Bible of a symbolical character were constantly repeated. Such were Noah in the attitude of prayer receiving the dove into his breast, Jonah rescued from the fish's mouth, Moses striking the rock, St. Peter with the wand of power, the three children, Daniel in the lions' den, the Good Shepherd, the dove of peace, the anchor of hope, the crown of martyrdom, the palm of victory, the ship struggling through the waves to a distant haven, the horse bounding onwards to the goal. All of these were manifestly symbolical, and were in no degree the objects of reverence or worship.

When, however, the first purity of the Christian Church was dimmed, and when the decomposition of the Roman empire and the invasion of the barbarians overcast the civilisation of Europe, the character of art was speedily changed, and though many of the symbolical representations still continued, there was manifested by the artists a constantly increasing tendency to represent directly the object of their worship, and by the people to attach a peculiar sanctity to the image.

Of all the forms of anthropomorphism that are displayed in Catholic art, there is probably none which a Protestant deems so repulsive as the portraits of the First Person of the Trinity, that are now so common. It is, however, a very remarkble fact, which has been established chiefly by the researches of some French archæologists in the present cen

in the act of attacking a serpent. The passage in the Psalms, about 'the hart panting for the waters,' was mixed up with this symbol. In the middle ages, stags were invested with a kind of prophetic power. See also Ciampini, De Sacris Edificiis (Roma), p. 44; and the very curious chapter in Arringhi, Roma Subterranea, tom. ii. pp. 602-606. The stag was supposed to dread the thunder so much, that through terror it often brought forth its young prematurely; and this was associated with the passage, 'The voice of thy thunder has made me afraid.'

tury, that these portraits are all comparatively modern, and that the period in which the superstition of Europe was most profound, was precisely that in which they had no ex istence.1 In an age when the religious realisations of Christendom were habitually expressed by visible representa tions-when the nature of a spirit was so inadequately conceived that artists never for a moment shrank from representing purely spiritual beings-and when that instinctive reverence which makes men recoil from certain objects as too solemn and sublime to be treated, was almost absolutely unknown-we do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father. Scenes indeed in which He acted were frequently depicted, but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to Him in the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning Adam and Eve to labour, speaking with Noah, arresting the arm of Abraham, or giving the law to Moses." With the exception of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator. At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter, would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject; and Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influ

1 This subject has been briefly noticed by Raoul-Rochette in his Discours sur l'Art du Christianisme (1834), p. 7; and by Maury, Légendes Pieuses; but the full examination of it was reserved for M. Didron, in his great work, Iconographie Chrétienne, Hist. de Dieu (Paris, 1843), one of the most important contributions ever made to Christian archæology. See, too, Emeric David, Hist. de la Peinture au Moyen Age, pp. 19–21.

2 Didron, pp. 177–182.

ence over Christian art, and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and twelfth centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to materialise every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain of the senses. This tendency, unchecked by any sense of grotesqueness or irreverence, was shown with equal force in sculpture, painting, and legends; and all the old landmarks and distinctions that had been made between the orthodox uses of pictures and idolatry had been virtually swept away by the resistless desire to form an image of everything that was worshipped, and to attach to that image something of the sanctity of its object. Yet amid all this no one thought of representing the Supreme Being. In that condition of society men desired a human god, and they consequently concentrated their attention exclusively upon the Second Person of the Trinity or upon the saints, and suffered the great conception of the Father to become practically obsolete. It continued of course in creeds and in theological treatises, but it was a void and sterile abstraction, which had no place among the realisations and no influence on the emotions of mankind. men turned away from the Second Person of the Trinity, it was only to bestow their devotions upon saints or martyrs. With the exception, I believe, of a single manuscript of the ninth century,' there was no portrait of the Father till the twelfth century; and it was only in the fourteenth century, when the revival of learning had become marked, that these

1

1 Raoul-Rochette, Discours sur les Types de l'Art Chrétien, p. 71.

If

portraits became common. From that time to the age of Raphael the steady tendency of art is to give an ever-increasing preeminence to the Father. At first His position in painting and sculpture had been a subordinate one, and He was only represented in the least attractive occupations," and commonly, through a desire to represent the coeternity of the Persons of the Trinity, of the same age as His Son. Gradually, however, after the fourteenth century, we find the Father represented in every painting as older, more venerable, and more prominent, until at last He became the central and commanding figure,' exciting the highest degree of reverence, and commonly represented in different countries according to their ideal of greatness. In Italy, Spain, and the ultramontane monasteries of France, He was usually represented as a Pope; in Germany as an Emperor; in England and, for the most part, in France as a King.

In a condition of thought in which the Deity was only realised in the form of man, it was extremely natural that the number of divinities should be multiplied. The chasm between the two natures was entirely unfelt, and something of

1 Didron, pp. 227-230.

2 See this fact worked out in detail in Didron.

'On peut donc relativement à Dieu le Père partager le moyen âge en deux périodes. Dans la première, qui est antérieure au XIVe siècle, la figure du Père se confond avec celle du Fils; c'est le Fils qui est tout-puissant et qui fait son Père à son image et ressemblance. Dans la seconde période, après le XIIIe siècle, jusqu'au XVIo, Jésus-Christ perd sa force d'assimilation iconographique et se laisse vaincre par son Père. C'est au tour du Fils à se revêtir des traits du Père, à vieillir et rider comme lui. Enfin, depuis les premiers siècles du Christianisme jusqu'à nos jours nous voyons le Père croître en importance. Son portrait, d'abord interdit par les Gnostiques, se montre timidement ensuite et comme déguisé sous la figure de son Fils. Puis il rejette tout accoutrement étranger et prend une figure spéciale; puis par Raphaël et enfin par l'Anglais Martin, il gagne une grave et une admirable physionomie qui n'appartient qu'à lui.' (Didron, p. 226.)

the Divine character was naturally reflected upon those who were most eminent in the Church. The most remarkable instance of this polytheistic tendency was displayed in the deification of the Virgin.

A conception of a divine person or manifestation of the female sex had been one of the notions of the old Jewish Cabalists; and in the first century Simon Magus had led about with him a woman named Helena, who, according to the Catholics, was simply his mistress, but whom he proclaimed to be the incarnation of the Divine Thought.' This notion, under a great many different forms, was diffused through almost all the sects of the Gnostics. The Supreme Being, whom they very jealously distinguished from and usually opposed to the God of the Jews," they termed 'The Unknown Father,' and they regarded Him as directly inaccessible to human knowledge, but as revealed in part by cer

1 See on this subject Franck, Sur la Kabbale; Maury, Croyances et Légendes d'Antiquité (1863), p. 338; and especially Beausobre, Hist. du Manichéisme (1734), tom. i. pp. 35-37. Justyn Martyr, Tertullian, Irenæus, Epiphanius, and several other Fathers, notice the worship of Helena. According to them, Simon proclaimed that the angels in heaven made war on account of her beauty, and that the Evil One had made her prisoner to prevent her return to heaven, from which she had strayed. There is some reason to think that all

this was an allegory of the soul.

2 Most of the Gnostics regarded the God of the Jews or the Demiurge as an imperfect spirit presiding over an imperfect moral system. Many, however, regarded the Jewish religion as the work of the principle of Evil-the god of matter; and the Cainites made everyone who had opposed it the object of reverence, while the Ophites actually worshipped the serpent. We have, perhaps, a partial explanation of the reverence many of the Gnostics had for the serpent in the fact that this animal, which in Christianity represents the principle of Evil, had a very different position in ancient symbolism. It was the general emblem of healing (because it changes its skin), and as such appears in the statues of Esculapius and Isis, and it was also constantly adopted as a representative animal. Thus in the Mithraic groups, that are so common in later Roman sculpture, the serpent and the dog represent all living creatures. A serpent with a hawk's head was an old Egyptian symbol of a good genius.