A visit to the Roman catacombs

There is no branch of Christian archæology in which the labours of De Rossi have produced a more startling revolution than in the history of Christian art. When the Reformers of the sixteenth century protested against the use of pictures and images in churches, and boldly declared that it was contrary to the practice of primitive ages, Catholics had no monuments to appeal to in refutation of such a statement. The remains of the Christian literature of those times were scanty, and more or less silent upon the subject, and the paintings in the Catacombs were buried in darkness. Even when they were brought to light, it was not easy at once to speak positively as to their chronology. By and by, in proportion as the Catacombs were more explored, and it became possible to compare the paintings of one cemetery with those of another, and all of them with the paintings of Pompeii, the baths of Titus, the tomb of the Nasones, and other newly-recovered Pagan monuments whose ages were known, Catholic writers began to assume a bolder tone, and to claim a greater antiquity for the Christian use of painting than they had done before. Still it was impossible to fix any dates with precision so long as men confined themselves to the examination of single monuments, illustrating them perhaps with great learning, but without reference to the place where each monument had been found, the circumstances under which it had been executed, its connection with the history of the period, and the internal and external development of the Christian community at the time and place to which it belonged.

Now the Roman Catacombs are a vast gallery of ancient Christian art. Single specimens, indeed, may exist elsewhere, and wherever they are found they deserve attentive examination; but it is obvious that the largest and most valuable collection in the world is to be found in subterranean Rome; and here, if anywhere, the subject may be thoroughly sifted and settled. It is to the minuteness of the topographical researches of De Rossi that we are indebted for the solid basis on which the earliest chapters of the history of Christian art can now be made to rest. His plan here, as well as in every other branch of his subject, has been simply to note all he sees; and then, when he has collected sufficient materials, to arrange and generalise, not according to any preconceived theory of classification, but absolutely according to the strict, stern facts before him. If these facts, arranged in their true historical and geographical order, present a harmonious whole, and suggest or support a theory which can otherwise be shown to be probable, he accepts it gladly; if not, he is content to leave the facts to speak for themselves, and to trust to further discoveries, or to the ingenuity of future commentators, to introduce light and order where at present there may seem to be chaos. For he never shrinks from acknowledging his inability to explain this or that phenomenon, and he prefers to leave a matter in doubt rather than to dogmatise on insufficient authority. Such moderation naturally inspires confidence; and perhaps another presumption in favour of the impartial accuracy of his statements may be found in the fact that sometimes they militate against the theories of those who would assign to every monument a greater antiquity than it is entitled to, and sometimes against the theories of the opposite and more numerous school. On the whole, however, whatever his opinion may be as to the age of any particular monument that has been called in question, his testimony as to the free use of painting by the early Christians is distinct and positive, and supported by irrefragable proofs.

“It may be asked,” he says, “whether it is credible that the faithful, in the age of the Apostles or their disciples, when the Church, fresh from the bosom of the image-hating synagogue, was in deadly conflict with idolatry, should have so promptly and so generally adopted and (so to speak) baptized the fine arts?” And he replies, “I can only say that the universal use of pictures throughout the subterranean cemeteries, and the richness, the variety, and the freedom of the more ancient types, when contrasted with the cycle of painting which I see becoming more stiff in manner and poorer in conception towards the end of the third century,—these things demonstrate the impossibility of accepting the hypothesis of those who affirm that the use of pictures was introduced little by little, on the sly, as it were, and in opposition to the practice of the primitive Church.” He points out also that the (comparatively) flourishing condition of the fine arts, and the large number of their professors in Rome during the reigns of Trajan, of Hadrian, and of the Antonines, materially favoured the early introduction and development of pictorial art amongst the faithful; and that the conversion to Christianity of wealthy personages, and even of members of the imperial family, such as Domitilla and Flavius Clemens, told powerfully in the same direction; “whereas, on the contrary, the decline of the fine arts in the third and fourth centuries, the increasing cost of the handiwork of the painter and sculptor as their numbers diminished every day, the gradual but continuous impoverishment of public and private fortunes, which induced even the Senate and the Emperors to make their new monuments at the expense of others more ancient,—all this could not facilitate the multiplication of new works of Christian art during that period; so that, even if the faithful were gaining in the number of converts, in power and in liberty, they lost quite as much, if I may say so, in the conditions required for the flourishing of Christian art.”

The reader will have observed that De Rossi insists in these passages upon the superiority of the Christian paintings of the first two centuries over those of the third and fourth; it does not enter into his argument in this place to speak of paintings executed at any later period, when the Catacombs had ceased to be used as burial-places, and were visited only from motives of piety. Neither does it form any part of our own plan to examine these later paintings at any length. We only mention here that, of course, there are such paintings, as it was not to be expected that the Christians would cease to decorate the places in which the relics of the martyrs still lay; but they are few in number as compared with the great mass of paintings throughout the Catacombs, and they are also so totally unlike those of the præ-Constantinian era, that it would be impossible for any intelligent person to mistake the one for the other. For the present, let us proceed to look more closely into the paintings of the earlier period.

Pliny tells us that in the days of Vespasian, i.e., in the first century of the Christian era, the art of painting was falling into decay in Rome—that it no longer executed any great and original works, but was well nigh confined to the decoration of apartments. Now, this is precisely the branch of art for which there was the greatest demand—one might almost say, the only opportunity—in the Catacombs. What kind of chamber-decoration, then, was in fashion in Pagan houses and tombs (for the Pagans also used to decorate their tombs) about this time? There are not wanting numerous specimens, both in Pompeii and in the neighbourhood of Rome itself, from which to form an opinion. But in the absence of any copies of them here, let us read the general description of them given by a competent and impartial critic. Müller (in his work on “Ancient Art and its Remains”), after endorsing Pliny’s judgment, which has just been quoted, goes on to say that “even in its degenerate state the art exhibited inexhaustible invention and productiveness. The spaces on the walls,” he says, “are divided and disposed in a tasteful way; then into these spaces are introduced arabesques of admirable richness of fancy; the roofs are often in the form of arbours hung with garlands, interspersed with fluttering winged forms, and all this in lively colours, clearly and agreeably arranged and executed.” Any one who is familiar with the Catacombs knows that this is exactly what is to be seen there over and over again, and that in those cemeteries to which we are induced for other reasons to assign the highest antiquity, we find all these things in the highest degree of perfection, and with the least admixture of anything distinctively Christian. This is so true, that a Protestant controversialist has even ventured to say that, on entering some of the most ancient chambers of the Catacombs, we hesitate for a moment as to the Pagan or Christian character of what we see. There is the same geometrical division of the roof, the same graceful arabesques, the birds and flowers, just as Müller describes them; and it is only when we recognise a figure of the Good Shepherd, or Daniel in the lions’ den, or some similar subject, occupying the central compartment of the whole, that our doubts are dissipated.

Look for a moment at the most graceful specimen of decoration on the last page; it is one of the most ancient in the Catacombs, and it comes from that one of which we saw in a former chapter the public entrance close to the high road, and which we said belonged to the noble Flavian family at the end of the first century. The whole roof of the vaulted passage is covered with the vine, trailing with all the freedom of nature, and little winged genii are fluttering among the leaves. Certainly we might suspect this of being Pagan, were it not that Daniel in the lions’ den, Noe in the ark, and other undoubtedly Christian subjects, are close at hand to disabuse us of the suspicion. Or look at the painting of another vault on the opposite page. This is more stiff than the former, because it was executed nearly a century later; still, there is nothing to declare its Christian character until the eye rests on the Good Shepherd, who appears below the principal part of the decoration.

We are not saying that the artists who executed these paintings had no Christian meaning in them; on the contrary, we believe that they had, and that the paintings really suggested that meaning to those who first saw them. For we know, on the authority of Tertullian, that “the whole revolving order of the seasons” (which are represented in the second painting) was considered by Christians to be “a witness of the resurrection of the dead.” This, therefore, was probably the reason why they were painted here; and no Christian needs to be reminded that our Lord spoke of Himself under the image of a vine, which sufficiently explains the first painting. Still the fact remains that the representations themselves are such as might have been used by Christian and by Pagan artists indifferently. If any of our readers feel disappointed that the first essays of the Christian painter should not have had a more distinctly Christian character, they must remember that a new art cannot be created in a moment. If the Christian religion in its infancy was to make use of art at all, it had no choice but to appropriate to its own purposes the forms of ancient art, so far as they were pure and innocent; by degrees it would proceed to eliminate what was unmeaning, and substitute something Christian.

Some writers have supposed that Christians used at first Pagan subjects as well as Pagan forms of ornamentation; and they point to the figure of Orpheus, which appears in three or four places of the Catacombs, and to that of Psyche also, which may be seen about as often. So insignificant a number of exceptions, however, would scarcely suffice to establish the general proposition, even if they were in themselves inexplicable. But, in truth, the figure of Orpheus has no right to be considered an exception at all, for he was taken by some of the early Fathers as a type of our Lord; and it was even believed by some of them, that, like the sybil, he had prophesied about Him. Clement of Alexandria calls our Lord the Divine enchanter of souls, with evident reference to the tale of Orpheus; and the same idea will have occurred to every classical scholar, as often as he has heard those words of the Psalmist which speak of the wicked as “refusing to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.” When, then, we find Orpheus and his lyre, and the beasts enchanted by his song, figured on the walls or roofs of the Catacombs, we have a right to conclude that the artist intended a Christian interpretation to be given to his work; and a similar explanation may be given of any other subjects of heathen mythology which have gained admittance there.

If we were asked to name the subject which seems to have been used most frequently in the early decorations of the Catacombs, we should give the palm to the Good Shepherd; nor is this preference to be wondered at. Any one who has meditated upon the words in which our Blessed Lord took this title to Himself, will easily understand why the first Christians, living in the midst of heathen persecutors, should have delighted to keep so touching an image always before them. They scratched it, therefore, roughly on the tombstone as they laid some dear one in the grave; they carved it on their cups, especially on the sacred chalice; they engraved it on signet rings and wore it on their fingers; they placed it in the centre of the paintings with which they covered the ceiling of their subterranean chapels, or they gave it the chief place immediately over the altar. We meet with it everywhere, and everybody can recognise it.

There are, however, one or two peculiarities in its mode of treatment which require a word of explanation. The shepherd is generally represented as a young man lightly clad, with his tunic girt high about his loins, denoting thereby his unwearied activity; he is surrounded by sheep, or he carries one on his shoulders, bearing it home to the fold,—the most tender act of his office. And there is nothing in this but what we might naturally have expected. But he is also sometimes represented with a goat instead of a sheep upon his shoulders; and, in later paintings, he has the pastoral reed or tuneful pipe either hanging on the tree by his side or he is playing on it. Now this last particular has no place in the gospel parable, and the former seems directly opposed to it, since the goat is the accepted symbol of the wicked, the sheep only of the good. Hence these points have been taken up by some critics, either as tokens of thoughtless carelessness on the part of the Christian artists, or as proofs that their work, whether consciously or unconsciously, was merely copied from some Pagan original. Neither of these remarks appears to be just. The images of a shepherd in Pagan art, with scarcely a single exception, are of a very different kind; and the particular details objected to are not only capable of receiving a Christian interpretation, they even express consoling Christian truths. St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of the anxious care of the shepherd as he sits on the hillside, filling the air with the soft notes of his pipe, calling together his scattered flock; and he observes that in like manner the spiritual pastor, desirous to recall souls to God, should follow the example of his Divine Master, and use his pipe more frequently than his staff. Then, as to the substitution of the goat for the sheep, it was probably intended as a distinct protest against the un-Christian severity of those heretics, who in very early times refused reconciliation to certain classes of penitent sinners.

Not many, however, of the most ancient Christian paintings are of the same simple and obvious character as the Good Shepherd. The leading feature which characterises most of them is this, that they suggest religious ideas or doctrines under the guise of artistic symbols or historic types. One doctrine specially prominent in them, and most appropriately taught in cemeteries, is that of the resurrection and the everlasting life of happiness which awaits the souls of the just after death. It is in this sense that we must understand not only the frequent repetitions of the stories of Jonas and of Lazarus—the type and the example of a resurrection—but also of Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three children in the fiery furnace. These last, indeed, very probably had reference also to the persecution which the Christians were then suffering, and were intended to inspire courage and a confident expectation that God would deliver them, even as He had delivered His chosen servants of old; but, as they are spoken of in very ancient Christian documents (e.g., in the hymns of St. Ephrem and in the Apostolic Constitutions) as foreshadowing the future triumph of the body over death, whence these too had been in a manner delivered, we prefer, in obedience to these ancient guides, to assign this interpretation to them; at any rate, it is certain that this interpretation cannot be excluded. Figures also of the deceased, with arms outstretched in prayer, sometimes accompanied by their names, or standing in the midst of a garden, or, again, figures of birds pecking at fruits and flowers, we understand as images of the soul still living after death, received into the garden of Paradise, and fed by immortal fruits.

Sometimes there may be a difference of opinion perhaps as to the correctness of this or that interpretation suggested for any particular symbolical painting; but the soundness of the principle of interpretation in itself cannot be called in question, nor will there often be any serious difficulty in its application, among those who study the subject with diligence and candour. The language, both of Holy Scripture and of the earliest Fathers, abounds in symbols, and it was only natural that the earliest specimens of Christian art should exhibit the same characteristic. More was meant by them than that which met at first the outward senses; without this clue to their meaning, the paintings are scarcely intelligible,—with it, all is plain and easy.

Take, for example, the figure of an anchor, so repeatedly represented on gravestones and other monuments of the Catacombs; so rarely, if indeed ever, to be found on Pagan monuments. What influenced the early Christians in the selection of such a figure? what meaning did they attach to it? This enquiry forces itself upon our minds, if we are intelligent students of Christian archæology, anxious to understand what we see: and if we are also prudent and on our guard against being led astray by mere fancy, we shall conduct the enquiry by the same laws and principles as we should apply to the interpretation of some perplexing riddle in heathen art. We should first examine the literature of the age and people to whom it was supposed to belong, and see if any light could be thrown upon it from that source. In the present instance, therefore, we turn to the sacred literature of the Christians, and we find there a passage which speaks of the duty of “holding fast the hope that is set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm.” We assume, then, provisionally, as a basis of further enquiry, that an anchor may perhaps have been used as an emblem of Christian hope. Continuing our search in the same sacred books, we find that there was a special connection in the Christian creed between hope and the condition of the dead. It is written that Christians are not sorrowful about those who die, “as others who have no hope.” The conclusion is obvious, that a reference to hope is just one of those things which might not unreasonably be looked for on a Christian’s grave-stone, since it was something on which they prided themselves as a point of difference between themselves and others. This greatly confirms our conjectural interpretation of the symbol, and we proceed with some confidence to apply it to every example of its use that we can meet with; for if it is the right key, it cannot fail to unlock all the problems that will come before us. In doing this, we are first struck by the fact that in several instances the very names of the deceased persons on whose epitaphs the anchor is engraved, themselves also meant the same thing. They were called Spes, Elpis, Elpidius, Elpizusa; all names coming from the Latin or Greek word for hope. Next, we observe that many of these anchors are so fashioned as to contain a hidden yet unmistakable representation of a cross; and, reflecting that the one only ground of a Christian’s hope is the cross of Christ, we hail this also as lending further support to our theory. Yet once more, we find many of the epitaphs contain the same idea, expressed in distinct words written in the ordinary alphabet and not in these hieroglyphics, so to call them,—we find Spes in Deo, Spes in Deo Christo &c. Finally, we often find the anchor united with one or more of several other symbols, to which, by a similar but independent process, we can assign a certain signification. We try, then, whether our rendering of the anchor as equivalent to “hope” will make sense, as a schoolboy would say who was trying to translate a piece of Greek or Latin into English, in all these other places; and if it does, we are satisfied that our interpretation can be no longer disputed. A false reading of a single symbol might chance to fit one monument, or two, or three; but to say that any false reading will fit hundreds of separate monuments, fit all equally well, and succeed in extracting a consistent meaning from each, is to assert what no sane man can believe.

Those who know the way in which the interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics was first guessed at, and then triumphantly established against all gainsayers, by a similar process of reasoning, will not dispute the soundness of the argument by which the meaning of the anchor has been arrived at. We cannot attempt to vindicate our interpretation of all the other symbols used by Christian artists with the same minuteness of detail, neither is it necessary. All will accept the dove as a fitting symbol of the simplicity, the gentleness, purity, and innocence of a Christian soul gone to its rest, and a sheep as fitly representing a disciple of Christ.

Another emblem, the fish, requires more words of explanation, because it is capable of receiving a double meaning. At first sight, our thoughts at once recur to the words of our Blessed Lord to St. Peter and his brother, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” and no doubt this will sufficiently explain many old Christian paintings or sculptures in which the fish appears. Taking this idea for our guide, we can understand why a man angling and catching a fish should find a place on the walls of a church, whether above ground or below. Such a representation in these sacred places was inspired by the same doctrinal teaching, and suggested the same ideas, as were present to the old Christian preachers when they spoke of men being caught by the bait of charity and the hook of preaching, and being drawn out of the bitter waters of this world, not to have their life taken from them, which is the fate that awaits the natural fish when it is caught, but that they may be made partakers of a new and heavenly life. This, however, will not enable us to decypher other symbolical paintings into which the fish enters, and which are found with equal frequency among the decorations of the Christian cemeteries. It is necessary that we should learn another, and, as it would seem, a still more common use of the fish. Just as the dove might stand for the Holy Ghost, and also for a soul sanctified by the Holy Ghost—just as the lamb or sheep might stand either for the Lamb of God, or for those who are “the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand”—so the fish, too, was used not only to represent a Christian, but also, still more frequently perhaps, Christ Himself. To understand how this could be, we must study a little Greek, which may be easily apprehended, however, even by those who are not scholars, if they will fix their attention for a few moments on the accompanying plan:—

The Greek for fish is here written perpendicularly, one letter above another, ΙΧΘΥϹ; and it is seen that these five letters are the initial letters of five words, which, together, contain a tolerably complete account of what Christ is. He is Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. Thus, this one word, ιχθυς, or fish, read in this way, tells a great deal about our Lord’s name and titles; it is almost a miniature creed, or, as one of the Fathers expresses it, “it contains in one name a whole multitude of holy names.” It would take us too long to enquire into the origin of this device for expressing our Lord’s name and titles in so compendious and secret a form. Clearly, whoever may have invented it, it was very ingenious, and specially convenient at those times and places where men dared not speak of Him freely and openly. We cannot say when it began, but it was in universal use throughout the Church during the first three hundred years of her life, and then, when she was in the enjoyment of peace and liberty, it gradually dropped, first out of sight in Christian monuments, and then out of mind also in Christian literature. But, during the ages of persecution, it had sunk deep into the habits of Christian thought and language; it became, as it were, a part of the very Catechism,—every baptized Christian seems to have been familiar with it, whether he lived on the banks of the Tiber or of the Po, of the Loire, of the Euphrates, or of the Nile. In all these parts of the world, writers in books, poets in hymns, preachers in sermons, artists in painting, the very masons themselves on gravestones, made use of it without a word of explanation, in a way that would utterly mystify any modern Christian community. Who would now dream of carving or painting a fish upon a gravestone in a Christian churchyard? yet scores of graves in the Catacombs were so marked, and some of them with hardly a word or an emblem upon them besides. Or what meaning could we attach to the picture of a dove or a lamb standing on a fish’s back, if we did not understand that the fish represented Christ, and the dove or the lamb a Christian, so that the whole symbol stood for a Christian soul supported by Christ through the waves and storms of life? Or again, only imagine a Christian in these days having buried with him, or wearing round his neck during life, a little figure of a fish cut in ivory, or crystal, or mother of pearl, or some still more costly material? Yet a number of those who were buried in the Catacombs did this; and some of these fish even bear an inscription, calling upon the fish to be a Saviour!

It was necessary to give this explanation of certain symbols, and to justify it by sufficient examples, before we proceed to study any of the more complex paintings in the Catacombs. But now, with these thoughts in our minds, let us enter the Cemetery of St. Callixtus, and look on a figure represented two or three times on a wall of one of its most ancient chambers: a fish swimming and carrying on its back a basket of bread, and in the midst of the loaves of bread, a glass vessel containing a red liquid. What is this but bread and wine, the elements of the Sacrament of Love, and Jesus Christ Its reality? St. Jerome, when speaking of a holy bishop of Toulouse who had sold the gold and silver vessels of his church to relieve the poor, uses these words, “What can be more rich than a man who carries the body of Christ in a basket of wicker-work, and the blood of Christ in a vessel of glass?” Here are undeniably the basket of wicker-work and the vessel of glass; and who can doubt that we have the other also, veiled under the figure of the fish?

Let us go to another part of the same cemetery, and consider a painting which with some variations is repeated in three or four successive chambers, all opening out of one of the primitive galleries. Bread and fish lie on a three-legged table, and several baskets of bread are arranged along the floor in front of it, or a man and woman stand by the side of the table. The woman has her arms outstretched in the form of a cross, the ancient attitude of Christian prayer; the man, too, is stretching forth his hands, but in another way: he holds them forward, and especially his right hand, over the bread and fish, in such a way as to press upon every Catholic intelligence the idea that he is blessing or consecrating what is before him. To modern eyes, indeed, his vestment does not look worthy of one engaged in the highest act of Christian worship; perhaps, at first sight, it almost strikes us as hardly decent. Nevertheless, to the Christian archæologist, this very vestment is a strong confirmation of the view we are taking of the real sense of the painting. For it is the Greek pallium, or philosophers’ cloak; and we know that at the time to which this painting belongs (the end of the second or beginning of the third century) it was a common practice to preach the Word of God in this particular costume. Tertullian, who was living at the same time, wrote a treatise De Pallio, in which, in his own peculiar style, he defended its use, and congratulated the pallium on its promotion to be a Christian vestment. It was not until fifty years later that St. Cyprian objected to it, both as not sufficiently modest in itself and as vainglorious in its signification.

If there were any lingering uncertainty as to whether these figures were really intended to have reference to the Holy Eucharist, or whether our interpretation of them may not have been fanciful and arbitrary, an examination of the other decorations of the same chambers will suffice to remove it. For it will be seen that, whilst in closest connection with them are other suitable emblems or figures of the same Divine Sacrament, they are also uniformly preceded by representations of the initiatory Sacrament of the Christian covenant, without which no man can be admitted to partake of the Eucharist; and they are followed by a figure of the Resurrection, which our Lord Himself most emphatically connected with the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood, saying, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” These three subjects, Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and the Resurrection occupy the three perfect sides of the chamber, the fourth side being, of course, broken by the entrance; and, taken in their right order, they faithfully depict the new life of a Christian; the life of divine grace, first imparted by baptism, then fed by the Holy Eucharist, and finally exchanged for an everlasting life of glory.

Let us look at the figures of these subjects in detail, and see how they are represented here. First, we have Moses striking the rock, a scene which occurs over and over again in the Catacombs, and which in these chambers commences the series of paintings we are examining; it is to be seen on the left-hand wall as we enter. St. Paul tells us that “the rock was Christ;” the water, then, which flowed from it must be those streams of Divine grace whereby His disciples are refreshed and sustained during their pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world, and this grace is first given in the waters of baptism. Next we have a man fishing, which has been already explained; and (in one instance at least) this is followed by another man performing the very act of baptism on a youth who stands before him; the youth stands in the water, and the man is pouring water over his head. Lastly, on the same wall, is the paralytic carrying his bed on his shoulders—the same, doubtless, who was miraculously cured at the pool of Bethsaida, which pool the fathers of the Church uniformly interpret as typical of the healing waters of the Christian sacrament.

On the wall opposite the doorway, the central scene is a feast wherein seven men are seated at a table, partaking of fish and bread; and there is a history in the last chapter of St. John’s Gospel, of which it may be taken as a literal representation. It was when our Lord “showed Himself to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and He showed Himself, after this manner. There were together Simon Peter and Thomas who is called Didymus, and Nathanael who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples”—seven in all. “And they went a-fishing, but caught nothing. Jesus appeared to them on the shore.” Then there follows the miraculous draught of fishes; and as soon as they came to land, they saw “hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith to them, Bring hither of the fishes which you have now caught. And Jesus cometh and taketh bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner.” Such is the letter of the gospel narrative; but this narrative is in fact a mystical and prophetic representation of the Church gathered together out of the waters of the world, and fed by the Holy Eucharist. The hundred and fifty-three great fishes that were caught represent the large numbers of the faithful that were drawn into the Church by apostolic preaching; the fish laid on the hot coals is Jesus Christ in His Passion, His Body “delivered for us” on Mount Calvary, given to us also to be our food in the Blessed Sacrament whereby “we show the death of the Lord until He come.” The faithful caught in the net of the Church must be brought to that broiled fish (Piscis assus, Christus passus, says St. Augustine), that crucified Lord, and they must be incorporated with Him by partaking of the living Bread which came down from Heaven.

Such is the full meaning of the scene at the Sea of Tiberias, as interpreted according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; and the adjuncts of this picture show that it was intended to be so understood here also; for on one side is the figure of the consecration already described; and on the other, the sacrifice of Isaac by his father, which was surely a most lively type of the sacrifice of Christ upon the altar; wherein blood is not really shed, but the Lamb is only “as it were slain,” just as Isaac was not really slain, but was received back from the dead, “for a parable.” Lastly, as has been mentioned before, there follows on the third wall of the same chamber the natural complement of the rest; the doctrine of the Resurrection, as contained in the fact of the rising again of Lazarus. Thus, this whole series of paintings, executed at the end of the second century, or within the first twenty or thirty years of the third, and repeated (as has been said) in several successive chambers, was a continual homily, as it were, set before the eyes of the faithful, in which they were reminded of the beginning, progress, and consummation of their new and supernatural life.

We do not say that every modern Christian who looks at these paintings will thus read their meaning at once; but we believe that all ancient Christians did so, because it is clear from the writings of the Apostles themselves and their successors, that nothing was more familiar to the Christian mind of those days than the symbolical and prophetical meaning of the facts both of the Old and of the New Testaments. They believed the facts themselves to have taken place just as they are recorded, but they believed also that they had a mysterious signification, whereby the truths of the Christian faith were insinuated or expressed, and that this was their highest and truest meaning. “Perhaps there is no one recorded miracle of our Lord,” says St. Gregory, “which is not therefore selected for recording because it was the type of something to happen in the Church;” and precisely the same was felt to be true also of the histories of the patriarchal and Jewish dispensations. “All these things had happened to them in figure, and they were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”

It may not be often possible to trace as clearly as we have just done in a single instance, the logical order and dependence of the several subjects that were selected for representation in each chamber of the Catacombs; they may not always have been so admirably arranged as to be in fact equivalent, as these were, to a well-ordered dogmatic discourse. Nevertheless it is only when read in this way, that the decoration of the Catacombs can be made thoroughly intelligible; and it is certain that some such meaning must have been intended from the first. The extremely limited number of Biblical subjects selected for representation, while such an immense variety is really contained in the Bible (and so many of those that are neglected might have seemed equally suitable for the purpose), and then again, the thoroughly unhistorical way in which these few subjects are dealt with, shows clearly that the principle of selection was theological rather than artistic. The artists were not left to indulge their own unfettered fancy, but worked under ecclesiastical supervision; and the Bible stories which they depicted were not represented according to their historical verity, because they were not intended to be a souvenir of past facts, but to symbolise and suggest something beyond themselves. In order, therefore, to understand them, it is necessary to bring them face to face with the Christian doctrines which they foreshadow.

Look, for example, at the numerous pictures of Noe in the ark which appear in the Catacombs, all resembling one another, but none resembling the reality. Instead of a vessel, three stories high, containing eight human beings and specimens of every kind of animal, we see only a narrow box, barely large enough to hold one person, and that person sometimes a lady, whose name is also inscribed upon it perhaps, being the same lady (as we learn from the inscription) who lies buried in the adjacent tomb. If all ancient Christian literature had perished, we should have been at a loss to comprehend this enigma; but as soon as we know that the Fathers of the Church speak of it as an acknowledged fact, which “nobody doubts” (to use St. Augustine’s words), that the Church was typified by the ark, a ray of light begins to dawn upon us; and when we call to mind that St. Peter himself speaks of the waters of baptism as saving men’s souls, “even as Noe and his family were saved by the waters of the flood,” all is at once made clear. We see plainly that the friends of the deceased have intended to signify that he had been received into the ark of the Church and made a Christian by baptism. And if they had added to the composition, as they often did, the figure of a dove bringing an olive branch to the person standing in the ark, this also enters into the same interpretation; it was symbolical of that Divine peace which comes to the soul in this world by faith, and which is a pledge of the peace given by everlasting happiness in the next.

The frequent repetition of the story of Jonas in a Christian cemetery needs no explanation, our Lord himself having put it forward as a type of His own resurrection, and so a pledge of ours also. The particular form, however, under which this story appears, was not suggested, as Noe’s ark was, by the place which it held in the cycle of Christian doctrine, but rather by a certain Pagan model with which the Romans of that day were very familiar. The mythological tale of Andromeda, and the sea-monster to which she was exposed on the coast near Joppa (for so the story ran), was a favourite subject for the decoration of the walls in Roman villas, temples, and other public buildings. It may be seen in Pompeii, and, much nearer to the Catacombs, in Rome itself—e.g., in the barracks of one of the cohorts of the imperial police, discovered a few years ago in Trastevere; and in both places the monster is the precise counterpart of that which is always represented as swallowing or casting up Jonas; a kind of dragon, with large head and ears, a long slender neck, and a very tortuous body. Of course, in the infancy of Christian art, it was convenient to have a model at hand to represent an unknown monster, and, as we have said, we do not doubt that this is the true history of its origin. Still this was not the only reason which recommended the adoption of so grotesque a form; it offered the further advantage of creating as strong a contrast as possible between this “great fish,” which was a type of death, and the ordinary fish, which, as we have seen, was the recognised symbol of the Author of life.

Another incident in the life of Jonas, which was often painted in the Catacombs, was his resting on the east side of the city of Nineve, under the shade of a certain plant which God caused to grow up for his protection, and which He again caused as suddenly to wither away. In the days of St. Jerome and St. Augustine there was a dispute between those learned doctors as to the precise nature of this plant; and in the course of it St. Jerome appealed to these paintings as bearing testimony in favour of his own rendering of the Hebrew word. We need not enter into the merits of the dispute, but it is important to note the fact of the appeal, as it peremptorily refutes the ridiculous assertions of certain authors of the present day, who would assign very recent dates to these and similar paintings in the Catacombs. We know that St. Jerome was very fond, when a boy, of visiting these places, and it is interesting to hear him appealing to the paintings he had seen in them as to “ancient witnesses.” It would be still more interesting, if we could say with certainty what were the motives which led the ancient Christians to choose this subject for such frequent contemplation; whether they read in it only a very striking lesson as to the watchfulness of Divine Providence, or whether it had a more subtle meaning, as a type of the mercy of God which overshadows the souls of the faithful in the long sleep of death which goes before the Sun of the Resurrection. But where no clue is supplied by the writings of cotemporary, or nearly cotemporary authors, we prefer to keep silence rather than to insist on any doubtful interpretation. All that need be said is that such a painting was certainly not out of place in a Christian Church or cemetery, any more than the story of Adam and Eve, or any other Biblical narrative which has reference to the doctrines or promises announced by Christianity to the world.

We do not pretend to enumerate here all the subjects from the Old and New Testaments that were painted in the Catacombs. We are but naming those that were used most frequently, that seem most interesting, or whose signification can be most precisely determined. Those who have seen the Catacombs themselves will call to mind others of which we have not spoken, but we think their meaning is generally obvious so as to need no explanation. We will name one class only of these paintings; those in which our Lord and His Blessed Mother appear. Our readers will hardly expect to find anything that pretends to be a portrait of either one or the other. We have seen that the disposition in primitive Christian art was to represent facts rather than persons, and the mystery which the facts signified rather than the facts themselves. Christ, therefore, appears most commonly in the typical character of the Good Shepherd, and as such is represented in appropriate form and with suitable accessories, or He sits in the midst of His Apostles, with a chest of volumes at His feet, as the Great Teacher of the world. Once, indeed, His head and bust form a medallion occupying the centre of a roof in a chamber of the Cemetery of St. Domitilla, the same in which appear Orpheus and his lyre. It is a work of the third century; there is more evidence of an intention to give a definite individual type of countenance, neither is the type altogether unlike that which the practice of later ages has consecrated by traditional usage. Nevertheless others of the fourth century are evidently not copies of the same model, so that it is clear that in those early days there was no uniform agreement upon the subject.