alleged that the Roman Senate offered to admit the Christ to the pantheon of the state, and similarly the Crucifix might have simply become the companion of the hammer of Thor, or the sun-crowned Phoebus, of the sacred ibis of Egypt, or the winged monsters of Assyria; or at best a mere substitute for them. Guided by a Divine instinct, the Church showed a wise self-restraint; and it was only as the decay of idolatry in the West removed this danger, that she allowed herself to contemplate the image of the Redeemer.

From the first, nevertheless, a yearning for the help towards devotion which the eye can give was felt, although the necessity of prudence and caution confined the faithful to the use of symbolic, rather than of historic, figures. Thus even in the days of the catacombs the Vine, the Dove, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd are found, with a meaning obviously Scriptural in origin; and again the Fish, specially recommended with the above emblems by S. Clement of Alexandria as a device for seals and rings, was frequently employed, as setting forth in an anagram, by means of its name in Greek, the words Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. These were all common forms, calculated to suggest Christian teaching to the believer, without exciting comment from the heathen. Meanwhile the simple cross was growing yearly more familiar to the people as the emblem of the Christian religion. Its earliest form seems to have been that known as the fylfot, like four Greek gammas joined at the base; a design that served, equally with the emblems just described, to suggest the sign to the Christian without offending others. But so rapid was the change that took place consequent on the conversion of Constantine, that so early as the papacy of John I. (who died in the year 400) crosses were carried in the processions of the Church.

The next step was the natural one of combining with the cross one or other of the emblematic figures which were already accepted as referring to the Crucified. The Lamb with the cross, therefore, became a common symbol of the Crucifixion during the first six centuries. In its most restrained form we find simply above the head of the Lamb the sacred monogram as used on the labarum of the Christianized empire; and occasionally the figure becomes not so much a type as a representative of the Saviour, by having five bleeding wounds in its feet and side. Later the same emblem appears, often with a cruciform nimbus about its head, carrying a slender cross on a tall shaft, or a banner charged with a cross. Similarly a long cross-staff is sometimes placed, instead of the pastoral crook, in the hand of the Good Shepherd. In all these the emblem of Christ is the prominent feature of the assign, the cross being entirely subordinate. As it became possible to be less guarded in displaying the “ensign of the faith,” this order was to some extent reversed. On the tomb of Gallia Placida at Ravenna, of the fifth century, the Lamb stands on a mount—the “Lamb standing on Mount Sion” of the Apocalypse—with behind it a cross, from the arms of which depend the Alpha and Omega. Again, the Lamb lies at the foot of the cross, an arrangement apparently referred to by S. Paulinus of Nola in the words, “Christ in the lamb stands ’neath the Cross all gleaming with His blood.”

AN EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT WIRKSWORTH

A more decided approximation to the Crucifix was made when the sacred Lamb was placed on the cross at the joining of the arms and the shaft; a most interesting example of which occurs on a slab unearthed at Wirksworth during the restoration of the church in 1820; it is part of a tomb, supposed to date from the seventh century.[1] In the sixth century we begin to meet with the Crucifix properly so called. Fortunatus gives us the first undoubted reference to one made in relief about the year 560, and S. Gregory of Tours, some thirty years later, refers to a painted one at Narboune. The famous Vatican cross, said to have been given by the Emperor Justin (elected 519) to Pope Gregory II., exhibits an interesting stage in the transition from the emblem to the figure of Christ. The sacred Lamb still keeps its place on a medallion in the centre, while a half-length figure of the Saviour in the act of benediction is on the upper limb of the cross, and another, probably S. John Baptist, is on the lower one; on the arms, with a curious lack of reverence and taste, are effigies of the Emperor and his wife Flavia. A book of the Gospels in the library at Munich, supposed to have been executed in this same century, has a cross which terminates above in a kind of arch, under which is a bust of Christ, while the Alpha and Omega hang from the transverse beams.

In the course of time the Cross itself seems to have been looked on, not so much as a suggestion of the Crucifixion, but as a type or emblem of Christ. A striking and curious example of this is to be found on a tomb in the church of S. Apollinare at Ravenna, where the artist has depicted the Transfiguration in a strange union of realism and symbolism. Moses and Elias are on either side, and the hand above suggests the Father, but three sheep stand for the chosen apostles, and in the centre is, not Christ, but the Cross.

It may, perhaps, have been the perception of such a tendency which led the Greek Fathers at the Council in Trullo, in 692, to feel that the time had come for a more emphatic assertion of the personality and human nature of the Redeemer in sacred art. Thus, at any rate, they decreed:—“We order that, instead of the Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ shall be shown hereafter in His human form in the images; so that, without forgetting the height from which the Divine Word stooped to us, we shall be led to remember His mortal life, His passion, and His death, which paid the ransom for mankind.”

The alteration, however, was completed as cautiously as it had been begun, even the method of production partaking of the restraint exhibited in the development of the subject. The earliest crucifixes probably had the figure simply etched in outline, then it was painted upon the cross, and last of all it became a partial or complete relief. The last stage was not reached, unless in a few exceptional cases, until the ninth century.

The earliest crucifix in the catacombs is of the seventh or eight century, and Pope John VII., in 706, dedicated the first mosaic example in St. Peter’s at Rome. Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Jarrow (died 690), brought from Rome the first picture of the crucifixion of which we hear in the north of England. S. Augustine advancing with his monks to his first conference with King Ethelbert of Kent, was preceded by a silver cross and a crucifixion painted on a panel.

Now and again an iconoclastic spirit revealed itself in opposition to the growing use, not only of the crucifix but of images of saints and patriarchs, but it made no headway in the west. Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, having broken down some images in a church, was reproved by Pope Gregory, on the ground that “in paintings on walls those who are unable to read books can read what in books they cannot.” In the east, however, the movement aroused much bitterness, and led even to persecution. Leo the Isaurian in 726, began an attack on all use of images, and a Council at Constantinople in 752, rejected them altogether.