reason for supposing it to have borne any
reference to the peculiar doctrine of the Roman Church. The pictures
themselves, so far as we are acquainted with them, seem to
contradict this assumption; for they, without exception, represent
the paralytic in the last act of the narrative, already on his feet
and bearing his bed. [2]
[Footnote 2: One picture of this scene in the Catacombs of St. Hermes
is said to be in immediate connection with the sacrament of Penance
"represented literally, in the form of a Christian kneeling on both
knees before a priest, who is giving him absolution." We have not
seen the original of this picture, and we know of no copy of it. It
is not given either by Bosio or in Perret's great work. Before
accepting it in evidence, its date must be ascertained, and the
possibility of a more natural explanation of it excluded. How is one
figure known to be that of a priest? and in what manner is the act
of giving absolution expressed?]
Among the favorite subjects from the Old Testament are four from the
life of Moses,--his taking off his shoes at the command of the Lord,
his exhibiting the manna to the people, his receiving the tables of
the Law, and his striking the rock in the desert. Of these, the first
and the last are most common, and the truths which they were
intended to typify seem to have been most dwelt upon. Moses was
regarded in the ancient Church as the type, in the old dispensation,
of our Saviour in the new. Thus as the narrative of the command to
Moses to take off his shoes was immediately connected with the
promise of the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land
of bondage, so it was regarded as the figure under which was to be
seen the promise of the greater deliverance of the world through
faith in Jesus Christ, and its freedom from spiritual bondage.
Moreover, the shoes were put off, "for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground"; and it is a natural supposition to regard
the act as having been considered the symbol of that Holiness to the
Lord which was the necessary preparation for the great deliverance.
Like so many other of the paintings, it led forward the thoughts and
the affections from time to eternity. And this figure was also, we
may well suppose, taken as an immediate type of the Resurrection, in
connection with the words of Jesus, "Now that the dead are raised
even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord" (or, as it
should be translated, "when, in telling you of the bush, he says
that the Lord called himself") "the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For God is not the God of the dead, but
of the living." With this interpretation, it affords another
instance of the constancy with which the Christians connected the
thought of immortality with the presence of death.
So also the smiting of the rock, so that the water came forth
abundantly, was adopted as the sign of the giving forth of the
living water springing up into everlasting life. "The rock was Christ,"
said St. Paul, and it is possible, that, with a secondary
interpretation, the smiting of the rock was sometimes regarded as
typical of the sufferings of the Saviour. The picture of this
miracle is repeated again and again, and one of the noblest figures
in the whole range of subterranean Art, a figure of surpassing
dignity and grandeur, is that of Moses in this sublime scene in one
of the chapels of the Cemetery of St. Agnes. In the performance of
this miracle, Moses is represented with a rod in his hand; and a
similar rod, apparently as the sign of power, is seen in the hands
of Christ, in the paintings which represent his miracles. It is a
curious illustration of the gradual progress of the ideas now
current in the Roman Church, that upon sarcophagi of the fourth and
fifth centuries St. Peter is found sculptured with the same rod in
his hands,--emblematic, unquestionably, of the doctrine of his being
the Vicegerent of Christ,--and on the bottom of a glass vessel of
late date, found in the catacombs, the miracle of the striking of
the rock is depicted, but at the side of the figure is the name, not
of Moses, but of Peter,--for the Church had by this time advanced
far in its assumptions.
The story of Jonah appears also in four different scenes upon the
walls of the chapels and burial-chambers. In the first, the prophet
appears as being cast into the sea; in the second, swallowed by the
great fish; in the third, thrown out upon dry land; and in the fourth,
lying under the gourd. They are not found together, or in series;
but sometimes one and sometimes another of these scenes was painted,
according to the fancy or the thought of the artist. The swallowing
of Jonah, and his deliverance from the belly of the whale, has
already been referred to as one of the naturally suggested types of
the Resurrection. When the prophet is shown as lying under a gourd,
(which is painted as a vine climbing over a trellis-work, to
represent the booth that Jonah made for himself,) the picture may
perhaps have been read as a double lesson. As God "made the gourd to
come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to
deliver him from his grief," so he would deliver from their grief
those who now trusted in him; but as he also made the gourd to wither,
so that "the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and
wished in himself to die," it was for them to remember their utter
dependence on the will of God, to prepare themselves for the sorrows
as for the joys of life. Nor was this all; the story of Jonah was
one especially fitted to remind the recent convert of the
long-suffering and grace of God, and to suggest to those who were
enduring the extremities of persecution the rebuke with which the
Lord had chastened even his prophet for his desire for vengeance upon
those who had long dwelt in evil ways. It recalled to them the new
commandment of love to their enemies, and it bade them welcome with
rejoicing even the latest and most reluctant listener to the truth.
It repressed spiritual pride, and checked too ready anger. Was not
Rome even greater "than Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more
than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle"? Such were some,
at least, of the meanings which the Christians of the catacombs may
have seen in these pictures. It would be long to enter into the more
subtile and less satisfactory interpretations of their symbolic
meanings which are to be found in the works of some of the later
fathers, and which afford, as in many other instances, illustrations
of the extravagance of symbolism into which the studies of the cell,
the darkness of their age, and the insufficiency of their education
often led them.
Two subjects are of frequent repetition in the catacombs, which bear
a direct reference to the personal circumstances in which the
Christians from time to time found themselves. One is that of Daniel
in the lions' den,--the other that of the Three Children of Israel
in the fiery furnace. Both were types of persecution and of
deliverance. "Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will
deliver thee." Daniel is uniformly represented in the attitude of
prayer,--the attitude adopted by the early Christians, standing with
arms outstretched. Very often single figures with no names attached
to them are thus represented above or by the side of graves. They
were probably intended as figures of those who lay within them,
figures of those who had been constant in prayer; and this conjecture
is almost established as a certainty by the existence of a few of
these figures with names inscribed above them,--as, for instance,
"HILARA IN PACE."
Noah in the ark is also one of the repeated subjects from the Old
Testament; the ark being represented as a sort of square box, in the
middle of which Noah stands, sometimes in prayer, and sometimes with
the dove flying towards him, bearing a branch of olive. It was the
type of the Church, the whole body of Christians, floating in the
midst of storms, but with the promise of peace; or, with wider
signification, it was the type of the world saved through the
revelation of Christ. It bore reference also to the words of St.
Peter, in his First Epistle, concerning the ark, "wherein few, that
is eight souls, were saved by water; the like figure whereunto, even
baptism, doth also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Sometimes, indeed, the act of baptism is represented in a more
literal manner, by a naked figure immersed in the water; sometimes,
perhaps, by still other types.
Paintings of the temptation and the fall of Adam and Eve, in which
the composition often reminds one of that adopted by the later
masters, are often seen on the walls; and the sacrifice of Abraham,
in which with reverent and just simplicity the interference of the
Almighty is represented by a hand issuing from the clouds, is a
common subject. Less frequent are pictures of David with his sling,
of Tobit with the fish, of Susanna and the elders, treated
symbolically, and some few other Old Testament stories. Their
typical meaning was plain to the minds of those who frequented the
catacombs. From the Gospels many scenes are represented in addition
to those we have already mentioned: among the most common are the
miracle of the multiplication of the loaves; our Saviour seated,
with two or more figures standing near him; and his restoring sight
to the blind. Every year's new excavations bring to light some new
picture, and our acquaintance with the Art of the catacombs is
continually receiving interesting additions.