IMAGES
665
IMAGES
(Ex., XXV, 18-22; III Kings, vi, 23-S; viii, 6-7, etc.)-
But, except for the human heads of the cherubim
(Ezech., xli, 19; Ex., xxv, 20; the references to them
when combined seem to point irresistibly to some such
figures as the Assyrian winged bulls with human
heads), we read nothing of statues of men in the lawful
cult of the Old Testament. In this point at least the
Jew seems to have vmderstood the commandment to
forbid the making of such statues, though even this is
not clear in the earlier periods. The ephod was cer-
tainly once a statue of human form (Judges, viii, 27;
xvii, 5; I Kings, xix, 13, etc.), and what were the
theraphim (Judges, xvii, 5)? Both were used in or-
thodox worship.
During the Machabean period, however, there was a strong feeling against any kind of representation of living things. Josephus tells the story of Herod the Great: "Certain things were done by Herod against the law for which he was accused by Judas and Matthias. For the king made and set up over the great gate of the temple a sacred and very precious great golden eagle. But it is forbidden in the law to those who wish to live according to its precepts to think of setting up images, or to assist any one to con- secrate figures of living things. Therefore those wise men ordered the eagle to be destroyed" ("Antiq. Jud.", 1. XVII, c. vi, §2). So also in "De bello Jud.", 1. I, c. xxxiii (xxi), §2, he says: "It is unlawful to have in the temple images or pictures or any representation of a living thing "; and in his "Life": "that I might persuade them to destroy utterly the house built by Herod the tetrarch, because it had images of living things (fvMi' |Uo/)0<£s) ; since our laws forbid us to make such things" (Jos. vita, 12). The Jews at the risk of their lives persuaded Pilate to remove the .statues of Ca>sar set up among the standards of the army in Jeru- salem ["Ant. Jud.", 1. XVIII, c. iii (iv), 1; De bell. Jud., ix (xiv), 2-.3]; they implored Vitellius not even to carry such statues through their land [ibid., c. V (vii), 3]. It is well known how fiercely they resisted various attempts to set up idols of false gods in the temple (see Jeru.salem, II) ; though this would be an abomination to them even apart from their general horror of images of any kind. So it became the gen- eral conviction that Jews abhor any kind of statue or image. Tacitus says: "The Jews worship one God in their minds only. They hold those to be profane who make images of the gods with corruptible materials in the likeness of man; for he is supreme and eternal, neither changeable nor mortal. Therefore they allow no images {simulacra) in their cities or temples" (Hist., V, iv).
It is this uncompromising attitude in the late Jew- ish history, together with the apparently obvious meaning of the First Commandment, that are respon- sible for the common idea that Jews had no images. We have seen that this idea must be modified for earlier ages. Nor does it by any means obtain as a universal principle in later times. In spite of the iconoclastic ideas of the Jews of Palestine described by Josephus, in spite of their horror of anything of the nature of an idol in their temple, Jews, especially in the Diaspora, made no difficulty about embellishing their monuments with paintings even of the human form. There are a number of Jewish catacombs and cemeteries decorated with paintings representing birds, beasts, fishes, men, and women. Dom Henri Leclercq has described these catacombs in his "Manuel d'archeologie chretienne" (1,495-528). At Gamart, North of Carthage, is one whose tombs are adorned with carved ornaments of garlands and human figures; in one of the caves are pictures of a horseman and of another person holding a whip under a tree, another at Rome in the Vigna Randanini by the Appian Way has a painted ceiling of birds, fishes, and little winged himian figures around a centre-piece representing a woman, evidently a Victory, crowning a small figure
(reproduced op. cit., p. 515). At Palmyra is a Jewish
funeral chamber painted throughout with winged
female figures holding up round portraits; above is a
picture, quite in the late Roman style, of Achilles and
the daughters of Lycomedes (p. 515). Many other
examples (cf. op. cit.) of carved figures on sarcophagi
(see especially the cone on p. 522 where purely classical
figures support the seven-branched candlestick), wall-
paintings, and geometrical ornaments, all in the man-
ner of Porapeian decoration and the Christian cata-
combs, but from Jewish cemeteries, show that, in spite,
of their exclusive religion, the Jews in the first Chris-
tian centuries had submitted to the artistic influence
of their Roman neighbours. So that in this matter
when Christians began to decorate their catacombs
with holy pictures they did not thereby sever them-
selves from the custom of their Jewish forefathers.
(2) Christian Images Before the Eighth Cen- tury. — 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 paint- ings 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 31 May, 1578, an accident revealed part of the catacomb in the Via Salaria — and the investigation of their con- tents 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 archfeology. The idea that they must have feared the danger of idolatry among their new con- verts 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 prej- udiced against pictures, as we have seen; still less had the Gentile communities any such feeling. They ac- cepted 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, gar- lands of flowers, and symbolic ornament; pagan ceme- teries, 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 Ciood Shepherd, or seated between figures of saints (Kraus, op. cit., 2.36-40), 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 mythol- ogy 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 Testa- ment 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 ar- rival of the Wise Men, our Lord's baptism, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the marriage feast at Cana,
