covered his face when he came from the Divine Presence. In Suger's glass at St. Denis, Christ, from the cross, raises the bandage from the eyes of the old law.
The Virgin and St. John, who are often found at the side of the cross, are to be looked upon not as mere historical personages, but as representatives of the Church and Synagogue.
There is much symbolism in the vine. The Fathers all compare the blood of Christ to the juice of the grape, and the Passion to the wine-press. The origin of the idea is in Isaiah. The blood of the grape is spoken of in many places in Scripture. Christ compares Himself to a Vine. The bunch of grapes carried by the two spies was universally looked upon in the middle ages as a symbol of Christ crucified. St. Austin admits it in the fourth century; after him Evagrius sees in the two bearers the Jew and the Christian. The one who goes first never sees the mysterious bunch of grapes, the other has it always before him. This idea has subsequently been much enlarged upon. Hence the old artists transformed the cross sometimes into a vine[1], sometimes into a wine-press. Hence too the bunch of grapes which is sometimes placed in the hand of the Virgin, and the idea found in several windows of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of angels holding cups under the wounds of the crucifix. The Virgin also has been compared to the promised land, from which the bunch of grapes was brought.
In No. 7. lions are introduced. The Lion of Judah is the symbol of the triumph of Christ, and of the Divine Power; in ecclesiastical writers, however, it is frequently taken with reference to the Resurrection. It is on account of its being symbolical of the Resurrection, that the lion is assigned to St. Mark as an emblem, St. Mark being called the historian of the Resurrection. This title he has probably obtained from his gospel being used on Easter-day. The reason why the lion is taken as a symbol of the Resurrection, is to be found in the fabulous history of the animal; according to which the whelp is born dead, and only receives life at the expiration of three days on being breathed on by its father.
In Nos. 9. and 10. of the diagram, Moses is represented with horns, but it seems that this type was not adopted by the majority of artists in the thirteenth century. The idea of the horns appears to have originated in the word cornuta, applied in the Vulgate (Exod. xxxiv. 29—35.) to Moses' face, or in some earlier tradition, which caused St. Jerome to adopt that word. The authors do not know a single Byzantine work representing Moses, in which the horns occur.
In a window at Lyons (Planches d' étude. No. 8.) the chaladrius or
- ↑ In a window of Lullingstone church, Kent, Christ is represented nailed to a vine in the form of a Y, rising from the middle of a square cistern, from one side of which water appears to flow. People of all ranks are approaching the cistern, and some are filling vessels from it. A monk is digging a channel to let the water flow freely through the land. One of the figures appears to call attention to the proceeding of the monk, and another is bending over the channel in order to fill a vessel from it. Above the vine is the text, (John vii. 37,) "If ani man thirst come to me and drinck." The date of this glass is about 1520.
