ECCLESIASTICAL
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ECCLESIASTICAL
style, and claims for it especially the creation of what
he calls the " continuous" method of composition, i. e.
a method by which several successive stages of the
same history are depicted together in a single painting.
Further, he contends that this Roman style was
a<lopted by the first Christian artists and that, though
obscured and weakened, it pervaded the Roman world
and maintained its identity throughout the Middle
Ages, until eventually it quickened again into fuller
life under the stimulus of the Renaissance. This view,
an exaggeration of the Romanist hypothesis which
long held the field, has been severely criticized by
many competent authorities and notably by Strzy-
gowski ("Orient oder Rom", 1901, and " Kleinasien ",
1903), who attributes the predominant influence in the
development of Christian art to the recrudescence of
purely Oriental feeling. This, as he maintains, had
always survived at Byzantium, Antioch, and Alexan-
ilria, and it became operative once more when the
Ora^co-Roman artistic tradition at Rome had ex-
hausted itself after the effort of a few centuries.
Though Strzygowski may go too far when he claims
that even the art of the Romanized provinces like
Gaul came from the East direct and not through
Rome, it seems highly probable that his contention is
in substance accurate enough. It is significant that
Professor Andre Michel in the monumental " Histoire
de I'Art" (1905 — ) distinctly lends his support to the
theory that the Christian art of the Middle Ages was
Byzantine rather than Roman in its origin. To Rome
no doubt must be assigned the prevalence of the basil-
ica type of church and the first effective conception of
the po-ssibiUties of stone vaulting. But the transfer-
ence of the seat of government by Honorius in 40-1
from Rome to Ravenna and the confusion that arose
in the Western Roman Empire, had far-reaching conse-
quences upon the development of art. If Rome was at
all times the seat of the papacy, the vicars of Christ
had not at tliis early date acquired any preponderat-
ing influence in the social and civil affairs of the West-
ern world, wliile more than a hundred years after tliis,
beginning with the seventh century, no less than tliir-
teen pontiffs who occupietl in succession the chair of
.St. Peter were of Greek or SjTian origin. But what is
Ijerhaps most important of aU, the Latin stock who
occupied what was once the great city, but what now
liecame only a provincial town, were morally and intel-
lectually effete. The motive power for a new develop-
ment was to come from outside. The impetuous
energy of the Teutonic tribes of the North was full of
latent possibilities for the arts of peace, when that
energy was once diverted from the strenuous occupa-
tions of a time of war. Once again " Graicia capta
ferum victorem cepit"; but it was Greece enriched
this time with the inheritance of Antioch, Ephesus, and
.\lexandria, while the culture that now travelled west
and north found ultimately a more responsive soil
than it had ever met with in Latium. In its adoption
by Goths, Franks, and ,Saxons the art of Byzantium
lost its rigidity, and something of its formalism. It
was a living germ which soon developed an indepen-
dent growth, and long before the Renaissance once
mure directed the mind.s of men to classic models, not
only architecture and sculpture, but the arts of the
painter, the iron-worker, the goldsmith, and the glass-
founder were full of vigorous life and promise
throughout all Western Europe.
The earliest specimens of decoration employed for a Christian purpo.se are found in the Roman catacombs. In the most ancient examples of all, the private cham- bers used for Christian interment in the first and sec- ond centuries, there is decoration indeed, but it is only in a negative sense that it can be called Christian art, for while the al)undant frescoes seen in the cemetery of Doniitilla and notably in the cubiculum of Amplia- tus exclude such pagan elements as would be un- seemly, the character of the painting is in every
respect the counterpart of the ornamentation of the
contemporary private houses buried at Pompeii.
There is nothing distinctively Christian. Perhaps the
frequent recurrence of the vine as a principal element
in the scheme of decoration may have been meant to
suggest the thought of Christ, the true vine, but even
tliis is doubtful. Symbolism occurs early, but it can
only be recognized with confidence in the more public
cemeteries of the second century, e. g. that of St. Cal-
listus; here, under the influence of the "Discipline of
the Secret", it is hardly wrong to recognize the true
beginnings of a distinctively Christian art. No doubt
this art in a most marked degree was imitative of the
more decent forms of pagan decoration familiar at the
period. It seems constantly to be forgotten by those
who discuss this subject that it was the deliberate ob-
ject of the early Cliristians, during the ages of suspicion
and persecution, to exclude from their places of sepul-
ture all that would by its conspicuousness or strange-
ness attract the notice of the casual pagan intruder.
No wontler that the theme of the Good Shepherd is
introduced again and again in the fresco decorations of
the early catacombs. This is no indication, as ration-
alist critics have sometimes pretended, of the survival
of an idolatrous mythology, but the very likeness of
the beardless tiood Shepherd to the type of the pagan
Hermes Kriophorus — a Ukeness, however, which is
never so exact as to lead to real confusion — consti-
tuted its recommendation to those who wished to hide
their distinctive practices from the prying eyes of the
people around them. In the same way the Orante, or
praying figure, symbolical of the Church or the indi-
vidual soul, bore a general resemblance to the statues
of Pietas. familiar enough to the ordinary Roman citi-
zen, while the dove, which was to the Christian elo-
quent of the grace of the Holy Spirit, would not have
been distinguished by his pagan neighbour from the
birds consecrated to Venus. The deeper mysteries of
the Eucharist and of the other sacroments were still
more artfully veiled in the frescoes of tho.se early cen-
turies. No doubt the fish was an object familiar
enough in all kinds of pagan decoration, but that very
fact rendered it most suitable for the purpose of the
Cliristian when he wished to symbolize the marvellous
workings of Christ (IrjcroOs Xpiarbs Qeov Tios Suriip =
IXeX-, the fish) in the waters of baptism. What again
was more common in decoration than some form of
banqueting scene — a theme also often utilized by the
worshippers of Mithra — but these feasts depicted upon
the walls of a sepulchral chamber had a far other and
deeper significance for the Christian, who by some
minute sign, the little cross, it may be, impressed upon
the loaves, or the fishes which decked the frugal board,
was quick to discern the reference to the life-giving
mystery of the Blessed Eucharist. There are also
human figures and Biblical scenes, especially those con-
nected with the liturgy for the departed — for example,
the miraculous restorations of Jonah and Daniel and
Lazarus — and in one or two isolated instances we may
perhaps recognize a presentment of the Madonna; but
the reference is always crj^jtic and only interpretable
by the initiated. It was under these circumstances
that the instinct of religious symbolism was developed
when the art of the Church was yet in its infancy, but
the tradition thus created has never departed from
true religious art throughout the ages.
With the triumph of the Church under Constantine the necessity for the sedulous hiding of the mysteries of the Faith in large measure disappeared. From a. d. 313 to the end of the fifth century was a period of trans- formation and development in Christian art, and it may be conspicuously recognized upon the walls of the Roman catacombs. Biblical scenes abound, and the figure of Christ, no longer so frequently as the beardless Good Shepherd, but crowned with a nimbus and sitting or standing in the attitude of authority, is fearlessly introduced. The nimbus is also extended to
