Veneration of Images. II. CHRISTIAN IMAGES BEFORE THE EIGHTH CENTURY. (Part 2-a)
History and theory of the veneration of images Images
https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/veneration-of-images Contents:
1 I. IMAGES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
2 II. CHRISTIAN IMAGES BEFORE THE EIGHTH CENTURY
3 III. THE VENERATION OF IMAGES
4 IV. ENEMIES OF IMAGE-WORSHIP BEFORE ICONOCLASM
5 V. IMAGES AFTER ICONOCLASM
6 VI. THE PRINCIPLES OF IMAGE WORSHIP
II. CHRISTIAN IMAGES BEFORE THE EIGHTH CENTURY:
Two questions that obviously must be kept apart are those of the use of sacred images and of the reverence paid to them.
That Christians from the very beginning adorned their catacombs with paintings of Christ, of the saints, of scenes from the Bible and allegorical groups is too obvious and too well-known for it to be necessary to insist upon the fact.
The catacombs are the cradle of all Christian art.
Since their discovery in the sixteenth century—on May 31, 1578, an accident revealed part of the catacomb in the Via Salaria—and the investigation of their contents that has gone on steadily ever since, we are able to reconstruct an exact idea of the paintings that adorned them.
That the first Christians had any sort of prejudice against images, pictures, or statues is a myth (defended amongst others by Erasmus) that has been abundantly dispelled by all students of Christian archaeology.
The idea that they must have feared the danger of idolatry among their new converts is disproved in the simplest way by the pictures, even statues, that remain from the first centuries.
Even the Jewish Christians had no reason to be prejudiced against pictures, as we have seen; still less had the Gentile communities any such feeling.
They accepted the art of their time and used it, as well as a poor and persecuted community could, to express their religious ideas.
Roman pagan cemeteries and Jewish catacombs already showed the way; Christians followed these examples with natural modifications.
From the second half of the first century to the time of Constantine they buried their dead and celebrated their rites in these underground chambers (Kraus, "Gesch. der christl. Kunst", I, 38).
The old pagan sarcophagi had been carved with figures of gods, garlands of flowers, and symbolic ornament; pagan cemeteries, rooms, and temples had been painted with scenes from mythology.
The Christian sarcophagi were ornamented with indifferent or symbolic designs—palms, peacocks, vines, with the chi-rho monogram (long before Constantine), with bas-reliefs of Christ as the Good Shepherd, or seated between figures of saints (Kraus, op. cit., 23G 40), and sometimes, as in the famous one of Julius Bassus, with elaborate scenes from the New Testament (ibid., 237).
And the catacombs were covered with paintings.
There are other decorations such as garlands, ribands, stars, landscapes, vines—no doubt in many cases having a symbolic meaning.
One sees with some surprise motives from mythology now employed in a Christian sense (Psyche, Eros, winged Victories, Orpheus), and evidently used as a type of our Lord.
Certain scenes from the Old Testament that have an evident application to His life and Church recur constantly—Daniel in the lions' den, Noe and his ark, Samson carrying away the gates, Jonas, Moses striking the rock.
Scenes from the New Testament are very common too, the Nativity and arrival of the Wise Men, our Lord's baptism, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the marriage feast at Cana, Lazarus, Christ teaching the Apostles.
There are also purely typical figures, the woman praying with up-lifted hands representing the Church, harts drinking from a fountain that springs from a chi-rho monogram, sheep.
And there are especially pictures of Christ as the Good Shepherd, as law-giver, as a child in His mother's arms, of His head alone in a circle, of our Lady alone, of St. Peter and St. Paul — pictures that are not scenes of historic events, but, like the statues in our modern churches, just memorials of Christ and His saints.
(for all this see Palmer, "An Introduction to Early Christian Symbolism", ed. Brownlow and Northcote, London, 1900; Kraus, op. cit., I, 58-224; and especially the classified list in Leclercq, op. cit., I, 529-88).
In the catacombs there is little that can be described as sculpture; there are few statues for a very simple reason.
Statues are much more difficult to make, and cost much more than wall-paintings.
But there was no principle against them. Eusebius describes very ancient statues at Caesarea Philippi representing Christ and the woman He healed there. ("Hist. eccl.", VII, xviii; Matt., ix, 20-2)
The earliest sarcophagi had bas-reliefs.
As soon as the Church came out of the catacombs, became richer, had no fear of persecution, the same people who had painted their caves began to make statues of the same subjects.
The famous statue of the Good Shepherd in the subjects.
Museum (Kraus, I, 227)
Was made as early as the beginning of the third century; the statues of Hippolytus and of St. Peter date from the end of the same century (ibid., 230-232).
The principle was quite simple.
The first Christians were accustomed to see statues of emperors, of pagan gods and heroes, as well as pagan wall-paintings.
So they made paintings of their religion, and, as soon as they could afford them, statues of their Lord and of their heroes, without the remotest fear or suspicion of idolatry.
(Leclercq, op. cit., II, 245-78)
The idea that the Church of the first centuries was in any way prejudiced against pictures and statues is the most impossible fiction.
After Constantine (306-37) there was of course an enormous development of every kind.
Instead of burrowing catacombs Christians began to build splendid basilicas.
They adorned them with costly mosaics, carving, and statues.
But there was no new principle.
The mosaics represented more artistically and richly the motives that had been painted on the walls of the old caves, the larger statues continue the tradition begun by carved sarcophagi and little lead and glass ornaments.
From that time to the Iconoclast persecution holy images are in possession all over the Christian world.
St. Ambrose (d. 397) describes in a letter how St. Paul appeared to him one night, and he recognized him by the likeness to his pictures (Ep. ii, in P.L., XVII, 821). St. Augustine (d. 430) refers several times to pictures of our Lord and the saints in churches.
(e.g. "De cons. Evang.", x, in P.L., XXXIV, 1049; "Contra Faust. Man.", xxii, 73, in P.L., XLII, 446); he says that some people even adore them ("De mor. eccl. cath.", xxxiv, P.L., XXXII, 1342).
St. Jerome (d. 420) also writes of pictures of the Apostles as well-known ornaments of churches (In Ionam, iv). St. Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) paid for mosaics representing Biblical scenes and saints in the churches of his city, and then wrote a poem describing them (P.L., LXI, 884).
Gregory of Tours (d. 594) says that a Frankish lady, who built a church of St. Stephen, showed the artists who painted its walls how they should represent the saints out of a book (Hist. Franc., II, 17, P.L., LXXI, 215).
In the East St. Basil (d. 379), preaching about St. Barlaam, calls upon painters to do the saint more honor by making pictures of him than he himself can do by words.
("Or. in S. Barlaam", in P.G., XXXI, 488-489, quoted in Hefele-Leclercq, "Histoire des Conciles", III, p. 611).
St. Nilus in the fifth century blames a friend for wishing to decorate a church with profane ornaments, and exhorts him to replace these by scenes from Scripture.
(Epist. IV, 56, in Hefele-Leclercq, ibid.)
St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) was so great a defender of icons that his opponents accused him of idolatry (for all this see Schwarzlose,
"Der Bilderstreit", 3-15).
St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) was always a great defender of holy pictures (see below).
We notice, however, in the first centuries a certain reluctance to express the pain and humiliation of the Passion of Christ.
Whether to spare the susceptibility of new converts, or as a natural reaction from the condition of a persecuted sect, Christ is generally represented as splendid and triumphant.
There are pictures of His Passion even in the catacombs (e.g.,—he crowning of thorns in the Catacomb of Praetextatus on the Appian way—Leclercq, I, 542), but the favorite representation is either the Good Shepherd (by far the most frequent) or Christ showing His power, raising Lazarus, working some other miracle, standing among His Apostles, seated in glory.
There are no pictures of the Crucifixion except the mock-crucifix scratched by some pagan soldier in the Palatine barracks (Kraus, I, 173).
In the first basilicas also the type of the triumphant Christ remains the normal one.
The curve of the apse (concha) over the altar is regularly filled with a mosaic representing the reign of Christ in some symbolic group.
Our Lord sits on a throne, dressed in the tunica talaris and pallium, holding a book in His left hand, with the right lifted up.
This is the type that is found in countless basilicas in East and West from the fourth century to the seventh.
The group around him varies.
(End Part 2-a)