e.g. even as the Crucifixion, and the Blessed Virgin with her Divine Child, are so represented, as in the one case to pain and shock the beholder, by the repulsive and harrowing exhibition of bodily agony, instead of concentrating his thoughts in reverential meditation upon the great Atonement and in the other, as merely to suggest ideas of maternal tenderness and infant weakness instead of the Mystery of the Incarnation-the life and substance of the Catholic and Sacramental System. But this objection will not apply to that school of painting for the revival of which I am now pleading. Here the terrestrial element is made subservient to the heavenly; "physical is sacrificed to moral truth": our LORD is not here represented as appealing to our human affection, but as claiming, what has been termed " the exalted love of pure faith," wearing His cross-indented crown, and sometimes arrayed in regal apparel, even upon the "tree of shame"; regarding us even thence as from a throne, as our King and our GoD, in suffering majestic and triumphant.

I will not pursue this topic further, as my space warns me to bring this paper to a close. It has been written rapidly, as a brief notice, and this must be my apology for not going more deeply into the important subject to which I have presumed to invite your attention. If, however, there be any truth in the considerations I have adduced, I trust that they may obtain favour with persons better qualified to illustrate, and enforce them than myself, and bear abundant fruit; that ere long, some able artists may be found willing to apply themselves to that branch of sacred decoration which I have been advocating, in the chastened and reverential, humble, faithful, and loving spirit of the sublime painters of Christian antiquity; artists, who while repudiating a servile archaic imitation of the mechanical defects and shortcomings which occasionally mar the (but for them) almost perfect beauty of the works of those great men, will devote their time and talents, energies, thoughts, and prayers to the production of paintings closely resembling them in their general characteristics of colouring and design, symbolism, and intense religious expression. So, with God's blessing, may a school of sacred art arise among us such as England has never yet possessed even in her Church's palmiest days; a school whose pictorial achievements in times to come, may throw even those of the Masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the shade.

ARMENIAN ECCLESIOLOGY.

A History of the Holy Eastern Church. Part I. General Introduction. By the Rev. J. M. Neale, M.A., Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead. London: Masters.

Rapports sur un Voyage Archéologique dans la Géorgie et dans l'Arménie, exécuté en 1847-1848. Par M. BROSSET, Membre de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences. 3 Livraisons. Avec un Atlas. bourg, 1849, 1850, 1851.

S. Peters

IN our February number, we noticed Mr. Neale's dissertation on Byzantine Architecture. We now proceed to give our readers some idea of his researches into the Ecclesiology of Armenia. He thus describes the general characteristics of this other great branch of the Ecclesiology of the East:

"If we take a Byzantine church as described in § 3, and elongate the square by throwing the narthex into it; make all the four arms internally apsidal, and the two opposite ones correspondent; prevent, or exceedingly diminish their external protrusion, by niching the wall on both sides of each; turn the complements of the parallelogram described about the cross into distinct chapels; divide the narthex into two, making it occupy the two chapels to the west, the prothesis and diaconicon occupying the two to the east; replace the central and angular domes by one central tower and spire, circular or octagonal; remove all piers, and support the tower on the parabemata, and the correspondent projections or antiparabemata on the west; the transformation into an Armenian church will be well-nigh complete. The four angular compartments, are, however, now generally used as distinct oratories, or chapels.

"Hence it follows that a purely Armenian church, bisected either longitudinally or latitudinally, would often present (excluding the consideration of doors and windows) two equal and similar halves; a fact which would serve as a definition, inasmuch as no other system of churches is arranged on the same plan. "As all Byzantine churches may be referred to S. Sophia as to their prototype, so may all Armenian churches be derived from S. Hripsime near Etchmiadzine; of which I therefore give an elevation, and a ground plan." -pp. 172, 173.

Mr. Neale notices the fact that in their outline and general external appearance, Armenian churches more closely resemble the churches of the West than do pure Byzantine structures. They approximate to European architecture not merely in the character and proportions of their towers and spires, but often in the tracery and pointed heads of the windows.

Armenian Ecclesiology, like the Byzantine, is divided by Mr. Neale into five periods, as follows:

"1. The period of the dynasty of the Arsacidæ, till A.D. 428.

"2. The period of the contest of Constantinople and Persia, till A.D. 884. "3. The period of the dynasty of the Bagratidæ, till A.D. 1064.

"4. The period of the dynasty of the Rubendians, till A.D. 1441.

"5. The period of the return of the Patriarchs."-p. 174.

The Primatial church of Etchmiadzine naturally claims the first notice. It lies about thirty-five miles to the north of Mount Ararat,

D

in the midst of a large fortified convent, of which an excellent groundplan is given by M. Brosset (Planche XV.) We borrow the plan and view of this celebrated church from Mr. Neale, who has copied it from M. Dubois de Montpereux. The ground-plan, though very coarse, is substantially correct. From M. Brosset's very beautiful plan, we can supply the following facts; that a screen runs across the church, to the westward of the west piers of the cupola; and that the windows are much fewer than are given in the plan before us. The latter fact indeed is obvious, from a comparison of the plan and the view, and we wonder that so good an ecclesiologist as Mr. Neale did not alter the plan accordingly. Mr. Neale believes that the original Byzantine church here-the western porch and transepts being Armenian additions-was founded about A.D. 483. In 618 and 705, it received alterations and additions. But the western porch and spire were not built till the early part, and the other small spires till the latter part of the 17th century.

"The High Altar is at the east end, in its original position, and is named from the Repose of the Panaghia. Before it is, contrary to the present practice of the Armenian Church, an iconostasis; this was given, a few years back, by the piety of the Smyrna merchants. The prothesis and the diaconicon were converted by the Catholicos Abraham, who died in 1737, into two chapels, respectively under the invocation of S. Gregory and the sons of Zebedee. But, from their excessive inconvenience, they are seldom used for the Liturgy when it is celebrated at the High Altar, they are indiscriminately employed as chapels of prothesis.

"The central Altar, with a ciborium springing from four columns of white marble, was built by the Catholicos Astvatsatur at the beginning of the

eighteenth century, to relace that of Eleazar, which was less costly. It is said to mark the exact spot where our LORD appeared to S. Gregory. Raised on two steps, it is surrounded with a railing of bronze: and the hours are recited in front of it. On the north side is the chair which the Patriarch occupies during the offices; it was a present from Pope Innocent XI.

"In the northern transept, if the expression may be used, is the Altar of S. Stephen the Protomartyr, orientating rightly, and raised on seven steps. The surrounding walls are frescoed with icons of the sainted Catholici of Armenia. In the southern transept, raised on three steps, is the Altar of the Forerunner the frescoes around it represent Greek Prelates. These two Altars were erected by the Catholicos Eleazar; and are used at the consecration of Bishops. The church generally is painted, in the Persian fashion, with arabesques and flowers, and a trace of gilding may here and there be detected.” -pp. 291, 292.

M. Brosset adds the curious information that, close to the church, to the south-west, is a monument, erected by the East India Company, over the grave of Sir John Macdonald, who died on a mission to Persia, in 1815. The tomb is of a most Pagan character, with inscriptions in Greek, Persian, and English. His observation upon it is-"C'est à coup sûr un rare exemple de tolérance religieuse." The cupola is thus described by M. Brosset-" Mais dans l'église d'Etchmiadzin le lieu véritablement remarkable, c'est sa belle coupole, couverte des plus riches arabesques de l'orient, percée de fenêtres avec des vitraux de couleur, et au-dessous, non tout-à-fait au milieu, la petite chapelle occupant, suivant la tradition, la place où le Sauveur descendit en personne et se montra à S. Grégoire l'Illuminateur. Ici s'élève un petit autel, recouvert par un dais, que soutiennent des colonnes de marbre translucide; dans sa nouveauté ce baldaquin dut être un fort joli monument. Il est entouré d'une balustrade basse."

(Brosset. Rapp. III. p. 20.)

Leaving now the Primatial church, we may give some account of S. Hripsime, with Mr. Neale's theory as to the peculiarity of the Armenian ground-plan.

"The church, however, of S. Hripsime is of deeper interest, as really being the norm of all Armenian ecclesiastical buildings. Indeed, notwithstanding its great rudeness, no feature afterwards occurs that does not, in an incipient state, manifest itself here. In the first place the arrangement ever continued unaltered. There is the double narthex at the west end, answering to the prothesis and diaconicon at the east; there are the four apsidal arms; there is the attempt at a polygonal apse on each face, while there was yet to be no projection. This led to the niche, which, in the present case, is very rudely managed by a kind of elliptic vaulting, but which, as we shall presently see, afterwards was improved into a great ornament of Armenian churches."p. 293.

"It is impossible to look at the ground-plan of this building without owning that it shows a great degree of aesthetical refinement; that it was the result of deliberate invention, not the nisus of rude impulse; that it assumed - as necessary the prothesis and diaconicon, and adapted the rest of the building to them; and therefore, on all these accounts, we cannot assign to it a date by any means so early as that to which Armenian vanity carries it, the time of S. Gregory; but may attribute it, with great probability, according to another tradition, to the sixth century.