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| Monumental Christianity; or, The art and symbolism of the primitive church. CHAPTER II - 3 |
Page 4 of 5 It is hardly worth while to pause here in this investigation of the structure and adornment of the Catacombs, to ask the question, whence came the spirit and the motive of all this art ? As far removed from the spirit of paganism as possible, no mere earthly teacher, whether Zoroaster, Confucius, Plato, or Pythagoras, could have taught such persecuted men a religion so powerful and self-restraining as that whose symbols and inscriptions beam with radiant joy amid the gloom of death, breathe of peace and resignation amid the most cruel wrongs and injustice, and are full of hope and charity amid a race of sensualists and suicides, a population of drunkards, sceptics, and gluttons. The men of pagan Rome, whose god was their belly, did not construct the Catacombs, but the Coliseum and Pantheon, or teach those who did make them, the religion which we find there recorded. Its author ' SeeSosio, Rom, Sott., p. 579. Rome, 1632. * Rationalism in Europe, I. pp. 211-14. N. Y. 1866. 6 42 Monumental Christianity. and first teachers must have lived near the times of their construction; for we find Christ, Peter, and Paul among the most prominent objects of representation, and the acts of mercy and love which they performed, the only subjects displayed. There is another point to be considered more fully as to the motive of so elaborately adorning these subterranean chapels. It is the assured belief in a blessed immortality in reserve for the faithful departed. It was not a mere hope and longing for it like that of Socrates and Plato ; it was not the philosophical dream of its possibility, nor yet the Egyptian metempsychosis of 3,ocx) years, until the soul's return to the mortal body ; it was not mere Buddhist nihilism, or utter absorption and loss of personal identity in a Pantheistic god ; but it was personal immortality in both soul and body in the eternal and ever-blessed God-likeness of Christ Jesus, who brought life and immortality to light out of a previous doubt, un- certainty, and obscurity. Immortality in both soul and body had been demon- strated and exempHfied by Christ's Resurrection and Ascension, or these Catacomb builders could never have had such clear conceptions of it, or such firm faith in it. As a deduction of pure reason from the observation of natural phenonema, it surely came very late into the world ; and such deduction was possible long before. If all religion, as distinguished from mere theology and mythology, is but the growth and development of man's unaided efforts, as Max Miiller and his school would have us think, then it is as uncertain a guide as philosophy; and we may yet be in the dark about the most momentous interests of life and death, God and eternity. But if religion is a revelation of God to the soul of man, made from time to time with greater or less fulness and clearness, then it can not mislead us, or deceive us. The religious faculty I take to be an appreciative and receptive one only, and not a creative and inventive one. It is faith, not imagination. It is charity, not logic. It is hope, not mysticism. But the greatest of these is charity. Everywhere that men have built and adorned rocky tombs, whether in Egypt, Persia, Palestine, Syria, Etruria, Rome, or Naples, we find the same essential idea prevalent, viz., that of beauty and solidity. A little hole dug in the ground for an immortal being made in God's image, did not comport with ancient ideas of the reverence and honor due the departed. In pagan Egypt, it was always burial in the most costly manner, and in the most elaborate tomb possible to the means of surviving relatives. In Etruria and Rome, great men and some old Patrician families were buried : others burned. In Judea and among the Hebrews, it was always burial, as derived from Egypt, as the tombs of the Kings, Patriarchs, and Prophets, still testify at Hebron and Jerusalem. Dr. E. D. Clarke, the distin- guished traveller, speaks of some Christian tombs at Jerusalem, thus : " In some Structure of the Catacombs. 43 of these sepulchres were ancient paintings executed after the manner of those found on the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii, except that the figures repre- sented were those of Apostles, the Virgin, &c., with circular lines as symbols of glory round their heads. These paintings appeared upon the sides, and upon the roof of each sepulchral chamber, preserving a wonderful freshness of colour, although much injured by Arabs and Turks, whose endeavors to efface them were visibly displayed in many instances. The sepulchres themselves are, from these docu- ments, evidently of Christian origin, •and of more recent construction than the tombs we first noticed in our descent from the Southern gate of the city, where there exists no such ornament, and where the inscriptions, from their brevity and the immense size of the letters, seem to denote a higher antiquity. Yet, to what period can we ascribe them ? . . . The only age to which with any probability they may be referred, is that long interval of prosperity and peace enjoyed by the Chris- tians of Jerusalem after the dispersion of the Jews by Adrian ; that is to say, from the establishment of the Gentile Church, and the ordination of Mark (not the evangelist), until the reign of Dioclesian. If this be true, the paintings may be considered as exhibiting specimens of the art belonging to the second century, the Syrian or Greek artists using such pigments and colours as are seen in the Egyptian tombs." * The Roman Catacombs, some of them at least, were as early as these at Jeru- salem, perhaps even earlier; and the style and colours are like those of the golden house of Nero, the tomb of the Nasoes, and the frescoes of Pompeii. Their an- tiquity, therefore, belongs to the same age. The beauty and solidity of rock-cut tombs, then, must have high motive, especially as prompted by Christian faith and charity. The Lord Himself was laid in a rock-cut tomb, and His followers would imitate that example for all those who departed this life in His faith and fear. And that place of sepulture must be as much like the paradise in which the suffer- ing and dying Lord said He would meet the penitent thief, as possible, by means of painted dome, and birds, and vines, and flowers, and every other symbolical de- vice that could suggest it. The bereaved soul of the Church would represent to itself by solid and enduring structures adorned and beautified by art, in sepulchral chambers excavated from the everlasting hills and far underground, the home eter- nal in the heavens, or the safe and blessed receptacle of departed spirits between death and the resurrection, called Hades. There no rage of persecution and no ill of life could touch or harm them more. There the expectant living as prisoners of hope could come in peace and safety to meet and hold communion with their ' Travels, &c., vol. IV. pp. 345-8, 4th Ed. London, 1817. 44 Monumental Christianity. departed brethren, now in the Lord's safe-keeping, in the celebration of the Agapa and the holy Eucharist ; and therefore it was that these chapels, and their adorn- ments and altar-tombs, were so made as to carry the mind and soul of the worship- pers up and beyond all sublunary things, to the blessed estate and recompense of the good and just in a better world. The old pagan Egyptians and Etruscans ex- pressed their imperfect faith in immortality and eternal life on the walls of their tombs; and the primitive Christians at Rome, Jerusalem, and elsewhere, did no more, and certainly no less, when they expr«ssed the higher and clearer faith that was in them. If we may receive the testimony of pagan monuments, surely we may also receive that of these Christian ones. It is the deep and earnest longing of the soul of man everywhere and at all times, to know more of the Infinite and Eternal ; it is his desire to be in some kind of communion with his departed friends and kindred ; it is his faith more or less clear and distinct in his own immortality ; it is his sense of sin and imperfection, his feeling of sorrow and remorse; it is his conviction of some final restoration of lost innocence and happiness; it is his hope of an eternal union with the great and good of all climes and ages in a better world ; and above all, his trust in some God of infinite justice, mercy, and goodness, to give him all that his soul needs and longs for, that ever prompts him to build grand temples of religion and offer costly oblations, to construct elaborate tombs, and fill them with graceful, beautiful, and symbolical devices, on purpose to express and keep alive within him all this faith and conviction. Call it sham and delusion, call it myth and vain superstition, — still it is something very powerful and practi- cal, expending its tremendous energies and varied talents for the Ideal and the Supernatural, and making for itself an artistic world of grace and beauty, as the symbol and counterpart of the world of spirits. Just as the Tower of Babel and the Egyptian Pyramids were symbols of Olympus, or the earthly and visible heavens, and as the Labyrinths under them were mystic representations of Hades, with their seven-fold enclosures corresponding with the seven planetary spheres,* so I conceive the mazy and intricate windings of the Catacombs to be symbolical of the blessed estate of departed spirits, and of the heaven of bliss in its perfect con- summation which is to succeed it. The great essential difference between them, however, is not one of idea, but of worship as debased, sensual, and devilish, in the one case, and as pure, spiritual, and God-like, in the other. Places of refuge, indeed, were they, in a double sense, for the persecuted living and for the faithful departed, — labyrinths where none could find them or disturb them. But besides ail this symbolical representation, there is also abundant evidence * A^M«w</, pp. 64, 105-114. London, 1826. ^fwfa/j^/ij", I. pp. 378-9. London, 1836. Structure of the Catacombs. 45 in the Catacombs of a deep sympathy and affection which bound the early Chris- tian community together in a far better social life than that which existed in the pagan world. Roman society, as it is depicted in the pages of Juvenal, Petronius, Martial, and others, was a festering mass of unnatural lust and rapacity, fast rotting to pieces. And Judaism was no longer a power in the world for good, by reason of its excessive pride, formalism, and pretentiousness. It had, indeed, abjured its old and familiar pagan idolatries ever since the Babylonian exile, only to become an eager aspirant after political power and worldly aggrandizement, and a grand earthly Messianic Kingdom that should rule over all, by means of religion. The one devil of idolatry cast out, only made room for a whole legion of fiercer and fouler spirits, such as faction, frivolity, scepticism, hypocrisy, formality, faithlessness, and unbridled license and corruption. That grand old patriarchal faith and Mosaic Theocracy, which had hitherto so bravely fought the good fight of pure theism and pure morals against polytheism and sensuality, even when the nation had time and again fallen almost as low in religion and morals as their pagan neighbours, had now grown so feeble and degenerate as to be incapable of much longer resistance to the complete domination of Rome. A Roman province Judea now had already become, but a semblance of nationality was left, which would soon be blotted out of the world's history forever. |