IMAGES
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IMAGES
A late catacomb painting represents a cross richly
jewelled and adorned with flowers (Kraus, I, 133).
Constantine's Labarum at the battle of the Milvian
Bridge (312), and the story of the finding of the True
Cross by St. Helen, gave a fresh impulse to its worship.
It appears (without a figure) above the image of Christ
in the apsidal mosaic of St. Pudentiana at Rome, in
His nimbus constantly (Kraus, I, 182-3, etc.), in some
prominent place on an altar or throne (as the symbol
of Christ), in nearly all mosaics above the apse or in
the chief place of the first basilicas (St. Paul at Rome,
ibid., 183; St. Vitalis at Ravenna, Beissel, op. cit.,
p. 173, etc.). In Galla Placidia's chapel at Ravenna
Christ (as the Good Shepherd with His sheep) holds a
great cross in His left hand (Beissel, p. 151). The
cross had a special place as an object of worship. It
was the chief outward sign of the Faith, was treated
with more reverence than any picture ; ' ' worship of the
cross" (a-Tavpo\aTpela) was a special thing distinct
from image-worship, so that we find the milder Icon-
oclasts in after years making an exception for the
cross, still treating it with reverence, while they de-
stroyed pictures. A common argument of the image-
worshippers to their opponents was that since the
latter too worshipped the cross they were inconsistent
in refusing to worship other images (see Iconoclasm).
The cross further gained an important place in the consciousness of Christians from its use in ritual func- tions. To make the sign of the cross with the hand soon became the common form of professing the Faith or invoking a ble.ssing. The Canons of Hippolytus tell the Christian : ' ' Sign thy forehead with the sign of the cross in order to defeat Satan and to glory in thy Faith" (c. xxi.x, 247 — (Jabrol-Leclercq, "Monumenta ecclesite liturgica", Paris, 1900-2, I, p. 271; cf. Ter- tullian, "Adv. Marc", III, 22). People prayed with extended arms to represent a cross (Origen, " Horn, in Exod.", iii, 3; TertuUian, "de Orat.", 14). So also to make the sign of the cross over a person or thing be- came the usual gesture of blessing, consecrating, exor- cising (Lactantius, "Divin. Instit.", IV, 27), actual material crosses adorned the vessels used in the Lit- urgy, a cross was brought in procession and placed on the altar during Mass. The First Roman Ordo (sixth century) alludes to the cross-bearers {cruces por- tantes) in a procession (21, ed. Atehley, London, 1905, p. 146). .\s soon as people began to repre- sent scenes from the Passion they naturally included the chief event, and so we have the earliest pictures and carvings of the Crucifixion. The first men- tions of crucifixes are in the sixth century. A travel- ler in the reign of Jvistinian notices one he saw in a church at Gaza (Kraus, I, 173) ; in the West, Vcnan- tius Fortimatus saw a palla embroidered with a pic- ture of the Crucifixion at Tours, and Gregory of Tours refers to a crucifi.x at Narbonne (ibid.). For a long time Christ on the cross was always represented alive. The oldest crucifixes known are those on the wooden doors of St. Sabina at Rome and an ivory carving in the British Museum (Kraus, " Ueber Begriff . . . der christl. Archaologie", Freiburg im Br., 1879). Both are of the fifth century. A SjTiac manuscript of the sixth century contains a miniature representing the scene of the crucifixion (Kraus, "Christl. Kunst", I, 175). There are other such representations down to the seventh century, after which it becomes the usual custom to add the figure of our Lord to crosses; the crucifix is in possession everywhere. [See Stock- bauer, " Kunstgcschichte des Kreuzes ", Schaffhausen, 1870; Dobbert, " Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Crucifixes" in "Jahrb. der k. preussischen Kunst- samml.", I, 1880; L. Brehier, " Les origines du cruci- fix dans I'art chretien" in series "Science et reli- gion", no. 287 (2nd ed., Paris, 1905).]
The conclusion then is that the principle of adorning chapels and churches with pictures dates from the very earliest Christian times; centuries before the Icono-
clast troubles they were in use throughout Christen-
dom. So also all the old Christian Churches in East
and West use holy pictures constantly. The only
difference is that even before Iconoclasm there was in
the East a certain prejudice against solid statues.
This has been accentuated since the time of the Icono-
clast heresy (see below, section 5). But there are
traces of it before; it is shared by the old schismatical
(Nestorian and Monophysite) Churches that broke
away long before Iconoclasm. The principle in the
East was not universally accepted. The emperors
set up their statues at Constantinople without blame;
statues of religious purpose existed in the East before
the eighth century (see for instance the marfile Good
Shepherds from Thrace, Athens, and Sparta, the
Madonna and Child from Saloniki — Kraus, op. cit., I,
228, 234, etc.), but they are much rarer than in the
West. Images in the East were generally flat —
paintings, mosaics, bas-reliefs. The most zealous
Eastern defenders of the holy icons seem to have felt
that, however justifiable such flat representations may
be, there is something about a solid statue that makes
it suspiciously like an idol.
(3) The Venbr.ition of Images. — Distinct from the admission of images is the question of the way they are treated. What signs of reverence, if any, did the first Christians give to the images in their cata- combs and churches? For the first period we have no information. There are so few references to images at all in the earliest Christian literature that we should hardly have suspected their ubiquitous presence were they not actually there in the catacombs as the most convincing argument. But these catacomb paintings tell us nothing about how they were treated. We may take it for granted, on the one hand, that the first Christians understood quite well that paintings may not have any share in the adoration due to God alone. Their monotheism, their insistence on the fact that they serve only one almighty unseen God, their horror of the idolatry of their neighbours, the torture and death that their martyrs suffered rather than lay a grain of incense before the statue of the emperor's numen are enough to convince us that they were not setting up rows of idols of their own. On the other hand, the place of honour they give to their symbols and pictures, the care with which they decorate them argue that they treated representations of their most sacred beliefs with at least decent reverence. It is from this reverence that the whole tradition of vener- ating holy images gradually and naturally developed. After the time of Constantine it is still mainly by con- jecture that we are able to deduce the way these miages were treated. The etiquette of the Byzantine court gradually evolved elaborate forms of respect, not only for the person of Ca-sar but even for his statues and symbols. Philostorgius (who was an Iconoclast long before the eighth century) says that in the fourth century the Christian Roman citizens in the East of- fered gifts, incense, even prayers ( !) to the statues of the emperor (Hist, eccl., II, 17). It would be natural that people who bowed to, kissed, incensed the impe- rial eagles and images of Caesar (with no suspicion of anything like idolatry), who paid elaborate reverence to an empty throne as his symbol, should give the same signs to the cross, the images of Christ, and the altar. So in the first Byzantine centuries there grew up tradi- tions of respect that gradually became fixed, as does all ceremonial. Such practices spread in some meas- ure to Rome and the West, but their home was the Court at Constantinople. Long afterwards the Frankish bishops in the eighth century were still un- able to understand forms that in the East were natural and obvious, but to Germans seemed degrading and servile (Synod of Frankfort, 794 — see Iconoclasm, IV). It is significant too that, although Rome and Constantinople agree entirely as to the principle of honouring holy images with signs of reverence, the
