entirely unwarranted. Besides simple wooden crosses, now that the church had risen to the kingdom, there were many crosses of silver and gold, or sumptuously set with pearls and gems.'

The conspicuous part which, according to the statements of Eusebius, the cross played in the life of Constantine, is well known: forming the instrument of his conversion; borne by fifty men, leading him to his victories over Maxentius and Licinius; inscribed upon his banners, upon the weapons of his soldiers in his palace, and upon public places, and lying in the right hand of his own statue. Shortly afterwards Julian accused the Christians of worshipping the wood of the cross. "The sign of universal detestation," says Chrysostom," "the sign of extreme penalty, is now become the object of universal desire and love. We see it everywhere triumphant; we find it on houses, on roofs, and on walls, in cities and hamlets, on the markets, along the roads, and in the deserts, on the mountains and in the valleys, on the sea, on ships, on books and weapons, on garments, in marriage chambers, at banquets, upon gold and silver vessels, in pearls, in painting upon walls, on beds, on the bodies of very sick animals, on the bodies of the possessed [-to drive away the disease and the demon—], at the dances of the merry, and in the brotherhoods of ascetics." Besides this, it was usual to mark the cross on windows and floors, and to wear it upon the forehead.' According to Augustine this sign was to remind believers that their calling is to follow Christ in true humility, through suffering, into glory.

We might speak in the same way of the use of other Christian emblems from the sphere of nature; the representation of Christ by a good shepherd, a lamb, a fish, and the like,

1

1 The cross occurs in three forms: the crux decussata × (called St. Andrew's cross, because this apostle is said to have died upon such an one); the cruz com massa T; and the crux immissa, either with equal arms + (the Greek cross), or with unequal (the Roman).

2 In the homily on the divinity of Christ, § 9, tom. i. 571.

• Εκτυποῦν τὸν σταυρὸν ἐν τῷ μετώπφ, efingere crucem in fronte, postare in fronte, which cannot always be understood as merely making the sign with the finger on the forehead. Comp. Neander, iii. 547, note.

which we have already observed in the period preced ing.'

Towards the end of the present period we for the first time meet with crucifixes; that is, crosses not bare, but with the figure of the crucified Saviour upon them. The transition to the crucifix we find in the fifth century in the figure of a lamb, or even a bust of Christ, attached to the cross, sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom. Afterwards the whole figure of Christ was fastened to the cross, and the earlier forms gave place to this. The Trullan council of Constantinople (the Quinisextum), A. D. 692, directed in the 82d canon: "Hereafter, instead of the lamb, the human figure of Christ shall be set up on the images." But subsequently the orthodox church of the East prohibited all plastic images, crucifixes among them, and it tolerates only pictures of Christ and the saints. The earlier Latin crucifixes offend the taste and disturb devotion; but the Catholic art in its flourishing period succeeded in combining, in the figure of the suffering and dying Redeemer, the expression of the deepest and holiest anguish with that of supreme dignity. In the middle age there was frequently added to the crucifix a group of Mary, John, a soldier, and the penitent Magdalene, who on her knees embraced the post of the cross.

1 Vol. i. § 100 (p. 877 sqq.).

2 Crosses of this sort, colored red, with a white lamb, are thus described by Paulinus of Nola in the beginning of the fifth century, Epist. 82:

"Sub cruce sanguinea niveo stat Christus in agno."

• Κατὰ τὸν ἀνθρώπινον χαρακτῆρα. Hefele (l. c. 266 sq.) proves that crucifixes did not make their first appearance with this council, but that some existed before. The Venerable Bede, for example (Opp. ed. Giles, tom. iv. p. 376), relates that a crucifix, bearing on one side the Crucified, on the other the serpent lifted up by Moses, was brought from Rome to the British cloister of Weremouth in 686. Gregory of Tours, also († 595), De gloria martyrum, lib. i. c. 23, describes a crucifix in the church of St. Genesius in Narbonne, which presented the Crucified One almost entirely naked (pictura, quæ Dominum nostrum quasi præcinctum linteo indicat crucifixum). But this crucifix gave offence, and was veiled, by order of the bishop, with a curtain, and only at times exposed to the people.

$110. Images of Christ.

FR. KUGLER: Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei seit Constantin dem Gr Berlin, 1847, 2 vols.; and other works on the history of painting Also C. GRÜNEISEN: Die bildliche Darstellung der Gottheit. Stuttgart 1828. On the Iconoclastic controversies, comp. MAIMBOURG (R. O.) Histoire de l'hérésie de l'Iconoclastes. Par. 1679 sqq. 2 vols. DAL LEUS (Calvinist): De imaginibus. Lugd. Bat. 1642. FR. SPANHEIM Historia imaginum restituta. Lugd. Bat. 1686. P. E. JABLONSKI († 1757): De origine imaginum Christi Domini, in Opuscul. ed. Water, Lugd. Bat. 1804, tom. iii. WALOH: Ketzergesch., vols. x. and xi. J. MARX: Der Bildersturm der byzantinischen Kaiser. Trier, 1839. W. GRIMM: Die Sage vom Ursprunge der Christusbilder. Berlin, 1843. L. GLÜCKSELIG: Christus-Archäologie, Prag, 1863. HEFELE: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. ii. Tüb. 1864 (Christusbilder, p. 254 sqq.). Comp. the liter. in HASE's Leben Jesu, p. 79 (5th ed. 1865).

While the temple of Solomon left to the Christian mind no doubt concerning the lawfulness and usefulness of church architecture, the second commandment seemed directly to forbid a Christian painting or sculpture. "The primitive church," says even a modern Roman Catholic historian,' "had no images of Christ, since most Christians at that time still adhered to the commandment of Moses (Ex. xx. 4); the more, that regard as well to the Gentile Christians as to the Jewish forbade all use of images. To the latter the exhibition and veneration of images would, of course, be an abomination, and to the newly converted heathen it might be a temptation to relapse into idolatry. In addition, the church was obliged, for her own honor, to abstain from images, particularly from any represen tation of the Lord, lest she should be regarded by unbelievers as merely a new kind and special sort of heathenism and creature-worship. And further, the early Christians had in their idea of the bodily form of the Lord no temptation, not the slightest incentive, to make likenesses of Christ. The oppressed church conceived its Master only under the form of a servant, despised and uncomely, as Isaiah, liii. 2, 3, describes the Servant of the Lord."

The first representations of Christ are of heretical and pagan

1 Hefele, 1. c. p. 254.

origin. The Gnostic sect of the Carpocratians worshipped crowned pictures of Christ, together with images of Pythago ras, Plato, Aristotle, and other sages, and asserted that Pilate had caused a portrait of Christ to be made.' In the same spirit of pantheistic hero-worship the emperor Alexander Seve

(A. D. 222-235) set up in his domestic chapel for his adora tion the images of Abraham, Orpheus, Apollonius, and Christ.

After Constantine, the first step towards images in the orthodox church was a change in the conception of the outward form of Christ. The persecuted church had filled its eye with the humble and suffering servant-form of Jesus, and found therein consolation and strength in her tribulation. The victorious church saw the same Lord in heavenly glory on the right hand of the Father, ruling over his enemies. The one conceived Christ in his state of humiliation (but not in his state of exaltation), as even repulsive, or at least "having no form nor comeliness;" taking too literally the description of the suffering servant of God in Is. lii. 14 and liii. 2, 3.' The other beheld in him the ideal of human beauty, "fairer than the children of men," with "grace poured into his lips;" after the Messianic interpretation of Ps. xlv. 3.'

1 Irenæus, Adv. hær. 1, 25, § 6: "Imagines quasdam quidem depictas, quasdam autem et de reliqua materia fabricatas habent, dicentes formam Christi factam a Pilato illo in tempore, quo fuit Jesus cum hominibus. Et has coronant et proponunt eas cum imaginibus mundi philosophorum, videlicet cum imagine Pythagoræ et Platonis et Aristotelis et reliquorum; et reliquam observationem circa eas, similiter ut gentes, faciunt." Comp. Epiphanius, Adv. hær. xxvi. no. 6; August., De hær. a. 7.

So Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph.; Clement. Alex., in several places of the Pædagogus and the Stromata; Tertullian, De carne Christi, c. 9, and Adv. Jud. c. 14; and Origen, Contra Cels. vi. c. 75. Celsus made this low conception of the form of the founder of their religion one of his reproaches against the Christians.

So Chrysostom, Homil. 27 (al. 28) in Matth. (tom. vii. p. 371, in the new Paris ed.): Οὐδὲ γὰρ θαυματουργῶν ἦν θαυμαστὸς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φαινόμενος ἁπλῶς πολλῆς ἔγεμε χάριτος· καὶ τοῦτο ὁ προφήτης (Ps. xlv.) δηλῶν ἔλεγεν ὡραῖος καλλει παρὰ Toùs vioùs Tâv åv&párov. The passage in Isaiah (liii. 2) he refers to the ignominy which Christ suffered on the cross. So also Jerome, who likewise refers Ps. xlv. to the personal appearance of Jesus, and says of him: "Absque passionibus crucis universis [hominibus] pulchrior est. Nisi enim habuisset et in vultu quiddam oculisque sidereum, numquam eum statim secuti fuissent apostoli, nec qui ac comprehendendum eum venerant, corruissent (Jno. xviii.).” Hieron. Ep. 65, c. 8.

This alone, however, did not warrant images of Christ. For, in the first place, authentic accounts of the personal ap pearance of Jesus were lacking; and furthermore it seemed incompetent to human art duly to set forth Him in Whom the whole fulness of the Godhead and of perfect sinless humanity dwelt in unity.

On this point two opposite tendencies developed themselves, giving occasion in time to the violent and protracted imagecontroversies, until, at the seventh ecumenical council at Nice in 787, the use and adoration of images carried the day in the church.

1. On the one side, the prejudices of the ante-Nicene period against images in painting or sculpture continued alive, through fear of approach to pagan idolatry, or of lowering Christianity into the province of sense. But generally the hostility was directed only against images of Christ; and from t, as Neander justly observes,' we are by no means to infer the rejection of all representations of religious subjects; for images of Christ encounter objections peculiar to themselves.

The church historian Eusebius declared himself in the strongest manner against images of Christ in a letter to the empress Constantia (the widow of Licinius and sister of Constantine), who had asked him for such an image. Christ, says he, has laid aside His earthly servant-form, and Paul exhorts us to cleave no longer to the sensible;' and the transcendent glory of His heavenly body cannot be conceived nor represented by man; besides, the second commandment forbids the making to ourselves any likeness of anything in heaven or in earth. He had taken away from a lady an image of Christ and of Paul, lest it should seem as if Christians, like the idolaters, carried their God about in images. Believers ought rather to fix their mental eye, above all, upon the divinity of Christ, and, for this purpose, to purify their hearts; since only the pure in heart shall see God.' The same Eusebius, how.

1 Kirchengesch., vol. iii. p. 550 (Germ. ed.). Comp. 2 Cor. v. 16.

' In Harduin, Collect, concil. tom. iv. p. 406. A fragment of this letter of Euse bius s preserved in the acts of the council of the Iconoclasts at Constantinople in 754, and in the sixth act of the second council of Nice in 787.