Understanding Early Christian Art (Understanding the Ancient World) [2 ed.] 9781032105505, 9781032105482, 9781003216094, 103210550X

Citation preview

Understanding Early Christian Art

Surveying the content and character of early Christian iconography from the third to the sixth century CE, this substantially revised and updated new edition of Understanding Early Christian Art makes the critical tools of art historians accessible to students. It opens by discussing a series of questions pertaining to the evidence itself and how scholars through the centuries have regarded this material as expressing and transmitting aspects of the developing faith and practice of early adherents of Christianity. It considers possible sources for the various motifs and the complex relationship between words and images, as well as the importance of studying visual and material culture alongside theological and liturgical texts. Rather than organising surviving examples by medium or chronology, the chapters categorise the evidence according to their general iconographic type, such as generic symbols, biblical narratives, and portraits. Each chapter takes up important questions of visual culture, formal style, and the ways in which the iconography is distinct from or shows parallels with contemporary documentary sources like sermons, exegetical works, catechetical lectures, or dogmatic treatises. Concluding with a discussion of the late-emerging depictions of Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, it remains a valuable guide to comprehending the complex theology, history, and context of Christian art. Augmented by over 140 full-colour images, accompanied by parallel text, the interdisciplinary and boundary-breaking approach taken in this extensively revised edition of Understanding Early Christian Art enables students and scholars in fields such as religion and art history to further their understanding and knowledge of the art of the early Christian era. Robin M. Jensen is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where she is a fellow of the Medieval Institute and holds concurrent appointments in the Departments of Art History and Classics. Her published works explore the intersection of early Christian art, ecclesial architecture, liturgy, and theological discourse. Her most recent publication is From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Art in Late Antiquity (2022), and she co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art (2018).

Understanding the Ancient World

Understanding Greek Religion Jennifer Larson Understanding Greek Tragic Theatre Second edition Rush Rehm Understanding Latin Literature Second edition Susanna Morton Braund Understanding Greek Warfare Matthew A. Sears Understanding Early Christian Art Second edition Robin M. Jensen

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/classicalstudies/series/UAW

Understanding Early Christian Art Second Edition

Robin M. Jensen

Cover image: Apse mosaic, Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, ca. 405 (with 16th century restorations). Photo credit: Jozef Sedmak/Alamy Stock Photo. Second edition published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Robin M. Jensen The right of Robin M. Jensen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge by 2000 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jensen, Robin Margaret, 1952– author. Title: Understanding early Christian art / Robin M. Jensen. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Understanding the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023008635 (print) | LCCN 2023008636 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032105505 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032105482 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003216094 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Christian art and symbolism—To 500. | Art, Early Christian. Classification: LCC N7832 .J46 2023 (print) | LCC N7832 (ebook) | DDC 704.9/48209015—dc23/eng/20230602 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023008635 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023008636 ISBN: 978-1-032-10550-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-10548-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-21609-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Dedication List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface 1

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Questions

viii ix xvi xviii 1

Preliminary Considerations  3 Chronology 3 Geographical and Physical Context, Media, and Materials  5 Subjects: Characters and Contents  10 Artistic Style and Technique  15 Workshops and Clients  19 The Myth of Early Christian Aniconism  22 Pagan Prototypes: Syncretism or Adaptation?  25 Text and Image  31 Conclusion 34 2

Early Christian Symbols Birds 44 Doves 45 Peacocks 45 The Phoenix  47 Anchors and Boats  47 Grapevines and Vintaging  49 Fish and Fishers  52 The Banquet  56 Praying Figures  62 The Shepherd and His Flock  65 Conclusion 72

43

vi  Contents 3

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

82

The Prominence of Hebrew Scripture Subjects  86 A Jewish Source Hypothesis  87 Prayers for the Dead as the Key to the Iconography  88 The Social Context as Underlying the Subject Selection  89 Visual Exegesis, Part 1: Prophecy and Fulfilment  90 The Hospitality of Abraham  91 The Three Hebrew Youths  95 The Jonah Cycle  100 Visual Exegesis, Part 2: Sacramental Symbolism  104 Moses Parting the Sea and Striking the Rock  105 The Woman at the Well  110 Conclusion 113 4

From Christ the Miracle Worker and Teacher to Christ the King and Lawgiver

120

Jesus as Wonderworker, Divine Healer, and Life Restorer  121 Jesus the Wonderworker  122 Jesus the Magician?  126 Jesus’s Staff  128 Jesus the Divine Healer  131 The Imposition of Hands  131 The Diminutive Recipients  133 Jesus the Revivifier  136 Jesus the Teacher  138 The Enthroned God  141 The Adoration of the Magi  144 Jesus Entering Jerusalem  146 Jesus Giving the Law  148 Conclusion 154 5

Depicting the Divine: Jesus and the Holy Trinity Prototypes for an Image of Christ  161 Orpheus 161 Helios/Sol Invictus  165 The Bearded God  169 Variations on a Theme  170 The Christological Implications of Jesus’s Depictions  175 The Trinity—God the Father and the Holy Spirit  180 The Symbolic Trinity  181 The Manus Dei and the Dove  183

160

Contents vii The Anthropomorphic Trinity  184 From Narrative Scenes to Holy Portraits  187 The True Image  191 Conclusion 194 6

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

200

Cross Shapes  203 Possible Early Cross Figures  203 Papyrus Staurograms  205 Earliest Crucifixion Depictions  205 The Alexamenos Graffito  206 Gems With Crucifixion Scenes  207 Fourth-Century Passion Sarcophagi  210 Fifth-Century Crucifixion Images  214 Examples From the Sixth Century and Later  218 Pilgrimage Tokens  221 Reliquaries 222 Depictions of Jesus’s Resurrection  223 Images of the Ascension  230 Conclusion 233 Bibliography239 Index of Subjects 259 Index of Modern Authors (excluding footnotes) 264 Index of Ancient Authors 265

Dedication

For Libby and Bobby

Figures

1.1 Noah in the ark, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, third century. 1.2 Reconstruction of the baptistery from the Christian House Church at Dura-Europos, Syria, 240s. 1.3 Hypogeum in the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 1.4 Single register sarcophagus of Sabinus, ca. 300–24. Now in the Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano. 1.5 Jonah at rest, pavement Aquileia Pavement mosaic, early fourth-century Christian basilica at Aquileia (Italy). 1.6 Christian gold glass, with miracles of Christ and Old Testament figures. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. 1.7 Putto and Psyche picking flowers, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. 1.8 Banquet scene, Catacomb of Callixtus. 1.9 Sarcophagus of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, ca. 290–300. 1.10 Ceiling painting from Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus. 1.11 Jesus raising Lazarus, third-century wall painting from the Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. 1.12 Compartment in the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, with adoration of the magi, Moses striking the rock, Noah, and Jonah. 1.13 Sarcophagus of Adelphia, ca. 340 CE, in the Museo Archeologico, Syracuse. 1.14 Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (plaster cast), 359, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 1.15 Strigillated Christian sarcophagus, fourth century. Now in the Catalonia Archeological Museum, Spain. 1.16 Grave marker for Priscus, fourth century. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Baths of Diocletian. 1.17 Putti harvesting, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. 1.18 Pottery lamp with shepherd. Now in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin. 1.19 Sarcophagus from the Via Salaria, ca. 260–300. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 1.20 Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb, interior of a chambers N and O, fourth century, Rome.

2 4 6 7 9 10 11 12 12 14 15 16 18 18 19 21 26 27 28 29

x  Figures 1.21 Marble sarcophagus with scenes from the myth of Selene and Endymion, early third century, Rome. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 2.1 Grave marker, from the cloister of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Rome. 2.2 Christian epitaph with Noah. Now in the the Museo Nazionale Romano, Baths of Diocletian. 2.3 Doves with garland, Catacomb of Panfilo, Rome. 2.4 Peacock from the cubicle of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome. 2.5 Phoenix fifth-century mosaic from the Naples Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte. 2.6 Anchor epitaph from the Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome. 2.7 Epitaph of Firmia Victoria with ship and lighthouse. Now in the Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano, fourth century. 2.8 Detail of end panel of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus showing putti harvesting grapes. 2.9 Early Christian ring with engraved fish. Now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. 2.10 Licinia Amias’s grave slab, third century. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Baths of Diocletian. 2.11 Banquet scene, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 2.12 Banquet scene on an early Christian sarcophagus, from the Via Tiburtina, Rome. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alla Terme. 2.13 Orant and celebrant at a tripod table, from the Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. 2.14 Banquet with servants Irene and Agape, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 2.15 Vibia’s Paradisical banquet, from the Hypogeum of Vibia, Rome. 2.16 Orant on slab with dove and christogram, Rome. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano. 2.17 Pietas on an Augustan era Roman coin, with the reverse legend PIETAS AUGG. 2.18 Orant from the Chamber of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome. 2.19 Good Shepherd from the Coemeterium Maius, Rome. 2.20 Intaglio ring with the Good Shepherd, Rome, fourth century. Now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, gift of Mrs. Saidie A. May. 2.21 The Good Shepherd, statuette, ca. 280–90, John H. Severance Fund, Cleveland Museum of Art. 2.22 Hermes Criophorus. Parian marble statue, Roman copy of an early fifth-century BCE Greek original by Kalamis. Now in the Museo Barracco, Rome. 2.23 Lunette mosaic, Good Shepherd, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, first half, fifth century. 3.1 Magi and Daniel, early fourth-century Christian sarcophagus from the cemetery of St. Agnes, Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano.

30 44 45 46 46 48 49 50 50 53 54 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 66 66 67 68 72 83

Figures xi 3.2 Painting from the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 3.3 Abraham and Isaac on gold glass, fourth century. Now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. 3.4 Baptism of Jesus, with fisher and paralytic, Catacomb of Callixtus, Crypt of Lucina, Rome. 3.5 Susanna and the Elders, detail from a sarcophagus. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2480. 3.6 Hospitality of Abraham Via Latina, from the Catacomb of Dino Compagni, Rome. 3.7 Hospitality of Abraham from the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome ca. 435. 3.8 Sanctuary mosaic of Abraham’s Hospitality and Offering of Isaac. Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 540. 3.9 Three Hebrew youths, catacomb Priscilla, Chamber of the Velata. 3.10 Noah and the three Hebrew youths on a fourth-century Christian sarcophagus now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 3.11 The three Hebrew youths on a lamp. Now in the Archeological Museum, Timgad. 3.12 Three Hebrew youths repudiating Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, Sarcophagus of Catervius, Tolentino (Italy). 3.13 Jonah cycle, with Jonah resting under the vine, Catacomb of the Vigna Massimo, Rome. 3.14 Gold glass with Jonah, fourth century. Now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. 3.15 Table base with Jonah swallowed and cast up by the big fish, Rome, early fourth century. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 3.16 Jonah sarcophagus, late third century, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 3.17 Moses striking the rock, Chamber of the Four Seasons, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 3.18 Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb, Rome. 3.19 Red Sea Sarcophagus, Arles. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2495. 3.20 Detail, Peter’s arrest and striking the rock, sarcophagus, from Arles sarcophagus. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, PAP 7400.2/6. 3.21 Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well, Catacomb of Dino Compagni, Rome, fourth century. 3.22 Wall painting, Woman at the Well, Dura-Europos baptistery. 3.23 Mosaic, Woman at the Well, Naples, Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, fifth century. 4.1 Miracle of the loaves, with the baptism of Jesus and Adam and Eve, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome.

83 84 85 85 92 93 95 96 97 98 99 101 102 103 103 106 107 107 109 110 111 112 123

xii  Figures 4.2 Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus sarcophagus. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo. 4.3 Sarcophagus with central scene of Jesus multiplying loaves and fish, first quarter fourth century. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 4.4 Jesus and Peter walking on the water. Wall painting from the Dura-Europos baptistery, mid-third century. 4.5 Jesus raising Lazarus, paralytic carrying his bed, adoration of the magi, baptism of Jesus, multiplication of loaves, Adam and Eve, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. 4.6 Sarcophagus with arrest of Peter and Jesus’s healing of paralytic and blind man, changing water to wine, and multiplying loaves, ca. 325–50, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 4.7 Asclepius, Roman copy of an early Hellenistic statue. Now in the Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini, Rome. 4.8 Jesus enthroned among healing scenes, below, three Hebrew youths and Jonah. Murano ivory diptych, fifth or early sixth century. Now in the Museo Nazionale, Ravenna. 4.9 Moses striking the rock, Jesus healing the woman with the haemorrhage, paralytic carrying his bed, Noah, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 4.10 Columnar sarcophagus of Agape and Crescentianus, Rome, ca. 330–60. Now in the Pio Cristiano Museo, Vatican. 4.11 Jesus’s baptism on a panel of the Rufus Probianus diptych, Rome or Milan, first quarter of the fifth century. Now in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin. 4.12 Sarcophagus with Jesus raising Lazarus and arrest of Peter, ca. 325–50. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 4.13 Resurrection of Lazarus on gold glass, fourth century, Rome. Now in the Vatican Museum. 4.14 Raising of Lazarus on the lid of a silver pyx, the Capsule of Brivio, early fifth century. Now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. 4.15 Jesus enthroned among his apostles, from the Crypt of the Mensores at the Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. 4.16 Jesus as teacher among his apostles, mosaic from the Sant’Aquilino Chapel, Milan, fourth century. 4.17 Tomb marker or sarcophagus fragment showing Jesus teaching and healing, ca. 290–300. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo. 4.18 Apse mosaic, Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, ca. 405 (with sixteenth-century restorations). 4.19 Adoration of the Magi, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome.

123 124 125 126

127 129 130 132 133

134 135 136 137 139 140 140 141 143

Figures xiii 4.20 Sarcophagus central scene of the paralytic’s healing at the pool of Bethesda. To the left Jesus healing two blind men and the haemorrhaging woman. On the right Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, Rome, ca. 375–400. Restored in the eighteenth century by B. Cavaceppi. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 4.21 Sarcophagus with Jesus giving the law (traditio legis) to Peter and Paul (and two apostles as witnesses) at the centre. To the far left, Jesus washes Peter’s feet; to the far right Jesus stands before Pilate. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique. FAN.92.00.2487. 4.22 Jesus raising the dead with adoration of the magi, fourth-century sarcophagus, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 4.23 Christ’s entry in to Jerusalem, from the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, early sixth century. Now in the Biblioteca Arcivescovile, Rossano, Italy. 4.24 Jesus giving the law (traditio legis) to Peter and Paul, dome mosaic, Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, Naples, early fifth century. 4.25 Jesus giving the law (traditio legis) to Peter and Paul on gold glass, Rome, fourth century. Now in the Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey. 4.26 Jesus giving the law (traditio legis) on the lid of the ivory casket found near Pula (or Samagher), Istria, early to mid-fifth century. Now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Venice. 4.27 Missorium of Theodosius I, replica in the Museo Nacionale de Arte Romano de Mérida. 5.1 Statue of Dionysus (Roman Bacchus), ca. 100–50, Roman. Now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. 5.2 Orpheus pavement mosaic, third century. Now in the National Museum of Damascus. 5.3 Orpheus, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. 5.4 Christ, or Good Shepherd, as Orpheus from the Catacomb of La Vigna Massimo, Rome. 5.5 David depicted in the guise of Orpheus, from a synagogue in Gaza, ca. 508. Now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 5.6 Christ in the guise of Sol with Jonah scenes, from the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. 5.7 Christ in the guise of Sol Invictus, vault mosaic from Mausoleum M, Vatican Necropolis (under St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome), late third or early fourth century. 5.8 Bronze statuette of Jupiter, Roman, second half second century CE. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Charles Engelhard Foundation Gift and Rogers Fund. 5.9 Apse mosaic, Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul (traditio legis), from the Mausoleum of Costanza, Rome, ca. 350.

143

144 145 147 149

150 151 152 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 170 171

xiv  Figures 5.10 Apse mosaic, Jesus giving the keys to Peter (traditio clavium), from the Mausoleum of Costanza, Rome, ca. 350. 5.11 Apse mosaic, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 540. 5.12 Medallion mosaic portrait of Christ from the triumphal arch, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 540. 5.13 Mosaic panel of Jesus calling the apostles from their nets. Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late fifth century. 5.14 Jesus with Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross on the way to Golgotha, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late fifth century. 5.15 Dome mosaic of Jesus’s baptism, Neonian (Orthodox) Baptistery, Ravenna, ca. mid-fifth century. 5.16 Dome mosaic, Arian baptistery, Ravenna, late fifth century. 5.17 Silver Paten with gemmed cross, Hand of God, and Holy Spirit Dove, from the Treasure of Canoscio, Museum of the Cathedral of Città di Castello, Umbria (Italy). 5.18 Mosaic, Albenga (Italy) baptistery, fifth century. 5.19 Dura-Europos Synagogue, vision of Ezekiel: the valley of dry bones, ca. 239 CE. 5.20 Double-register sarcophagus with depiction of the creation of Adam and Eve (top left), ca. 320. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, PAP 7400.1/5. 5.21 Double-register sarcophagus, Rome, with depiction of the creation of Adam and Eve, ca. 320–30. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 5.22 Bust portrait of Jesus with a beard, vault in the Catacomb of Commodilla, Rome, late fourth century. 5.23 Bowl base with Saints Peter and Paul flanking a column with the christogram, late fourth century. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 5.24 Peter and Paul on epitaph of the child Asellus, late fourth century, Rome. Now in the Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano. 5.25 Tapestry, Virgin Mary with Christ Child and archangels, sixth century, Egypt. Now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Bequest, 1967. 6.1 Abraham offering Isaac with Pilate. Detail from “Two Brothers” sarcophagus, Rome, mid-fourth century. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 6.2 Cross at Herculaneum, House of the Bicentenary. 6.3 Graffito from Rome, late second or early third century, showing Alexamenos worshipping a donkey-headed god on a crucifix. Now in the Museo Palatino, Rome. 6.4 The Constanza carnelian gemstone, engraved with a scene of Jesus, crucified among his apostles, mid-fourth century. Now in the British Museum, London.

171 172 173 176 176 178 179 182 183 184 185 185 188 189 190 193 202 204 206 208

Figures xv 6.5 Bloodstone amulet engraved with a crucifixion figure. Now in the British Museum, London. 6.6 Passion sarcophagus from the Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome, mid-fourth century. Central image of the christogram mounted on an empty cross. To the left scenes of Simon carrying the cross and Jesus crowned; to the right Jesus before Pilate. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 6.7 Passion sarcophagus with Cain and Abel on the left, Job and wife, arrest of Peter and Paul, Rome, mid-fourth century. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. 6.8 Sarcophagus with central christogram mounted on a cross flanked by apostles, mid-fourth century. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2483. 6.9 Sarcophagus with central image of Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul. To the left the arrest of Peter; to the right Jesus before Pilate, third quarter fourth century. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2487. 6.10 Glass paten, fourth century. Now in the Archaeological Museum, Linares, Jaen Province (Spain). 6.11 The Brescia Casket (lid), ivory, from northern Italy (perhaps Milan), ca. 380s. Now in the Brescia Museo Civico dell’Eta Cristiana. 6.12 Mosaic panel, right nave wall, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late fifth century. 6.13 Ivory plaques with scenes from Christ’s Passion and Resurrection (the “Maskell Casket”), ca. 420–30, from northern Italy or Rome. Now in the British Museum, London. 6.14 Crucifixion scene from a wooden panel on the door of the Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, ca. 432. 6.15 Crucifixion (above) and scene of the empty tomb (below), Rabbula Gospels, Syria, ca. 586, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence. 6.16 Pilgrim’s ampulla with scenes of the crucifixion (front) and empty tomb (back), sixth century, tin-lead alloy. 6.17 Resurrection and three Marys at the tomb, Ivory diptych from Rome, ca. 400. Now in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan. 6.18 Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, ivory probably from Milan or Rome, ca, 400. Now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. 6.19 Marble reliquary of SS. Julittta and Quiricus, side with resurrection and ascension. Ravenna, now in the Museo Arcivescovile. 6.20 Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, mosaic panel showing women arriving at the empty tomb. 6.21 Wooden door panel with scene of Jesus’s ascension, from the Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, ca. 432. 6.22 Ascension, Rabbula Gospels, Syria, ca. 586, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence.

209

211 211 212

213 214 215 215 216 218 220 222 226 227 228 229 231 232

Acknowledgements

This work, a substantial rewrite of my earlier book of the same title, owes much to the prompting of Amy Davis-Poynter of Routledge Press, who regularly suggested that I should undertake it. In the midst of many other projects, I was reluctant to turn back to something I had written decades earlier at the beginning of my academic career, but the time was finally right and I am grateful for her persistence. Along with Amy, I have to thank Marcia Adams, who most ably saw this book through the editorial and production process. I also need to express my appreciation to many wonderful colleagues in the US and abroad who have been intellectual partners, collaborators, advisers, and trusted friends. Although there are too many to mention individually, most of them appear in this bibliography and I hope that when they find their work mentioned, they will recognise how much they contributed to my research. I am particularly thankful for the support and advice of my friends at the International Catacomb Society, the Notre Dame Department of Theology, the Vanderbilt University Department of Art History, the North American Patristics Society, the Society of Biblical Literature’s section on Art and Religion in Antiquity, and the Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. I am also grateful for the generosity of those individuals and institutions who have given me access to their materials and collections, including Nancy Forest-Flier, Arthur Urbano the Musée d’Arles Antique, the Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano Museum, the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome. I have been particularly blessed by former students who have carried on the work of interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of art history, theology, the history of Christianity, and liturgical studies, especially Lee Jefferson, Mark Ellison, and Jennifer Awes Freeman. It makes me happy to know that they will be among those training the next generation of scholars in the field along with my younger American colleagues, Sean Leatherbury, Danielle Joyner, Michael Peppard, Jacob Latham, Arthur Urbano, Catherine Marsengill, Nathan Dennis, and Felicity Harley-McGowan (who’s actually an Australian). Looking back to my own student days, I owe much to the pioneering work of Mary Charles-Murray,

Acknowledgements xvii Paul Corby Finney, Margaret Miles and, more recently, Thomas Mathews, Herbert Kessler, Jutta Dresken-Weiland, and Jaś Elsner. I am also grateful for the mentorship of my teacher, Richard Brilliant, esteemed colleagues at the Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, and the continuing friendship and advice of my dear friend, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. Several individuals provided valuable help in the final stages of the preparation of the manuscript. Bette VanDinther, Kelsi Ray, and Maura Shea offered their skills, editing, proof-reading, and indexing the text. I wish to add a special note of appreciation for the financial support of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame, which underwrote the cost of the full-colour images in this volume. Finally, I must thank my husband, J. Patout Burns, for his unfailing support for my work, listening ear as I worked out my ideas, patient assistance with everything from computer glitches to travel disasters, and in general just being the best partner imaginable.

Preface

I started work on the first version of this book more than 20 years ago, fresh out of graduate school and beginning my first teaching position at a theological seminary. Convinced that studying ancient art objects or artefacts can enrich any study of history and bring that history to life in a way that studying written documents alone cannot do, I wanted to share the ways that study of surviving examples of visual and physical remains offers an equally valuable testimony to the character of past religious practices and beliefs as the study of texts. Trained as an historian of Christianity as well as an art historian, I was particularly interested in integrating texts and images and was convinced that such integration adds depth and dimension to the writing of history. I never assumed that images and texts should be regarded as unrelated modes of expression, especially those that emerge within the same culture and time period. Through subsequent study of early Christian liturgy and ritual practices, I also began to see both of these modes of expression as evidence for the lived religion of a community and the individuals who belong to it. The surviving documents of early Christianity are more than dogmatic treatises that expound on the nature of the divine; they include prayers, homilies, catechetical lessons, devotional manuals, and moral teachings. They retell the ancient sacred stories and expound on their meaning. They give instructions about what to believe, how to live, what to value, and how to worship. The built spaces for worship and the artworks that adorned them, the decorated burial boxes and chambers that housed the dead, and the small personal objects worn on the body or used in the home perform these same functions. They offer pictorial interpretation to sacred stories, give visual expression to beliefs about the divine, and give physical shape and context to liturgical ceremonies; they reflect the group’s core values. Together, these different but related bodies of evidence reveal much more about the character of early Christianity than any of them separately do. Therefore, because of their interrelationship, one cannot treat the textual and material evidence separately or see their messages or purposes as necessarily different, much less conflicting. Although verbal and visual idioms are not equivalent, studies of the various genres of religious art should not be disconnected from studies of the different types of theological writing. In fact, a study of preached homilies or liturgical prayers suggest clear parallels with surviving pictorial compositions.

Preface xix Many early Christian visual metaphors have direct parallels in early Christian literature, especially when they derive from roughly the same general place and time. This is not surprising; the people that heard sermons, or offered prayers, or participated in religious ceremonies also viewed images. Over the last two decades, I have learned much and even changed my mind on certain points that I made in the first version of this work. A multitude of new and excellent studies have been written, and I have been blessed to have brilliant colleagues who specialise in art history; the history of Christian thought, archaeology, and liturgy; Roman cultural and social history; and the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world. I have become a more cautious scholar, perhaps making fewer lofty assertions, but my core belief that the study of early Christian art must be an interdisciplinary one has never wavered. I expect that most readers probably share my belief in the benefits of interdisciplinary study. Yet, they are aware, as I am, that the distinct methods and objective goals of text historians and art historians sometimes hamper this work. One reason for this difficulty is that the training of specialists and the practical need for professional focus often has led to an unfortunate but understandable estrangement between the two scholarly worlds and has divided the types of evidence between them rather than considering them in tandem. Separate analyses of material objects and ancient texts thereby miss crucial parallels and relationships between and among the historical remains that would aid in the interpretation of both. Such a division often arises because scholars from one field rarely master the vocabulary, tools, expertise, or techniques of research belonging to the other. Moreover, individual efforts to bring the two fields into dialogue can be fraught with professional risk; stepping over disciplinary lines and entering another’s field—often as interested and eager but sometimes hapless amateurs—can lead to scorching critique. Scholars in each of these fields (art history and intellectual history) may also resist interlopers. While there are many exceptions to this, text historians may worry about the degree of subjectivity brought to the examination of artistic evidence, which they might regard as less accessible or directly communicative than the written documents. Unfortunately, most art objects lack captions or attached written explanations and, as such, can seem frustratingly ambiguous or dauntingly mysterious. For different reasons, art historians often worry about over-reliance by text historians on documentary evidence to interpret something essentially non-textual or to overly apply familiar theological categories as labels on artistic images. Those whose work begins with the images as primary resist turning to texts as an ancillary source for their analysis or interpretation. They justifiably value art objects for themselves and see them as independent witnesses to past believes and practices. Yet, stylistic and formal analysis alone can overlook the relevance of an image to belief systems or meanings they reflected and fostered. Thus, while many text-oriented historians find visual artworks beautiful, interesting, and even provocative, they may find themselves unable to interpret and therefore are inhibited from incorporating them into their studies. Even when they might wish to include illustrations in their books, they tend to safely

xx  Preface limit them to dust covers or occasional illustrations to support their arguments. Sometimes this unfortunately (and unwittingly) results in the artworks being treated as merely supplementary rather than as substantial testimonies in their own right. Similarly, when art historians treat material objects almost as autonomous monuments of culture, they may miss certain essential documentary sources that might correspond in time and place with the artworks they study. Theological arguments, religious practices, or exegetical methods those textual sources embodied would, if judiciously considered, offer context and meaning to those artworks. Added to the problem of training, a more vexing issue is that of inclination or interest. Scholars working in one field may overlook, or simply be uninterested in, questions that would occur to their colleagues in another discipline. While preoccupied with their own questions or scholarly agendas, they may miss something that appears to be blatantly obvious or tantalisingly curious from the vantage point of those others. Sometimes the subtle disparagement of images by many of those who come at history through texts or, equally, art historians’ concern that religious meanings might be unjustifiably imposed on their objects, arise from simple misunderstanding or lack of appreciation. These problems could be lessened by patient and generous interdisciplinary research and collaboration. Questions that arise in one field of study sometimes must be directed to another for reflection and analysis. This is particularly true for scholars engaged in the interpretation of art, in its meaning or significance for the social group or religious communities—something broadly called the “study of iconography.” Scholars who fit into this category do, in fact, work in the intersection between text and art history and have carved out a distinct field, although in most cases they began with the mastery of a “home discipline” and acquired a broad working knowledge of another. In my experience, a particularly persistent and problematic assertion that regularly arises in discussions of religious art is that religious pictures are the “Bible of the unlettered.” This idea originated in a letter from Pope Gregory the Great to a subordinate bishop of Marseilles around the beginning of the seventh century. Gregory had criticised the man for destroying pictures in his church lest they be inappropriately venerated and, in their defence, he gave this justification, that “the church should provide pictures for the sake of those who are illiterate who may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books.”1 This idea, that pictorial images are a good and necessary thing for those who have no better way to learn the stories or teachings of the faith, sounds well-meaning. However, it implies that visual art is, firstly, beholden to verbal expression and, secondly, that images are only useful for children or the uneducated, whereas theological treatises, commentaries, and verbal arguments contain the meat of adult intellectual development and spiritual formation. The function of art in religious contexts is thus unfortunately judged to be primarily didactic and as such dependent on and interpretive of what can be found in a more sophisticated and appropriate written form elsewhere. This, moreover, is assumed about religious traditions whose primary documents are overwhelmingly visual.

Preface xxi To the contrary, visual art may actually be a refined and eloquent mode of theological expression, even when it is not always regarded as beautiful according to some modern aesthetic criteria. However, understanding often depends on prior knowledge. For example, with regard to Christian art that depicts biblical stories, one must assume that viewers did not learn their stories from the pictures alone but had already heard them recounted and interpreted in sermons or catechetical lessons. Likewise, early Christian doctrines were not merely presented in erudite discourse; they were expounded in homilies, recited in liturgical formulae, and evoked in prayers or ritual actions that ordinary folks would have listened to, spoken, or performed. Viewers in the past, just as those in the present, could not fully appreciate the message or purpose of most of the surviving early Christian art objects without some instruction, and they were even expected to be familiar with the many layers of the faith tradition as it was passed down in different forms, whether homilies, liturgies, dogmatic writings, or pictures. Examining early Christian visual art in conjunction with the study of early Christian texts will show that a critical connection links these two bodies of material, particularly in the ways both use metaphors, types, or allegories as ways of indirectly conveying meaning. For this reason, the function of narrative subjects will be a primary focus of this work, especially when verbal and visual interpretations are found to be parallel. Christian art emerged and is first identified as a distinct category primarily through its depiction of biblical narrative scenes. In time, other subject matter developed, including sacred portraits, but the narratives basically were first. Whether the way a particular story is deployed in a homily or theological treatise can be transferred to explaining its place in a visual program is worth exploring, even if one cannot demonstrate some kind of strict and detailed relationship. Naturally, the ever-present problems of point of view (author vs. reader/artist vs. audience), transmission, and tradition limit firm pronouncements about how any extant text or art object might have been received by any particular person or group. Reconstructing the responses of readers or the significance of texts through tradition is a thorny matter, and text historians may well wish to avoid the equally vexing problem of theorising about the perspective of an ancient viewer, a perspective that may seem even more inaccessible than that of the ancient reader. Looking at art has always been a process conditioned first by the particular situation and the character of the viewer, as much as determined by the object she sees. In other words, viewers interpret the art work for themselves, but the work has its own, original reality that has been enhanced by being seen (over time) by different people with different reactions based on concrete experiences within particular communities. Thus, the image can be said to have a presence and power that is both stable in itself and transformed by and through its successive spectators. Both image and viewer are conditioned by their interaction and may be different each time a single viewer returns to the same object. Since multiple messages may be communicated by a single image to a single viewer in a single glance, one should calculate a substantial increase of possibilities in a room full of viewers, or over a span of generations. As with all history, nothing is ever objectively clear or stable. All we have are slants, angles, and points of view that affect the reality we experience in varied ways.

xxii  Preface These problems are even more vexing, because few records exist that report specific responses to art by ancient Christian viewers. Nor do we have ancient reviewers offering their perspectives on whether an art object is beautiful or inspirational, or whether it fulfilled its function (as defined by the reviewer, patron, or artist). And although art critics existed in the pagan world, ancient Christian writers rarely attempted to interpret specific art works, especially those that survive for modern analysis. Given this state of affairs, it is only reasonable to draw upon any resources available, in particular any writings belonging to the same general time and physical context as the artworks. Both texts and artworks have distinct genres, settings, functions, composition, and content, but they share a number of qualities. They may be elaborate or abridged, simple or complex, formal or informal, well composed or awkwardly crafted. They may be made for grand, public occasions and spaces or for modest events and humble contexts. The frequent appearance of a particular theme in a rhetorical discourse or a decorative program can be significant, as well as its proximity to other motifs or themes. Once certain images appear together, interpreters might begin to speculate about meaning as much as about patterns or motifs and how the choice of subject matter provides clues about the meaning of the whole compositions. But more basic than trying to understand what individual art works meant in late antiquity is the question of how art itself functioned as both constructive and expressive factors in religious belief. We may discover that some images preceded texts and the texts then provided commentary on the visual symbols. However, at the very least visual imagery never merely retold or condensed a text into corresponding pictorial language, but rather made meaning in its own right—by using symbols and allegories already present in written expression (narratives, commentaries, etc.) in such a way as to become a communication mode in itself—one that paralleled, commented upon, corrected, and expanded the text, rather than simply amplifying or repeating it. Learning to “read” ancient art works, therefore, means learning to use a visual language, to become familiar with an unfamiliar idiom or vocabulary. Nor is the visual idiom any less historical, contextually determined, or theologically sophisticated than the verbal. Any such assumption returns us to the stereotype that art is for the unlearned, while the elite or the educated prefer written texts. Similarly, this process requires that one dismiss the characterisation of art as belonging mainly to “popular” or “unofficial” religion while written documents tend to reflect the “official” statements of the religious authorities. Any suggested distinction of “high” and “low” culture is not only prejudicial but basically wrong. Images and words together constitute sacred symbols, and neither has inherent primacy over the other. Nor is there any evidence that women were more drawn to pictures than men, or that clergy were opposed to art while the layfolk preferred them. Like early Christian literature, early Christian pictorial art served a variety of purposes and audiences and has distinct genres or types. It might be purely decorative or simply didactic, highly symbolic or more literally illustrative. It might be a vehicle for a spiritual encounter, prompt prayer, or be a devotional aid. Images, like

Preface xxiii texts, were made for both private use and public consumption. Narrative art interprets scriptures on many different levels, from the literal to the allegorical. Symbolic motifs bridge a familiar reality with an idea that transcends verbal expression. Liturgical art has a performative function and belongs to a particular space, time, and action. A portrait of a holy person allows a mediated, face-to-face encounter with a saint. Recognising all these types, genres, and purposes requires familiarity with custom and culture more broadly. Although what we see today was, at one time, as familiar to ancient viewers as the most conventional signs or symbols are to us, narrative images depend particularly on memory and use a kind of conventional visual vocabulary to remind viewers of what they already know. Portrait images depend on recognition informed by tradition. Many images draw upon pre-existing types that modern viewers might ignore but that ancient observers would instantly understand. Thus, again, the work of understanding any kind of religious art depends on discerning as much as possible about the context, time, place, and character of the beliefs of a community or the individuals who identified themselves as its members. The following chapters return to these questions and examine them in far more depth. The first chapter raises core questions about the history of scholarship. Chapters 2 through 6 are organised around selected basic motifs characterising early Christian art. Chapter 2 considers symbols that are not drawn directly from biblical narratives (philosopher, praying figure, etc.); Chapter 3 examines the ways in which biblical narratives are interpreted in both text and image; Chapter 4 considers the development and significance of depictions of Christ; while Chapters 5 and 6 examine theological or dogmatic aspects of art, especially as the art interprets the crucifixion of Christ or presents a belief in the resurrection of the dead. Each of the motifs discussed is juxtaposed with selected textual or liturgical parallels in an effort to show the relationship or even mutual dependence of picture and word in the construction of sacred symbols. As much as possible in a single volume, each chapter of this book attempts to integrate particular textual and visual modes of expression into a coherent discourse. My hope is this project will introduce scholars or students whose view of the past is often mediated primarily through written documents to the power, subtlety, and beauty of sacred images, as well as to counter any belief that art is a substitute “text” for the uneducated or primarily representative of those whose theology remains at the level of “popular religion.” I hope it will also convince my art historian colleagues that early Christian art is profoundly theological and not only for the pious and that, while it is a different kind of witness to the past, it is not one that is distinctly alien to other witnesses. Robin M. Jensen Advent, 2022 Note 1 Gregory the Great, Ep. 9.209, trans. author (CSEL 140A; 768). See the parallel text at Ep. 11.10.

1

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Questions

The problem with pictorial images is that they rarely convey a single, clear message. Unless pictures are provided with captions or detailed explanations, viewers may not always know what the images are meant to represent. Even when captions and explanations accompany pictures, viewers may still see what they want to see and not appreciate their original intent. What a picture means, then, depends to a great extent on what viewers expect, or have been prompted, to see. What they see, however, may have little in common with what the maker intended, much less what later viewers find in them. For example, to a modern viewer, the figure of a veiled male, with raised arms, standing in a box-like chest just large enough to hold him (its lid open at his back) would look more like a man emerging from a packing crate or a toy jack-in-the-box than the biblical character in his ark (Fig. 1.1). The bird that seems to be flying over the man’s head with an olive branch in its mouth may be a clue, but unless one knows about the dove’s role in the story of the biblical Noah, the bird would not be especially clarifying. Even those familiar with the Noah story might still wonder why the artist omitted so many identifying details (the paired animals, for example), or why the chest looks nothing like a boat. But if one were accustomed to seeing this image as Noah, and was at least initially told what it depicted, it would not be so puzzling. Literary critics have long taught us that texts also “mean” on many different levels. To some degree, consulting relevant and contemporary literary sources may be useful tools. One could try to find out what early commentaries had to say about the story of Noah and hope to find answers there. These texts, however, are rarely as clear as one might hope, and even when a text and image appear together, their correspondence may be less than obvious. The Noah narrative has many different applications, from an instance of God’s merciful deliverance of a righteous person from death to a symbolic reference to the salvation offered in Christian baptism. The social and historical context of the writing itself, different visionary slants of writer and reader, the medium-like role of editor or translator, the relationships among the words themselves, and, above all, the competing time and culture-bounded frameworks of original author and individual interpreter matter. Like the great food chain, ideas have already passed through many different digestive systems before a reader encounters them in a text, and even then, every reader and every reading event is unique. DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-1

2  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.1 Noah in the ark, Catacomb of Priscilla, Capella Graeca, Rome, late 3rd or early 4th cen. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebure and C., 1903), tav. 16, p. 22.

So also with images. Visual perception is a socially constructed and culturally conditioned activity, influenced by the viewer’s physical environment, immediate or proximate stimuli, life events, and the presence and influence of others in the space. Each viewer sees an object through not only the lens of a mediated tradition (e.g., Christian teaching, remembered stories from childhood) but also

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 3 lenses unique to the individual (e.g., religious identity, gender, social class, general knowledge of the subject). Therefore, a myriad of considerations and caveats must be explored before an interpreter dare say anything with confidence about what an image might mean. Moreover, self-aware interpreters know that they are, themselves, guided by their own expectations, preferences, and predispositions. Consequently, this project, boldly titled Understanding Early Christian Art, is audacious, if not presumptuous. It does not pretend that the questions that it raises can be easily resolved, even though it offers some analysis and tentative hypotheses. Others may raise different questions and offer alternative answers from alternative perspectives. Yet, as a starting point, this chapter opens by describing the data and noting some key factors that provide overall structure to the endeavour. Preliminary Considerations How might one define the term “early Christian art?” Art historian Robert Couzin interrogated all three of the words in this term, noting that each could be challenged on several levels.1 The word “early” is a vague but strictly chronological classification, which can encompass anything from the first century to the dawn of the Middle Ages. It does not necessarily mean “nascent” or “primitive.” The identifying adjective “Christian” is a broadly applied adjective, usually ascribed to images if they depict exclusively Christian symbols (e.g., a cross) or scenes from biblical or other sacred narratives. The term “art” is even more problematic insofar as it usually connotes something that can be judged on formal or aesthetic terms. However, many paintings, sculptures, and other artefacts presented in this book were not necessarily made to be works of art nor were produced by individual artists, but were instead closer to something that we might, today, refer to as graphic or perhaps “folk art,” fabricated by artisans or workshops whose names we do not know. Judging what can be encompassed in the term “art” is arguably an anachronistic exercise.2 Allowing for these problems, this study employs the term “early Christian art” primarily as a chronological and iconographic distinction that, to an extent, is decided by the context for which it was made (e.g., a church or Christian cemetery). The category is also distinguished by certain formal aspects of style and composition that are common to most of the examples in the collection. Therefore, this chapter will discuss these aspects of the works and the ways they are defined in respect to and even limited by their chronology, context, medium, and content. Chronology

With regard to its beginnings, the word “early” must be intentionally vague, in part because surviving examples of identifiably “Christian” art are difficult to date any earlier than the beginning of the third century.3 Before that time, pictorial images that could be regarded as explicitly Christian—biblical subjects or symbolic figures with recognisably Christian connotations—are either rare to non-existent or indistinguishable from those belonging to the wider cultural and religious context.

4  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.2 Reconstruction of the baptistery from the Christian House Church at Dura-Europos, Syria, 240s. Source: Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Dura-Europos Collection.

Thus, this particular kind of material testimony of the first adherents to the Jesus movement is lacking when compared to available documentary evidence from the first centuries. This limiting factor applies only to the terminus a quo. From the late third century forward, Christians certainly began to acquire visual images for their domestic and funerary spaces, and by the mid-fourth century, the corpus of evidence considerably expanded in terms of volume and variety. One notable example, the baptistery from the mid-third-century house church at Dura-Europos in Syria, indicates that worship spaces might have been decorated with pictorial art (Fig. 1.2). A few texts also attest to the existence of Christian artworks by the early third century and quite possibly by the late second.4 Hence, historians may divide the emergence and development of early Christian art into two main chronological periods: first, the late Roman or pre-Constantinian era, which includes the third and very early fourth centuries; and second, the period in which Christianity became established as the official religion of the Roman Empire, during the fourth through mid-sixth century, beginning with the Constantinian ruling dynasty, through the Theodosian era, and concluding with the time of the Emperor Justinian (527–65). The advent of Christian art is thus set in the time of the Severan emperors (ca. 193–235 CE), and its first phase generally coincides with the last century of pagan

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 5 rule, up to the elevation and conversion of the emperor Constantine. The fact that few clearly recognisable examples of Christian art pre-date this period may not be due simply to the vagaries of historical preservation. In other words, not all the evidence was either lost or destroyed. It either did not exist or may simply have been unrecognised as a distinctively Christian in its subject, style, or context. Very possibly, Christians neither made nor acquired distinguishing artworks but selectively adapted those of their pagan neighbours. Likewise, little or no evidence of pre-third-century Christian buildings survives, probably because they lacked characteristically Christian architectural features or decorative visual art. Moreover, little useful documentary evidence mentions Christian artefacts that would confirm their existence prior to the early third century. The dramatic transition in Christianity’s status with the apparent conversion of the emperor Constantine (ca. 313) and the so-called peace of the church brought a manifest increase in the production of Christian-themed artworks. The emperor Constantine’s patronage of the church was a watershed moment for the Christian community and, by extension, for Christian art. In a single stroke the church gained its first imperial benefactor, as Constantine financed the building and artistic embellishment of the first great public Christian buildings. Nevertheless, with some rare exceptions (e.g., objects with clearly datable inscriptions), most of the fourthcentury artefacts cannot be dated more precisely than to within one or two decades. Dating of any work is often based on stylistic grounds.5 While the most definitive characteristic of “Christian” art in the earlier period is its iconography (i.e., subject matter and themes), during the post-Constantinian era, the criteria expanded to include an object’s context and function. In the third and early fourth century, distinguishable Christian and pagan art works were mainly identifiable by their content. By the first decades of the fifth century, the appellation “Christian art” could be as much defined by where a thing was found or used as by what it depicted. Even artworks with ambiguous subject matter but that belonged to the decoration of church buildings or liturgical implements could, by their placement alone, be included in the category of early Christian art. Geographical and Physical Context, Media, and Materials

With significant exceptions, early Christian art in the pre-Constantinian period comes predominantly from the Italian peninsula, especially the environs of Rome. The usual context for this art was funerary—paintings in burial chambers and relief sculpture on stone coffins (sarcophagi). In fact, the first significant examples of Christian image-making, the very basis for setting the beginning date, are the wall paintings found in Rome’s Christian catacombs. The oldest of these tunnellike burial grounds, the Catacomb of Callixtus, was named for an early bishop of Rome (c. 217–22), who, according to a disputed tradition, administered this first subterranean Christian cemetery while still a deacon of the church.6 The Catacomb of Callixtus, discovered by Giovanni di Rossi in 1849, is, however, just one of a network of more than 70 catacombs or underground burial chambers (hypogea), dating from the third through the fourth century, and which include more than

6  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question four hundred painted compartments, each of these compartments having several burials, the more important ones in arched recesses (arcosolia-type) and others in horizontal openings (loculi) cut directly into the walls (Fig. 1.3). Between 1897 and 1903, Josef (Giuseppe) Wilpert directed a project to photograph hundreds of these paintings and then to paint over the photographs to produce a record of the original paintings.7

Figure 1.3  Hypogeum with banquet scene, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 184, p. 190.

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 7

Figure 1.4 Single register sarcophagus of Sabinus, Rome, ca. 300–24. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

While Roman catacomb paintings comprise a major portion of early Christian artworks, the other major group of artefacts are relief carvings on a group of late third- to early fifth-century sarcophagi (stone coffins for inhumation burial). Inhumation burial and the fabrication of these objects pre-dated Christian use, and so many parallel remains depict scenes from classical mythology as well as purely secular decoration (e.g., scenes of harvest, hunting, or sea life and maritime images). Tub-shaped (lenos) or, more often, rectangular caskets made to hold either one or two bodies, and made from a single block or from slabs held together with clamps, their lids, fronts, and sides were commonly covered with sculpted decoration (Fig. 1.4). Most of these were fabricated—or at least finished—in workshops in Rome, which was the primary centre for sarcophagus production. Thousands of remains (either full coffins or fragments) survive from this period, and so they significantly outnumber the existing catacomb paintings available for analysis.8 Except for imperial monuments made from porphyry, the most desirable material for these objects was white marble. Less costly were those made from limestone. Although made for cemeteries and catacomb chambers, many were moved from their original contexts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and found their way into churches and private homes. Although Rome was the political centre of the Empire, it would be inaccurate to judge that all data from outside Rome were little more than local adaptations of Roman models. Arguably, the dominantly Roman geographical provenance of early Christian art is an accident of history and, unlike the lack of pre-third-century data, not a characteristic inherent in the evidence. Moreover, the fact that existing artistic data derive from Rome does not imply Roman superiority in the crafts or dominion within the church at this early date. Evidence of early Christian artistic activity in

8  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question other parts of the Roman Empire, from Spain to Syria and the Tigris-Euphrates region, and from the British Isles to North Africa, refutes such assumptions. Possible third-century frescoes have been found in catacombs in Tunisia and Thessalonica. Additionally, many surviving examples of early Christian relief sculpture on sarcophagi have been found in such places as Sicily, Germany, Dalmatia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Gaul, and, while the latter were probably produced by local ateliers, the influence of Roman workshops is apparent in their technique and style (e.g., Figs. 3.20, 4.21, 5.20).9 In other respects, a reasonable assumption is that regional styles would have developed, as is the case for the wall paintings found in the mid-third-century house church in Syria’s Dura-Europos. While much more non-Roman material must once have existed, it was lost, presumably to wars, outbreaks of iconoclasm, or the continuous urban renewal of cities and towns. Yet, given the concentration of extant evidence in Rome, some historians have speculated that all early Christian art derived from, or was influenced by, that city’s workshops and its particular styles, tastes, and catalogue of subjects.10 Although this conclusion is impossible to prove, given the lack of comparative materials from other regions, it also seems to over-weigh the importance of the Roman church in the early centuries. Similarly, the funereal context of the earliest surviving Christian art monuments simply may be due to the fact that so much of it was preserved underground. Some notable exceptions include an early fourth-century pavement mosaic in a church at Aquileia (Fig. 1.5), a group of small sculptures now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, believed to be from Asia Minor (cf. Fig. 2.21), the famous mid-third-century fresco-decorated baptistery in the house church at Dura-Europos (Fig. 1.2), and a number of objects often categorised as “minor arts,” including third-century lamps, gems, and gold glasses bearing Christian motifs (Fig. 1.6 and cf. Figs. 3.3, 3.14, 4.13, 5.23), many of the latter actually found in the catacombs.11 Although the remains dominantly derive from a funerary context, documentary sources indicate that thirdcentury Christians built or converted buildings or parts of buildings for their assemblies, and that they owned liturgical implements as well as scripture books.12 These buildings or artefacts, like the examples from areas beyond the Italian peninsula, have been lost or destroyed over the centuries, perhaps during the persecutions of the third and early fourth centuries. Nevertheless, with certain outstanding exceptions, few examples of non-sepulchral religious imagery remain from the early period. New contexts, expanded provenances, and a wider range of media emerge in the later, post-Constantinian period, especially the development of figurative and polychrome glass mosaics for apses and vaults of churches, baptisteries, mausolea, and saints’ shrines (cf. Figs. 2.23, 3.23, 5.10, 5.15). Added to these are reliquaries and implements made from precious metal (cf. Fig. 4.14, 5.17); decorative textiles (garments, church curtains, and altar cloths); ivory carvings (cf. Figs. 4.8, 4.11, 6.13, 6.17, 6.18), and—beginning in the sixth century—illuminated biblical manuscripts (cf. Fig. 4.23). Examples of Christian artworks dated to the later era can be found in almost every part of the Roman Empire as well; the Roman dominance is far less evident as other centres emerge, including Constantinople, Ravenna, Milan, Thessaloniki, and various places in Britain, France, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, the Balkans, Syria, and Asia Minor.

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 9

Figure 1.5  Jonah at rest, pavement mosaic, early 4th cen. Christian basilica, Aquileia (Italy). Source: Photo credit: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY.

Whether these limitations of geography and context primarily are due to the accidents of preservation or reveal regional distinctions regarding the use and distribution of objects bearing pictorial images is difficult to say. Whether these non-funereal examples were, in fact, exceptions to the rule or remnants of a large, but lost, body of data will stay an unsolved problem unless archaeologists make a phenomenal discovery. For instance, we have no way of knowing whether the walls

10  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.6 Christian gold glass with miracles of Christ and Old Testament figures, 3-4th cen. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Source: Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.

of the assembly hall at Dura-Europos were decorated like those of the baptistery or left undecorated. Until a significant amount of new evidence surfaces, comparing artistic content from one context to another is speculative. Such comparisons would neither support nor refute theories that iconographic programs in funerary contexts specifically referred to aspects of Christian belief about death and afterlife or were simply popular images, suitable for use in diverse venues. Subjects: Characters and Contents

A notable aspect of early Christian art is the limits of its iconographical repertoire. Each chronological period has its distinctive themes or motifs, and each is somewhat circumscribed, perhaps none so much as the early phase (third to early fourth century). Generally, the subjects of Christian art in the pre-Constantinian period fall into three general categories and appear both in catacomb wall paintings and on sarcophagus reliefs: (1) borrowings from existing religious iconography, including images from pagan mythology, that might have conveyed a Christian idea or ideal; (2) religiously neutral images or conventional decorative motifs that

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 11 also could have been adapted as Christian symbols; and (3) narrative-based images drawn from selected biblical stories. In the post-Constantinian era and into the early fifth century new types of this latter category emerged, including otherwise unknown scenes from the Hebrew Scriptures, episodes from Jesus’s Passion, and non-narrative portraits of Christ and the saints.13 Christian iconography of the third and early fourth centuries, drawn primarily from the three above-mentioned groupings, repeatedly featured certain motifs. Compared to later Christian iconography, the range is significantly limited. The first group, adapted mythological images, includes recognisably pagan figures like Sol Invictus, Hermes, or Orpheus (cf. Fig. 5.2) that relayed some ideas current in Christian teaching.14 The second group tends to be comprised of more simple figures (e.g., fish, doves, anchors, sheep, and boats) or scenes from daily life, many of which crossed cultural and religious identities, including Jewish and polytheistic, and could carry any number of meanings, including cryptic references to Christ or the cross. Depictions of chubby naked children (putti) picking flowers (Fig. 1.7), milking, or harvesting grapes (cf. Fig. 1.17), and fishers casting lines or nets into the water (cf. Figs. 3.4, 3.16), have recognisable

Figure 1.7  Putto and Psyche picking flowers, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 53, p. 59.

12  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question parallels in non-Christian sources and also may have been selected and adapted in order to allude to biblical imagery (e.g., the calling of disciples). Vases of flowers, garlands, birds, and bowls of fruit, found commonly in religiously neutral domestic décor, may have been simply decorative rather than bearing a specifically Christian connotation.15 Scenes of diners sharing a meal at a semi-circular table are found in both Christian and non-Christian contexts and could allude to either a pleasurable banquet in the afterlife or a ritual meal shared by family members or a burial club (Fig. 1.8). Sarcophagus reliefs showing a seated male reading from a scroll and a veiled, usually female, figure standing in the prayer posture (Fig. 1.9) might have

Figure 1.8  Banquet scene, Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 41, p. 47.

Figure 1.9  Sarcophagus of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, ca. 290–300. Source: Photo credit: Author.

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 13 been intended as portraits of the deceased or perhaps allusions to shared classical and Christian virtues (e.g., learning/paideia and religious devotion/pietas). Because of these motifs’ Graeco-Roman parallels, classifying them as Christian can be problematic and controversial. Such categorisation often depends on the subjects’ proximity to or juxtaposition with more clearly Christian figures, especially those based on biblical themes. The third group (biblical narrative scenes) are more uniquely Christian and frequently combined with the first and second types. These may have some compositional parallels with existing pagan types, but their specific compositions are unique and their source—the scriptures of the early church—is clearly recognisable. They are also consistent in their individual composition, even though no two are exactly alike.16 Generally, sarcophagus reliefs and catacomb paintings displayed the same catalogue of subjects, although certain images emerged earlier or more frequently in one medium than in the other. Among these are the depictions of the Good Shepherd and scenes from the story of Jonah, most commonly Jonah being thrown overboard, swallowed by the sea creature, and reclining under a pergola after being spit up again on dry land (Fig. 1.10). Other biblical characters that occur with great regularity in this early phase include Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Noah, Moses, Daniel, the three Hebrew youths, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Susanna. Initially fewer in number, the New Testament scenes include John the Baptist baptising a childlike Jesus (cf. Figs. 1.9, 3.4, 4.11), Jesus multiplying loaves and fish (cf. Figs. 1.4, 1.13), and Jesus raising Lazarus (Fig. 1.11, and cf. Fig. 3.16). In the early fourth century new images appear, drawn from both Testaments, and include the adoration of the magi (cf. Figs. 1.12, 3.1, 4.5), Jesus healing the blind and the lame (cf. Figs. 1.4, 1.13, 4.2), and scenes from the apocryphal narratives of Peter’s arrest and imprisonment (cf. Figs. 1.13, 3.20).17 The consistent replication of particular subjects raises the question of why they were especially popular and what that reveals about the original community and its beliefs. In general, a limited catalogue of motifs requires the images themselves to be more polyvalent than those drawn from within a larger artistic vocabulary. They are not merely illustrations of a single story or one idea, and despite the commonly cited maxim, they should not be understood as mere illustrations or picture bibles for the unlettered. Theorising about what these figures might mean requires looking at the physical context, adjacent images, and wider cultural framework. During the fourth century, many of the most prevalent early motifs gradually disappeared while others emerged. Particular motifs frequently were juxtaposed as if their proximity expresses a message not conveyed by one or the other by itself.18 Each of these aspects—selection of individual elements, position within the larger whole, and the general context of the monument itself— contributes to its meaning. As noted previously, in the post-Constantinian era, the range of Christian subjects increased in all three categories, but perhaps most dramatically in the third, with the appearance of many new scriptural themes and especially with the

14  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.10 Ceiling painting, Daniel with scenes from the Jonah narrative, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: Watercolour illustration from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 61, p. 110.

inclusion of episodes from the story of Christ’s nativity and Passion as well as scenes that lack specific scriptural references such as those showing of Jesus as a lawgiver, teacher, and enthroned king of heaven.19 Among the motifs that gradually faded from popularity were representations of the Good Shepherd, the orant (praying figure), Noah, and Jonah. Taking their place were the emerging portrait-type images of saints and martyrs, especially the Virgin Mary, Peter, and Paul, the latter two often shown together (cf. Figs. 5.23, 5.24).

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 15

Figure 1.11  Jesus raising Lazarus, from the Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome, 3rd. cen. Source: Watercolour from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (Rome: Desclée Lefebure and C., 1903), tav. 46, p. 52.

Artistic Style and Technique

Added to the limitations noted already (e.g., chronological, contextual, material, and iconographic), another distinctive aspect of early Christian art is certain features of its style. Even while using prevailing stylistic devices common to contemporary Roman art, an observably Christian form of iconographic composition is evident. Most of the earliest examples of Christian art are unpretentious in their manner of presentation. Extant catacomb murals in particular are mostly sketchy and simply rendered, without a great deal of detail or decorative elaboration. Although similar in some respects to the decorative embellishments of Roman houses of the same era, Christian catacomb murals usually appear sketchy or hastily executed. As in many Campanian wall paintings, the walls and ceilings of Christian tomb chambers were divided into pictorial compartments by frames of decorative lines of red or green that mostly were filled with individual figures (Fig. 1.12). Bodily proportions are often awkward and the characters’ relative scale is frequently distorted. Perhaps because they were hastily painted in poorly lit sepulchral contexts, or possibly because many early Christians lacked the financial wherewithal to pay more highly skilled artisans, the oldest

16  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.12 Hypogeum with scenes of the adoration of the magi, Moses striking the Rock, Noah, and Jonah. Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, “Crypt of the Virgin,” Rome, early 4th cen. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (Rome: Desclée Lefebure and C., 1903), tav. 60, p. 66.

images seem neither stylistically sophisticated nor well conceived. Details are two-dimensional and shallow, without extraneous details, paying little attention to setting or landscape. Occasionally paintings of much higher quality appear on the catacomb walls, but more often they are poorly done and crammed together in a small area, with little obvious relationship to one another. Art historians of the past have often characterised these works as ugly and the unimpressive work of poorly trained artisans.20 Notably, the subjects are abbreviated rather than elaborated; they are based on narratives, but they are not actually narrations. Unlike the Roman mythological murals or sarcophagus reliefs, which often render events in complex and often sequential fashion, Christian compositions typically display only one or two characters and a single representative moment in the story. Little is added in the way of background or context, rendering them as allusions rather than as illustrations

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 17 and, as such, require a trained viewer to recognise them. Rather like a synecdoche, a single specifically identified narrative detail represents or evokes the whole. In effect, this minimalistic and schematic approach indicates that the images are not merely illustrations of stories but were intended to remind viewers of the ways these figures’ symbolic significance was expounded (and compounded) by Christian biblical exegetes in their commentaries, preachers in their sermons, and in the prayers of the liturgy.21 Sarcophagus reliefs tend to evince a different quality of carving and finishing work and most would have been produced by fairly skilled or trained artisans. Normally, rectangular boxes about the right dimensions for holding a human body, some were also created as tub-shaped (lenos), with curved ends (cf. Figs. 1.9, 1.19, 1.21). Most were carved on only the three exposed sides of both lid and base; the front of the coffin was the centre of the viewer’s focus, with the lid and two ends sometimes given more cursory treatment. Some were more highly crafted and had more polished details than others; relief carving could be relatively shallow at the low end or nearly three-dimensional at the upper. Grades of stone similarly ranged from white Proconnesian marble to soft limestone. A drill rather than a chisel was commonly employed to create curls in the hair or folds in the drapery. Some surviving sarcophagi bear traces of polychrome colouring and even gilding in key parts of the design. Negative assessments of the aesthetic qualities of these objects continue among art historians, even though most allow that some, like the exceptionally fine sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (cf. Fig. 1.15) were better crafted than most. For example, Paul Zanker and Björn Ewald contended that the style of Christian sarcophagi gives the impression “that beautiful forms, let alone classical ones, are of absolutely no importance, and all that matters is the message put across by the images, which should be read like a set of keywords.”22 In addition, instead of episodes from a more expansive narrative as is the compositional approach for most Roman mythological sarcophagi, a number of these shorthand images are juxtaposed or jumbled together in what seems an apparently arbitrary assortment of these emblematic images. Old and New Testament scenes alternate, Jesus’s healing scenes jostle with depictions of Abraham offering Isaac, the fall of Adam and Eve, and Jesus’s multiplication of loaves, often compressed into a tightly composed row (cf. Fig. 4.3). The emergence of double-register sarcophagi in the early fourth century only increases the possibility of iconographic chaos in a visually cluttered program of apparently unrelated characters (Fig. 1.13). Despite this, some high-quality craft and compositional skill is evident among the surviving examples. A few sarcophagi depict a fully integrated scene of the Exodus Red Sea Crossing across the whole front frieze (cf. Fig. 3.19). Other fourthcentury sarcophagi display their scenes within architecturally defined niches, set off by columns that separate and frame them, as on the Junius Bassus sarcophagus, with its ten individual scenes (Fig. 1.14). Others balance sculpted figures with panels of wavy lines (or strigillated), which may reflect some patron’s cost-cutting since lesser-skilled artists likely were assigned to produce those (Fig. 1.15).23 But while

18  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.13  Sarcophagus of Adelphia, ca. 340 CE, in the Museo Archeologico, Syracuse. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 1.14 Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (plaster cast), 359, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo contributor, Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo.

such techniques avoid a crowded and visually tedious mishmash of episodes, the results typically still mingle Old Testament with New Testament stories. The combined results may serve no other purpose than to (repetitively) emphasise the message of God’s salvation, although they tempt modern scholars to seek a rationale guiding the selection of subjects and their juxtaposition.24

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 19

Figure 1.15  Strigillated Christian sarcophagus, fourth century Now in the Museu d’ Arqueologia de Catalunya, Spain. Source: Photo credit: FOST/Alamy Stock Photo.

Still, in the judgement of some, this apparently careless execution, haphazard composition, and lack of detail in the paintings actually lend an expressive quality to the work. Because of their terse lack of detail and episodic reduction, the compositions are referential rather than illustrative. Even those art historians of the past who decried the aesthetics of the works or the skills of the artisans who made them allowed that they might represent a new form of art meant to be symbolic rather than realistic.25 Rather than being straightforward evidence that most Christians were of modest social status and unable to afford better, perhaps those who commissioned the works emphasised the meaning behind the images more than their aesthetic presentation. Exceptions also existed. The refined and naturalistic styles of many late fourth-century objects, especially those worked in ivory or precious metals, attest to the fact that artisans could still produce items of high artistic quality, and that some Christian clients wanted and could pay for them. In the post-Constantinian period, the quality of the craft, the variety of contexts, and the compositions themselves were both improved and expanded. The decoration of churches and baptisteries, gospel books, and liturgical vessels, initially underwritten by imperial donations, began to reflect the changing social, economic, and political status of Christians. Wealthy Christians were not only motivated but positively encouraged to add their patronage to that of the emperor, decorating the walls and floors of local churches with beautiful mosaics and purchasing objects of ivory, precious gems, gold, silver, and glass adorned with Christian iconography that reflected the wealth and values of the new Christian elite. Meanwhile, throughout the fourth century and until the early fifth, more ordinary Christians continued to decorate their coffins and the walls of their underground tombs, and gradually even these artworks evolved to more detailed and elegant forms. Workshops and Clients

The majority of early Christian sarcophagi were probably produced by many small, local Roman workshops that served a variety of buyers from different religious backgrounds. Since this form of burial was extremely expensive, one

20  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question can assume that only the more financially prosperous Christians afforded even modestly crafted sarcophagi.26 The existence of only partially finished examples, some roughly designed in the quarry, suggests that many of these objects were bought “off the shelf” and then, in optimal circumstances, personalised and finished after they were purchased. It may be that urgent need (an unexpected death) or increased demand caused some of these monuments to simply remain unfinished.27 Other examples show that sarcophagi could be re-cut to suit a patron (turning a mythological motif into a Christian one, for example), or even re-used.28 Workshops likely had a mix of skilled and unskilled workers, which would allow them to produce a range of monuments at varying quality and cost. As noted earlier, some of the decorative schemes on sarcophagus reliefs were more competently composed, better sculpted and polished than others. The use of a drill to easily and quickly produce curls or clothing folds suggests the lower end of the scale. These differences, along with just a straightforward visual study of the variations in style and technique, especially of a selected set of motifs, could be indications of particular workshops, perhaps in competition with one another.29 No surviving textual or material evidence suggests that any workshop served Christian patrons exclusively or that the artisans were themselves Christian, at least prior to the late fourth century, when a growing percentage of both patrons and artisans could have identified as Christian.30 Because they were expensive items, it seems reasonable to suppose that sarcophagi were purchased mainly by the wealthy and possibly only for the laity and not the clergy before the late fourth century.31 Evidently, some proportion of the Christian population was affluent, even prior to the post-Constantinian era. Inscribed epitaphs sometimes give information about the social rank as well as the name of the deceased, such as the one fabricated for Junius Bassus, whose lid identifies the deceased as a recently baptised member of the church (a neofitus) as well as an “illustrious man” (vir clarissimus) of senatorial rank (Fig. 1.14).32 On the other end of the economic scale are the inscribed marble and terracotta slabs that closed the loculus burials along the walls of the Roman catacombs, some of them more elaborate than others (Fig. 1.16, compare Fig. 2.1). Perhaps the most important influence on the essential design, quality, or character of early Christian art was its clients. Whereas bishops or other church authorities would have overseen the decoration of ecclesiastical buildings, almost no surviving textual or material evidence indicates the degree to which they influenced the decoration of early Christian tombs. Most of the latter would have been privately owned and maintained and at least some were shared by families, or burial societies that could have included non-Christian members.33 The dominantly sepulchral setting of early Christian art often has prompted art historians to classify it as a private rather than public endeavour. They suggest that individual patrons chose the images that decorated their tombs or burial boxes with little oversight or control by church officials and that they were meant mainly for viewing by family members and close friends. Because most wall paintings

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 21

Figure 1.16 Grave marker for Priscus, aged 36 years, fourth century. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano. Source: Photo credit: Album/Art Resource, NY.

apparently were created for specific persons or families, they were likely privately financed and personalised, allowing clients to select subjects from a workshop’s available catalogue of conventional motifs. This shared iconographic vocabulary reveals a gradually emerging public “face” of a religion that was developing its identity and making it visible. Some obvious differences of quality of materials and carvers’ skills suggests that wealthy patrons had more options or oversight of the work; nevertheless, it appears that even they drew from a standard and shared iconographic repertoire. The fact that tomb decoration was costly undermines the idea that pictorial art was mainly created for or by non-elite members of the community. Presumably, viewers from a range of economic circumstances and social classes were among those who paid for the work. Visitors to the tombs during the mourning period or on the regular festivals of the dead included servants and clients as well as close relatives. Thus, Christian art—especially that made for sepulchral contexts—must have been, at some level, acceptable even to church authorities.

22  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question The Myth of Early Christian Aniconism One of the questions that the relatively late emergence of Christian art poses is whether this was because first- and second-century Christians were especially faithful to the biblical injunctions against graven images and extended it to any kind of pictorial art. Alternatively, could this lack be due to Christian belief in a transcendent and invisible deity who commanded abstinence from most earthly luxuries? Many prominent historians have argued that, for nearly two hundred years, Christians repudiated visual imagery on both grounds: that it violated the commandment and because they resisted certain behaviours that they associated with a decadent pagan culture.34 Certain eminent art historians of the past, such as Theodore Klauser and Ernst Kitzinger in the 1950s and André Grabar and Kurt Weitzmann in the 1960s, held the belief that early Christianity was an essentially aniconic (imageless), or even an iconophobic (image-fearing), religion.35 Likening it to Judaism, these historians collectively believed that early Christians consciously avoided making any kind of visual art, particularly for worship contexts. Kurt Weitzmann similarly makes the case that “it took Christianity, as an offspring of Judaism, about two centuries to overcome the Second Commandment.”36 As support, many of these scholars cited the writings of second- and third-century Christian apologists who condemned Roman idol veneration. Because such documents rarely attacked pictorial art as such, much less any instances of Christian visual imagery, citations of this sort are irrelevant, insofar as Christians would not have made cult images of pagan gods in any sense.37 They also overlooked the near absence of any mention of the biblical commandment in any of these early Christian critiques of idolatry.38 Accordingly, they regarded the emergence of Christian images at the beginning of the third century as merely a pragmatic ecclesiastical response to the demands and needs of lukewarm or backsliding converts to the faith who found an aniconic religion difficult to accept. These converts ostensibly failed to abandon their idolatrous past, misunderstood the anti-material and/or spiritual dimensions of their new faith, and were unaware that the Christian God’s invisibility and transcendence precluded any cult images of the deity. Church authorities’ toleration of these confused or lukewarm Christians, conceding to them for the sake of increasing their flocks. Sometimes historians believe these producers and/or consumers of art came from society’s marginalised classes, the uneducated poor who were moved or captivated by visual images and symbols because they could not read or comprehend the more abstract truths of Christian theology.39 This generally anticipates the later dictum of Gregory the Great, that art is the Bible of the illiterate (therefore for children or the uneducated).40 At a broader societal level, this analysis proposes that the emergence of pictorial art in the third century reflects popular resistance to ecclesiastical positions or attitudes that ordinary folk did not share or understand. James Breckenridge expresses this analysis succinctly: What we would suggest, then, is that the expansion of Christian art in the later third century was not the result of a change in the attitude of the Church toward religious images, but of the enfeeblement of its ability to enforce its

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 23 rules. . . . [Its] unchanged official position . . . was in reality impossible to maintain in the face of popular interest in the portrayal of the objects in their worship—an interest all the stronger in view of the mountainous wave of new converts from idolatrous paganism following the Edict of Toleration.41 More recently, the art historian Beat Brenk proposed that the emergence of Christian art was “unavoidable” because, in their desire to recruit more socially elite members, church authorities made exceptions, and likely suppressed any potentially problematic discussion of the biblical commandment: The Second Commandment prohibits any kind of religious image without exception. The Church, however, was not able to comply with a “unité de doctrine.” In the city of Rome, it would have been simply impossible to issue such a prohibition, because images there were something absolutely normal for the newly Christianized upper-class believers. The Second Commandment was only discussed orally. That is why there are no further texts on this matter, and if ever they existed, the Church probably let them disappear.42 The theory that first- and second-century Christians basically had no pictorial art because they conscientiously obeyed the Second Commandment’s prohibitions or because they regarded their new religion as superior in its emphasis on the spiritual over the material realm continues into the present day.43 Many historians of early Christianity assume that early Christianity was an imageless religion and that Christianity became increasingly decadent or Hellenised in the third and fourth centuries as the community expanded and became more assimilated to its surrounding culture. Some scholars even proposed such accommodation as an underlying motivation for the later, eighth- and ninth-century iconoclastic movements.44 Other historians challenged the supposed aniconism of first- and second-century Christians. Mary Charles-Murray in the 1970s and, subsequently, Paul Corby Finney in the 1990s effectively critiqued the prevailing view of early Christians as monolithically hostile to images and expressly refuted the prevailing theories.45 Charles-Murray argued that Christian apologists rarely condemned cult images on the basis of biblical injunctions, although adding that this was possibly because their intended audience of non-Christians was unlearned in Christian holy texts. She added that modern scholars undermined the importance of those rare references to the Mosaic Decalogue in Christian condemnation of idol veneration, noting that scholars misunderstood or took them out of context. Moreover, rather than cite their own scriptures, the apologists frequently drew upon philosophically informed distrust of pictorial art, perhaps because their audiences would have been more receptive to arguments from Socrates or Plato.46 Charles-Murray further observed that these historians’ presumptions about supposed Jewish aniconism in the early Christian era were clearly challenged by contemporaneous archaeological evidence of Jewish pictorial art. In her words, “It becomes clear that in the early Christian period, the prohibition was regarded in

24  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question contemporary Jewish circles as definitely modified, while by Christians it was regarded as irrelevant save in matters of Old Testament exegesis.”47 She went on to critique scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who held it to be an unambiguous fact that the early Church was hostile to art.48 Finney’s work continued and advanced Charles-Murray’s. Examining Adolf von Harnack’s influence on scholars like Hugo Koch and meticulously refuting the entrenched characterisation of an increasingly Hellenised Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, Finney revealed a conscious or perhaps unconscious bias in these and other historians’ work.49 Soon more scholars joined in to offer alternative explanations for the apparent late emergence of Christian material culture, some citing the gradual attainment of economic and social stability, others questioning whether the categories of “Christian” and “pagan” were even applicable to material culture in the early centuries.50 Although early Christians never actually objected to pictorial art as such, surviving literary evidence clearly shows that their spokespersons were hostile to the veneration of pagan cult images. These were the images that they attacked. With rare exceptions, early Christian opposition to pictorial art was aimed at a specific type of image: depictions of divine beings and, in particular, representations of the Graeco-Roman deities. This allows a distinction among different kinds of images: between safe symbolic or narrative art and dangerous pagan cult idols.51 This distinction is crucial for understanding early Christian attitudes toward visual art. Christians were concerned only with non-Christian religious art, rather than images made by or for Christian edification, decoration, or devotional use. Any internal criticism of Christian visual images did not commence until Christians began to make their own sacred images depicting saints and Christ, toward the end of the fourth and into the beginning of the fifth century.52 Although distinctively Christian art first emerged during the time when Christianity was vulnerable to persecution, it was well established by the time the church was legally tolerated. Thus, the danger of being identified is not, in itself, a reason for its ostensibly late development. The third-century emergence coincided first with sporadic and later with imperially sanctioned persecution of Christians. Nor can the inclusion of particular carved or painted symbols on underground tomb chambers be explained as an effort to disguise or hide their Christian identity from Roman officials. The logistics of excavating and decorating these catacombs must have been a fairly public activity, undertaken with the full knowledge of the secular authorities. Moreover, the very existence of these underground cemeteries signalled that the local Christian community had achieved both the capital and the right to own property and to bury their co-religionists in a space purchased specifically for them. Despite the often-applied term “crypto-Christian” to such supposedly disguised symbols as the fish-Ichthys or the cross-anchor, no evidence suggests that these symbols functioned any differently from the way they do today—as shorthand references to certain aspects of the Christian faith, widely understood but not particularly esoteric or deliberately clandestine identification marks of secret worship spaces.53

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 25 A different view argues that, following Constantine’s conversion and his joint promulgation of the Edict of Milan in 313, Christian art was especially vulnerable to cultural influences. Many art historians regard the development of new Christian types in this period as the beginning of the imperialisation of Christian iconography promoted by the ruling classes, who adopted the long-standing practice of deploying religious symbols in their propaganda.54 In this view, art began to serve the interests of the ruling classes rather than devotional, theological, or evangelical interests. Perceived as an easily manipulated tool to advance secular political agendas, scholars saw the image of an enthroned Christ as assimilated to the person of the emperor. Others challenged this perception, arguing that the imagery was, rather, evidence of Christians asserting their God’s superiority to all others.55 As noted earlier, a less controversial explanation of the relative lateness of a distinctively Christian iconography proposes that Christians as a group simply lacked the financial resources to patronise artists’ workshops, an argument that assumes most first- and second-century Christians belonged to the lower social classes. This theory challenges the idea that, when art finally emerged, it reflected the beliefs or values of the less elite in the community.56 A parallel hypothesis proposes that Christians simply comprised too small a portion of the populace to command much purchasing power or make them viable consumers. Such Christians may have purchased art for devotional purposes, but because that art was indistinguishable in style and content from that of their pagan neighbours, it disappeared from historical scrutiny.57 Certainly, the emergence of distinctively Christian art at the dawn of the third century may be the natural result of changing social, economic, or demographic circumstances, rather than the radical abandonment of a fundamental theological principle. Christians lived in and engaged with their culture, whether they conformed to or transformed it, or both. Nevertheless, the relatively late arrival of distinctive Christian iconography is puzzling, given that Christian literature of all genres existed (e.g., apology, exhortation, poetry, romance), and that Christian forms of worship were quite well established by the mid-second century. For this literature and these liturgies, Christians did not invent a new language, but adopted the literary and regional vernacular. In the same way, Christians initially adapted a familiar iconographic vocabulary. Creative ventures with that artistic language evolved and expanded as the size of the community grew, cultivated a distinctive identity (or identities), and gradually achieved social position along with wealthy patrons. Perhaps the nascent or experimental stages of this creative work were lost, but clearly the time had arrived in the early third century for the establishment of a material culture and the permanency such a culture implied.58 Pagan Prototypes: Syncretism or Adaptation? As discussed earlier, Christian iconography appears to have incorporated motifs from contemporary Roman pictorial art such as birds, garlands, sea life, and harvesting scenes. Whether these images retained their original meaning (or were simply decorative) or Christian viewers then inculcated them with religious significance

26  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.17  Putti harvesting scene, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea:  Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (Rome: Desclée Lefebure and C., 1903), tav. 148, p. 154.

pertinent to their own beliefs and practices is difficult to say. Presumably different viewers had different responses.59 For example, a peacock might allude to resurrection and eternal life or it might just be a beautiful bird (cf. Fig. 2.4). Scenes of cherubs making wine or harvesting wheat could have had eucharistic associations, but they might just suggest the pleasures of a pastoral setting (Fig. 1.17). Depictions of fishermen dangling poles or hauling in nets might allude to Christ’s calling the disciples to be fishers of people (Matthew 4:19), refer to the miraculous catch in the Gospel of John (2:1–14), or just be charming maritime motifs. Yet, early Christian texts suggest that at least some of the simplest symbols, taken over from common figures in pagan funerary inscriptions, could carry a special Christian significance. According to the second- and early third-century writers, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix, figures like boat masts, anchors, masons’ tools, ploughs, or military trophies could be read as allusions to the cross and even to the crucifix.60 These motifs might or might not have had special religious significance in pagan iconography prior to their Christian adoption; they might simply have indicated the deceased’s profession. Sometimes, however, Christians apparently adopted images that were clearly derived from Roman religious iconography. A shepherd carrying a ram or lamb on his shoulders, wearing a short tunic and boots, turns up in dozens of catacomb paintings, often featured in the centre of the ceiling vault (cf. Fig. 2.19). The shepherd also appears on some of the earliest sarcophagus reliefs (cf. Figs. 1.9, 1.19), gem engravings (cf. Fig. 2.20), and pottery lamps (Fig. 1.18). Although the figure is usually identified as a depiction of the biblical Good Shepherd (cf. John 10:1–9), and thus as an allegorical reference to the person of Jesus, it had clear parallels with pre-Christian representations of Hermes as a ram-bearer (cf. Fig. 2.22).61 In some instances, the decorative motifs of what historians have assumed to be a Christian artefact could have suited a pagan client as much as a Christian one. The so-called Via Salaria sarcophagus in the Vatican Pio Cristiano Museum is a case in point (Fig. 1.19). At the centre, the Shepherd joins a female praying figure, each

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 27

Figure 1.18 Pottery lamp with shepherd, Rome, 3rd cen. Now in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin. Source: Photo credit: bpk Bildagentur/Art Resource, NY.

turning their gaze to the other. On the right and left of this central group are two seated figures joined by their attendants or friends: a man reading an open scroll and a woman holding hers still rolled up. These are likely meant to represent the deceased spouses, as a learned man and woman. The composition as a whole could express the virtues of philanthropy (the shepherd), piety (the praying figure), and

28  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question

Figure 1.19 Sarcophagus from the Via Salaria, ca. 260–300. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

philosophy (the two readers). Large rams adorn the ends of this tub-shaped sarcophagus, lending a thoroughly traditional, Roman aspect to the monument. Early Christian writers allowed that some pagan mythological characters possessed character traits associated with the Christian saviour god. For instance, Christian apologists acknowledged explicit parallels between Jesus’s death and resurrection, as well as his miracles and those of Graeco-Roman gods like Asclepius, Orpheus, Hercules, and Bacchus.62 The depiction of the sun god, Helios, riding his chariot through the heavens was similarly adapted to express the idea that Christ brings light into the world (John 1:9 and cf. Fig. 5.7). Clement of Alexandria in fact referred to Christ as the Sun of the Resurrection, born before the morning start, and who gives life with his rays.63 Orpheus, the mythical singer and animal tamer, was transformed into a type of Christ who could tame the wildest of all animals—the human soul (cf. Fig. 5.4).64 Consequently, even in literary works, Christian writers embraced certain mythological narratives for their own purposes. The question arises, then, of whether this practice merely reflects a kind of religious visual vernacular or reveals genuine religious confusion.65 This appropriation of pagan deities and heroes might indicate some degree of plural identities or affiliations among Christians who did not forsake all their former religious commitments or found ways to reinterpret and integrate those previous attachments—along with their associated images—into their new belief system. This would allow them to endow pagan types with their own religious significance while using familiar visual vocabulary.66 In the last century, Franz Dölger and Erwin Goodenough analysed Christian imagery with the methods of the history of religions school and emphasised the continuity of Hellenistic and Christian iconographic themes.67 Dölger particularly emphasised the funerary context of early Christian art in his analyses, as well as the place of pagan and other religious imagery in the development of

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 29 Christian iconography. Goodenough, well known for his work on Jewish symbols, differs from Dölger in his more generous interpretation of the symbols themselves, seeing in them perhaps more than Dölger would have permitted. A later, more focused analysis comes from Mary Charles-Murray, who examined the place of Orpheus imagery in early Christianity.68 More recent scholarship has questioned an over-emphasis on mutually exclusive identities, especially in the first three or four centuries, and cautions against the perception that ordinary Christians were as clearly identified with their adopted new religion as the writings of their bishops and theologians seem to suggest; perhaps they maintained varying religious identities as a reasonable, real-world practice.69 A commonly cited example is the juxtaposition of Christian heroes with pagan deities in the Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb. In two adjoining chambers (N and O), depictions of Hercules, Admetus, Demeter, and Persephone mingle with images of Noah, Moses, Daniel, the three Hebrew youths, and Jesus multiplying loaves and raising Lazarus (Fig. 1.20).70 Notably, Daniel and Hercules both appear as heroic nudes in these paintings. Art historians offer various explanations for this fusion of pagan and Christian types, including the suggestion that the two chambers were designed for a

Figure 1.20 Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb, interior of a chambers N and O, 4th cen., Rome. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

30  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question family of mixed religious affiliation or otherwise just evidence that Christians and pagans could be buried in the same catacomb.71 For example, Antonio Ferrua raises but dismisses the suggestion that the catacomb’s mythological subjects could have been given “an acceptable interpretation for Christians as allegories of conjugal love, of virtue resisting vice, or fortitude and patriotism,” opting rather that the owners of the chambers belonged to a large family of mixed pagans and Christians.72 By contrast, Jaś Elsner compellingly argues that the these figures should be read allegorically rather than literally, and as not “an arbitrary syncretism of themes” but rather a “highly complex energetic parallelism where salvific cycles of images from different religious contexts were placed side by side deliberately.”73 A similar case is the long-noted similarities between the reclining posture of the mythological hero Endymion in Graeco-Roman mosaics, paintings, and sarcophagus relief sculptures and that of Jonah under his vine-covered pergola in Christian iconography (compare Figs. 1.9 and 1.21).74 Assuming the viewers were familiar with both stories as well as the iconography based upon them, Jonah’s blissful repose could represent not just his safe return to dry land, but his ultimate reward. This might explain why the selected scenes from the Jonah narrative omit his call to preach to the Ninevites or their final repentance, but only his being tossed into the mouth of the monster and regurgitated safely. Such a view reveals a specifically Christian meaning embedded in the Jonah story itself. This meaning is evident already in the New Testament, when Jesus refers to the “sign of Jonah” as a figure of the Son of Man’s being in the heart of the earth for three days (Matthew 12:40). Therefore, Jonah’s repose could refer to the promised resurrection of the Christian dead (as well as their interim wait for that resurrection). Jonah’s nudity could even

Figure 1.21 Marble sarcophagus with scenes from the myth of Selene and Endymion, early third century, Rome. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Source: Open access, Creative Commons Licence.

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 31 indicate his baptism, just as his passage from death to life through the water suggests. Moreover, such symbolism is clearly meaningful in a funereal context, as baptism represents a death to an old life and rebirth to the new. Baptism also is the sacramental gateway to salvation from death itself.75 These borrowings, ambiguities, and influences should not be surprising, given that, as noted earlier, as with other expressive media, Christians naturally maintained much of the visual vocabulary of their surrounding culture. And certain pagan types continued to be produced long after Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire, presumably because they also reflected a kind of secular pride in Roman cultural identity. Along with some individual blurring of religious identities, mixed-religious adherences within families might account for some of these juxtapositions of pagan mythological with Christian biblical figures. Moreover, most of the subjects—whether identifiably Christian or not—could have conveyed a variety of meanings to different viewers. Common sense suggests that no single interpretation is ever warranted. Nevertheless, much of what can be identified as early Christian art was, in fact, newly created to serve a fresh purpose and clientele. Biblical narrative images, including those that show the influence of certain pagan prototypes, undoubtedly carried specific Christian inferences, even if those might be manifold. Moreover, as Robert Couzin recently argued, the instances of combined pagan and Christian iconography in funerary spaces are extremely rare, and subsequent juxtaposition of mythological images with Christian ones is non-existent.76 If so, then Christians gradually and effectively developed and sustained a distinctive and particularly appropriate iconography for spaces that housed their ritual practices. In these spaces especially, they consciously avoided “visual syncretism.”77 Text and Image Although most scholars now set aside many of the earlier or standard explanations for the lateness of early Christian art, their re-examination of the matter reopened the question of the relationship between text and image. The assertion that the production or use of art violates a clear biblical prohibition against any kind of pictorial imagery or that it represents a misunderstanding of the true, more spiritual form of the faith presumed that the presence of art, as such, challenges certain normative Christian teachings, that the message of Christian visual art diverged from or conflicted with teachings transmitted by literary documents. As noted earlier, some historians suggest that visual art is a window into popular religion, or the beliefs of the overlooked, ordinary people, unrepresented in the written record, which (it is argued) mainly reflects the viewpoints of privileged church authorities and the educated upper classes. Recovery of the material evidence is consequently seen as a means of getting a more balanced view of the history of Christianity, a more direct or representative body of data. Yet, works of art were expensive and must have been made for the wealthy and not for the poor. Thus, while many—if not most—of them could have been seen by a broad spectrum of viewers, they did

32  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question not reflect the beliefs of the uneducated or the lower classes any more than they represented those of the elite or the learned members of the community. By contrast, this study argues that the emergence and development of Christian art in the third century actually parallels developments in Christian theology as revealed in literary texts. Without these texts, including the scriptures themselves, some images would be impossible to interpret. Early Christian visual images are never simply illustrations of biblical texts, but they clearly draw upon them. Visual depictions, like verbal commentaries on these stories, function in parallel fashion; they interpret the source, expanding on them or focusing on certain elements. To the extent that their authors were also hearers of sermons, surviving exegetical and homiletical texts can serve as witnesses to how contemporary viewers thought about these images. Artworks and theological treatises that date to roughly the same time period, emerge from the same general culture, and ostensibly belong to the same religious group can be put into conversation with one another. While artisans’ workshops most likely worked from image catalogues, those catalogues were from basic knowledge of the Bible stories as well as the ways those stories were interpreted by teachers and preachers. Moreover, the textual evidence that survives reveals no incontrovertible evidence of a conflict between image and texts. They might be different modes of expression, but no reason suggests that they inevitably conflict with or contradict one another or that turning to texts as a helpful resource is necessarily privileging words over images.78 Nevertheless, raising concerns about the subordination of art to texts is reasonable. The great scholars of Christian art and archaeology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including those associated with the “Roman school,” tended to interpret early Christian iconography almost entirely in terms of literary sources from the patristic era.79 These scholars tended to date artefacts inaccurately and inappropriately harmonised the material evidence with later theological and liturgical developments. Meanwhile, text historians often viewed evidence of Christian art as merely illustrative of written sources and not as an independently constructed data field that might provide a wealth of information apart from literature. Accordingly, art-historical materials were judged to be supplementary and supportive rather than autonomous and sometimes divergent sources of data revealing early the faith and practices of early Christians or, alternatively, as if art contained a canon of static symbols for expressing basic theological truths as contained in catechism or creed.80 This style of interpretation had obvious problems, including the assumption that Christian material or physical remains should corroborate the history as presented in documents, and that what would emerge as a fairly unified or “catholic” form of Christianity could be viewed as mainstream or normative. Hence, both text historians and art historians presented material and literary remains as being more or less in agreement with one another. Where these two kinds of evidence contrasted or diverged (or the historians simply did not like what they found), historians presumed written documents to provide more accurate historical data than art-historical evidence and explained away the latter as unrepresentative, unreliable, or

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 33 unofficial. When interpreters therefore deemed dogmatic issues to be overriding and respectable art subservient to the writings of theologians and promulgations of church councils, different images or symbols were interpreted accordingly. Besides making assumptions regarding aspects of early Christian tradition that would make it conform to later teachings (e.g., the centrality of the Virgin Mary in the work of salvation, or the particular blame given to Eve for the fallen human state), these interpreters also saw Christian art as a distinct departure from contemporary pagan iconography.81 Scholars writing in the latter part of the twentieth century tended to be critical of this approach, partly in an effort to make the field of early Christian art and archaeology more objective and less confessional. In the 1930s, Paul Styger argued for a scientific dating of the catacombs and was among the first to reject the early, pre-third-century dating of the frescoes. Erich Dinkler especially criticised the habit of attributing later theological developments to earlier periods, and the over-interpretation of particular images, particularly any cross symbols inscribed on epitaphs in the Roman catacombs.82 Echoing earlier writers like Ludwig von Sybel, and unfettered by a need to create a Christian apologetic, such scholars as Theodore Klauser and Ernst Kitzinger reemphasised the continuity and parallels between pagan and Christian iconography.83 Correcting what they saw as an often-abusive manipulation of evidence, the innovative approach of Klauser and Kitzinger separated written sources from archaeological ones. They perceived the distinction as a more scientific and respectful treatment of the non-literary evidence and regarded it as less likely to be corrupted by the biases inherent in the documents, especially theological polemics and ecclesial politics. On the negative side, the fact that the art was produced for a community of Christian believers began to be lost in an effort to remain objectively detached from the religious context of the evidence. Thus, while the earlier style of interpretation presupposed that the archaeological data required coordination with the written sources, the latter group argued for an almost radical disjunction of the two. This more critical approach treated texts with scepticism and, in some cases, even suspicion, wanting to challenge the presentation of the faith as belonging to a small minority, composed mainly of the church’s educated leadership, rather than the broader community. Without doubt, these scholarly trajectories served as important correctives to the earlier practice of interpreting artworks mainly through texts or seeing them as proof of continuity with later tradition. Yet, Christian art was not created in a vacuum, without reference to pressing theological, doctrinal discussions, or the lived practices of the large gatherings of the faithful who attended liturgies and heard sermons preached and scriptures read in communal worship. Presuming more compatibility between the meaning of visual images and the messages encoded in written texts than previous theorists allowed permits us to re-examine the visual evidence for possible interpretative clues suggested in selected contemporary writings. Such an approach assumes the organic emergence of Christian art in a complex but receptive community of believers who saw pictorial imagery as a legitimate expression of religious faith not out of step with

34  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question the teachings or practices of either departed founders or contemporary authorities. Although Christians were a diverse community, made up of competing factions, different sects, and cultural backgrounds, their differences do not seem to be about whether they were more visually or textually oriented, and no evidence suggests that any group judged texts and images to be fundamentally incompatible. Conclusion In sum, early Christian art, identified as such by its subject matter (e.g., biblical scenes or characters), is basically unknown before the early third century, and the earliest surviving examples are fairly restricted in geographical, contextual, material, and iconographic scope. Although self-identified Christians may have owned objects with pictorial images before that time, they were probably indistinguishable from those belonging to their non-Christian neighbours. The art that belongs to the period beginning in the Constantinian age and lasting into the early Byzantine era moved from essentially private, funerary, and domestic contexts into more ecclesial settings. Catacomb paintings and sarcophagus relief carvings begin to be eclipsed by mosaics made for church interiors, items made for ritual or liturgical use, and illuminated Bibles. The range of iconographic subjects expanded in this phase as well and began to include non-narrative compositions, especially portraits of Christ and the saints. Undoubtedly, Christian art, in both of its initial phases, reflects and parallels the change of fortunes of both Christians and the institutional church over time. The Christian religion, although focused on divine laws, transcendent issues, and other-worldly expectations, was lived out amid and in reaction to political and cultural circumstances. To a large degree, even theological debates about the nature of God had this-worldly stimuli and ramifications. Similarly, Christian art developed in and responded to particular social shifts and historical events. Circumstances, contemporary theological debates, methods of scripture interpretation, and liturgical practices all shaped its content and character. In other words, Christian art evolved in an integrated environment and in relation to external historical pressures as well as internal theological developments, both of which form its sometimesunacknowledged backdrop. Secular power struggles, competing Christian factions, overlapping identities, local and imperially sanctioned persecutions, and doctrinal conflicts were all relevant to the selection of subjects and their composition. Certain motifs appear with great regularity and predictability, suggesting that they were deliberately selected and popularly reinforced. They reflected the ritual uses of the spaces in which they were set, both funerary and ecclesial.84 Those writers who expounded their understanding of the Christian faith in words frequently illustrated their prose with metaphors and scriptural illustrations that found visual form in the paintings, mosaics, sculpture, and other crafts of the early church. One may therefore logically conclude that the earliest known Christian images were not accidentally chosen or pulled out of some artist’s grab-bag. An extended study of this art leads one to expect more standard types than innovations or inventions and that some subjects were deemed particularly appropriate for a funerary context. The early consistency

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 35 of the iconographic repertoire indicates that individual taste or personal whim played little role in the decoration of these places. The historian’s challenge is to discern what that community, as a whole, found meaningful in those images. Taking all these issues into consideration, the proposition that the interpretation of early Christian art works may be advanced by considering social contexts, written documents, and visual art synoptically is reasonable, so long as one body of evidence is not judged always to be the more reliable or governing one. By synthesising texts and images from comparable geographic and chronological contexts, trained text historians may discover that some of the images correspond with particular text narratives, and art historians may recognise the high degree of resonance between Christian literature and visual art. Casting more light on the historical and theological situation of the early church, this dialogical process reveals the kind of relationship that exists between theological treatises and sacred images—two modes of communication or speculation about the nature of divine and human existence. This proposition does not mean that images and texts will be in complete accord, or that they will present aspects of religious faith in parallel form, but rather that one mode of discourse may help to elucidate another and give historians a better understanding of ancient symbol systems. The following chapters will consider central religious images in more depth and in dialogue with changes in the religious and social environment as well with the literary evidence to see how contexts, texts, and images correspond to one another. In the end, however, despite the fact that images may seem frustratingly enigmatic or ambiguous, they provide an extraordinary testimony to aspects of the hopes, values, and deeply held convictions of the early Christian community. Images are articulate and complex modes of expression that make no sense in isolation and/ or express meaning apart from ideas that emerge in a local community and engage that community’s values. The historian’s task is not unlike the artist’s—to make those ideas three-dimensional, having both surface and depth. Notes 1 See Robert Couzin, “ ‘Early’ ‘Christian’ ‘Art,’ ” in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, ed., Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 380–92. 2 See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmond Jephcott (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1994), xxi. 3 Although Christian material artefacts may date to the first or early second century, and older historians such as Giovanni De Rossi (at the end of the nineteenth century) and Joseph Wilpert (in the early twentieth) dated the Roman Christian catacomb frescoes to the end of the first century, a beginning date of the early third century for Christian iconography as such is now widely accepted. For a scientific discussion of the dating of catacomb paintings see Hugo Brandenburg, “Überlegungen zum Ursprung der frühchristlichen Bildkunst,” Atti Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome 9.1 (1978); also, Hans Georg Thummel, “Die Anfänge der Katakombenmalerei,” Atti Congresso Internationale di Archeologia Cristiana 7 (1965), 745–52. Friedrich Gerke is generally credited with establishing the dating of the catacomb paintings, based on the archaeological data more than on stylistic considerations, “Ideengeschichte der ältesten christlichen Kunst,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 59 (1940), 1–102.

36  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 4 Both Tertullian, Pud. 7.1–4; 10.12; and Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 3.11.59, offer late second- or early third-century testimonia to Christians using etched eucharistic cups and engraved signet rings. One notable, earlier instance, dated to the late second century, could be Irenaeus of Lyons’ mention of certain heretical groups owning and venerating portraits of Jesus, Haer. 1.25.6. 5 A good example is the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, in which the man’s name and title are included in an inscription that allows precise dating of the object to 359 CE. 6 See Hippolytus, Haer. 9.12.14. On scholarly challenge to the attribution to Callixtus, see John Bodel, “From Columbaria to Catacombs: Collective Burial in Pagan and Christian Rome,” in Commemorating the Dead, Texts and Artifacts in Context, ed., Laurie Brink O.P. and Deborah Green (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 177–242, esp. 202–3. 7 Norbert Zimmermann, “Catacomb Painting and Iconography,” in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, ed., Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 21–38, esp. 21. On catacomb paintings generally, and for an extensive bibliography, see Philippe Pergola, Le catacombe romane: Storia e topografia (Rome: Carocci, 1997); Fabrizio Bisconti, Le pitture delle catacombe romane, Restauri ed interpretazioni (Todi: Tau, 2009); and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani di Roman dal VI al VI secolo (Vatican City: Istituto Grafico Editoriale Romano, 2001). 8 The catalogue of Roman sarcophagi was edited by Friedrich W. Diechmann, Giuseppe Bovini, and Hugo Brandenburg, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, Bd 1, Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1967). See also Jutta Dresken-Weiland, “Christian Sarcophagi from Rome,” in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, ed., Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 39–55; Guntram Koch, Frühchristlichen Sarkophage (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000); and Robert Couzin, “The Christian Sarcophagus Population of Rome,” Journal of Roman Archeology 27 (2014): 275–303. 9 The Gallican sarcophagi are well presented and discussed by F. Benoit, Sarcophages paléochrétiens d’Arles et de Marseille, Gallia Suppl. 5 (Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1954). For full catalogues of these others, see Brigitte Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, dritter Band: Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2003); and Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, zweiter Band: Italien mit einem Nachtrag Rom und Ostia, Dalmatien, Museen der Welt (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998). 10 Paul Corby Finney summarises the ideological aspects of scholarly assertions that Rome was the source and centre for all Christian artistic output. See Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 151 and footnotes 8 and 9, 264. 11 The so-called Cleveland marbles may have also been created for a family tomb. See W. Wixom, “Early Christian Sculptures in Cleveland,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 45 (1967), 65–88. Ernst Kitzinger disputed this in his article, “The Cleveland Marbles,” in the Atti IX Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiana 9.1 (1978): 653–75. Also see Heidi Hornik, “Freestanding Sculpture,” in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, ed., Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 78–81. The mid-third-century house church at Dura-Europos is an important exception to the funerary context of early Christian art, whose program of images is, however, strikingly similar to those in the Roman catacombs and sarcophagi. On this important monument see Michael Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2016). 12 Evidence for this includes Lactantius’s account of the looting and levelling of a “lofty” Christian church building in Nicomedia during the Diocletianic persecution, Mort. 12; Eusebius’s account of purpose-built churches prior to the time of Constantine, Hist.

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 37 eccl. 8.1.5; and the account of the confiscation of codices from a church in Cirta (Numidia) during that same persecution, Act. Zeno. 2. 13 Individual examples are more fully discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. 14 See discussion of these figures in Chapter 5. 15 Joseph Wilpert or Erwin Goodenough would have found meaning even in these figures, however. See Wilpert, Roma sotterranea: le pitture delle catacombe romane (Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre, 1903); and a relatively brief work of Goodenough, “Catacomb Art,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962), 113–42, in which he argues, at p. 117: “the devices used again and again to fill the spaces in the catacomb create an atmosphere, express a hope, but atmosphere and hope are not the deepest meaning we know. In Symbols I, I gave reasons for supposing that vines and baskets with animals or birds drinking and eating still expressed hope of life here and hereafter [and for eschatological?] eating and drinking, and that with Christians they had eucharistic implications.” 16 Stylistic and compositional elements are discussed below. 17 All these subjects are discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 4. 18 This is discussed at more length in Chapter 3. An example, however, is the juxtaposition of Noah with the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace. 19 See discussion of these developments in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. 20 See, for example, the comments of Charles R. Morey, Christian Art (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1935), 14; H. W. Janson, History of Art: A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day (New York: Prentice Hall, 1964), 159; see the assessment of these qualitative judgements in Jaś Elsner, “Perspectives in Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed., N. Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 255–77 (summarised in pp. 271–2 under the subtitle, “Conclusion: The Chimaera of Decline?”). 21 Examples of this are discussed in the following chapters. See also the discussion of Christian art as compared with Roman mythological paintings and reliefs, Robin M. Jensen, “Compiling Narratives: The Visual Strategies of Early Christian Art,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23 (2015): 1–26. 22 Paul Zanker and Björn Ewald, Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 265 23 For a broad study of this type, see Janet Huskinson, Roman Strigillated Sarcophagi: Art and Social History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 24 For example, see Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 25 See the discussion of style in Jaś Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 15–23; also, a brief discussion in Kurt Weitzmann, “Introduction” in Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, ed., Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 1–2. 26 For calculation of the cost of a sarcophagus see Couzin, “Christian Sarcophagus Population,” 275–84; and Ben Russell, “The Roman Sarcophagus ‘Industry’ A Reconsideration,” in Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson, eds., Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011). 119–47, esp. at 122–3. 27 For different surmises about the unfinished sarcophagi, see Janet Huskinson, “Unfinished Portrait Heads on Later Roman Sarcophagi: Some New Perspectives,” Papers of the British School at Rome 66 (1998), 129–58, esp. at 155. On workshops, clients, and the sarcophagus trade in Late Antiquity, generally, see Russell, “The Roman Sarcophagus ‘Industry,’ ” and with regard to the practice of buying unfinished monuments, see esp. pp. 125–7 and 138–9, where he argues that blank portraits do not necessarily indicate stock pieces. Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Sarkophagbestattungen des 4.–6. Jhr. im Westen des Römischen Reichs (Rome: Herder, 2003), 15, suggests that increasingly high demand resulted in partially finished monuments.

38  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 28 On re-cutting see Stine Birk, “Man or Woman? Cross-Gendering and Individuality on Third Century Roman Sarcophagi,” in Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson, eds., Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 229–60 at 229–30; on re-use see Mont Allen, The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi, chap. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 29 For extensive discussion of (and theories about) the sarcophagus production process, from quarry to market, see Klaus Eichner, “Die Produktionsmethoden der stadtrömischen Sarkophagfabrik in der Blütezeit unter Konstantin,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 24 (1981): 85–113; also, Koch, Frühchristlichen Sarkophage, 72–5. A  helpful summary of these different proposals is in Roald Dijkstra, The Apostles in Early Christian Art and Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 23–8. 30 Couzin, “Christian Sarcophagus Population,” at 279; Stine Birk, “Carving Sarcophagi: Roman Sculptural Workshops and Their Organization,” in Ateliers and Artisans in Roman Art and Archeology, eds., Troels M. Kristensen, Birte Poulsen, and Stine Birk (Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2012): 13–37; also, Mat Immerzeel, “Les ateliers de sarcophages paléochrétiens en Gaule: La Provence et les Pyrénees,” in Antiquité Tardive 2 (1994); 233–49. 31 Dresken-Weiland, “Christian Sarcophagi from Rome,” at p. 41, argues that the sarcophagus made for Bishop Concordius of Arles is the first clearly identified example of such a monument. 32 The inscription reads IUN BASSUS V C QUI VIXIT ANNIS XLII MEN II IN IPSA PERFECTA URBI NEOFITUS IIT AD DEUM VIII KAL SEPT EUSEBIO ET YPATIO COSS (Junius Bassus, an illustrious man, 42 years and two months old, holding the title of prefect of the city, went to God newly baptised on August 25 during the consulship of Eusebius and Hypatius) (i.e., 359). The translation of V C (vir clarissimus) could simply indicate that he was of senatorial rank. 33 See John Bodel, “From Columbaria to Catacombs,” 177–242; and Mark Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices of the Fourth Century: Shared Tombs?” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 37–59. 34 Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Pelican History of the Church, vol. 1; London: Penguin, 1967), 277, sums it up: “The second of the Ten Commandments forbade the making of any graven images. Both Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria regarded this prohibition as absolute and binding on Christians. Images and cultic statues belonged to the demonic world of paganism. In fact, the only second-century Christians known to have images of Christ were radical Gnostics, the followers of the licentious Carpocrates.” See also James D. Breckenridge, “The Reception of Art into the Early Church,” Atti IX Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiania 9.1 (1978): 361–9; and Robert Grigg, “Aniconic Worship and the Apologetic Tradition,” Church History 45 (1976) 428–9. An opposing position was proposed by Mary Charles-Murray, “Art and the Early Church,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 28.2 (1977), 304–45; and Rebirth and Afterlife: A Study of the Transmutation of Some Pagan Imagery in Early Christian Art (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1981), 13–36. 35 Theodor Klauser’s serially published essays, which used archaeological evidence to argue that early Christians were aniconic, appeared under the title “Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst,” in the Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 1 (1958), 20–51; 2 (1959), 115–45; 3 (1960), 112–33; 4 (1961), 128–45; 5 (1962), 113–24; 6 (1963), 71–100; 7 (1964), 67–76; 8–9 (1965–6), 126–70; 10 (1967), 82–120. 36 Weitzman, Age of Spirituality:Symposium, 2. 37 Texts to demonstrate that church authorities were adamantly opposed to art and perceived it as an essentially pagan practice are culled mainly from Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. Scholars who amassed these texts include Hugo Koch, Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen (Forsch. zur Relig. und Lit. des A. and N. Testaments, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1917); and Walter Elliger, Zur Entstehung und frühen Entwicklung der altchristlichen Bildkunst,”

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 39 ibid. 23 (1934), 1–284. That first- and second-century Christians had some art is demonstrated by both Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, who refer to cups and signet rings, or seals, with figures of the Good Shepherd or other “acceptable” images. See Tertullian, Pud. 7.1–4; and Clement, Paed. 3.59.2–3.60.1. In addition, see the discussion of second-century lamps with figures of the Good Shepherd in Finney, Invisible God, 116–32. 38 On the theologically diminished role of the Ten Commandments in early Christian literature, see Robert Grant, “The Decalogue in Early Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 40 (1947): 1–17. Rare exceptions include Tertullian, Idol. 4; Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 4; Strom. 5.5, 6.16; and Origen, Cels. 8.34. 39 Graydon Snyder tends toward this viewpoint in his presentation of two different groups of early Christians: rural, “cemetery” Christians versus an urban intellectual party. See Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 164, 167–8. This viewpoint is echoed in Ramsay MacMullen’s The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). Also consider Margaret Miles’s statement in Image as Insight (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 38: “Images can also reflect the discontinuity featured in women’s physical existence; religious imagery delights in themes specific to the stages of women’s life experience . . . [which] is different from the universality of the subjective consciousness articulated by language. . . . The antagonism of a few theologians to visual images and their injunctions to ‘spiritual’—that is, verbal—worship of God reveals a fundamental disdain for the vast majority of human beings, women and men, whose perspective was based in the exigencies of physical existence.” 40 Gregory the Great, Ep. 9.209 and 11.10. 41 Breckenridge, “The Reception of Art,” 368. See also Chadwick, The Early Church, 280: “With the conversion of Constantine, the Church no longer had to be reticent in expressing its faith . . . and the tide became a flood in the course of the fourth century. Nevertheless, the older puritanism was not stifled or killed.” 42 Beat Brenk, The Apse, The Image, and the Icon (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), 61. Note that he here makes an argument from the lack of evidence (as evidence), and recognises the lack of any existing texts that condemn pictorial art generally or cite the Second Commandment in doing so. 43 Vehemently, Beat Brenk, “Art and Propaganda fide: Christian Art and Architecture, 300–600,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2: Constantine to c, 600, eds., Augustine Casiday and Frederic W. Norris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 691–75, esp. at 692; more circumspectly, Jaś Elsner, “Inventing Christian Rome: The Role of Early Christian Art,” in Rome the Cosmopolis, eds., Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 71–99, esp. at p. 71, fn. 1, where he argues that against others, “we should not underestimate a residual resistance to art in a series of influential Church fathers.” 44 The supposed aniconism of the early church is simply assumed by many standard church histories, including Henry Chadwick’s (see n. 34). This aniconism has also been suggested as a basis for the eighth-century iconoclastic controversy. See Leslie W. Barnard, The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 1974); Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), 85–150, esp. 88–9; and Gerhard B. Ladner, “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953): 1–34, esp. at 5. Klauser’s and others’ representation of an anti-material and purely spiritual early Christianity that became gradually “Hellenised” may have been influenced by Adolph von Harnack’s writings. See his Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 2, 4th edition (Mohr: Tübingen, 1909), 467–79. 45 Charles-Murray developed this argument in her article, “Art and the Early Church.” Finney continues it in The Invisible God, esp. pp. 290–3 (summary). In this work Finney concurs with Charles-Murray that early Christians were far from aniconic, despite the

40  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question ways they were cited during the iconoclastic period. Finney further asserts that the relative lateness of Christian art must be explained by social or economic factors rather than purely religious ones. 46 Charles-Murray, “Art in the Early Church,” 307–8. 47 Charles-Murray, “Art in the Early Church,” 311. 48 Charles-Murray, “Art in the Early Church, 302. 49 Finney, Invisible God, 7–10. 50 For example, Jaś Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Antique Jewish Art and Early Christian Art,” Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): 114–15. 51 This was also suggested by Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 89. 52 This is a central thesis of Robin M. Jensen, From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Art in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022). 53 See the work of E. Testa, for example: Il simbolismo dei Guideo-Cristiani (Pubblicazioni dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, n. 14, Jerusalem: Tip. dei PP. francescani, 1962). 54 See discussion of this issue in Chapter 4. 55 This is a central argument in Thomas Mathews’s The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 56 On the matter of Christian wealth, numbers, and status in this early period, see Timothy Barnes, “Statistics and the Growth of the Roman Aristocracy, Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 135–47; Couzin, “Christian Sarcophagus Population,” 285–303. 57 See Finney, Invisible God, 108–10, for a summary of his argument to this effect. 58 See the excellent summary essay by Sean Leatherbury, “The Iconography of Early Christian Roman Art,” in the Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography, eds., Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 464–84. 59 Adam Levine makes this point specifically in “Re-Imagining Encounters between Late Antique Viewers and Early Christian Art,” in Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 7.1 (2016): 29–42. 60 Many of these are discussed in more detail in the next chapter. For example, see Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 55: Tertullian, Apol. 12.3, 16.7; Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.7–8; and Hippolytus, Antichr. 59. 61 More discussion of the shepherd and its pagan prototype, Hermes, in Chapter 2. 62 For example, see Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 21. More discussion of these figures as conflated with Christ in Chapter 4. 63 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 9, 11. 64 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 1, 7. 65 See Robert Couzin, “Syncretism and Segregation in Christian Art,” Studies in Iconography 38 (2017): 18–54, esp. at 21–3. Couzin shows, however, that the juxtaposition of pagan and Christian images or iconographic “confusion” is rare after the early fourth century. 66 On this question see Maijastina Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Culture ca. 360–430 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), who coined the term “incerti” to describe Christians who were not sure what they actually believed. Christopher Jones categorises Christians as ranging on a blurry spectrum from fully committed at one end to centre-Christians or centre-pagans at the middle, to fully committed pagans at the other end, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 7. Cameron, Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176–7, suggests as many as five contiguous categories, including committed (either Christians or pagans) and those Christians who were sincere believers but neither theologically informed nor saw a reason to reject secular culture. 67 Franz Dölger, ΙΧΘΥE: Das Fisch Symbol in frühchristlicher Zeit (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorffschen, 1910); and Erwin Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols (New York: Pantheon, 1953–68).

Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 41 68 Mary Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife: A Study of the Transmutation of Some Pagan Imagery in Early Christian Funerary Art (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1981). For a more general discussion of the question of this assimilation, see Janet Huskinson, “Some Pagan Figures and Their Significance in Early Christian Art,” Papers of the British School at Rome 42 (1974): 68–97, esp. 68–74. See the discussion or Orpheus in Chapter 5. 69 See, for example, Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). 70 Beverly Berg, “Alcestes and Hercules in the Catacomb of Via Latina,” Vigiliae Christianae 48 (1994): 219–34. On the Via Latina Catacomb generally see the works of William Tronzo, The Via Latina Catacomb (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986); and Antonio Ferrua, The Unknown Catacomb (New Lanark: Geddes and Grosset, 1991). 71 Fabrizio Bisconti, “Il mito e la Bibbia: due volti delle rivoluzione dell’immaginario iconografico nella tarda antichità” in La rivoluzione dell’immagine, ed., Fabrizio Bisconti and Giovanni Gentili (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2007), 36–53 at 47. 72 Ferrua, Unknown Catacomb, 157–9, esp. at 159, adding that no known ecclesiastical laws forbade burial with pagan relatives. 73 Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 271–2. 74 On the Jonah and Endymion parallels see David Balch, “From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition,” in Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context, eds., Laurie Brink O.P. and Deborah Green (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 273–302; and Michael Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 85–99. Also, Marion Lawrence, “Three Pagan Themes in Christian Art,” in De Artibus Opuscula XL, Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, vol. 1, ed., Millard Meiss (New York: New York University Press, 1961), 323–34. 75 More discussion of Jonah in Chapter  3. And see Everett Ferguson, “Jonah in Early Christian Art: Death, Resurrection, and Immortality,” in Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World, eds., Aliou Cissé Niang and Carolyn Osiek (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 342–53. 76 Couzin, “Sycretism and Segregation,” esp. 39–40. 77 A term coined by Couzin. 78 Jocelyn Penny Small makes a similar argument with regard to the relationship between classical art and texts, in The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. 1–7. More recently, see Michael Squire, “Word & Image,” in The Oxford Handbook to Roman Imagery and Iconography, eds., Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 51–91. 79 The “Roman School” is exemplified by the older publications and excavations of Roman Catholic archaeologists associated with the Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana. 80 Possibly the classic source for this style of interpretation are articles in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed., F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (Paris: Letourzey et Ané, 1924–53). See the helpful discussion of many of these problems in E. A. Judge, “ ‘Antike und Christentum’: Toward a Definition of the Field. A Bibliographical Essay,” Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 2.23.1 (1979), 3–58. 81 A good example of this mode of interpretation can be seen in the writings of Joseph Wilpert, especially in his summary monograph, Erlebnisse und Ergebnisse im Dienste der christlichen Archäeologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1930), and in La fede delle chiesa nascente: secondo i monumenti dell’arte funeraria antica (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1938), but also in many others, including Orazio Marucchi, The Evidence of the Catacombs (London: Sheed and Ward, 1929). See H. Lother, Realismus und Symbolismus in der altchristlichen Kunst (Tübingen: Mohr, 1931). Snyder also gives useful summary criticism of these approaches, Ante Pacem, 5–7.

42  Overview of the Evidence and Methodological Question 82 See Paul Styger, Die römischen Katakomben (Berlin, 1933) and Erich Dinkler, Signum Crucis. Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament und zur christlichen Archäologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1967). Also, Dinkler’s work, “Die ersten Petrusdarstellung,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11 (1939), 1–80, in which he challenges earlier arguments about the so-called Petrine evidence in early Christian art. 83 Ludwig von Sybel, Christliche Antike, 2 vols (Marburg, 1906–9); Theodor Klauser, “Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 1–10 (1958–67); and Ernst Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). 84 See Matthew J. Grey and Mark D. Ellison, “Imagery in Jewish and Christian Ritual Settings,” in the Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography, eds., Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 534–63.

2

Early Christian Symbols

Although the inclusion of scenes or characters from biblical narratives is the primary identifier of Christian pictorial art, figures without an explicit source in scripture may express a Christian identity and concept, or allude to some story or teaching in a brief or shorthand manner. Lacking direct textual references, these motifs function more as symbols or even pictograms. Yet, while they might seem simpler than the narratively based subjects, in many ways such figures are inherently more polyvalent and thus more equivocal. Moreover, since most of these symbols also occur in clearly pagan contexts, unless they are accompanied by figures like christograms that confirm their Christian associations or have adjacent biblical scenes, they are not easily categorised (Fig. 2.1). For example, unless a simple funerary epitaph that, along with the deceased’s name and years of life, includes a characteristically Christian phrase like “in pace” (at peace) or “neofitus” (new-born or baptised) it is possibly—but not certainly—a marker for a Christian burial, even if it includes the design of a shepherd, praying figure, or dove with an olive branch. While these kinds of formulae may be religiously ambiguous, even the traditional dedication to the underworld gods, Di Manibus Sacrum (or its abbreviation, DMS, or simply DM), were frequently transferred from pagan to Christian contexts (cf. Fig. 2.10).1 Among the most prevalent of such motifs are various birds (e.g., doves and peacocks), boats and anchors, grapevines, harvesting, herding, and fishing scenes. While these motifs are common in Graeco-Roman art, they achieve Christian resonance by alluding to scripture passages such as Jesus’s statement, “I am the vine and you are the branches” (John 15:5) or any of the parables or references to planting or harvesting (e.g., Matthew 13:30). They may also carry a weight of symbolism beyond any particular scripture text, or allude to certain Christian rituals. For example, while fish or fishing scenes drew upon popular maritime images in contemporaneous Roman compositions, they recall any number of biblical stories related to catching fish (e.g., Matthew 4:19) or eating fish (e.g., Matthew 4:17), both of which also have baptismal or eucharistic associations. Fish also feature prominently in scenes of diners sharing a banquet, which may have evoked a specific biblical narrative (the feeding miracles or the Last Supper) but also could have depicted an actual ritual meal or even alluded to an anticipated paradisiacal feast. Moreover, because the meal scene commonly occurs in pagan funerary contexts, DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-2

44  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.1  Grave marker, from the cloister of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Author.

its meaning could have varied from viewer to viewer or simply depicted the kind of traditional funerary banquets shared by Christians and non-Christians alike. Two other extremely popular motifs are the praying figure (orant) and the shepherd. While the praying figure lacks specific biblical associations, the shepherd, like the fisher, evokes any number of scriptural images. Almost all of these figures peaked in popularity in the third and early fourth centuries and in Christian art by the beginning of the fifth when they, like most biblical narrative scenes, were outnumbered by portraits of Christ and the saints. This chapter begins by discussing a group of relatively simple motifs: birds, anchors, boats, and grapevines, some of them perhaps symbols for the promised afterlife, the Church, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. It continues by considering more complex symbolic motifs, some with more specific scriptural associations: fish and fishers and banqueting scenes. It concludes by discussing the praying figure (orant) and the shepherd, both of which could be personifications of certain human or divine virtues. Birds Birds of all kinds appear in early Christian art. They include doves, peacocks, quail, herons, and the mythological (and singular) phoenix. Many images of birds in flight are impossible to identify with precision. Their function in visual compositions—especially in funerary settings—might simply be decorative, but they may also carry a special meaning insofar as birds are creatures that soar above the ground, linking the heavenly with the earthly realms.

Early Christian Symbols 45 Doves

Certain birds, especially doves, have specific scriptural associations. Noah sends out both a raven and a dove from the ark to determine if or when the flood subsided (Genesis 8:6–11). When the dove returns with an olive branch in its beak, Noah knows that dry land has re-emerged. Doves are mentioned in the Psalms and in the Song of Songs (e.g., Psalm 55:6 or Song 5:2). In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove at the baptism of Jesus (cf. Matthew 3:16 and parallels). Thus, doves appear in early Christian art alongside depictions of Noah (Fig. 2.2 and cf. Figs. 1.1, 2.2.3.2) and John baptising Jesus (cf. Figs. 1.9, 3.4, 4.11, 5.14, 5.15), in at least one depiction of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace (cf. Fig. 3.9), and often simply as decorative motifs (Fig. 2.3).2 Peacocks

The peacock is not mentioned in scripture and rarely in any early Christian text. However, it appears frequently in catacomb paintings (Fig. 2.4) and sarcophagus reliefs as well as in a wide variety of other objects, from pottery lamps, to mosaics, to marble chancel screens. In pagan tradition, the peacock is associated with the goddess Hera, but this is unlikely a reason that Christians chose it for their

Figure 2.2 Christian epitaph with Noah, now in the Museo Romano Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano. Source: Photo credit: Album/Art Resource, NY.

46  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.3  Painting of doves with garland, Catacomb of Panfilo, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 2.4 Peacock from the Cubiculum of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, 4th cen. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Early Christian Symbols 47 funerary, liturgical, and ordinary domestic items. The possibility that the peacock is a symbol for the Christian belief in bodily resurrection is supported by a single mention in Augustine of Hippo’s treatise City of God, in which the author claims that the peacock’s flesh resists decay.3 Whether or not this was a widespread notion, the peacock’s popularity in Christian art may have been simply because it suggested the beauties awaiting the Christian faithful in Paradise.4 The Phoenix

In contrast to doves and peacocks, the phoenix is a singular, mythical creature and a widely recognised symbol of rebirth and renewal across many religious traditions. Although versions of the myth vary, generally they say that when the phoenix reaches the end of its exceptionally long life (500 years or more), a single offspring emerges from its decaying remains and carries the parent’s nest (constructed from aromatic spices like myrrh, cinnamon, and frankincense) to Heliopolis, where it deposits it upon an altar. Later versions state that the parent bird and its nest are consumed by flames and the bird is regenerated from the ashes, either as itself or as its offspring. Although mentions of the phoenix do not turn up, as such, in the Bible, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Septuagint) uses the word φοίνικος for the Hebrew “tamar” or “date palm” (Psalm 92:12), which inspired a symbolic connection between the palm and phoenix in later rabbinic and Christian literature. The phoenix also appears in pseudepigraphic biblical literature, including in 3 Baruch, in which the seer sees a bird, large as a mountain and circling the sun. Its vast wings catch the solar rays and save the world from the burning heat. Thus he becomes the guardian of the world and receives a crown of the sun that must be renewed daily (3 Baruch 6–8). Early Christian writers adapted the phoenix’s story as either symbolising the bodily resurrection or as a figure representing Christ’s own death and resurrection.5 The fourth-century church order, the Apostolic Constitutions, refers to the phoenix as a symbol of the resurrection.6 Ambrose of Milan also referred to the phoenix as a symbol of bodily resurrection in his funeral sermon for his brother Satyrus and, in his homilies on the six days of creation, encouraged his hearers to follow the phoenix’s example in seeking a burial casket of faith, filled with the sweet odour of good deeds.7 The bird was a frequent subject in Graeco-Roman art, found in wall paintings and pavement mosaics from Pompeii to Antioch. In Christian art, the phoenix turns up in a variety of contexts, including catacomb paintings, gold glasses, and in early basilica apse and mosaics (Fig. 2.5), usually with rayed halo, and often either standing amid flames or perched in a palm tree (cf. Fig. 4.21).8 Anchors and Boats Maritime or nautical themes were widely favoured in Graeco-Roman art. Sea life along with scenes of ships at sea, fishers casting nets, and nereids cavorting in the waves or riding upon the backs of Tritons decorate the mosaic pavements of baths, villas by the sea, and even many third-century pagan sarcophagi.9 Early Christian iconography similarly features these motifs, among them an anchor, which

48  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.5 Phoenix, mosaic detail from the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, Naples, early 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Ivan Vdovin/Alamy Stock Photo.

occurred more often than any other symbol type on second- to fourth-century Christian epitaphs (Fig. 2.6).10 Dozens of pre-Constantinian anchor images have been found among the epitaphs in the catacombs, accompanied by such legends as spes (hope), pax tecum, pax tibi, and in pace. The anchor also appears with versions of the Greek word for hope, ἐλπίς.11 In addition to these epitaph images, anchors appear on early Christian gems, often accompanied by two fish.12 Clement of Alexandria specifically allows the anchor as an appropriate figure for a Christian signet ring.13 A common explanation for the anchor’s popularity is its use in the Epistle to the Hebrews as a metaphor for steadfast hope (Hebrews 6:19).14 Ambrose of Milan later commented on this passage: “Just as an anchor thrown from a ship prevents the ship from being tossed about and holds it securely, thus we hold fast to faith strengthened by hope.”15 However, anchors are not symbols for hope in pre-existing Graeco-Roman iconography or used as a metaphor for hope elsewhere in scripture. Nor is it found in early Christian writings apart from brief mention in a work by Hippolytus in which he compares the church to a ship tossed in the waves but anchored by Christ’s iron-strong commandments.16 Hippolytus’s text also allegorises this ship, adding that she is safe because she is guided by Christ (a skilful pilot), her sails are supported by the cross (the mast), and she is directed by the two Testaments (her tillers). The sailyard ladder symbolises Christ’s Passion, which allows the faithful to ascend to heaven; the ropes that

Early Christian Symbols 49

Figure 2.6  Anchor epitaph from the Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

hold the sails signify Christ’s binding love. The Holy Spirit provides the breeze that moves her forward; the top sails are the prophets, martyrs, and apostles that have already reached heaven; and mariner-angels protect her as she sails the sea of the world. Hippolytus’s reference to the ship’s mast as signifying the cross suggests that motifs of boats and anchors were understood as references to, or substitutes for, the cross. A number of early Christian writers in fact made this connection explicit by arguing that the cross was evident everywhere in the world, including in a ship’s mast.17 Boats and ships also appear in a number of early Christian epitaphs, in one instance sailing past a lighthouse into harbour (Fig. 2.7). Grapevines and Vintaging Lush grapevines or groups of vintaging cherubs were popular motifs in Roman art, and though probably simply evoking the seasons, fertility, or the pleasures of rural life, such images were also associated with the cult of Bacchus or Dionysus.18 They were also carried into Christian iconography and perhaps linked to Jesus’s words, “I am the vine; you are the branches” (John 15:5) and, as such, were a visual metaphor for Christ and the Church (the community of his followers).19 Vines and

50  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.7 Epitaph of Firmia Victoria with ship and lighthouse. Now in the Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano, 4th cen. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 2.8 Detail of end panel of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus showing putti harvesting grapes. Rome, 4th cen., now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo.

vintaging images also may have resonated with any number of biblical texts (e.g., Proverbs 31:16 or Isaiah 5:1–4). They also might have recalled Jesus’s offering the “fruit of the vine” at the Last Supper (Mark 14:25 and parallels) and so carried a eucharistic significance.20 Clusters of grapes hanging heavily from green leafy vines also show up nearly everywhere in early Christian art, particularly in scenes of harvest and wine-making (Fig. 2.8).

Early Christian Symbols 51 Early Christian texts support the vine’s eucharistic allusions. For example, the early church order, the Didache (ca. 100) speaks of the cup of wine as “the Holy Vine of David.”21 Clement of Alexandria regards the grape as both a Christological and a eucharistic allegory: a grape “bruised for us” in order to produce blood that when mingled with water brings salvation.22 Later commentators on the vine’s symbolism also saw it as a eucharistic metaphor, including the midthird-century bishop Cyprian of Carthage, who connects the wine that inebriated Noah with the eucharistic wine when refuting those who received only water as their sacramental drink.23 Adding to the sacramental signification, according to Jesus’s words, the vine is Christ, and its branches represent the apostles and by extension the church. Other early Christian writers also use this figurative language. Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 175) cites the prophet Hosea, who compares Israel (the church) to a luxuriant vine and as new young grapes, imperfect but full of promise for a plentiful vintage (Hosea 9:10).24 Origen of Alexandria elaborates on the branches’ need to stay firmly attached to the “true vine,” since they cannot produce the fruits of virtue apart from it.25 Hippolytus of Rome explains the vine and harvest as symbolising different “branches” of the church, its apostles, saints, and martyrs. Hippolytus’ description resonates with these visual images on sarcophagus reliefs or in mosaic: The spiritual vine was the Saviour. The shoots and the vine branches are his saints, those who believe in him. The bunches of grapes are his martyrs; the trees which are joined with the vine show forth the Passion; the vintagers are the angels; the baskets full of grapes are the Apostles; the winepress is the Church; and the wine is the power of the Holy Spirit.26 In the fourth century, Basil of Caesarea developed this theme at some length, beginning by asserting that “everyone who is grafted by faith into the church are branches, urged to produce abundant fruit, lest infertility should condemn us to the fire.”27 Ambrose of Milan similarly borrowed the motif to represent the church and its sacraments.28 As these texts reveal, grapevines as a symbol of the Church makes sense primarily in terms of the harvest. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says that those branches that do not produce fruit will be gathered up and thrown into the fire (John 15:1–6). This caution is echoed in other gospel texts, such as the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24–30), in which the end time is compared to the gathering of the wheat and burning of the weeds. Because this iconography often shows reaping and vintaging, the significance of these texts should not be overlooked. Probably more than simple references either to the eucharist, or to the community (the vine’s “branches”), such scenes may serve as pictorial references to the final judgement, perhaps partially realised among those already dead. Given the fact that only fruitful vines and ripe bundles of wheat are depicted, the viewer is reassured that the deceased have been safely gathered in.29 Thus, like the fish and the banquet scene, these images reflect upon biblical texts, liturgical practices, and expectations for the afterlife.

52  Early Christian Symbols Fish and Fishers Fish and fishers are more complicated instances of early Christian symbolism than some of the motifs just discussed. These are especially multivalent symbols, pointing to Christ, the church, and the apostles, as well as to baptism as a sacrament, and the following discussion is more extensive than the preceding ones. Fish and fishing scenes already were favourite subjects in Roman art. Various forms of sea life by themselves or depictions of fishers casting lines or hauling in nets are widely depicted, especially in the mosaics made for courtyard pools and nymphaea. Although maritime iconography was popular, Christians could have attached their own special meaning to many of these subjects. Some are fairly easily aligned with biblical narratives that involve fish or fishers. These include the apocryphal story of Tobit catching his medicinal fish (Tobit 6:3–9), the New Testament references to Peter finding the fish with a coin in its mouth (Matthew 17:27), the apostles being called to be fishers of people (Mathew 4:18–19; Mark 1:16–17; Luke 5:1–11), Jesus multiplying bread and fish in the feeding miracle stories (Matthew 14:15–21; Mark 6:35–44; 8:1–8, Luke 10:10–17; John 6:1–13), and the miraculous catch and fish meal on the beach in the Fourth Gospel (John 21:4–14). A fish by itself (lacking any particular narrative association) is one of the oldest and most enduring of Christian image-signs, appearing no later than the early second century and continuing to the present day. Rarely elaborated with more than basic identifying details (fins, eye, tail, and, occasionally, scales), the fish might signify the person of Christ or the Christian faithful. It shows up on Christian tomb epitaphs and on inscribed gems set into rings (Fig. 2.9). A seemingly simple symbol, reviewing its manifold Christian meanings reveals it to be surprisingly complex.30 And, despite the popular belief, no evidence exists that early Christians used the fish as a cryptic sign meant to identify clandestine meeting places during times of persecution. In general, the motif had several possible and sometimes overlapping associations: as a symbol for Christ, as a reference to baptism, and as a figure for the Christian person. The most lucid association of the fish with Christ is the famous acrostic that uses the Greek word for fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ), each letter standing for the first letter in one of Jesus’s titles. This acrostic, first recorded in the Jewish–Christian Sibylline oracles, appears in a 27-verse acrostic poem in which each line begins with a word starting with one of the six letters forming the expanded legend IHΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ (Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour, Cross).31 The addition of the word “cross” at the poem’s conclusion introduces a following seven-line verse in praise of the cross. These Christian interpolations are usually dated to sometime in the third or even fourth century, but they may reflect an earlier tradition. A material instance of this acrostic can be seen in a Christian epitaph from the Catacomb of Callixtus that shows two fish flanking an anchor (Fig. 2.10). Immediately below this design are the words “Fish of the Living” (ΙΧΘΥΣ ΖΩΝΤΩΝ).32 That otherwise unattested formula apparently refers to Christ as the one who saves

Early Christian Symbols 53

Figure 2.9 Early Christian ring with engraved fish, Syria or Asia Minor, late 3rd cen. Now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Source: Photo credit, courtesy of Penn Museum, used with permission.

his followers and refers to the texts of Matthew 22:32 and Mark 12:27, which assert that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the dead but the God of the “living.” That there are two fish, rather than a single one, suggests that here the fish refer to the “living” ones (presumably adherents to the faith) and not to Christ himself, even though the acrostic confirms the Christological identification. Later Christian writers, including Jerome, Eusebius of Caesarea, Optatus of Milevis, Zeno of Verona, Maximus of Turin, Augustine of Hippo, and Quodvultdeus of Carthage, all cite this acrostic.33 Augustine’s citation is the most explicit. In his City of God, Augustine provides the Sibylline oracle version in full, noting places where the Latin translation does not quite correspond to the Greek initial letters. Augustine also expounds on the mystical significance of the poem’s 27 verses (27 being the cube of 3) and argues that Christ is mystically understood in the word “fish” insofar as he was able to live without sin in the abyss of mortality as if in the depths of the waters.34 Fish motifs were particularly popular for baptisteries and might have been intended to remind the newly baptised that they were renewed through water. Literary evidence confirms this latter association. Early Christian writers emphasised

54  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.10 Licinia Amias’s grave slab, Rome, late 3rd cen. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano. Source: Photo credit: Album/Art Resource, NY.

the connections between the fish, a fisher, and baptism. Tertullian opened his treatise on baptism with these words: Concerning our sacrament of water by which we are liberated to eternal life . . . we, little fishes, after the example of our ichthys Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor in any other way than by permanently abiding in water, are we safe.”35 Origen’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew draws a connection between calling the “fishers of people” (Matthew 4:18–19) and the story of Peter with the fish that had the coin in its mouth (Matthew 17:27): “But this coin was not in Jesus’s house, but was found in the sea, and in the mouth of a fish of the sea—a fish which jumped up of its own goodwill, having been caught on the hook of Peter,

Early Christian Symbols 55 who had become a fisher of people.” Origen goes on to say that the fish in the story is a type of the convert, caught by Peter, one of Christ’s commissioned fishers.36 Cyril, a fourth-century bishop of Jerusalem, instructed those preparing for baptism by assuring them: “You are fish caught in the net of the church. Let yourself be taken alive: don’t try to escape. It is Jesus who is playing you on his line, not to kill you, but by killing you, to make you alive.”37 Tertullian’s and Cyril’s sayings complicate the matter of whether Jesus is the fisher, the fish itself, or both. Cyril also identifies the fish (plural) with those about to be baptised. By contrast, the so-called Abercius epitaph, controversially dated to the late second century, seems to agree with Tertullian that the fish is Christ, insofar as it refers to eating the fish along the pilgrimage of conversion: Everywhere faith led the way and set before me for food the fish from the spring, mighty and pure, whom a spotless virgin caught, and gave this to friends to eat, always having sweet wine, and giving the mixed cup with bread.38 Apparently, Abercius, who describes himself as a “disciple of the Good Shepherd,” and speaks of Christ as the fish the “Virgin caught,” refers to the sacrament of eucharist (literally eating the fish in the species of bread and wine), and perhaps also baptism, since the fish is “from the spring” and because the sacrament of eucharist is first offered to the neophyte Christians after baptism.39 Early western baptismal fonts also were often called “fishponds” (piscinae), a play on words elaborated by the late fourth century Optatus of Milevis, who incorporated the Greek word ichthys into a diatribe against Donatists who rebaptised those coming into their community. Referring to the story of Tobias and the fish that cured his blindness (Tobit 6), he asks whether Donatist baptismal waters could confer the same healing properties without (in his view) the presence of the Christ-fish: This is the fish, which in baptism is introduced into the waves of the font, so that what was water may also be called a fish pool because of the fish. The name of this fish, according to its Greek appellation ΙΧΘΥΣ contains a host of holy names of individual letters, being in Latin, Jesus Christus dei filius Salvator.40 Another (fourth-century) Greek inscription, the epitaph of Pectorius, found in southern France, uses language similar to that found in the Abercius epitaph. It identifies Christ as the fish and alludes to both baptism and eucharist within five lines that simultaneously form an acrostic using the Greek word ichthys. The epitaph’s text addresses the newly baptised and appears to refer to their first eucharistic meal: Divine child of the heavenly Fish, keep your heart holy, having received the immortal spring of divine water. Comfort your soul, friend, with the ever-flowing water of wealth-giving wisdom.

56  Early Christian Symbols Take the honey-sweet food from the Saviour of the holy ones. Eat with joy and desire, holding the fish in your hands. Give as food the fish, I pray, Lord and Saviour. Fill me with this fish, this is my desire, O my Lord and Saviour. Soft may my mother sleep; I beseech you, O Light of the dead. Aschandius, my father, beloved of my heart, together with my dear mother and my brothers, in the peace of the fish, remember Pectorius.41 This enigmatic inscription does not, however, offer convincing evidence that early Christians commonly included fish in their eucharistic celebrations. In fact, the passages cited more likely refer to Christ as the fish and to an eschatological rather than an earthly banquet. An excerpt from the work of an unknown author that goes under its Latin title: “Narratio rerum quae in Perside acciderunt,” strengthens the case. Probably dating from the fifth century but drawing upon an earlier tradition, the text conflates the Virgin Mary with the Goddess Hera and both with the fountain of life: For the fountain of water flows ever with the water of the Spirit, having the one and only fish, taken with the hook of divinity, which feeds the whole world, as if dwelling in the sea, with its own flesh.42 Thus, because the fish symbol has many possible meanings, distinguishing them is superfluous. Fishers, by contrast, might have had more explicit associations with particular scripture passages. When Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215) specified the figures Christians should select for their signet rings, he specifically mentioned the fish and fisherman as suitable, commenting on the fisherman in particular who, he said, would remind the wearer of the apostle drawing children from the water.43 Also attributed to Clement is an early Christian poem, the so-called Hymn to Christ the Saviour, which addresses Christ by several descriptive titles: the helm of a ship, the shepherd of lambs, guide, king, ploughman, and as “fisher of men, of those saved from the sea of evil, luring with sweet life the chaste fish from the hostile tide.”44 Cyril of Jerusalem’s admonition to those about to be baptised also presents Jesus as a fisher.45 Based on this fairly scant documentary evidence, early Christian depictions of single fishers with lines hooking individual fish, as found on some third-century catacomb paintings, gems, funerary epitaphs, and sarcophagi, might be seen as references to Christ as a fisher as well as the fish. The Banquet In early Christian art, fish as a food item often shows up in scenes of diners sharing a banquet. This use complicates the question of what both the banquet and the fish in this context are meant to represent and whether they are purely symbolic figures, references to some scripture narrative, or depictions of an actual ritual meal.46 Depictions of diners reclining behind a semi-circular table are regularly featured, in both catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs. They also resemble

Early Christian Symbols 57 similar scenes in Graeco-Roman art, and these seem to be of two basic types.47 The first, usually seen on sarcophagi along with a few tomb mosaics and dating anywhere from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE, typically depicts a diner reclining on a couch (klinē) in front of a three-legged table laden with loaves of bread, cups of wine, and sometimes a variety of other foods. Another diner may be included, often a woman (probably the deceased’s spouse) sitting on a straight chair. Servants may appear in the foreground. The second type, more often found on wall paintings dating to the common era, shows a number of diners sitting around a semi-circular table set with various foods and drinks, and sharing a convivial banquet.48 The Christian versions of the banquet scene usually follow the second type of composition. These images typically show five or seven diners reclining on couches around the semi-circular table laden with cups of wine, platters with one or two large fish, and baskets of bread (Fig. 2.11, cf. Fig. 1.8). Although the number may vary, five or seven loaves or baskets are most prevalent. These are found on sarcophagus reliefs as well as wall paintings (Fig. 2.12). A related depiction, mostly found in the catacomb paintings and often adjacent to the more prevalent type, shows a man extending his hands over a small tripod table laid with bread and fish, opposite an orant (Fig. 2.13). Scholars, attempting to interpret these images, sometimes identify them with particular biblical narratives and thus as depictions of Jesus with his disciples at the Last Supper, the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes (Matthew 14:13–21 and parallels), or a post-resurrection meal like that mentioned in the Fourth Gospel (John

Figure 2.11 Banquet scene with scenes of Jesus’s baptism (left), orant (center top), and Moses, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 57, p. 63.

58  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.12 Banquet scene on an early Christian sarcophagus, from the Via Tiburtina, Rome. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alla Terme. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

21:13).49 Others saw the banquet scenes as illustrations of a sacred Christian meal, either an agape or a eucharist.50 This last option explains the scene’s conventionally being labelled a “fractio panis” (breaking of bread), a term first applied by Joseph Wilpert specifically to a meal scene in the Cappella Graeca of the Catacomb of Priscilla.51 This fresco shows the usual seven figures behind a sigma table on which is set a cup, a platter with two fish, and a platter with bread. Seven baskets of bread are also shown in the image. The person (a woman?) seated at the “head” (the right end) of the table is making a gesture that resembles the action of breaking of a loaf, which led some scholars to propose that women may have acted as the celebrants at early Christian eucharists.52 As the above-mentioned Pectorius inscription implies, fish, along with bread and wine, could have been included in an early Christian ritual meal, although no clear literary evidence reflects such a practice. Several early Christian sources include milk, honey, oil, cheese, olives, and salt as elements of sacred meals.53 Tertullian claimed the followers of Marcion considered fish the more sacred diet, but does not actually suggest that they ate it in place of eucharistic bread and wine.54 The late fourth-/early fifth-century monk and then bishop Paulinus of Nola associated both fish and bread with Christ and described his congregation at an abundant banquet—one modelled on the stories of the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish. In one excerpt, Paulinus doesn’t seem to be describing an actual experience but rather an anticipated future meal in which he sees all the faithful gathered at tables filled with an abundance of food. He links this scene with the feeding miracle in the Gospel narratives, and he refers to Christ as the true bread and the fish of living water.55 Similarly, Augustine speaks of Christ as the divine Fish, raised from the deep and served at the table prepared by God for believers.56

Early Christian Symbols 59

Figure 2.13  Orant and celebrant at a tripod table, from the Catacomb of Callixtus. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea:  Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (Rome: Desclée Lefebure and C., 1903), tav. 41, p. 47.

Identifying these meal scenes as portraying actual Christian eucharists, however, is problematic as it is undermined by evidence for actual Christian practices. By the third century, the eucharistic liturgy included the whole community, not just a small group of guests reclining at couches.57 Although the ancient agape meal remains a candidate for the image’s model, because the term is indefinite and covers a wide variety of table fellowship occasions (including the eucharist), it is hard to apply it to this quite specific motif.58 Nevertheless, the practice of sharing a particular type of meal at the tomb may explain some paintings found in the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus. These paintings, showing fewer than the traditional seven guests, also have inscriptions that presumably record the diners’ commands to servants named Irene and Agape: “mix me wine,” “bring the warm wine” (Fig. 2.14).59

60  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.14  Banquet with servants Irene and Agape, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 157, p. 163.

Thus, the scene most likely depicts the customary Roman funerary practice of sharing a meal at the graveside. Like many other ancient people, Romans brought food offerings to the tomb as part of their funeral observations, at the end of the nine-day mourning period, subsequently on particular days established for honouring ancestors, and on departed loved ones’ birthdays. In order for the dead to share in the meal, graves were often provided with table-like structures (mensae) that included basins for various food offerings or pipes to receive libations. Several of these tables include depressions in the shape of fish—suggesting that fish was a regular food offering.60 Christians continued these traditional customs and integrated them into their new religious practices, initially as memorials for deceased family members but quite soon also as a way of celebrating the martyrs on their feast days.61 Similar receptacles have been found in Christian tombs along with small offering tables and benches.62 Meals could have taken place in the room-like cubicula in the catacombs, although these spaces were dark and cramped. More likely they were shared in the open air or in covered cemetery halls. Archaeologists have found the remains of a mid-third-century courtyard beneath Rome’s church of San Sebastiano that could have served this purpose. The inscriptions found at the site (dated as early as 260 CE) indicate that this structure probably accommodated the faithful who came to feast in honour of Saints Peter and Paul.63

Early Christian Symbols 61 Whether Christians believed the dead were in some way actually present at the meal itself, or were already departed and in Hades awaiting the general resurrection (the refrigerium interim), is not entirely clear.64 Surviving literature attests to church officials trying to curb this banqueting practice, possibly since it was too closely identified with a pagan custom and, at least in the case of martyrs’ feasts, the crowd might become a bit more festive (and even disorderly) than respectfully devout.65 Because these compositions—both pagan and Christian—appear most often in funerary contexts (i.e., catacombs and sarcophagi), attributing a particular funerary significance to them seems reasonable. The fact that the Christian compositions look much the same as the pagan ones argues against an explicitly Christian meal, however. As discussed earlier, Christians repurposed many symbols from their surrounding culture to convey new, if similar, religious meanings. For example, while pagan banquet scenes very likely alluded to earthly pleasures or expressed hope for joyous paradisiacal banquets in some afterlife domain, Christian banquet images might also illustrate future heavenly feasts, promised in the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “I tell you that from now on I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29).66 An especially fascinating banquet scene appears in the small catacomb of Vibia on the Via Appia Antica in Rome (Fig. 2.15). Vibia probably was not a Christian (her husband, Vincentius, is elsewhere identified as a priest of Sabazius), but even if she was pagan, the imagery in her tomb is worth considering as an important contemporary parallel. Adjacent to portrayals of Pluto carrying Vibia off to the underworld and her subsequent judgement by him is a banquet scene showing six diners, raising their glasses and waiting for the deceased woman to make up the seventh at their party. To the left, a figure identified as an Angelus Bonus conducts

Figure 2.15  Vibia’s Paradisical banquet, from the Hypogeum of Vibia, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 132, p. 138.

62  Early Christian Symbols Vibia through a gate into paradise. The meal of fish, poultry, bread, and wine takes place in a bucolic setting and is attended by four servants. The diners also carry the identification: Bonorum Iudicio Iudicati (“those approved by the judgement of the good”). Vibia’s fresco clearly continues the Roman tradition of symbolising the deceased’s happy afterlife. And although this banquet’s particular composition—seven guests at a sigma table—suggests Christian influence, it might have been the other way around (pagan to Christian). Nevertheless, parallel examples in non-Christian iconography, including this particular fresco, attest that the scene depicts the departed soul sharing a joyous meal with a group of companions in a garden-like setting. Praying Figures Perhaps the most enigmatic figures in early Christian art are standing praying figures. Usually a forward-facing female, she has a veiled head and a heavenward gaze, and her hands outstretched in prayer (cf. Fig. 1.9, 1.20). Art historians devised the term “orant” to identify these figures by adapting the mediaeval Latin term orans, meaning a praying person. She is often joined by a dove (Fig. 2.16).67 Her stance and gestures depict the customary prayer position in antiquity (cf. 1 Timothy 2:8). While this is typically Christian, it is not exclusively so.68 Women, whether single or married, were expected to cover their heads for prayer (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:5–7), but men might also do so, and this held true for pagans as well as Jews and Christians.69 Christian prayers could also be offered by prostration or kneeling, but those postures were more appropriate for prayers of penitents

Figure 2.16 Orant on slab with dove and christogram, Rome. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano. Source: Photo credit: PRISMA/Archivio/Alamy Stock Photo.

Early Christian Symbols 63

Figure 2.17  Pietas on an Augustan era Roman coin; reverse legend PIETAS AUGG. Source: Photo credit: Atrokaloro/Alamy Stock Photo.

confessing sins. During most Sunday eucharistic liturgies, prayers were supposed to be offered standing.70 Basil of Caesarea specifically says that everyone stands for prayer on Sunday to remind themselves to seek out the things on high but also because the Day of Resurrection (Sunday) is an image of the age to come.71 Apart from funerary art, the orant also occurs as the personification of the virtue pietas on Roman coinage from the Augustan era through the second and third centuries (Fig. 2.17). The praying figure shown on these coins often stands with a flaming altar or a small stork, a symbol of filial piety. These coins bear such accompanying legends as Pietas Aug (or Augg) or Pietas Publica and probably referred to the emperor’s piety toward his deceased parent or predecessor, or the extension of this filial value to the entire Roman state.72 The term also referred to the honour and obedience given by the ruler and/or people to the gods. Descriptions of characters like Aeneas as “pious” connote a dutiful individual, devoted to family and nation. The early Christian apologists Justin Martyr used the term “pious” to refer to religious activity or worship, whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan. Other Christian writers applied the word to correct or orthodox faith or behaviour, in opposition to heretical beliefs or immoral acts.73 Despite these classical connections, the figures of pietas on coin reverses, or the uses of the term “pious” in literature, might not explain the orant’s significance in either pagan or Christian funerary contexts.74 Various controversial interpretations have been offered. Given the funerary context of most of the orant images, some interpreters propose that they represented the deceased’s soul in paradise.75

64  Early Christian Symbols Other scholars, citing the image’s secular meanings and its rare appearances in non-sepulchral settings, argue that it simply refers to filial devotion, and in the case of Christians, their devotion to their new family (the Church). When these figures are found in non-Christian contexts, they might indicate the deceased person’s pious behaviour in life—his or her giving proper honour to the gods.76 In support of the interpretation of the orant figure as representing the deceased’s soul is the fact that “soul” is a feminine noun, anima, in Latin, which could account for the figure’s feminine attributes. Moreover, because Christians similarly spoke of the church, or ecclesia, in feminine terms, this image has also been interpreted as a symbol of the church.77 Occasionally the orant figure is so specifically portrayed as to indicate that it depicts a particular individual. A likely instance of this is the painting of an orant found in the San Gennaro Catacomb in Naples. She is given the name Cerula and is described as “at peace” (in pace). Rendered with grey hair, carefully arranged in tight curls, she also wears a veil and an elaborate, embroidered stole over a dark purple tunic with banded sleeves. Above her head is a tau-rho flanked by an alpha and omega, and to her right and left are open Gospel books. Besides the obvious particularity of her presentation, some scholars suggest that Cerula might have held some important church office, perhaps a lector, priest, or even a bishop.78 Another well-known example of an orant figure comes from the cubiculum in Rome’s Catacomb of Priscilla. Often called by the title “Velata” (the veiled lady), she is dressed in a dark red tunic with two vertical bands, wearing a white veil that comes over her shoulders; she looks upwards while raising her hands (Fig. 2.18). She

Figure 2.18  Orant from the Cubiculum of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, 4th cen.. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Early Christian Symbols 65 stands in the centre of two groups of persons: on the left a man with two children; on the right a seated woman with a naked baby on her lap. Scholars have debated the identity of all these figures. Some interpret the woman with the child as the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, others as depicting the central female holding her own child.79 Still other interpretations range from seeing the group on the left as illustrating the woman’s catechetical instruction (she is reading from a scroll), her receiving of a bridal veil, or her consecration (veiling) as a virgin.80 Although the vast majority of images of the praying figure are female, several central male biblical characters also strike this pose, including the sailors with Jonah, Daniel, the three youths in the furnace, Noah, and in one rare instance, Abraham and Isaac. In a few of these images, male characters are veiled. These figures might be seen to be praying for (or giving thanks after) divine deliverance from threatening circumstances. By the mid-fourth century, the orant’s stance and gesture was employed in a host of full-length portrait representations including Mary, the saints, bishops, and martyrs. Thus, the image successively progressed from a personification of a virtue, to the portrait of a specific but ordinary individual, and finally to the conventional type of the Virgin or a saint in intercessory prayer. To some degree, with this development the image’s symbolism continued. For instance, in later Byzantine art, when the Virgin, as Mother of God (Theotokos), assumes this posture with a bust portrait of the Christ Child within a round nimbus over her breast. This familiar icon, sometimes named “The Sign,” or Panagia Platytera, signifies the dogma of the Incarnation. The Shepherd and His Flock A shepherd figure often accompanies the orant on early Christian sarcophagi (cf. Fig. 1.9.1.19), but is found by himself nearly everywhere in early Christian art. Depicted as a youthful and beardless male, he carries a sheep or ram over his shoulders and wears a short tunic and boots. Sometimes he carries a shepherd’s purse, a set of pipes, or a bucket of milk (Fig. 2.19). Although related images portray the pastoral scene of several shepherds milking or tending to their flocks, the Roman catacomb paintings, sarcophagus reliefs, and loculus slabs display hundreds of solitary shepherds.81 An image of the shepherd with his flock also decorates the lunette painting over the font in the Dura-Europos baptistery (cf. Fig. 1.2) and turns up on innumerable lamps (cf. Fig. 1.18), gold glasses, terracotta tiles, mosaics, engraved gems (Fig. 2.20), and even some small statuettes dated from the third through the late fourth century (Fig. 2.21). From the fifth century forward, however, the figure becomes much less frequent and also undergoes significant modification in presentation and context as it becomes associated more with regnant imagery and loses its purely pastoral character.82 As scholars have long noted, the sheep-carrying figure had ancient antecedents in ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman art (Fig. 2.22). In particular, the depiction of Hermes in this guise presents him as the deceased’s guide to the underworld (psychopomp), a character associated with hopes for a blessed afterlife and particularly appropriate in a funereal environment.83 Early Christians may have perceived

66  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.19  Good Shepherd from the Coemeterium Maius, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 117, p. 123.

Figure 2.20 Intaglio ring with the Good Shepherd, Rome, 4th cen. Now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Source: Photo: Open access/public domain, permission of the Museum.

Early Christian Symbols 67

Figure 2.21 The Good Shepherd, statuette, ca. 280–90, Asia Minor, John H. Severance Fund, Cleveland Museum of Art. Source: Photo credit: Open access/public domain, permission of the Museum.

68  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.22 Hermes Criophorus. Parian marble statue, Roman copy of an early 5th cen. BCE Greek original by Kalamis. Now in the Museo Barracco, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Lalupa/Archivio, Wikipedia, Creative Commons 3.0.

this parallel between Hermes, the guardian of souls and guide to the underworld, and the Good Shepherd (Jesus) as the Christian psychopomp.84 In Late Antiquity, in the way that the orant figure could represent the virtue of piety, the single image of a shepherd could be a personification of philanthropy, or humanitarian care.85 Compositions with many shepherds might refer to an idyllic, bucolic setting. Because of the shepherd figure’s long pre-Christian history and the general popularity of pastoral iconography, none of these images, by themselves, can be identified as explicitly Christian unless more certain Christian motifs are immediately adjacent to them.

Early Christian Symbols 69 Despite his well attested use in non-Christian contexts, some scholars regard the early shepherd images as actual depictions of Jesus, assuming the parallel as so obvious that it hardly needs challenging.86 This identification is also taken to mean that early Christian believers saw Jesus more as a gentle and merciful saviour than a divine judge or heavenly lord. Despite this identification, the shepherd might have been less an explicit portrayal of Jesus than a metaphorical reference to his tender care for his flock. By contrast, other historians reject the possibility that the shepherd figure should be identified with Jesus before the Constantinian period and cite the image’s widespread use in Roman society as evidence that the figure represented a generic need for protection during times of persecution and danger.87 Both of these positions could be correct; the ubiquity of shepherd imagery in both Old and New Testaments (cf. Psalm 23.1, Ezekiel 34, and John 10:11, 14) would have allowed Christians easily to endow it with a variety of meanings. Support for this inclusive view comes from the different ways the figure is mentioned in the literary evidence. Obviously, the biblical texts, including John 10:1– 19, in which Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (v. 11); Luke 15:3–7 (with its parallel in Matthew 18:12–13, the parable of the lost sheep), are relevant to seeing the figure as Christlike. Despite these, early Christians would and 1 Peter 2:25. not necessarily have perceived a depiction of a young man carrying a full-grown ram over his shoulders as an actual portrait of Jesus and 1 Peter 2:25. For example, Hermas, one of the apostolic fathers writing in the early second century, described his vision of a fine-looking man, dressed like a shepherd in a white goat’s skin and carrying a rod in his hand.88 Notably, while this description corresponds well with the artistic images of the shepherd described above, Hermas does not identify the shepherd of his vision with Jesus. By contrast, Tertullian of Carthage mentions eucharistic cups bearing images of the shepherd. Although he disapproves of their use, he insists that in the Lukan parable of the lost sheep, the figure of the sheep is properly understood to represent the sinner, the flock as the Church, and the Good Shepherd as Christ.89 Similarly in the “Hymn to Christ the Saviour,” attributed to Clement of Alexandria and found at the end of Clement’s treatise on Christian instruction, Jesus is three times addressed as a shepherd.90 The shepherd as a divine figure also turns up in several other early Christian texts. The above-discussed autobiographical epitaph of a late second-century Christian bishop from Hieropolis, Abercius, now in the Vatican Museum, refers to himself as a disciple of the pure shepherd who feeds his flock on hills and plains, with large eyes that look into everything. Similarly, the anonymous editor of the trials of the North African martyr Perpetua recounts one of her visions of paradise as a beautiful garden, tended by a tall white-haired man who is dressed as a shepherd and offers her sweet milk (or cheese) to eat.91 The milk in Perpetua’s vision echoes certain lines in Clement’s hymn that addresses Jesus as a shepherd, but also as sweet heavenly milk, suckled by children from the divine Logos’s nipple.92 The milk of wisdom (sophia—which may refer to either the divine Son or the Holy Spirit) is a well-known theme in early Christian literature and finds a liturgical parallel in the milk and honey offered to neophyte

70  Early Christian Symbols Christians immediately after baptism (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:1–2; Hebrews 5–12; 1 Peter 2:2).93 These textual and liturgical symbols may have visual counterparts, or at least parallels, in late second-century artistic representations of the shepherd carrying a bucket of milk or of shepherds milking ewes. The Good Shepherd’s baptismal connection is confirmed not only in his appearance over the font at Dura-Europos (cf. Fig. 2.12), but also in numerous other baptismal contexts, including (as reported in the Liber Pontificalis) in Rome’s Lateran baptistery and in Naples’s early fifth-century baptistery of S. Giovanni in Fonte.94 The shepherd’s particular aptness for a baptismal context may parallel its function in the funerary setting. Johannes Quasten’s extensive discussion of this context notes the connection of the 23rd Psalm with the baptismal liturgy in Naples and concludes that the suitability of the pastoral theme had to do with the fact that shepherds branded their sheep, just as the neophytes are given a sign (sphragis) in baptism.95 Quasten’s argument, however, overlooks the psalm’s other possible associations with aspects of the baptismal rite. For example, the still waters could allude to the font, the table and the cup to the eucharistic meal, and the shadow of death to the first part of the rite when the candidates understand that their old life must pass away. The candidates, then, would be the lambs and the flock, the church, all being led to salvation by the shepherd. One can find such associations in places besides Naples along with evidence that newly baptised chanted the 23rd Psalm as they processed from the baptistery into the main church. Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo all refer to this psalm in conjunction with the baptismal ritual.96 Ambrose, for example, assures the catechumens preparing for baptism that, while they heard the psalm recited many times prior to their baptism, they will only fully understand it after they have undergone the ritual and entered the church to receive their first eucharist.97 Paulinus of Nola even describes the bishop as the shepherd, bringing the novice lambs from the font to the altar where he will give them their first eucharist as the gathered flock of the faithful would bleat their collective, welcome chorus of alleluias.98 Other baptismal associations with the Shepherd figure occur in fourth-century textual sources. For example, the Spanish poet Prudentius described the spring-fed baptistery in Rome’s Basilica of St. Peter as having a colourful mosaic of the divine shepherd bathing his sheep in an icy pool.99 An inscription believed to have been attached to an ablution fountain in the courtyard of St. Paul’s outside the walls is attributed to Bishop Leo I, who is identified as the shepherd of a flock bringing sheep to bathe and washing away their sins.100 The orant’s frequent juxtaposition with the Good Shepherd in sarcophagus iconography suggests that the pairing was intentional. Perhaps the orant represented the deceased’s prayers for salvation and shepherd as the one who could fulfil those prayers. If the composition represented the soul in paradise, the shepherd could signify the bucolic bliss and pastoral care of the next world (guaranteed in baptism). That the two simply represent the virtues of piety and philanthropy is also possible, although it disregards the textual evidence summarised earlier. Thus, the iconography, taken together programmatically, represents human salvation and its two

Early Christian Symbols 71 principal actors—the saviour and the one saved. The orant image is then asserted to be a portrait of the already saved deceased whose prayer is one of either thanks (eucharistia) or petition for a yet hoped-for deliverance. Later writers emphasised that the shepherd also lays down his life for his sheep, which is taken as a reference to the passion and thus associated with the sacrificial Lamb of God (agnus dei) as much as with the shepherd.101 Augustine makes this point clearly: A sheep, to be sure, is subject to a shepherd, yet he is both shepherd and sheep. Where is he a shepherd? . . . Where is he a sheep? As the prophet, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7). Ask the friend of the bridegroom: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).102 The shepherd’s gradual disappearance from the Christian iconographic repertoire in the later fourth and early fifth century seems to be a surprising development given the shepherd’s earlier popularity. Possible reasons for this change could be a shift in emphasis away from more symbolic imagery and toward more representational, dogmatically oriented, and majestic portrayals of Jesus as enthroned Lord and (eventually) crucified and resurrected saviour.103 Integrating these new artistic emphases on specific manifestations of Jesus’s divinity could have been difficult to integrate with the caretaking shepherd image. While such an image could remind viewers of Jesus’s works of mercy, these aspects of his nature were not in the centre of theological discussions that focused on Jesus as the incarnation of the pre-existent Son, descended from heaven and ascended to be enthroned on the right hand of God the Father. Yet, at least one example stands out as an exception, the fifth-century mosaic of the Good Shepherd in Ravenna’s Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, which is perhaps the last of the Good Shepherd types to appear in Late Antique Christian art. Boniface Ramsey considered this to be a kind of transitional Christological composition as it shows the shepherd with a golden cross, gold tunic, and purple mantle rather than shepherd’s crook and rustic garb (Fig. 2.23).104 According to Ramsey, by the fifth century, a visual reference to God’s safe deliverance of his flock from danger would have been essentially anachronistic in an age when Christians had arrived on or near the seats of secular power and that an emphasis on the shepherd as a humanitarian or loving guide simply lacked “sufficient dogmatic content.” More recently, historians have assessed this image somewhat differently. Deborah Mauskopf Deliynannis paid particular attention to the Shepherd’s golden crossstaff, which she regarded as simultaneously an emblem of his care for his flock, the sign of his crucifixion, and a royal sceptre.105 For Jennifer Awes Freeman, this transitional image blends the “humble” Good Shepherd type with “more overt, royal, divine, and even triumphant” iconography. While not precisely aligning him with secular or imperial power, the iconography still evokes the ancient idea of the royal shepherd, a type of divine figure, whose role is to care for and guide the flock as their leader and king.106

72  Early Christian Symbols

Figure 2.23 Lunette mosaic, Good Shepherd, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, first half, 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Afredo Dagli Orti/Art Resource, NY.

Conclusion That many of the most prevalent of early Christian symbols and types have clearly established counterparts in Graeco-Roman art simply demonstrates the ways that Christians adopted an existing visual vocabulary to express aspects of their beliefs about Jesus, the values espoused by their new faith, and the role of the Church for their salvation. These adopted figures need no justification as their new purposes might not radically differ from how they were previously deployed as allusions to hope for a blissful afterlife, a safe passage to the next world, eternal rewards for a life well lived, finding a community of family and friends on the other side, and a caretaking divine guide through both life and death. The optimism expressed in pagan funerary art was transferred quite seamlessly into Christian iconography The almost graceful transition from pagan to Christian visual symbolism in the early period has parallels in the writings of such apologists as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, who acknowledged the similarities between certain Christian values and virtues and those of their non-Christian neighbours. They merely reinforced the connections between those existing philosophical principles and specifically Christian beliefs about the divine being, the importance of ritual initiation into the community, shared sacred meals, and their particular belief in bodily resurrection at the end of time. Any conflict or clash between Christians and polytheists are hardly sensed in these early images. In time the similarities would diminish, and the symbols and signs of the first generation of images would begin to disappear as Christianity began to assert itself

Early Christian Symbols 73 as more distinct from and, ultimately, eclipsed what had gone before. Yet, even as this new self-awareness asserted itself, the imagery never became entirely separated from the culture in which it had emerged. Eventually linked with biblical narrative images that reinforced most of these religious tenets and expectations and even more strongly expressed them, those symbols or signs that at first were somewhat ambiguous became more unequivocally and definitively Christian. Even though these changes were inevitable, the initial continuity of pictorial language conveyed the new religious ideas effectively and smoothed a transition from the older, traditional cult to the new faith, making it seem almost as natural as growing up and leaving home. Notes 1 The bibliography on Christian epigraphy is vast. For a good English introduction and helpful bibliography see Danilo Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions in the Roman Catacombs,” in The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, eds., Vincenzo Fiocchi Niolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni (Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2009), 147–85. An older but still useful work is Patrick Bruun, “Symboles, signes, et monogrammes,” Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 1.2 (1963): 73–166. 2 Clement of Alexandria allows the dove as appropriate for Christian finger rings, Paed. 3.11.59. For a discussion of doves, especially in the decoration of Christian baptisteries, see Giovanna Ferri, La Colomba e lo Spirito,” in Arti Minori e Arti Maggiore: Relazioni e interazioni tra Tarda Antichità e Alto Medioevo, eds., Fabrizio Bisconti, Matteo Braconi, and Mariarita Sgarlata (Todi: Tau Editrice, 2019), 33–60; Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort: Untersuchungen zu Jenseitsvorsetllungen von Christen des 3. Und 4. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Schnell  & Steiner, 2010, 33–6; Barbara Mazzei, “Colomba,” in Temi di Iconografia Paleocristiana, ed., Fabrizio Bisconti (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 2000), 153–4; and Friedrich Sühling, “Die Taube als religiöses Symbol im christlichen Altertum (Freiburg: Bolzano, 1930). 3 Augustine, Civ. 21.4. 4 Few secondary examinations of the Christian image of the peacock have expanded on the work of Helmut Lother, Der Pfau in der altchristlichen Kunst: eine Studie über das Verhältnis von Ornament und Symbol (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1929). See, however, the work of Jelana Andelković, Dragana Rogić, and Emilija Nicolić, “Peacock as a Sign in Late Antiquity and Early Christian Art,” Archaeology and Science 6 (2010), 241–48; and the brief entry by Paul Corby Finney, “Peacock,” in the Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archeology, vol. 2, ed., Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 308–9. 5 1 Clem. 25–6; Tertullian, Res. 13; Lactantius, Ave phoenice; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 18.8; 6 Ap. Const. 5.7. 7 Ambrose, Exc. 2.59; Hex. 5.23.79–80. 8 Françoise Lecocq, “The Flight of the Phoenix to Paradise in Ancient Literature and Iconography,” ed., I. Schaaf, ed., Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Anthropozoological Aspects in the Late Antique World (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), 97–129; Maria Kardis and Dominika Tlučková, “The Symbol of the Phoenix in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome and Its Transformation in Early Christianity,” The Biblical Annals 12 (2022), 66–88; and Roel van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1962). 9 Zanker and Ewald, Living with Myths, 112–22.

74  Early Christian Symbols 10 See Jason A. Whitlark, “Funerary Anchors of Hope and Hebrews: A Reappraisal of the Origins of the Anchor Iconography in the Catacombs of Rome,” in Visualizing the Tradition(s): Early Christians and Their Art, eds., Mikeal Parsons and Robin Jensen (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming), also Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 23–6; Emmaneule Castelli, “The Symbols of Anchor and Fish in the Most ancient Parts of the Catacomb of Priscilla: Evidence and Questions,” Studia Patristica 49 (2011): 13–14; and Charles Kennedy, “Early Christians and the Anchor,” The Biblical Archeologist 38 (1975): 115–24. 11 The examples discussed by Whitlark, “Funerary Anchors,” 12 See examples in Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: Richert, 2007), cat. nos. 198–258. 13 Clement, Paed. 3.11.59. 14 Castelli, “Symbols of Anchor and Fish,” 17 and Erin Roberts, “Anchor” in the Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, vol. 1., ed., Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 58–9. 15 Ambrose, In Ep. ad Heb. 6. 16 Hippolytus, Antichr. 59. On the ship as an image see also Zeno, Tract. 2.17.3. An interesting thesis that attempts to explain the lack of textual parallels to the symbol of the anchor was put forth by Kennedy, “Early Christians and the Anchor.” Here Kennedy argues that the anchor is a pun on the Greek words en kurio. 17 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 55; Tertullian, Apol. 16.7, 12.3; Nat. 1.12; and Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.7–8. See more discussion of these signs of the cross and crucifix in Chap. 5. 18 On these pastoral scenes in Roman sarcophagus reliefs see Paul Zanker and Björn Ewald, Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi, translated by Julia Slater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 163–73. For example, see the fifthcentury ivory diptych of Helios and Selene, which shows a classic Dionysiac vintaging scene, Richard Brilliant, in the Age of Spirituality Catalogue, ed., Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), entry no. 134, p. 158. 19 See Lothar Eckhart, “Die Grosse Traube Christus,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 19 (1976): 173–98; Otto Nussbaum, “Die grosse Traube Christus,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 6 (1963), 136–43; and A. Thomas, “Weintraube,” Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 4 (1972), 494–6. 20 Regarding the seasonal symbolism of these images, see the discussion and detailed notes in E. Struthers Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 95–103, in which the author critiques earlier attempts to decipher the harvesting scenes on the ends of some Christian sarcophagi as seasonal allegories. Malbon goes on to argue that although modelled on pagan seasonal cycles, these images in Christian contexts should be understood as eucharistic metaphors. 21 Did. 9.2. 22 Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 2.1ff. See also Paed. 1.6; and Strom. 1.9. Also see Irenaeus, Haer. 5.2.3. 23 Cyprian, Ep. 62.3. Also, Origen, Hom. Gen. 17.7 and Cant. 2; and Ephrem the Syrian, Ser. 3 in Nat. Dom. Many of these are discussed in C. Leonardi, Ampelos. Il simbolo delle vita nell’arte pagana e paleocristiana (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1947). Leonardi interprets the grapevines as symbolic of martyrdom, but also of eternal life. 24 Irenaeus, Frag. 55. 25 Origen, Cels. 5.12. 26 Hippolytus, De bene. Iacob 25, cited also in The Crucible of Christianity, ed., Arnold Toynbee (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), 274. The translation used here is from this source. Also see Hippolytus, Frag. in Gen. 49.11. 27 Basil, Hex. 5.6. A different parable of the church as vine was offered earlier by the Shepherd of Hermas, Sim. 2.1ff. 28 Ambrose, Sacr. 5.15–16.

Early Christian Symbols 75 29 Walter Oakeshott also offered this interpretation with regard to the mosaics in Santa. Constanza: “the idea of harvest, the end of one life and the beginning of another, is central,” in The Mosaics of Rome: From the Third to the Fourteenth Centuries (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), 62. 30 Probably the most thorough (but now dated) work on the material evidence for the early Christian fish symbol is by Franz J. Dölger, ICHTHYS: Das Fisch Symbol in frühchristlichen Zeit (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1910); Der Heilige Fisch in den antiken Religionen und im Christentum (= ICHTHYS, vols 2 and 3 (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1922); Die Fisch-Denkmäler in der frühchristlichen Plastik, Malerie, und Kleinkunst (= ICTHYS, vols. 4 and 5 (Münster in Westf., 1927–32). Textual evidence was amassed by several scholars over the last centuries, including Hans Achelis, Das Symbol des Fisches und die Fischdenkmäler der römischen Katakomben (Marburg: Elwert, 1888) and Charles R. Morey, “The Origin of the FishSymbol,” published serially in the Princeton Theological Review 8 (1910): 93–106; 231–46, 401–32; 9 (1911): 268–89; 10 (1912): 278–97. More recent studies include those of Robin M. Jensen, “The Fish: An Early Christian Symbol for Christ,” in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3 eds., Chris Keith, Helen Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2019). 271–89; Tuomas Rasimus, “Revisiting the ICHTHYS: A  Suggestion Concerning the Origins of Christological Fish Symbolism, in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices, eds., Christian H. Bull, Live Lied, and John D. Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327–48; Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 26–32; Laurence. H. Kant, The Interpretation of Religious Symbols in the Graeco-Roman World: A Case Study of Early Christian Fish Symbolism, 3 volumes (PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 1993); and Guy Stroumsa, “The Early Fish Symbol Reconsidered,” in Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, eds., Ithamar Gruenwald, Shaul Shaked, and Guy Stroumsa (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 199–205. For a speculative but extremely interesting treatment of the subject, see Robert Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism (London: Watkins, 1921), which connects the imagery of Orpheus (as fisher god) with the images of fish and fishers in early Christian art. 31 Edition in Johannes Geffcken, Die Oracula Sibyllina, Die griechischen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1902). Both text and translation in Morey, “Origin of the Fish Symbol,” 2:232–3. In particular see Morey’s discussion of the addition of the word “cross,” Sibylline Oracles 8.217–50. The Greek text of the Oracles may be found in the edition of J. Geffcken, Die Oracula Sibyllina in Die griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 8 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche, 1902), 153–7. See J. J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, ed., J. H. Charlesworth (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 423–4. The particular text in question is quite difficult to date and may have been later than Tertullian, thus reflecting an already existing acrostic tradition. F. Dölger argued that the acronym actually appeared around the end of the second century corresponding to a Christological title; see Ichthys, vol. 1, 51–68. Other scholars sought pre-Christian or Jewish sources for the fish-symbol. For examples see I. Scheftelowitz, “Das Fisch-Symbol in Judentum und Christentum,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 14 (1911), 1–54, 321–92; and summary discussion in Stroumsa, “Early Christian Fish Symbol,” 199–200. 32 Spier, ed., Picturing the Bible, 196, entry 27. See also the immediately preceding entries for fish on gems. 33 Jerome, Epist. 7.3; Eusebius of Caesarea, Coet. sanct. 18–19; Optatus of Milevis, Parm. 3.2.1–8; Zeno of Verona, Tract. 2.13.2; Maximus of Turin, Contra pag. trac. 4; Augustine, Civ. 18.23; and Quodvultdeus of Carthage, Lib. prom. et praed. 2.39. Eusebius quotes the text in full in his account of Constantine’s oration to the assembly of the saints. See also Pseudo-Prosper of Aquitaine, De prom. praed. Dei 2.39. Fuller citations and translations of these texts are found in Morey, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol,”

76  Early Christian Symbols











pt. 3, 401–32. In his five volumes, Dölger collects many more of these texts dating through the early mediaeval period. 34 Augustine, Civ. 18.23. See also Augustine, Conf. 13.21 (29), where he refers to the fish, raised from the deep at the table that God prepares for believers. 35 Tertullian, Bapt. 1, trans. author’s (Latin text, E. Evans, Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism, London: SPCK, 1964, 20–1). 36 Origen, Comm. Matt. 13.10. For translation, commentary, and discussion of this short passage see Morey, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol,” pt. 3, 406–8. 37 Cyril of Jerusalem, Procat. 5, trans. A. Stephenson, The Works of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1969), 74. Clement of Alexandria (Paed. 3.11), discussing the symbols appropriate for rings, suggests the fisherman—a reminder of an apostle and children “drawn from the water.” For other passages that use the metaphor of fish for baptism, see Dölger, Ichthys, vol. 5. 308–20. 38 The Abercius Inscription, trans. J. Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1966), 171–3; also recorded in Johannes Quasten (ed.), Monumenta eucharistica liturgica vetustissima = Florilegium Patristicum VII (Bonn: Hanstein, 1935–7) 1.22. The object itself was fragmentary and the reconstructed text is based on combining it with another monument as well as the longer, fourth-century Vita Abercii. On this see Allen Brent, “Epitaph of Abercius,” in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3 eds., Chris Keith, Helen Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 259–70; Margaret Mitchell, “The Poetics and Politics of Christian Baptism in the Abercius Monument,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism in Early Judaism, Graeco-Roman Religion, and Early Christianity, vol. 1, eds., David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval, and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 1739–78; and idem, “Looking for Abercius: Reimagining Contexts of Interpretation of the ‘Earliest Christian Inscription,’ ” in Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context, eds., Laurie Brink, O.P. and Deborah Green (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 303–36; also Everett Ferguson, Early Christians Speak (Abilene: ACU Press, 1981), 156; and Wolfgang Wischmeyer, “Die Aberkionsinschrift als Grabepigramm,” Studia Patristica 17.2 (1987), 777–81. 39 See the discussion of this text and its symbolism by Morey, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol,” pt. 4, 268–89. 40 Optatus of Milevis, Parm. 3.2.1 (trans. Mark Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997], 58–9, slightly adapted by author, SC 413.12–13). 41 Trans. author, based on the Greek text and translation in Morey, “Origin of the FishSymbol,” pt. 4, 282–9. Cf. Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, 173–5; and Dölger, Icthys, vol. 1, 12–15, 177–83; and vol. 2, 507–15. Also discussion in Gregory Grabka, “Eucharistic Belief Manifest in the Epitaphs of Abercius and Pectorius,” American Ecclesiastical Review 13 (1954), 254–5. 42 Cited, translated, and analysed by Morey, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol,” 426–9. 43 Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 3.11. See also P. Corby Finney, “Images on Finger Rings and Early Christian Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 181–6; and James Francis, “Clement of Alexandria on Signet Rings: Reading an Image at the Dawn of Christianity,” Classical Philology 98 (2003): 179–83. 44 Clement of Alexandria, Hymn to Christ 23–28 (trans. Annewies van den Hoek, Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology, ed., Mark Kiley et al., (London: Routledge, 1997), 300–1). 45 Cyril of Jerusalem, Procat. 5. 46 On Christian feasts at the tomb, see Robin M. Jensen, “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity,” in Commemorating the Dead: Text and Artifacts in Context, ed., Laurie Brink, O.P. and Deborah Green (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 107–44; and Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 147–50.

Early Christian Symbols 77 47 For studies of this image as it appears in an earlier era, see Jean-Marie Dentzer, Le motif du banquet couché dans le Proche-Orient et le monde grec du VIIe au IVe siècle avant J-C (Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles français d’Athènes et Rome, 1982). Late antique Roman examples of this kind seem to have Greek prototypes. See examples in Guntram Koch, Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988), entries 9, 33, and 34. A full catalogue with analysis was produced by Nikolaus Himmelmann, Typologische Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts nach Christus (Mainz am Rhein: Zabern, 1973), 24–8 and 47–66. More recently, Elżbieta Jastrzębowska, “Les scènes de banquet dans les peintures et sculptures chrétiennes des IIIe et Ive siècles,” Recherches Augustiennes 14 (1979), 3–90, with catalogue and helpful bibliography. 48 See examples in Tran Tam Tinh, Catalogue des peintures romaines (Latium et Campanie) du musée du Louvre (Paris: Editions des musées nationaux, 1974), 50–1, fig. 57; and D. Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 294–304, pl. 66b. For discussion of the Roman dining arrangement known as the stibadium, see Katharine Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” in Dining in a Classical Context, ed., W. J. Slater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 121–48; and idem, The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 49 André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins, trans. Terry Grabar (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 8–9; and Walter Lowrie, Art in the Early Church (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 51–3. 50 Orazio Marucchi, Manual of Christian Archaeology, trans. Hubert Vecchierello, O.F.M. (Patterson: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1935), 291–2; Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), 25, and Snyder Ante Pacem, 64–5. Other scholars who consider these images to be representations of agape meals or actual eucharists include Morey, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol,” pt. 8, 432; Eisler, Orpheus, 217–19; Richard H. Hiers and Charles A. Kennedy, “The Bread and Fish Eucharist,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 3 (1976), 21–48; and John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 398–9, who refers to the earliest of these images as evidence of an alternative bread and fish eucharist in the “early tradition.” Also see V. Osteneck, “Mahl, Gastmahl,” Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie 3 (1971), 128–35. 51 Joseph Wilpert, “Fractio Panis: Die älteste Darstellung des eucharistischen Opfers in den “Capella graeca” (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1895); and id., La fede delle chiesa nascente, 97–9. This was continued by André Grabar, Early Christian Art from the Rise of Christianity to the Death of Theodosius, trans. G. Stuart and J. Emmons (New York: Odyssey Books, 1968) 107, 112. 52 Some scholars have suggested this rather inconclusive image is evidence that women were permitted to act as celebrants at early Christian eucharists. See for instance Dorothy Irvin, “The Ministry of Women in the Early Church,” Duke Divinity School Review 45.2 (1980), 76–86, esp. 81–4; followed by Karen Jo Torgesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 1995). 55; and Nicola Denzey, The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 100, who argues that it could be both a funerary and a eucharistic meal with all female celebrants. For a broader discussion of the place of women in meals, both Christian and pagan, see K. Corley, Private Women, Public Meals (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993), esp. ch. 1, “Women in Early Christianity and Early Christian Communal Meals,” 3–23. 53 Hippolytus, Ap. trad. 6, mentions a blessing of cheese and olives, following a blessing of oil, suggesting the gifts often included elements other than wine, bread, milk, and honey. A listing of such items is found in Cyrille Vogel, “Le repas sacré au poisson chez les Chrétiens,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 40 (1966), 1–26, esp. 21–5. For more on the

78  Early Christian Symbols











use of fish in certain Christian ritual meals, see Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 127–40; and Hiers and Kennedy, “The Bread and Fish Eucharist,” 35–9. 54 Tertullian, Marc. 1.14. 55 Paulinus, Ep. 13.11. 56 Augustine, Conf. 13.21 (29). Compare this with the epitaphs of Abercius and Pectorius discussed previously. 57 See the eucharistic services described in Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 65, 67; Hippolytus, Ap. trad. 4; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 3; or Apost. Const. 8.6–15, for fairly detailed descriptions of the rite at different times and places. 58 See J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the Primitive Church (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1965). Augustine, Contra Faust. 20.20, speaks of the love-feast as meals for the poor. 59 See Peter Dükers, “Agape und Irene: Die Frauengestalten der Sigmamahlszenen mit antiken Inschriften in der Katakombe der Heiligen Marcellinus und Petrus,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 35 (1992): 147–67. 60 See Lea Stirling. “Archeological Evidence for Food Offerings in the Graves of Roman North Africa,” in Daimonopylai: Essays in Classics and the Classical Tradition Presented to E.G. Berry, ed., R. Egan, M. Joyal, and E.G. Berry (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Center for Hellenic Civilization): 427–49. 61 Tertullian, Cor. 3 refers to the tradition of Christians making offerings for the dead as birthday honours. See also Tertullian, Mon. 10.4; Res. 1; An. 4; and Exh. Cast. 11. In other places, Tertullian refers to the practice as akin to sitting at table with demons, Spec. 13.3–4; Apol. 13. A good summary of the evidence in Ramsay MacMullen, “Christian Ancestor Worship in Rome,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010): 597–613. 62 Examples of Christian funerary tables in Jensen, “Dining with the Dead.” 63 The literature on this subject is vast. See, however, Richard Krautheimer, “MensaCoemeterium-Martyrium,” in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 35–58. 64 On the refrigerium interim see Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), ch. 3, esp. pp. 50–64. The term refrigerium interim seems to have been coined by Tertullian in his treatise, Mon. 10.4. 65 For instance, see Augustine, Ser. 252, 310, 311; and Ep. 22 and 29.9. In the latter he explains the origins of feasts dedicated to the martyrs as an antidote to other, less decorous feasts. Also see Augustine, Conf. 6.2, where he describes Monica’s practice of bringing cakes, wine, and bread to oratories built in memory of the martyrs, as well as Faust. 20.21, in which Augustine refutes Faustus’s claim that Christians worshipped their saints like idols, offering them gifts of food and wine. Other sources include Tertullian, Res. 1; Ambrose, Hel. 17; and Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 13.11–13; and Carm. 27. 66 Whether the pagan images can be interpreted with reference to a particular expectation of the afterlife is a somewhat open question, although it appears more plausible that the Roman images (as distinct from the earlier Greek ones) did project a paradisiacal image rather than an earthly one. A Roman epitaph in Avignon presents one explanation of the meaning of such images: “But what good is it to the dead to be shown feasting: They would have done better to have lived that way” (cited in A History of Private Life, vol. 1, ed., Paul Veyne (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 180. See further discussion in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 37, 50–1, 137. 67 Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 38–76; and Friedrich Sühling “Taube und Orante: ein Beitrag zum Orantenproblem,” Römische Quartalschrift für Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 39 (1931): 333–54. 68 On this Christian prayer posture see Clement, Strom. 7.7; Origen, Or. 31.2.3; Justin Martyr, Dial. 90; Tertullian, Orat. 4, and Cor. 3; Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.6; and Cyprian, Dom. or. 31. Of these, Justin, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix specifically

Early Christian Symbols 79









compare the posture to the shape of the cross. On ancient prayers postures in general, see L. Edward Phillips, “Early Christian Prayer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, eds., Risto Uro, Juliette Day, Richard DeMaris, and Rikard Roitto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 570–86, esp. 580–2; Simon Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 188–95; and Adalbert Hammam, “La prière chrétienne et la prière païenne,” Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt 23.2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 1190–247, esp. 1212–19. 69 On women veiling, see Tertullian, Or. 22 and Virg. 27. 70 This is prescribed in the twentieth canon of the Council of Nicaea (325). 71 Basil of Caesarea, Spir. 27.66, cited by Phillips, “Early Christian Prayer,” 581–2. 72 See Pierre Prigent, “Les orants dans l’art funéraire du christianisme ancien,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses 72 (1992):143–50 and 73 (1993): 259–87, esp. at pp. 143–5 (1992); and the much older work of Charles H. Dodd, “The Cognomen of the Emperor Antoninus Pius,” Numismatic Chronicle 4th ser. 11 (1911), 6–41 and esp. 11f. For an exhaustive study of the figure see Theodor Klauser “Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst II. 6–10,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 2 (1959), 115–45; Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 3 (1960), 112–33; and Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 7 (1964), 67–76. 73 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 3.2 and Dial. 4.7; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.24; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.24 and Prep. ev. 11.15; and Athanasius, Contra Arian. 2.45, for example. 74 For a survey of the possible political significance of the term in Roman times, see Thedor Ulrich, Pietas (Pius) als politischer Begriff im römischen Staate bis zum Tode des Kaisers Commodus (Breslau: M. and H. Marcus, 1930). 75 For example, Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, 32–3. 76 See Stine Birk, Depicting the Dead: Self-Representation and Commemoration on Roman Sarcophagi with Portraits (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013), 44 and 85–90, where the author links it to the figure of the learned woman holding a scroll on Christian sarcophagi. Older discussion in Henri Leclercq, “Orant, Orante,” Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie 12.2 (1936), 2291–322; Wilhelm Neuss, “Die Oranten in der altchristlicher Kunst,” in Festschrift Paul Clemens (Bonn: Schwann, 1926), 130–49; Alice Mulhern, “L’Orante, vie et mort d’une image,” Les dossiers de l’archéologie 18 (1976), 34–47; G. Seib, “Orans, Orant,” in Lexikon der Christliche Ikonographie, vol. 3 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1971), 352–4; Prigent, “Les orants dans l’art funeraire;” and Graydon Snyder, Ante Pacem, 20. 77 Klaus Wessel, “Ecclesia orans,” Archäologischer Anzeiger 70 (1955), 315–34, who specifically refers to the female orant standing at a tripod table across from a man making a gesture of blessing (see above Fig. 2.13). 78 She has a parallel in the depiction of another woman in the same catacomb, named Bitalia. See the work of Ally Kateusz, Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 156–61. 79 The Virgin Mary by James Stevenson, The Catacombs. Rediscovered Monuments of Early Christianity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 88; and John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 21. 80 Other interpretations see Denzey, Bone Gatherers, 84–5, Pierre Du Bourguet, Early Christian Painting, trans. Simon W. Taylor (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 76, and Grabar, Christian Iconography 188 (the catechesis); Claude Dagens, “A propos du cubiculum de la ‘velatio,’ ” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 47 (1971): 119–29 (presentation of the wedding veil); and (earlier) Pierre Du Bourguet, Early Christian Art (New York: Morrow and Co., 1971), 29 (the consecration of a virgin); and Marucchi, Manual, 179, 322. 81 Henri Leclercq identified more than 300 examples in Christian art between the third and fifth centuries in his 1924 article, “Pasteur (Bon),” Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie 13.2, 2272–390. 82 See the excellent and recent study by Jennifer Awes Freeman, The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2021). See also, idem,

80  Early Christian Symbols















“The Good Shepherd and the Enthroned Ruler: A Reconsideration of Imperial Iconography in the Early Church,” in The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context, eds., Robin M Jensen and Lee Jefferson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 159–95; and Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 77–95. On the disappearance see Boniface Ramsay, O.P. “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art,” Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983): 375–8. 83 See the work of Valentine Muller, “The Prehistory of the Good Shepherd,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3.2 (1944): 87–90 84 Johannes Quasten, “Der Gute Hirt in frühchristlicher Totenliturgie und Grabeskunst,” Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati. Studi e testi 121 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1946), 1:373–406. This suggestion was also made by James N. Carder in the Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, ed., Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970), entry 462, p. 518. 85 See Walter N. Schumacher, “Hirt und ‘Guter Hirt,’ ” Römische Quartalschrift Supplementheft, Suppl. 34 (Freiburg: Herder, 1977); and Nikolaus Himmelmann, Über das Hirten-Genre in der antiken Kunst, (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1980). 86 As noted by Paul Corby Finney in, “Shepherd, Good” Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd edition, vol. 2, ed. Everett Ferguson (New York: Garland, 1997), 1055–6. 87 This is the characterisation of Klauser, “Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte,” but see also Snyder, Ante Pacem, 22–4. 88 Shepherd of Hermas, Vis. 5.1. 89 Tertullian, Pud. 71–4. This is also a rare reference to an early Christian artefact bearing imagery. 90 Clement, Paed. 1.7 and 3.12. Clement’s hymn has recently been translated and annotated by Annewies van den Hoek in an anthology Prayer from Alexander to Constantine, ed., M. Kiley (London: Routledge, 1997), 296–303. Also see Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 11.116.1. 91 Passio Perp. 4. Her vision was later cited in a sermon attributed to Quodvultdeus of Carthage, De temp. barb., that claims that the milk’s provision specifically assisted Perpetua in her suffering. 92 Clement of Alexandria, Paed., 3.12, lines 40–53. Cf. id., Paed. 1.6. 93 For another example of the symbolism of milk, see the Odes of Solomon 4.10, 8.14, 35.5, 40.1, and especially Ode 19. The tradition of offering the newly baptised milk and honey is widely attested. See Ep. Barnabas 6.8–17; Ambrose, Sac. 5.3.12; Zeno of Verona, Inv. ad font. 7; the Third Council of Carthage, Can. 4; John the Deacon’s Ep. ad Senarius 12; the Leonine Sacramentary; Tertullian, Bapt. 12; Cor. 3; and Marc. 3.22; and Hippolytus, Ap. trad. 3. 94 According to the Liber Pontificalis, the Emperor Constantine I endowed a solid gold statue of a lamb to the Lateran baptistery, Lib. Pont. 34.13. On the Naples baptistery, see Giovanna Ferri, I mosaici del battistero di San Giovanni in Fonte a Napoli (Todi: Tau, 2013). Also in the sixth-century baptistery at Albenga, and numerous pavements found in North African baptisteries (e.g., at Henchir Sokrine and Sidi Jedidi). 95 Johannes Quasten, “Das Bild des Guten Hirten in den altchristlichen Baptisterien und in den Taufliturgien des Ostens und Westens,” Pisciculi, Ergänzungsband zu “Antike und Christentum,” ed., Franz J. Dölger (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1939), 220–44. The likening of baptism to the branding of sheep appears in the works of Ephrem the Syrian, Epiph. 6.15. 96 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 1.6 and Myst. 4.7; Ambrose, Sac. 5.3.13 and Myst. 8.43; and Augustine, Serm. 313b and Enarrat. Ps. 3.7, 94.11. Discussion in Robin M. Jensen, Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 75–82. 97 Ambrose, Myst. 8.43. Echoes of the Song of Songs also turn up in early writings on baptism. Ambrose, for example, compares the newly baptised with flocks of shorn

Early Christian Symbols 81 sheep, just coming up from their washing (Song 4:2; 6:6). See Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 3.16; Ambrose, Myst. 7.38. 98 Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 32.5. This image of the flock embracing its new-born lambs is also expressed by Ephrem the Syrian, Epiph. 6.15. 99 Prudentius, Perist. 12.43. 100 Text in Giovanni B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, vol. 2, 80–1, Sylloge Centulensis (Rome: Libraria Pontificia, 1888). For full text and translation see Robin M. Jensen, “Poetry of the Font: Inscriptions in Early Christian Baptisteries.” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 24, n.s. 10 (Rome: Norwegian Institute at Rome Publication Series, 2011): 65–83. Compare an inscription written by the sixth-century poet Venantius Fortunatus, for the baptistery at the Cathedral at Mainz in which he too identifies the baptiser as the shepherd God. Fortunatus, Carm. 2.11. Also see the inscription in a lunette in the mid fifth-century Neonian (Orthodox) baptistery at Ravenna: In locum pascuae ibi me conlocavit super aqua reflectionis edocavit me (“He makes me lie down in green pastures: he leads me by still waters).” 101 This transition from Shepherd to Lamb is made especially clear in Chrysostom’s Hom. in Joh. 59, beginning at verse 11. 102 Augustine, Tract. in Joh. 46.3, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. Homilies on the Gospels of John 41–124 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2020), 74. CCL 36: 339. Translation slightly adapted by this author. 103 See discussion of this development in Chapters 4 and 5. 104 Ramsay, O.P. “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art,” at 376. 105 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 83 106 Awes Freeman, Good Shepherd, 101–5.

3

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

As discussed in Chapter 1, the inclusion of biblical narrative scenes or characters is what distinguishes Christian iconography within the larger category of late antique art. Almost all of these images were created afresh, even those that, like the reclining figure of Jonah, adapted details from non-Christian imagery. Unlike the praying figure or the banquet scene, the scriptural referents of these images usually are discernible, although explaining the predominance of certain types is less obvious. Even a brief survey of the biblical subjects portrayed in early Christian art reveals that certain figures or narrative scenes appear with greater frequency than others. Consideration of the works’ physical context (the funerary setting) poses some answers to why some subjects were especially popular, but examining the ways their source narratives were treated in relevant documentary evidence also may shed light on why they were selected and how they were represented. This chapter opens by addressing theories about the possible reasons for or influences on these choices. It then turns to the ways that visual art functions as a form of scriptural exegesis and concludes with a series of examples that demonstrate the parallels between visual and verbal interpretations of biblical narratives. To modern eyes, the subjects that were particularly frequent may seem odd choices. Pervasive themes found in later Christian art appear to be altogether missing from this earlier repertoire. For example, depictions of Christ’s transfiguration or the Last Supper are lacking before the fifth century, while portrayals of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection rarely appear before the sixth.1 Moreover, those scenes with corresponding versions in later art are distinctly different from what one might expect. Noah seldom appears in an actual boat surrounded by animals and family members. Rare early annunciation images do not depict a winged angel appearing to a compliant virgin. Pictorial references to Christ’s nativity rarely include the cast of characters more common in later art.2 Instead, the iconography mainly depicts the magi bearing gifts to the Christ child on his mother’s lap (Fig. 3.1). And while the iconographic repertoire includes many representations of such Old Testament figures as Adam and Eve (Fig. 3.2, cf. Figs. 1.14, 4.1, 4.3), Noah (Fig. 3.2, cf. Figs. 1.1, 1.10, 1.12, 2.2, 3.9, 4.9), Abraham offering Isaac (Fig. 3.3, cf. Figs. 1.14, 4.3, 4.10), Moses (Fig. 3.2, cf. Figs. 1.12, 3.16, 4.9), Daniel (Fig. 3.1, cf. Figs. 1.10, 1.20), the three Hebrew youths (cf. Figs. 1.13, 3.8, 3.9, 4.10), Jonah being swallowed and regurgitated (cf. Figs. 1.5, 1.9, 1.10, 3.12), and Susanna accused by the DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-3

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 83

Figure 3.1 Adoration of the magi and Daniel with lions, early 4th cen. Christian sarcophagus from the cemetery of St. Agnes, Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 3.2 Noah with Moses striking the Rock and Adam and Eve, Painting from the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav 186, p. 192.

elders and judged by Daniel (Fig. 3.5), only a few show episodes from the Joseph cycle (Genesis 37–50) or depict King David.3 With few exceptions, pre-fourthcentury New Testament narrative scenes are limited to Jesus’s baptism by John (Fig. 1.9, 3.4), Jesus healing the blind and infirm (cf. Figs. 4.3, 4.6), Jesus multiplying loaves and fish and changing water to wine at the Cana wedding (cf. Figs. 1.4, 1.13, 4.1), and Jesus raising Lazarus (cf. Figs. 1.4, 1.11, 4.5). Added to the striking frequency of certain subjects, such non-textual features as Jesus using a staff to perform certain miracles or his portrayal as a small child at his baptism are notable and will be discussed in Chapter 4. These distinctive—and, to modern eyes, often surprising—details indicate that particular types were copied and shared, but also that they were meant to convey an idea in a simple, formulaic manner, that their significance had more to do with referential power than illustrative purpose. Thus, the images extended beyond literal readings of texts, adding certain non-textual elements in order to elaborate their meaning.

84  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.3 Abraham and Isaac on gold glass, 4th cen. Now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Source: Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY.

Despite the sarcophagi’s often-jumbled arrangements, certain figures’ placement in proximity to other biblical subjects suggest that their compositions were not necessarily random or disconnected compilations but had some coherence and an overarching message. Additionally, a particular subject’s insertion into what appears to be an otherwise integrated program might have been deliberate. For this reason, simply to label the themes and subjects of early Christian iconography

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 85

Figure 3.4 Baptism of Jesus, with fisher and paralytic, Catacomb of Callixtus, cubiculum A3, Rome, 3rd cen.. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 27, p. 33.

Figure 3.5 Susanna and the Elders, detail from a sarcophagus. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2480. Source: Photo credit: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

according to their apparent narrative source is to overlook their role within an overall scheme. For example, portraying Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice might signify the promise of divine deliverance, particularly when neighbouring scenes reinforce that idea (e.g., Daniel in the lion’s den and the three youths in the fiery furnace). Yet, nearly identical presentations of this same scene in a different context could be intended to prefigure Jesus’s crucifixion, as in instances where it appears juxtaposed with a depiction of Jesus before Pilate (cf. Fig. 6.1).4 In other words, the subjects’ composition and context contributed to how viewers perceived and understood them. As noted in Chapter 1, these are abbreviated figures, showing only one or two figures with identifying attributes. In contrast to comparable

86  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art Roman mythological murals or sarcophagus reliefs that render events in complex and often sequential fashion, Christian narrative images typically rely on a single evocative moment. Yet, because so little is added in the way of background or context, these images would not have been self-explanatory or obvious; a viewer would need to know from other sources what they represented. This is why verbal treatments of the narratives, as in sermons, scripture commentaries, or liturgical prayers, may shed light on the subjects’ visual presentation. Like the portrayal of Noah standing by himself in a box-like ark (cf. Fig. 1.1), while these abridged compositions refer to their source texts, they are not mere illustrations but point to secondary meanings that commentators discern behind or beyond the literal narrative. Recognising this helps superficially baffling selections and iconographic details become more intelligible. Above all, the physical setting of these images is relevant to their imparted message, whether by individual compositions or by whole pictorial programs. Almost all of these narrative scenes function, at least contextually, as sepulchral décor. Since little non-funereal evidence remains for comparison with the earlier period’s art, modern interpreters may never know for certain whether or how this imagery differed from the decoration of other spaces (e.g., churches and baptisteries). Still, the fact that these subjects were painted on tomb walls or carved on stone sarcophagi is a significant factor for understanding them, as Christian beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife almost certainly influenced their selection and design.5 Thus, the art works, when examined apart from the documents, can be assessed according to their frequency, compositional details or peculiarities, place in compositional patterns (e.g., proximity to other subjects), and physical setting. All these elements contribute to the possible meaning of any single subject, which, by itself, is often ambiguous. Moreover, interpretations may be strengthened by consideration of contemporary and relevant literary evidence, including theological treatises, liturgical texts, homilies, and exegetical works, many of which treat these biblical narratives as allegorical, typological, or prophetic figures that symbolically point to or explicate various Christian beliefs, Christological assertions, and ritual practices like baptism. Finding more than a literal or historical purpose in scripture stories applies also to their visual rendering and should be regarded as a parallel exegetical endeavour. The Prominence of Hebrew Scripture Subjects Even a superficial review of Christian iconographic subjects shows that narrative scenes taken from the Hebrew Scriptures (or Christian Old Testament) were initially far more popular than New Testament subjects. The depictions’ early prominence challenges any assumption that Christian iconography would be more prone to depict specifically Christian themes. In fact, in the third and early fourth centuries, Hebrew Scripture subjects occur at least three or four times more often than images drawn from the New Testament. Furthermore, some of those subjects are particularly prevalent. For example, the sequentially presented story of Jonah appears more than a hundred times in third and early fourth-century catacomb painting or sarcophagus reliefs. Although the exact number of examples of various surviving narrative scenes is difficult to calculate precisely, along with Jonah, the early dominant figures from

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 87 the Old Testament include Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Moses (striking the rock in the wilderness), Daniel (with the lions), the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace, and Susanna, falsely accused of adultery and exonerated by Daniel. These are found in the oldest sections of the Roman catacombs of Priscilla and Callixtus. The New Testament subjects dated to the third century (e.g., Jesus’s baptism, Jesus’s multiplying loaves and fish, and Jesus raising Lazarus) are comparatively less popular.6 After the turn of the fourth century, the balance between Old and New Testament scenes gradually evened as more New Testament subjects began to appear and the frequency of depictions of Jesus healing, especially on the sarcophagus reliefs, increased dramatically. A Jewish Source Hypothesis

The inclusion of New Testament images alongside Old Testament subjects indicates that these works were not made especially for or by Jews. Nevertheless, scholars have sometimes proposed a Jewish iconographic source to explain these subjects’ prominence.7 One of these, Josef Strzygowski, argued in his highly polemical book, Orient oder Rom, that contemporary Roman art influenced the style and content of early Christian iconography. Stryzgowski’s work largely reacted to that of Franz Wickhoff, who, noting the high ratio of Old Testament to New Testament images in the Roman catacombs, attributed this to the presumed influence of hypothetical Jewish artworks originating in the east, especially among the Jews of Parthia, Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor. Modern historians’ analysis of Stryzgowski’s work critique its orientalism, racism, and extreme nationalism.8 Nevertheless, a number of subsequent scholars, whether or not they were influenced by Stryzgowski’s theory, propose either an earlier or synchronous Hellenised Jewish pictorial art from which artisans drew their models when serving Christian clients. The discovery and excavation of the extensively decorated, midthird-century synagogue in Syria’s site of Dura-Europos in the 1930s, with its cycle of biblically themed frescoes, significantly supported this theory insofar as it overturned long-standing assumptions that Jews, obedient to the Mosaic prohibition of graven images, were strictly aniconic and consequently made no figurative art. This hypothetical existence of an earlier or synchronous Jewish iconographic tradition as a source for early Christian iconography continued throughout the twentieth century.9 In his extensive study of Jewish symbols, published in the 1960s, Erwin Goodenough suggested a Jewish influence on Christian catacomb art, particularly citing what he took to be parallels between paintings in the Dura-Europos synagogue with the Roman frescoes.10 A decade or so later, Kurt Weitzmann hypothesised that Christian iconography directly inherited an Antiochene- or Alexandrine-Jewish tradition of biblical illumination, specifically of an illustrated (and now lost) Septuagint manuscript.11 However, in the first instance, neither the artistic style nor iconography of the Dura Synagogue has much similarity to the Roman catacomb paintings, and, in the second, no evidence of a Jewish illuminated Bible has (as yet) been found. Nevertheless, other art historians accepted Weitzmann’s theory, including John Beckwith, who, along with Bezalel Narkiss, proposed that these “possibly illuminated” Bible

88  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art manuscripts could be reconstructed by reference to the Dura Synagogue paintings.12 Taking this a step further, Narkiss identified occasional Midrashic elements found in the Christian catacomb paintings, including a portrayal, found in the Dino Compagni (Via Latina) catacomb, of Joseph resting his head on three stones.13 Narkiss’s theory nevertheless proposes a theological or exegetical source beyond the narrative itself, raising the idea that biblical iconography had a different purpose than simple illustration.14 Positing early Christian art’s derivation exclusively from pre-existing Jewish prototypes might imply that Christians did not regard the Hebrew Scriptures to be as sacred as their New Testament Gospels. Such an assumption overlooks the Hebrew Scripture’s position in early Christian teaching and biblical interpretation. Apart from such teachers as Marcion of Pontus, who rejected the Hebrew Bible and distinguished between the creator God of the Old Testament and the superior God of the New Testament, from the earliest years of its existence the church regarded the Old Testament as sacred. This prompted Christian thinkers, eager to establish a link between the two covenants in their sacred history, to consistently identify prophetic figures or types in the Old Testament that bore out their claims of divine providence and anticipated Jesus’s coming as the Messiah. For example, exegetes regarded Abraham’s offering of Isaac as prefiguring Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and understood Moses striking the rock in the wilderness as a type of Christian baptism.15 Although these prophetic readings could be viewed as instances of Christian appropriation or supersessionism (Christians claiming the Church to be the New Israel), they also confirmed the Hebrew Scriptures’ continuing relevance for Christians. Interpreting events in Christ’s life as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy is modelled in the Gospels themselves (e.g., the link between Moses and Jesus in Matthew 2:15). Asserting the two Testaments’ continuity thereby expands the story of the people of Israel to include the Gentile Christian community. The same intentions guided the inclusion and compositional arrangement of early Christian iconographers.16 Prayers for the Dead as the Key to the Iconography

A different explanation for the prominence of Old Testament themes in early Christian iconography is that these are the figures mentioned in prayers offered for the dead (the Ordo Commendationis Animae). According to this theory, such prayers petitioned for the living person’s deliverance from danger or the soul’s salvation after death. Their appeal to God to faithfully deliver the departed cited the precedents of Noah, Abraham, Job, Isaac, Lot, Moses, Daniel, the three youths in the fiery furnace, Susannah, David, Peter, Paul, and Thecla. Thus, some (not all) of these figures are found in the Christian catacombs because the deceased or the family wished to give their prayers visual form and extend the prayer for salvation to life after death. Unfortunately, a significant difficulty with this hypothesis is establishing its earliest date. While the prayer’s oldest extant version is known only from the eighth century, scholars have identified evidence for earlier formulae.17 Arguing for a late fourthcentury use, Catherine Brown Tkacz has called attention to Augustine of Hippo’s

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 89 second sermon on Psalm 21 (22), noting that in his treatment of the psalm’s verses four and five (“in you our ancestors trusted and you delivered them”), he calls upon three of the biblical heroes who regularly turn up in early Christian iconography: See what he (the psalmist) says: In you our fathers hoped; they hoped in you and you delivered them. . . . He delivered the people of Israel from the land of Egypt; he delivered the three young men from the furnace; he delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, and he delivered Susanna from false allegations.18 Nevertheless, no complete parallel for the later Ordo Commendationis Animae exists from the third and early fourth centuries. Because of the dominance of exemplars drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures, some scholars believe such prayers had origins in Jewish practice, even though the only known Jewish parallel dates to the ninth century. Moreover, the coincidence of characters is imperfect. The earlier examples of this prayer include figures who do not appear in the catacombs and lack some who do, such as Adam and Eve or Moses striking the rock. Nor does this hypothesis account for those early New Testament scenes of Jesus being baptised, Jesus raising Lazarus, or Jesus multiplying loaves. Yet, it seems reasonable to assume that prayers of this type could explain the choices for the decoration of tomb chambers and sarcophagi. The influence of prayers for the dead is an appealing explanation for the prominent depiction of certain Old Testament heroes in a funerary setting. Along with prayers for the dead, other liturgical parallels could have prompted these early images. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Victor Schultze noted a pattern of citations in the fifth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, a Syrian church order dated to the last quarter of the fourth century that contains materials from older, third-century documents.19 These citations appeared to correspond to the painted subjects on Christian catacomb walls. The fifth book contains scriptural demonstrations of the resurrection, to argue for the resurrection of the faithful by recalling the examples of Enoch and Elijah along with the raising of Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, and the widow of Nain’s son. The text further cites the deliverance of Jonah, Daniel, and the three youths; the legend of the phoenix; the trials of Job; the harvesting of wheat; the paralytic’s healing; the restoration of the blind man’s sight; Jesus’s miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish; Jesus changing water to wine at the Cana wedding; and the coin in the mouth of the fish (Matthew 17:27). All these, including Christ’s own passion, death, and resurrection, are given as lessons to the faithful and signs of their own salvation.20 The Social Context as Underlying the Subject Selection

The text of the Apostolic Constitutions suggests that the dominance of Old Testament images in early Christian art was designed to reassure the faithful of God’s deliverance from danger and their resurrection from death and the end of time. For this reason, they would have been especially meaningful at a time when Christians faced persecution. Stories from the Old Testament (e.g., Daniel, the three Hebrew youths) are particularly useful to reinforce this idea. Rather than seeking a

90  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art theological or doctrinal significance that could be adduced from liturgical sources, another approach attends more to early Christianity’s immediate social context and assumes that in a hostile, threatening environment the community constantly recalled stories that gave them courage and comfort. This approach is associated with writers who emphasise the importance of popular religious practice and material evidence over written texts arising within a formal ecclesiastical setting.21 It also assumes a more pluralistic community of individuals whose identities may have been somewhat malleable and who lived in a complex social environment that was sometimes threating and at other times relatively safe and secure. Yet, Christians did not always face present or immediate danger. Even thirdcentury Christians encountered persecution only sporadically and, on the whole, tended to live fairly harmoniously with their neighbours. Moreover, after the “peace of Constantine” following the Edict of Milan (313), Christians no longer faced the danger of persecution and martyrdom. While this could explain why certain more popular subjects, the Noah and the Jonah cycles in particular, began to disappear from the standard repertoire in the fourth century, it seems also that other subjects, like the scene of Abraham offering Isaac or Daniel with the lions, could be recast as Christ figures, the former as a type of his willing sacrifice, the latter as a type of his resurrection.22 Overall, a strength of this methodological approach is its consideration of the iconography’s social context in the broadest sense. That is, the images may refer to deliverance, not from the threat of torture or death, but rather from death itself.23 Visual Exegesis, Part 1: Prophecy and Fulfilment Because most of the subjects of early Christian art are drawn from Bible stories, they might be described as visual exegeses—or pictorial commentaries on the texts as well as references to them. As such, the methods that guided much of early Christian scripture interpretation were transferred to a graphic medium. Homilies and catechetical lessons that were delivered orally would have trained even illiterate listeners to become familiar with these methods. Such exegetical exercises were based on a belief that scripture should not be understood only on the literal or historical level, but that higher or spiritual meanings could be uncovered in its symbolic associations. Finding these spiritual meanings meant identifying the figures or types in the biblical narrative that referred to another entity (a person, doctrine, or sacrament) that are not superficially apparent but relied initially on general knowledge of the story and subsequently on some level of instruction. Thus, figures from the Hebrew Scriptures are perceived as prophetic types of teachings about Christ or central Christian rituals. Instances of this typological reading occur already in the New Testament. Jesus cited the “sign of Jonah” as prophesying the Son of Man’s being in the heart of the earth for three days and nights (Matthew 12:39; 16:4) or as a prediction of the final judgement (Luke 11:29). The first epistle of Peter makes the salvation of Noah and his family a type of Christian baptism (1 Pet 3:20–1), just as Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians indicated that “our fathers” were all “baptised into Moses

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 91 in the cloud and the sea,” and the supernatural rock from which they drank in the wilderness was “the rock of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1–5). Paul identifies Jesus as the new Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45–9), and the Epistle to the Hebrews explicitly links the enigmatic priest-king Melchizedek from the book of Genesis (Genesis 14:17–20) with Christ (Hebrews 7:3, 15–16). This metaphorical or symbolic rhetoric would have been easily transferred to the visual realm. The paintings in the catacombs almost certainly functioned in ways like these verbal exegeses, selecting certain Old Testament figures as types that prophetically pointed to New Testament entities or early Christian rituals and church teachings. As mentioned earlier, recognising that pictorial depictions of biblical subjects are more than mere illustrations implies a particular interpretive strategy. Even a cursory study reveals that the images were not merely didactic tools. Some subjects are portrayed with so few identifying details that viewers would need to be told what they are. Depictions of Noah, for instance, are abbreviated in a way that only viewers who are familiar with the figure would be able to recognise what it represents. Noah stands alone, his hands raised in prayer, within an open box-like ark; a dove hovers overhead (cf. Fig. 1.1, 1.10). Apparently, Noah’s wife, sons, daughters-in-law, and the paired animals were regarded as unnecessary, because they were either taken for granted or superfluous. This minimalism suggests that the visual message mainly focused on the prayer and the symbolism of the ark, the water, and the dove as referring to the church, baptism, and the Holy Spirit.24 New Testament scenes also follow this pattern. For example, a man carrying a bed alludes to the whole story of the paralytic’s healing (cf. Figs. 3.5, 4.9), and the entire Lazarus narrative is referenced by showing the moment when the shrouded figure emerges from his tomb (cf. Fig. 1.11). These abridged images clearly are less intended to visually encapsulate the stories than to call them to mind. The point, then, is to make connections that were already known to viewers, perhaps from sermons, catechetical lectures, hymns, or prayers. For this reason, and because most of these images were parts of larger programs rather than isolated scenes, attending to the adjacent subjects can shed light on the images’ both intended and perceived meanings. The following three cases, Abraham’s hospitality to the three enigmatic guests, the witness of the three Hebrew youths, and the story of Jonah swallowed and regurgitated by the sea monster, will demonstrate how this works. The Hospitality of Abraham

A painting in the fourth-century Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb offers an early and comparatively rare depiction of Abraham receiving his three angelic visitors by the oaks of Mamre (Fig. 3.6). According to the Greek (Septuagint) version of the narrative (likely used by early Christians), Abraham was sitting at the door of his tent around midday when he looked up and saw three men. Rising to greet his guests, he then addresses them in the singular as “my Lord” (Genesis 18:1–8). The Dino Compagni painting shows the seated Abraham gesturing his welcome as he looks slightly upward to the three almost identical figures, who are poised on a cloud-like structure. A strikingly different and more complex rendering of this same

92  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.6 Hospitality of Abraham Via Latina, from the Catacomb of Dino Compagni (Via Latina Catacomb), Rome. Source: Photo: granted from the Pontificia Commissione di Archelogia Sacra.

story appears in an early fifth-century mosaic panel on the upper nave wall of Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (Fig. 3.7). Here, the story of Abraham’s hospitality is depicted in three superimposed scenes. In the upper section of the mosaic, Abraham stands and slightly bows to three figures who, though much alike, are distinguished in one essential respect: while all three male figures have haloes, only the central figure is surrounded by a full-body aureole (mandorla). On the left side of the panel’s lower section, Abraham turns to Sarah, directing her to provide cakes for the visitors, and on the right side he offers the three a platter with a roast calf. Notably, here the three male figures are nearly identical, and none has a distinguishing aureole. The distinctions in the Genesis story itself, which describes Abraham first as seeing the “Lord” (singular) and then in the third person plural (Genesis 18.4–5), may account for the different presentations of the three in the upper and lower section of the mosaic. However, in an unusual textual reference to an early Christian visual artefact, the early fourth-century bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, describes a composition that corresponds to the Santa Maria Maggiore mosaic’s upper section. Apparently, while on a visit to the physical site of Mamre itself, Eusebius claims to have seen a depiction of the event in which one of Abraham’s guests is presented as surpassing the other two in honour. Although he does not say how this is indicated, he clearly distinguished one of the three as the Christian Lord and Saviour.25 Differences in early Christian exegesis of this story may account for these iconographic variations. In his late second-century dialogue with the Jew

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 93

Figure 3.7 Hospitality of Abraham from the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome ca. 430–40. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Trypho, Justin Martyr asserted that the one who appeared to Abraham was God the Word (or the Second Person of the Trinity), accompanied by two angels.26 Irenaeus of Lyons likewise argued that the two of the three beings that Abraham encountered were angels, while the other was the pre-incarnate Logos.27 Tertullian agrees and also asserts that the assumption of flesh did no harm to the pre-incarnate Logos, and as a matter of fact, it confirmed Christ’s invulnerability to bodily change and his identity as the one Person of the Holy Trinity able to undergo external change and take on human nature.28 As noted earlier, the view that one of the visitors was the pre-incarnate Word was also the view

94  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art of Eusebius of Caesarea, who also judged that Abraham actually saw the preincarnate Christ in human guise.29 The images in the catacomb and the one occupying the lower section of the mosaic at Santa Maria Maggiore portray a different theological idea, however. These instances, in which the three visitors are nearly identical, could have been a visual way to affirm the three Persons of the Trinity’s equality. Conversely, they were meant to symbolise, but not actually to depict, the Triune Deity. An interesting solution, proposed by Ambrose of Milan, argues that Abraham encountered the Trinity in a type but not in reality. Although beholding three figures, he offered worshipful reverence to only one, thus acknowledging the three-in-one unity of the Christian Godhead.30 Concerned to protect this equality and unity and to reject the idea that one of the three divine Persons could have a distinct ability to appear in human form, Augustine of Hippo similarly repudiates the earlier Christological interpretations of Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Eusebius, insisting that Abraham’s three visitors should be understood as three angelic beings. While they symbolically prefigure the Christian Trinity, the story should not be read as an actual epiphany of either the Godhead or the pre-incarnate Second Person.31 Whether or not the images express divergent aspects of contemporaneous Trinitarian and Christological debates is difficult to say. Perhaps the painter who executed the catacomb scene sometime in the mid-fourth century consciously decided that the three visitors must be equal in order to affirm the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. Or perhaps the one who designed the panel in Santa Maria Maggiore intended to depict two slightly different epiphanies to Abraham—one of two angels and the pre-incarnate Word and the other simply of three angels. In any case, both those who made these images and those who viewed them would likely have found more than a literal illustration of the Genesis narrative in them. Common sense also suggests that some viewers perceived more doctrinal significance in these images than others, exerting more or less influence on their understanding of the story and its theological significance. And, while the textual sources cited previously were probably unfamiliar to many (or even any) of these viewers, their contents cannot have been utterly different from what the ordinary faithful gathered through sermons or other exegetical exercises. This context also may be significant, particularly considering the different venues for these two portrayals of Abraham’s three visitors. One of these images appears in a private family tomb; the other is in a church. The catacomb painting would have had fewer viewers. The other, though rather high up in the nave for easy observation, is in a public worship space. The latter is also much more highly crafted and a part of an extensive cycle of mosaic panels that occur on both sides of the nave, depicting episodes from the Joseph, Moses, and Joshua narratives in what is arguably a programmatic effort to show how events and characters from the Hebrew Scriptures foreshadowed events and persons in Christian salvation history.32 More specifically, that mosaic panel is placed second in line from the altar area on the nave’s left side. The image just immediately before it shows the Old Testament priest, Melchizedek, blessing Abraham and presenting him the sacred gifts of bread and wine (Genesis 14:18–20).

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 95

Figure 3.8 Sanctuary mosaic of Abraham’s Hospitality and Offering of Isaac. Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 527–45. Source: Photo: Author.

The significance of context is equally evident in the presentation of this same narrative episode in the sixth-century Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. A lunette mosaic on a prominent sanctuary wall contains a two-part scene. On the left, Sarah watches from a rustic booth, while Abraham, dressed in the garb of a shepherd, serves his three identical guests. On the right, Abraham appears again, in this instance in the full tunic and pallium of a Roman dignitary, poised to sacrifice his son Isaac (Fig. 3.8). As in the lower section of the Santa Maria Maggiore mosaic, the three visitors are virtually identical and only slightly distinguished from one another in size, gesture, or the colour of their garments. Thus, this mosaic supports Ambrose’s and Augustine’s interpretation of the event as an appearance of three angels who were a type of the Holy Trinity, but not the actual divine Triad. This scene, although likely observable by the faithful standing in the nave, was most visible to the clergy in the sanctuary and conveyed something about the ritual acts of eucharistic offering that they performed at the altar directly below the image. Across the space and clearly related to this image, given its shape and composition, a depiction of Abel and Melchizedek presenting their offerings at an altar completes the idea. The story of Abraham’s hospitality in this context could have resonated with the prayer spoken by the presider at the altar as he consecrated the elements in the eucharistic ritual and that, at least in later tradition, referred to those very “acceptable sacrifices” as found in the Roman rite dated to the seventh century.33 The Three Hebrew Youths

The three Hebrew youths from the biblical book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, feature prominently in catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs as well as on some terra cotta tiles, lamps, and at least one fourth-century dome

96  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art mosaic at Centcelles, Spain.34 As the story in the book of Daniel, chapter 3, relates, after the three boys (who also had the Hebrew names Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah) repudiated Nebuchadnezzar’s command to worship his colossal golden statue, the king cast them into a fiery furnace, where they were joined by an enigmatic fourth figure who looked like a god (Daniel 3.25), and then they emerged unscathed out of the flames. Perhaps the earliest surviving example, an early third-century fresco in the Catacomb of Priscilla, shows the three boys dressed in short, belted tunics, leggings, and little peaked caps, which is how the text describes them, but which also indicates their eastern (Babylonian) context (Fig. 3.9). They stand amid flames with their hands outstretched in prayer. A large bird-like creature with an olive branch in its beak hovers above the trio, perhaps intended to represent the divine Holy Spirit assuring their safe deliverance from the flames or the fourth figure who appeared with them in the furnace. This scene turns up elsewhere in the catacombs and also appears frequently on sarcophagus reliefs. Nearly all of these depictions show the three standing frontally, hands lifted in prayer, wearing characteristic Babylonian(?) dress, and often in a particular kind of open brick oven, with arches across the front that gives a view of the leaping flames (Fig. 3.10). In some instances, a character joins them, representing the god-like being that Nebuchadnezzar saw when he looked into the

Figure 3.9 Three Hebrew youths, Catacomb of Priscilla, Cubiculum of the Velatio, Rome, 4th cen. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 78, p. 84.

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 97

Figure 3.10 Noah and the three Hebrew youths on a Christian sarcophagus, Rome, 4th cen. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

furnace. Sometimes this figure resembles an angelic being, as on this small pottery lamp (Fig. 3.11), but occasionally more like a human being. A different scene from the story, also found in both catacomb painting and sarcophagus reliefs, depicts the action that led to the three youths’ condemnation to the flames: their refusing Nebuchadnezzar’s orders to bow down and worship his statue (Fig. 3.12, cf. Fig. 1.13). In these images, one or all three of the youths make gestures to show their disavowal of a small bust mounted on a slender plinth. One even turns his back on the object. The king usually is depicted as wearing Roman military garb rather than the trappings of a Babylonian ruler: a short, pleated tunic under a breastplate over which a cape is draped and pinned. Notably, the king’s facial features are identical to those of the bust on the plinth, and he looks more like a Roman emperor than an eastern monarch.35 While the first scene matches the textual narrative fairly well, the second significantly diverges from the biblical story. The statue on the plinth is not of colossal size (60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide), nor does it look like something made of solid gold. And although the biblical text offers no information about what god Nebuchadnezzar’s statue depicted, it does not seem to have been a statue of the king himself. Thus, the king’s likeness in the iconography suggests that the image did more than illustrate the tale; it conveyed an additional meaning, conflating an ancient narrative with a contemporary one. Early Christian writers typologically connected the three youths in their fiery furnace with early Christian martyrs. Since the three faithful Jews were put into the furnace because they refused to bow down and worship an idol, they were obvious prototypes of early Christians who stood up to religious persecution of secular authorities on similar grounds. Examples of this exegetical association began as early as the epistle known as 1 Clement.36 Subsequently, Origen of Alexandria and both Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage interpreted the three youths’ story as a moral exhortation to the ambivalent and an encouragement to the courageous during the times of persecution during the early to mid-third century. The North African writers

98  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.11 The three Hebrew youths on a pottery lamp, North Africa, 4th cen. Now in the Archeological Museum, Timgad (Algeria). Source: Photo credit: Author.

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 99

Figure 3.12 Three Hebrew youths repudiating Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, Sarcophagus of Catervius, Tolentino (Italy). Source: Photo credit: Estate of Jim Forest, used with permission of Nancy Forest-Flier.

particularly emphasised the three youths’ refusal to venerate pagan idols and their remaining faithful to God.37 Cyprian’s application of this story is exceptionally exhortatory: God in his goodness has allied with you in glorious confession young boys as well; to us he has made manifest deeds such as those illustrious youths Ananias, Azarius, and Misael once did. When they were shut up on the furnace, the fire drew back from them and the flames yielded them a place of refreshment, for the Lord was present with them proving that against his confessors and martyrs the heat of hellfire could have no power but that those who believed in God would continue ever safe and in every way secure. I ask you in your piety to ponder carefully the faith which those boys possessed, a faith which could win God’s favour so fully.38 In a later epistle Cyprian, noting that, by contrast with the martyrs’ ends, the youths’ story ends happily (they were delivered from death), adds that the fact that they emerged unscathed did not lessen the quality of the youths’ heroic martyrdom.39 Nevertheless, when the image appears on a tomb or burial box, the imagery might emphasise their deliverance from death more than their willingness to submit to it. Cyprian insists that the victory is not the three boys’ temporary rescue, but their final and eternal salvation.

100  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art Many of the “fiery furnace” scenes are juxtaposed with a depiction of Noah floating in his box-shaped ark and about to receive the dove with the olive branch (cf. Fig. 1.1, 3.10). The frequent connection of these two images suggests that they should be understood as belonging together, possibly a subtle reference to the world’s prophesied destruction by fire and flood (cf. 2 Peter 3:5–7).40 Seeing this image as an eschatological reference suggests a moralistic emphasis: out of destruction, the righteous (and only those) shall be rescued. An alternative interpretation that emphasises divine rescue as a resurrection from death is less threatening and more hopeful, especially considering the art’s funereal context. Some early commentators interpreted the three youths’ escape from death as indicating the mortal body’s preservation and resurrection.41 Much later, Augustine of Hippo combines these themes when he comments on the story of the three Hebrew youths toward the end of his long treatise, The City of God. Here he discusses the last judgement as described in 2 Peter, where the apostle declares that the earth, which once perished from the flood, would finally be destroyed by fire along with the godless (2 Peter 3:3–13). Augustine acknowledges that this raises the question of how the saints will escape the conflagration. He explains that the saints will be preserved because they will receive bodies that are immortal and incorruptible, and thus be like the three youths. Their bodies were mortal and corruptible, yet they were still able to survive in the blazing furnace.42 Representations of the youths’ refusal to worship idols often appear juxtaposed with scenes of the magi bringing their gifts to the Christ child. The similarities between the two sets of three figures is clear and evocative. They could almost be two identical sets of triplets, perhaps to suggest the contrast between true and false veneration of a god, or to imply the victory of true wisdom and worship over sorcery and idolatry. In at least one instance, this connection becomes even more apparent by the fact that one of the three Hebrew youths often points to a star that appears again over the three magi, drawing the viewer’s eye from one scene directly to the other. Toward the end of the fourth century, John Chrysostom, echoing Tertullian and Cyprian, cited the three youths as models of courage, nobility, and steadfastness in the face of death, evil, or temptation. In more than one place, Chrysostom speaks of the youths’ escape from death as the equivalent of the Christian’s escape from the devil and winning a wreath of victory, first through baptism and then by continually resisting evil. Thus, Satan departs from the scene “fearing he should be the cause of our winning more crowns.”43 All these interpretations share the common theme of goodness conquering evil and life overcoming death, a theme appropriate for decorating a tomb or sarcophagus. The Jonah Cycle

Images of Jonah were by far the most prevalent in early Christian funerary art, and from the first, the narrative uniquely was shown in sequential scenes (Fig. 3.13). Along with catacomb painting and sarcophagi, Jonah appears on mosaics (cf. Fig. 1.5), gold glasses (Fig. 3.14), pottery lamps and bowls, statuettes, gems, and even a table base (Fig. 3.15). The depiction of Jonah’s story excludes many parts of the biblical narrative. For example, rather than the first scene showing

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 101

Figure 3.13 Jonah cycle, with Jonah resting under the vine, Catacomb of the Vigna Massimo, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 122, p. 128.

Jonah’s call to preach to the Ninevites, it starts closer to the middle of the story, depicting him being cast overboard and into the mouth of the sea monster.44 The second and third (and sometimes fourth) scenes depict Jonah coming back out of the sea monster’s mouth and then reclining beneath a leafy pergola. No further details from the biblical story appear (e.g., Nineveh’s escape from impending destruction, and Jonah’s resentment of its deliverance). Instead, these renderings focus on Jonah’s near-death, deliverance, and blissful repose under a shady vine. Although these selected moments in the story constitute a kind of visual abbreviation, the image is also elaborated by showing Jonah as a sleeping nude, in a particular pose with his right leg crossed over the left and with his right arm over his head–a posture that is similar to the way Roman iconography depicts the sleeping hero Endymion (cf. Fig. 1.21).45 As discussed earlier, this adaptation could have re-used a ready-made type, but it could also have conveyed the idea of the soul’s blissful life beyond death.46 Yet, because Jesus gives the “sign of Jonah” as prefiguring his own death and resurrection (cf. Matthew 12:40), the image could also be a Christ-type, not unlike the Good Shepherd. Especially in a funeral context, this image likely evoked the promise of a blessed afterlife or possibly the deceased individual’s peaceful repose while awaiting the final, bodily resurrection.47 Early Christian writings confirm that Jonah served as a proof of this resurrection, along with other figures like Daniel, the three Hebrew youths, and Enoch, and Elijah, whose bodies were exempted from death and physical decay.48 For example, Irenaeus gives the example of Jonah, cast into the water, swallowed by the sea creature, and cast up again on dry land as proof that God can raise corpses and grant them eternal life.49 One of the most famous instances of the presentation of the Jonah cycle within a series of other biblical narrative scenes is on a sarcophagus in the Vatican’s Museo Pio Cristiano (Fig. 3.16). This impressive object was discovered in the Vatican cemetery in the late sixteenth century and much restored in the eighteenth. Now detached from the rest of the original box, the entire front frieze displays a skilfully composed group of images that, at its centre, shows Jonah first being swallowed and then emerging from the sea monster’s mouth. The twisted tails of the creature dominate the composition, giving it a kind of energy and rhythm. To the

102  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.14 Gold glass with Jonah, second half 4th cen., Rome. Now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: Photo credit: RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

left is Jonah’s transport—a boat with a large rectangular sail. On the right a nude Jonah reclines under his shady vine. All around are other biblical scenes, including Jesus raising Lazarus at the upper right, Moses striking the rock, a scene of that may show a post-resurrection scene of Jesus with the two women grasping Jesus’s feet and running to announce the resurrection to the other disciples (cf. Matthew 28:7–10), and a shepherd with his flock. Below, Noah stands in his box-like ark and fishermen carry poles and baskets of fish. The total composition, combining Old Testament and New Testament narrative figures, works as a unified program that

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 103

Figure 3.15 Table base with Jonah swallowed and cast up by the big fish, Rome, early 4th cen. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: Open access, Creative Commons Licence.

Figure 3.16 Jonah sarcophagus, late 3rd cen., Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Eric Vandeville/akg-images.

expresses a message of salvation, from death through baptism, of resurrection, and of a blissful life in the hereafter. Jonah’s nudity in these images is clearly more than a casual detail. While the art sometimes presented Endymion as nude, it more often showed him as draped. By contrast, Jonah is almost always naked.50 As such, the iconography makes a

104  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art particular point of his nakedness, and he joins a small number of other nudes in early Christian art: Adam and Eve, Daniel, and occasionally the characters whom Jesus heals or raises from death.51 While this could refer to the nudity of a classical hero or god, it might allude to the nakedness of those who underwent Christian baptism.52 This ritual not only initiated into the community; it also conveyed the promise of a blessed afterlife. Just as Jonah going in and out of the water passed from death to life, so the one who receives baptism dies and is reborn in the water of the font.53 This link is explicit in the writings of Basil of Caesarea, who viewed Jonah’s three days in the fish’s belly as symbolising the triple immersion of candidates.54 Visual Exegesis, Part 2: Sacramental Symbolism The image of Jonah demonstrates that popular narrative images in early Christian iconography also point beyond literal narratives as typological references to Christian sacraments. Jonah was not only a sign of resurrection (Jesus’s along with the Christian’s), it also referred to the Christian ritual of baptism. A baptismal significance also applies to such other biblical narrative scenes in early Christian art as Noah in his box-like ark, the Israelites crossing through the Red Sea, Moses striking the rock in the wilderness to produce water for the thirsty Israelites, Jonah emerging from the sea monster’s belly, or Jesus offering living water to the Samaritan woman. In these cases, the context of the imagery is also relevant. Noah’s and Jonah’s reveal water’s death- and life-giving properties, and their visual representations may have assured visitors to their family members’ tombs that the baptismal ritual guaranteed a departed soul’s rebirth into a heavenly, eternal life. Early Christian exegetes would have felt especially justified in making these typological links between certain scripture narratives and the baptismal sacrament because this practice appears already in the New Testament. For example, Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth gave the Israelites crossing of the Red Sea as a figure of their baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1–2). Similarly, the first epistle of Peter represents Noah’s salvation “through water” as corresponding to baptism. Thus, Justin Martyr confidently cites Noah’s rescue as a prototype of baptism in which the deluge represents the font, the righteousness of Noah alludes to the candidate’s faith, and the ark’s wood prefigures the wood of Jesus’s cross.55 Taking this further, in his elucidation of the rite of baptism, Tertullian provides a whole catalogue of biblical “types” of baptism, including the flood, the Red Sea crossing, Jesus’s baptism, the miracle at Cana, Jesus walking on the water, Pilate washing his hands, and the water from Jesus’s side wound.56 Origen likens the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites into the Sea to wicked spirits besetting those about to be baptised.57 Cyprian of Carthage adds the stories of Moses striking the rock and the Samaritan woman at the well to the list of baptismal figures and then claims that as often as water is mentioned in scripture, baptism is proclaimed.58 Ambrose includes the Noah story and the healing of Naaman the Syrian as scriptural prefigurations of baptism.59 These textual references undoubtedly prompted past art historians to label certain chambers in the Callixtus catacomb as “chapels of the sacraments,” because,

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 105 using this approach, they viewed their decoration as generally alluding to baptism and eucharist.60 For instance, chamber 21 contains representations of Jesus’s baptism, Jonah at rest and cast into the sea, Moses striking the rock, a fisherman, and seven diners sharing a banquet, alongside the resurrection of Lazarus and the Good Shepherd. Chamber 22 similarly shows scenes of baptism, Moses striking the rock, a fisherman, the Jonah cycle, Jesus multiplying loaves and fish, Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, and a banquet scene along with the paralytic’s healing, Abraham’s offering of Isaac, and the Good Shepherd. Baptism was not the only sacrament that was prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament Gospels. While many early Christian exegetes and homilists interpreted the stories of Moses’ rock miracle and the Hebrews’ crossing of the Red Sea as signifying the “baptism” of the Israelites, some, like Cyprian of Carthage and Ambrose of Milan, also interpreted the story of the rock miracle as a type of the eucharist.61 Although depictions of the gift of manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16) would parallel the rock-striking scene, a visual depiction of this particular episode is almost non-existent in the early period.62 Similarly, the story of the Priest Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine (Genesis 14:18–20) appears somewhat later in art as prefiguring the eucharistic offering. However, eucharistic symbolism could explain certain popular images drawn from New Testament narratives: Jesus changing water to wine at the Cana wedding (John 3), Jesus feeding the multitude by multiplying loaves and fish (Matthew 14:13–21 and parallels), or any of the banquet scenes discussed in the previous chapter. Overall, however, baptismal symbolism appears to dominate in early Christian narrative art, among them the stories of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea and striking the rock in the wilderness, and of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman and offering her the water of eternal life (John 4:4–42).63 Moses Parting the Sea and Striking the Rock

Moses shows up in early Christian iconography in a number of different narrative scenes, including receiving the law from the hand of God (cf. Fig. 1.12, 4.10). Early catacomb paintings and some sarcophagus reliefs also frequently show Moses striking a rock with a staff to bring forth a cascade of water (Exodus 2:1–6). In most of these, Moses appears as an older, bearded figure garbed in a long tunic with two parallel purple stripes (clavi) and a wide pallium, a Roman costume that indicates the wearer’s privileged social rank (Fig. 3.17, cf. Fig. 4.9). Sometimes the image includes three small figures drinking from the fountain (cf. Fig. 3.16). A rare fourth-century painting from Rome’s Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb shows Pharaoh’s daughter retrieving the infant Moses from the Nile River (Exodus 2:5–10). That same catacomb shows Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea (cf. Fig. 3.18), a narrative event that also occurs on fourthcentury sarcophagi (Fig. 3.19). Both the catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs depicting this event are unusual insofar as they are more elaborated than abbreviated. The catacomb paintings sometimes cover three adjacent walls while sarcophagus reliefs often constitute the entire front frieze. The sarcophagus reliefs

106  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.17 Moses striking the rock, Chamber of the Four Seasons, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 107

Figure 3.18 Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, Dino Compagni (Via Latina) Catacomb, Rome, 4th cen. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 3.19 Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, front frieze of a 4th cen. Christian sarcophagus, Arles. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2495. Source: Photo credit: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

also depict Pharaoh’s horses and chariots plunging into the waves and drowning in the agitating current. At the right, Moses wields his staff to close the parted water so that the Israelites may escape safely. His sister, Miriam, also appears, carrying her tambourine. Early Christian exegetes read the episode of the Red Sea crossing as an allegorical figure of baptism. While Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians described the

108  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art story as the baptism of the ancestors (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1–2), third- and fourthcentury theologians expanded it to symbolically prefigure the destruction of evil (Pharaoh and Satan) in the waters of the baptismal font, a salvation offered through sacramentally consecrated water. Tertullian of Carthage was one of the earliest to articulate this idea in his treatise on baptism: The first [testimony to the use of water as a means of grace] was when the people were liberated from Egypt and, by passing through the water, escaped the Egyptian king’s power, king himself, with all his forces, having been destroyed by water. How is this figure manifest in the sacrament of baptism? Plainly that, in this age, the Gentiles are also liberated through water and have forsaken their original oppressor, the Devil, who is drowned in that water.64 This typological interpretation of the Exodus story as prefiguring Christian baptism shows up in many other early Christian homilies and treatises, including Origen of Alexandria’s comparison of neophytes singing as they leave the font to Miriam’s song as the Israelites depart for the Promised Land.65 The fourth-century bishop Zeno of Verona even made Miriam a type of the church, playing her tambourine and leading her people through the water into heaven itself.66 Gregory of Nyssa preached a sermon for the Feast of Epiphany in which he declared that candidates entering the font symbolically escape Egypt (their burden of sin) in the font.67 Of the many surviving textual examples, perhaps the most vivid is found in a catechetical lecture, delivered by Cyril of Jerusalem to those about to be baptised, explaining how the Exodus story mystically represents the pre-baptismal renunciation of Satan and the waters of the sea signify the baptismal pool: This moment, you should know, is prefigured in ancient history. When that tyrannous and cruel despot, Pharaoh, was oppressing the noble, free-spirited Hebrew nation, God sent Moses to deliver them from the hard slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians. . .. After their liberation, the enemy gave chase, and on seeing the sea part miraculously before them, still continued in hot pursuit, only to be instantaneously overwhelmed and engulfed. Pass, pray, from the old to the new, from the figure to the reality. There Moses was sent by God to Egypt; here Christ was sent from the Father into the world. . .. Pharaoh pursued that people of old right into the sea; this outrageous spirit, the impudent author of all evil, followed you, each one, up to the very verge of the saving streams. That other tyrant is engulfed and drowned in the Red Sea; this one is destroyed in the saving water.68 Largely because of Paul’s lines in his first epistle to the Corinthians, in which he says that “our ancestors” were baptised into Moses, drinking the spiritual drink from the rock (1 Corinthians 10:1–4), it seems that the first of these above-mentioned motifs, the image of Moses striking the rock, alluded to Christian baptism. Despite this, very little existing textual evidence supports this apart from Basil of Caesarea’s reference to Moses’s act as the baptism of Israel, in which he not only cites the Exodus passage but also incorporates lines from Psalm 78, which speaks

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 109 of God striking the rock and raining down manna on the people (Psalm 78:20–5).69 Other early commentators on this story interpret the incident as pointing to the sacrament of eucharist.70 Cyprian of Carthage, however, expands Paul’s symbol and suggests that Christ (the rock) was “struck” by the spear at the crucifixion, and the life-giving fluid is the blood and water that flowed from his wound.71 In many fourth-century artefacts, depictions of Moses striking the rock are merged into portrayals of Peter similarly striking a rock wall to bring forth water for three small Roman soldiers who lean in to receive it (Fig. 3.20; cf. Figs. 4.2, 4.6, 4.10). This transformation draws upon an apocryphal story in which Peter baptises his Roman jailers with water he miraculously brings forth from his prison wall.72 The soldiers are identified by their costume: short tunics, capes, and small caps, like those worn by legionaries on the eastern Roman frontier. The change from Moses to Peter usually is made evident by an adjacent scene of Peter’s arrest and the inclusion of a rooster also somewhere in the composition (a reference to his denial of Christ). On one gold glass in the Vatican Museum, Peter is even identified by name as he performs this water miracle.

Figure 3.20 Detail, Peter’s arrest and striking the rock, sarcophagus, 4th cen. Christian sarcophagus, Arles. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, PAP 7400.2/6. Source: Photo credit: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

110  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art The fact that Peter’s name (given him by Jesus) means “rock” gives some basis for this association of Moses and Peter (cf. Matthew 16:18). Peter, the “rock on which the church is founded,” thereby also becomes the leader of the new Israel and the one who delivers the spiritual water to the people. The Woman at the Well

The story of the Samaritan woman meeting Jesus at the well in the Gospel of John has obvious baptismal significance. Jesus asks the woman for a drink and, in turn, offers her “living water” that will become a spring of eternal life to anyone who receives it (John 4:14). That the story alludes to the baptismal font is already clear to Irenaeus of Lyons in the late second century. In a passage in which he compares baptism to baking bread, with water from heaven to moisten the dough, he brings up this Johannine narrative and its promise.73 Both Tertullian and Cyprian refer to this story in their discussions of baptism, and in the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus cites the Samaritan woman in his baptismal sermon as an example for all Christians who desire water from the fountain of eternal life.74 Jesus with the woman at the well appears in early catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs. Most of these situate the well in the centre of the composition, between Jesus and the woman (Fig. 3.21). The subject also features in the decoration of two early, surviving baptisteries: the mid-third century one in the house church at Dura-Europos (Fig. 3.22) and the vault mosaics in the early fifth-century baptistery

Figure 3.21 Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well, Catacomb of Dino Compagni (Via Latina Catacomb), 4th cen, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 111

Figure 3.22  Wall painting, Woman at the Well, Dura-Europos baptistery. Source: Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery, public domain.

112  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art

Figure 3.23 Woman at the Well, 5th cen. Mosaic from the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, Naples. Source: Photo credit: Author.

at Naples (San Giovanni in Fonte—Fig. 3.23). Although her identification at Dura has been challenged by some scholars who, following the extra-canonical Protevangelium of James, see the image as depiction of the Virgin Mary’s annunciation at the spring, her inclusion in the Naples baptistery is unambiguous.75 The figure of Jesus is partially destroyed, but the woman holding the bucket over the well is presented in rich costume and an elaborate coiffure. To her right two males fill six large jars with water, a detail from the story of the wedding at Cana that appears immediately adjacent to the scene with the Samaritan woman (John 2:6–10). The juxtaposition of these two stories—the Samaritan woman at the well and the wedding at Cana—and the fact of their immediate context (a baptistery) emphasises the total sacramental meaning of the figure. The Cana scene, with its inclusion of the miracle of turning water to wine, adds an allusion to the eucharist. The eucharistic interpretation of the Cana story is more common in early writings, but both Tertullian and Jerome also include it among the baptismal typologies, with Jerome emphasising that water was the matter of Jesus’s first miracle.76 Yet, another mosaic panel in this baptistery’s vault shows Jesus calling to the disciples to lower their nets for a miraculous catch of fish, a story that naturally lends itself

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 113 to baptismal connotations, as the newly baptised would understand themselves as being among the fish caught in the disciples’ nets and, as noted earlier, also as members of the community of the Christ-fish.77 Finally, taking Cyprian’s assertion that whenever water is present, baptism is signified at face value, and applying it to pictorial art, any image incorporating miraculous water, the water of life, or the healing properties of water may thereby refer to baptism. By analogy, one might say that wherever bread and wine are found in the text, or depicted in art, the eucharist is symbolised. Conclusion Christian art was, and continues to be, an important medium for theological reflection, no less than the written texts or liturgical actions of Christian lived practice. While both modes of interpretation may arise within a common culture, time, or place, to the extent that they elaborate common themes or project similar ideas, they do that differently. Sermons, commentaries, or theological treatises have beginnings, middles, and ends, while artworks tend to be perceived in a less than linear manner, sometimes taken in a single glance. Yet, neither form of theological reflection, verbal and visual, is static; both are enriched and changed by how readers, hearers, or viewers attend to and receive them and by what they already know or expect to discover. This is particularly true with regard to the ways that Bible stories are interpreted in images and words. Yet, whether biblically based iconography gradually detaches from or tenaciously clings to its narrative sources, it can open up texts in ways that writing or speaking alone cannot do. Pictures that previously were envisioned only in the individual imagination now become more concretely visible. Readers or listeners become witnesses to and affected by a scene that appears before their eyes. Moreover, when the image is seen and shared with others, viewing becomes a social rather than purely personal experience. While one can never know what another person actually sees in an image, by examining the range of subjects and their placement within artistic programs and then placing that alongside other relevant data (e.g., historical circumstances, contemporary documents, physical contexts), it may be possible to at least imagine what that might have been. Considering the funereal context of most surviving early Christian art and the often-repeated set of subjects, it appears that viewers would most likely have received pictorial assurance of life beyond death, initially promised through the sacrament of baptism and reaffirmed through other practices of the worshipping Christian community, including the reception of the eucharist— assurance that they sought in their prayers and reinforced in liturgies and homilies that drew upon the same stories as the ones they saw painted on the walls or carved on their coffins. The previous chapter showed that Christian art of the early period both adapted and transformed elements already present in the religious and artistic environment, making them sensible to a new context. The new narratives of the fourth century included previously unknown scenes from the Old Testament, including those

114  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art above-discussed of Abraham entertaining his three visitors (cf. Figs. 3.5, 3.6, 3.7) and Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea (cf. Figs. 3.17, 3.18). Among novel New Testament narrative scenes are Jesus entering Jerusalem (cf. Figs. 1.13, 1.14, 4.20) and Jesus before Pilate (cf. Figs. 1.14, 6.6, 6.9). Added to these new biblical subjects were some without any specific narrative reference, such as depictions of Jesus delivering the law to Peter and Paul (cf. Figs. 1.14, 4.21) or episodes from extra-canonical stories, especially depictions of Peter’s arrest and his miraculously producing water to baptise his Roman jailers.78 By the end of the fourth century, however, the tomb no longer was a primary context for Christian iconography. Catacombs ceased to be used, and sarcophagus reliefs began to become much simpler in design. Thus, the biblical narrative images that were so initially popular were joined by new types, in new contexts, and in new media. Biblical scenes never entirely disappeared; they just found new contexts. The early fifth-century mosaic panels that lined the nave of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and a century later in Ravenna’s Sant’Apollinare Nuovo continue to display biblical narrative scenes. Those in Santa Maria Maggiore reprise some Old Testament stories known from catacomb frescoes but include otherwise unknown examples.79 Many of the small mosaic panels in the upper nave of Ravenna’s Sant’Apollinare Nuovo show depictions of Jesus’s miracles but similarly include new scenes from the life, death, trials, and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.80 Fifth-century ivory plaques and book covers likewise show many of the motifs that had been common in earlier iconography but also add new ones, some of which were drawn from apocryphal literature, especially episodes from the extra-canonical life of the Virgin Mary.81 Additionally, from the late fourth century on, illuminated Bible manuscripts began to appear that directly juxtaposed images with texts, making the artwork more illustrative or didactic. The proximity of these images to the texts they referenced made them somewhat less reflective of allegorical or typological interpretations.82 In the end, successful pictorial images, like good texts, never impart only one set of meanings to their recipients. The best works of art continually adapt to changing circumstances or personal needs. Thus, as the church’s circumstances changed in the early fourth century, so did its iconography, a change of focus manifested as much in the visual art as in the theological writings of the same time. The next chapter will consider the ways that visual depictions of Jesus were particularly affected by changing circumstances. Once again, by attending to the initial popularity of certain motifs and seeing how those gradually give way to new and different ones, the role of visual art as both reflecting and shaping the community’s lived religion becomes vividly—and visually—evident. Notes 1 This topic is discussed extensively in Chapter 6. 2 Some early nativity scenes include the shepherds, the mother, and the ox and ass behind the baby Jesus’s manger. 3 An exception is the image of David with Goliath in the Dura-Europos baptistery. 4 See discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac as a type of Jesus’s passion in Chapter 5.

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 115 5 Art historians have long accepted a funerary significance for catacomb or sarcophagus art. See, for instance, Joseph Wilpert, Roma sotterranea: le pitture delle cata combe romane (Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre, 1903), 141; or a dissenting view by Paul Styger, Die altchristliche Grabeskunst, ein Versuch der einheitlichen Ausslegung (Munich: Josef Kösel, 1927), 75f. See also Alfonse Fausone, Die Taufe in der frühchristliche Sepulkralkunst (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1982), in which the author presumes a funereal significance present in catacomb painting. Against this see Snyder, Ante Pacem, 47. 6 Lists and tables of different subjects in different media were compiled by Also Aldo Nestori, Repertorio delle pitture delle catacombe romane (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1975); Snyder, Ante Pacem, 87; and Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Word: Untersuchungen zu Jenseitsvorstellungen von Christen des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2010), passim. 7 Josef Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom: Beiträge zur Geschichte der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst (Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1901); Franz Wickhoff, Die Wiener Genesis (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895), was re-published as Römische Kunst (Die Wiener Genesis) in 1912 (Berlin: Meyer & Jessen). 8 For modern analyses of this debate, see Annabel Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem, and Ravenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–12; Elżbieta Jastrzębowska, “Josef Strzygowski und Josef Wilpert: Zwei Gesichter derselben Wissenschaft,” in Von Biala nach Wien: Josef Strzygowski und die Kunstwissenschaften, ed., Piotr O. Scholz and Magdalena A. Dlugosz (Vienna: European University Press, 2015), 43–54; Ivan Foletti and Francesco Lovino, “Introduction: Orient oder Rome, and Josef Strzygowski in 2018,” in Orient oder Rom? History and Reception of a Historiographical Myth (1901–1970), ed., Ivan Foletti and Francesco Lovino (Prague: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2018), 7–14. 9 See, for instance, O. Wulff, Altchristliche und byzantinische Kunst, vol. 1 (BerlinNeubabelsberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1914), 36–72. Henry Chadwick offers the Jewish model theory as conclusive, The Early Church (Pelican History of the Church, vol. 1; London: Penguin, 1967), 279–80. 10 Erwin Goodenough, “Catacomb Art,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962), 113–42. 11 See Kurt Weitzmann, “The Illustration of the Septuagint,” in Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed., H. Kessler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 45–75; and Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990) for discussion and elaboration of this hypothesis. For an example of the way this theory has been widely accepted, see K. Schubert, Jewish Influence on Earliest Christian Paintings, pt. 3 of Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). More extensive discussion of this issue in Robin M. Jensen, “Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Pictorial Art,” in Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New, eds., Matthias Henze and David Lincicum (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2023), 1023–54. 12 John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 39. Bezalel Narkiss, “Representational Art” in The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century; A Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977–February 23, 1978, ed., Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), 367. 13 Narkiss, “Representational Art,” 369. 14 Joseph Gutmann consistently made this cautionary argument. See Gutmann, “The Illustrated Jewish Manuscript in Antiquity: The Present State of the Question,” Gesta 5 (1966), 39–44; in his introduction to Hebrew Manuscript Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 9–12; and “Early Synagogue and Jewish Catacomb Art and its Relation to Christian Art,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 21.2 (1984), 1313–42; and his review of Weitzmann’s and Kessler’s work in Speculum 67 (1992), 502–4.

116  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 15 Isaac as prefiguration of Jesus is discussed more in Chapter  5, but see, for example, Tertullian, Jud. 10.6 and 13.20–2; Irenaeus, Haer, 4.10.1; Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 1.23; and Origen, Hom. Gen. 8. Paul himself makes the baptism–rock-striking typology in 1 Cor. 10.1–5. 16 See Robin M. Jensen, “Early Christian Images and Exegesis,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed., Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 65–86. 17 Edmund F. Le Blant, Études sur les sarcophages chrétiens antiques de la ville d’Arles (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878), may have been the first to suggest this origin for catacomb iconography. See also his later version, Les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886). Henri Leclercq, in his Manuel d’archéologie chrétienne, vol. 1 (Paris: Letouzey, 1907), 187–9 and 110–16; and “Défunts (commémoraison des),” an article in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. 4.1, cols. 427–56 (esp. 434–7), identified prayers in the Gelasian sacramentary (the commendatio animae) and a prayer from Pseudo-Cyprian of Antioch that mentions Noah, Jonah, Enoch, Abraham, Lot, Rahab, Elisha, Elijah, Job, Moses, and Daniel. Those who follow Leclercq include Antonio Ferrua, “Paralipomeni di Giona,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 38 (1962), 7–69; André Grabar, Early Christian Art, 102–5; Erich Dinkler, “Abbreviated Representations,” in the Age of Spirituality Catalogue, 393–9; and Finney, Invisible God, 282–4. See also the important presentation in Alfred Stuiber, Refrigerium Interim: Die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand und die frühchristliche Grabeskunst, Theophaneia 11 (Bonn: Hanstein, 1957), 169–74. Most importantly, and with the strongest support for its relevance, see Catherine Brown Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and the Early Christian Imagination, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 14 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 109–37. 18 Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 21.2.6. Trans., author. CSEL 93/1B, 54–5. This text was brought to the author’s attention by Tzacz, Brescia Casket, 118–24. 19 Victor Schultze, Grundriss der christlichen Archäologie (Munich: Beck, 1919). For the Constitutions themselves see Marcel Metzger’s edited version, Les Constitutions Apostoliques, in Sources Chrétiennes 320, 329, 336 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987). Alternatively, see David A. Fiensy, Prayers Alleged to be Jewish: An Examination of the “Constitutiones Apostolorum” (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985). 20 Ap. Const. 5.7. 21 On this contextual methodology or emphasis on the social matrix of early Christianity, see the summary in Snyder, Ante Pacem, 14–21. 22 For instance, Snyder, throughout Ante Pacem, interprets many Old Testament images as artistic expressions of peace in “moments of extreme threat.” In particular he includes Noah, Jonah, Daniel, Susannah, the three youths in the fiery furnace, the praying figure (orant) and the Good Shepherd. Snyder’s hypothesis may have been influenced by André Grabar or Theodore Klauser. For discussion of Isaac and Daniel as types of Christ, see Chapter 6. 23 Snyder objects to a specifically funereal context for these images, arguing that many of the same images appear in the Dura Baptistery, Ante Pacem, 47. 24 On the baptismal symbolism here see below. More discussion of the minimalism of these scenes above in Chapter 1. 25 Eusebius, Dem, ev. 5.9 26 Justin, Dial. 56 and 127. In fact, Justin sees all other appearances of God to figures in the Old Testament as theophanies of the Second Person. For a summary of the patristic interpretations and more extensive secondary bibliography, see Jeffrey Hubbard, “Seeing God at Mamre: Reconsidering the Early Visual Evidence,” in Visualizing the Tradition(s): Early Christians and Their Art, eds., Mikeal Parsons and Robin Jensen (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming); Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling, “Abraham’s Angels: Jewish and Christian Exegesis of Genesis 18–19,”

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 117 in The Exegetical Encounter Between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, eds. Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 181–202; and Bogdan Bucur, Scripture Re-envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 42–70. 27 Irenaeus, Epid. 44. 28 Tertullian, Marc. 3.9; Carn. Chr. 3. 29 Eusebius, Dem. ev. 5.9. 30 Ambrose, Exc. 2.96. 31 Augustine, Trin. 2.11.20. 32 On this juxtaposition of Old and New Testament scenes in the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, see Miles “Santa Maria Maggiore’s Fifth-century Mosaics: Triumphal Christianity and the Jews,” Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993): 155–75; and Suzanne Spain, “ ‘The Promised Blessing:’ The Iconography of the Mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore,” Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 518–40. 33 The Latin text reads: “Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificum patriarchae nostris Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam (Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as one you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offerings of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim). 34 On the subject as a whole, see Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 302–11; Martine Dulaey, Les trois hébreux dans la fournaise dans l’interprétation symbolique de l’église ancienne, Review des sciences religieuses 72 (1998): 38–50. On the Centcelles mosaic see Gillian Mackie, Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function, and Patronage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 154–6; and Centcelles: El monumento tardoromano, iconografia y arquitectura ed., Javier Arce (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002). 35 More in-depth discussion of this other narrative scene in Robin M. Jensen, “The Three Hebrew Youths and the Problem of the Emperor’s Portrait in Early Christianity,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, eds., Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Series, 2015), 303–20. 36 1 Clement 45.7. 37 Origen, Mart. 33; Tertullian, Idol. 15; Scorp. 8; Marc. 4.41. In Jejun. 9; and An. 48.3, Tertullian makes the three youths models of abstinence. Cyprian, Laps. 19; Unit. Eccl. 12; and Ep. 6.3 (quoted below), 58.5, 57.8, and 61.2. Also see Irenaeus, Haer. 5.5.2; and Hippolytus, Schol. in Dan. 3, both of which emphasise Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of the three children as well as a fourth—“like the Son of God.” 38 Cyprian, Ep. 6.3.1, trans. Graeme Clarke, Letters of Cyprian, vol. 1 (Ancient Christian Writers Series, 43, 1984), 65 (CCSL 3B: 34–5), slightly adapted by this author. See also Cyprian, Ep. 67.8.2 (CCSL 3C: 458–59), where he compares Daniel and the three Hebrew youths to the Maccabean martyr Matthias (1 Macc 2:24) and the prophet Elijah (1 Kgs 19:10). 39 Cyprian, Ep. 61.2. Also Hippolytus, Frag. of discourses 9. 40 On this see Justin 2 Apol. 7.2; Origen, Cels. 1.19; and Irenaeus Haer. 5.29.2. 41 Irenaeus, Haer. 5.5–9; Tertullian, Res. 58.6. 42 Augustine, Civ. 20.18 (CCSL 48:729–30). 43 John Chrysostom, Hom. 15.12 (on Matthew); and cf. Hom. 18.6 (on 1 Cor.). See also Chrysostom, Stat. 5.14, which specifically treats the story as an escape from death. 44 The monster is called “dag gadol” (‫ )לודג גד‬in Hebrew, which simply means “big fish.” The Greek version (Septuagint) uses the term “big fish” (κῆτος μέγας). The creature is not depicted as a whale before the Middle Ages. 45 See discussion in Chapter 1.

118  Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 46 Everett Ferguson, “Jonah in Early Christian Art: Death, Resurrection, and Immortality,” in Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World, eds., Aliou Cissé Niang and Carolyn Osiek (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 342–53. 47 This was first suggested by Alfred Stuiber, Refrigerium Interim, 136–51. 48 See Jutta Dresken-Weiland’s comprehensive summary in Bild, Grab und Word, 96–119. The texts are also collected in Yves-Marie Duval, Le livre de Jonas dans la littérature chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1973). 49 Irenaeus, Haer. 5.5.2. Also see Justin, Dial. 5.5.2; Tertullian, Res. 32, 58; Methodius, Res. 2.25.8–9; Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 14.17–20; and Augustine, Ep. 102.34. 50 An exception to this is the Cleveland Museum statuette of Jonah under the Gourd Vine, which depicts him wearing a short tunic. See Hornick, “Freestanding Sculpture;” Kitzinger, “Cleveland Marbles;” and Wixom, Early Christian Sculptures.” 51 See Robin M. Jensen, “Nudity in Early Christian Art,” in Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World, eds., Aliou Cissé Niang and Carolyn Osiek (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 296–319. Also, Thomas Mathews, “La nudità nel cristianesimo,” in Aurea Roma: Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, ed., Eugenio La Rocca (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000), 396–8. 52 On nudity at baptism see Jensen, “Nudity,” 312–13, with a list of ancient sources that describe this. 53 Jensen, Baptismal Imagery, 153–6. 54 Basil of Caesarea, Spir. Sanct. 14.32. 55 Justin, Dial. 138.1–3. 56 Tertullian, Bapt. 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9. 57 Origen, Hom. Exod. 5.5. 58 Cyprian, Ep. 63.8. 59 Ambrose, Myst. 10–18. On Naaman as a baptismal type see also Irenaeus, Haer. 5.34. 60 This traditional designation for six chambers in the Catacomb of Callixtus seems to have been first used by Giuseppe Marchi in the mid-nineteenth century, Monumenti delle’arte Cristiane primitive (Rome: Tip. Di. C. Puccinelli, 1844), 161–3. Although Josef Wilpert objected to the terminology, he continued to use the designation in Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms, 152. 61 Cyprian, Ep. 63.8.2; Ambrose, Myst. 8 and 9. 62 A depiction of this story occurs among the nave mosaics in the early fifth-century Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 63 The paralytic as a baptismal type in Tertullian, Bapt. 5; Cyprian, Ep. 69.131.1; Ambrose, Sac. 2.6 and Myst. 4.24; Gregory Nazianzus Or. 40.33; and Cyril of Jerusalem, Hom. para. 7. The Samaritan woman as a baptismal type in Tertullian, Bapt. 9.4; Cyprian, Ep. 63.8.4 and 73.11; Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. (Bapt.) 27. 64 Tertullian. Bapt 9.1, author’s translation (CCL 1:284). 65 Origen, Hom. Exod. 5.5. 66 Zeno, Tract. 54 (De Exodo). 67 Gregory of Nyssa, Diem Lum. See also Gregory of Nyssa, Vit. Mos. 2.125, Basil of Caesarea, Bapt. 1; Ambrose, Sac. 1.20 and Myst. 12. 68 Cyril of Jerusalem, Myst. 1.1–3, trans. Leo McCauley, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 2, Fathers of the Church, 64 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1970), 153–4. Compare Basil of Caesarea, Sanct. Spirit. 14. For similar use of the blood and the Passover themes see John Chrysostom, Catech. illum. 3.23–4; Ambrose, Sac. 1.12, 20, and 4.18; and Myst. 12; and Augustine, Catech. 20.34. 69 Basil of Caesarea, Bapt. 2; also, Spir. Sanct. 32–33. Another rare reference is found in the writings of the Syrian father Aphrahat, Dem. 12.8. 70 For example, Ambrose, Sacr. 5.2 71 Cyprian, Ep. 62.8. 72 For more discussion of the Peter/Moses parallel, see Carl-Otto Nordström, “The Water Miracles of Moses in Jewish Legend and Byzantine Art,” Orientalia Suecana 7 (1958), 78–109, reprinted in No Graven Images, ed., J. Gutmann (New York: KTAV, 1971),

Biblical Stories in Early Christian Art 119 277–308; Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 119–43; and Robin M. Jensen, “Moses and the Christian ‘New Moses’ in Early Christian Art,” in The Christian Moses: From Philo to the Qur’an, eds., Philip Rousseau and Janet A. Timbie (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2019), 165–85. 73 Irenaeus, Haer. 3.17.2. 74 Gregory Nazianzen, Or. (Bapt.) 27. See also Optatus of Milevis, Parm. 5.4.5 and Jerome, Ep. 69.6. 75 On the Dura Baptistery question see Peppard, World’s Oldest Church, 155–83; and Dominic Serra, “The Baptistery at Dura-Europos: The Wall Paintings in the Context of Syrian Baptismal Theology,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 120 (2006): 67–78, at 77–8. 76 Cyril of Jerusalem, Myst. 4.2 (eucharist); Tertullian, Bapt. 9 and Jerome, Ep. 69.6 (baptism). 77 Ferri, Il Mosaici del battistero di San Giovanni, 29–32. 78 See discussion of the law-giving scene in Chapter 4 and of the last image above in Chapter 3. 79 Among new biblical scenes in the mosaic nave panels at Santa Maria Maggiore are included episodes from the Jacob cycle, Moses leading the people through the Red Sea and in the battle with the Amalekites, and Joshua taking Jericho. New Old Testament scenes also appear in the Via Dino Compagni Catacomb; see above, Chapter 3. 80 These are discussed in Chapter 6. 81 Robin M. Jensen, “The Apocryphal Mary in Early Christian Art,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds., Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 289–305. 82 On Early Illuminated Bibles see Herbert Kessler, “The Word Made Flesh in Early Decorated Bibles,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed., Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 141–68; and Dorothy Verkerk, “Early Christian Illuminated Manuscripts,” in The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, eds., Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 354–71; John Lowden, “The Beginnings of Biblical Illustration,” in Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, ed., John Williams (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 9–59.

4

From Christ the Miracle Worker and Teacher to Christ the King and Lawgiver

At the beginning, Christian art portrayed Jesus mostly as a miracle worker and healer. These images’ remarkable dominance contrasts with the lack of images that would later come to the fore: portrayals of the annunciation of his birth and his death on the cross. However, the earliest depictions of Jesus concentrated on his earthly life and ministry instead of on his virginal conception, crucifixion, and resurrection. To the extent that the earliest Christian art represents Jesus as a divine saviour, it does it by showing his power over nature and his ability to cure bodily infirmities rather than through his victorious, redemptive, or substitutionary selfsacrifice. What early Christians chose to decorate their burial chambers or display on their coffins were images of Jesus as someone who could give sight to the blind, restore disabled limbs, bring the dead back to life, feed hungry crowds, and change water to wine. However, around the mid-fourth century this began to change. New images appeared in the iconographic program that depicted other scenes from the Gospels, including portrayals of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:1–11 and parallels) and as a teacher among his disciples. Other, less clearly narrative types also emerged, including depictions of an ascended Christ presenting the new law to his apostles. Within only a few years, these images began to overtake those images of Jesus as a miracle worker. Similarly, many formerly dominant figures as the Good Shepherd, Jonah, Daniel, and many other Old Testament types apparently lost favour. These new images also appeared in new, non-funereal contexts: church apse mosaics in particular. Most noticeably, as Christianity made the transition from a minority cult with a fairly introverted and circumscribed system of visual symbols to a more highly organised and public religion patronised by the Roman emperor himself, artists began to portray Christ as an enthroned ruler and judge. He exchanges his simple tunic and pallium for regal robes and his beardless and youthful appearance for the full-bearded visage and the heavier physique of a mature male. This new type emerged alongside images of Jesus as a teacher and lawgiver that at first appeared in the catacombs and on the sarcophagi but soon also adorned the newly constructed churches in the Empire’s major cities, churches that initially were underwritten by imperial donations but gradually also by the wealth of an emerging Christian aristocracy. DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-4

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 121 This chapter argues that this gradual but evident shift in imagery not only corresponds to the church building boom following the legalisation of Christianity and the church’s imperial patronage, but also reflects the evolving character of Christian religious practice and theology in the post-Constantinian era more generally. However, it opens by considering the significance of Jesus’s initial presentation as a miracle worker, healer, and raiser of the dead and what the popularity of those images reveals about early Christian beliefs regarding Jesus’s divine nature and earthly works. It especially interrogates the often-made argument that these early depictions of Jesus confirm the perception, even accusingly levelled by ancient detractors, that Jesus was regarded as a magician or, worse, some type of conjurer or trickster. After discussing these first images and the issues they present, the chapter then considers the shift to representations of Jesus as a teacher and lawgiver. With regard to the first type, the image of Jesus as a teacher, it poses the question of whether this presentation concurred with values of certain elite members of the community and was thus favoured by them. The second type, which shows Jesus giving the law to his apostles, especially to Peter and Paul, raises a different set of issues, including whether the image was meant to show Jesus as a new Moses, or to affirm the primacy of the Roman church (with its two apostolic founders) or of Peter himself. The chapter concludes with the late fourth- and early fifth-century iconography of Jesus enthroned and examines of such scenes as the adoration of the magi and Christ’s entrance to Jerusalem to ask whether these images had specific imperial resonance or were intended to present him as a cosmic ruler rather than an earthly one. It also explores why the art of the later fourth century was prompted to drop the image of Jesus as a caretaking shepherd to recast him as the divine counterpart of a mortal king While and the new iconography clearly reflected the glory of a newly triumphant religion and perhaps subtly associated it with the power and majesty of the Roman Imperium, it simultaneously challenged the gods of traditional Roman paganism and even the Roman emperor’s temporal supremacy. Jesus as Wonderworker, Divine Healer, and Life Restorer Visual representations of Jesus stilling the storm, multiplying loaves and fish, healing the paralytic, and raising dead Lazarus had already emerged in the late third century alongside the already popular subjects drawn from Old Testament narratives. Yet, around the time that some of those latter subjects began to disappear, these representations of Jesus as a wonderworker and healer remained and were expanded to include additional miracles from Jesus’s earthly ministry. All told, these surviving wonder-working and healing images outnumber any other scenes from the New Testament narratives of Jesus’s earthly ministry and are appreciably more common than depictions of his nativity or his crucifixion. Although slight variations exist between catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs, taken as a group and in order of frequency, the most prevalent miracle motifs show Jesus raising the dead Lazarus, multiplying loaves and fish, restoring the paralytic, healing

122  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver the blind man (or men), changing water to wine, and healing the haemorrhaging woman. Related, but rarer, subjects include Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter, raising the widow’s son, raising other dead, healing the demoniac, curing the leper, stilling the storm, and walking on water.1 The dominance of these scenes in early Christian funerary art indicates that the community probably found these stories especially compelling. They may have been the tales that prompted their conversion or, given their centrality in funerary art, that the bereaved found particularly consoling.2 Jesus is pictured as a saviour god who could not only heal the sick but also raise the dead. While raising Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, or the widow’s son are natural choices for funerary iconography, the healing scenes offer hope for deliverance from bodily infirmity and attest to Jesus’s care for the physically or mentally afflicted.3 Moreover, these marvels confirm Jesus’s supernatural powers and divine identity, witnessing his power over nature and his superiority over other deities. Two aspects of these depictions of Jesus’s miracles are distinctive. First, in most of the miracles, and when he raises the dead, Jesus wields a staff that some observers refer to as a wand or even as a magic wand. No mention of this instrument occurs in the narrative versions of these stories. By contrast, in most portrayals of healing, Jesus uses his hand to accomplish his cure, a ritual gesture often referred to as the “laying on (or imposition) of hands,” which is described in the New Testament. Second, an interesting and often overlooked detail is the small size of those whom Jesus heals, especially in contrast to the incident’s witnesses. This detail occasionally applies also to the figures Jesus raises from the dead (e.g., Lazarus), and it may have a significance of its own, perhaps alluding to the idea that healing or being raised from death is a type of rebirth, linked to the baptised person’s symbolic rebirth. Interestingly, these miraculous acts were not always received positively. According to the biblical text, some witnesses wondered if Jesus was a sorcerer or demon-possessed. The complications of Jesus as a wonderworker, healer, and one who even had the power to raise the dead is noted in a brief text from Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with the Jew Trypho. Using the image of Jesus as the font of living water (cf. John 7:38), he declares that Christ’s appearance on earth was marked by his healing the blind, deaf, and lame by the force of his word, causing them to walk, to hear, and to see. Along with restoring the dead to life, these acts compelled the people of his time to recognise Jesus’s divinity and persuaded them to believe in him. But, he adds, though they saw these marvels, many concluded that Jesus did this by magical arts and declared him a magician and a deceiver of the people.4 Jesus the Wonderworker All four New Testament Gospels describe Jesus miraculously increasing a small basket of loaves and a few fish into enough to feed a multitude (Matthew 14:15–21 and parallels). Other stories of his supernatural power over the natural world include the episode in which he calms a raging sea tempest (Matthew 8:23–7 and parallels), when he walks on water (Matthew 14:25–31 and parallels), causes a

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 123 prodigious catch of fish (Luke 5:1–10; John 21:4–6), or changes water to wine at the Cana wedding (John 2:3–11). Depictions of these stories are among the most often seen in the first century of Christian art. Depictions of Jesus’s multiplication of loaves and fish and his changing water to wine are especially popular subjects for catacomb painting and sarcophagus reliefs (Figs. 4.1, 4.2). They also appear on fourth- and fifth-century gold glasses and ivory carvings. The miracle of the multiplication usually shows Jesus with five or six

Figure 4.1 Miracle of the loaves, with the baptism of Jesus and Adam and Eve, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea:  Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903) tav. 240 p. 246.

Figure 4.2 Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus sarcophagus, Rome, ca. 330–40. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo. Source: Photo credit: Dmitriy Moroz/Alamy Stock Photo.

124  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver

Figure 4.3 Sarcophagus with central scene of Jesus multiplying loaves and fish, first quarter 4th cen. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

breadbaskets at his feet. With his right, he usually points his staff to the baskets; some depictions show Jesus extending his hand in blessing over a basket of bread and a platter of fish (Fig. 4.3, cf. Figs. 1.4, 1.13). The feeding miracle often is found in conjunction with images of Jesus aiming his staff at a set of jars (often, but not always, six in number), the scene in which he changes water to wine at the Cana wedding.5 Notably, Jesus’s mother, whose intervention arguably prompted the miracle, does not appear in the earliest surviving Cana scenesinitially appearing only on the panel image from the sixth-century ivory throne of Maximian, bishop of Ravenna. As discussed in Chapter 3, both of these iconographic subjects could symbolically allude to the eucharist. However, some Christian commentators also insist that the feeding miracle specifically revealed Jesus’s extraordinary power. For example, in a homily on the feeding miracle, John Chrysostom commented mainly on Jesus’s decision to use earthly matter to display his ability to will and effect changes in ordinary substances.6 In his commentary on the miracle at Cana in the Gospel of John, Chrysostom similarly observes that, while Jesus reveals himself only gradually in this incident, it nonetheless shows that the miraculous works of Christ are far better and more perfect than any operation of nature.7 Augustine also preached on the Cana story and in his homily refers to the episode of the multiplication of fish and loaves. In Augustine’s reading, Jesus performed both of these acts to demonstrate his omnipotence and also to show that, like new wine from water, Jesus fulfils scriptures’ prophecy of the coming Messiah.8 Augustine specifically recalls the line in John’s Gospel that refer to the Cana miracle as the first sign of Jesus’s glory and the revelation that prompted his disciples to believe in him (John 2:11). Especially compared to images of Jesus multiplying loaves and fish or changing water to wine, early representations of Jesus walking on water or stilling the storm are rare. The story, recounted in three of the four Gospels (Matthew 14:22–34; Mark 6:45–53; John 6:15–21), follows the account of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish. A depiction of the walking on water scene appears among the Dura-Europos baptistery’s wall paintings and was likely featured in Naples baptistery’s mosaic adjacent to a scene of the miraculous catch of fish, although it is difficult to

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 125

Figure 4.4 Jesus and Peter walking on the water. Wall painting from the Dura-Europos baptistery, mid 3rd cen. Source: Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery, open access/public domain.

be certain as much of the mosaic has been lost.9 The Dura-Europos baptistery also depicts the version of the story in which Jesus walks on water from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Peter, having stepped out of the boat, tries to navigate the waves over to Jesus (Matthew 14:29–31).10 This painting also shows the disciples watching this act with expressions and gestures of amazement (Fig. 4.4).11

126  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver Jesus the Magician? Jesus often wields a staff in certain narrative scenes, both before and after the Constantinian era, especially when he is shown raising Lazarus from the dead or performing such wonders as those described previously (Fig. 4.5). Although scripture does not mention it, Moses also employs such a staff in images of his parting the Red Sea (cf. Figs. 3.17, 3.18) or striking the rock that gushes water for the Israelites in the desert (cf. Fig. 3.16). The latter image corresponds to the biblical story (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11), but the former contradicts the Exodus narratives in which Moses stretches out his hand to part the sea (Exodus 14:21, 26). The staff appears again in a rock-striking scene, when it is transformed to show Peter instead of Moses striking the rock with a staff to bring forth water for baptising his Roman jailers (Fig. 4.6, cf. Figs. 1.4, 3.19, 4.2).12 While Jesus commonly holds this object in scenes of raising people from the dead or working certain wonders, he rarely uses it in contemporaneous images of healing.13 Rather, Jesus typically accomplishes these miracles by imposing his hand, making a gesture of speech, or pointing to the sufferer. These accord with the gospel accounts of Jesus’s healings, in which manual touch was how these miracles were accomplished (for example, Mark 5:23; 8.22; Luke 22:51). The distinction between healing touch and working wonders by the aid of a staff sometimes occurs in the same composition. This iconographic distinction raises the possibility that Jesus’s miracles are of two distinct types, some that revealed his power to transform material, raise the dead, and control nature, and others that distinguished him as healer. His role as wonderworker and revivifier is thereby distinguished from his role as healer of human infirmities.

Figure 4.5 Jesus raising Lazarus, paralytic carrying his bed, adoration of the magi, baptism of Jesus, multiplication of loaves, Adam and Eve, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903) tav. 230, p. 236.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 127

Figure 4.6 Sarcophagus with arrest of Peter and Jesus’s healing of paralytic and blind man, changing water to wine, and multiplying loaves, ca. 325–50, Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

Some modern commentators on this iconography propose that depictions of Jesus’s miracles, especially those in which Jesus wields a staff, show that early Christians regarded him as a magician.14 This view is supported by some biblical passages in which others characterise or just wonder about the source of his power. For example, scribes claim that Jesus’s power to exorcise demons comes from the prince of demons himself (Mark 3:22); his ability to cast out demons and their recognition of him raises questions (Matthew 8:29; Luke 4:36). Jesus’s followers receive these powers as well. Philip also casts out demons, which brings him to the attention of the magician Simon, who tried to purchase the Spirit’s power from Peter (Acts 8:9–24). Early Christian texts show that some detractors judged Jesus’s miracles as akin to magical acts. Magicians were often subjects of contempt and even persecution (both legal and otherwise) in Late Antiquity. Defending Jesus from such association comes up in the work of the second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr, who apparently had heard that Christ performed his works by the use of magic, and clearly distinguishes Jesus’s miracles from the signs or wonders attributed to characters like Simon.15 Similarly, Origen of Alexandria was provoked by the pagan critic Celsus’s comparison of Jesus with tricksters or conjurers, and with those who practised exorcism and healing or made magnificent banquets appear out of thin air.16 When Celsus insisted that Jesus was an ordinary sorcerer whose wonders and miracles must be credited to satanic powers, Origen replied that while some supernatural acts can be credited either to divine or diabolical powers, Jesus’s were the signs of his own divine nature.17 Here Origen recognises Jesus’s purpose behind his extraordinary deeds. Such feats were (sometimes grudgingly) intended to proselytise. As Jesus said to the Roman official whose son was deathly ill, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe” (John 5:48). Thus, Jesus’s miracles had the effect of affirming his power and gave recipients, witnesses, and later hearers of the stories a foretaste of what salvation meant. In his

128  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver treatise On the Incarnation, Athanasius, like Origen, repudiates any real parallels between Jesus and ordinary magicians: If they call him a magician, how can magic be destroyed by a magician, rather than being confirmed? For if he conquered human magicians, or prevailed over only one, he would properly be reckoned by them to have surpassed the rest by superior skill. But if his cross has won the victory over absolutely all magic, and over the very name of it, it must be clear that the Saviour is not a magician, from whom even those demons invoked by other magicians flee as their master.18 Hence, for Athanasius, Jesus is not the equivalent of an everyday magician; his supernatural acts were only a by-product of his identity, and moreover, he destroyed magic itself. Nevertheless, Jesus’s miracles, especially his phenomenological wonders, could be viewed by outsiders as characteristic of a magician, even if they demonstrate his ultimate victory over magic and all magicians.19 Jesus’s Staff

Nevertheless, the iconographic element that complicates the question of whether or not Jesus is a magician is the staff that he ordinarily uses when he works nature miracles or raises the dead. Often referred to as a virga (in Latin) or rabdos (in Greek), this object is frequently described in the popular media as a “wand” and sometimes even as a “magic wand.”20 Some scholars point out that this terminology is anachronistic. While modern magicians may wield wands to perform their stunts, no clear evidence says that ancient magicians regularly did. Gods and healers like Hermes or Asclepius might hold wand-like rods, but they are not depicted as thaumaturgical instruments. While Asclepius often leans upon a serpent-entwined rod or stick, it bears little similarity to Jesus’s staff (Fig. 4.7). In fact, very few visual images exist of ancient magicians in action, much less of them using wands.21 Scholars often make the connection between Jesus’s healing miracles and those of the healer god Asclepius and the itinerant healing hero Apollonius of Tyana.22 However, while ancient literature both praised and slandered Apollonius, he was only depicted as a magician in order to contrast him with Jesus.23 But Asclepius was not a magician. His cures were delivered through ritual acts of incubation (sleeping and dreaming) at his shrine and were not public miracles. Moreover, representations of Asclepius usually present him alone or accompanied by the female personification of health, Hygeia, and not actually performing a cure. A different explanation for Jesus’s use of a staff in the artwork is that it signifies his authority; it is more akin to a sceptre of power.24 While this is a reasonable hypothesis, as Thomas Mathews points out, Jesus mostly holds the staff when he performs certain miracles and not when he teaches his apostles or transmits the law to Peter and Paul.25 Additionally, the way that Jesus holds his staff is unlike that of kings and emperors, whose sceptres are usually pointed upwards and not at a person or object. Nor is it necessary to view these images of Jesus as making him into a new Moses, simply because Moses also holds a staff when he strikes the rock.26 This connection

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 129

Figure 4.7 Asclepius, Roman copy of an early Hellenistic statue. Now in the Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

130  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver is further troubled by the fact that God punished Moses for this action by barring his entry to the Promised Land (Numbers 20:11–12). Nor it is likely that the staff replicates the Roman instrument used for the manumission of slaves.27 While this last possibility makes sense of the way that Jesus wields the slender staff and points it at those he wishes to raise, it does not account for the staff as the item he uses for multiplying loaves or changing water to wine. Whatever it was intended to suggest, representations of Jesus wielding the staff gradually disappear after the beginning of the fifth century, when it sometimes is transformed to a cross (Fig. 4.8).

Figure 4.8 Jesus enthroned among healing scenes, below, three Hebrew youths and Jonah. Murano ivory diptych, 5th or early 6th cen. Now in the Museo Nazionale, Ravenna. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 131 Jesus the Divine Healer Jesus’s works of healing are exceedingly prominent in the Gospel narratives of his earthly life. Although these stories also draw negative attention from both his detractors and from demons, the texts make it clear that these were the acts that primarily drew crowds and earned him followers (cf. Mark 3:9–10, 6:54–6; Luke 5:15). No less miraculous than his multiplying loaves, Jesus’s cures did not come through ordinary medical remedies, perhaps excepting his use of mud and saliva to restore the blind man’s sight (John 9:13) or saliva alone to heal the deaf mute and blind man (Mark 7:33, 8:23). Moreover, Christ’s acts of healing often are prompted by the confession of faith and are accompanied by his forgiveness of sins (Mark 2:9) or his command to “go and sin no more” (John 5:14). In his own words, as a physician to the sick, he comes to heal sinners (Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31–2). The emphasis on Jesus’s wonders and healing miracles in early Christian art is paralleled in many early Christian apologetic, catechetical, and dogmatic texts, where they serve as testimonies to Jesus’s divine identity and power. One of the earliest of such texts comes from Origen of Alexandria, who refers to Jesus as the “heavenly physician” who cures and cleanses by the sacraments—medicines for the soul—rather than by herbal remedies or potions.28 Two centuries later, Arnobius of Sicca echoes this claim to rebut those who contended that Christ’s healing miracles were produced by magic. Instead, he says, Christ cured solely by his own authority, without benefits of instruments, rituals, or medical procedures. This, he asserts, was done so that unbelievers would realise that he was a true and not a false god.29 These images’ role may have functioned as a way of seeing these miracles in art, if not in life. For those who never witnessed the actual miracles, these were another form of visible testimony to who Christ is and assurance that his power was divine, not demonic, and moreover that it was available to all who sought it.30 The Imposition of Hands

By contrast to the pictorial scenes that present Jesus wielding a staff as he changes water to wine, raises the dead, or multiplies loaves, Jesus usually performs his healing miracles by his touch—the imposition of his (usually right) hand. The only other place the gesture shows up in iconography is the image of John baptising Jesus (cf. Figs. 1.9, 3.4, 4.1). This gesture is mentioned in the Gospels (e.g., Mark 5:23, 6:5, 7:32–5, 8:25; Luke 4:40, 13:13) as the act by which Jesus often (but not always) healed the sick or the disabled. The disciples also healed in their own ministries by the imposition of hands (e.g., Paul healing the father of Publius in Acts 28:2). The ritualised form of this gesture evidently could also deliver a blessing, incorporate a new community member, and bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 6:6, 8:17, 13:3, 19:6; 1 Timothy 4:14 and 5:2; 2 Timothy 1:6; Hebrews 6:2). The Epistle of James mentions only anointing for healing, although one may assume that this was done with the hand (James 5:14). In the visual images, this action usually involves only the right hand. Notably, however, while the New Testament texts usually indicate that hands (plural) were imposed on the sick, they do not describe the gesture precisely.31 Although little information is available about how this was done in the earliest practice, in later

132  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver church custom, officiants may place one or both hands hand on the recipient’s head to give a blessing, seal the baptism of neophytes, invoke the Holy Spirit over the newly ordained, or offer the sacrament of healing or reconciliation.32 As in the New Testament texts, the visual image of the healing gesture varies and is sometimes missing altogether. Jesus either touches the blind man’s eyes (perhaps spreading the mud), his chest, or his forehead, but the paralytic just carries away his bed. Sometimes the scene shows Jesus merely gesturing as if speaking to the man; sometimes the figure of Jesus is simply omitted from this particular scene (Fig. 4.9, cf. Figs. 3.4, 4.5). This perhaps corresponds to the story of his cure

Figure 4.9 Moses striking the rock, Jesus healing the woman with the haemorrhage, paralytic carrying his bed, Noah, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, late 3rd or early 4th cen., Rome. Source: Watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903) tav. 98, p. 104.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 133

Figure 4.10 Columnar sarcophagus of Agape and Crescentianus, Rome, ca. 330–60. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

in both Mark’s and John’s Gospels when Jesus commands him to get up, take his bed, and walk (Mark 2:3–12; John 5:8–9). Similarly, depictions of Jesus curing the woman with the haemorrhage typically show her kneeling before Jesus and reaching out to touch his garment (Matthew 9:20–2). While the story does not say that he touched her, in some images he places his hand on her head (Fig. 4.10, cf. Figs. 1.13, 4.2, 4.3, 4.10).33 Perhaps these variations in the ways the healings are pictured Indicate that the ritual form was not yet completely established. The Diminutive Recipients

A prominent feature of these images of Jesus as healer is the consistent representation of the recipients as small, even childlike figures.34 Because, like Jesus’s wielding a staff, this detail in the visual imagery is not based on the scripture text, it seems to have a specific exegetical purpose. One explanation is that showing the beneficiaries of healing as inferior in size distinguished between mortal persons and the immortal divine being, as elsewhere in Graeco-Roman art. Another is that representation of these characters as diminutive in stature had the practical purpose of squeezing one more character into a crowded composition.35 Neither of these explanations is tenable, however, because these healed figures are the only ones in the composition that are depicted as exceptionally small. Jesus’s followers or other witnesses to these events, for example, are represented as equal to him in stature. Significantly, the small-sized recipients of Jesus’s miraculous cures resemble portrayals of Jesus at his baptism by John (Fig. 4.11, cf. Figs. 1.9, 3.4, 4.1). The presentation of Jesus as a small nude is noteworthy because it specifically contradicts scripture’s representation of Jesus as a 30-year-old adult when he is baptised (cf. Luke 3:23). Jesus appears as an adult at his baptism only later, as in the two

134  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver

Figure 4.11 Jesus’s baptism on a panel of the Rufus Probianus diptych, Rome or Milan, first quarter of the 5th cen. Now in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin. Source: Photo credit: Art Resource, NY.

baptistery mosaics in Ravenna (cf. Figs. 5.15, 5.16). Showing Jesus as a small, childlike person at his baptism may have been meant to express the idea that the newly baptised were joined to him or that his baptism was the exemplary model for theirs. This cannot be an early reference to infant baptism, since, with the exception of infants who were close to death, in most places, adult baptism was the norm through the third century and well into the fourth.36 This, then, underscores the idea that baptism constitutes a type of rebirth, in which the ones being baptised are immersed in the font naked (just as they come from their mother’s womb naked) and are restored to the innocence of childhood. It also evokes the pre-fallen status of Adam and Eve, who are unselfconscious about their nakedness.37 Furthermore, in scenes of either Peter or Moses striking the rock to bring forth water, the figures drinking (or being baptised) are also shown as small. Similarly, in depictions of the creation of Adam and Eve, the two original humans are also shown as diminutive nudes (cf. Figs. 5.20, 5.21).

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 135 The idea of the newly baptised being like new-born infants occurs in textual references, as, for example, in Origen of Alexandria’s description of the community’s newly baptised members being like little children.38 Much later, in one of his postbaptismal sermons, Augustine refers to them as “infants” and to the place (the chancel) where these neophytes were to stand during the week following their baptism, as their “cradle” (cunabulum).39 Showing Jesus as a small child at baptism, then, could have been a figurative way of showing that his baptism is a model for theirs.40 The reasons for showing the blind man or paralytic as small (although rarely nude) are less clear. Jesus addresses the paralytic in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as “child” or “son” (τέκνον, Matthew 9:2; Mark 2:5), but this phrase is not repeated in other healing stories. Jesus addresses Jairus’s daughter as “little girl” or “child” (kοράσιον, Mark 5:41; παῖς, Luke 8:54), but according to the story she is, in fact, said to be a child of about 12. None of the others who are healed are addressed or described as children.41 The most plausible explanation for this unusual iconography lies in considering the images’ context and understanding that the links between healing, rebirth, and baptism would be particularly apt for funerary art. Visually signifying the body’s restoration or revivification along with the soul, then, requires some iconographic cues; depicting those healed as small, childlike figures would serve that purpose. Their size indicates their status as neophytes and, through the sacrament, they are truly new-born, newly emerged from the font rather than from their mother’s womb. This might also account for Lazarus’s reappearance as a small nude in a few of the scenes of his being raised from death (Fig. 4.12). In addition, New Testament stories of Jesus’s healing regularly emphasise that healing is contingent upon the

Figure 4.12 Sarcophagus with Jesus raising Lazarus and arrest of Peter, ca. 325–50. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit, Vanni Archive/Art Resource NY.

136  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver recipient’s faith and that it also forgives sin as well as provides a physical cure (cf. Matthew 9:27–30; Mark 9:23–6; Luke 5:17–32).42 Jesus the Revivifier Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is among the earliest and most numerous of early Christian subjects. In addition to catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs (Fig. 4.8), it shows up on gold glasses (Fig. 4.13), pottery lamps, ivory boxes and book covers (cf. Fig. 4.8), and silver reliquaries (Fig. 4.14).43 The image is especially well suited to a funerary environment, particularly when it includes one or both of Lazarus’s sisters. In those instances, the viewer is prompted to recall Jesus’s words to one of them (Martha): “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who

Figure 4.13 Resurrection of Lazarus on gold glass, 4th cen., Rome. Now in the Vatican Museum. Source: Photo credit: ART Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 137

Figure 4.14 Raising of Lazarus on the lid of a silver pyx, the Capsule of Brivio, late 4th or early 5th cen. Now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Source: Photo credit: Gérard Blot, © RMN-Grand Palais, open access/public domain.

believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25–6). Probably the earliest surviving rendering of this story is in the Catacomb of Callixtus (cf. Fig. 1.11). Here Jesus stands to the right of a small, typically Roman house-type tomb (aedicula) evidently made from bricks and with a decorated pediment topped with small ornaments (acroteria). His right hand makes a gesture of speech and his left holds the staff. Lazarus appears to be nude, stepping forth just as Jesus called him to do. In other versions of this scene, Jesus points his staff toward a bound mummy-like figure who stands at the door of his tomb. The instances of a small nude appearing next to Jesus (cf. Fig. 4.12) likely represent the resurrected Lazarus, restored not only to life but, as discussed earlier, to the innocent, perhaps newly baptised (new-born) state.44 Most early Christian writers commonly interpret the Lazarus story as confirming the promise of a future resurrection from death and the physical body’s restoration at the end time.45 However, comparing Lazarus to the newly baptised, Cyril of Jerusalem reminds his catechumens that baptism is both a death and a rebirth and adds that Lazarus’s burial wrappings signify the sins that he left behind in the tomb

138  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver and that those preparing for baptism must be ready to leave their old lives behind.46 Similarly, Gregory of Nazianzus gives the story an exhortatory twist, urging the unbaptised members of his flock to listen, like Lazarus, to the voice telling them to come forth from their tombs and leave the bindings of their sins behind.47 Portrayals of Jesus raising Lazarus are not the only scenes of Jesus raising the dead. Less frequent, but with some similar features, are representations of Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:21–4, 35–43, and parallels) or the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11–17). In other images, Jesus, perhaps in the guise of Ezekiel bringing dry bones to life, touches his staff to a pile of corpses who come to life again as small nudes (cf. Figs. 4.3, 4.22). While no specific biblical text corresponds to the composition, it resonates with Jesus’s proclamation in the Fourth Gospel: “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes” (John 5:21). In conclusion, visual depictions of Christ as a miracle worker and healer were the most frequently produced representations of Jesus in early Christian art in part because they identified him as a saviour god whose divine power rendered him superior to all other healers, whether deities, heroes, or magicians. In the New Testament, crowds came to believe in him because they witnessed his power to cure their bodily infirmities and to bring the dead back to life. In the early centuries of Christianity, the miracles of healing may have continued in rare instances, but healing was more a spiritual than a physical cure, linked to the ritual of baptism and the forgiveness of a penitent’s sins. Scenes of Jesus raising the dead were especially prevalent in funerary contexts, not because the mourners hoped that their loved ones might suddenly come back to earthly life like Lazarus or Jairus’s daughter, but because these images reassured them of a future resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Jesus the Teacher Another iconographic subject that emerges in the mid-fourth century shows Christ as a teacher. Here, Christ, usually seated, surrounded by his disciples. He holds a book (codex) or a scroll (rotula) and makes the gesture of speech. Examples of this type include catacomb paintings (Fig. 4.15), sarcophagus reliefs, and mosaics (Fig. 4.16).48 Among the oldest surviving examples is an exceptional polychrome fragment of a sarcophagus, now in Rome’s Museo Nazionale (Palazzo Massimo), which renders Christ as bearded and bare-chested, wearing only a traditional philosopher’s pallium. His disciples, shown like small children, sit at his feet, their backs to the viewer (Fig. 4.17). Most other versions of this motif do not show Jesus bare-chested. Usually, Jesus occupies a high-backed chair that elevates him above his disciples with his feet resting on a footstool. In many instances, a leather basket (capsa) filled with scrolls stands at his feet. The disciples form two groups of six on either side of Christ and either gaze toward him or look out of the frame directly at the viewer. Occasionally they also hold books or scrolls and make animated gestures, showing their attentiveness to his instruction and lively engagement. They typically wear

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 139

Figure 4.15 Jesus enthroned among his apostles, from the Crypt of the Mensores at the Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: From watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 193, p. 199.

the tunic and pallium of respectable, learned Roman citizens. In this guise, they resemble the seated readers who frequently appear on both Roman and early Christian sarcophagi.49 This motif likely was intended to project the idea that Jesus taught true philosophy and that he could be counted among the ancient sages like Socrates or Plato. The pallium was their identifying garment.50 According to both Justin Martyr and Tertullian, second- and third-century Christian teachers properly wore the philosopher’s mantle because they taught a better form of wisdom.51 Rather than demonstrating his divine power through prodigies and miraculous healings, these new compositions show Jesus expounding his teaching and forming a following of those who would become its adherents. This was most likely the way of showing Christ instructing his followers in a true philosophy that was transcendently superior to earlier and imperfect manifestations. At least one commentator contends that this iconography arose from an elitist context and desire to visually recast Jesus as a teacher of wisdom who satisfied the social aspirations of the sophisticated upper classes or those Christians who felt demeaned by critics of their religion as superstition rather than as an egalitarian

140  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver

Figure 4.16 Jesus as teacher among his apostles, mosaic from the Sant’Aquilino Chapel, Milan, late 4th or early 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Ghigo G. Roli/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 4.17 Jesus teaching and healing, Tomb marker or sarcophagus fragment, Rome ca. 290–300. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

saviour whose message was directed at slaves, the poor, and the uneducated.52 However, one of the early apologists’ primary aims was precisely to demonstrate that Jesus taught true philosophy. Similarly, this iconography indicates that Christianity was not a religion solely aimed at simple belief in a new saviour god but encompassed an entire system of thought and a superior form of wisdom.53

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 141 Jesus The Enthroned God A long-held hypothesis, here referred to as the “imperial style theory,” is often posited to explain new artistic themes that emerge during the post-Constantinian era. This is especially true of the transformation of Christ from a young healer into a majestic king of the universe, which is often understood as Christian appropriation of imperial cult imagery. The assertion that this visual presentation of a regnant Christ was modelled after the emperor’s portrait, including those on early Byzantine coins and medallions, undergirds related speculation that this borrowing effectively gave the Christian saviour the persona of a secular ruler. One frequently given example is the heavily restored mosaic with an image of Christ in the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana.54 Usually dated to the first decade of the fifth century on the basis of a lost inscription dating the apse mosaic to the pontificate of Innocent I (401–17), the mosaic presents Christ as thickly bearded, with shoulder-length dark hair, garbed in a golden robe and seated in a jewel- and pearl-studded golden throne (Fig. 4.18). Two groups of six apostles flank him, and standing behind Peter and Paul are two female figures offering them crowns who probably were meant to personify the churches of the Jews and the Gentiles. Behind and encircling Christ is a walled city: Jerusalem or, perhaps more accurately, the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). Rising from behind, the rocky mound of Golgotha supports an enormous gemmed cross. In the cloud-streaked sky are the four creatures of the seer’s vision (Revelation 4:6–8).55 The references to figures from the Book of Revelation (e.g., the New Jerusalem, the four creatures) indicate

Figure 4.18 Apse mosaic, Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, ca. 405 (with 16th cen. restorations). Source: Photo credit: Jozef Sedmak/Alamy Stock Photo.

142  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver that the scene depicts a heavenly and even future event, when Christ presides as a judge over, and ruler of, the whole world and its inhabitants. An earlier-dated instance of this type of regnant Christ appears in one of the apse mosaics in Rome’s Mausoleum of Santa Constanza (ca. 340). Here, a darkly bearded Christ seated upon the cosmic orb and garbed in royal purple hands what looks like a set of keys to St. Peter (cf. Fig. 5.10). Although this mosaic was restored and possibly changed over the centuries, the image, like the mosaic of Santa Pudenziana, unquestionably depicts Christ as a ruler, but not necessarily an earthly one. Firstly, most fourth-century emperors were clean-shaven and wore their hair short. Secondly, as Thomas Mathews has argued, Christ’s purple and golden robes are nothing like what a fourth-century emperor would wear. He adds that, at least when in Rome, emperors usually sat upon a folding ivory stool (sella curulis), not on an opulent and jewelled throne.56 Thus, these new compositions, while evoking the imperial court’s majesty and power along with its official ceremonies, were not glorifications of the current human ruler but representations of the incarnate Son of God, ascended and installed on his heavenly throne of glory (cf. Matthew 19:28; Psalm 103:19). The imperial style theory is most significantly identified with the work of Ernst Kantorowicz in the 1940s and subsequently developed by such luminaries as Andreas Alföldi and André Grabar.57 Grabar thoroughly contrasted the pre- and postConstantinian eras in his handbook on Christian iconography in this way: [T]he earliest Christian iconography frequently employed motifs and formulas in more or less common use in all branches of contemporary art; what happened in the fourth century is similar, but distinct. All the “vocabulary” of a triumphal or imperial iconographic language was poured into the “dictionary” which served Christian iconography, until then limited and poorly adapted to treat abstract ideas. . . . It is to the theme of the supreme power of God that Imperial art contributed the most, and naturally so, since it was the key theme of all the imagery of the government of the Empire.58 Although at first art historians only cautiously speculated that many of the sources of fourth-century Christian iconography might be found in imperial prototypes, later writers tended to take the hypothesis for granted and then interpret nearly every post-Constantinian art monument in light of the theory.59 For example, Robert Milburn’s handbook on early Christian art and architecture states that “preoccupation with the emperor’s authority naturally led to emphasis on the majesty of Christ” and cites the portrait of Christ in the Catacomb of Commodilla (cf. Fig. 5.22) as a clear expression of this “idea of Christ as Ruler of the Universe.”60 Evaluating the emergence of other new subjects, including the adoration of the magi and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, while noting the concurrent decline of such characters as Jonah and the Good Shepherd, many art historians not only note the influence of imperial iconography on the image of Christ but also suggest a political impetus for this shift. For example, Johannes Deckers portrays this development as the emperor Constantine’s suppression of Christ’s portrayals as “an unassuming teacher of brotherly love and nonviolence” in favour of imperialising figures of Christ that were “contrary to the faith’s doctrines of peace and modesty.”61

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 143 Putatively, the Roman emperor’s desire to quash these earlier images was to align his reign with the divine will and to identify Christ as his divine patron.62 A number of imperial ceremonies that ostensibly lay behind visual renderings of particular biblical scenes are discussed in what follows. They include depictions of the magi bringing gifts to the Christ child seated on his mother’s lap (Fig. 4.19, cf. Figs. 1.13, 3.1, 4.5), Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey (Fig. 4.20), and Christ passing a scroll with the new law to his apostles Peter and Paul (Fig. 4.21). The first is often seen as a parallel to a ritual, the aurum coronarium, in which Roman senators or foreign ambassadors presented gold crowns to an enthroned ruler—an offering of tribute to signal that they submit to his authority and acknowledge his sovereignty. The second is compared to the imperial adventus, a ritual entrance to a city in which the emperor is greeted by his subjects and formally greeted by the city’s important dignitaries with acclamations, waving banners and palm branches, and brandishing tapers and torches. The third, a scene that art historians often label the “traditio legis,” shows Jesus between the apostles Peter and Paul, passing an open scroll to one or the other, usually to Peter.

Figure 4.19  Adoration of the magi, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: From watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 116, p. 122.

Figure 4.20 Sarcophagus central scene of the paralytic’s healing at the pool of Bethesda with Jesus healing two blind men and the haemorrhaging woman (left) and Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem (Right). Rome, ca. 375–400. Restored in the eighteenth century by B. Cavaceppi. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

144  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver

Figure 4.21 Sarcophagus with Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul (centre); Jesus washes Peter’s feet (right); Jesus stands before Pilate (left). Rome (?), late 4th cen. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique. FAN.92.00.2487. Source: Photo credit: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

The Adoration of the Magi

Portrayals of the magi bearing gifts to the Christ child as recorded in Gospel of Matthew (2:1–12) emerged sometime in the early fourth century in both catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs, possibly around the same time as Constantine began politically and financially to patronise the Christian church. Rather than the later and more familiar image of the baby lying on a bed of straw in a stable surrounded by animals and adoring parents, this composition usually shows only a seated mother in profile, holding her child on her lap. The child reaches to receive gifts from (usually) three identical and exotically dressed youths. Sometimes a male character stands behind the woman’s draped chair, possibly Joseph but perhaps the Holy Spirit (by whom Mary virginally conceived according to Matthew 1:20) or the seer Balaam, whose oracle was said to predict the Messiah’s coming as a “star rising out of Jacob” (Numbers 24:17–19).63 The magi, with their short tunics, leggings, capes, and peaked caps, usually arrive in single file, with the trio’s leader pointing to a large star over the mother’s head (Fig. 4.22, cf. Fig. 3.1) The magi’s camels occasionally appear in the background. Rare variants of this subject show two or four magi, on each side of the seated (and front facing) mother and child. Some scholars often insist that the composition of this scene reflects the influence of an imperial agenda that made an explicit connection between the divinity of Christ and the emperor’s grandeur and point to the Roman court ritual, the aurum coronarium, as a source for the iconography.64 For example, Johannes Deckers insists that the image’s imperial associations are unmistakable: The unusual appearance of an emperor’s gold wreath in the depiction of the Adoration of the Magi becomes more comprehensible if one hypothesises that it was suggested by someone from Constantine’s own circle . . . The depiction of the gift of gold as a wreath accordingly draws an explicit parallel between the divine power of Christ and the Emperor.65

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 145

Figure 4.22 Front of an early Christian sarcophagus, Jesus raising the dead with adoration of the magi, 4th cen., Rome. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

However, the similarity between this ritual and the pictured biblical story is actually ambiguous. In fact, the composition is more conditioned by the narrative in the Gospel of Matthew as well as its subsequent interpretations by early Christian writers than by this purported ritual. Of the three exotically attired and almost identical magi shown bearing gifts to the child, only the first typically proffers a wreath while the other two carry different kinds of objects or vessels. Presumably, these gifts reflect the biblical narrative that specifically identifies the offerings as gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matthew 2:11). Furthermore, as an instance of the importance of attending to contemporary textual sources, early interpretations of the three gifts specifically argue that, while the first represents the child’s sovereignty, it is of an eternal and heavenly realm rather than a temporal and earthly one.66 The other two gifts in turn were interpreted to represent his divine priesthood and his salvific sacrifice. For example, Irenaeus of Lyons explained that the magi’s gift of myrrh prophesied Jesus’s mortal death for the sake of the human race, while the frankincense indicated his divine nature and the gold showed that he was the ruler of a kingdom without end. This exegetical trope continued into the fourth and fifth centuries. Leo the Great’s sermons on Epiphany, preached sometime in the 440s, declared that the gifts reflected Christ’s threefold identity: gold showed him as king, myrrh as human, and frankincense as God. In one of these sermons, he elaborates: But if we give attentive consideration to how that same threefold gift is offered by all who come to Christ in faith, will we not recognise the same offering repeated in the hearts of true believers? For the one who acknowledges Christ as ruler of the universe brings gold from the treasure of her heart: the one who believes the Only-begotten of God to have united humanity’s true nature to himself, offers myrrh; and the one who confesses his majesty to be in no way inferior to the Father’s, venerates him with incense.67

146  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver Although contemporary viewers plausibly would have made a connection between some imperial court ritual of offering fealty to a ruler and this scene, or between the gift of a single gold wreath and an imperial crown, if they were cognisant of these interpretations, they also would have been prompted to see the three different gifts as conveying a more complicated message than just making an explicit connection between a living, mortal emperor and a small god-child on his mother’s lap. Jesus Entering Jerusalem

The earliest pictorial representations of Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem as described in the New Testament (Matt 21:1–11 and parallels) also emerged in the early to mid-fourth century. These usually show Jesus in profile, mounted on a colt or donkey, typically holding the animal’s reins in his left hand and raising his right in a gesture of blessing (Fig. 4.20, cf. Figs. 1.13, 1.14). One or more apostles accompany him. Other attendants include a youth placing a cloak beneath the prancing animal’s feet and others waving palm branches, one having climbed a tree to better witness this event, possibly a reference to the character Zacchaeus from the Gospel of Luke (19:1–16). Some compositions also show the gates of Jerusalem. Beyond the sarcophagus reliefs, this narrative subject turns up with slight variations on dozens of early Christian sarcophagi and on some fifth- and sixth-century ivories: a Gospel cover from Milan, a diptych known as the Etschmiadzin Gospel, and one of the ivory panels from the sixth-century throne of Bishop Maximian in Ravenna. Additional early examples occur on a Coptic relief, now in Berlin, and a relief from the Monastery of St. John Studios in Constantinople. It also occurs on a leaf of the sixth-century Rossano Gospels (Fig. 4.23). Art historians have identified a possible prototype for this iconography in depictions of the imperial adventus regis, the ceremonial entrance of an emperor to a city.68 Among them, Ernst Kantorowicz asserted that the influence of imperial adventus iconography on scenes of Christ’s entry to Jerusalem is unmistakable.69 Some even judge that the image intentionally evoked the triumphant entry of Constantine into the city of Rome following his defeat of his rival Maximian at the Milvian Bridge in 312.70 As Eusebius of Caesarea described that event, it undeniably had religious overtones. According to him, when Constantine formally entered Rome, all the senators and other important dignitaries, along with women and children, greeted him as their deliverer, saviour, and benefactor with hymns and shouts of praise.71 The adventus regis was how Romans traditionally welcomed an arriving emperor, and the ceremony appears on such triumphal arch reliefs as that of Emperor Galerius in Thessaloniki. It also shows up on coins and commemorative medals. However, from the time of Constantine I onward, the images more often show the emperor arriving in a carriage or chariot instead of on horseback.72 Also, though the similarities between the imperial adventus iconography and that of Jesus entering Jerusalem are evident, some details are also distinctly different. For example, the goddess Victory never appears in the latter compositions, nor does Jesus carry

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 147

Figure 4.23 Christ’s entry in to Jerusalem, from the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, early 6th cen. Now in the Biblioteca Arcivescovile, Rossano, Italy. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

a spear, wear a diadem, or have a halo, all attributes of the emperor in those other depictions. Most importantly, Jesus rides a donkey or colt and wears quite an ordinary civilian tunic and pallium. Given these differences, the resonance between portrayals of Jesus’s entry and an emperor’s adventus are not necessarily indicative of an iconographic agenda meant to legitimise a living ruler by linking him with Christ. Rather, one may ask in what other way Jesus’s entry could have been shown except in the way that the gospel narratives indicate—that he rode a donkey or a colt. In fact, the iconography closely corresponds to the details found in the biblical story. Moreover, the

148  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver Gospels describe this event in almost exactly the same terms as a city greeting an arriving ruler: the people spread their cloaks along the road, wave palm branches, and shout words of praise and acclaim his “deeds of power” (Luke 19:38).73 Accordingly, the Gospel writers may intentionally have modelled Jesus’s entry after that imperial adventus and, consequently, so also the story’s fourth-century pictorial representations. This literary and pictorial adaptation does not, however, signify that Christ thereby was intentionally equated with an earthly king. Although the iconography suggests the imperial procession, Jesus is not shown with any imperial regalia and is mounted on a humble beast. Yet, as in the scene of the adoration of the magi, he should be understood also as a king whose eternal and cosmic reign is different from that of any secular ruler. The transcendent as well as spiritual significance of his adventus was evident to Athanasius of Alexandria, writing at about the same period in which the sarcophagi were carved. In his treatise On the Incarnation, he compares the Word of God to a great king who, having entered some large city, made his dwelling in one of its houses. Such a city, he says, is worthy of high honour because of the king’s residence within it.74 A later fourth-century bishop, John Chrysostom, takes a different approach. Citing the prophecy of Zechariah, “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant is he, humble and riding on an ass” (Zech. 9:9), he juxtaposes the arrival of an earthly king, driving a chariot, demanding tribute, preceded and followed by guards, and pushing spectators away, with Jesus, meek and merely mounted on a donkey.75 In his critical analysis of this purported iconographic linkage, Thomas Mathews argues that it caused the very word “adventus” to become the common way of labelling the iconography of Jesus’s entry.76 He particularly calls attention to the humble beast (the donkey) on which Jesus is mounted as evoking other figures, from mythological characters like Silenus in a Dionysiac procession to the prophet Balaam (Numbers 22–3) or the pregnant Virgin Mary on the way to Bethlehem. He also points out that, in later imagery as in the sixth-century Rossano Gospels, Jesus often sits side-saddle (cf. Fig. 4.23).77 All these links, he points out, undermine any direct comparison with a powerful ruler and, in fact, should be seen as explicitly anti-imperial. Mathews, conversely, concludes that the scene is modelled on that of a Roman nobleman returning home from the hunt, found on pagan sarcophagi.78 Jesus Giving the Law This enigmatic subject, depicting Christ seated or standing between the apostles Peter and Paul and handing a scroll to one of them (usually Peter), is traditionally referred to by the title, the traditio legis. Although it lacks a clear scriptural source, some interpreters link it to the Gospel of Matthew’s passage in which Jesus commissions Peter as the rock of his church (Matt 16:18). Others see it as alluding to Christ’s second coming or the final judgement, while others find resonance to imperial iconography. The motif, widely popular in sarcophagi, most often dates to the last half of the fourth century but also is found in catacomb paintings, gold glasses, ivory and silver objects, and early polychrome mosaics (Fig. 4.24). It has two basic

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 149

Figure 4.24 Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul, dome mosaic, Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, Naples, early 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Author.

compositions, but each has many variants. On the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (cf. Fig. 1.14), Jesus sits with feet resting upon the head of the celestial god, Caelus, probably to indicate his having ascended above the heavens. In other examples, Christ stands, usually upon a rocky outcrop from which flow four rivers, though occasionally on a cosmic orb (cf. Fig. 4.24). The two apostles flanking him may

150  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver switch places, although Paul usually stands to Christ’s right, with Peter on Christ’s left and the one most often to receive the unfurled scroll from Christ’s left hand.79 Similar compositions show Jesus standing or sitting in the midst of all 12 of his apostles, although still flanked by Peter and Paul. A key element in the image is the unfurled scroll, usually being conveyed from Jesus’s left hand to Peter’s. In some examples, Peter is identified by the slender cross he carries over his shoulder, ostensibly a reference to his martyrdom by crucifixion. Jesus raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing or greeting, similar to a Roman general’s or emperor’s gesture when he addresses his army or subjects (adlocutio). That this gesture is always given with the right hand accounts for why Christ hands over the scroll with his left.80 Surviving examples in glass and mosaic sometimes include the legend, “Dominus legem dat” (the Lord gives the law—cf. Fig. 4.24).81 In rare instances, Jesus appears to present a pair of keys to Peter (usually alone) rather than a scroll, presumably alluding to the next line of the Matthean text in which Jesus gives him the keys to the kingdom (Matthew 16:19). This slight adaptation is thus referred to as the traditio clavium instead of the traditio legis. Many examples, particularly those on the gold glasses (Fig. 4.25), ivories, and

Figure 4.25 Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul on gold glass, Rome, late 4th cen. Now in the Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey. Source: Open access/public domain, used with permission of the Museum.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 151 mosaics, include additional elements like palm trees, a phoenix, a procession of lambs, the Lamb of God (agnus dei) standing on a rock from which four rivers flow, the Jordan River, and structures that are often labelled as the two cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Some scholars propose that the first appearance of this type was in the mosaic program for the original apse of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, possibly commissioned either by Emperor Constans or his brother Constantius II around 350 CE.82 This much disputed hypothesis is partly based on the motif’s appearance on the lid of a fifth-century ivory casket known as either the Pula (Pola) or Samagher casket for its findspot on the Istrian peninsula, which some scholars think reproduces that apse image along with a scene on the back of that apparently depicts pilgrims at St. Peter’s shrine (Fig. 4.26).83 Supporting this idea is a set of drawings made by Giacomo Grimaldi in the seventeenth century just before the old basilica was demolished and which documents the apse mosaic of his time. However, because the mosaic pictured had been commissioned four centuries earlier, under the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216), and may not have reproduced the original design, the question remains unanswered.84

Figure 4.26 Jesus giving the law on the lid of the ivory casket found near Pula (or Samagher), Istria, mid 5th cen. Now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Venice. Source: Photo credit: Alinari Archives/Art Resource, NY.

152  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver Among those scholars who perceived this type’s connections with imperial iconography, André Grabar and Johannes Deckers echo the assessments of much earlier historians like Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Joseph Wilpert, both of whom regarded the traditio legis motif as evoking a ritual in which the emperor deputised his proconsuls with his power by handing them a “codice civile.”85 The argument that this iconographic type was borrowed from Roman art is based on images of the emperor dispensing the law or commissioning his agents. A commonly cited parallel for this type of composition, found on the Missorium of Theodosius I (388), shows the emperor in the centre, flanked by his two sons and co-regents, Arcadius and Valentinian II, handing a scroll to a kneeling figure (Fig. 4.27). Another example often offered is a relief from the Arch of Constantine, in which that emperor is shown enthroned and distributing largesse to his subjects. However, the imagery has actually little in common with these proposed prototypes. Most notably, the two co-regents on the Missorium are not the scroll’s recipients, but only a single individual who kneels at the emperor’s feet.

Figure 4.27 Missorium of Theodosius I, ca. 388. Replica in the Museo Nacionale de Arte Romano de Mérida. Source: Photo credit: Ángel M. Filicisimo. Wikipedia Creative Commons 3.0.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 153 A more dogmatically oriented interpretation of the scene argues that it depicts the moment at which Peter receives Christ’s investiture with authority over the church or the keys to the kingdom and the power to bind or loose sins, consequently endorsing the primacy of Peter as the first bishop of Rome in a visual motif.86 This analysis is complicated by the presence of Paul, who, according to the New Testament, was neither present at this event nor had any noted contact with Jesus before his death. This problem had already been noticed by Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century, in his treatise On the Harmony of the Gospels. Augustine worries that viewers were deceived by paintings that showed Christ joined by Peter and Paul, as if Paul had contact with Christ in his earthly life.87 Of course, in Rome, the two apostles’ joint appearance could have been understood to emphasise their joint founding of the church, instead of emphasising their rivalry. This idea is echoed in the iconography of their reconciliation, often referred to as the concordia apostolorum.88 Nevertheless, the presence of Paul undermines the possibility that this composition specifically endorses the primacy of Peter and, as Armin Bergmeier argues, the central figure in the iconography is not Peter, but Christ. Moreover, in nearly all the Roman examples, Peter is standing at Christ’s left and not his right, thus not in the traditional privileged position.89 Nor is it reasonable to view the motif as representing Peter as a new Moses, receiving the law from the hand of God, and thus of the Christian law superseding the Mosaic one, as this does not account for Paul’s presence.90 Additionally, surviving depictions of Moses receiving the law on other Christian sarcophagi are distinctly different; they typically show Moses alone, in profile, and grasping the law from the disembodied divine hand (cf. Figs. 1.13, 4.2, 4.10).91 Here, however, Christ is the one who gives the law, and Peter is not always the one who receives it. The fact that both Peter and Paul are present in the scene and, additionally, that Christ is either enthroned or standing on a rock that is meant to evoke the site of Eden with its four rivers, suggests that it represents a post-ascension event. Jesus is, as the rule of faith declares, ascended to heaven and is seated there at the right hand of God. His enthronement also prompted historians to propose an eschatological or apocalyptic reading of the mosaic, seeing the rocky outcrop on which Jesus stands as evoking his second coming.92 However, this standard composition usually lacks other visual references to these events, many of which appear in later depictions of Christ’s glorious return (e.g., sun-streaked clouds, starry skies, and the sign of the Son of Man—Matthew 24:30). Bergmeier posits a more nuanced version of the same idea, arguing that the image is based on the prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah 2:2–4) in which the prophet announces the coming of a messianic age, in which Jesus will be the new lawgiver and the all the earth’s nations will be at peace.93 What all these conclusions share is a focus more on the figure of Christ than on either Peter or Paul, a focus that is clear in the structure of composition itself. Whatever the two apostles’ positions or postures, Christ is always in the centre and often larger than either apostle. From this perspective, the iconography does not need to impart an overt political or ecclesiastical message. Instead, it presents Christ in the role of teacher and lawgiver, but now from heaven, rather than earth.

154  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver Conclusion In the third and early fourth centuries, images of Jesus as wonderworker, healer, and raiser of the dead would have conveyed a number of ideas to viewers, from demonstrating his supernatural power and divine identity, to assurance of God’s care for their physical bodies both before and after death, to belief in the resurrection and restoration of life at the end of time. Aspects of their composition, especially the nudity or diminutive size of the figures healed, also may suggest the inauguration of a new life (rebirth), imparted through the Christian initiation ritual (baptism). Considering their placement in a burial context as well as these aspects of their composition, it seems likely that these stories were central to both the conversion of new Christians and the consolation of the dying and grieving. These early scenes of episodes from Jesus’s earthly ministry rendered him not as larger than life or even as a dominating or especially formidable figure, but rather as a youthful saviour who, though he wielded a staff, did not brandish it as a sceptre or even as a magic wand. Dressed in the ordinary garb of a Roman upperclass male and no larger than most of the figures who surrounded him, he seems almost an unassuming figure. Only his miraculous deeds confirmed his divine identity, and these deeds were more akin to works of mercy than mere displays of his supernatural power. From the mid-fourth century onwards, the iconographic subjects began to show Jesus less as a miracle worker and more as a teacher among his disciples, an ascended lawgiver, or, finally, as the ruler of the cosmos. These images expressed Christ’s ascendency and supremacy and presented him as the God of all gods and king of kings (Revelation 17:14), the one who holds all authority in heaven and on earth, a name above every name (cf. Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:17–23). Depicting him as enthroned in heaven or giving his law to his apostles from the cosmic orb or the rock of Paradise conveys social, ecclesial, and theological messages simultaneously. The next chapter continues to consider the ways that the presentations of Jesus’s physical appearance changed, from a beardless youth to a regnant and mature deity. It explores the possible prototypes for these changing representations and what they reveal about how Jesus’s character and divine nature came to be understood from the mid-fourth century onwards. From a focus on the person of Jesus, the discussion moves to how early Christians, after initially insisting that God is invisible and cannot be represented in art, found ways to symbolise or even to pictorially represent all three Persons of the divine Trinity. Notes 1 The particular popularity of scenes from the Gospel of John is discussed in Robin M. Jensen, “The Gospel of John in Early Christian Art,” in The Edinburgh Companion to the Bible and the Arts, ed., Stephen Prickett (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 131–48. For a broad survey of Jesus’s healing images, see Lee Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2014); idem, “Miracles and Art, in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, eds., Robin M.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 155 Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 308–21; Norbert Zimmerman, “The Healing Christ in Early Christian Funeral Art: The Example of the Frescoes at Domitilla Catacomb/Rome,” in Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and Their Concepts of Reality, eds., Stefan Alkier and Annette Weissenreider (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 251–74; and David Knipp ‘Christus Medicus’ in der frühchristlichen Sarkophagskulpture: Ikonograpnische Studien zur Sepulkralkunst des späten vierten Jahrhunderts (Leiden: Brill, 1998). 2 Robin M. Jensen, “Jesus the Healer: Iconographic Evidence for Healing Miracles as Prompting Religious Conversion in Early Christianity,” in Materiality and Conversion: The Role of Material and Visual Cultures in the Christianization of the Latin West, ed., Ivan Foletti (Convivium Supplementum, 2022), 61–77. 3 This is an assertion by Snyder, Ante Pacem, 116, who asserts that the images “speak for themselves” that “Jesus was a deliverer.” 4 Justin Martyr, Dial.69.7. 5 Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 162–80. 6 John Chrysostom, Hom. Jo. 42.3 (on John 6, verse 12). 7 John Chrysostom, Hom. Jo. 22.3. 8 Augustine, Tract Ev. Jo. 9.5. 9 Jean-Louis Maier, Le baptistère de Naples et ses mosaïques (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1964), 105–8. 10 See discussion of this painting in Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church, 87–93. 11 This story is not commonly cited in surviving early Christian literature. Two examples from Augustine, however, include Serm. 76.3.5 and Enarr. Ps. 54.4. 12 See discussion of this conflation of Peter and Moses in Chapter 3. 13 Among the rare exceptions are a few in the Catacomb of Domitilla, where he uses it for healing the paralytic and the leper. 14 Most notably, Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 54–91. See also the earlier and controversial work by Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978). 15 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 26, 30. 16 Origen, Cels. 1.68. 17 Origen, Cels. 2.49–51. 18 Athanasius, Inc. 9.48, trans. John Behr, Saint Athanasius the Great of Alexandria: On the Incarnation (Yonkers: NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 155 (SC 199). 19 Scholarly studies of the place of Jesus’s miracles within the context of Hellenistic magical practices include Paul Corby Finney, “Do You Think God Is a Magician,” in Akten des Symposiums Frühchristliche Sarkophage, ed., Guntram Koch (Marburg: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1999), 99–108; David E. Aune, “Magic in Early Christianity,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2 (1980), 1507–57; and Howard Clark Kee, Medicine, Miracle, and Magic in New Testament Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). 20 The term Latin virga or Greek rabdos also is used in places. 21 Vasiliki Tsamakda, “Eine ungewöhnliche Darstellung der Heilung des Paralytikers in der Domitilla-Katakombe: Zur Verwendung des Wunderstabes in der frühchristlichen Kunst, Mitteilungen zur Christlichen Archäologie 15 (2009): 25–49, esp. 38–43; and Finney, “Do You Think God is a Magician?” 107; Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker, 147–51. 22 On possible links with Asclepius and Apollonius, see Mathews, Clash of Gods, 68– 72; Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker, 99–110; Smith, 89–91, and Knipp, Christus Medicus, 16–22, 150–1. Justin Martyr also refers to the parallels between Jesus and Asclepius, 1 Apol. 21, 22, 25, 54. See also the negative comparison with Asclepius in Athanasius, Inc. 3.48.

156  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 23 Lactantius, Div. Inst. 5.3.9, for example. 24 Martine Dulaey, “Le symbole de la baguette dans l’art paléochrétien,” Revue des études anciennes 19.1–2 (1973), 3–38; Lee Jefferson, “The Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art,” Religion and the Arts 14 (2010): 221–51; and idem, “Miracles and Art,” 318–21. 25 Mathews, Clash of Gods, 54, where he argues that this is why the staff must be a magic wand. 26 Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker, 172–5; here Jefferson also makes the link between Peter and Moses (Peter as “new Moses”) as discussed in Chapter 3. 27 Elżbieta Jastrzębowska, “Virga” in the Hands of Christ, Moses, and Peter: Pagan Heritage or Christian Novelty?” Światowit 12 (2015): 99–110. 28 Origen, Hom. Lev. 8.1, also Comm. Matt. 13.3–5, where Origen also compares the infirmities to sicknesses of the soul and gives figurative interpretations of the stories of healing as overcoming spiritual suffering. 29 Arnobius, Nat. 1.46–50. This supports the argument made earlier, that Christ’s miracles were to exhibit him as the true (and superior) God. 30 A good example in Athanasius of Alexandria, Inc. 3.48. 31 In two places the Hebrew Scriptures indicate that the officiant lays hands upon the head of the recipient (cf. Genesis 48:14; Leviticus 4:15). 32 See Lucien de Bruyne, “L’imposition des mains dans l’art chrétien ancien,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 20 (1943): 113–266. The blessing of the head is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 3.63.1, however. 33 Barbara Baert, Liesbet Kusters, Emma Sidgwick, “An Issue of Blood: The Healing of the Woman with the Haemorrhage (Mark 5.24B–34; Luke 8.42B–48; Matthew 9, 19–22) in Early Medieval Visual Culture,” Journal of Religion and Health 51.3 (2013): 663–81. 34 With the exception of the woman with the haemorrhage, who usually is not shown as especially small. 35 Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker. 93. 36 The bibliography on this question is vast, but for a general overview, see Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 362–79. 37 On nudity at baptism and its many possible meanings, see Robin M. Jensen, Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 158–67. Also see Robin M. Jensen, Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 158–60. 38 Origen, Comm. Matt. 13.16. 39 Augustine, Serm. 228.1; 223.1; and Serm. 204.4; 353.1. 40 More discussion of this in Jensen, Baptismal Imagery, 159–60. Jonah’s nudity in early Christian art also fits this pattern, as a baptismal type. 41 Jesus addresses the haemorrhaging woman as “daughter” (θυγάτηρ) in Matthew 9:22, Mark 5:34, and Luke 8:48. 42 Ambrose of Milan speaks specifically of baptism as a healing ritual and cites many of the Gospel stories as proof of the healing powers of the baptismal water, Myst. 16–24. Also, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 40 (On Baptism). 43 Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort, 213–32; Jan S. Partyka, La résurrection de Lazare dans les monuments funéraires des nécropoles chrétiennes à Rome (Warsaw: Polskiej Akademii, 1993); Robert Darmstädter, Die Auferweckung des Lazarus in der altchristlichen und byzantinischen Kunst (Bern: Arnaud, 1955). 44 A hypothetical identification that, nevertheless, fits the pattern of small figures being healed and nude figures as types of the newly baptised. 45 Irenaeus, Haer. 5.13.11; Tertullian, Res. 53. 46 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 2.5; 5.9. 47 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 40.33.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 157 48 Johannes Kollwitz, “Christus als Lehrer und die Gesetzesübergabe an Petrus,” Römische Quartalschrift 44 (1936): 46–66; Robin M. Jensen, “Visual Representations of Paideia and Christ as Teacher of True Philosophy,” in Christian Teachers in Rome, ed., Gregory Snyder (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 60–83. 49 On the seated philosopher or reader on Roman sarcophagi, see Björn Ewald, Der Philosoph als Leitbild. Ikonographische Untersuchungen an Römischen Sarkophagreliefs. Römische Abteilung, Ergänzungsheft 34 (Mainz: Von Zabern, 1999); Stine Birk, Depicting the Dead: Self-Representation and Commemoration on Roman Sarcophagi with Portraits (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013), 73–94. 50 See Arthur Urbano, “Sizing up the Philosopher’s Cloak: Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribon,” in Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, eds., Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes, and Alicia J. Batten (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 175–94. 51 Justin Martyr, Dial. 1; Tertullian, Pall. 5.4.2. 52 This is the argument of Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates, trans. Alan Shapiro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 296–7. 53 For example, Justin Martyr, Dial. 8.1; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.28. 54 The mosaic was significantly reduced in the late sixteenth century and lost sections of tesserae were restored in the early nineteenth century. On this see Matteo Branconi, Il Mosaico del Catino Absidale di S. Pudenziana: La storia, i restauri, le interpretazioni (Todi: Tau Editrice, 2016); and Vitaliano Tiberio, Il mosaico di Santa Pudenziana a Roma: Il restauro (Todi: Tau Editrice, 2003). 55 On the iconography see Fredric W. Schlattler, “Interpreting the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992): 277–80; and idem, “The Two Women in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 1–25. 56 Mathews, Clash of Gods, 98–109. 57 For a strong critique of the so-called Emperor Mystique, see Mathews, Clash of Gods, in which the first chapter strongly (and controversially) refutes earlier scholars on this subject. 58 Grabar, Christian Iconography, 41–2 (also cited by Mathews, Clash of Gods, 13–14). 59 For example, see Beat Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage of Early Christian Art,” in The Age of Spirituality: A Symposium ed. Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 39–52; and Johannes Deckers, “Göttlicher Kaier und kaiserlicher Gott: Die Imperialisierund des Christentums im Spiegel der Kunst,” in Epochenwandel? Kunst und Kultur zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, ed., Franz A. Bauer and Norbert Zimmerman (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001), 3–16. 60 Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, 47. 61 Johannes G. Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed., Jeffrey Spiers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 107–8. 62 Deckers, “Constantine the Great,” 87. 63 Identified as Balaam in Erika Dinkler-von Schubert, “Engraved Ring Stone with Adoration of the Magi,” in Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, ed., Kurt Weitzman (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), cat. no. 393, 436. Identified as the Holy Spirit in Robin M. Jensen, “The Trinity and the Economy of Salvation on Two Early Christian Sarcophagi,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999): 527–46. 64 See Johannes Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed., Jeffrey Spiers (New Haven: Yale University Press), 105. Also, idem, “Die Huldigung der Magier in der Kunst der Spätantike,” in Die Heiligen Drei Könige—Darstellung und Verehrung, ed., F. Günter Zehnder (Köln: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 1982), 20–32; See also Beat Brenk, The Apse, the Image, and the Icon (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), 62, who stresses this linkage but says that this was

158  From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver a way of giving “special attention to the divine character of Jesus Christ.” On the ritual itself, see Theodor Klauser, “Aurum Coronarium” in Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte Kirchengeschichte und Christlichen Ergänzsband 3 (1974), 292–302. 65 Deckers, “Constantine the Great,” 105. See also Robin M. Jensen, “Allusions to Imperial Rituals in Fourth-Century Christian Art,” in The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context, eds., Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 13–48, esp. 15–24. 66 See Irenaeus, Haer. 3, 9.2; Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 2.8; Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 157.4; 159.10; 160.2; Leo the Great, Serm. 31.1; 33.2; 36.1; Prudentius, Carm. 12.28; and Maximus of Turin, Serm. 44.2. 67 Leo, Serm. 36.1, trans. author (CCL 138:196). 68 On the adventus see Sabine MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 17–61; and Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 84–100. Also, Jensen, “Allusions to Imperial Rituals,” 24–33. 69 Ernst Kantorowicz, “The ‘King’s Advent’: And the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina,” Art Bulletin 4 (1944): 207–31, at 216. 70 See for example Erich Dinkler, Der Einzug in Jerusalem: Ikonographische Untersuchungen im Anschluss an ein bisher unbekanntes Sarkophagfragment (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1970). André Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1936), 234–6. 71 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.9.9–10. 72 An exception, the Missorium of Kerch, now in the Hermitage Museum, shows Constantius II mounted. See, however, the description of Constantius’s adventus in Ammianus Marcellinus, Hist. 16.10, where he describes the emperor as riding in a carriage. 73 According to Mathews, Clash of Gods, 30, the spreading of cloaks and waving palm branches was not part of the imperial adventus, however, but may reflect Jewish customs. 74 Athanasius, Inc. 9. 75 John Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 66:2. 76 Mathews, Clash of Gods, 24. 77 Mathews, Clash of Gods, 41–8. 78 Mathews, Clash of Gods 33–7, where he seems to overlook the possibility that the hunt composition might itself be based on imperial adventus imagery. 79 The bibliography on this motif is extensive. Among the more recent works are Robert Couzin, The ‘Traditio Legis:’ Anatomy of an Image (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015); Cecilia Proverbio, “Riflessioni sul tema di ‘traditio legis’ nella seconda metà del IV secolo,” Archivium Historiae Pontificiae 53 (2019): 3–48; Lee M. Jefferson, “Revisiting the Emperor Mystique: The Traditio Legis as an Anti-Imperial Image,” in The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context, eds., Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 49–86; Armin Bergmeier, “The Traditio Legis in Late Antiquity and Its Afterlives in the Middle Ages, Gesta 56.1 (2017): 27–52; Bas Snelders, “The Traditio Legis on Early Christian Sarcophagi,” Antiquité Tardive 13 (2005): 321–33; and Mikael Bogh Rasmussen, “Traditio Legis: Bedeutung und Kontext,” in Late Antiquity: Art in Context, ed., Jens Fleisher, John Lund, and Marjetta Nielson (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2001), 21–52. 80 On this subject see Gregory Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 45–50; and Richard Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art: The Use of Gesture to Denote Statues in Roman Sculpture and Coinage (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1963), 165–70. 81 The variant, Dominus pacem dat, appears in the Mausoleum of Sta Costanza in Rome, but this may be a change made by later restorers—see discussion of this in Bergmeier, “The Traditio Legis in Late Antiquity,” 30 and footnote 8.

From Christ the Miracle Worker to Christ the King and Lawgiver 159 82 On the controversial dating of St. Peter’s Basilica, see Richard Gem, “From Constantine to Constans: The Chronology of the Construction of St. Peter’s Basilica,” in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, eds., Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 35–64. 83 Tilmann Buddensieg, “Le coffret en ivoire de Pola, Saint-Pierre et le Latran,” Cahiers archéologiques fin de l’antiquité et du moyen âge 10 (1959): 157–200. 84 See the summary of the controversy over this hypothesis in Couzin, Traditio Legis, 10–12. 85 Grabar, Christian Iconography, 42; Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” 95–6 (in reference to the apse mosaics in Santa Costanza Mausoleum); Giovanni Battista de Rossi, “Il Gruppo simbolico rappresentante il Salvatore, che dà la legge a.s. Pietro, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana 6.3 (1868): 39–41 at 40 and Joseph Wilpert, Principiefragen der christlichen Archäologie, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der “Forschungen” von Schultz, Hasenclever und Achelis (Freiburg: Herder, 1889), 29–30 (cited by Bergmeier, “Traditio Legis,” 33, at fn. 25). 86 Peter Franke, “Traditio Legis und Petrusprimat: eine Entgegnung auf Franz Nikolasch,” Vigiliae Christianae 26.f (1972): 263–71. 87 Augustine, Cons. 1.10.16. 88 John M. Huskinson, Concordia Apostolorum: Christian propaganda at Rome in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. A Study in Early Christian Iconography and Iconology (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1982). 89 Bergmaier, “Traditio Legis,” 35. The two apostles switch sides in some compositions, primarily those fabricated outside of Rome, including one in Ravenna, which might indicate a rivalry between Rome and Constantinople (to which the see at Ravenna turned), which promoted Paul over Peter. On this, see Ruth Sullivan, “Saints Peter and Paul: Some Ironic Aspects of their Imaging,” Art History 17 (1994): 59–80, at 67–8, esp. 73. 90 This interpretation proposed by Reidar Hvalvik, “Christ Proclaiming the Law to the Apostles: The Traditio Legis-Motif in Early Christian Art and Literature, in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David Aune, ed., John Fotopoulos (Leiden: Brill: 2006), 405–37; also see Galit NogaBanai, “Visual Prototypes versus Biblical Text: Moses Receiving the Law in Rome, in Sarcofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani ed altomedioevali, eds., Hugo Brandenburg and Fabrizio Bisconti (Vatican City, Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana), 175–85. Also, Jefferson, “Revisiting the Emperor Mystique,” who concludes the image depicts Christ conferring authority over the church to Peter as a new Moses, at 84–6. 91 Couzin, Traditio Legis, 36. 92 Geir Hellemo, Adventus Domini: Eschatological Thought in 4th-Century Apses and Catecheses (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 65–89; Snelders, “Traditio Legis;” Rasmussen, “Traditio Legis,” 32; Couzin, Traditio Legis, 64–5; Annewies van den Hoek and John J. Hermann, Jr., Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 333–8. 93 Bergmeier, “Traditio Legis,” 38–41.

5

Depicting the Divine Jesus and the Holy Trinity

The new images of Christ that emerged in the fourth century not only introduced new subjects (e.g., the entry into Jerusalem, Jesus as transmitting the law (or the keys) to Peter and Paul, and Jesus enthroned) but also began to change his appearance from a youthful and beardless wonderworking god into a majestic, darkly bearded ruler of the cosmos. This raises the question of how an artist would know how to depict Jesus. Notably, scripture nowhere describes Jesus’s physical appearance, so neither of these types is supported by a biblical text. Early Christian writers were aware of the problem. The pagan Celsus, who had heard that Jesus was short of stature and ill-favoured, claimed, therefore, that if Jesus were truly divine, he would have been more attractive than any other living man. Responding to him, Origen presumes that Celsus knew only the text from Isaiah, “He had no form nor comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2b).1 Origen countered that the Psalmist spoke of the “mighty one” as the fairest of the sons of men (Psalm 45:2) and so Christ was, in fact, most beautiful. Much later, in a homily on this same psalm, John Chrysostom also proclaimed that Christ was extraordinarily handsome.2 Not having any other information, artists likely turned to available models for their representations of Jesus. Among those models were certain gods’ images that had particular physical characteristics associated with divinity such as idealised beauty or awesome majesty. But one may then ask, which deities were used as models and why? How was the transformation of Jesus’s appearance related to these choices? This chapter considers the possible theological significance to this changing portrait of Jesus in the fourth century, opening with an examination of certain pagan types that lay behind the early portraits of Jesus as a saviour god, and proposes those others that might explain Jesus’s transformed appearance in the mid- to late fourth century. Next it considers instances in which Jesus appears with two different physical types within the same composition, likely alluding to texts that describe Jesus’s varying appearance in life. Following this, it proposes that these changes in Jesus’s image had theological and religious significance. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the emergence and growing dominance of sacred portraits in the late fourth century and it poses the question of whether the divine Being may be depicted at all and what, finally, defines a true image of Christ or any holy person. DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-5

Depicting the Divine 161 Prototypes for an Image of Christ Nearly all early images of Jesus as a healer or wonderworker present him as beardless. He also often has shoulder-length curling hair. In these depictions, he also looks quite different from his apostles, who are shown with closely cropped hair and beards (cf. Figs. 1.4, 4.2, 4.10). This presentation of Jesus is striking. As Thomas Mathews argued, “no Roman male would wear his hair like this.3” Mathews further suggests that, in more than his beardlessness and hairstyle, Jesus appears to be androgynous, having a bodily physique and facial type that gives him a feminine aspect.4 Mathews proposes that this portrayal of Christ comes about because artists adapted the depictions of certain pagan gods to express distinctive aspects of Christ’s divine status. Except for the fact that Jesus is not presented as nude, he bears a striking physical resemblance to the cult images of the apotheosised heroes, demi-gods, or the junior deities of the Roman pantheon, particularly those who were credited with working wonders, shepherding souls through the underworld, bringing light from the darkness, offering healing to the sick, being born through miraculous or divine conception, or dying a violent death and then rising again (e.g., Hermes, Apollo, Helios, Hercules, Orpheus, Asclepius, and Dionysus/Bacchus—cf. Fig. 5.1). As themselves, some of these deities even show up in early Christian art. As depicted in Chapter 1, Hercules shows up near to Daniel in a series of scenes in the Via Dino Compagni Catacomb (cf. Fig. 1.20), among them and perhaps most relevant to the funerary context, adjacent to King Alcestis, leading Admetus out of the underworld. Early Christian apologists acknowledged these gods’ resemblances to Christ, not so much in their appearances but in their actions. Realising this, they had to argue that Christ’s works, although similar in some respects, were superior to theirs. For example, Justin Martyr allowed that accounts of the deeds performed by the sons of Jupiter were strikingly like those reported of Christ.5 Clement of Alexandria pointed out certain parallels that formerly misguided pagans might find between the old gods and the divine Son in Christianity.6 Origen of Alexandria similarly felt it necessary to distinguish Christ from Hercules, Aesclepius, and Orpheus, whom his opponent, Celsus, claimed to be not only more ancient, but also nobler than Christ.7 Thus, similarities between these youthful gods and early Christian depictions of Jesus are not surprising, as Christian iconography adapts the visual vocabulary of its surrounding culture in order to express characteristic aspects of Jesus’s personal attributes or divine roles and powers. In early Christian art, two figures in particular resonate with early Christian depictions of Christ: Orpheus and Helios/Sol Invictus. Orpheus

The Good Shepherd figure not only draws upon earlier depictions of Hermes, as noted in Chapter 2, but also has some parallels with depictions of the immortal hero, Orpheus, who was often shown in classical iconography as playing a harp and surrounded by various beasts (Fig. 5.2).8 This son of Apollo, the focus of his own mystery cult, was renowned for taming wild animals with his music. According to

162  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.1 Statue of Dionysus (Roman Bacchus), ca. 2nd cen., Rome. Now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: Photo credit: © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Hervé Lewandowski. Open access/ public domain.

Depicting the Divine 163

Figure 5.2  Orpheus pavement mosaic, 3rd cen. Now in the National Museum of Damascus. Source: Photo credit: Album/Alamy Stock Photo.

his myth, he, like Hercules, descended to the underworld, in his case to rescue his wife, Eurydice, from Hades. Figures of Orpheus playing his lyre and wearing his distinctive, peaked, Phrygian-style cap occur on floor mosaics, wall paintings, and textiles and, in Christian contexts, on a half-dozen third-century sarcophagi, as many as five third- and fourth-century catacomb paintings, and on fifth- and sixth-century ivory pyxides (small cylindrical boxes for the eucharist). Notably, the Orpheus figures on the ivory boxes and sarcophagi do not always include overtly Christian (or biblical)

164  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.3  Orpheus, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Source: Detail from watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 229, p. 235.

imagery, whereas the catacomb paintings almost always do. For example, the image of Orpheus in the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus is juxtaposed with figures of Daniel and the lions and Jesus raising Lazarus. The Orpheus painting occupies a lunette in the Catacomb of Domitilla (Fig. 5.3) where it is surrounded by a series of Old and New Testament subjects, including Moses striking the rock, Jonah at rest, Noah in his ark, and Jesus raising Lazarus. In the ceiling above is an early bust portrait of Christ. A different painting of Christ or the Good Shepherd in the guise of Orpheus in the Catacomb of La Vigna Massimo illustrates the merging of the figures more directly (Fig. 5.4). While the catacomb depictions of Orpheus are consistent with how he is presented in non-Christian iconography (he wears a short tunic, floppy “Phrygian” cap, and boots and sits, holding his lyre and plectrum, in a natural landscape among animals), his insertion into an overtly Christian image program suggests that he is less a cultic depiction of a pagan hero-god and more a figurative or allegorical reference to Jesus as one who will deliver the dead from the underworld (like Orpheus’s rescue of Eurydice). References to Orpheus in early Christian apologetic and exhortatory literature make additional connections.9 For example, according to Clement of Alexandria, Orpheus, like Plato and Moses, believed that God is the singular and perfect creator of the cosmos, and so had glimmerings of the truth.10 At the same time, however, Clement of Alexandria compares Orpheus to Jesus unfavourably, saying that the former’s song deceives his listeners and leads them into idolatry; the latter’s song (the saviour’s), tamed the most intractable of all wild beasts (humans) and leads them into new life.11

Depicting the Divine 165

Figure 5.4 Christ, or Good Shepherd, as Orpheus from the Catacomb of La Vigna Massimo, Rome. Source: From watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 122b, p. 128.

The existence of a comparable figure of David (identified by his label) playing a lyre, discovered on a fifth-century pavement in a Gaza synagogue (Fig. 5.5), suggests an additional parallel to Orpheus in the biblical text: David’s playing his harp to drive the evil spirits from Saul (1 Samuel 16:14–23). Clement of Alexandria also compared David’s song favourably to Orpheus’s, which raises the possibility of a Jewish source for the Christian Orpheus figure and the question of whether the Christ/Orpheus conflation should be expanded to a messianic parallel with King David.12 However, the inclusion of the animals in the iconography undermines this suggestion and points back to the first suggestion, that this image is intended to refer to the character of Christ and not his Davidic or messianic connections. As Mary Charles-Murray concludes, it seems reasonable to assume that the orthodox Christians of the early Roman Church connected their saviour in some quiet essential way with the pagan figure, and that its use enabled them to express something about the person of Christ and their religious experience of Him which was not possible simply through the application of the models to be found in Scripture.13 Helios/Sol Invictus

Unlike the image of Hermes carrying a ram, which developed as the Christian Good Shepherd in large part because of direct support from symbolic metaphors in scriptural texts, the Orpheus image was adopted into Christian iconography almost purely by virtue of the figure’s pre-existing significance in Graeco-Roman tradition. A similar process of adaptation, without direct scriptural parallel, also explains representations of Christ in the guise of the sun god (Fig. 5.6). An especially vivid example is the thirdor early fourth-century tomb mosaic in the Vatican necropolis that shows a youthful Christ with a rayed halo, ascending in a chariot drawn by four white horses through a field of grapevines (Fig. 5.7). Although frequently described as “Jesus-Helios,” its

166  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.5 David depicted in the guise of Orpheus, from a synagogue in Gaza, ca. 508. Now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Source: Photo credit: Album/Alamy Stock Photo.

Depicting the Divine 167

Figure 5.6 Christ in the guise of Sol with Jonah scenes, from the Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome. Source: From watercolour by Carlo Tabanelli over photograph by Pompeo and Renato Sansaini, from G. Wilpert, Roma Sotterranea: Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, vol. 2 (Rome: Desclée Lefebvre and C., 1903), tav. 160, p. 166.

Christian identity is presumed because of adjacent figures of Jonah and a fisher on the same mausoleum walls. Nevertheless, the figure is clearly adapted from the iconography of the sun god ascending in his chariot. Appropriated as a Christian figure, it then represents Christ as the bringer of light out of darkness (John 1.4–5).14 Thus, the suitability of such a figure is less evidence of religious syncretism and more of a pagan type’s compatibility with a Christian meaning. Functionally, this was a way of assigning or even transferring the solar deity’s attributes to Jesus.15 As with the shepherd and Orpheus, such a possibility is supported by textual and liturgical evidence that metaphorically links Christ with the rising sun, the Lord’s Day with the day of the sun, and Easter itself with the sun’s rebirth.16 Solar metaphors were widely used in early Christian texts. Scriptural references to Christ as the “light of the world” (Matthew 4:16, a citation of Isaiah 9:2; and John 1:4–5, 9; Ephesians 5:14 based on Isaiah 60:1–3) as well as the “sun of Justice” (Matthew 5:45, following Malachi 4:2) may be important scriptural sources for such images. Pliny the Younger’s correspondence with Trajan referred to Christians gathering at dawn to sing hymns to Christ.17 Tertullian even felt he needed to defend the Christians against charges that they worshipped the sun because they prayed toward the east and made Sunday their feast day.18 The late second-century bishop, Melito of Sardis, also connected the setting and rising sun with the baptism of Jesus and thus also with the Christian convert’s baptism. In a fragment of his treatise on the subject, he describes the bathing of the heavenly bodies in the ocean’s cold water, a bath that does not extinguish their light, and compares this to the bathing of “good disciples” being washed in the baptismal font. He concludes by asking, Now, if the sun with the stars and moon is washed in the Ocean, why is not Christ also washed in the Jordan? King of heaven and governor of creation, sun of the east, who also appeared to the dead in Hades and the mortals in the world, and, the only sun, shone forth from heaven.19

168  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.7 Christ in the guise of Sol Invictus, vault mosaic from Mausoleum M, Vatican Necropolis (at the under St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome), late 3rd or early 4th cen. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Clement of Alexandria similarly refers to Christ as the “Sun of the Resurrection” (helios tas anastasis), the “one begotten before the morning star, who gives life with his own rays,” a description that could have served as a caption for the Vatican mosaic.20 In another section of his treatise, Clement depicts Christ as a charioteer ascending into heaven and bringing dawn and eternal life with him: “Hail, oh light . . . for he who rides over all creation is the ‘Sun of Righteousness’ who . . . has changed sunset into sunrise, and crucified death into life.”21 The endurance of the parallels between Christ and the Sun god is demonstrated by an ancient prayer taken from an Armenian liturgy for the Feast of Epiphany; it reads: Come and see how the radiant Helios Is baptised in the waters of a wretched river.

Depicting the Divine 169 A mighty Cross appeared over the baptismal font. The servants of sin descend, And the children of immortality rise up. Come then and receive the light!22 As this prayer attests, from early days Christian baptism was commonly spoken of as “illumination,” and many aspects of the baptismal rite and setting were compared with the rising sun at dawn.23 Baptisteries constructed in the fourth to sixth centuries were often eight-sided to symbolise the “eighth day,” which is the day of the sun, and sometimes oriented so that candidates would enter the building and/or font from the western side and emerge at the eastern. In some early baptismal rites, upon arrival at the baptistery, candidates were instructed to turn towards the west to renounce Satan and towards the east to proclaim their faith.24 The adoption of these Roman iconographic models thus should be regarded not as evidence of religious syncretism but as a borrowing and transformation of preexisting religious iconography to communicate the characteristics of Jesus as the tamer of unruly characters, the caretaker of souls, and the bringer of light into the world through familiar visual idioms. The Bearded God

Jesus’s youthful, beardless representations. initially consistent in early Christian art, gradually disappeared and soon became exceedingly rare. By the end of the fourth century, Jesus was shown, more consistently, with a full beard and as a mature male. This new figure also may have drawn on pre-existing prototypes. Proposing depictions of the youthful gods of the Graeco-Roman pantheon as models for the beardless figure of Jesus in early Christian art has a counterpart in seeing the later emerging depictions of a mature, bearded, and enthroned Christ as modelled on the cult images of senior gods like Neptune, Asclepius, or Serapis, or perhaps most obviously on depictions of Jupiter, the supreme Roman deity and most directly a competitor to Christ.25 Representations of these older gods are strikingly like the images of Christ as he appears, for example, in the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome (cf. Fig. 4.18). This particular representation bears strong likeness to the depictions of Jupiter or Serapis (Fig. 5.8). Evidently, some early Christians recognised the parallels between visual depictions of Christ and those senior gods. According to a sixth-century historian, Theodorus Lector, the patriarch Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471), healed the withered hand of an artist who had been divinely stricken for daring to make an image of Christ in the guise of Zeus. Apparently, a certain pagan had commissioned the artist to make an icon that would allow him to continue worshipping his (pagan) god while ostensibly worshipping Christ.26 The painter’s image must have depicted a divine figure with a full beard and long hair and, as such, could be identified as Christ or Zeus, depending on what the viewer chose to see.27

170  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.8 Bronze statuette of Jupiter, Roman, second half 2nd cen. CE. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Charles Engelhard Foundation Gift and Rogers Fund. Source: Open access/public domain.

Variations on a Theme

Through the fourth and into the mid-sixth century, Jesus could appear as both bearded and beardless, and, interestingly, both types were sometimes juxtaposed or combined in one composition.28 For example, the Mausoleum of Constantine’s daughter, now known as Santa Costanza, contains two mosaic apses, each of which shows one of these types; one shows him as youthful and beardless, wearing a golden tunic and pallium and standing on the rock of Paradise; the other presents him as darkly bearded, garbed in a purple robe, and enthroned on the cosmic orb (Figs. 5.9 and 5.10).29 The differences are so striking that some art historians suggest that the latter figure represents God giving the law to Moses, and not Jesus giving the keys to Peter (traditio clavis).30 Yet, by comparison with the Santa

Depicting the Divine 171

Figure 5.9 Apse mosaic, Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul, from the Mausoleum of Costanza, Rome, ca. 350. Source: Photo credit: Author.

Figure 5.10 Apse mosaic, Jesus giving the keys to Peter, from the Mausoleum of Costanza, Rome, ca. 350. Source: Photo credit: Author.

172  Depicting the Divine Pudenziana mosaic, this portrayal of Jesus is not unexpected. What is surprising is the contrast between the two apse images, simultaneously visible within the same relatively small space. Other examples include the variety of presentations of the traditio legis motif, which sometimes shows Jesus as bearded and other times as beardless. A sarcophagus from Arles shows Christ as bearded when presenting the law to Peter and Paul but beardless in the adjacent scenes of washing Peter’s feet and before Pilate (cf. Fig. 4.21). In this instance, the distinction might be meant to indicate that one scene takes place in heaven (post-ascension) while the other occurs during Jesus’s earthly life. This solution does not hold, however, for the famous sixth-century mosaic program in Ravenna’s Basilica of San Vitale that shows both types. The apse mosaic shows a beardless Christ with short hair, enthroned on the blue cosmic orb much like the one in Santa Costanza (Fig. 5.11, compare Fig. 5.10). The bust portrait on the underside of the triumphal arch leading into the sanctuary area depicts him as darkly bearded with long hair (Fig. 5.12). In both of these presentations, he has a jewelled cruciform halo and wears a dark purple mantle over a purple tunic adorned with gold stripes. These adjacent but strikingly different representations pose the question of intentionality. Did the

Figure 5.11 Christ enthroned with angels, St. Vitalis, and bishop. Apse mosaic, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 540. Source: Photo credit: Alfredo Dagli Orti/Art Resource, NY.

Depicting the Divine 173

Figure 5.12 Medallion mosaic portrait of Christ from the triumphal arch, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 540. Source: Photo credit: Author.

artist (or viewers) regard the variations as irrelevant or were they in some respect purposeful? In fact, while scripture never describes Jesus’s physical appearance, it actually records instances in which his appearance seems to be changeable. In the Transfiguration episode (Matthew 17:1–8 and parallels), Christ’s face suddenly begins to shine and his clothing becomes vividly white. When, after his resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples on the road to Emmaus, they only recognise him when he sits down and breaks bread with them (Luke 24:13–51). In Mark’s longer ending, the resurrected Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene and then “in another form” to two of his disciples (Mark 16:12). The Fourth Gospel describes Mary Magdalene as mistaking the resurrected Christ for the gardener (John 20:15–16). Similarly, the disciples out in their boats fishing do not realise that Jesus is the one speaking to them from the shore until he calls to them to haul in a miraculous netful of fish (John 21:4–7). A number of non-canonical gospels also mention this problem of identification and portray Jesus in a variety of changeable forms. For example, in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Peter relates his encounter with the transfigured Jesus (cf. Matt

174  Depicting the Divine 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–23; Luke 9:28–36), remarking how the Lord’s brightness causes him to fall to the ground and close his eyes. However, when he arises and opens his eyes again, he sees Jesus in a form that he cannot comprehend. The Lord, he says, is simultaneously large and small, beautiful and ugly, young and old.31 In the next chapter, when Peter prays for the healing of some blind widows, the room is suddenly suffused with an unbearably bright light that penetrates the widows’ eyes and cures their blindness. When Peter asks what they have seen, some respond that they saw an old man with an indescribable appearance. Others claim to have seen a boy who tenderly touched their eyes. Peter praises the Lord and tells the assembly that God is able to appear in different forms because God is far greater than their imaginations or thoughts.32 The Acts of John similarly portrays Jesus as having both an elusive and an inconsistent appearance. When the character Drusiana speaks with John, she explains that Christ appeared to her both as a youth and in the form of John himself. Explaining how this perplexing experience was plausible, John recalls that, when Jesus first summoned him and his brother James while they were fishing, he appeared to James in the guise of a child calling to him from the shore and to John in that of a handsome and amiable man. When they left their boat and nets to follow him, Jesus’s appearance changed again; he suddenly was balding and thickly bearded. This puzzling transformation evidently kept happening. John says that the more he tried to see Jesus as he was, the more he kept changing, first to a small and unattractive man and then into one tall enough to reach heaven.33 Other apocryphal documents relate similar stories. The Apocryphon of John relates a parallel story of Jesus, in which he looked first like a child, then an elderly person, then a youth, and finally a multiform figure with three distinct manifestations emerging one from the other in order to reveal that the Saviour is simultaneously Father, Mother, and Son.34 According to these texts, Jesus evidently can and did appear in many forms. Moreover, Origen cites Jesus’s altered appearance in the Transfiguration as showing that Jesus’s varying physical appearance is divinely capable of transformation, at one time possessing qualities of beauty and loveliness, at another time ugliness.35 Elsewhere Origen writes that although Jesus was one person, those who looked at him did not all see him in the same way.36 Thus, Christ is able to appear in different guises, including that of judge and mother. Such variability reinforces Christ’s divinity and offers a new way to understand Jesus’s humanity. Jesus, as the Logos, is polymorphous both prior to and after the incarnation. Divergences in the ways that artists represented Christ, sometimes in the same physical context, therefore may be due less to the fact that they really had no idea what he looked like and more to their understanding that, as often true of other deities, he had the power to assume varying physiques. The many variations of Jesus’s appearance in the art may be, in the end, a recognition that in his divine nature, Christ cannot be represented fully in art and ultimately must subsume or even transcend all efforts to portray his appearance. Early Christian art did reveal truths about Christ, but limited truths, and only some of his many aspects. Portraits,

Depicting the Divine 175 therefore, are much more than simple external likenesses. They attempt to capture the divine presence. Cyril of Jerusalem made this case in his fourth-century lectures to catechumens preparing for their baptism: The Saviour comes in various forms to each person according to need. To those who lack joy, he becomes a vine; to those who wish to enter in, he is a door; for those who must offer prayers, he is a mediating high priest. To those in sin, he becomes a sheep, to be sacrificed on their behalf. He becomes “all things to all people” remaining in his own nature what he is. For so remaining, and possessing the true and unchanging dignity of Sonship, as the best of physicians and caring teachers, he adapts himself to our infirmities.37 The Christological Implications of Jesus’s Depictions While these varying representations of Christ in the fourth century could be a way to express his divine ability transcend a single human appearance or to portray his different but simultaneous roles (saviour, teacher, wonderworker, judge, sovereign Lord, etc.), they also could have been intended to reveal his dual natures (divine and human). This desire—to show both different aspects of Jesus’s character and/or his human and divine natures—might explain the two deliberately contrasting depictions of Christ that are found in Ravenna’s Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, constructed by the Arian, Ostrogothic King Theodoric in the late fifth century. Art historians often resist seeing any specifically Arian theological elements in the iconographic program in Ravenna’s Ostrogothic Arian buildings and discount any differences between the pre- or post-Nicene imagery as having a theological basis.38 Yet, it seems possible that the distinctive iconographic program of certain Ostrogothic structures reveals aspects of late fifth- or early sixth-century Arian theology. For example, one may consider the surviving mosaics in the basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, initially built as Theodoric’s palace chapel and dedicated to Christ the Saviour. In 540, Justinian (or, rather, his general Belisarius) conquered Ravenna and subsequently returned the basilica to the orthodox Christian community. The orthodox bishop rededicated it to St Martin, persecutor of Arians (the dedication to Sant’Apollinare dates to the ninth or tenth century) and instigated a radical interior redecoration, including the effacement of members of Theodoric’s court from the mosaics along the nave walls, replacing them with two rows of martyrs in single file procession: men on the right and women on the left. Although the apparently problematic images were removed, a cycle of original mosaics in the nave’s upper registers was allowed to remain. This included a series of 26 small panels (two groups of 13 on each side), portraying the life and passion of Christ. Possibly the oldest surviving monumental series of its kind, those on the left nave wall (above the processing female saints) show Jesus working wonders, calling his apostles, teaching, and healing (Fig. 5.13). Those placed on the right wall (above the male saints) display images that follow the Passion narrative (Fig. 5.14).

176  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.13 Mosaic panel of Jesus calling the apostles from their nets. Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Author.

Figure 5.14 Jesus with Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross on the way to Golgotha, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Author.

Depicting the Divine 177 Beginning from the apse area and progressing toward the entrance door, the panels depict the Last Supper, Jesus’s farewell address to his disciples, Judas’s kiss, Jesus before the Sanhedrin, Jesus before Caiaphas, Jesus predicting Peter’s denial, Peter’s denial, Jesus before Pilate, Jesus with Simon carrying his cross to Golgotha, the empty tomb, Jesus’s post-resurrection appearance on the Emmaus road, and Jesus’s appearance to the apostles and doubting Thomas. Notably, in all the depicted episodes from his earthly ministry (on the left), Jesus is beardless, while in the scenes depicting episodes from Christ’s passion (on the right), Jesus wears a beard. Art historians offer different explanations for these divergences in Christ images that almost certainly were made around the same time, probably by the same workshop of artisans, and certainly intended to be viewed simultaneously. Per Jonas Nordhagen attributed the differences in the iconography to the work of different workshops.39 Taking a different approach, Ralf Bockmann suggests that the mosaics simply show Jesus getting older.40 Much earlier, Otto von Simson interpreted the distinctive representations of Christ in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in theological terms as affirming Christ’s two natures (human and divine) in one person, proposing a modified Nestorian theology that accorded them different operations—the beardless Jesus performing miracles in his divine nature and the bearded one suffering in his human nature.41 More recently, Neil MacGregor, following this general line of argument, asserted that Theodoric (or his court theologians) wished to emphasise the distinction of Christ’s two natures (divine and human), following the Nestorian or dyophysite theology, against the one-unitednature theology of the miaphysite-leaning orthodox hierarchy that he encountered in Ravenna. Accordingly, MacGregor, like von Simson, contended that showing Jesus bearded in scenes from his Passion was meant to indicate his human nature, while depicting him as beardless in scenes of miracles and wonders was meant to reveal his divine nature.42 Although both Von Simson’s and MacGregor’s explanations assert a theological significance to the differences in the iconography, they contradict how both the Gospels and early Christians understood Christ’s suffering and death. Rather than his Passion revealing his humanity, the Passion was, for both Gospel writers and early Christian theologians, the event at which Christ is recognised as truly the Son of God. Thus, the two contrasting cycles of Christ depictions call for an opposite explanation to MacGregor’s and von Simson’s. Rather than the left-side panels showing Jesus’s divinity and the right-side panels representing his humanity, those that illustrate Jesus’s miracles emphasise his public ministry, while the others—the ones that depict the Last Supper and scenes of Jesus’s arrest, trial, bearing his cross to Golgotha, and on the road to Emmaus—reveal him coming into his glory. Instead of expressing Christ’s two natures, the imagery portrayed Jesus as undergoing a progressive transformation from teacher and healer to divine Lord and Saviour. The two distinct presentations thereby distinguish Christ’s earthly actions of healing, teaching, and wonderworking from his heavenly mission of divine selfsacrifice and cosmic redemption. Here the iconography might reflect a distinctively Arian Christological reading of John’s Gospel. Instead of seeing the two Jesus types as reflecting the simultaneous existence of the two (divine and human)

178  Depicting the Divine natures, a visualisation of fifth-century dyophysite Christological speculations, this mosaic program may be a pictorial representation of those two natures appearing sequentially. First—on the upper left—the human Jesus in his public ministry, prior to achieving fully divine status: “my time has not yet come” (cf. John 7.39), or “because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 8.39); and second—on the upper right—Christ in the process of being exalted through his Passion and death on the cross. According to the Fourth Gospel, it was after he washed their feet, shared a meal, and sent Judas out that Jesus said: “Now is the Son of Man glorified” (John 14.31). Christ’s new manifestation appearing as the glorified Lord could, in fact, be visually represented in this iconography in his change from young and beardless to older and full-bearded, beginning when he shares his final meal with his disciples. This physical change continues through the depictions of his arrest, trial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. This explanation also may account for the different portrayals of Jesus’s baptism in Ravenna’s two famous baptisteries. The earlier monument, built for the Orthodox Christians of Ravenna, was richly embellished with mosaics and stucco reliefs toward the mid-fifth century (c.  403–50). The Arian baptistery was constructed and decorated several decades later for the Arian community, sometime after Theodoric seized power (ca. 495). Each depicts the baptism of Jesus in the dome’s centre (Figs. 5.15, 5.16). And while the Arian baptistery mosaic was almost certainly modelled after the iconography of the Orthodox example, it displays

Figure 5.15 Dome mosaic of Jesus’s baptism, Neonian (Orthodox) Baptistery, Ravenna, ca. mid- 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Author.

Depicting the Divine 179

Figure 5.16  Dome mosaic, Arian baptistery, Ravenna, late 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Author.

certain pictorial adaptations that must have been purposeful, given the similarities of other compositional details. Although both mosaics have undergone restoration over the centuries such that nothing is certain about their original appearance, as they now appear, Jesus in the Orthodox Baptistery is nude, bearded, and older, while, in the Arian baptistery, Jesus is nude, beardless, and has a comparatively youthful physique.43 Even if, as some historians believe, the Jesus in the Orthodox Baptistery was originally beardless, to the extent that late Ostrogothic Arian Christians regarded Jesus as less than fully divine at his baptism, they might have chosen to show Jesus as youthful. Moreover, in the Arian baptistery, the figure of John the Baptist has been transferred from Jesus’s right hand (as in the Orthodox baptistery) to his left, and the personified Jordan River witnesses from the side and not partially submerged. The Jordan’s jug (the rippling waves’ source), his white hair, full beard, and stocky physique contrast with the figure of the youthful Christ, so that viewers often think he is meant to be the Christian Father God and not the pagan river god.

180  Depicting the Divine This admittedly speculative proposal might account for the differences in the iconography of these two monuments along the same lines of argument used to explain the distinctions in the two types of Christ in the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Although no confirming contemporary literature exists to support this hypothesis, it seems at least possible that the imagery of Arian-sponsored visual programs reflects aspects of Ostrogothic Christology, in which Jesus’s exaltation commences with his passion rather than his full glory being conveyed either at his baptism, his conception, or his full glory being there from the beginning (cf. John 1.1). The Trinity—God the Father and the Holy Spirit Depictions of the baptism of Christ, like the two discussed previously, are often given as instances in which the Holy Trinity might be perceived, especially when figures of Christ and the descending dove of the Holy Spirit are joined by some iconographic motif that indicates the voice or presence of the First Person. However, in one of his many studies of early Christian art, when André Grabar commented that efforts to express theological ideas in visual art nearly always failed, he specifically contended that, no satisfactory iconography of the Trinity has ever been achieved, and the best proof of this is that all the iconographies that have ever been proposed have been rapidly abandoned, to be followed by new attempts just as debatable and equally ephemeral.44 Such a claim resonates with the long-held belief that no human artist is capable of depicting the invisible Christian God and that trying to do so would be at least inadequate and at worst blasphemous. In fact, many early Christian writers insisted that the deity not only cannot be depicted but cannot—and should not—even be imagined. One of the most vehement articulations of this position was given to the Christian character in an imagined debate with a pagan. Written by the African apologist Marcus Minucius Felix at the turn of the third century, his title character, Octavius, explains that Christians have no images of their God because their God is invisible, and, furthermore, that this is even the reason they believe in him.45 Saint Paul expressed an version of this claim in his speech to the Athenians, when he declared that “we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals” (Acts 17:24). Although Grabar contended, “no satisfactory iconography of the dogma of the Trinity has ever been achieved,” he acknowledges that Christians undoubtedly tried. Depictions of Jesus based on narratives describing events from his earthly life were apparently unproblematic, because Jesus was not, at that time, invisible. Apart from this, however, biblical texts and theologians alike insist on the invisibility and therefore the non-incarnate divine being’s indescribability (cf. 1 Timothy 1:17; Colossians 1:15). While this would have constrained artists from making pictorial representations of God the Father, they nevertheless did, and as any study of western art history will show, they continued to do so. One of the early instances

Depicting the Divine 181 in which it seems that artists tried to depict the Holy Trinity is the scene of Abraham receiving three visitors at his encampment by the oaks at Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8).46 Other early visual depictions of God, either as one or as three Persons, exist in two other types. One of these types uses symbolic motifs; the other anthropomorphic figures for God. The Symbolic Trinity

Paulinus of Nola described two early fifth-century apse mosaics that he commissioned: one for the cathedral of St. Felix in Cimitile and the other for the church on his ancestral estate at Fundi. Wishing to depict the Holy Trinity but apparently cautious about erroneously or idolatrously picturing the Deity in human form, Paulinus decided to use symbolic figures instead. In a letter to his friend Sulpicius Severus, he describes what he had envisioned for his cathedral church: The Trinity in all its mystery shines out. A lamb represents Christ, the Father’s voice thunders forth from the sky, and the Holy Spirit descends as a dove. A wreath surrounds the cross, made up of a ring of doves that represents the apostles. Thus, the holy unity of the Trinity merges in Christ, but the Trinity has its threefold symbolism. The Father’s voice and the Spirit show forth God, the cross and the lamb proclaim the holy victim. The purple and the palm point to kingship and triumph. Christ himself, the Rock, stands on the rock of the church, and from this rock four splashing fountains flow, the evangelists, the living streams of Christ.”47 Fundi’s apse apparently employed roughly the same symbols to express what Paulinus calls the Trinity’s holy unity. As at Cimitile, Christ is a lamb beneath a bloody cross and is haloed by a dove (the Holy Spirit), and crowned by the Father from a ruddy cloud. The lamb, he adds, stands on a high rock, judging between two groups of animals and sending the goats off to his left and welcoming the sheep to his right.48 Although Paulinus’s apses did not survive, his description allows us to imagine what they looked like. Moreover, a few rare non-anthropomorphic Trinitarian representations from the period have survived. One, a plate from a group of 25 sixthcentury silver liturgical objects discovered near the cathedral of Città di Castello (Umbria), features a gemmed cross with the alpha and omega suspended from its horizontal beam (Fig. 5.17). The cross stands on a hill or rock from which four rivers flow. To either side are lambs, perhaps signifying Mary and John; above are the dove, representing the Holy Spirit, and a disembodied right hand (representing the Father). A similar composition appears on the cover of a seventh-century silver box in the Vatican Library, the Capsella Vaticana. The top displays a cross, again rendered as gemmed. Angels hover below the horizontal arms. Many Christians might regard Paulinus’s apse images as theologically problematic. Despite his insistence, his designs do not actually portray the divine Trinity or express its unity. The biblical figures of lamb, hand, and dove fail

182  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.17 Silver Paten with gemmed Cross, Hand of God, and Holy Spirit Dove, ca. 500, found at Canoscio (Italy), now in the Museum of the Cathedral of Città di Castello, Umbria (Italy). Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

to represent the shared essence of the three Persons. Furthermore, although the Holy Spirit’s appearance in the form of a dove at Jesus’s baptism and the Incarnation itself might justify such visualisation of this Divine Person, no rendering of the First Person of the Holy Trinity, fundamentally invisible to the human eye and incomprehensible to the mind, could be anything more than a visual metaphor at best. Perhaps André Grabar had these images in mind when he judged such efforts as unsuccessful. The sixth-century baptistery of Albenga (Italy) reveals a different approach. Here 12 doves surround three superimposed christograms flanked by alphas and omegas (Fig. 5.18). Rather than using different symbols (hand, lamb, dove) for the Persons of the Trinity, this use of identical and intersecting figures attempts to indicate both equality and unity in the triune divine being. Yet, while this composition overcomes the suggestion that the three divine Persons are distinct in nature and avoids anthropomorphism, it lacks any biblical or personal references. The result is a more theologically attuned image but one that lacks a sense of divine presence or intimacy.

Depicting the Divine 183

Figure 5.18  Mosaic, Albenga (Italy) baptistery, 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: Ivan Vdovin/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Manus Dei and the Dove

Paulinus’s description of his apses does not specify that God is depicted as a hand, although this is a very common way that early Christian art represents God and, in particular, God holding out a crown to the saint or to the newly baptised (cf. Figs. 2.5, 6.9). This motif, the manus dei, also appears in early Jewish art. It shows up in several mid-third-century paintings in the Dura-Europos synagogue and in the sixth-century mosaic pavement in the Galilean synagogue of Beth Alpha. One of the Dura Synagogue panels, showing the story of Ezekiel raising the dry bones, includes a whole series of these hands (Fig. 5.19). In the synagogues of DuraEuropos and at Beth Alpha, the hand of God is depicted in the scene of Abraham’s binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:12).49 In these instances, the hand represents God’s voice commanding Abraham to put down his knife and spare his son. In Christian iconography, the manus dei also appears in images of Abraham’s offering of Isaac (cf. Figs. 1.13, 1.14, 4.3, 4.10), and of God giving the law to Moses (cf. Fig. 4.10). Sometimes it appears in scenes of John baptising Jesus and of Jesus’s ascension (cf. Fig. 6.18). The hand descends from the top of the sixthcentury apse mosaic of Sant’Apollinare in Classe to acknowledge the Transfiguration event and to represent the divine proclamation also heard at Jesus’s baptism: “This is my beloved son” (Mark 9:9 and parallels; Mark 1:11 and parallels). God’s hand is usally the one depicted but occasionally God’s left hand also shows up in

184  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.19 Dura-Europos Synagogue, vision of Ezekiel: the valley of dry bones, mid 3rd cen. Source: Photo credit: Art Resource, NY.

the iconography, as in some instances in which Moses receiving the law and Abraham’s offering Isaac are juxtaposed with one another (cf. Fig. 1.13).50 The dove, as in Paulinus’s description of his apse mosaic, usually represents the Holy Spirit in images of Jesus’s baptism. Although the dove also appears with Noah and, as Paulinus describes, can also represent the apostles, the Holy Spirit is rarely represented in any other fashion. Undoubtedly, this tradition stems from the biblical narratives, in which the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove (Mark 1:10 and parallels), a passage that is cited in early Christian apologetic writings as testimony to Jesus’s special status as God’s “beloved Son.”51 Once the dove comes to be the Holy Spirit’s conventional symbol, it turns up in other biblical narrative scenes, including depictions of Pentecost. The Anthropomorphic Trinity

Fully anthropomorphic images of God show up in early Christian art in at least two scenes from the book of Genesis. In scenes of Cain and Abel presenting their offerings to God, God is shown as a single seated male figure, pointing toward the preferred gift of Abel (cf. Fig. 6.7). However, in a few instances all three of the Persons of the Trinity show up in compositions depicting the creation of Adam and Eve. Two similar renderings of this scene appear on the friezes of early fourth-century sarcophagi, one in the Musée de l’Arles Antique (Fig. 5.20) and the other in the Vatican, Museo Pio Cristiano (Fig. 5.21).52 The Arles monument is presumed to be the earlier, and the Vatican image a copy of it or of a lost, common prototype. Both

Depicting the Divine 185

Figure 5.20 Double-register sarcophagus with depiction of the creation of Adam and Eve (top left), ca. 320. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, PAP 7400.1/5. Source: Photo credit: Author, used with permission of the Museum..

Figure 5.21 Double-register sarcophagus, Rome, with depiction of the creation of Adam and Eve, ca. 320–30. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

186  Depicting the Divine sarcophagi depict God the Father, seated in a high-backed chair, presiding at the creation of Adam and Eve and giving the two first humans his gesture of blessing. Each composition also shows two male figures with him. One stands behind the Father’s chair and may be identified as the Holy Spirit; the other has his right hand on Eve’s head and, accordingly, should be identified as the Son, the pre-incarnate Christ. All three wear tunics and pallia, the ordinary dress of an upper-class Roman man. Directly below, in the lower register, the Virgin Mary sits, with the baby Jesus on her lap in an almost identical chair, with her feet on an almost identical footstool, to receive the gift-bearing magi. If this interpretation is correct, both the Arles and the Vatican sarcophagi assert the full participation of all three divine Persons of the Trinity in the work of creation. However, the two monuments display subtle but important differences that may have theological significance. Both show the seated male figure as heavily bearded, but while the Vatican sarcophagus shows the three as nearly identical in facial type, the Arles sarcophagus distinguishes them; the figure on the right is beardless. Consequently, the slightly later Vatican sarcophagus appears to emphasise the three persons’ identity while the older Arles sarcophagus’s composition presents the Son as younger than the others. Moreover, this younger one is almost an identical twin to the figure of Jesus who heals the paralytic in the scene to the immediate right. A fourth figure with his left arm over Adam’s shoulder is almost certainly Paul, his identity assured by his typical portrait type. Of course, Paul does not actually belong in the scene from a biblical perspective, but perhaps he shows up here in order to present the old Adam to the new Adam (cf. Romans 5.12; 1 Corinthians 15). The image accords with the teaching that the divine Logos was the primary agent or architect of creation, as proclaimed by the prologue to the Fourth Gospel and elaborated in the apologetic works of Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Theophilus, among others.53 Depicting the creation by the Son or Logos became standard in later Byzantine and mediaeval iconography, usually identified by his cruciform halo. Yet, by the time these sarcophagi were produced, the work of creation was being treated as an action of the Triune God. Irenaeus of Lyons, only a decade or so after Justin and refuting the heretical teaching that creation was a work of a lesser divinity, described it as a Trinitarian activity, the Logos and Spirit being the Father’s two hands.54 Echoing Irenaeus, Tertullian likewise insisted that creation was enacted by all three divine Persons.55 Thus these sarcophagus reliefs depict Adam and Eve’s creation as a Trinitiarian action, anthropomorphised as the work of three male figures. However, this does not explain why the Arles sarcophagus represents the three males as different in appearance while the Vatican sarcophagus makes them look identical. This might be explained by the fact that the Arles monument is dated to the first quarter of the fourth century, perhaps fabricated before or just at the outset of the Arian controversy. The slight date difference might explain the different facial types as reflecting pre-Nicene subordinationist theology. Showing the three as different in appearance could suggest their different divine roles or statuses; the Son here is younger than the Father. By contrast, the Vatican sarcophagus seems to

Depicting the Divine 187 have consciously followed the Nicene formula, asserting the three Persons’ shared nature and identity by making them identical. Troubling this interpretation, just to the right of the Vatican creation scene, in a depiction of the post-fall allocation of labours to Adam and Eve, the Son resembles youthful Jesus figure. It seems that, in the work of creating Adam and Eve, the Second Person bears a likeness to the Father God. However, when he subsequently assigns them their postlapsarian work, he appears as the incarnate Christ. These differences follow the variations of his appearance according to his role or as a visual affirmation of the Son’s equal nature and co-eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. From Narrative Scenes to Holy Portraits As discussed earlier, prior to the fourth century, Christian art did not feature portraits of Christ, biblical characters, or other holy persons apart from narrative contexts. However, when Paulinus of Nola built his church at Cimitile to honour St. Felix, he commissioned artists to decorate the interior with a program of painted images of Christ and the saints alongside scenes from biblical stories. In one of his longest poems, Paulinus admits that the practice was an unusual custom, but defends such adornment both as a way of counteracting the continuing attraction of pagan idols and as a device for enticing pilgrims to come inside the church instead of focusing their attention on the graves just outside, thus adapting elements of popular religious practices for the sake of converting and edifying the masses. The colourful paintings not only attracted visitors inside, but, he hoped, would also nurture their faith.56 Paulinus’s stated intention, that portraits of holy men and women should provide edification and inspiration by example, was offset by his hope that his project would offer competing attractions to the saint’s tomb outside the church. To serve his purpose, however, these portraits needed to have the same appeal, perhaps even to possess an intrinsic quality of sanctity that might draw pilgrims in to take a look. In addition to saints’ portraits, Paulinus’s iconographic program apparently also featured characters from the Bible. As such, he was adapting a pre-existing pictorial repertoire—the scripture narrative scene—to accommodate a new type of image: the sacred portrait. This transition from mainly story-based scenes to representations of figures without any narrative context is a striking development of late fourth-century iconography. The figures who appeared in third and early fourthcentury pictorial representations of Bible stories were not in any sense portraits, nor were they intended to present likenesses of the individuals. These new types of front-facing figures were not part of any narrative, nor did they offer instruction in the content of Bible stories; they were simply meant to inspire their viewers and, presumably, to encourage devotion and prayer. Although surviving panel painted icons of Christ, the saints, and the Virgin Mary mostly date to the sixth century and later, many fourth- and fifth-century portrait-type images of these figures occur on wall paintings, apse mosaics, gold glasses, and relief sculpture. Among the earliest are bust portraits of Christ in the ceilings of the catacombs of Domitilla and Commodilla (Fig. 5.22). Joint portraits

188  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.22 Bust portrait of Jesus with a beard, vault in the Catacomb of Commodilla, Rome, late 4th cen. Source: Photo: Wikipedia, Creative Commons, public domain.

of Peter and Paul appear on gold glasses (Fig. 5.23), ivory carvings, and on a funerary epitaph (Fig. 5.24). A group of apostles’ busts (Andrew, John, Peter, and Paul) show up in roundels in Rome’s Catacomb of St. Thecla. Mosaic apses and panels in churches dated from the early fifth century onwards typically depict the saint to whom the church is dedicated, Christ, or the Virgin Mary, often surrounded by saints and angels and, often, a still living bishop.57 This evolution of Christian iconography from narrative scene to portrait-type presentations suggests that viewers were engaging the art in a new way. Like Paulinus’s visitors, they were no longer just visiting the saints’ relics in the shrine, but directly engaging his or her image in a face-to-face manner.

Depicting the Divine 189

Figure 5.23 Bowl base with Saints Peter and Paul flanking a column with the Christogram Rome, late 4th cen. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Source: Photo credit: Rogers Fund, 1916. Open access/public domain.

The emergence of sacred portraits introduced a function of art to and for the fifth-century church (and beyond) that mystically made the holy person’s presence available through the mediation of the image. Like the presence of Christ invoked in the consecration of the material elements of a sacrament, these likenesses were believed to connect the earthly world with the heavenly realm and the living community with the community of the saints. In this case, representation is more than mere memorial (e.g., a funerary portrait recording the deceased’s physical appearance in life), and its purpose is far more than instructional, inspirational, or devotional. They served in many respects, the same purpose as did relics.58

190  Depicting the Divine

Figure 5.24 Detail of Asellus’ eptaph with portraits of Peter and Paul, Rome, late 4th cen. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

Earlier portraits of Christ or one of the saints could have existed, and a few textual sources refer to instances of these. For example, Irenaeus of Lyon mentions an image of Christ supposedly made by Pontius Pilate that, he claims, the sect of Carpocratians set up and venerated alongside images of Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle. He specifically accuses the Carpocratians of acting like pagans by crowning and offering various other honours to such things.59 Added to this is the apocryphal account of the Ephesian magistrate Lycomedes, who apparently commissioned the Apostle John’s likeness for his personal veneration. The fragmentary Acts of John (usually dated to the second or third century), describes John as scolding Lycomedes for treating his (John’s) portrait in the manner of a pagan, by setting lit candles before and draping garlands upon it.60 This new kind of Christian art did not develop without some expressed concern by theologians. Some contemporary church leaders evidently worried that viewers were directing inappropriate veneration to paintings, presumably of persons and not just of narrative scenes. A canon from the Spanish Council of Elvira, probably dating to the early fourth century, simply states, “There shall be no pictures in churches, lest what is reverenced and adored be depicted on walls.”61 That canon from the Elvira council is unparalleled among early conciliar documents, but other fourth- and fifth-century textual evidence similarly attests that some church officials worried that pious devotees might accord unsuitable veneration to portraits of Christ or the saints. Eusebius of Caesarea mentions the existence of a statue of Christ with the haemorrhaging woman as well as paintings of Peter and Paul and Christ which he regards as similar to pagan cult images. Added to these is an often-cited letter attributed to Eusebius, purportedly addressed to

Depicting the Divine 191 the emperor’s sister, Constantia. According to the document, the bishop refuses to provide Constantia a portrait of Christ for her personal devotion. He contends that attempting to render both Christ’s human and divine natures would be either impossible or heretical. While this letter’s authenticity has been challenged, many scholars accept it as genuine.62 Another group of disputed documents are attributed to Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) and include letters addressed to Bishop John of Jerusalem and the Emperor Theodosius I. In these, the writer decries saints’ portraits as false, stupid, mute, inanimate, and even dead—terms that earlier Christian apologists had applied to the Roman cult statues—and condemns those who would venerate them.63 Doubts about the authenticity of these works of Eusebius and Epiphanius are balanced by two brief testimonies from Augustine of Hippo, one in which he scolds his congregation for acting like pagans for worshipping columns (probably meaning images upon columns) and another in which he expressly warns them against idolatrously venerating tombs and pictures, presumably martyrs’ shrines and their portraits.64 Additional, albeit much later, examples are two certainly genuine letters from Gregory the Great to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, written at the turn of the seventh century. In the first of these, written in July of 599, Gregory urges his episcopal colleague to cease destroying images on the walls of his church. While he commends him for warning his flock against idolatrous adoration of pictures, he also gives his famous dictum that pictures can serve as the Bibles of the illiterate: Furthermore, we indicate that it has recently come to our attention that your Fraternity saw some people adoring images, and you smashed those images and threw them out of the churches. And we certainly applauded you for having had the zeal not to allow anything made by human hands to be adored, but we judge that you ought not to have smashed those images. For a picture is provided in churches for the reason that those who are illiterate may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books.65 While this text does not specify that Serenus destroyed paintings, Gregory’s second letter, written in October of 600, reiterates his points and specifies that Serenus had, in fact, destroyed images of saints (sanctorum imagines).66 Assuming other bishops like Serenus were concerned about improper adoration of images, some type of icon veneration must have been taking place before the seventh century. The True Image One problem that arises with regard to the emergence of holy portraits is whether they are actual likenesses of the persons they depict. Parallel to the problem of depicting Jesus, whose earthly appearance was unrecorded by any Gospel writer, most saints were long dead before their portraits were first produced. Their images could not have been painted from life. Nevertheless, some of them, particularly Peter and Paul, obtained conventional depictions very early, and those continue even into the present. Peter is traditionally rendered with square jaw, a trimmed beard,

192  Depicting the Divine and closely cropped, curly grey hair, while Paul is usually shown with a high forehead, a narrow face, and a longer, pointed beard (Fig. 5.23). Other saints’ images are less identifiable, which is why, to assist viewers, their names and distinguishing attributes or instruments of torture (e.g., Agnes’s flames or Lawrence’s iron grill) often appear with their portraits. Although legends about St. Luke painting the Virgin Mary’s portrait circulated no later than the early fifth century, the ways she was depicted in visual art was never completely established.67 While she typically is represented as a veiled woman, unless she holds the Christ child in her lap, she can be difficult to tell apart from other female figures in early Christian art. In time, she will be enthroned, her veil will be adorned with stars and her undertunic with gold bands, but it is almost always the Christ child she holds that makes her quickly recognisable (Fig. 5.25). Yet, while artists must have had some latitude in how they rendered their subjects, a great deal of authority came to be attributed to certain portraits, so that they became the standard upon which subsequent versions would be based. In time, these portraits were the means by which visionaries could recognise the saints who appeared to them.68 In the final analysis, the claim for likeness in any holy portrait primarily depends on its widespread acceptance, not on any verifiable historical evidence.69 As the historian Gilbert Dagron so eloquently expressed it, “A cult image can only be recognised as true and, therefore, valid if the artists and the art disappear, in other words, if subjectivity acting as a screen, and if an illusion which would be a lie, disappear.”70 Most of these prototypes were human made, but others were believed to be miraculously produced. One of the earliest recorded of these phenomena is associated with the legendary King Abgar of Edessa. Like the tale of Veronica’s veil in the mediaeval West, this miraculously produced portrait was said to have materialised when Christ pressed a cloth to his face and transferred his likeness to it. The legend exists in many different versions, but the story’s core outlines report that the King sought a cure for a disease and sent his courtier to ask if Christ would come to him. In the oldest version of the story, Christ declined to come in person but sent a letter to the King in his place. In later versions, the courtier painted a portrait of Christ to bring back to Edessa. Eventually the legend reported that Christ himself provided his image by holding a towel to his face to make a perfect (if reversed) likeness. Once presented to the king, the image miraculously healed him. The story and its related iconic artefacts played a prominent role in the history of Byzantine Christianity, not only because the portrait functioned as a divinelymade “true” likeness of Christ’s actual face, but also because it was believed to possess wonder-working power. Although the original no longer survives, its copies act as direct links between Christ’s visage and that initial cloth icon, no less sacred than a direct, bodily contact image-relic like the Shroud of Turin, to which it is often compared and sometimes linked.71 Abgar’s miraculous portrait has counterparts in other examples besides the Veronica veil, including the image of Kamouliana and the Holy Face of Manoppello.72 Each of these miraculous prototypes, originally made on cloth, began to be copied and circulated; they came to be regarded as authoritative as a true “from

Depicting the Divine 193

Figure 5.25 Tapestry, Virgin Mary with Christ Child and archangels, Egypt, 6th cen.. Now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Bequest, 1967. Source: Open access/public domain.

194  Depicting the Divine life” likeness. Like the original, these reproductions depict only the face of Jesus. He has a pointed beard that divides at the bottom, a drooping moustache, and long hair parted in the middle and reaching his shoulders. Most importantly, the copies were just as holy and powerful as the original; all that was required was that they be faithfully reproduced. They were linked, by resemblance, to the one that was made by direct contact with Christ’s face, which, in turn, acted as a link to his earthly body. Conclusion The evolution of Jesus’s portrayals, from a youthful wonderworker to an enthroned Lord, along with all the variations along the way, might have been partly why church authorities worried that these figures invited idolatrous practices. On one hand, if Jesus’s likeness is neither prescribed nor fixed, it could make it less likely that viewers would believe that God could, in fact, be completely represented in visual art. No single image, like no one name, can depict or describe the divine being. In their variations, these early representations of Jesus in art were thus able to convey beliefs about the Saviour’s character without pretending that they had captured the whole and entire truth about him. On the other hand, variations in his presentation might undermine the claim that, in his earthly life, he would have had a consistent appearance. Jesus, as the Virgin Mary’s incarnate son, had a physical body and human face. As God, he might appear in any way that he chose, but during his earthly life, it would always be as in the form of a man. This idea is summed up in a passage from Augustine of Hippo’s treatise On the Trinity: Anyone, surely, who has read or heard what the apostle Paul wrote or what was written about him, will fabricate a face for the apostle in his imagination and for everybody else whose name is mentioned in these texts. And every one of the vast number of people to whom these writings are known will think of their physical features and lineaments in a different way, and it will be quite impossible to tell whose thoughts are nearest the mark in this respect. . . . Even the physical face of the Lord is pictured with infinite variety by countless imaginations, though whatever it was like he certainly had only one. Nor as regards the faith we have in the Lord Jesus Christ is it in the least relevant to salvation what our imaginations picture him like, which is probably quite different from the reality. .  .  . What does matter is that we think of him as a man; for we have embedded in us as it were a standard notion of the nature of a man. . . . Nor do we know what the Virgin Mary looked like, from whom he was marvelously born. . .. And so, without prejudice to faith it is permissible to say, “Perhaps she had a face like this, perhaps she did not.”73 Augustine’s argument here not only insists that depictions of the incarnate Christ should present him as a human male but also acknowledges the problem with making portraits of any long-dead saint whose likeness cannot be judged except by

Depicting the Divine 195 convention. Peter and Paul came to be established in ways that make them almost instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Christian visual art through the ages. However, like the Virgin Mary, the other apostles and saints similarly tend to be less easily identified and so their portraits require visual cues and even their inscribed names. Despite the variations and the simple fact that, as Augustine says, no one can really judge the actual likeness of any of these portraits to their once-living models, the question of their truth is more complicated. The viewer may not need to believe in the accuracy of the image to accept its authenticity or to find it a devotional or spiritual aid to prayer or meditation, and even to facilitate an encounter with the holy person’s presence, not in the painting itself, but by the painting, to move beyond it. Notes 1 Origen, Cels. 6.75–7. 2 John Chrysostom, Exp. Ps. 44.3. 3 Mathews, Clash of Gods, 126. Here Mathews notes Paul’s admonition that for a man to wear long hair is degrading (1 Corinthians 11:14), and the parallels with other ancient writers from Epictetus to Augustine. 4 This is the argument of Mathews 119–41, where he concludes, however, that this is a mark of divinity, not femininity and associates it with gnosticism. For a different view, see Robin M. Jensen “The Femininity of Jesus in Early Christian Art,” Studia Patristica 29 (1997): 269–82. 5 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 21–3, 44, and 54.6; and Dial. 69.2. 6 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 7. 7 Origen, Cels 7.53–5; and compare Arnobius, Nat. 6.17. 8 Ilona Julia Jesnick, The Image of Orpheus in Roman Mosaic: An Exploration of the Figure of Orpheus in Graeco-Roman Art and Culture with Special Reference to Its Expression in the Medium of Mosaic in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1997). 9 Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 37–63. Earlier, Charles-Murray, “The Christian Orpheus,” Cahiers Archéologiques 23 (1974): 303–45. See also Henri Stern, “Orphée dans l’art palelochrétien,” Cahiers Archéologiques 23 (1974): 1–16; also, an earlier, interesting but somewhat unreliable analysis in R. Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism (London: J. M. Watkins, 1921), 51–8. 10 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.12; Prot. 7. 11 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 1.3 and 2.21. See the important study of Clement’s treatment of Orpheus in the Protrepticus by Fabienne Jourdan, Orphée dans la littérature chrétienne grecque des cinq premiers siècles, vol. 1: Orphée, du repoussoir au préfigurateur du Christ: Réécriture d’un myth à des fins protreptiques chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009). This author’s second volume continues to survey the literary tradition through the mid-fifth century. 12 Charles-Murray disputes this identification of Orpheus in the Jewish iconography: “The Christian Orpheus,” and subsequently in her longer work, Rebirth and Afterlife, 37–63. See also Paul Corby Finney, “Orpheus-David: A Connection in Iconography between Greco-Roman Judaism and Early Christianity?” Journal of Jewish Art 5 (1978): 6–15. 13 Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 43. 14 For literature on the Vatican necropolis mosaic, see Otto Perler, Die Mosaiken der Juliergruft im Vatikan (Freiburg in der Schweiz: Universitatsverlag, 1953); and Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee and John Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London: Longmans, 1956), 72–4.

196  Depicting the Divine 15 For an old but still worthwhile study of these parallels, see Franz J. Dölger, Sol Salutis. Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1925), Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, 4–5. 16 Examples include Did. 14.1; Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 67.3–5; Zeno of Verona, Pasch. hom. 17 Pliny, Epist. 10.96. 18 Tertullian, Nat. 1.13. 19 Melito, Frag. on bapt., trans. Robert Grant, Second Century Christianity (London: S.P.C.K., 1946), 74. Text in Jean-Baptiste Pitra, Analecta Sacra 2.3–5. 20 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 9, possibly quoting Psalm 110:3. Ephesians 5:14 also seems a possible source for Clement’s language here. The Odes of Sol. 15 includes another instance of this: “Because He is my Sun, and His rays have lifted me up; and His light has dismissed all darkness from my face.” Trans. and notes see James H. Charlesworth, Odes of Solomon (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), 67. 21 Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. 11. Discussion of these texts in Charles-Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife, 94–6. 22 Text in F. C. Conybeare, Rituale Armenorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), 427; trans. Hugo Rahner, S.J., “Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries,” in The Mysteries, Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 2, ed., Joseph Campbell (New York: Pantheon Books, 1955), 396. Rahner also quotes a passage from Ps.-Athanasius’s De passio Dom. that compares and contrasts the illumination offered by Helios with the illumination of Christ’s cross in baptism. 23 Justin in particular calls the candidates “illuminati” (= Greek, photizomenoi) 1 Apol. 61. Also see Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 40. 24 This custom was recorded by Cyril of Jerusalem, Myst. cat. 1.2–2.2; and in an emended text of Ambrose, Myst. 2.7. 25 Ivan Foletti makes a convincing case, however, for Serapis as the model, “God from God. Christ as the Translation of Jupiter Serapis in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana,” in The Fifth Century in Rome: Art, Liturgy, Patronage, eds., Ivan Foletti and Manuela Gianadrea (Rome: Viella, 2017), 11–29. 26 Theodorus Lector, Hist. eccl. 1.15; a story also included in John of Damascus, Div. imag. 3.130. 27 The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York possesses an object identified as the “Head of Christ or Zeus” because the archaeologists who found it were unable to determine the subject of the bust and noted the physical similarities between the two (Christ and Zeus). 28 See Jean-Michel Spieser, “Invention du portrait du Christ,” in Le portrait: La représentation de l’individu, eds., Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Jean-Michel Spieser, and Jean Wirth (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007), 57–76. 29 Problematically, the mosaics have been heavily restored. See David J. Stanley, “The Apse Mosaics at Santa Costanza: Observations on Restorations and Antique Mosaics,” Mitteilungen des deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 94 (1987): 29–42, at 32–8; also, Jürgen Rasch and Achim Abreiter, Das Mausoleum de Constantina in Rom (Mainz: Zabern, 2007), 124–47. Unfortunately, the restorations have been insufficiently documented, which makes it impossible to reconstruct the original compositions with certainty. 30 For example, see Ross Holloway, Constantine and Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 103, who describes the bearded figure as “Jehovah giving the Law to Moses.” Also, Noga-Banai, “Visual Prototypes,” 176–8. 31 Acts Pet. 20. 32 Acts Pet. 21. 33 Acts John 87–9. 34 Ap. John 2.4–8; see also the Acts of Andrew and Matthias, in which Jesus disguises himself as the pilot of a boat and then appears on shore as a beautiful child; and the Syriac

Depicting the Divine 197 Acts Thom. 153, which recounts the deeds of Jesus’s twin, and has the apostle address Christ as “polymorphous Jesus.” See Robin M. Jensen, “The Polymorphous Christ in Early Christian Image and Text,” in Seeing the God, eds. Marlis Arnhold, Harry O. Maier, and Jörg Rüpke (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 149–75, esp., 157–9. 35 Origen, Cels. 6.75–7. 36 Origen, Cels. 2.64. See also, Cels. 4.16. 37 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. lec. 10.5, trans. slightly adapted from A. Stephenson, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, Fathers of the Church Series, 1969), 198. 38 For example, see Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Mosaics of Ravenna: Image and Meaning (Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2016), 112–13; Ralf Bockmann, “The Non-Archaeology of Arianism,” in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, eds Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 201–8; Mariëtte Verhoven, The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna: Transformations and Memory (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 146–7; and Bryan Ward Perkins, “Where is the Archaeology and Iconography of Germanic Arianism?” Late Antique Archaeology 6 (2010): 265–89. Dennis Groh, “The Arian Controversy,” Bible Review (1994): 21–32. 39 Per Jonas Nordhagen, “The Penetration of Byzantine Mosaic Technique into Italy in the Sixth Century,” in III Colloquio sul mosaico antico, Ravenna, 6–10 settembre, 1980, ed., Raffaella F. Campanati (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1983), 75–9. 40 Bockmann, “Non-Archaeology of Arianism,” 215. 41 Otto von Simson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 3–74. This argument was rejected by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 156–8. Here Deliyannis summarises other explanations for the differences, including the one summarised below, but argues that any overtly Arian iconography would have been removed by later orthodox church authorities. Against this, see R. Sörries, Die Bilder der Orthodoxen im Kampf gegen den Arianismus (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984), 83–4. 42 Neil MacGregor, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 80–1. 43 Later restorations of the mosaic create some doubt about the appearance of the heads of John the Baptist and Christ. According to Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, “it is unlikely that Christ had a beard in the image.” See Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 98. On the restorations (and agreeing with Deliyannis), see Spiro Kostof, The Orthodox Baptistery of Ravenna (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 86; Friedrich W. Deichmann, Ravenna: Hauptstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1974), 38. Kostof and Deichmann partly base their argument on the supposed lack of a bearded figure of Christ being baptised before this time but overlook the fact that almost no depictions of Jesus’s baptism show him as an adult figure before this time. 44 Grabar, Christian Iconography, 112. 45 Minucius Felix, Oct. 32. 46 See discussion of Abraham’s hospitality in Chapter 3. 47 Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 32.10, trans. P.G. Walsh, Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, vol. II (Westminster: Newman Press, 1967), 144–5. (CSEL: 29:285–6). 48 Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 32.17. 49 Shira Lander, “Revealing and Concealing God in Ancient Synagogue Art,” in History of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, eds., April De Conick and Grant Adamson (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 205–16. 50 Robert Couzin, Right and Left in Early Christian and Medieval Art (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 22–46. 51 Justin Martyr, Dial. 88; Clement of Alexandria, Theod. 16. 52 Discussed in Robin M. Jensen, “The Economy of the Trinity at the Creation of Adam and Eve,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 7.4 (1999): 527–46. Also see Jennifer

198  Depicting the Divine Awes Freeman, The Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts: The Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022), 34–60, esp. 49– 60 (“Anthropomorphic Images of God”). Scholars who disagree with this identification include: Yves Christe, "A propos du sarcophage à double registre récemment découvert à Arles," Journal des savants (1975): 78; Deborah Markow, "Some Born-Again Christians of the Fourth Century," Art Bulletin 63 (1981): 652; and Josef Engemann objected that no other Trinity depiction was like this, giving the symbolic Trinity identifications as counter-examples, “Zu den Driefaltigkeitdarstellungen der frühchristlichen Kunst: Gab es im 4. Jh. anthropomorphe Trinitätsbilder?” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 19 (1976): 157–72. 53 For example, see Justin Martyr, 2 Apol. 6. 54 Irenaeus, Haer. 2.2.5–5; 5.6.1. 55 Tertullian, Prax. 8.7. 56 Paulinus, Carm. 27.511–83. See Dennis Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 182–3. 57 For more on this, see the important work of Katherine Marsengill, Portraits and Icons: Between Reality and Spirituality in Byzantine Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); and idem, “Panel Paintings and Early Christian Icons,” in The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, eds. Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 191–206. 58 Robin M. Jensen, “Icons as Relics; Relics as Icons,” in Dynamics of the Cult of Saints, eds., Robert Wiśniewski, Bryan Ward Perkins, and Raymond Van Dam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), 17–44. 59 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.25.6. On Marcellina and with discussion of the Carpocratians’ alleged images, see Gregory Snyder, “ ‘She Destroyed Multitudes:’ Marcellina’s Group in Rome,” in Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, eds., Ulla Tervahauta, Ivan Mirosnikov, Outi Lehipuu, and Ismo Dunderberg (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 39–61. Parallel accounts are found in Hippolytus, Haer. 7. 32. 7, Epiphanius, Pan. 27. 6. 10, and Augustine, Haer. 7. 60 Acts of John 26–9. The complicated textual history of this document makes it difficult to reliably date the above-cited section, although scholarly consensus usually accepts a date between the mid-second and mid-third century. On the dating and construction of the whole document, see Janet E. Spittler, “Acts of John,” in the Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, and idem, “Is Vienna hist. gr. 63, fol. 51v-55v a ‘fragment?’’ Ancient Jew Review, May 6, 2019 (an online publication, https://www.ancientjewreview.com/ read/2019/4/30/is-vienna-hist-gr-63-fol-51v-55v-a-fragment). 61 Canon 36: Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur. Text and translation in Karl Joseph Hefele, History of the Christian Councils, trans. By W. Clark (London: T&T Clark, 1894), p. 151. See also José Vives, Concilios Visigóticos e Hispano-Romanos, España Cristiana, Textos 1 (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1963), 78. The date is disputed by Maurice Meigne, “Concil ou collection d’Elvire?” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 70 (1975), 361–87, who sees the canons as a compilation from a later date, allowing the first 21 canons to be dated to the turn of the fourth century and the others to later periods. For more on this and a summary of different scholarly views, see the essay by de Ste. Croix and appendix of Joseph Streeter, in Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 99–105. 62 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 7.18 and Letter to Constantia, trans. Cyril Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453, Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 16–18. Partly because the letter’s original only exists in the Iconoclasts’ Horos of 754, the authenticity of the letter has been challenged, though widely (now) accepted as authentic. See Claudia Sode and Paul Speck, “Ikonoklasmus vor der Zeit? Der Brief des Eusebius von Kaisareia an Kaiserin Konstantia,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 54 (2004), 113–34. Among those who question the authenticity of this letter

Depicting the Divine 199 are Mary Charles-Murray, “Art and the Early Church,” Journal of Theological Studies 28 (1977), 335–6. Charles-Murray revised her opinion based on the challenge by Stephen Gero, “The True Image of Christ: Eusebius’ Letter to Constantia Reconsidered,” Journal of Theological Studies 32 (1981), 460–70. Another scholar who dismisses the letter’s authenticity is Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 401, n. 82. 63 Epiphanius’s texts include fragments of his letters to the Emperor Theodosius I and Bishop John of Jerusalem, texts and translations in Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 41–3. On the question of authenticity, see Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 85–150, esp. 93, n. 28; and Charles-Murray, “Art and Early Church,” 336–8, which outlines the discussion up to the time of her writing. She notes that George Ostrogorsky initially accepted only the Treatise (or Testament) as authentic but after severe critique allowed also that the Letter to John of Jerusalem could be authentic as well. See Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreites: Historische Untersuchungen, vol. 5 (Breslau: Marcus, 1929), 61–113. By contrast Karl Holl, ‘Die Schriften des Epiphanius gegen die Bilderverehrung’, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte II, der Osten (Tübingen: DeGruyter, 1988), accepted them all as genuine. 64 Augustine, Serm. 198.10 (Dolbeau 26); and Mor. eccl. 1.34. 65 Gregory I, Registrum epistularum 9. 209, trans. by John R.C. Martyn, The Letters of Gregory the Great (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval studies, 2004), vol. 2, 674 (CCSL 140A:768.8–13). 66 Gregory I, Registrum epistularum 11.10 (CCSL 140A:874). 67 On the legends of St. Luke’s painting the Virgin, see Hans Belting: Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 49–54. 68 Gilbert Dagron cites many examples in “Holy Images and Likeness,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): 23–33, esp. 30–2. 69 See the work of Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 5–47 (Chapter 1, “Likeness and Definition”). 70 Dagron, “Holy Images and Likeness,” 23. 71 See Averil Cameron, “The Sceptic and the Shroud,” Inaugural Lecture at King’s College London (London: King’s College, 1980). On Veronica, see Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism and Structure of a “True” Image (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991); Gerhard Wolf, “From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the ‘Disembodied’ Face and Disseminating the True Image of Christ in the Latin West,” in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation ed., H. Kessler and G. Wolf (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998), 153–80. 72 For more on these miraculous images, see the collection of essays in H. Kessler and G. Wolf, ed., The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1998). 73 Augustine, Trin. 8.4.7. Trans., Edmund Hill, The Trinity: The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 246–7 (CCSL 50: 275–7).

6

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

The fourth-century change in portrayals of Jesus, from narrative scenes that primarily showed him as a wonderworker and healer to depictions of him as an enthroned Lord and ascended lawgiver, appear, as from the first, to have avoided graphic presentations of his death on the cross. The surviving material record also lacks images of Jesus as resurrected and ascended into heaven. Apart from a handful of rare engraved gems, the earliest surviving images of Christ on the cross date to the early fifth century. Compared to later Christian visual art, in which representations of the crucifixion are especially prominent, this absence seems strange and evidently intentional. Although well known to, if not fully understood by, art historians, the lack of early visual depictions of the crucifixion often surprises theologians and historians of Christianity. It seems extraordinary that a story so central to the biblical narrative as well as to subsequent liturgical and theological exposition lacked pictorial form for so long. Explanations offered for this iconographic absence include suggestions this part of Jesus’s story was less compelling to ordinary Christians than accounts of his miracles, arguments that Christians were inhibited from making or showing images of Christ’s crucifixion because of the shame associated with this form of execution, that Christians were reluctant to display a cross or crucifix from fear of persecution, or that the Jesus’s death by crucifixion was simply too profound a mystery to be exhibited.1 All these hypotheses are undermined by both literary and visual evidence. Verbal testimonies range from Paul’s epistles that openly acknowledge the “scandal” of the cross (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:22–5), to discussions of the event’s significance among first-century writers, to arguments made to pagan detractors by second- and third-century apologists. They hardly disregarded, avoided or suppressed the subject. For example, Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35–107) claims to be dedicated to the cross; an offence to unbelievers, but to Christians, the sign of salvation and eternal life.2 Melito of Sardis (d. c. 190) wrote an entire treatise on the passion, comparing Jesus to the sacrificial lamb of Passover.3 Justin Martyr compared Jesus’s death and resurrection to those of several pagan gods and insisted that the crucifixion had been foretold by the prophets.4 As noted in Chapter 5, Clement of Alexandria claimed that “Christ transformed the sunset into sunrise, and by his crucifixion turned death into life.”5 DOI: 10.4324/9781003216094-6

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 201 In his rebuttal of the pagan Celsus’s assertions that Christians absurdly venerated a crucified man and that Jesus’s form of execution showed that he was nothing more than a thief or magician, Origen of Alexandria explains that Christians do not believe in Jesus simply because of the manner his death; rather, they understand that he, as the perfect, wise, and good divine Son, willingly underwent that death for the sake of the human race.6 Thus, although the surviving iconographic subjects found in Christian art in the third and fourth centuries focus more on Jesus as a wonderworker than on Jesus as undergoing a sacrificial and brutal death, the existing documentary evidence makes it difficult to argue that the New Testament Passion narratives were not read out in church, that the crucifixion was not publicly discussed, or that at the popular level, converts to the faith were just unaware of or uninterested in this part of the story. The suggestion that Christians were inhibited about displaying an image of the cross in order to avoid persecution simply overlooks the abundance of examples of other clearly Christian images that emerged in the third century. Although tombs were not precisely public, they must have been accessible to non-Christians. Moreover, the paintings and sarcophagus reliefs that they contained were clearly made for clients who patronised openly known workshops. Added to these monumental types of art were more modest domestic items produced for Christian consumers: lamps, glasses, and other pottery objects decorated with biblical scenes and engraved gems with identifiably Christian designs. Christians were far from reticent about displaying their association with the new religion, even during those sporadic episodes of persecution. Simpler explanations for this puzzling lack of crucifixion images may be that, given the lack of analogous prototypes from Roman art to draw upon, it just took time for depictions to emerge in the iconographical catalogue. Or perhaps the scene, described in words, was better left to the imagination than presented in horrifyingly graphic form. This last suggestion might explain the existence of earlier, third-century, plain cross figures (without a corpus). Additionally, some Old Testament scenes, particularly depictions of Abraham offering Isaac (Genesis 22), were understood as types of Jesus’s voluntary self-sacrifice and, as such, substituted for actual depictions of the crucifixion. In sarcophagus reliefs, portrayals of Isaac’s near-sacrifice often occur near to or juxtaposed with scenes of Jesus standing before Pilate (Fig. 6.1) or Susanna being judged innocent by Daniel (Fig. 3.5). The scene of Abraham raising his knife to slay his son is a common motif in early Christian iconography (cf. Figs. 1.14, 3.3, 4.2, 4.3, 4.10), and the textual interpretation of Isaac’s story as prefiguring Christ’s death on the cross is widely apparent in early Christian literature, beginning no later than with a text like Melito of Sardis’s treatise On the Passover in the late second century.7 Tertullian, for example, states bluntly that the “mystery of the Passion” is figuratively predicted in the Old Testament because, when Isaac was led by his father as a victim, he carried his own wood for the sacrifice, just as Christ carried the wood of his cross to the place of his passion.8 This interpretation continues through the fourth and fifth centuries in works like Ambrose’s discourse On Abraham, and John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis.9 Augustine’s long treatise, The City of God,

202  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.1 Abraham offering Isaac with Pilate. Detail from “Two Brothers” sarcophagus, Rome, mid 4th cen. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Eric Vandeville/akg-images.

also makes the connection between Isaac’s carrying the wood and Christ’s bearing the cross and added the thorns that caught the horns of the substitute sacrificial ram (Genesis 22:13), prefiguring the crown of thorns that was placed on Jesus’s head.10 Thus, while the New Testament subjects that belong to the standard catalogue of early Christian art emphasise scenes from Jesus’s ministry (especially his miracles), they seem to explicitly omit his betrayal, trial, suffering, and death on the cross. Conversely, the Christological portion of the church’s earliest baptismal creeds begin with “born of the Virgin Mary” and then move directly to “suffered under Pontius Pilate, resurrected on the third day, and ascended into heaven” without mentioning Jesus’s earthly works. Arguably, the art thereby fills in the missing middle of the story. This chapter considers the problem of this apparently late-arriving image of the cross and crucifix, opening with an examination of what have been identified as primitive cross signs and a graffito mockingly made by non-Christians, and then turning to the first pictorial depictions of or allusions to Jesus’s crucifixion, including rare examples on third- or fourth-century gems, early so-called Passion sarcophagi, and two early fifth-century instances, one on ivory and the other on a wooden door panel. The discussion then turns to what is probably the oldest existing fully rendered crucifixion scene from an early Syrian manuscript, and images of the cross on sixth-century pilgrimage tokens from the Holy Land. The last

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 203 section of this chapter discusses the earliest pictorial images of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, including instances in which these two events appear to be shown simultaneously and sometimes conflated with a reference to Jesus’s transfiguration. Cross Shapes Cross motifs are found in a myriad of forms and materials, and because many are simple constructions of two intersecting lines, they are not necessarily all Christian symbols. Crosses commonly made on bread loaves or game boards incised into paving stones probably had no religious significance. When found on first-century Jewish burial boxes or tomb markers, these figures might be versions of the identifying, protective mark described by the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 9:4–5), insofar as they resemble a Hebrew taw (‫)ת‬, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, made to look like the Greek letter chi (X). Some early Christian writers did, in fact, perceive this biblical sign as referring to the cross and associated it with the sign Christians could make or receive on their foreheads.11 However, when roughly inscribed on the burial boxes (ossuaries), they might just be masons’ marks, made to indicate which side should be placed toward the back of the tomb.12 Thus, barring clear indicators, determining that a simple T or X-shaped mark has some intentional Christian meaning—much more a direct allusion to Christ’s crucifixion—is speculative. Nevertheless, early Christians were sealed with cross-marks at baptism and made the sign of the cross on their bodies on many other occasions. According to Tertullian, Christians traced the sign of the cross of their foreheads whenever they entered or left a room, when they bathed, dressed, sat down to eat, or went to bed.13 According to Athanasius, Anthony of Egypt (251–356) urged his disciples to make the sign of the cross on both their bodies and their dwellings in order to repel demons who would vanish the moment they caught sight of it.14 Similarly, Cyril of Jerusalem admonishes those about to be baptised that they should wear the cross openly and, like Tertullian, urges them to cross themselves when starting to eat, to sleep, to rise, to speak, and whenever they come or go.15 Yet, these crosses appear not to have been material objects as such. Rather, they were more or less indelible marks, made on the bodies of the faithful and probably recognisable mainly to demons (who feared it) and Christ (who would look for it at the final judgement).16 Possible Early Cross Figures

Two well-known, very early, and much debated examples of material crosses come from the lost cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The first was discovered on the wall of an upper room in that ancient Roman city; the second, a stucco decoration in a bakery. Both must be dated no later than the year the city was destroyed in the Vesuvius eruption (79 CE), which arguably make them the oldest known crosses in existence. However, scholars disagree about their original purpose and meaning. Rather than an applied figure, the Herculaneum cross, a fairly modest depression in the wall plaster, could have been made by a bracket constructed to support a shelf or a cabinet attached to the wall by nails and then removed at some point (Fig. 6.2).

204  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.2  Cross at Herculaneum, House of the Bicentenary. Source: Photo credit: REUTERS/Ciro De Luca, Alamy Stock Photo.

Some scholars suggest, however, that this could have held a wooden cross, hung on a wall of a small chapel or domestic shrine and then removed later, perhaps in order to avoid exposing its Christian owners to persecution.17 The purported cross at Pompeii is similarly problematic. A bas-relief figure that has a cruciform shape was found on the wall of a bakery in which archaeologists also found shrines (lararia) dedicated to various pagan domestic gods and a number of what were probably intended to be apotropaic, phallic images. The object itself is enigmatic and clearly exists among cult items related to traditional Roman cults. Some scholars have reasonably suggested that it might depict a tool used for the preparation of bread dough.18 Although Paul’s letter to the Roman church suggests that other Christians could have lived in either Herculaneum or Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius, given the very early date and the lack of any other clearly defined Christian artefacts from Herculaneum (or even from Rome), identifying these objects as crosses is debatable. At the very least, if these are Christian crosses, they would be extremely rare examples. Notably, no Christian cross symbol was found in the baptistery of the mid-third-century house church at Syria’s Dura-Europos. A few cross signs have been identified in the Roman catacombs but these almost certainly cannot be dated earlier than the late second century, as Christians began to bury their dead in the Roman catacombs after that time.19 Also, a number of cross figures, also mostly dated to the third century, have been found on Montanist inscriptions from Phrygia.20 As discussed later, some third-century engraved

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 205 gems display symbols of the cross and depictions of the crucifix, and a number of third-century papyri have monogrammatic figures that could be visual references to Christ on a cross. Nevertheless, interpreting earlier cruciform-shaped figures as Christian cross figures by reference to these later examples is problematically anachronistic. Literary references, too, mostly date to the late second or third century, including the assertions by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix that the cross sign is present everywhere and give the examples of the cross as evident in the figures of a ship’s mast, a farmer’s plough, or a military banner. Significantly, not only do these texts date to a century or so after the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, their authors never speak of these “evident crosses” as if they were made as such. They are always perceived in something that already existed in the external world.21 Papyrus Staurograms

In contrast to these controversial examples, some second-century papyrus leaves contain figures that some early Christians could have identified as a cross- or crucifixion-pictogram. This device was the combination of two Greek letters, tau and rho (T and P), that occurred within forms of the Greek word for cross (σταυρός) in order to represent the visual image of a crucified man. The loop at the top of the rho suggests a head, set on the upright of the cross.22 The figure, therefore, seems to have functioned as both an abbreviation for the word and as a reference to the crucifixion. It is also sometimes referred to as one of many “nomina sacra” (sacred names), or a way of using abbreviated devices to take the place of certain divine names or titles like “Θεός” (God), “Κύριος” (Lord), or “Χριστός” (Christ) in manuscripts. The earliest example of this character appears in an early Christian manuscript—the Papyrus Bodmer II—that preserves a portion of the Gospel of John and has been dated to around 200 CE. In these manuscripts, the staurogram appears about ten times and in each instance within a context that refers to the crucifixion of Christ. The staurogram, or the tau-rho, became a widespread device, over time appearing in mosaics and on metal liturgical vessels, tombstones, terracotta lamps, and finger rings. Some rings, in particular, though hard to date and difficult to place geographically, appear to incorporate cross-like devices like the staurogram just as often as they include other emblematic crosses in the guise of a ship’s mast or an anchor.23 Earliest Crucifixion Depictions While plain crosses and cross-types undoubtedly existed by the third century, depictions of Jesus’s crucifixion are not utterly absent from the visual record by this time. Perhaps the most famous and controversial second-century graffito, found in Rome and discussed in more detail in what follows, displays what may be the oldest surviving representation of Jesus’s crucifixion. Added to this early example are a few gems with images of the crucifixion that have been dated, somewhat

206  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension speculatively, to the third century. After that, the most clearly Christian images of Jesus’s death on the cross date to the early fifth century, and only two of these exist. Other surviving images of crucifixion do not date any earlier than the sixth century. The Alexamenos Graffito The so-called Alexamenos Graffito is a famous, but singular, instance of a crucifixion that was most likely made by a non-Christian as a mockery of Christian veneration of a crucified god (Fig. 6.3). Discovered in the 1860s on the wall of a

Figure 6.3 Alexamenos worships a donkey-headed god. Graffito from Rome, late 2nd or early 3rd cen.. Now in the Museo Palatino, Rome. Source: Photo credit: Alinari Archives/Art Resource, NY.

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 207 room that may have been part of a soldier’s barracks on Rome’s Palatine Hill, it is generally dated to the second century. Now housed in the Palatine Museum, the wall plaster depicts a crudely drawn crucified figure. Seen from behind, the victim appears to have a donkey’s head turned in profile and gazing down and to the left at a smaller figure who appears to be saluting it. The inscription, ΑΛΕ ΞΑΜΕΝΟϹ ϹΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ, may be translated, “Alexamenos worships [his] god” or “Alexamenos, worship God.”24 This graffito usually is understood to be a pagan caricature intended to mock the Christian worship of a crucified deity. It also corresponds to evidence that Jews and Christians were accused of worshipping the head of an ass or a donkey-god. Josephus, as well as the early second-century Christian writers Tertullian of Carthage and Minucius Felix, records such rumours.25 Tertullian specifically identifies the Latin author Cornelius Tacitus as one of the primary sources for the calumny.26 Tertullian also recounts an instance of a Carthaginian Jew (who was also a gladiator) displaying a cartoon of a man with the ears of an ass and one hoofed foot carrying a book and wearing a toga. The caption below this image reads “Onocoetes,” which could mean “offspring of an ass” or imply that Christians worshipped an ass.27 Another North African, Marcus Minucius Felix, also attests to the slander of the ass-headed god. In the words of a pagan interlocutor (Caecilius), Christians were rumoured to venerate the most degenerate of animals (an ass), for reasons that seem unfathomable but yet well suited to adherents of a religious sect that also worships a man punished by crucifixion. Thus, he says, they worship the kind of god they deserve. Defensively, Marcus records himself as responding that the story is merely based on hearsay, and that no one would be stupid enough to worship such an object.28 Gems With Crucifixion Scenes

Gems also show what are among the earliest examples of crucifixion images. Although the dates and provenance of most of these small items are not clearly established, most scholars accept that they could date to the mid-fourth century and believe most were likely originated in the eastern part of the Empire.29 One of these, a carnelian now in the British Museum and thought to be from Constanza in Romania, displays a figure without either canonical or non-canonical counterpart (Fig. 6.4). The inscribed design appears to show a crucified man, apparently standing on the ground, but affixed to a tau-shaped cross. He is nude and bearded, both details unusual for images of Jesus at this date. His face turns so that he appears to gaze off to his right. His arms are tied to the cross’s crossbar at the wrists and are bent at the elbows; his feet appear to be free of any restraints or nails. The identification with Christ’s crucifixion is based on two details: first, the Greek word above him, IXΘYC, is an acrostic for the title Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. Second, two groups of six, faceless figures, presumably meant to represent the 12 apostles, appear on either side of the crucified one. Wrapped in mantles, they are identical to one another and about half of Christ’s size.30 A second gem that bore distinct similarities to the Constanza carnelian was at one time in the private collection of a nineteenth-century British cleric, Rev. George

208  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.4 Crucifixion on the Constanza carnelian gemstone, Syria (?), mid 4th cen. Now in the British Museum, London. Source: Photo credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

Frederick Nott. Now lost, it is only known from a plaster cast currently owned by the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. The design is similar to the Romanian gem, with the exception that on this object Christ (or his cross) seems to be mounted on a column and raised above the ground. His arms are not bent, he faces forward rather than to the side, and a nimbus surrounds his head. Each of the 12 apostles on either side of him wears some kind of hat or helmet and garments that look vaguely military. The lead apostle in each group reaches out to touch the top of the column. Rather than the word IXΘYC, the legend that runs across the gem and beneath Christ’s arms reads EHCO XPECT, which may be completed in the lower part of the gem with the letters O and C on either side of a lamb (probably an unusual form of the name Jesus Christ). These two gems, enough like each other to suggest that they were not unique, are the only existing of their kind.31 Whether such gems were made especially for Christian patrons or could have been owned or used by non-Christians as well, perhaps as magical amulets, is uncertain. The latter possibility is supported by the existence of two other crucifixion gems, one of them a possible forgery. The first, an inscribed bloodstone now in the British Museum, is well authenticated (Fig. 6.5). Dated to the late second or early third century, it depicts a man crucified on a T- (or tau-) shaped cross. Because

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 209

Figure 6.5 Bloodstone amulet engraved with a crucifixion figure, Syria (?), late 2nd or early 3rd cen. Now in the British Museum, London. Source: Photo credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

its style, material, legend, and iconography are typical of Graeco-Roman magical amulets fabricated in Egypt and Syria and exported to all parts of the Roman Empire around that time, scholars include it among those types of objects.32 Like the Constanza carnelian, the crucified figure’s bearded and nude presentation is quite unlike other, contemporary images of Jesus. Additionally, while his arms appear to be tied to the horizontal crossbar by the wrists as in the other gems, his legs and feet hang free. The words inscribed above and around him probably

210  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension include a collection of magical formulae. The back of the gem contains a nine-line legend that appears to include the divine names: “Son, Father, Jesus Christ.”33 The amuletic character of the inscription suggests the use of Jesus’s name or title for incantations, a practice even mentioned in the New Testament Book of Acts, which recounts the case of travelling Jewish exorcists invoking the name of Jesus to cast out evil spirits (Acts 19:13–15). Another frequently discussed amulet is a cone-shaped hematite stone that appears to be engraved with crucified figure beneath the name “Orpheus Bakkikos.” A hole drilled at the top indicates that the stone probably was worn as a pendant. Usually dated to the second or third century, this was at one time in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (now the Berlin Bode Museum) but disappeared during the Second World War and is now known only from old black-and-white photos. Many modern scholars believe that it may have been a forgery, but its loss makes it difficult to establish its authenticity (or lack thereof).34 According to surviving reproductions, its face depicts a naked figure attached to a cross. He is slightly turned, his knees together and bent, his ankles attached to the base of the cross. Two large items, perhaps meant to be nails, lie at the bottom of the figure. A crescent moon is attached to the top of the cross, under an arc of seven stars (or possibly planets). The identifying inscription “Orpheus Bakkikos” suggests that this may not be an image of Christ but of the hero-god Orpheus, who is himself aligned with Bacchus. In any case, this artefact would have been at least syncretistic, if not entirely pagan. Fourth-Century Passion Sarcophagi

Although crucifixion scenes never appear on surviving early Christian sarcophagi, a group of so-called Passion sarcophagi dated to the middle of the fourth century feature a central christogram (the chi-rho monogram using the first two letter of the title “Christ”). On most of these objects, the christogram is surrounded by a wreath and mounted on an otherwise empty cross (Figs. 6.6 and 6.7). The christogram is primarily associated with the emperor Constantine, as it appeared as a miraculous sign to him either in the sky or in a dream, promising him victory over his enemies if he carried it into battle.35 Although this sign initially appears mainly on coin reverses and mainly on the standards or helmets of Roman soldiers,36 from the mid-fourth century onward, its exclusively military associations gradually declined, and it soon became a common motif found on all kinds of Christian artefacts, from gems and pottery lamps and tomb slabs, to monumental mosaics in churches and baptisteries. In particular, the christogram reappears on a number of mid-fourth-century sarcophagi fabricated during the 340s through the 370s, in Gallican as well as in Roman workshops. These sarcophagi feature a cross surmounted with this christogram as their characteristic central element. The composition resonates with textual references to the cross appearing like a military trophy.37 Mounted on an empty cross and surrounded by a beribboned wreath, the device is often described as the crux invicta (the unconquered cross). Doves sometimes perch on the cross’s horizontal arms, pecking at the wreath’s berries. Occasionally, two helmeted Roman soldiers sit

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 211

Figure 6.6 Passion sarcophagus from the Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome, mid 4th cen., Rome Central image of the christogram mounted on an empty cross with Simon carrying the cross, Jesus crowned, and Jesus before Pilate. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 6.7 Passion sarcophagus, mid-4th cen., Rome. Cain and Abel presenting their offerings to God, arrest of Peter and Paul, and Job with his wife. Now in the Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

beneath the cross’s arms, one on each side; the one on the viewer’s right normally leans on his shield as if sleeping. Although they recall depictions of captives of war on coin reverses, in these instances, they may represent the soldiers Pilate sent to guard Jesus’s tomb (Matthew 27:65–6). The cross then takes the place of the empty tomb while also alluding to the manner of Jesus’s death, which accounts for their often being referred to “anastasis” (or resurrection) types. One of these sarcophagi, now in the Vatican Museum, is divided into five architecturally distinct niches separated by spiralling columns with Corinthian capitals. Each niche depicts an episode from scripture (Fig. 6.6). On the far left, a Roman soldier guides Simon of Cyrene as he carries Christ’s cross; in the centre left, a Roman soldier crowns Jesus with a jewelled laurel crown instead of one made from thorns. At the centre is the wreathed christogram, held in the beak of an eagle. To the right of this crux invicta, a soldier ushers Jesus before Pilate, who turns aside, his face in his hand, while attendants pour water into a basin so that he may wash

212  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension his hands (cf. Matthew 27:24). These scenes are among the earliest depictions of episodes from the trial and death of Jesus and, undoubtedly, they deemphasise his suffering and clearly avoid showing his crucifixion. Here Christ does not undergo death; he rises from it. Another Roman sarcophagus employs olive trees rather than spiralling columns and niches to separate its five individual scenes (Fig. 6.7). The cross surmounted by a wreath-encircled christogram stands at the centre, the two Roman soldiers crouch beneath its arms, and doves perch on the horizontal bar. Here, rather than scenes from Jesus’s mockery and trial before Pilate, on the far left, Cain and Abel present their gifts to God. Immediately to the right two Roman soldiers grasp Peter’s arms. To the right of the central emblem, another soldier draws his sword to execute Paul. On the far right is an enigmatic scene that is usually identified as Job and his wife but might be Pilate with his wife. A different sarcophagus composition of this type shows the christogram in the centre of two groups of processing apostles (Fig. 6.8). A row of stars appears behind them and crowns suspended above their heads allude to their coming martyrdom. As they approach, they raise their right hands as if to venerate the empty cross. While the crux invicta on these sarcophagi has elements in common with the Roman military standard, it appears in a new setting, one that is clearly different from the reverse of a coin or the face of a public monument. While it alludes to victory, the funerary context suggests that the victory is Christ’s conquest of death and not of some earthly, human enemy. This victory is extended to those who die in the faith. The figure appears elsewhere in grave décor, from elaborate mosaic tomb covers to simple epitaphs, often accompanied with a dove holding an olive branch or by the inscription in pace (in peace) and symbolically alludes to the deceased’s hopes to be resurrected like Christ, thereby also conquering the final foe. The conquest here is one that Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:54–6: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?”

Figure 6.8 Sarcophagus with central christogram mounted on a cross flanked by apostles, mid 4th cen. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2483. Source: Photo: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 213

Figure 6.9 Sarcophagus with Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul, Peter’s arrest and Jesus before Pilate, third quarter 4th cen. Now in the Musée d’Arles antique, FAN 92.00.2487. Source: Photo: Author, used with permission of the Museum.

On a few early sarcophagi, the cross actually appears in Christ’s hand. Christ, standing on the rocky mount of Golgotha/Eden, holds a tall gemmed cross. Even apart from the fact that these crosses are studded with oval jewels, they are far too slender and short to support the body of a man condemned to crucifixion. Rather, here the cross is clearly Christ’s sceptre, staff of power, or standard of victory.38 In one, now in the Vatican Museum, the relatively diminutive figures of Peter and Paul stand at Christ’s left and right. Columns divide the frieze into three niches; on the left two Roman soldiers drive Peter to his execution; on the right Jesus stands between two Roman soldiers presumably bringing him before Pilate (Fig. 6.9). This composition has a parallel in a fourth-century glass paten recently found in south-eastern Spain (Fig. 6.10).39 A group of objects with more elaborate Passion cycles appear on fourth-century sarcophagi. These include more scenes from the narrative, often using episodes from all four Gospels. Most of these depict Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayal, arrest, and trial.40 However, they also omit any explicit portrayal of the crucifixion, even though they show the events leading up to and following it. For example, a fragmentary front frieze of a Gallican sarcophagus (now in Arles) depicts a complex sequence of scenes on its lower register. It starts from the left with the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas’s betrayal, and Jesus before Pilate at the centre (the images from the upper section are missing). It then immediately skips to a scene of the women coming to the empty tomb, Christ’s post-resurrection appearance to his disciples, and ends on the far right with Christ’s ascension.41 A parallel omission of crucifixion occurs in other places, including on the lid of a late fourth-century ivory casket now in the Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia (Italy), and on the cycle of mosaic panels in the late fifth-century Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, discussed in Chapter 5. On the top register of the Brescia Casket lid the iconography depicts Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, his arrest, and Peter’s denial; on the lower register Jesus appears before Caiaphas

214  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.10 Glass paten, 4th cen. Now in the Archaeological Museum, Linares, Jaen Province (Spain). Source: Photo credit: José Lucas/Alamy Stock Photo.

and Annas, then before Pilate (Fig. 6.11).42 As discussed in Chapter 5, the mosaic cycle on the upper side of the nave of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo begins with a scene of the Last Supper and proceeds through the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas’s betrayal, Jesus’s trial before Caiaphas, Peter’s denial, and Jesus before Pilate. The scene of Simon of Cyrene bearing the cross to Golgotha is immediately followed by a depiction of the women coming to the empty tomb and Jesus’s post-resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus (Fig. 6.12). Significantly, a depiction of the actual crucifixion is conspicuously missing where one would expect it, between the image of Jesus on the way to Golgotha (cf. Fig. 5.14) and the women approaching the empty tomb (cf. Fig. 6.20). Fifth-Century Crucifixion Images

The crucifixion scene that was evidently omitted in these early Passion sarcophagi and even later ivory and mosaic passion cycles eventually appear on two early fifth-century artefacts. One of these images appears on one of four surviving ivory panels of a small casket in the British Museum. Known as the Maskell ivories after their nineteenth-century owner, the box was probably fabricated in Rome around 420 CE and likely designed as either a reliquary or a container for

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 215

Figure 6.11 The Brescia Casket (lid), ivory, from northern Italy (perhaps Milan), ca. 380s. Now in the Brescia Museo Civico dell’Eta Cristiana. Source: Photo credit: DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 6.12  Right nave wall, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, late 5th cen. Source: Photo credit: VividaPhotoPC/Alamy Stock Photo.

216  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.13 Ivory plaques with scenes from Christ’s Passion and Resurrection (the “Maskell Casket”), ca. 420–30, from northern Italy or Rome. Now in the British Museum, London. Source: Photo credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

consecrated eucharistic bread. As a group, the four panels display scenes from Christ’s passion, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances (Fig. 6.13). The panels are of equal size (7.5 × 9.8 cm) and show the work of a skilled artisan working in a classicising style.43 The iconography of all four scenes is nearly unprecedented, each perhaps the earliest surviving example of its subject. The first panel conflates several episodes from Jesus’s trial. On the left, Pilate, sitting on an elevated throne, turns away to wash his hands. In the centre, Jesus carries his cross off to Golgotha following the direction of a Roman soldier. On the right is a depiction of Peter’s denial. Peter warms himself at a charcoal fire while a maidservant points at him accusingly; the rooster, about to crow, perches above (cf. Matthew 26:69–75). The crucifixion panel juxtaposes Christ crucified with Judas’s suicide. On the left, Judas hangs from a tree; his moneybag lies open on the ground, spilling its contents (cf. Matthew 27.3–5), its drawstring evoking a slithering serpent. Judas’s lifeless body dramatically contrasts with Christ’s living body on the cross. The tree on which he hangs arches gracefully to draw the viewer’s eye to the crucified Christ

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 217 to the right. Rather than suffering or dead, Jesus is portrayed as vigorously alive, arms outstretched, and eyes wide open. His expression is almost unemotional; he exhibits no signs of suffering. He wears only a loincloth (subligaculum), and his body shows no evidence of physical agony. the nails through his palms are the only indication of his suspension; his feet are neither bound nor nailed and, although the image implies the possibility of a footrest (suppedaneum), he appears to be supporting his own weight on the cross. Above his head Pilate’s plaque (in the form of a tabula ansata—a tablet with protruding handles) bears the abbreviated title, REX IUD (Rex Iudaeorum = “King of the Jews”). Jesus’s mother and the Beloved Disciple stand between the figures of Judas and Jesus (cf. John 19.26). On the right, a Roman soldier appears to be driving his lance into Christ’s side. The weapon is lost, but its end is still visible in the soldier’s right hand, and the wound is apparent. The third scene depicts two women arriving at the empty tomb of the resurrection (Matthew 28.1). Contrary to the biblical description, Jesus’s tomb is shown as a small, elaborate monument. Corinthian columns rise on either side of a decoratively carved double door. A brick cupola pierced with windows and covered by a peaked tiled roof tops this small, cubical structure. The structure with its lion’s head door knocker, may have been a visual reference to the actual shrine at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The relief carvings on the right-hand door depict Christ’s raising of Lazarus above and what appears to be a depiction of Job in mourning. The doors themselves are slightly ajar allowing a glimpse of the empty slab inside. The two women stand on either side of the tomb, behind the pair of Roman guards who evidently have fallen asleep leaning on their shields.44 The final scene shows one of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to four of his apostles. One of them, Thomas, puts his index finger into Christ’s side wound (John 20.19–29). Jesus stands on a small platform and his raised left hand makes the gesture of an orator, indicating that he is delivering his final teachings to his disciples. Here, as in the crucifixion panel, Jesus has a halo. Perhaps less than a decade after the Maskell ivories were produced, a very different depiction of the crucifixion was carved, also in Rome, but on a panel of the large, central wooden doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina (Fig. 6.14). Among the smaller of an ensemble of 28 carved scenes that included episodes from both the Old and New Testaments, the crucifixion scene is not only smaller than many of the other door’s panels, but also in the upper left corner—almost out of the viewer’s range of vision.45 This composition shows Christ for the first time between the two thieves that the Gospel accounts say were crucified with him (cf. Matthew 27:38; Mark 15:27; Luke 23:32; John 19:18). The thieves are about half of Jesus’s height and all three are naked except for loincloths. Here Christ is bearded and has long hair. All three figures face forward, their faces expressionless and arms outstretched, almost as if they are in the posture of prayer rather than suspended on crosses.46 Yet, the ends of the crosses’ horizontal beams are visible and nails appear to be driven through the palms of their hands. The three appear to stand on the ground rather than hang from crosses. Their eyes are open, and they show no visible signs of suffering. Behind the group, a three-gabled brick structure could be meant to represent Jerusalem’s

218  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.14 Crucifixion scene from a wooden panel on the door of the Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, ca. 432. Source: Photo credit: Author.

city walls or possibly the walls of the basilica founded by Constantine on the site of the crucifixion.47 No other figures (e.g., Mary, the Beloved Disciple, the centurion, etc.) appear in the scene. Both of these early fifth-century crucifixion images present Jesus as almost robustly alive on the cross. His physical appearance and facial expressions do not suggest suffering and his body is not obviously bloody or bruised. Following the symbolism of the earlier passion sarcophagi, the message appears to be one of overcoming death, not succumbing to it. Examples From the Sixth Century and Later No other examples survive from the fifth century, though common sense suggests that there must have been others. Even textual evidence is scant. Only one single mention of a crucifixion image occurs in the writings of Gregory of Tours (d. 594). Gregory reports the story of a crucifix in the city of Narbonne, at the Cathedral of Saint-Just, probably constructed sometime in the 440s. According to the text, this crucifix also seems to depict Jesus as naked, which apparently caused something of a scandal at that time and place, and even prompted a miracle. According to Gregory, a certain priest named Basileus experienced a vision in which a stranger

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 219 appeared to him, saying, “All of you are clothed in various garments, but you see me always naked. Come now as quickly as possible, cover me with a curtain!” Apparently, the priest did not understand the import of the vision, so the stranger returned and repeated his demand. When the stranger showed up a third time, he hit the priest and threatened death if he did not obey. The priest finally went to his bishop to ask what to do and the bishop ordered that image be covered with a curtain.48 The story of the Narbonne crucifix may give context to the shift in Jesus’s garments in subsequent images of the crucifixion, which depict him covered from shoulders to ankles by a purple robe, rather than wearing only a loincloth (as on the Maskell ivory and Santa Sabina panels). One of the first of these purple-robed images survives on a full-page illumination from the Syrian Gospel of Rabbula. Usually dated to 586, it comes from the Monastery of St. John of Zagba and is now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence.49 The page is divided into two parts. The upper section (about twothirds of the space) depicts Christ’s crucifixion. The lower section portrays two different episodes associated with his resurrection: two women meeting the angel at the empty tomb and then encountering Jesus on the way to Galilee (Matthew 28.1–10). The crucifixion is depicted in a style that art historians often refer to as the “eastern” or “Syrian” type. Here, Christ is fastened to the cross with nails in his palms and both ankles. He has long dark hair and a beard, a gold halo banded with blue, and he wears a sleeveless purple robe with two vertical gold stripes (Fig. 6.15). His eyes are open, but his head inclines slightly toward his right shoulder; his face now indicating his sorrow suggests his sorrow or physical pain. The two crucified thieves are shown slightly lower and shorter than (or perhaps slightly behind) Christ. Whereas Christ here is fully clothed, they are naked except for knotted skirtlike garments (perizomata) that cover them from their hips to their upper thighs. Also different from Christ, ropes across their bare chests bind them to their crosses; like Christ, however, the two thieves have nails through their palms and ankles. The crucifixion scene is set outdoors against the backdrop of Jerusalem’s two hills, Agra and Gareb. Small images of the sun and the moon appear on either side of Christ. The entire scene is populated with a number of other characters as well. On the left are Jesus’s mother and the Beloved Disciple. On either side of Jesus are two figures, one holding up a lance to his right side and identified by name as Longinus. The other, unidentified, but later given the name Stephaton, holds up a sponge in his right hand and a bucket of vinegar or sour wine in his left (cf. Matt 27.48). At the foot of the cross are three men, apparently casting lots for Christ’s garments (Matt 27.35). On the far right is a group of women onlookers (Matt 27.55). The purple garment (colobium) that Jesus wears may refer to the soldiers’ mocking him by garbing him in elegant, purple robes and a crown of thorns (cf. Luke 23.11; John 19.2). This garment regularly reappears in subsequent crucifixion images through the early Middle Ages, including on the lid of a seventhcentury Palestinian reliquary now in the Vatican Museum (the Sancta Sanctorum reliquary), an eighth-century fresco in the Roman church of Santa Maria Antiqua, an eighth-century icon at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and an

220  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.15 Crucifixion (above) and scene of the empty tomb (below), Rabbula Gospels, Syria, ca. 586, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 221 eighth- or ninth-century enamelled reliquary box now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. These crucifixion scenes also include some of the same figures as on the Rabbula manuscript illumination and show certain compositional similarities. Jesus’s mother usually stands on the left side of the cross with the Beloved Disciple on the right. The fresco from Santa Maria Antiqua also includes the two attendants with spear and sponge, while the Sinai icon shows the soldiers gambling for Jesus’s tunic and the two semi-nude thieves in the background. The Sinai icon also shows blood and water streaming from the wound in his side. These later images now contain elements that become standard in mediaeval iconography. Pilgrimage Tokens

While these images were emerging, another type of crucifixion image began to turn up on small metal, clay, or glass vessels (ampullae) made in Palestine, most used as flasks to hold oil that had been poured over a fragment of the True Cross.50 Once Constantine built the shrine at the site identified as Christ’s tomb and his mother, Helena, was said to have discovered the remains of the cross, pilgrims began to arrive in Jerusalem to visit the sacred sites and to venerate the relics of the holy wood. Before they returned home, they would have bought these small bottles as souvenirs. Many depict biblical scenes associated with the places they visited, in particular the site of Golgotha and the small house-like structure over the place identified as the site of Christ’s empty tomb within the Anastasis (resurrection) rotunda. Some bear inscriptions that typically include legends such as, “Oil of the wood (or tree) of life from the holy places of Christ.”51 The best known and most elaborately decorated of these artefacts are a group of 38 sixth- or seventh-century pewter or lead vials preserved in the treasuries of the Italian cathedrals of Monza and Bobbio. Some show a variety of scenes from the life of Christ, including the adoration of the magi, the baptism, doubting Thomas, or the ascension, but the large majority (29) include crucifixion scenes, a few of which are set above an image of the women arriving at the empty tomb on Easter morning. One example shows the crucifixion on the obverse side and the resurrection on the reverse side (Fig. 6.16). The shape of the tomb in these instances depicts the kind of small structure that marked and covered the tomb of Christ at the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre rather than the rock-hewn grave described in the New Testament (cf. Matthew 27:59 and parallels). These objects’ depictions of the crucifixion vary. In a small number of instances Christ wears the colobium and has a cruciform halo, his arms are bent at the elbows with hands outstretched, and his feet are together. The two thieves who flank him are nude from the waist up. Sometimes their hands seem to be bound behind their backs; in other instances, their arms are bent at the elbows and their hands outstretched, palms forward. Normally their knees are bent with legs apart. No horizontal beam appears, but an upright stake is visible above their heads. Most often, the cross has no corpus. Rather, Christ is only shown as a bust portrait hovering over the cross. The title (or charge against Jesus) set over the cross with the

222  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.16 Pilgrim’s ampulla with scenes of the crucifixion (front) and empty tomb (back), Palestine, 6th cen.. Source: © Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington, DC.

text “the King of the Jews” or “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37, John 19:19–32) is indicated, often, by a small, rectangularly shaped plaque. The sun and moon appear to either side of Christ’s head in all of these images. The two thieves are here again nude from the waist up. In some instances, the cross is an equal-armed figure, set up on a tall column; other times, it appears to be constructed of palm branches, suggesting a tree of life or, perhaps, of victory. Almost always, the cross rises from the rock of Golgotha, from which four rivers stream, thus making a connection between Golgotha and Eden (cf. Genesis 2:10). In nearly every example, two smaller figures kneel at the base of the cross, evidently venerating the cross and even reaching out to touch it. Their presence in the image combines the historical image of the crucifixion with the devotional practice of pilgrims at the site of Golgotha in the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre.52 Reliquaries

Along with modest ampullae, a more elaborately made set of items contained fragments of the True Cross. The oldest surviving example of these is a small wooden box made in the late sixth or early seventh century to hold stones or bits of wood, some of which bear labels identifying the sites from which they were collected (loca sancta). Initially kept in the Sancta Sanctorum of the Lateran Palace, it resides now in the Vatican Museum. The top of the box’s sliding lid displays a cross intersected with beams of light within a dark oval-shaped mandorla. On the inside of the lid, five small paintings in tempera and gold leaf depict a series of five

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 223 scenes from Christ’s life: the nativity, the baptism, the empty tomb, the ascension, and the crucifixion. The crucifixion scene, the largest of the five, takes up the central section and shows a scene that parallels the Rabbula manuscript crucifixion. Christ wears the colobium; the bare-chested thieves wear loincloths; the spear- and sponge-bearers, Mary, and the Beloved Disciple all flank him. Again, in the background are the hills of Agra and Gareb.53 Later True Cross reliquaries display similar iconography. One, a cruciform casket, was commissioned by Pope Paschal I (817–824) and kept in the Sancta Sanctorum of the Lateran Palace. The other, an early ninth-century rectangular box known as the Fieschi Morgan reliquary, is now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The Sancta Sanctorum reliquary opens to reveal five small compartments for relics. Its front (top) surface shows a series of episodes from Christ’s nativity and early life: the annunciation, Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, the nativity, the adoration of the magi, the presentation in the temple, and Jesus’s baptism by John. Inside is a dedicatory inscription addressed to the Virgin Mary from the Pope: “Please accept, my sovereign, queen of the world, this vexillum of a Cross, which Bishop Paschal offers you.”54 The Metropolitan Museum reliquary’s sliding lid opens to reveal a series of compartments, one of them cross-shaped to indicate the precise place where the True Cross fragment would have been inserted. A series of four episodes from Christ’s life (annunciation, nativity, crucifixion, and resurrection) appear on the underside of the lid, rather than on the top. A crucifixion scene dominates the cloisonné (enamel) lid. Here Christ wears the colobium and stands upon the suppendaneum. Mary and the Beloved Disciple stand to either side. Busts of saints and apostles fill the four-sided border of the casket’s lid. This object was most likely made in the early ninth century, probably in Syria, Palestine, or Constantinople. Thus, from an early dearth of crucifixion images to their emergence and finally to their proliferation in the early Middle Ages, one can observe changes in context, composition, and function. The earliest passion images emphasise Christ’s resurrection more than his death, and even the earliest crucifixion images lack any evidence of his suffering. The discovery (or invention) of the site of his death and empty tomb in Jerusalem, as well as remains of the actual cross, prompted a new type of imagery, at first associated primarily with pilgrimage but, over time, and as small pieces of the holy wood of the cross began to be dispersed across the world as sacred relics, images of the crucifixion gradually became central to the Christian iconographic canon. Depictions of Jesus’s Resurrection According to Paul, Christ’s resurrection was the “first fruits” of those who had died (1 Corinthians 15:20). Thus, the resurrection of Christ is both prototype and promise. Like portrayals of the crucifixion, however, explicit representations of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, or even images of his empty tomb are unknown before the late fourth century. The single exception may be a fresco in the Dura-Europos baptistery, which might represent the three women approaching Jesus’s tomb on Easter

224  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension morning.55 Earlier, indirect representations of the resurrection include the representation of the empty cross surmounted by the wreathed christogram on the passion sarcophagi discussed earlier. Also, the compositions that show Christ transcendent and either standing on the rock of Paradise or seated on a jewelled throne or a cosmic orb certainly depict the resurrected Christ.56 Just as depictions of Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice may have been intended to stand in for the missing images of Jesus on the cross in the third and fourth centuries, the figure of an otherwise inexplicably naked Daniel might also serve as a type of the resurrected Christ (his grave wrappings left behind in the tomb) and, therefore, also allude to the future resurrection of the Christian (cf. Figs. 1.10, 3.1).57 Understanding the figure of Daniel as a figural allusion to Jesus’s resurrection may be due to a narrative detail in the biblical text. The hero is sealed in the den of lions by means of a great stone laid over the mouth of the cave. The next morning, at daybreak, the king returns to the den to find Daniel alive instead of dead—rescued by a mysterious saviour figure. His nudity in the iconography could allude to his rebirth from death to life. Hippolytus, in a commentary on the book of Daniel, notes the prophet’s supernatural deliverance by the “one in human form” (Daniel 10:15–19) as a foreshadowing of the restoration of the physical body for all humanity; he has the prophet proclaim that while in prison his strength was restored, just as when in death, life and its glory pass away, Christ stretches forth his hand and raises the living from the dead—from Hades to the resurrection.58 Beginning in the fifth century, pictorial representations of an empty tomb structure, guarded by an angel and visited by two or three women, begin to appear with some regularity. Many of these early compositions, particularly those on pilgrimage objects, appear near to or alongside depictions of the crucifixion. For example, another panel on the same wooden doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome with the crucifixion carving depicts two women approaching a peak-roof architectural structure guarded by a winged angel who makes a gesture of greeting.59 The slightly earlier ivory casket in the British Museum (discussed above), depicts Christ’s trial, passion, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances on its four sides. On the panel showing the empty tomb, two women stand on either side of the tomb, their hands to their cheeks in gestures that intimate grief (cf. Fig. 6.13). In front of them sit two Roman soldiers who appear to be asleep, leaning on their spears and shields. The tomb in this resurrection image is small and square, with columns on either side of its slightly open double doors. The door on the right has been broken off; the other has a round door pull in the shape of a lion’s head, and the small carved image of Jesus raising Lazarus is clear reference to (or prediction of) his own resurrection. The opening between the doors gives a peek into the tomb’s interior with its empty bier draped with grave clothes. While the lower part of the tomb is square, it is surmounted by a cylindrical, domed structure punctuated by round-topped windows. Another early fifth-century work, an ivory diptych from Rome (now in Milan) shows a highly refined style similar to the British Museum casket. Also here, a small brick building topped by a drum-type cupola looks more like a typical Roman mausoleum, although its shape, too, was likely inspired by the aedicula in

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 225 Jerusalem’s Anastasis rotunda. Women bow or kneel before a young man seated in front of the shrine. The young man has a halo, holds a scroll, and makes a gesture of greeting (or blessing). On the roof, two Roman guards respond with gestures of fear or awe. In the sky over their heads are the symbols for Matthew (a winged man) and Luke (the ox). As on the Maskell casket, small decorative scenes appear on the doors of the tomb, one of Jesus raising Lazarus and the other of Jesus speaking to Zacchaeus (Fig. 6.17). The details in the image appear to follow the narrative of the Gospel of Matthew, which describes the angel announcing the resurrection to the two Marys (Mary Magdalene and “the other” Mary, Matthew 28:1–8). A very different composition, also on an ivory (now in Munich) and from nearly the same time period, is commonly identified as a representation of Christ’s ascension but might be best taken as another conflation of narratives, this time of the resurrection and the ascension. Known as the Reidersche Tafel, it shows Jesus confidently striding upwards over a mountainous bank to grasp God’s right hand that reaches down out of a cloud, evidently to welcome him into heaven (Fig. 6.18). Beneath Jesus’s feet crouch two figures. One shields his eyes while the other makes a gesture of awestruck wonder. Below, three veiled women proceed toward a small square masonry structure with a double door and topped by a columned drum. A wingless male figure, seated on a rock, gestures toward them in greeting. Above, two standing Roman guards (one apparently sleeping) lean on the roof of the structure’s lower chamber. Birds perch in an olive tree in the background. The three women here probably represent Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:1). Behind the small building stand two men, either the Roman soldiers mentioned in Matthew’s narrative or the apostles Peter and John, whom Mary called to the scene in John’s version (John 20:2). This puzzling composition seems to depict several narratives simultaneously: the ascension, the transfiguration, and the women’s discovery of the empty tomb on Easter morning. The depiction of Jesus rising up to heaven and the olive tree in the background suggests the story of his ascension on the Mount of Olives. And the little square structure, topped by a cylindrical drum, might depict a shrine (the so-called Imbomon) supposed to have been built by a Roman noble woman, Poemenia, sometime in the 380s or 390s, at that supposed site.60 Other depictions of Jesus climbing up to grasp the hand of God show up on fragments of two late fourth-century sarcophagi from Gaul, one of which clearly also includes small figures of two apostles, again suggesting a link to the transfiguration narrative.61 However, a very different rendering of Jesus’s resurrection or ascension appears on the long side of a small, early fifth-century marble casket or reliquary, probably made in north Italy and now in Ravenna’s Archiepiscopal Museum (Fig. 6.19). In this instance, two (rather than three) women kneel before Christ as he mounts a small step, presumably into heaven, to grasp the hand of God. He holds a sceptre-like cross in his left hand. However, the depicted rectangular structure with its arched door and crenellated rampart suggests the empty tomb. Once again, the iconography suggests a conjunction of two biblical episodes, in this case Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Here, instead of the three women coming to the tomb, this scene depicts Jesus greeting Mary Magdalene

226  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.17  The three Marys at the tomb, Ivory diptych from Rome, ca. 400. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 227

Figure 6.18 Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, ivory probably from Milan or Rome, ca, 400. Now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. Source: Photo credit: INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo.

228  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.19  Marble reliquary of SS. Julittta and Quiricus, side with resurrection and ascension Ravenna, Museo Arcivescovile. Source: Photo credit: German Archaeological Institute, Rome.

and the other Mary as in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 28:9), and their taking hold of his feet to worship him Additional images of the empty tomb (two women meeting an angel at a small tomb) occur on the lower register of many sixth-century pilgrims’ souvenir ampullae with crucifixion images (cf. Fig. 6.16). In these compositions, the empty tomb takes a variety of architectural forms, but almost all of them show a small gabled structure with elaborate gates closing the front face and set under an arch that suggests the dome of the anastasis rotunda in the Holy Sepulchre. One of these, discussed previously, has its entire reverse face taken up with the image of the three women coming to the tomb and the legend ANECTIO + KYRIOC (“the resurrection of the Lord”). These schematic designs, different as they are, give indication of how the actual fourth-century shrine appeared, rather than depicting the rock-cut tomb as described in the Gospels (cf. Matthew 27:60 and parallels). As just noted, one of the panels of the early sixth-century mosaic program in Ravenna’s Sant’Apollinare Nuovo portrays the angel greeting the two women at the empty tomb, a scene immediately following a depiction of Simon carrying the cross. Here the tomb is a small, circular, open-air temple, inside of which we see what might be an empty bier (Fig. 6.20). The late sixth-century Rabbula gospel illumination with the depiction of the crucifixion also portrays the empty tomb in a horizontal panel directly under the crucifixion scene. Serving more as illustration than representational metaphor, the composition is comparatively complex. The angel, seated to the left of a small, ornate aedicula in the centre of the picture, greets two women. The tomb’s doors

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 229

Figure 6.20  Sant’Apollinare mosaic, women arriving at the empty tomb. Source: Photo credit: Arthur Urbano, used with permission.

almost appear to be exploding with rays of light that strike down three Roman soldiers in the foreground. On the right, Jesus greets the same two women who kneel before him. One of the women (Mary Magdalene?) has a halo, along with Christ and the angel. These resurrection images emerge alongside depictions of the crucifixion and are similarly late. They never actually show Christ rising from the grave, but rather emphasise the empty tomb, the arrival of the women, and the angel’s presence. Eventually, as in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo’s small mosaics, one of which shows the disciples with Christ on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–27), the Ravenna casket’s image of the women encountering Jesus and grasping his feet in veneration (cf. Fig. 6.19), or the Maskell casket’s depiction of the doubting Thomas reaching to touch the risen Christ’s wounds (cf. Fig. 6.13), Christ’s resurrection is assured. Yet, at least a few examples appear to combine depictions of the resurrection with the transfiguration and the ascension. It may be that the conflation of scenes confused the resurrection and ascensions stories or implied that they were nearly simultaneous events, rather than taking place 40 days apart, but the combination might also have focused on what the three stories (transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension) have in common: Christ’s ability to be physically transformed and, as such, able to be received into heaven in his bodily form.

230  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension Images of the Ascension Added to the images of Christ’s ascension, mentioned earlier, which seem to be combined with images of his resurrection, are a few depictions of the ascension scene by itself. One of these, another small, early fifth-century wooden panel from the door of Rome’s Basilica of Santa Sabina, shows two angels who appear to pull Jesus up to heaven. One angel grasps both of Christ’s hands, the other the back of his head. A third angel’s gesture directs the viewer to observe the scene. No divine hand reaches down to help. Below, four witnesses assume varying postures. One buries his head in his hands; the three others gaze up in evident astonishment (Fig. 6.21). Portrayals of the ascension also appear on fifth-century pottery lamps from North Africa. These lamps bear figures of Christ standing, facing forward, bearing a cross over his left shoulder and what looks like a scroll in his right hand. The four creatures of Revelation appear again, in this instance outside of the orb or mandorla that surrounds Christ’s body. Beneath his feet two angels appear to be bearing him upward. In an unusual addition, the upper sections of these lamps’ spouts depict two men, their faces turned upward; one gestures his acclamation. The two figures on the spout likely represent the two men in white mentioned in the Book of Acts (Acts 1:10).62 Other characters from the Acts narrative (e.g., the Virgin Mary or the 11 apostles) are missing from all these above-described items. The Virgin Mary and the apostles only begin to be found in surviving ascension depictions that date to the sixth and seventh centuries, among them images on pilgrims’ souvenir ampullae from the Holy Land, a Byzantine gold medallion now in the British Museum, a number of marriage rings with scenes from the life of Christ, and another wellknown illumination from the sixth-century Syriac Gospels of Rabbula (Fig. 6.22). In these images, Jesus sits or stands within a radiant aureole (mandorla), being borne to heaven by two or four angels.63 These new types include the Virgin, usually in the midst of the apostles and making the gesture of prayer, although scripture does not specifically mention her presence. Although Mary most often appears facing forward (in contrast to the apostles who turn to look upward), she sometimes appears in profile, her head turned up and her hands stretched toward her divine son. The depiction of the ascension on the Rabbula illumination displays some distinctive features. Here Christ’s oval mandorla is supported by Ezekiel’s envisioned cherubic chariot (Ezekiel 1:4–8 and 10:8–14) and flanked by four flying angels, two of whom bear crowns. The inclusion of Ezekiel’s chariot suggests the prophet’s pre-view of this Christological event and also acts as another reference to Christ’s second coming, with its visual links to the Book of Revelation.64 Inside his mandorla, Christ stands rather than sits; his left hand holds an unfurled scroll and his right makes a gesture of blessing (cf. Luke 24:50). The sun and moon appear in the upper corners. Below, the Virgin Mary poses, face forward, in the prayer stance at the centre. To the left and right, two angelic figures turn to address the 12 apostles (now including Paul). Plainly intended to be the two men in white of

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 231

Figure 6.21 Wooden door panel with scene of Jesus’s ascension, from the Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, ca. 432. Source: Photo credit: Author.

232  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Figure 6.22  Ascension, Rabbula Gospels, Syria, ca. 586, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence. Source: Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 233 Acts 1:11, their gestures illustrate their words, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?” This basic composition—Jesus’s ascent in a mandorla carried or attended by angels, a crowd of wonder-struck apostles with Mary at the centre—occurs in a variety of other contexts, including on a sixth-century illuminated box of Holy Land souvenirs, now in the Vatican Museum, and in a sixth-century chapel from the Monastery of Apollo at Bawit, now in Cairo’s Coptic Museum. Most eastern icons of the ascension show this type as well as a version that appears in the ninthcentury dome mosaic of the church of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, modified so as to fit the circular space of the vault. These no longer evoke the transfiguration or resurrection accounts so much as the enthronement of Christ in heaven. Yet, even in these, minor variants continue to appear. Sometimes Jesus stands; other times he sits on a throne. Sometimes the two men in white are shown; other times they are omitted. After the sixth century, Ezekiel’s cherubic chariot rarely, if ever, appears. Mary usually is centrally placed, faces front, and poses as an orant, but occasionally she stands in profile, opposite to and facing St. Peter. Ascension depictions, fabricated in Byzantine-controlled southern Italy, continue to draw upon the eastern-type composition that show Christ seated within a mandorla being supported by four angels. Conclusion Although it appears that the cross and crucifix are missing from the material record in the first centuries of Christianity, the reality is that they were not so much absent as present in other ways, as figures seen in ships’ masts or in depictions of Isaac’s willing sacrifice. In the early passion sarcophagi, the cross was empty only in a sense, as it is surmounted by a christogram within a wreath as a symbol of victory over death. When actual depictions of the crucifixion did finally appear in the material record, they represented Christ as upright and vigorously alive rather than suffering, bleeding, and dying. He receives the crown of victory rather than the crown of thorns. Christ’s grief and pain were not yet part of the message of salvation; the imagery concentrated on his conquest of death, without a trace of any reference to shame, scandal, or defeat. The images of the resurrection and ascension are similarly keyed to representing Christ as divinely powerful, leaving an empty tomb, received by the manus dei, and bodily conveyed to heaven by angelic beings where he will be seated on a throne at God’s right hand. Below, the witnesses’ facial expressions and gestures reveal their awe and amazement. To the extent that Christ’s physical death finally appeared in visual art, it was only as a precursor to the scene of his triumphant resurrection, ascension, and cosmic enthronement. The cross, then, as it first appears is appropriately a gemmed sceptre rather than an instrument of torture. Thus, that it should also resemble a military standard indicating victory over an enemy makes all the sense in the world. As with all early Christian art, the beliefs and practices of early Christians are not unconnected to what they saw painted on the walls of their tombs, carved on their

234  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension coffins, decorating their rings or dishware, or finally displayed on the walls of their churches. These beliefs and practices similarly were not disengaged from or even oblivious to the debates, developing doctrines and conciliar definitions regarding the person and work of Christ, even though those discussions may have taken place at a somewhat more erudite level than many of the faithful might have engaged. Perhaps as important, however, in understanding early Christian art is the role of the church and its sacraments in mediating (and assuring) the salvation of the faithful. From the symbols that emerged in the third century that alluded to the promise of a blissful paradise in the hereafter, to the biblical stories that recalled God’s deliverance of Old Testament heroes from violent death by water, fire, or wild beasts, to the depiction of Jesus as a healer, miracle worker, and life restorer that came to prominence in the late third and early fourth century, these subjects evoke Christian hope and even consolation. In time, the subject matter becomes more focused on the glory and power of a divine Christ who is equal to his Father in his nature and eternity, who has ascended into heaven to reign over and judge the whole cosmos, and whose death on the cross is only the beginning of his victory and not the last word. Notes 1 For example, Snyder, Ante Pacem, at 64, states, “All the early [Christian] symbols emphasize victory, peace, and security in the face of adversity. There is no place in the third century for a crucified Christ, or a symbol of divine death.” Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca A. Parker echo this view in Saving Paradise (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), ix–x and 62–3. Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, 109, attributes a “motive of reverence or conservatism” that ensured that the death of Jesus was not openly displayed. Franz Cumont coined the term “crypto-Christians” in reference to Christian reticence to display the cross openly, “Les inscriptions chrétiennes d l’Asie Mineure,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 15 (1895): 245–99, at 249–50. 2 Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 18.1; also Phil. 8.2 and Trall. 10, 11.2. See also Barn. 5–7. 3 Melito, Peri pascha. 4 For example, Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 21–2, 41, 46, 50, and 55. 5 Clement, Protrep. 11.114.1–4. 6 Origen, Cels. 1.68. Also see Cels. 7.16–17. 7 Melito of Sardis, Pasch, 3–8. 8 Tertullian, Jud. 10.6, and 13.20–2. See also Irenaeus, Haer. 4.5.4. 9 See also Irenaeus, Haer, 4.5.4; Ambrose, Abr. 1.8; John Chrysostom, Hom. Gen. 47.3; also Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 29. 10 Augustine, Civ. 16.32. For Isaac as a Christ-type, see Robin M. Jensen, "Isaac's Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Image and Text." Biblical Interpretation 2 (1994): 85–110, with helpful bibliography. On Susanna as another Old Testament figure of Christ’s false accusation and trial, see Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Susanna as a Type of Christ,” Studies in Iconography 20 (1999): 101–53. 11 For example, see Tertullian, Marc. 3.22 and Adv. Jud. 11; Cyprian, Test. 2.22; and Origen, Sel. Ezech. 9.4, Additional biblical references to these identifying or apotropaic “taw” marks are in 1 Samuel 21:12 and Job 31:35, where the word translated often as “mark” or “signature” is “taw” in the Hebrew text. Jack Finegan, The Archeology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 343–50. 12 Finegan, The Archeology of the New Testament, 356–74; also L. Y. Rahmani, in A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Tel Aviv: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), holds some of them to be later Christian additions to Jewish

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 235 ossuaries. More recently, Bruce W. Longenecker, The Cross Before Constantine: The Early Life of a Christian Symbol (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 49–60. See a review of Longenecker’s work by John Granger Cook in Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 72.1 (2018): 88–9. 13 Tertullian, Cor. 3. 14 Athanasius, Vit. Ant. 13, 35, and 80. 15 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 4.14; see also Lactantius, Inst. 4.27; Prudentius, Cath. 7; and Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 50.1. More discussion of this in Robin M. Jensen, The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 34–41. 16 This is specifically explained by John Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 12.13–14. 17 Bruce Longenecker, The Crosses of Pompeii: Jesus-Devotion in a Vesuvian Town (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016); The Cross Before Constantine, 212–48; and Finegan, Archaeology of the New Testament, 374. See more recently, Bruce Longenecker with Chris Keith, “Cross Symbol,” in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries: From Celsus to the Catacombs, vol. 3, eds., Chris Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter, (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 235–49. Far older, William Holladay, “The Herculaneum Cross,” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 19 (1951); 16–19. 18 See the highly critical analysis of these objects with helpful references to other scholars’ interpretations by John Granger Cook, “Alleged Christian Crosses in Herculaneum and Pompeii,” Vigiliae Christianae (2018): 1–20. 19 Finegan, Archeology of the New Testament, 377–81. 20 Examples of Montanist crosses in William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia: Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), 150–1, 160–1, 371, 513–17, not all of these securely dated and not all necessarily third century. 21 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 55; Tertullian, Apol.12.3, 16.7; and Nat. 1.12; Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.7–8. See also discussion in Chapter 2 on the symbols of the boat and the anchor. 22 Larry Hurtado, “The Staurogram in Early Christian Manuscripts: The Earliest Visual References to the Crucified Jesus?” in New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World, eds., Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 207–26; Dieter Roth, “Staurogram,” in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, eds., Chris Keith (London: Bloomsbury, T&T Clark), 349–58. 23 See Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: Richert, 2007), 30–4 and 41–52. 24 Felicity Harley-McGowan, “The Alexamenos Graffito,” in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, eds., Chris Keith (London: Bloomsbury. T&T Clark), 105–40. 25 See Josephus, C. Ap. 2.7.80–8; Tertullian, Apol. 16, Nat. 1.11. 26 Tacitus, Hist. 5.304. 27 Tertullian, Nat. 1.14. 28 Minucius Felix, Oct. 28.7–8. 29 Jeffrey Spier argues for an earlier date—the early fourth century, on the basis that their engraving, letterform, and inscriptions compare with other Christian gems from eastern workshops of around 300. See Spier, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 73–4. See also Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems, 73–5. 30 See Felicity Harley-McGowan, “The Constanza Carnelian and the Development of Crucifixion Iconography in Late Antiquity,” in Gems of Heaven: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, eds., Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams (London: British Museum, 2011), 214–20; also, idem, “Picturing the Passion,” in The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, eds., Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 290–307, esp. 290–4.

236  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 31 Other gems dated to the same approximate time period make use of the tau-shaped cross without a corpus. See Spier, Late Antique Gems, 73–5. 32 Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems, 74. 33 Spier, Late Antique and early Christian Gems, 74–5, 81–6 (on Christian magical gems); Harley, “Constanza Carnelian,” 217–18; and Roy Kotansky, “The Magic Crucifixion Gem,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017): 631–59. 34 Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems 178 (cat. no. X94). On authenticity see Francesco Carlotta with Arne Eikenberg, “Orfeo Bakkikos—the Missing Cross” (2009), originally published as “Orfeo Båquico—La Cruz Desaparecida,” Isidorianum 18 (2009): 179–217; Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 122–26, esp. fn. 83 on 123; Josef Engemann, “The Argument from Silence: Iconographic Statements of 1981 on Faked Gems Reconsidered,” in Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams, ‘Gems of Heaven:’ Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, ca. AD 200–600 (London: The British Museum, 2011), 208–13; Attilio Mastrocinque, “Orpheos Bakkikos,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 9 97 (1993): 16–32; and Christoph Markschies, “Odysseus und Orpheus—christlich gelesen,” in Raban Haehling, Griechische Mythologie und frühes Christentum (Darmstadt: WBG Academic, 2006), 227–53. 35 Ancient sources include Lactantius, Mort. 44, and Eusebius, Vit. Const. 1.28–31. Modern studies include Peter Weiss, “The Vision of Constantine” in the Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003): 237–59; and Jacqueline Long, “How to Read a Halo: Three (or More) Versions of Constantine’s Vision,” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, eds., Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 226–5. A brief summary of this episode in Jensen, The Cross, 52–6. 36 The christogram by itself also appeared on coinage of mid-fourth-century emperors, in particular on the reverses of coins issued by the “usurper” emperors, Magnentius and Decentius, possibly as an attempt to appropriate the iconography of the Constantinian dynasty. 37 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 55; Tertullian, Apol. 16.7, Nat. 1.12; Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.7. 38 A similar image appears on the sarcophagus of Sextus Probus in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. On depictions of gemmed crosses as emerging in the fourth century and soon widely appearing in mosaics, wall paintings, textiles, and on reliquaries, see Jensen, The Cross, 97–112. 39 See a brief report and image in Archaeology Magazine, October 6, 2014. 40 Harley-McGowan, “Picturing the Passion,” 298–9. 41 Depicted in Brigitte Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium der Christliche-Antiken Sarkophage, bd. III: Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 2003), no. 42, 29–31. Discussed by Harley-McGowan, “Picturing the Passion,” 298. 42 On the Brescia Casket see Brown Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket, passim; on the mosaics in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, also see Chapter 6. 43 Felicity Harley-McGowan, “The Maskell Passion ivories and Greco-Roman Art,” in Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West, eds., Juliet Mullins, Jennifer Ní Ghrádaigh, and Richard Hawtree (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 13–33; and idem, “Picturing the Passion,” 301–4. 44 More on depictions of the Empty Tomb below. 45 The order of the panels may have been changed over the centuries, but this does seem to be a likely original place for it. For a study of the doors, see Ivan Foletti, “La porta di Santa Sabina, un ‘immagine in dialogo con il culto,” in Zona liminare: Il nartece di Santa Sabina a Roma, la sua porta e l’inizione cristiana, eds., Ivan Foletti and Manuela Gianandrea (Rome: Viella, 2015), 95–200. 46 Tertullian and Minucius Felix both note that the prayer stance recalls the image of crucifixion: Tertullian, Orat. 14; Minucius Felix, Oct. 29.8. 47 For a different interpretation, see Allyson Everingham Sheckler and Mary Joan Winn Leith, “The Crucifixion Conundrum and the Santa Sabina Doors,” HTR 103 (2010),

Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 237 67–88. These authors also compare the three figures (Christ and the two thieves) to the iconography of three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace. 48 Gregory of Tours, Mart. 22, trans. Raymond Van Dam, Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988, 41. For some theories about the date and context of this image and this story, see Kurt Wessel, “Der nackte crucifixus von Narbonne,” Rivista di archeologia ristiana 43 (1967), 333–45. 49 For discussion of the contested dating of the Rabbula Gospels miniatures, see Marlia M. Mango, “The Rabbula Gospels and Other Manuscripts Produced in the Late Antique Levant,” in Il tetravangelo di Rabbula. Firenze. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 1.56 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008), ed., Massimo Bernabò, 113–26; and Massimo Bernabò, “The Miniatures in the Rabbula Gospels: Postcripta to a Recent Book,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 68 (2014): 343–58. 50 On the legend of Helena’s discovery of the Cross and the dispersion of the relics, see Holger Klein, “Constantine, Helena, and the Early Cult of the True Cross,” in Byzance et les reliques du Christ, eds., Jannie Durand and Bernard Flusin (Paris: Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2004), 31–59. 51 See Derek Kruger, “Liturgical Time and Holy Land Reliquaries in Early Byzantium” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, eds., Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2015), 111–31; Gary Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications, 2010), 38; Robert Ousterhout, The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Kurt Weitzman, “Loca Sancta and the Representational Arts of Palestine,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974), 31–55; and André Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1958). 52 See Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 39–40. 53 Beate Fricke, “Tales from Stones, Travel through time: Narrative and Vision in the Casket from the Vatican,” West 86th 21.1 (2014): 230–50; Kruger, “Liturgical Time and Holy Land Reliquaries,” 112–13. 54 ACCIPE QUAESO A DOMINA MEA REGINA MUNDI HOC VEXILLUM CRUCIS QUOD TIBI PASCHALIS EPISCOPUS OPTULIT. On this object see Eric Thunø, Image and Relic (Rome: Bretschneider, 2002), 25–51. 55 The Dura-Europos image might instead depict the scene of the wise brides coming to the tent of the bridegroom (Matthew 25:1–13). For a discussion of the varying interpretations, see Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church, 111–54; and Dominic Serra, “The Baptistery at Dura-Europos: The Wall Paintings in the Context of Syrian Baptismal Theology,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 120 (2006): 67–78. 56 Gertrude Schiller devoted the entire third volume of her Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971) to the iconography of resurrection, including the triumphal images of the enthroned Christ as well as the empty cross, the empty tomb, and the ascension, judgement, and second coming of Christ. 57 The Junius Bassus shows Daniel clothed, which seems to have been the work of a later restorer, as both a seventeenth-century engraving and an eighteenth-century drawing show him as nude. See Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 62 with illustrations 14 and 15. Struthers Malbon favours the baptismal interpretation of Daniel generally, however, 64–8. 58 Hippolytus, Scol. in Dan. 10.16. 59 An important, older study of Christ’s resurrection in art by Anna Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), includes an early chapter, “The Prehistory of the Image,” pp. 19–39. An even older but still very significant work is that of Jeanne Villette, Le resurrection du Christ dans l’art chrétien du IIe au VIIe siècle (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1957). 60 Palladius, Hist. Laus. 35 (John of Lycopolis); John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi, 35; and Eucherius, Ep. Faust. 127.15–18. Mentioned also by Jerome, Com. In Zeph. 1.15–16; Ep.

238  Jesus’s Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 108.12.1. For additional discussion of this shrine, see Virgilio Corbo, O.F.M., Richerche Archeologiche al Monte Degli Ulivi (Jerusalem: Biblicum, 1965); Paul Devos, “La ‘Servante de Dieu’ Poemenia,” Analecta Bollandiana 87 (1969): 189–212; and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, “Die Eleona und das Imbomon in Jerusalem,” in Akten des XII Internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäologie, Bonn 22–28 September 1991, ed., Ernst Dassman (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995), 568–71. As this fourth-century shrine was destroyed by the Persians in 614 and rebuilt by the Patriarch Modestus sometime in the 620s—then rebuilt again by crusaders in the 1150s—we do not know how the original appeared. However, it seems possible that the Munich ivory depicts it in some fashion. The Bordeaux Pilgrim (ca. 330) mentions a basilica at the site, but this does not appear to be a large structure, Itin. 592–8. 61 See Christern-Briensenick, Repertorium, no. 42, taf. 15.5 and no. 219, taf. 60.5. 62 On these objects and relevant bibliography, see John Herrmann, Jr. and Annewies van den Hoek, “ ‘Two Men in white:’ Observations on an Early Christian Lamp from North Africa with the Ascension of Christ,” in David Warren, Ann Graham Brock, and David Pao, eds., Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions, and Symbols, Festschrift François Bovon (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 293–318, and republished in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 107–32. 63 Josef Engemann, “A Modern Myth: The Sixth-Century Starting Date of the ‘Eastern’ Representation of Christ’s Ascension” in Anna C. Olovsdotter, Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2018), 199–207. Engemann cites these objects as evidence that the image of Christ ascending in a mandorla was not specifically “eastern” and had an earlier, perhaps western prototype 64 On the influence of Ezekiel’s vision on depictions of the ascension, see Sophie Helena Gutberlet, Die Himmelfahrt Christi in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis ins hohe Mittelalter (Strassburg: Heitz, 1934), 52–9 and 104–7.

Bibliography

Achelis, Hans. Das Symbol des Fisches und die Fischdenkmäler der römischen Katakomben. Marburg: Elwert, 1888. Aldrete, Gregory. Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Allen, Mont. The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming. Andelković, Jenena, Dragana Rogić, and Emilija Nicolić. “Peacock as a Sign in Late Antiquity and Early Christian Art.” Archaeology and Science, 6 (2010): 241–48. Arce, Javier, ed. Centcelles: El monumento tardoromano, iconografia y arquitectura. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002. Aune, David E. “Magic in Early Christianity.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 2 (1980): 1507–57. Awes Freeman, Jennifer. The Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts: The Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022. Awes Freeman, Jennifer. “The Good Shepherd and the Enthroned Ruler: A Reconsideration of Imperial Iconography in the Early Church.” In The Art of Empire: Christian Art in its Imperial Context, 159–95. Edited by Robin M Jensen and Lee Jefferson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Awes Freeman, Jennifer. The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021. Baert, Barbara, Liesbet Kusters, and Emma Sidgwick. “An Issue of Blood: The Healing of the Woman with the Haemorrhage (Mark 5.24B–34; Luke 8.42B–48; Matthew 9, 19–22) in Early Medieval Visual Culture.” Journal of Religion and Health, 51.3 (2013): 663–81. Balch, David. “From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition.” In Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context, 273–302. Edited by Laurie Brink O.P. and Deborah Green. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Barnard, Leslie W. The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Barnes, Timothy. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Barnes, Timothy. “Statistics and the growth of the Roman Aristocracy.” Journal of Roman Studies, 85 (1995): 135–47. Beckwith, John. Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Translated by Edmond Jephcott. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994.

240  Bibliography Benoit, F. Sarcophages paléochrétiens d’Arles et de Marseille, Gallia (Suppl. 5). Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1954. Berg, Beverly. “Alcestes and Hercules in the Catacomb of Via Latina.” Vigiliae Christianae, 48 (1994): 219–34. Bergmeier, Armin. “The Traditio Legis in Late Antiquity and Its Afterlives in the Middle Ages.” Gesta, 56.1 (2017): 27–52. Bernabò, Massimo. “The Miniatures in the Rabbula Gospels: Postcripta to a Recent Book.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 68 (2014): 343–58. Birk, Stine. “Carving Sarcophagi: Roman Sculptural Workshops and Their Organization.” In Ateliers and Artisans in Roman Art and Archeology. Edited by Troels M. Kristensen, Birte Poulsen, and Stine Birk. Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2012. Birk, Stine. Depicting the Dead: Self-Representation and Commemoration on Roman Sarcophagi with Portraits. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013. Birk, Stine. “Man or Woman? Cross-Gendering and Individuality on Third Century Roman Sarcophagi.” In Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi. Edited by Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. Bisconti, Fabrizio. “Il mito e la Bibbia: due volti delle rivoluzione dell’immaginario iconografico nella tarda antichità.” In La rivoluzione dell’immagine. Edited by Fabrizio Bisconti and Giovanni Gentili. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2007. Bisconti, Fabrizio. Le pitture delle iteratu romane, Restauri ed interpretazioni. Todi: Tau, 2009. Bloedhorn, Hanswulf. “Die Eleona und das Imbomon in Jerusalem.” In Akten des XII Internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäologie (Bonn 22–28. September 1991), 568–71. Edited by Ernst Dassman. Münster: Aschendorff, 1995. Bockmann, Ralf. “The Non-Archaeology of Arianism.” In Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, 201–8. Edited by Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Bodel, John. “From Columbaria to Catacombs: Collective Burial in Pagan and Christian Rome.” In Commemorating the Dead, Texts and Artifacts in Context, 177–242. Edited by Laurie Brink O.P. and Deborah Green. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Branconi, Matteo. Il Mosaico del Catino Absidale di S. Pudenziana: La storia, i restauri, le interpretazioni. Todi: Tau Editrice, 2016. Brandenburg, Hugo. “Überlegungen zum Ursprung der frühchristlichen Bildkunst.” Atti Congresso Internationale di Archeologia Cristiana, 9.1 (1978), 331–60. Breckenridge, James, D. “The Reception of Art into the Early Church.” Atti IX Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiania, 9.1 (1978): 361–9. Brenk, Beat. The Apse, The Image, and the Icon. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010. Brenk, Beat. “The Imperial Heritage of Early Christian Art.” In The Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, 39–52. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980. Brent, Allen. “Epitaph of Abercius.” In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, 259–70. Edited by Chris Keith, Helen Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter. London: T&T Clark, 2020. Brilliant, Richard. Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (Entry 134), p. 158. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979. Brilliant, Richard. Gesture and Rank in Roman Art: The Use of Gesture to Denote Statues in Roman Sculpture and Coinage. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1963.

Bibliography 241 Brock, Rita Nakashima and Rebecca A. Parker. Saving Paradise. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. Bruun, Patrick. “Symboles, signes, et monogrammes.” Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae, 1.2 (1963): 73–166. Bucur, Bogdan. Scripture Re-envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Buddensieg, Tilmann. “Le coffret en ivoire de Pola, Saint-Pierre et le Latran.” Cahiers archéologiques fin de l’antiquité et du moyen âge, 10 (1959): 157–200. Cabrol, Ferdnand and Henri Leclercq, eds. Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie. Paris: Letourzey et Ané, 1924–53. Cameron, Alan. Last Pagans of Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Cameron, Averil. “The Sceptic and the Shroud.” In Inaugural Lecture at King’s College London. London: King’s College, 1980. Carder, James N. Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (Entry 462), p. 518. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970. Carlotta, Francesco and Arne Eikenberg. “Orfeo Bakkikos—The Missing Cross” [“Orfeo Båquico—La Cruz Desaparecida].” Isidorianum, 18 (2009): 179–217. Castelli, Emmanuele. “Symbols of Anchor and Fish.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, vol. 1, 58–9. Edited by Paul Corby Finney. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017. Castelli, Emmanuele. “The Symbols of Anchor and Fish in the Most ancient Parts of the Catacomb of Priscilla: Evidence and Questions.” Studia Patristica, 49 (2011): 13–14. Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church: Pelican History of the Church, vol. 1. London: Penguin, 1967. Charles-Murray, Mary. “Art and the Early Church.” Journal of Theological Studies XXVIII, no. 2 (1977): 303–45. Charles-Murray, Mary. Rebirth and Afterlife: A Study of the Transmutation of Some Pagan Imagery in Early Christian Funerary Art. Oxford: BAR International Series, 1981. Charles-Murray, Mary. “The Christian Orpheus.” Cahiers Archéologiques, 23 (1974): 303–45. Christe, Yves. “À propos du iterature à double iteratu récemment découvert à Arles.” Journal des Savants, 1.1 (1975): 76–80. Christern-Briesenick, Brigitte. Repertorium der christlich—antiken Sarkophage, dritter Band: Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2003. Collins, John J. “Sibylline Oracles.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, 423–4. Edited by J. H. Charlesworth. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1983. Conybeare, Frederick Cornwallis. Rituale Armenorum. Oxford: Clarendon, 1905. Cook, John Granger. “Alleged Christian Crosses in Herculaneum and Pompeii.” Vigiliae Christianae (2018): 1–20. Corbo, Virgilio C. Richerche Archeologiche al Monte Degli Ulivi. Jerusalem: Biblicum, 1965. Corley, Kathleen E. Private Women, Public Meals. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993. Couzin, Robert. “Christian Sarcophagus Population.” In Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, 275–84. Edited by Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Couzin, Robert. “ ‘Early’ ‘Christian’ ‘Art.’ ” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 380–92. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018.

242  Bibliography Couzin, Robert. Right and Left in Early Christian and Medieval Art. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Couzin, Robert. “Syncretism and Segregation in Christian Art.” Studies in Iconography, 38 (2017): 18–54. Couzin, Robert. “The Christian Sarcophagus Population of Rome.” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 27 (2014): 275–303. Couzin, Robert. The ‘Traditio Legis:’ Anatomy of an Image. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015. Crossan, John Dominic. The Historical Jesus. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1991. Cumont, Franz, “Les inscriptions chrétiennes d l’Asie Mineure.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 15 (1895): 245–99. Dagens, Claude. “A propos du cubiculum de la ‘velatio.’ ” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 47 (1971): 119–29. Dagron, Gilbert. “Holy Images and Likeness.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45 (1991): 23–33. Darmstädter, Robert. Die Auferweckung des Lazarus in der altchristlichen und byzantinischen Kunst. Bern: Arnaud, 1955. De Bruyne, Lucien. “L’imposition des mains dans l’art chrétien iterat.” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 20 (1943): 113–266. De Jáuregui, Miguel Herrero. Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010. De Rossi, Giovanni B. “Il Gruppo simbolico rappresentante il Salvatore, che dà la legge a.s. Pietro.” Bullettino di archeologia iteratur, 6.3 (1868): 39–4. De Rossi, Giovanni B. Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, vol. 2, 80–1. Rome: Sylloge Centulensis, 1888. De Ste. Croix, Geoffrey. Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Deckers, Johannes. “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art.” In Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, 107–8. Edited by Jeffrey Spiers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Deckers, Johannes. “Die Huldigung der Magier in der Kunst der Spätantike.” In Die Heiligen Drei Könige—Darstellung und Verehrung, 20–32. Edited by F. Günter Zehnder. Köln: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 1982. Deckers, Johannes. “Göttlicher Kaier und kaiserlicher Gott: Die Imperialisierund des Christentums im Spiegel der Kunst.” In Epochenwandel? Kunst und Kultur zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, 3–16. Edited by Franz A. Bauer and Norbert Zimmerman. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001. Deichmann, Friedrich W. Ravenna: Haupstadt des spätantiken Abendlandes. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1974. Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf. Ravenna in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Dentzer, Jean-Marie. Le motif du banquet couché dans le Proche—Orient et le monde grec du VIIe au Ive siècle avant J-C. Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles français d’Athènes et Rome, 1982. Denzey, Nicola. The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. Devos, Paul. “La ‘Servante de Dieu’ Poemenia.” Analecta Bollandiana, 87 (1969): 189–212. Diechmann, Friedrich W., Giuseppe Bovini, and Hugo Brandenburg. Repertorium der christlich—antiken Sarkophage, Bd 1, Rom und Ostia. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1967. Dijkstra, Roald. The Apostles in Early Christian Art and Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Dinkler, Erich. “Abbreviated Representations.” In Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art Third to Seventh Century, 393–9. Edited by Kurt Weitzman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979.

Bibliography 243 Dinkler, Erich. “Die ersten Petrusdarstellung.” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, 11 (1939): 1–80. Dinkler, Erich. Der Einzug in Jerusalem: Ikonographische Untersuchungen im Anschluss an ein bisher unbekanntes Sarkophagfragment. Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1970. Dinkler, Erich. Signum Crucis. Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament und zur christlichen Archäologie. Tübingen: Mohr, 1967. Dinkler-von Schubert, Erika. “Engraved Ring Stone with Adoration of the Magi.” In Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century(Entry 393), p. 436. Edited by Kurt Weitzman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979. Dodd, Charles H. “The Cognomen of Emperor Antonius Pius: Its Origin and Significance Considered in the Light of Numismatic Evidence.” Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, 11 (1911): 6–41. Dölger, Franz J. Der Heilige Fisch in den antiken Religionen und im Christentum. ICHTHYS, vols. 2 and 3. Münster in Westf: Aschendorff, 1922. Dölger, Franz J. Die Fisch—Denkmäler in der frühchristlichen Plastik, Malerie, und Kleinkunst. ICHTHYS, vols. 4 and 5. Münster in Westf: Aschendorff, 1927–32. Dölger, Franz J. ΙΧΘΥE: Das Fisch Symbol in frühchristlicher Zeit. Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1910. Dölger, Franz J. Sol Salutis. Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum. Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1925 (Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, 4–5). Dresken-Weiland, Jutta. Bild, Grab und Wort: Untersuchungen zu Jenseitsvorsetllungen von Christen des 3. Und 4. Jahrhunderts. Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2010. Dresken-Weiland, Jutta. “Christian Sarcophagi from Rome.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 39–55. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Dresken-Weiland, Jutta. Mosaics of Ravenna: Image and Meaning. First edition. Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2016. Dresken-Weiland, Jutta. Repertorium der christlich—antiken Sarkophage, zweiter Band: Italien mit einem Nachtrag Rom und Ostia, Dalmatien, Museen der Welt. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998. Du Bourguet, Pierre. Early Christian Art. New York: Morrow and Co., 1971. Du Bourguet, Pierre. Early Christian Painting. Translated by Simon W. Taylor. New York: Viking Press, 1965. Dükers, Peter. “Agape und Irene: Die Frauengestalten der Sigmamahlszenen mit antiken Inschriften in der Katakombe der Heiligen Marcellinus und Petrus.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 35 (1992): 147–67. Dulaey, Martine. “Le symbole de la baguette dans l’art paléochrétien.” Revue des études anciennes, 19.1–2 (1973): 3–38. Dulaey, Martine. “Les trois hébreux dans la fournaise dans l’interprétation symbolique de l’église ancienne.” Review des sciences religieuses, 72 (1998): 38–50. Dunbabin, Katherine. The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Dunbabin, Katherine. “Triclinium and Stibadium.” In Dining in a Classical Context, 121– 48. Edited by W. J. Slater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. Duval, Yves-Marie. Le livre de Jonas dans la iterature chrétienne grecque et latine. Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1973. Eckhart, Lothar. “Die Grosse Traube Christus.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 19 (1976): 173–98. Eichner, Klaus. “Die Produktionsmethoden der stadtrömischen Sarkophagfabrik in der Blütezeit unter Konstantin.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 24 (1981): 85–113.

244  Bibliography Eisler, Robert. Orpheus the Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism. London: Watkins, 1921. Elliger, Walter. Zur Entstehung und frühen Entwicklung der altchristlichen Bildkunst. (Die Stellung der alten Christen zu den Bildern in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten. Teil 2.), 1–284. Leipzig: Dieterich, 1934. Elsner, Jaś. Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Elsner, Jaś. “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Antique Jewish Art and Early Christian Art.” Journal of Roman Studies, 93 (2003): 114–15. Elsner, Jaś. “Inventing Christian Rome: The Role of Early Christian Art.” In Rome the Cosmopolis, 71–99. Edited by Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Elsner, Jaś. “Perspectives in Art.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, 255–277. Edited by N. Lenski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Engemann, Josef. “A Modern Myth: The Sixth-Century Starting Date of the ‘Eastern’ Representation of Christ’s Ascension.” In Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art, 199–207. Edited by Anna C. Olovsdotter. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2018. Engemann, Josef. “The Argument from Silence: Iconographic Statements of 1981 on Faked Gems Reconsidered.” In ‘Gems of Heaven:’ Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, ca. AD 200–600, 208–13. Edited by Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams. London: The British Museum, 2011. Engemann, Josef. “Zu den Driefaltigkeitdarstellungen der frühchristlichen Kunst: Gab es im 4. Jh. Anthropomorphe Trinitätsbilder?” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 19 (1976): 157–72. Everingham Sheckler, Allyson, and Mary Joan Winn Leith. “The Crucifixion Conundrum and the Santa Sabina Doors.” Harvard Theological Review, 103 (2010): 67–88. Ewald, Björn Christian. Der Philosoph als Leitbild: ikonographische Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs. Mainz: von Zabern, 1999. Fausone, Alfonse. Die Taufe in der frühchristliche Sepulkralkunst. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana,1982. Ferguson, Everett. Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009. Ferguson, Everett. Early Christians Speak. Abilene: ACU Press, 1981. Ferguson, Everett. “Jonah in Early Christian Art: Death, Resurrection, and Immortality.” In Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World, 342–53. Edited by Aliou Cissé Niang and Carolyn Osiek. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. Ferri, Giovanna. I mosaici del battistero di San Giovanni in Fonte a Napoli. Todi: Tau, 2013. Ferri, Giovanna. “La Colomba e lo Spirito.” In Arti Minori e Arti Maggiore: Relazioni e interazioni tra Tarda Antichità e Alto Medioevo, 33–60. Edited by Fabrizio Bisconti, Matteo Braconi, and Mariarita Sgarlata. Todi: Tau Editrice, 2019. Ferrua, Antonio. Le pitture delle nuova catacomba di via Latina, p. 8. Vatican City: Monumenti di Antichità Cristiana, 1960. Ferrua, Antonio. “Paralipomeni di Giona.” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, 38 (1962): 7–69. Ferrua, Antonio. The Unknown Catacomb. New Lanark: Geddes and Grosset, 1991. Ferrua, Antonio. “Una nuova catacomba iteratur sull Via Latina.” La Civiltà Cattolica, 107 (1956): 118–31. Fiensy, David A. Prayers Alleged to be Jewish: An Examination of the “Constitutiones Apostolorum.” Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985.

Bibliography 245 Finegan, Jack. The Archeology of the New Testament, revised edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Finney, Paul Corby. “Do You Think God Is a Magician.” In Akten des Symposiums Frühchristliche Sarkophage, 99–108. Edited by Guntram Koch. Marburg: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1999. Finney, Paul Corby. “Images on Finger Rings and Early Christian Art.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 41 (1987): 181–6. Finney, Paul Corby. “Orpheus–David: A Connection in Iconography between Greco-Roman Judaism and Early Christianity?” Journal of Jewish Art, 5 (1978): 6–15. Finney, Paul Corby. “Peacock.” In Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archeology, vol. 2, 308–9. Edited by Paul Corby Finney. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017. Finney, Paul Corby. “Shepherd, Good.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, second edition, vol. 2, 1055–6. Edited by Everett Ferguson. New York: Garland, 1997. Finney, Paul Corby. The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Foletti, Ivan. “God from God. Christ as the Translation of Jupiter Serapis in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana.” In The Fifth Century in Rome: Art, Liturgy, Patronage, 11–29. Edited by Ivan Foletti and Manuela Gianadrea. Rome: Viella, 2017. Foletti, Ivan. “La porta di Santa Sabina, un ‘immagine in dialogo con il culto.” In Zona liminare: Il nartece di Santa Sabina a Roma, la sua porta e l’inizione iteratur, 95–200. Edited by Ivan Foletti and Manuela Gianandrea. Rome: Viella, 2015. Foletti, Ivan and Francesco Lovino. “Introduction: Orient oder Rome, and Josef Strzygowski in 2018.” In Orient oder Rom? History and Reception of a Historiographical Myth (1901–1970), 7–14. Edited by Ivan Foletti and Francesco Lovino. Prague: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2018. Francis, James. “Clement of Alexandria on Signet Rings: Reading an Image at the Dawn of Christianity.” Classical Philology, 98 (2003): 179–83. Franke, Peter. “Traditio Legis und Petrusprimat: eine Entegegnung auf Franz Nikolasch.” Vigiliae Christianae, 26.f (1972): 263–71. Fricke, Beate. “Tales from Stones, Travel through Time: Narrative and Vision in the Casket from the Vatican.” West 86th, 21.1 (2014): 230–50. Geffcken, Johannes. Die Oracula Sibyllina in Die griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1902. Gem, Richard. “From Constantine to Constans: The Chronology of the Construction of St. Peter’s Basilica.” In Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, 35–64. Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Gerke, Friedrich. “Ideengeschichte der ältesten christlichen Kunst.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 59 (1940): 1–102. Gero, Stephen. “The True Image of Christ: Eusebius’ Letter to Constantia Reconsidered.” Journal of Theological Studies, 32 (1981): 460–70. Goodenough, Erwin. “Catacomb Art.” Journal of Biblical Literature, 81 (1962): 113–42. Goodenough, Erwin. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1953–68. Grabar, André. Ampoules de Terre Sainte. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1958. Grabar, André. Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins. Translated by Terry Grabar. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Grabar, André. Early Christian Art from the Rise of Christianity to the Death of Theodosius. Translated by G. Stuart and J. Emmons. New York: Odyssey Books, 1968.

246  Bibliography Grabar, André. L’empereur dans l’art iteratur. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1936. Grabka, Gregory. “Eucharistic Belief Manifest in the Epitaphs of Abercius and Pectorius.” American Ecclesiastical Review, 13 (1954): 254–5. Grant, Robert. “The Decalogue in Early Christianity.” Harvard Theological Review, 40 (1947): 1–17. Grey, Matthew J. and Ellison, Mark D. “Imagery in Jewish and Christian Ritual Settings.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography. Edited by Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 534–63. Grigg, Robert. “Aniconic Worship and the Apologetic Tradition.” Church History, 45 (1976): 428–9. Groh, Dennis. “The Arian Controversy.” Bible Review (1994): 21–32. Grypeou, Emmanouela and Helen Spurling. “Abraham’s Angels: Jewish and Christian Exegesis of Genesis 18–19.” In The Exegetical Encounter Between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, 181–202. Edited by Emmanouela Grypeou and Helen Spurling. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Gutberlet, Sophie Helena. Die Himmelfahrt Christi in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis ins hohe Mittelalter. Strassburg: Heitz, 1934. Gutmann, Joseph. “Early Synagogue and Jewish Catacomb Art and its Relation to Christian Art.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 21.2 (1984): 1313–42. Gutmann, Joseph. Hebrew Manuscript Painting. New York: George Braziller, 1978. Gutmann, Joseph. Review of K. Weitzmann and H. L. Kessler. “The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art.” Speculum, 67 (1992): 502–4. Gutmann, Joseph. “The Illustrated Jewish Manuscript in Antiquity: The Present State of the Question.” Gesta, 5 (1966): 39–44. Hammam, Adalbert. “La prière chrétienne et la prière païenne.” Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 23.2 (1980): 1190–247. Harley-McGowan, Felicity. “Picturing the Passion.” In The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, 290–307. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Harley-McGowan, Felicity. “The Alexamenos Graffito.” In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, 105–40. Edited by Chris Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter. London: Bloomsbury. T&T Clark, 2019. Harley-McGowan, Felicity. “The Constanza Carnelian and the Development of Crucifixion Iconography in Late Antiquity.” In Gems of Heaven: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, 214–20. Edited by Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams. London: British Museum, 2011. Harley-McGowan, Felicity. “The Maskell Passion Ivories and Greco-Roman Art.” In Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West, 13–33. Edited by Juliet Mullins, Jennifer Ní Ghrádaigh, and Richard Hawtree. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013. Hefele, Karl Joseph. History of the Christian Councils. Translated by W. Clark. London: T&T Clark, 1894. Hellemo, Geir. Adventus Domini: Eschatological Thought in 4th–Century Apses and Catecheses. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Herrmann, Jr., John and Annewies van den Hoek. “ ‘Two Men in white:’ Observations on an Early Christian Lamp from North Africa with the Ascension of Christ.” In Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions, and Symbols, Festschrift François Bovon, 293–318. Edited by David Warren, Ann Graham Brock, and David Pao. Leiden: Brill, 2003 (Republished in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity, 107–32. Leiden: Brill, 2013).

Bibliography 247 Hiers, Richard H. and Charles A. Kennedy. “The Bread and Fish Eucharist.” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 3 (1976): 21–48. Himmelmann, Nikolaus. Typologische Untersuchungen an römischen Sarkophagreliefs des 3. Und 4. Jahrhunderts nach Christus. Mainz am Rhein: Zabern, 1973. Himmelmann, Nikolaus. Über Hirten—Genre in der antiken Kunst. Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1980. Holl, Karl. “Die Schriften des Epiphanius gegen die Bilderverehrung.” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte II, der Osten. Tübingen: DeGruyter, 1988. Holladay, William. “The Herculaneum Cross.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 19 (1951): 16–19. Holloway, Ross. Constantine and Rome. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Hornik, Heidi. “Freestanding Sculpture.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 78–81. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Howells, Daniel Thomas. A Catalog of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 2011. Hubbard, Jeffrey. “Seeing God at Mamre: Reconsidering the Early Visual Evidence.” In Visualizing the Tradition(s): Early Christians and Their Art. Edited by Mikeal Parsons and Robin Jensen. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming. Hurtado, Larry. “The Staurogram in Early Christian Manuscripts: The Earliest Visual References to the Crucified Jesus?” In New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World, 207–26. Edited by Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Huskinson, Janet. Roman Strigillated Sarcophagi: Art and Social History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Huskinson, Janet. “Some Pagan Figures and Their Significance in Early Christian Art.” Papers of the British School at Rome, 42 (1974): 68–97. Huskinson, Janet. “Unfinished Portrait Heads on Later Roman Sarcophagi: Some New Perspectives.” Papers of the British School at Rome, 66 (1998): 129–58. Huskinson, John M. Concordia Apostolorum: Christian propaganda at Rome in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. A Study in Early Christian Iconography and Iconology. Oxford: BAR International Series, 1982. Hvalvik, Reidar. “Christ Proclaiming the Law to the Apostles: The Traditio Legis-Motif in Early Christian Art and Literature.” In The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David Aune, 405–37. Edited by John Fotopoulos. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Immerzeel, Mat. “Les ateliers de sarcophages paléochrétiens en Gaule: La Provence et les Pyrénees.” Antiquité Tardive, 2 (1994): 233–49. Irvin, Dorothy. “The Ministry of Women in the Early Church.” Duke Divinity School Review, 45.2 (1980): 76–86. Janson, H. W. History of Art: A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day. New York: Prentice Hall, 1964. Jastrzębowska, Elżbieta. “Josef Strzygowski und Josef Wilpert: Zwei Gesichter derselben Wissenschaft.” In Von Biala nach Wien: Josef Strzygowski und die Kunstwissenschaften, 43–54. Edited by Piotr O. Scholz and Magdalena A. Dlugosz. Vienna: European University Press, 2015. Jastrzębowska, Elżbieta. “Les itera de banquet dans les peintures et sculptures chrétiennes des IIIe et Ive siècles.” Recherches Augustiennes, 14 (1979): 3–90. Jastrzębowska, Elżbieta. “Virga in the Hands of Christ, Moses, and Peter: Pagan Heritage or Christian Novelty?” Światowit, 12 (2015): 99–110. Jefferson, Lee. Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014.

248  Bibliography Jefferson, Lee. “Miracles and Art.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 308–21. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Jefferson, Lee. “Revisiting the Emperor Mystique: The Traditio Legis as an Anti-Imperial Image.” In The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context, 49–86. Edited by Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015. Jefferson, Lee. “The Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art.” Religion and the Arts, 14 (2010): 221–51. Jensen, Robin M. “Allusions to Imperial Rituals in Fourth-Century Christian Art.” In The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context, 13–48. Edited by Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015. Jensen, Robin M. Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012. Jensen, Robin M. “Compiling Narratives: The Visual Strategies of Early Christian Art.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 23 (2015): 1–26. Jensen, Robin M. “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity.” In Commemorating the Dead: Text and Artifacts in Context, 107–44. Edited by Laurie Brink, O.P. and Deborah Green. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Jensen, Robin M. “Early Christian Images and Exegesis.” In Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, 65–86. Edited by Jeffrey Spier. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Jensen, Robin M. From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Art in Late Antiquity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2022. Jensen, Robin M. “Icons as Relics; Relics as Icons.” In Dynamics of the Cult of Saints. Edited by Robert Wiśniewski, Bryan Ward Perkins, and Raymond Van Dam, 17–44. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. Jensen, Robin M. “Isaac’s Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Image and Text.” Biblical Interpretation, 2 (1994): 85–110. Jensen, Robin M. “Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Pictorial Art.” In Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New, 1023–54. Edited by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023. Jensen, Robin M. “Jesus the Healer: Iconographic Evidence for Healing Miracles as Prompting Religious Conversion in Early Christianity.” In Materiality and Conversion: The Role of Material and Visual Cultures in the Christianization of the Latin West, 61–77. Edited by Ivan Foletti. Brepols: Convivium Supplementum, 2022. Jensen, Robin M. Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2011. Jensen, Robin M. “Moses and the Christian ‘New Moses’ in Early Christian Art.” In The Christian Moses: From Philo to the Qur’an, 165–85. Edited by Philip Rousseau and Janet A. Timbie. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2019. Jensen, Robin M. “Nudity in Early Christian Art.” In Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World, 296–319. Edited by Aliou Cissé Niang and Carolyn Osiek. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. Jensen, Robin M. “Poetry of the Font: Inscriptions in Early Christian Baptisteries.” Acta ad archaeologiam et itera historiam pertinentia, 24.10 (2011): 65–83. Jensen, Robin M. “The Apocryphal Mary in Early Christian Art.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, 289–305. Edited by Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Jensen, Robin M. The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Jensen, Robin M. “The Economy of the Trinity at the Creation of Adam and Eve.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 7.4 (1999): 527–46.

Bibliography 249 Jensen, Robin M. “The Femininity of Jesus in Early Christian Art.” Studia Patristica, 29 (1997): 269–82. Jensen, Robin M. “The Gospel of John in Early Christian Art.” In The Edinburgh Companion to the Bible and the Arts, 131–48. Edited by Stephen Prickett. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Jensen, Robin M. “The Polymorphous Christ in Early Christian Image and Text.” In Seeing the God, 149–75. Edited by Marlis Arnhold, Harry O. Maier, and Jörg Rüpke. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Jensen, Robin M. “The Three Hebrew Youths and the Problem of the Emperor’s Portrait in Early Christianity.” In Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, 303–20. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Series, 2015. Jensen, Robin M. “The Trinity and the Economy of Salvation on Two Early Christian Sarcophagi.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 7 (1999): 527–46. Jensen, Robin M. “The Fish: An Early Christian Symbol for Christ.” In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, 271–89. Edited by Chris Keith, Helen Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2019. Jensen, Robin M. “Visual Representations of Paideia and Christ as Teacher of True Philosophy.” In Christian Teachers in Rome, 60–83. Edited by Gregory Snyder. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Jesnick, Ilona Julia. The Image of Orpheus: An Exploration of the Figure of Orpheus in Graeco-Roman Art and Culture with Special Reference to Its Expression in the Medium of Mosaic in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1997. Johnson, Mark. “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices of the Fourth Century: Shared Tombs?” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 5 (1997): 37–59. Jones, Christopher. Between Pagan and Christian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Jourdan, Fabienne. Orphée dans la iterature chrétienne grecque des cinq premiers siècles, vol. 1: Orphée, du repoussoir au préfigurateur du Christ: Réécriture d’un myth à des fins protreptiques chez Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009. Judge, E. A. “ ‘Antike und Christentum’: Toward a Definition of the Field. A Bibliographical Essay.” Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 2.23.1 (1979): 3–58. Kahlos, Maijastina. Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Culture ca. 360–430. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Kant, Laurence. H. The Interpretation of Religious Symbols in the Graeco-Roman World: A Case Study of Early Christian Fish Symbolism, 3 vols. PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 1993. Kantorowicz, Ernst. “The ‘King’s Advent’: And the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina.” Art Bulletin, 4 (1944): 207–31. Kardis, Maria and Dominika Tlučková. “The Symbol of the Phoenix in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome and Its Transformation in Early Christianity.” The Biblical Annals, 12 (2022): 66–88. Kartsonis, Anna. Anastasis: The Making of an Image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Kateusz, Ally. Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. Kee, Howard Clark. Medicine, Miracle, and Magic in New Testament Times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Kennedy, Charles. “Early Christians and the Anchor.” The Biblical Archeologist, 38 (1975): 115–24.

250  Bibliography Kessler, Herbert. “The Word Made Flesh in Early Decorated Bibles.” In Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, 141–68. Edited by Jeffrey Spier. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Kessler, Herbert and G. Wolf, eds. The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1998. Kilmartin, J. The Eucharist in the Primitive Church. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Kitzinger, Ernst. Byzantine Art in the Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. Kitzinger, Ernst. “The Cleveland Marbles.” Atti IX Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, 9.1 (1978): 653–75. Kitzinger, Ernst. “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 8 (1954): 85–150. Klauser, Theodor. “Aurum Coronarium.” In Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte Kirchengeschichte und Christlichen Ergänzsband, 3 (1974): 292–302. Klauser, Theodor. “Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 1 (1958): 20–51; 2 (1959): 115–45; 3 (1960): 112–33; 4 (1961): 128–45; 5 (1962): 113–24; 6 (1963): 71–100; 7 (1964): 67–76; 8–9 (1965–6): 126–70; 10 (1967): 82–120. Klein, Holger. “Constantine, Helena, and the Early Cult of the True Cross.” In Byzance et les reliques du Christ, 31–59. Edited by Jannie Durand and Bernard Flusin. Paris: Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2004. Knipp, David. ‘Christus Medicus’ in der frühchristlichen Sarkophagskulpture: Ikonograpnische Studien zur Sepulkralkunst des späten vierten Jahrhunderts. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Koch, Guntram. Frühchristlichen Sarkophage. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000. Koch, Guntram. Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections. Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988. Koch, Hugo. Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen. Forsch. zur Relig. und Lit. des A. and N. Testaments. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1917. Kollwitz, Johannes. “Christus als Lehrer und die Gesetzesübergabe an Petrus.” Römische Quartalschrift, 44 (1936): 46–66. Koortbojian, Michael. Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Kostof, Spiro. The Orthodox Baptistery of Ravenna. New Haven, CA: Yale University Press, 1965. Kotansky, Roy. “The Magic Crucifixion Gem.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 57 (2017): 631–59. Krautheimer, Richard. “Mensa–Coemeterium–Martyrium.” In Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance Art, 35–58. New York: New York University Press, 1969. Kruger, Derek. “Liturgical Time and Holy Land Reliquaries in Early Byzantium.” In Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, 111–31. Edited by Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2015. Kuryluk, Ewa. Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism and Structure of a “True” Image. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Ladner, Gerhard B. “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 7 (1953): 1–34. Lander, Shira. “Revealing and Concealing God in Ancient Synagogue Art.” In History of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical

Bibliography 251 Traditions, 205–16. Edited by April De Conick and Grant Adamson. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Lawrence, Marion. “Three Pagan Themes in Christian Art.” In De Artibus Opuscula XL, Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, vol. 1, 323–34. Edited by Millard Meiss. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Le Blant, Edmund F. Études sur les sarcophages chrétiens antiques de la ville d’Arles. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1878. Le Blant, Edmund F. Les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886. Leatherbury, Sean. “The Iconography of Early Christian Roman Art.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography, 464–84. Edited by Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Leclercq, Henri. “Défunts (commémoraison des).” Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 4.1 (1920): 427–56. Leclercq, Henri. Manuel d’archéologie chrétienne, vol. 1. Paris: Letouzey, 1907. Leclercq, Henri. “Orant, Orante.” Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, 12.2 (1936): 2291–322. Leclercq, Henri. “Pasteur (Bon).” Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie. vol. 13.2 (1937): 2272–390. Lecocq, Françoise. “The Flight of the Phoenix to Paradise in Ancient Literature and Iconography.” Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Anthropozoological Aspects in the Late Antique World, 97–129. Edited by I. Schaaf. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. Leonardi, C. Ampelos. Il simbolo delle vita nell’arte pagana e paleocristiana. Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1947. Levi, D. Antioch Mosaic Pavements, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947. Levine, Adam. “Re-Imagining Encounters between Late Antique Viewers and Early Christian Art.” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 7.1 (2016): 29–42. Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Long, Jacqueline. “How to Read a Halo: Three (or More) Versions of Constantine’s Vision.” In The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, 226–5. Edited by Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Longenecker, Bruce W. The Cross Before Constantine: The Early Life of a Christian Symbol. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015. Longenecker, Bruce W. The Crosses of Pompeii: Jesus—Devotion in a Vesuvian Town Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016. Longenecker with Chris Keith, “Cross Symbol.” In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries: From Celsus to the Catacombs, vol. 3, 235–49. Edited by Chris Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter. London: T&T Clark, 2020. Lother, Helmut. Der Pfau in der altchristlichen Kunst: eine Studie über das Verhältnis von Ornament und Symbol. Leipzig: Dieterich, 1929. Lother, Helmut. Realismus und Symbolismus in der altchristlichen Kunst. Tübingen: Mohr, 1931. Lowden, John. “The Beginnings of Biblical Illustration.” In Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, 9–59. Edited by John Williams. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Lowrie, Walter. Art in the Early Church. New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. MacCormack, Sabine. Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981.

252  Bibliography MacGregor, Neil. Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Mackie, Gillian. Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function, and Patronage. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. MacMullen, Ramsay. “Christian Ancestor Worship in Rome.” Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010): 597–613. MacMullen, Ramsay. The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Maguire, Henry. The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Malbon, Elizabeth Struthers. The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Mango, Marlia M. “The Rabbula Gospels and Other Manuscripts Produced in the Late Antique Levant.” In Il tetravangelo di Rabbula. Firenze. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 1.56, 113–26. Edited by Massimo Bernabò. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008. Marchi, Giuseppe. Monumenti delle’arte cristiane primitive. Rome, Tip. di. C. Puccinelli, 1844. Markow, Deborah. “Some Born-Again Christians of the Fourth Century.” Art Bulletin, 63 (1981): 650–5. Markschies, Christoph. “Odysseus und Orpheus—christlich gelesen.” In Griechische Mythologie und frühes Christentum, 227–53. Edited by Raban Haehling. Darmstadt: WBG Academic, 2006. Marsengill, Katherine. “Panel Paintings and Early Christian Icons.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 191–206. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Marsengill, Katherine. Portraits and Icons: Between Reality and Spirituality in Byzantine Art. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Marucchi, Orazio. Manual of Christian Archaeology, 291–2. Translated by Hubert Vecchierello, O.F.M. Patterson, NY: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1935. Marucchi, Orazio. The Evidence of the Catacombs. London: Sheed and Ward, 1929. Mastrocinque, Attilio. “Orpheos Bakkikos.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 9.97 (1993): 16–32. Mathews, Thomas. “La nudità nel cristianesimo.” In Aurea Roma: Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, 396–8. Edited by Eugenio La Rocca. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000. Mathews, Thomas. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Mazzei, Barbara. “Colomba.” In Temi di Iconografia Paleocristiana, 153–4. Edited by Fabrizio Bisconti. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 2000. Mazzoleni, Danilo. “Inscriptions in the Roman Catacombs.” In The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, 147–85. Edited by Vincenzo Fiocchi Niolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni. Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 2009. McCormick, Michael. Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. McGowan, Andrew. Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Christian Ritual Meals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Meigne, Maurice. “Concil ou collection d’Elvire?” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 70 (1975): 361–87.

Bibliography 253 Milburn, Robert. Early Christian Art and Architecture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. Miles, Margaret. Image as Insight. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985. Miles, Margaret. “Santa Maria Maggiore’s Fifth-Century Mosaics: Triumphal Christianity and the Jews.” Harvard Theological Review, 86 (1993): 155–75. Mitchell, Margaret. “Looking for Abercius: Reimagining Contexts of Interpretation of the ‘Earliest Christian Inscription.’ ” In Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context, 303–36. Edited by Laurie Brink, O.P. and Deborah Green. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Mitchell, Margaret. “The Poetics and Politics of Christian Baptism in the Abercius Monument.” In Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism in Early Judaism, Graeco-Roman Religion, and Early Christianity, vol. 1, 1739–78. Edited by David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval, and Christer Hellholm. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Morey, Charles R. Christian Art. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1935. Morey, Charles R. “The Origin of the Fish-Symbol.” Princeton Theological Review, 8 (1910): 93–106; 231–46, 401–32; 9 (1911): 268–89; 10 (1912): 278–97. Mulhern, Alice. “L’Orante, vie et mort d’une image.” Les dossiers de l’archéologie, 18 (1976): 34–47. Muller, Valentine. “The Prehistory of the Good Shepherd.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 3.2 (1944): 87–90. Narkiss, Bezalel. “Representational Art.” In The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century; A Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977–February 23, 1978, 366–89. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979. Nestori, Aldo. Repertorio delle Pitture delle Catacombe Romane. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1975. Neuss, Wilhelm. “Die Oranten in der altchristlicher Kunst.” In Festschrift Paul Clemens, 130–49. Edited by Leopold Seligmann. Bonn: Schwann, 1926. Nicolai, Vincenzo Fiocchi. Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani di Roman dal VI al VI secolo. Vatican City: Istituto Grafico Editoriale Romano, 2001. Noga-Banai, Galit. “Visual Prototypes versus Biblical Text: Moses Receiving the Law in Rome.” In Sarcofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani ed altomedioevali, 175–85. Edited by Hugo Brandenburg and Fabrizio Bisconti. Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 2002. Nordhagen, Jonas. “The Penetration of Byzantine Mosaic Technique into Italy in the Sixth Century.” In III Colloquio sul mosaico antico, Ravenna, 6–10 settembre, 1980, 75–9. Edited by Raffaella F. Campanati. Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1983. Nordström, Carl-Otto. “The Water Miracles of Moses in Jewish Legend and Byzantine Art.” Orientalia Suecana, 7 (1958): 78–109 (Reprinted in No Graven Images, 277–308. Edited by J. Gutmann. New York: KTAV, 1971). Nussbaum, Otto. “Die grosse Traube Christus.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 6 (1963): 136–43. Oakeshott, Walter. The Mosaics of Rome: From the Third to the Fourteenth Centuries. London: Thames and Hudson, 1967. Osteneck, V. “Mahl, Gastmahl.” Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, 3 (1971): 128–35. Ostrogorsky, George. Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreites: Historische Untersuchungen, vol. 5. Breslau: Marcus, 1929. Ousterhout, Robert. The Blessings of Pilgrimage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

254  Bibliography Partyka, Jan S. La résurrection de Lazare dans les monuments funéraires des nécropoles chrétiennes à Rome. Warsaw: Polskiej Akademii, 1993. Peppard, Michael. The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Pergola, Philippe. Le catacombe romane: Storia e topografia. Rome: Carocci, 1997. Perkins, Bryan Ward. “Where is the Archaeology and Iconography of Germanic Arianism?” Late Antique Archaeology, 6 (2010): 265–89. Perler, Otto. Die Mosaiken der Juliergruft im Vatikan. Freiburg in der Schweiz: Universitatsverlag, 1953. Phillips, L. Edward. “Early Christian Prayer.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, 570–86. Edited by Risto Uro, Juliette Day, Richard DeMaris, and Rikard Roitto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Prigent, Pierre. “Les orants dans l’art funéraire du christianisme ancien.” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, 72 (1992):143–50 and 73 (1993): 259–87. Proverbio, Cecilia. “Riflessioni sul tema di ‘traditio legis’ nella seconda metà del IV secolo.” Archivium Historiae Pontificiae, 53 (2019): 3–48. Pulleyn, Simon. Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Quasten, Johannes. “Das Bild des Guten Hirten in den altchristlichen Baptisterien und in den Taufliturgien des Ostens und Westens.” In Pisciculi, Ergänzungsband zu “Antike und Christentum,” 220–44. Edited by Franz J. Dölger. Münster in Westf: Aschendorff, 1939. Quasten, Johannes. “Der Gute Hirt in frühchristlicher Totenliturgie und Grabeskunst.” Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati. Studi e testi 12, 1, vol. 1, 373–406. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1946. Rahmani, Levi Y. A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994. Rahner, S.J., Hugo. “Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries.” In The Mysteries, Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 2, 396. Edited by Joseph Campbell. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955. Ramsay, O.P., Boniface. “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art.” Harvard Theological Review, 76 (1983): 375–78. Rasch, Jürgen and Achim Abreiter. Das Mausoleum de Constantina in Rom. Mainz: Zabern, 2007. Rasimus, Tuomas. “Revisiting the ICHTHYS: A  Suggestion Concerning the Origins of Christological Fish Symbolism.” In Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices, 327–48. Edited by Christian H. Bull, Live Lied, and John D. Turner. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Rasmussen, Mikael Bogh. “Traditio Legis: Bedeutung und Kontext.” In Late Antiquity: Art in Context, 21–52. Edited by Jens Fleisher, John Lund, and Marjetta Nielson. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2001. Rebillard, Éric. Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200– 450 CE. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. Rebillard, Éric. The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Roberts, Erin. “Anchor.” In Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, vol. 1., 58–9. Edited by Paul Corby Finney. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017. Roth, Dieter. “Staurogram.” In The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, vol. 3, 349–58. Edited by Chris Keith, Helen K. Bond, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter. London: Bloomsbury and T&T Clark, 2019.

Bibliography 255 Russell, Ben. “The Roman Sarcophagus ‘Industry’ a Reconsideration.” In Life, Death, and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, 119–47. Edited by Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Rutgers, Leonard V. Subterranean Rome: In Search of the Roots of Christianity in the Catacombs of the Eternal City. Leuven: Peeters, 2000. Scheftelowitz, I. “Das Fisch-Symbol in Judentum und Christentum.” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 14 (1911): 1–54, 321–92. Schiller, Gertrude. Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971. Schlattler, Fredric W. “Interpreting the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana.” Vigiliae Christianae, 46 (1992): 277–80. Schlattler, Fredric W. “The Two Women in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 3 (1995): 1–25. Schubert, Kurt. Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992. Schultze, Victor. Grundriss der christlichen Archäologie. Munich: Beck, 1919. Schumacher, Walter N. “Hirt und ‘Guter Hirt.’ ” Römische Quartalschrift Supplementheft (Suppl. 34). Freiburg: Herder, 1977. Seib, Gerhard. “Orans, Orant.” In Lexikon der Christliche Ikonographie, vol. 3, 352–4. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1971. Serra, Dominic. “The Baptistery at Dura-Europos: The Wall Paintings in the Context of Syrian Baptismal Theology.” Ephemerides Liturgicae, 120 (2006): 67–78. Small, Jocelyn Penny. The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Smith, Morton. Jesus the Magician. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1978. Snelders, Bas. “The Traditio Legis on Early Christian Sarcophagi.” Antiquité Tardive, 13 (2005): 321–33. Snyder, Graydon. Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985. Snyder, Gregory. “ ‘She Destroyed Multitudes:’ Marcellina’s Group in Rome.” In Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, 39–61. Edited by Ulla Tervahauta, Ivan Mirosnikov, Outi Lehipuu, and Ismo Dunderberg. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Sode, Claudia and Paul Speck. “Ikonoklasmus vor der Zeit? Der Brief des Eusebius von Kaisareia an Kaiserin Konstantia.” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 54 (2004): 113–34. Sörries, R. Die Bilder der Orthodoxen im Kampf gegen den Arianismus. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984. Spain, Suzanne. “ ‘The Promised Blessing:’ The Iconography of the Mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore.” Art Bulletin, 61 (1979): 518–40. Spier, Jeffrey. Late Antique and Early Christian Gems. Wiesbaden: Richert, 2007. Spier, Jeffrey, ed. Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Spieser, Jean-Michel. “Invention du portrait du Christ.” In Le portrait: La représentation de l’individu, 57–76. Edited by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Jean-Michel Spieser, and Jean Wirth. Florence: SISMEL–Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007. Spittler, Janet E. “Acts of John.” In Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Edited by David G. Hunter, Paul van Geest, and L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Spittler, Janet E. “Is Vienna hist. gr. 63, fol. 51v–55v a ‘fragment?’’ Ancient Jew Review, May 6, 2019. https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2019/4/30/is-vienna-hist-gr-63fol-51v-55v-a-fragment

256  Bibliography Squire, Michael. “Word & Image.” In The Oxford Handbook to Roman Imagery and Iconography, 51–91. Edited by Lea K. Cline and Nathan T. Elkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Stanley, David J. “The Apse Mosaics at Santa Costanza: Observations on Restorations and Antique Mosaics.” Mitteilungen des deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, 94 (1987): 29–42. Stevenson, James. The Catacombs. Rediscovered Monuments of Early Christianity, 88. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. Stern, Henri. “Orphée dans l’art palelochrétien.” Cahiers Archéologiques, 23 (1974): 1–16. Stirling, Lea. “Archeological Evidence for Food Offerings in the Graves of Roman North Africa.” In Daimonopylai: Essays in Classics and the Classical Tradition Presented to E.G. Berry, 427–49. Edited by R. Egan, M. Joyal, and E.G. Berry. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Center for Hellenic Civilization, 2004. Stroumsa, Guy. “The Early Fish Symbol Reconsidered.” In Messiah and Christos: Studies in the Jewish Origins of Christianity, 199–205. Edited by Ithamar Gruenwald, Shaul Shaked, and Guy Stroumsa. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992. Strzygowski, Josef. Orient oder Rom: Beiträge zur Geschichte der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst. Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1901. Stuiber, Alfred. Refrigerium interim: die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand und die frühchristliche Grabeskunst. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1957. Styger, Paul. Die altchristliche Grabeskunst, ein Versuch der einheitlichen Ausslegung. Munich: Josef Kösel, 1927. Styger, Paul. Die römischen katakomben: archäologische forschungen über den ursprung und die bedeutung der altchristlichen grabstätten. Berlin: Verlag für kunstwissenschaft, 1933. Sühling, Friedrich. Die Taube als religiöses Symbol im christlichen Altertum. Freiburg: Bolzano, 1930. Sühling, Friedrich. “Taube und Orante: ein Beitrag zum Orantenproblem.” Römische Quartalschrift für Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 39 (1931): 333–54. Sullivan, Ruth. “Saints Peter and Paul: Some Ironic Aspects of their Imaging.” Art History, 17 (1994): 59–80. Sybel, Ludwig von. Christliche Antike: Einführung in Die Altchristliche Kunst. Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1906. Tabbernee, William. Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia: Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997. Testa, E. Il simbolismo dei Guideo—Cristiani (Pubblicazioni dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, n. 14). Jerusalem: Tip. dei PP. francescani, 1962. Thomas, A. “Weintraube.” Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 4 (1972): 494–6. Thummel, Hans Georg. “Die Anfänge der Katakombenmalerei.” Atti Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, 7 (1965): 745–52. Thunø, Eric. Image and Relic. Rome: Bretschneider, 2002. Tiberio, Vitaliano. Il mosaico di Santa Pudenziana a Roma: Il restauro. Todi: Tau Editrice, 2003. Tinh, Tran Tam. Catalogue des peintures romaines (Latium et Campanie) du musée du Louvre. Paris: Editions des musées nationaux, 1974. Tkacz, Catherine Brown. “Susanna as a Type of Christ.” Studies in Iconography, 20 (1999): 101–53. Tkacz, Catherine Brown. The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and the Early Christian Imagination (Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 14). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.

Bibliography 257 Torgesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper, 1995. Toynbee, Arnold, ed. The Crucible of Christianity. London: Thames and Hudson, 1969. Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. Death and Burial in the Roman World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971. Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. and John Bryan Ward-Perkins. The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations. London: Longmans, 1956. Tronzo, William. The Via Latina Catacomb. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. Tsamakda, Vasiliki. “Eine ungewöhnliche Darstellung der Heilung des Paralytikers in der Domitilla—Katakombe: Zur Verwendung des Wunderstabes in der frühchristlichen Kunst.” Mitteilungen zur Christlichen Archäologie, 15 (2009): 25–49. Ulrich, Thedor. Pietas (Pius) als politischer Begriff im römischen Staate bis zum Tode des Kaisers Commodus. Breslau: M. and H. Marcus, 1930. Urbano, Arthur. “Sizing up the Philosopher’s Cloak: Christian Verbal and Visual Representations of the Tribon.” In Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity, 175–94. Edited by Kristi Upson-Saia, Carly Daniel-Hughes, and Alicia J. Batten. Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. Utro, Umberto, ed. San Paolo in Vaticano: la figura e la parola dell’apostolo delle genti nelle raccolte pontificie. Todi: Tau Editrice, 2009. van den Broek, Roel. The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Tradition. Leiden: Brill, 1962. van den Hoek, Annewies and John J. Hermann, Jr. Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Verhoven, Mariëtte. The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna: Transformations and Memory. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. VerKerk, Dorothy. “Early Christian Illuminated Manuscripts.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 254–72. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Veyne, Paul, ed. A History of Private Life, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Vikan, Gary. Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications, 2010. Villette, Jeanne. La résurrection du Christ dans l’art chrétien du IIe au VIIe siècle. Paris: Henri Laurens, 1957. Vives, José. Concilios Visigóticos e Hispano—Romanos, España Cristiana (Textos 1). Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1963. Vogel, Cyrille. “Le repas sacré au poisson chez les Chrétiens.” Revue des Sciences Religieuses, 40 (1966): 1–26. von Harnack, Adolph. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 2, fourth edition. Mohr: Tübingen, 1909. von Simson, Otto. Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Weiss, Peter. “The Vision of Constantine.” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 16 (2003): 237–59. Weitzman, Kurt. “Loca Sancta and the Representational Arts of Palestine.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 28 (1974): 31–55. Weitzmann, Kurt. “The Illustration of the Septuagint.” In Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, 45–75. Edited by H. Kessler. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

258  Bibliography Weitzmann, Kurt and Herbert Kessler. The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art (Dumbarton Oaks 28). Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990. Wessel, Kurt. “Der nackte Crucifixus von Narbonne.” Rivista di archeologia cristiana, 43 (1967): 333–45. Wessel, Klaus. “Ecclesia orans.” Archäologischer Anzeiger, 70 (1955): 315–34. Wharton, Annabel. Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem, and Ravenna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Whitlark, Jason A. “Funerary Anchors of Hope and Hebrews: A Reappraisal of the Origins of the Anchor Iconography in the Catacombs of Rome.” In Visualizing the Tradition(s): Early Christians and Their Art. Edited by Mikeal Parsons and Robin Jensen. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming. Wickhoff, Franz. Die Wiener Genesis. Vienna: Tempsky, 1895 (Republished as Römische Kunst (Die Wiener Genesis). Berlin: Meyer & Jessen: 1912). Wilpert, Joseph. Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms. Frieburg i. Br: Herder, 1903. Wilpert, Joseph. Erlebnisse und Ergebnisse im Dienste der christlichen Archäeologie. Freiburg: Herder, 1930. Wilpert, Joseph. “Fractio Panis: Die älteste Darstellung des eucharistischen Opfers in den “Capella greca.” Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1895. Wilpert, Joseph. La fede delle chiesa nascente: secondo i monumenti dell’arte funeraria antica. Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1938. Wilpert, Joseph. Principiefragen der christlichen Archäologie, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der “Forschungen” von Schultz, Hasenclever und Achelis. Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1889. Wilpert, Joseph. Roma sotterranea: le pitture delle catacombe romane. Rome: Desclée, Lefebvre, 1903. Wischmeyer, Wolfgang. “Die Aberkionsinschrift als Grabepigramm.” Studia Patristica, 17.2 (1987): 777–81. Wixom, W. “Early Christian Sculptures in Cleveland.” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 45 (1967): 65–88. Wolf, Gerhard. “From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the ‘Disembodied’ Face and Disseminating the True Image of Christ in the Latin West.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, 153–80. Edited by H. Kessler and G. Wolf. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. Wulff, Oskar. Altchristliche und byzantinische Kunst, vol. 1. Berlin-Neubabelsberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1914. Zanker, Paul. The Mask of Socrates. Translated by Alan Shapiro. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Zanker, Paul, and Björn Ewald. Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Zimmermann, Norbert. “Catacomb Painting and Iconography.” In The Routledge Handbook to Early Christian Art, 21–38. Edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark Ellison. London: Routledge, 2018. Zimmerman, Norbert. “The Healing Christ in Early Christian Funeral Art: The Example of the Frescoes at Domitilla Catacomb/Rome.” In Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and Their Concepts of Reality, 251–74. Edited by Stefan Alkier and Annette Weissenreider. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013.

Index of Subjects

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Abel see Cain and Abel Abercius (epitaph of) 55, 69, 76n38, 76n41, 78n56 Abgar, King of Edessa 192 Abraham 88, 116n17; hospitality of (with three visitors at Mamre) 91, 92, 92, 93–94, 93, 95, 95, 94, 114, 181; offering Isaac 18, 85, 87, 90, 117n33, 124, 133, 183, 185, 201, 202, 202, 224 Acta apud Zenophilum 37n12 Acts of John 174, 190, 198n60 Acts of Peter 175 Adam and Eve 10, 13, 17, 18, 82, 83, 87, 89, 104, 123, 124, 126, 134, 185; creation of 184, 185, 186–87 Admetus/Admetus and Alcestis 29, 161 adventus (imperial, regis) 143, 146–48, 158n68, 158n72, 158n73, 158n78 aedicula (Anastasis Rotunda) 137, 224, 228 Aeneas 63 Agnus Dei see lamb/Lamb of God Albenga (baptistery of) 80n94, 182, 183 Alexamenos graffito 206, 206 alpha and omega 64, 181 ampulla/ae (pilgrim’s souvenir) 221, 222, 222, 228, 230 anchor/cross anchor 24, 47–49, 49, 52, 53, 74n16, 205 annunciation to the Virgin Mary 82, 112, 120, 223 Apocryphon of John 174 Apollo 161 Apollonius of Tyana 138, 155n22 Apostles 139, 140, 141, 208, 211; see also Peter; Paul (Saint); Thomas (Doubting)

Apostolic Constitutions 47, 89 Aquileia, basilica of 8, 9 Arch of Constantine 152 Arch of Galerius 146 Arian baptistery (Ravenna) 178, 179, 179 Arians/Arianism 175, 177–179, 180, 186, 197n41 Asclepius 28, 128, 129, 165n22, 161, 169 aurum coronarium 143–144 Balaam 144, 148, 157n63 baptism 31, 52, 54, 55, 70, 76n37, 80n95, 80n97, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 103–105, 107–108, 110, 113, 116n15, 118n52, 132, 134–135, 137–138, 154, 156n37, 156n42, 167, 169, 175, 203; baptism of Jesus (see Jesus, baptism of) baptisteries (baptismal fonts, general) 8, 19, 53, 55, 70, 73n2, 80n94, 86, 108, 110, 169, 178, 210 Belisarius 175 Beth Alpha, Synagogue of 183 bird/s 12, 25, 37n15, 43, 44, 44, 225 blind man/men, healing of 7, 19, 122, 123, 124, 127, 131, 130, 133, 135, 143 boat see ship Bordeaux Pilgrim 238n60 Brescia Casket 213, 215 Caelus 18, 149 Caiaphas 177, 213, 214 Cain and Abel 184, 211, 212, 185 Callistus/Callixtus, Catacomb of 5, 12, 15, 59, 85, 87, 104; Pope 36n6 Cana see wedding at Cana Celsus 127, 160–161

260  Index of Subjects Centelles (Spain) 96, 117n34 chi-rho/christogram 62, 189, 203, 210, 211, 211, 212, 212, 224, 233, 236n36 Christ see under Jesus coins/medallions 63, 63, 141, 146, 236n36 Commodilla, Catacomb of 142, 187, 188 concordia apostolorum 153 Constantia 191 Constantine I (Emperor) 5, 36n12, 80n94, 90, 144, 146, 210, 216, 221 cross/cross symbol or sign 3, 26, 33, 48, 49, 52, 71, 79n68, 104, 128, 130, 141, 150, 169, 176, 177, 181, 182, 200–202, 203–205, 204 cross, gemmed 141, 213, 214 crucifixion/passion of Jesus see Jesus, death (crucifixion/passion) crux invicta 210–212 Daniel 13, 14, 18, 29, 65, 82, 83, 83, 85, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95–96, 101, 104, 116n17, 16n22, 16n38, 120, 161, 164, 201, 224, 237n57 David (King) 83, 88, 165; and Goliath 114n3; as Orpheus 165, 166 Demeter 29 Dino Compagni (Catacomb) 29, 29, 88, 91, 92, 105, 107, 110, 119n79, 161 Dionysus 29, 161, 162 dominus legem dat, see Jesus, giving the Law Domitilla, Catacomb of 11, 26, 123, 126, 139, 143, 164, 164, 187, 209 Donatism/Donatists 55 dove 21, 43, 45, 46, 52, 62, 91, 120; dove (Holy Spirit) 178, 179, 180, 181–182, 182, 183, 184 dry bones see Ezekiel, vision of Dura-Europos: House Church/Baptistery 4, 4, 8, 10, 36n11, 65, 70, 110, 111, 112, 114n4, 116n23, 119n75, 124, 125, 125, 204, 223, 237n55; Synagogue 87, 88, 183, 184 Elijah 89, 101, 116n17, 117n38 Elisha 116n17 Elvira, Council of 190 empty tomb see Jesus, resurrection of (empty tomb) Endymion 30, 30, 41n74, 101, 103 Enoch 89, 101, 116n17 Epiphany (Feast of) 108, 145, 168 epitaph 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55, 69, 190, 78n66, 188

Etschmiadzin diptych 146 eucharist 51, 55, 58, 59, 70, 77n50, 105, 109, 112, 113, 119n76, 124, 163 Ezekiel: raising dry bones 138, 183, 184; vision of 69, 203, 230 Felix (Saint) 181, 187 fish/fishers 43, 49, 52, 53–56, 58, 85, 103, 176; see also loaves and fish four creatures of Revelation 141, 141, 230 four rivers of Paradise 149, 151, 181, 222 Galla Placidia, mausoleum of 71, 72 Gaza synagogue 165, 166 Gem/s 8, 19, 26, 48, 52, 53, 56, 65, 66, 100, 201, 202, 205; with crucifixion image 200, 207–210, 208, 209, 235n29, 236n31 gold glass 10, 84, 102, 109, 136, 150 Good Shepherd see Shepherd, Good graffito see Alexamenos graffito grape/grapevine 43, 44, 49–51, 74n23, 168 Gregory the Great (Pope) xxiii, 22, 39n40, 191, 199n65 halo (aureole) 47, 92, 147, 165, 172, 186, 217, 219, 221, 225, 229, 230 harvest scene 7, 50, 50, 51, 75n29 Helena (Mother of Constantine I), discovery of the cross 221 Helios 28, 74n18, 161, 165–169, 167, 168, 196n22 Hera 45, 56 Herculaneum, cross at 203–205, 204 Hercules 28, 29, 161, 163 Hermas, Shepherd of 69, 74n27, 80n88 Hermes 11, 26, 40n61, 65, 68, 68, 128, 161, 165 Holy Sepulchre, Church of the (Jerusalem) 217, 221, 222, 228 Holy Spirit 44, 45, 49, 51, 69, 91, 96, 131, 132, 144, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187; see also dove illuminated manuscripts/Bibles and Gospels 8, 34, 87, 114, 119n82, 146, 147, 148, 230, 233, 220, 232 ivory objects (book cover, plaque, casket, diptych) 8, 19, 114, 123, 124, 130, 136, 146, 148, 151, 163, 188, 101, 213, 214, 215, 216, 224–225, 226, 227

Index of Subjects  261 Jacob 53, 119n79, 144 Jairus’s daughter, raising of 89, 122, 135, 138 Jerome 53, 75n33, 112, 119n74, 119n75, 237n60 Jerusalem (New) 141, 141 Jesus: arrest of 177, 178, 213, 215; ascension of 153, 172, 183, 201, 203, 213, 221, 223, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 237n56, 238n64; baptism of 12, 45, 57, 83, 85, 87, 104, 105, 123, 126, 134, 167, 178, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 187, 223; before Pilate (see Pontius Pilate); calling apostles 12, 26, 54, 112, 175, 176; carrying cross 202, 216; death (crucifixion/ passion) 14, 48, 51, 71, 82, 85,, 120, 121, 175, 200, 205, 206, 211, 212, 223, 233, 234; depictions of 177–189, 200–210, 206, 208, 209, 216–217, 216, 218–223, 218, 220, 222 (lacking depictions of 82, 120–121, 200–202, 210, 212–214); entering Jerusalem 18, 114, 120, 143, 143, 146–148, 147; enthroned 14, 25, 71, 120, 121, 130, 139, 141–144, 141, 153, 154, 160, 169, 170, 172, 172, 194, 200; giving the Law (traditio legis or dominus legem dat) 18, 121, 143, 148–153, 149, 150, 151, 170, 171, 172, 213; (as) healer 131–133, 140 (see also under individual healing scenes); (as) magician 121, 126–128, 201; nativity of 14, 82, 114n2, 121, 223; post-resurrection appearances 57, 102, 114, 173, 177, 178, 213, 214, 216, 217; raising the dead (life restorer, revivifier) 18, 124, 136–138, 145; resurrection of (empty tomb) 25, 28, 47, 82, 89, 90, 101, 102, 178, 200, 203, 216, 219, 221, 222, 223–229, 226, 227, 228, 229, 233; second coming 148, 153, 230, 237n56; (as) teacher 138–140, 139, 140; walking on water 122, 124, 125; washing disciples’ feet 144, 172; (as) wonderworker 121, 122–125 (see also under individual scenes) Job 18, 88, 89, 116n17, 211, 212, 217 John the Baptist 12, 13, 178, 179, 179, 187n43

Jonah 9, 12, 13, 14, 14, 16, 30, 41n74, 41n75, 65, 82, 86, 89, 90, 91, 100–104, 101, 102, 103, 103, 105, 116n17, 116n22, 118n50, 120, 130, 142, 164, 167, 167 Jordan River (god) 178, 179, 179 Joseph (husband of Mary) 144, 223 Joseph (patriarch) 83, 88, 94 Joshua 94, 119n79 Judas 178, 216, 216, 217 Junius Bassus sarcophagus 17, 18, 20, 36n5, 38n32, 50, 149, 237n57 Jupiter 161, 169, 170 Justinian (Emperor) 4, 175 lamb/Lamb of God 71, 80n94, 81n101, 151, 181, 182, 200, 208 Last Judgement 51, 90, 100, 148, 203, 237n56 Last Supper 43, 50, 57, 61, 82, 177, 178, 214 Lateran Basilica (S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome) 70, 80n94 La Vigna Massimo, Catacomb of 101, 164, 165 laying on (imposition) of hands 122, 131–133 Lazarus, raising of 7, 10, 13, 15, 29, 83, 87, 89, 91, 102, 103, 105, 121, 122, 123, 126, 126, 135, 136, 136, 137, 137, 138, 164, 217, 224, 225 leper, healing of 122, 155n13 loaves and fish, multiplication of 7, 13, 17, 18, 13, 29, 57, 58, 83, 87, 89, 105, 121, 122, 123, 123, 124, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 133, 185 Lord’s Day 167 Lycomedes 190 magi, adoration of 13, 16, 18, 82, 83, 100, 121, 126, 142, 143, 142, 144–146, 145, 148, 185, 186, 221, 223 mandorla 92, 222, 230, 233, 238n63 manus dei 183–184, 182, 184 Marcion/Marcionites 58 maritime scenes 7, 28, 43, 47, 52 Mary (Virgin) 14, 33, 56, 65, 114, 144, 148, 181, 186, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 202, 218, 223, 230, 233; see also nativity Mary Magdalene 173, 225, 229 Maskell casket 214, 216, 217, 219, 225, 229 Maximian (Bishop of Ravenna) 124, 146

262  Index of Subjects meal (banquet – funerary) 12, 12, 43, 56, 57, 58–62, 58, 59, 59, 60, 60, 77n52 Melchizedek 91, 94, 95, 117n33 milk 58, 65, 69, 70, 80n93; and honey 69, 77n53 Miriam 107, 107, 108 Missorium of Theodosius I 152, 152 mosaics 32, 19, 30, 34, 45, 47, 52, 57, 65, 100, 110, 117n32, 118n62, 120, 134, 138, 142, 148, 151, 163, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 187, 205, 210, 229, 236n38 Moses 13, 29, 82, 88, 90, 94, 116n17, 121, 126, 130, 164; parting the Red Sea 105, 107–108, 107, 114, 119n79, 126; receiving the Law 18, 133, 153, 183, 184, 185; rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter 105; striking the rock 16, 57, 83, 87, 88, 89, 102, 104, 105, 105, 108–109, 110, 126, 128, 132, 134, 164 Murano Diptych 130 Naaman the Syrian, healing of 104, 118n59 nativity see Jesus, nativity of Nebuchadnezzar 18, 96, 97, 99, 117n37 Neonian/Orthodox Baptistery (Ravenna) 81n100, 178, 178, 179 Nestorianism 177 Nicaea (first ecumenical council of) 79n70 Noah 1, 2, 13, 14, 14, 16, 29, 37n18, 45, 45, 65, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 97, 100, 102, 103, 104, 116n17, 16n22, 132, 164, 184; Drunken 51 Optatus of Milevis 53, 55, 75n33, 76n40, 119n74 orant (praying figure) 7, 14, 28, 44, 57, 57, 59, 62–65, 64, 68, 70, 71, 116n22, 85, 123, 233 Ordo Commendationis Animae 88, 89 Orpheus 11, 28, 29, 161–165, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 195n11, 195n12, 210 paralytic, healing of 10, 85, 118n63, 121, 124, 126, 127, 130, 132, 132, 135, 143, 155n13, 185, 186 passion of Christ see crucifixion passion sarcophagi 202, 210–214, 211, 212, 213 Paul (Saint) 88, 91, 116n15, 131, 180, 188, 194, 212, 223, 230; arrest/

martyrdom of 18, 211, 212; portrait type 186, 192, 195; see also Peter and Paul Peacock 45–47, 46, 73n4 Pectorius (epitaph of) 55, 56, 58, 76n41, 78n56 Peter: arrest of 7, 18, 123, 135, 185, 211, 212; crucifixion 150; denial of Christ 133, 177, 213, 214, 215, 216, 216; feet washed 144; receiving keys from Christ (traditio clavis) 150, 170; striking the rock 7, 109–110, 109, 123, 124, 133, 185 Peter and Marcellinus, Catacomb of 6, 14, 16, 57, 59, 60, 83, 106, 132, 164, 167 Peter and Paul (together) 14, 189, 190; receiving the Law (see Jesus, giving the law) philosopher type xxiii, 28, 136, 139, 157n49, 157n50 phoenix 44, 47, 48, 89, 151 piety/Pietas 13, 27, 63, 63, 68, 70 pilgrimage artifacts (souvenirs) 202, 221–222, 222, 224 Plato 23, 139, 164, 190 Pluto 61 Pola (Samagher) Casket 151, 151 Pompeii (crosses at) 203–205 Pontius Pilate 18, 144, 190, 202, 202, 211, 213, 215 pottery/ceramics (lamps, dishware) 26, 27, 45, 97, 98, 100, 136, 201, 210, 230 Priscilla, Catacomb of 2, 46, 49, 58, 64, 64, 87, 96, 96 Protevangelium of James 112 Psyche 11 putti (as harvesters) 11, 11, 26, 50 Rabbula, Gospel of 219, 220, 221, 223, 228, 230, 232, 237n49 refrigerium interim 61, 78n64 reliquary/reliquaries 8, 126, 214, 219, 222–223, 225, 228, 236n38 resurrection of Jesus see Jesus, resurrection of Revelation, Book of 141, 230 Rossano Gospels 146, 147, 148 St. Catherine’s (Sinai) 219 Samaritan woman (at the well) 104, 105, 110, 110, 111, 112, 112, 118n63 S. Apollinare in Classe 183

Index of Subjects  263 S. Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna) 114, 175, 176, 177, 180, 214, 215, 226 S. Giovanni in Fonte (Naples) 48, 70, 112, 112, 149 S. Peter’s Basilica (Rome) 151, 159n82, 168n57, 236n38 S. Sebastiano (Rome) 60 S. Vitale (Ravenna) 95, 95, 172, 172, 173 Sarah (wife of Abraham) 92, 95, 95 Serapis 169, 196n25 shepherd 26, 27, 27, 28, 39n61, 43, 44, 56, 69, 70, 71, 95, 102, 103, 167; Shepherd, Good 12, 13, 14, 26, 39n37, 55, 65–72, 66, 67, 72, 81n101, 101, 105, 116n22, 120, 121, 142, 161, 164, 165, 165 ship 48, 50, 56, 74n16 Sibylline Oracles 52, 53 Silenus 148 silver objects 19, 136, 137, 148, 180, 181, 182 Simon of Cyrene 175, 211, 211, 214 Socrates 23, 139 Sol/Sol Invictus see Helios Sta. Costanza, mausoleum of (Rome) 158n81, 159n85, 170, 171, 172; Sta. Maria Antiqua, sarcophagus of 12; fresco 219, 221 Sta. Maria Maggiore (Rome) 92, 93, 95, 95, 114, 117n32, 118n62, 119n78 Sta. Pudenziana (Rome) 141, 141, 142, 169, 172 Sta. Sabina (Rome) 218, 219, 224, 230, 231 staff (virga, rabdos) 83, 105, 107, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128–130 staurogram 205 Susanna 13, 82, 85, 87, 89, 201, 234n10

Tatian 186 Taw sign 203, 234n11 textiles 8, 163, 236n38 Theodoric (King) 175, 177, 178 Theodosius I (Emperor) 152, 152, 191, 199n63 Theophilus 186 Thomas (Doubting) 177, 216, 221, 229 three Hebrew youths 13, 18, 29, 37n18, 45, 82, 87, 89, 91, 95–100, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 117n38, 130, 237n47 Tobias/Tobit 52, 55 traditio clavis/ium 150, 170 traditio legis see Jesus, giving the law transfiguration 225, 229 Trinity, Holy 93, 94, 95, 154, 180–187, 182, 183, 186 Veronica (veil of) 192, 199n71 Via Latina Catacomb see Dino Compagni (Catacomb) Via Salaria (sarcophagus of) 26, 28 Vibia, Catacomb of 61, 61, 62 wand see staff (virga, rabdos) wedding at Cana 7, 83, 89, 104, 105, 112, 112, 123, 124, 124, 185 widow of Nain’s son, raising of 89, 138 women at the empty tomb 229, 229 women with issue of blood (haemorrhaging woman) 18, 124, 132, 133, 133, 143, 156n34, 156n41, 180, 185 workshops 3, 7, 8, 19–22, 25, 32, 37n27, 177, 201, 210 Zacchaeus 146, 225 Zeus 169, 196n27

Index of Modern Authors (excluding footnotes)

Alföldi, Andreas 142 Beckwith, John 87 Bergmeier, Armin 153 Bockmann, Ralf 177 Breckenridge, James 22 Brenk, Beat 23 Charles-Murray, Mary 23, 29, 165 Couzin, Robert 3, 31 Dagron, Gilbert 192 Deckers, Johannes 142, 144, 152 Dinkler, Erich 33 Dölger, Franz 28 Ewald, Björn 17 Ferrua, Antonio 30 Finney, Paul Corby 23, 24 Freeman, Jennifer Awes 71 Goodenough, Erwin 28, 28 Grabar, André 22, 142, 152, 180, 182 Kantorowicz, Ernst 142, 146 Kitzinger, Ernst 22, 33

Klauser, Theodor 22, 33 Koch, Hugo 24 MacGregor, Neil 177 Mathews, Thomas 128, 142, 148, 161 Narkiss, Bezalel 87, 88 Nordhagen, Per Jonas 177 Ramsey, Boniface 71 Rossi, Giovanni Battista di 5 Schultze, Victor 91 Simson, Otto von 177 Stryzgowski, Josef 87 Styger, Paul 33 Sybel, Ludwig von 33 Tkacz, Catherine Brown 88 Weitzmann, Kurt 22 Wickhoff, Franz 87 Wilpert, Joseph 6, 152 Zanker, Paul 17

Index of Ancient Authors

Ambrose of Milan 47–48, 51, 70, 94, 104–105; Abr. 234n9; Exc. 73n7, 117n30; Hel. 78n65; Hex. 73n7; In Ep. ad Heb. 74n15; Myst. 81n96, 81n 97, 118n59, 118n61, 118n63, 118n67, 118n69, 159n42, 196n24; Sac. 74n28, 80n93, 80n96, 118n63, 118n67, 118n68, 118n70 Arnobius 131; Nat. 156n29, 195n7 Athanasius 128, 148, 203; Contra Arian. 79n73; Inc. 155n18, 155n22, 156n30, 158n74; Vit. Ant. 235n14 Augustine of Hippo 47, 53, 58, 70, 71, 88, 94, 100, 124, 135, 153, 191, 194, 195, 195n3; Catech. 118n68; Civ. 73n3, 75n33, 76n34, 78n65, 117n42, 234n10; Conf. 76n34, 78n56, 78n65; Cons. 159n87; Enarrat. Ps. 80n96, 116n18, 155n11, 235n15; Ep. 78n65, 118n49; Faust. 78n58, 78n65; Haer. 198n59; Mor. eccl. 199n64; Ser. 78n65, 80n96, 155n11, 156n39, 199n64; Tract. in Joh. 81n102, 155n8; Trin. 117n31, 199n73 Barnabas, Epistle of 80n93, 234n2 Basil of Caesarea 51, 63, 104, 108; Bapt. 118n67, 118n69; Hex. 74n27; Spir. 79n71, 118n54, 118n67, 118n68, 118n69 Clement of Alexandria 28, 38n34, 38n37, 48, 51, 56, 69, 72, 161, 164, 165, 168, 200; Hymn to Christ 76n44; Paed. 36n4, 39n37, 73n2, 74n13, 74n22, 76n37, 76n43, 80n90, 80n92, 116n15, 156n32, 158n66; Protrep. 39n38, 40n63, 40n64, 80n90, 195n6, 195n10, 195n11,

196n20, 196n21, 234n5; Strom. 39n38, 74n22, 78n68, 79n73, 157n53, 195n10; Theod.197n51 Clement of Rome, Epistle (1 Clement) 97; Epistle 1 117n36 Cyprian of Carthage 51, 97, 99, 100, 104, 105, 109, 110; Dom. or. 78n68; Ep. 74n23, 117n37, 117n38, 117n39, 118n58, 118n61, 118n63, 118n71; Laps. 117n37; Test. 234n11; Unit. Eccl. 117n37 Cyril of Jerusalem 55, 56, 70, 76n37, 76n45, 81n97, 108, 137, 175, 203; Cat. 73n5, 78n57, 80n96, 81n97, 118n49, 156n46, 196n24, 197n37, 235n15; Hom. 118n63; Myst. 80n96, 118n68, 119n76, 196n24; Procat. 76n37, 76n45 Ephrem the Syrian: Epiph. 80n95, 81n98; Ser. in Nat. Dom. 74n23 Eusebius of Caesarea 38n37, 53, 92, 94, 146, 190, 191; Coet. sanct. 75n33; Dem. ev. 116n25, 117n29; Hist. eccl. 79n73, 158n71, 198n62; Prep. ev. 79n73; Vit. Const. 236n35 Gregory of Nazianzus 110, 138; Or. 118n63, 119n74, 156n42, 156n47, 196n23 Gregory of Nyssa 108; Diem Lum. 118n67; Vit. Mos. 118n67 Gregory of Tours 218; Mart. 237n48 Gregory the Great (Pope) 22, 191; Ep. xxiiin1, 39n40, 199n65, 199n66 Hippolytus of Rome 26, 48, 51, 224, 198n59, 224, 247n58; Antichr. 40n60, 74n16, 74n26; Ap. trad. 77n53, 78n57, 80n93; De bene.

266  Index of Ancient Authors Iacob 74n26; Frag. in Gen. 74n26; Frag. of discourses 117n39; Haer. 36n6, 198n59; Schol. in Dan. 117n37, 237n58 Ignatius of Antioch 200; Eph. 234n2; Phil. 234n2; Trall. 234n2 Irenaeus of Lyons 51, 93, 94, 101, 110, 145, 186, 190; Epid. 117n27; Frag. 74n24; Haer. 36n4, 74n22, 116n15, 117n37, 117n40, 117n41, 118n49, 118n59, 119n73, 156n45, 158n66, 198n54, 98n59, 234n8, 234n9 John Chrysostom 100, 124, 148, 160; Catech. Illum. 118n68; Exp. Ps. 195n2; Hom. (1 Cor) 117n43, 235n16; Hom. (Gen) 234n9; Hom. (John) 155n6, 155n7; Hom. (Matt) 117n43, 158n75; Stat. 117n43 Justin Martyr 26, 63, 72, 93, 94, 104, 122, 127, 139, 161, 186, 200, 205; 1 Apol. 40n60, 40n62, 74n17, 78n57, 79n73, 155n15, 155n22, 195n5, 196n16, 196n23, 234n4; 235n21; 2 Apol. 117n40, 198n53, 236n37; Dial. 78n68, 79n73, 116n26, 118n49, 118n55, 155n4, 157n51, 157n53, 195n5, 197n51 Lactantius: Ave phoenice 73n5; Div. Inst. 156n23, 235n15; Mort. 73n5; 236n35 Leo I, the Great (Pope) 70, 145; Serm. 158n66, 158n67 Maximus of Turin 53; Contra pag. 75n33; Serm. 158n66 Melito of Sardis 167, 200, 201; Frag. on bapt. 196n19; Peri pascha 234n3, 234n7 Minucius Felix 26, 180, 205, 207; Oct. 40n60, 75n17, 78n68, 197n45, 235n21, 235n28, 236n37, 236n46 Optatus of Milevis 53, 55; Parm. 75n33, 76n40, 119n74 Origen 51, 55, 97, 104, 108, 127–128, 131, 135, 160–161, 174, 201;

Cant. 74n23; Cels. 39n38, 74n25, 117n40, 155n16, 155n17, 195n1, 195n7, 197n35, 197n36, 234n6; Comm. Matt 76n36, 156n28, 156n38; Hom. Exod. 118n57, 118n65; Hom. Gen. 74n23, 116n15; Hom. Lev. 156n28; Mart. 117n37; Or. 78n68; Sel. Ezech. 234n11 Paulinus of Nola 58, 70, 181, 184, 187; Ep. 78n55, 78n65, 81n98, 197n47, 197n48, 198n56, 234n9 Perpetua 69; Passio 80n91 Pliny the Younger (correspondence with Emperor Trajan) 167; Epist. 196n17 Prudentius 70; Carm. 158n66; Cath., 235n15; Perist. 81n99 Quodvultdeus of Carthage 53; Lib. prom. et praed. 75n33; De temp. barb. 80n91 Tertullian 26, 38, 38n34, 54, 55, 58, 69, 75n31, 93, 94, 97, 100, 104, 108, 110, 112, 139, 167, 186, 201, 203, 205, 207; An. 78n61, 117n37; Apol. 40n60, 74n17, 78n61, 235n21, 235n25, 236n37; Bapt. 76n35, 80n93, 118n56, 118n63, 118n64, 119n76; Carn. Chr. 117n28; Cor. 78n61; 78n68, 80n93, 235n13; Exh. Cast. 78n61; Idol. 39n38, 117n37; Jejun. 117n37; Jud. 116n15, 234n8, 234n11; Marc. 78n54, 80n93, 117n28, 117n37, 234n11; Mon. 78n61, 78n64, 117n28; Nat. 74n17, 196n18, 235n21, 235n25, 235n27, 236n37; Orat. 78n68, 79n69, 236n46; Pall. 157n51; Prax. 198n55; Pud. 36n4, 39n37, 80n89; Res. 73n5, 78n61, 78n65, 117n41, 118n49, 156n45; Scorp. 117n37; Spec. 78n61; Virg. 79n69 Theodorus Lector 169; Hist. eccl. 196n26 Zeno of Verona 37n12, 53, 108; Inv. ad font. 80n93; Pasch. hom. 196n16; Tract. 74n16, 75n33, 118n66