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| Monumental Christianity; or, The art and symbolism of the primitive church. CHAPTER VIII |
Author: Lundy, John P. (John Patterson), 1823-1892 CHAPTER VIII. JESUS CHRIST AS HUMAN. The Manhood of Christ, Who was Conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary. — Pagan and Christian Madonnas compared. — Isis and Horus. — Lakshmi-Narayana. — ^Juno-Lucina and Child. — Devaki and Krishna. — Mary rising from the Sea as Venus. — Androgynous Dei- ties. — Coronation and Adoration of Mary and Bhavani. — Dr. J. H. Newman's opinion. . 197-230 CHAPTER VIII. JESUS CHRIST AS HUMAN. The Manhood of Christ, Who was Conceived by the Holy Ghost ^ Born of the Virgin Mary, — Pagan and Christian Madonnas compared, — I sis and Horus. — Lakshmi- Narayana, — Juno-Lucina and Child. — Det'aki and Krishna. — Mary rising front the Sea as Venus, — Androgynous Deities. — Coronation and Adoration of Mary and Bhavani. — Dr. J. H. Newman s Opinion. PARHELIA is the term which Archbishop Trench applies to all such gleams and anticipations and types of Divine truth in ancient Paganism as have been disclosed in the last chapter. And it is well that his wise observation respecting this important matter is receiving due attention, at least from a few thoughtful per- sons, in the controversy of Christianity with atheism and infidelity. His remark is this, viz.: "The heathen religions boasted of their virgin-born, as of Buddha and Zoroaster, as of Pythagoras and Plato. It much concerns us to determine in what relation and connection we will put their legend and our history; whether we will use the truth to show that the falsehood was not all falsehood, and for the detecting the golden grains of a true anticipation which lay concealed amid all its dross; or whether we will sufler the falsehoods to cast a slight and suspicion upon the truth, as though that was but the crowning falsehood of them all. In the present position of the controversy with infidelity we cannot let these parallels alone if we would, — even if we were willing to forego the precious witness for the glory and truth of the Christian Faith which they contain. We cannot ignore them ; if they are not for us, they will be used against us. But they are for us, since we may justly ask, — and it is no playing with imperfect analogies, for the question may be transferred from the natural to the spiritual world, — Are the parhelia, however numerous, to be accepted as evidence that all is optical illusion, that there is no such true body of light as the sun after all; or rather, does not the very fact of their delusively paint- ing the horizon, tell of and announce a sun, which is surely travelling up from 198 Monumental Christianity. behind ? " * It is in this sense that all such Pagan types and anticipations of Christ, as Agni, Krishna, Mithra, Horus, Apollo, and Orpheus, are to be understood. The true Sun must have been somewhere to produce such remarkable phenomena as these on all the ancient Pagan horizon. The Incarnation or Humanity of the Son of God now claims our notice. And the remarkable eagerness with which the Pagans embraced Christianity when first preached to them is best explained by the fact that it was exactly that one grand truth which their religious systems imperfectly taught. It explained the mystery of their own creeds. The birth of a man-God was the common faith of humanity — the one great dogma, which, under forms more or less mysterious, and often gro- tesque and hideous, appears in the oldest modes of worship, and may be traced in the most ancient traditions and monuments. The Messiah, the Redeemer, promised to fallen man, had been announced uninterruptedly from age to age." And when Christ appeared, it was not only in Judea, among the Hebrews, that he was looked for; He was expected also at Rome, among the Goths and Scandinavians, in China, in India, in High Asia especially, where almost all religious systems are founded on the dogma of a Divine Incarnation. Zoroaster had foretold it, as he learned it from the Brahmins of Upper India; and Zoroaster's disciples, the Persian Magi, following the brilliant star, of which he, like Balaam, spake as the precursor of " that Holy One who came from the womb of an Immaculate Virgin,'* and which should guide them to the place of His nativity, were the first to go and worship Him. And Confucius, lamenting in his writings the loss of the sacred Tripod, by which he probably meant the idea of the tri-une God, at the same time announces to the Hundred Families, u e,, (the Chinese nation,) Si Fam Yen Xim Gim^ i, e,. The Holy One shall appear in the West} And after He appeared the Chinese government sent ambassadors to Rome to seek the friendship of Augustus, thinking perhaps that he was the great King and Holy One who was to deliver men from evil ; but finding out their mistake, another embassy was sent, A. D. 65, which also failed of its object by being persuaded that Buddha was the Divinely Incarnate One; and so Buddhism became the national religion of China, however early Christianity was also preached there, as well as in India.* In the two early Christian representations of the Nativity which precede this chapter, it will be noticed that there are three Magi proper with the pointed cap of Mithra on their heads, and wearing precisely such garments as Mithra and his priests are represented to have worn. There is no doubt, therefore, * Star of the Wise Men^ pp. 27-8. Phila., 1850. • Hue's Christianity in China, &c., I. pp. I and 2, &c. * Maurice's Hist, of Hindustan y II. p. 276. Hue's Christianity in China, I. p. 4. * Hyde's Hist. Per., pp. 392. Hue. I., p. 10-30. yesus Christ as Human. 199 that these Magi were Persian priests come to do homage to One who, in their es- timation, was the antitype of Mithra and the Holy One, foretold by Zoroaster Hyde thinks they were from Parthia. In one of the Sarcophagi, viz., the upper one, a fourth person stands by with a roll in his hand, differently clad, and without the Phrygian cap of Mithra. It has been explained as representing and personifying the ancient prophecy respecting the Nativity, perhaps Zoroaster's or Isaiah's, and as leading the magi to Christ. Observe, too, that in both these exam- ples, out of many like them, the worship is directed to the Child exclusively, accord- ing to St. Matthew, ii. ; and yet Aringhi can say this, in explanation of the obvious difficulty of the subject to a modern Romanist, viz., Beata virgo impensum parvulo latriae cultum excipit, i, e,, T/ie blessed Virgin receives the superior worship of latria for the Child? But how is it that in all cases the Child either receives the worship or the gifts Himself? It is an admission that the Child is entitled to the highest worship, but it is also an assertion that it must be paid through the Virgin. In the lower one of these sarcophagi, the Virgin sits quite apart, in a thought- ful mood, as if already forecasting the fate of her Son, while the cattle and the Magi join together in worship. And in the upper one, it is the Child who reaches forth His hands to receive the gifts. In every instance of early Christian art, the Child is the central figure and the sole object of supreme regard. If the interven- tion of the Blessed Virgin were necessary, it would have been indicated in some way, either by placing her between the suppliant and her Divine Child, or by her own previous reception of the gifts for Him. But of such treatment of the subject as this, there is not a single known example in ancient Christian art. It would have been considered blasphemous. The Virgin Mother is, indeed, a necessary ac- cessory, and is always present in the scene of the Nativity ; for how could the Son of God come into the world and become the Son of Man, enter the sphere of our own humanity, and become like one of us, without a mother? Therefore, of all human beings, she holds the first place ; is entitled to the highest consideration ; all nations call her blessed, and have types of her high and holy maternity ; she was highly favoured; the Lord was with her; she was the blessed among women ; and yet she was only a pure-minded, sweet, and modest Jewish maiden, chosen of God to become the channel of Christ's Incarnation. There is no evidence that early Christianity ever dreamed of her as a mediatress between us and her Son. Juno and other Pagan goddesses were sorry mediatresses ; they were sometimes very ter- magants in the courts above ; and they were not always chaste and pure. The Primitive Church, while so deeply impressed with a sense of Christ's ' Rom, Subt, I. pp. 320-1. 2CX) Monumental Christianity. essential Divinity as to make the ver}^ Child of the manger the recipient of Divine honours, is also just as explicit in manifesting her concern about His real and proper humanity ; and therefore the Holy Mother is always present, looking like her who was deemed worthy by an early council of the Church to receive the title, since then greatly abused and perverted, Theotokos, Mater Deiy Mother of God. In an age of such intense faith as the first three or four centuries of the Christian era were, it is not to be wondered at, that art was called -in to record and express in every possible variety of fresco, sculpture, mosaic, glass-enamel, intaglio, and cameo, the two great leading facts of Christ's Divinity and humanity. And the expression is very explicit. The Divinity and the humanity are never confounded. It is no Pagan mixture of the Divine and the human, the good and the bad, as in Krishna and Mithra ; but it is simply the union in One Person of the Son of God, with our own nature in its purity and perfection. It is neither the deification of man, nor the humanizing of God ; but the two natures coexist side by side in one and the same Person, as mind and matter do in ourselves, or as vital force exists in all external nature. And therefore it is, that the early Church has taken such pains to teach this doctrine by the oft-repeated subjects of the youthful Divinity, that never grows old, and the Nativity, or other records of Christ's true and proper manhood. Although ancient Paganism had its conceptions and symbols of one only God existing as a Triad of persons, or rather of qualities and attributes ; and although it had its Divine Incarnations and Good Shepherds ; its sacrifices, victims, and cru- cifixions ; yet they were all so philosophized upon, and the mystery involved in them so persistently tortured with rationalistic explanations, as soon to become pantheistical, and lose their true object and meaning. They became mere specula- tions and myths. And so God became the mere soul of the world, and every ob- ject in nature was infused with His essence. He became incarnate in almost everything, suffering with everything that could feel pain, and rejoicing with every alleviation of it. So, too, it came to pass that kings and emperors became divine ; and that such men as ApoUonious of Tyana, Pythagoras, Plato, &c., passed for in- carnations of Deity. But whence came the radically different and higher conception of Christ's Incarnation? Not a mere infusion of the Divine essence into men, animals, and plants, or the sun, moon, and stars ; but a real union of all that is Divine with all that is human, without any change of the nature of either. This had hitherto been beyond the reach of Paganibm, although Paganism had its imperfect concep- tions, types, and symbols of it. If this union of the Divine with the human had been the sole idea and invention of Christian men, it is not easy to sec why other Jesus Christ as Human. 201 and more acute minds had not sooner conceived it. Nothing is so simple as a dis- closed fact or principle, after its discovery. It is a perplexing thing before the discovery. And surely the Fishermen of Galilee and their poor disciples for three centuries afterwards, have not outwitted the Brahmins of India, the Priests of Persia, or the Philosophers of Greece and Rome, by inventing an Incarnation totally different from their own. And the record of early Christianity, in all her monu- ments, is one of simple faith in the disclosed fact of a real Divine Incarnation in Jesus Christ. In those primitive times belief was the first imperative necessity ; to believe and confess the Incarnation of the Word, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body ; consequently, to stimulate faith was the task imposed on all the early monuments. Ancient sarcophagi, the frescoes in the catacombs, the mosaics in the Roman Basilicas, all speak the same language, and constantly present to our view the birth, actions, and resurrection of Christ, not as philosophical spec- ulations and myths, but as facts. Life is constantly extracted from death, to show that at the Final Judgment the reanimated body shall quit the tomb; Jonah is rejected by the whale as a type of it ; the Hebrew Children are spared by the fiery flames as types of those who shall not perish either in the fires of persecution or in the fires of the Last Day; and Jesus raises Lazarus to life. To believe was then indispensably necessary ; for the object to be achieved was the substitution of one religion for another: — for what was typical, speculative, and mythical, the substitu- tion of what was real and substantial, and matter-of-fact.* It was pre-eminently the reign of Faith, and as such it triumphed. The Jews, in common with all other religious peoples, held the belief in the pre- existence of souls, as the story of the man born blind shows us, whom they thought punished for his sin in some previous state of existence, or that his parents had so sinned and transmitted the punishment to their blind son. Three times after death did every man's soul pass into other human bodies; Adam's soul passed into the body of King David ; and King David's soul4>assed into the Messiah, or would do so, which mystery is contained in the three Hebrew letters DTK, i. e., ADM, Adam or man, A standing for Adam, D for David, and M for Messiah.* Our Lord only denies, that, in this instance, blindness was to be considered as a punishment for sin committed in a previous state of existence, not contradicting, but rather implying the doctrine of pre-existence. Did He not -say, Before Abra- ham was, I am ? Our aspirations after immortality and the home eternal in the heavens may be the dim and almost obliterated recollections of both, as the Poet Wordsworth so beautifully expresses the belief in his poem on the ** Intimations of * Didron's Icon. Chr^t., pp. 490-1. • Beckker's Le Monde Enchant., I. p. 166. 30 202 Monumental Christianity. Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood ; " and as the matter is so well presented and argued by Capel Berrow on the ** Pre-existent Lapse of Human Souls;*' by an Impartial Inquirer after Truth, Anonymous, on " Pre-existence, Crea- tion," &€.; and by Edward Beecher, in our own time and country, in his " Conflict of Ages." If the Great Teacher of all seems to sanction the ancient belief in the pre-exist- ence of souls, then it need not be thought a strange or impossible thing that the Son of God existed be- fore He came into the world, or ex- isted before the world Itself was. It was no new doctrine either to Jews or Pagans; and therefore to all right-minded men of the times, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, was received as the Power and the Wisdom of God. Christian art begins its treatment of the subject with the Divine intimation or annunciation to the Virgin Mary as above represented. (Fig. 86.) This is the oldest and simplest treatment of the subject yet discovered, and must go back to the times between the Flavians and the Antonines, i. ^., from the second half of the first century to the first part of the second. At least, this is De Rossi's opinion as expressed about another classical fresco in the same cemetery of Priscilla, from which this Annunciation is taken.* His judgment is based on the Fig. 86.— ^The Annunciation. Fresco. Second century. * Images tU la T. S. Vierge, pp. 14-17. Rome, 1863. Jesus Christ as Human, 203 style and elegance of the painting, as belonging to the best period of art. The above copy is from Bosio ; it is also given by Aringhi.* Look at it well ; for it is too severely simple and classical to secure any notice except by the most cultivated taste. This young queen of maidenly purity, modesty, and innocence, holds no sceptre in her hand ; there is no jewelled crown upon her head ; the moon and the clouds of heaven are not under her feet, as in some of the representations of modern Christian art ; but she sits, nevertheless, in a chair of royal state, with veiled head in token of modesty, and downcast eye and uplifted hand, as if in the very ecstacy of wonder, perplexity, and astonishment, at the announcement made her by the majes- tic youthful figure standing before her, emphasizing his message, and pointing her out with his hand, as saying, ** Hail ! Mary, highly-favoured ! Fear not ! thou hast found favour with God." He does not kneel to deliver his message as the angel does in Overbeck's treatment of the subject ; " but stands up as her equal, and as a messenger of God should do when engaged in such work as this. The doves in the angles indicate the presence of the all-pervading and all-powerful Holy Spirit, as the Lord and Giver of life, and the Divine Agent in the generation of our Lord's humanity, pot given by measure in His case as in ours, but in the complete fulness of grace and truth. It was this spiritual generation, and not the im- maculate nature of the Virgin, that produced Christ's pure and perfect man- hood. I am aware that by some Christian archaeologists the above picture is consid- ered doubtful as to subject, and therefore it must speak for itself. But from the fact that it occurs in the cemetery of St. Priscilla with the scene of the Nativity itself, and is very difficult of explanation except as the scene of the Annunciation, other good authorities have regarded it as such. Its age is vouched for, not only by its classic art, simplicity, and elegance, but by its being in the cemetery of Priscilla, whom St. Paul mentions in his writings, and whose tomb was known to have been on the Salarian way.* And yet Agincourt is disposed to place it in the third century. Although winged angels were not altogether unknown to the first ages of the Church, yet the practice was not general of giving them wings. The angel Gabriel has no wings in this instance ; and there is another, of the ninth cen- tury, in a Latin gospel of Louis le Debonnaire given to the Church at Soissons, in which the angel is without wings, but has the circular nimbus, and carries a cross in his left hand, while he points with the right to the Virgin seated in a chair, just as in the fresco of St. Priscilla. The first known examples of angels with ' Bosio, Rom. SotU p. 541. Aringhi, Rom. Sno. II. p. 137. ^ Darstellungen aus den Evangelien. DUs. pi, I. ' Bosio, Rom. Sott. p. 479. and plate on p. 541. 204 Monumental Christianity. wings in Christian art, are the diptyches of the Milan Cathedral, and the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome.' And for twelve centuries there is no exam- ple of an angel as kneeling before the Virgin to deliver his message. Fleury gives about twenty examples of the subject, from the Catacombs down to later pictures in manuscripts and Bibles, and in no instance is the angel kneeling, as in Overbeck's otherwise admirable representation.* This kneeling indicates adoration of some kind, and a change of doctrine respecting the Virgin, as we shall presently see. In earlier art the Virgin kneels, as Boldetti assures us in these words, viz.," In one of the chapels of the cemetery of St. Callixtus was discovered, a few years ago, a good and beautiful painting representing the Virgin kneeling down, {jnginocchiata^ while the angel was announcing to her the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word.** * I here reproduce, from Ciampini, an- other representation of the Annunciation, somewhat more ex- plicit than the other of an earlier age. The Discipline of the Se- cret was now relaxed, and the great mystery of Godliness — God manifest in the flesh — might now be more clearly given, without incurring oflFence from the Pagans, and without danger to the Christian community. It is a mosaic of the fifth century, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome. It consists of two parts, and is only a very small portion of the whole subject of the Nativity, which occupies the entire space over the whole great arch that opens into the sanctuary. The work was exe- cuted under the Pontificate of Xystus III., A. D. 443, whose name appears just Fic. S7.— The Annunciation, ftc. Mosaic, FifUi century. ' Ch. Rohault de Fleury's VEvangiU, I. pp. 11 and 15, pi. VII. •This work of Fleury's is the latest archaeological resumi of the artistic treatment of our Lord's life. MTAS published at Tours, A. D. 1874. 2 vols. 4to. ' Osservanoni^ lib. I. c. 5, p. 21. It JesMS Christ as Human. 205 above the apex of the arch, and over the Christian monogram with A and /2, thus, XISTVS EPISCOPVS PLEBI DEI. The upper part represents the annunciation; the lower, the adoration. More angels than Gabriel are interested in this great mystery, and are come with him, as if desirous of looking into it. (I. Pet. i. 12.) Gabriel is twice represented (6 and 7) as flying from heaven, and as alighted and standing' he(ore the Virgin, with the same gesture, and in the same attitude and vestments as the figure in the fresco of St. Priscilla. The Virgin, too, is the same modest young girl seated in the same way, with left hand raised as before ; while the Dove is now seen flying towards her, emblematic of the Holy Ghost coming upon her. On the garments of two of the angels is the mystic letter I, the initial of Jesus, the new name of God. In the lower part, the Divine Child is seated on a throne, the star above, while Mary, Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds and angels are all adoring Him.' This is in the spirit and style of the earlier works of the Catacombs, and especially of the lower sarcophagus of the preceding plate. TAe star over the chilcTs head has eight points, and signifies the union of Heaven and earthy God and man, in the Incarnation. Fig. 88.— The VisiUUon. Madonna and Child. Fifth century. ' Ciampini. Vet. Mon,^ Pars I., tab. 49, pp. 195- 21 1, cap. v. 2o6 Monumental Christianity. The next scene of the Nativity in order, is the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, which is herewith presented from Bosio,' a later fresco from the cemetery of St. Valentinus, or Pope Julius. (See Fig. 88.) I have omitted the painful scene of a supposed martyrdom, which accompanies this picture, said to be the only one in the Catacombs, but painted there after per- secution had ceased, to remind the faithful what had been endured by their prede- cessors in the faith of Christ. From the inscription, it is evident that this produc- tion of Christian art dates after the council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, when the epithet Mother of God was applied to the Virgin Mary. And yet even here the Child is the prominent personage, and the foremost one, as appears from the salutation when the Babe danced in the womb of the Virgin ; from the box in which He lies after delivery ; and from the front place which He occu- pies in His mother's lap. The lily-cross is significant. Later treatments of the subject, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, as cited and published by Fleury, are simple copies of this. One of the very earliest representa- tions of the Nativ- ity itself is Fig. 89, Fig. 89.— The Naliviiy. brt;M;u. Second century. from Dc RoSSi.* The * Rom, Sou. p. 579. • Images, pp. 7 and 8. Plate I. IV Jesus Christ as Humafu 207 star to which the prophet points has the usual eight points, just as we so often see it in the Pagan monuments ; and both here and there it is one and the same star of hope and promise to mankind of a Deliverer, coming from heaven to earth. Here it is over the Divine Child clinging to His mother's breast. At first sight this would seem to be the Holy Family, very simply and naturally treated ; but the roll in the left hand of the standing male figure, and the pointing with his right to the star, in- duce De Rossi and some other Christian antiquarians to think that it is the prophet Isaiah, foretelling the Nativ- ity as recorded in the ninth and sixtieth chapters, and elsewhere, in his prophecy. The fresco is much defaced by the falling off of the plas- ter ; but enough of it remains to determine the nature of the subject ; and that it is treated in the same easy, graceful, and elegant style as its counterpart, the Annun- ciation, in the same cemetery. The Virgin is veiled in token of modesty ; there is no thought as yet of a jewel, crown, or sceptre ; she is no more than the pure, tender mother pressing her Divine Child to her bosom ; and she is reverently regarding and laying to heart all that an- cient prophecy is saying to her about this wonderful Child. But Fig. 90 is one of a 2o8 Monumental Christianity. much later date from the cemetery of St. Agnes, later even, I am in- clined to think, than the fourth century, where De Rossi places it ; ' because it is the Byzantine style, and the Virgin is jewelled. True, she is yet veiled ; she is in the same praying attitude as the other two Orantes ; the sacred monogram is on either side of her indicative of Christ ; and the young face above may be a portrait of some member of the family buried there, but it may also be the young and Divine Christ Himself; yet this jewelled Virgin begins to look like a return to Paganism, from which Christianity had just escaped. Prophetical and typical Paganism is one thing; perverted and corrupt Paganism is another; and what jewels are doing on the neck of this poor and lowly maid, it is not easy to say, except that pride and wealth were now asserting their corrupting influence, and beginning to secularize and Paganize the holy simplicity of sacred things. The Church had now placed herself under the fostering care of the secular power, which was yet half-Pagan ; what wonder is it that she degenerated with such frightful rapidity as to be almost overwhelmed by Mohammedanism, by reason of her dissen- sions, corruptions, and weakness. How absurd to trick out the Virgin Mary with a necklace, as if a little jewelry could add anything to her importance ! And yet what must have been the state of things in the Church of that age, which must have required it, in order to secure her a becoming attention ? Was the weakness borrowed from a distant Oriental Brahminism ? or was it inherent in the Christian community itself. In either case, it was a departure from a former purity and sim- plicity. In plain terms, it was the first artistic attempt made to exalt the Christian Virgin into a Pagan goddess, after the council of Ephesus. Father Marchi*s exces- sive antiquity of the subject is given up by Martigny, who says expressly that this St. Agnes Virgin is one of the first attempts of this type after the council of Ephe- SuS.' No man has paid more attention to this subject of early and later Christian art as connected with doctrine than Charles Hemans, whose return to the Church of England is due to the careful study of the ancient Christian monuments ; and he tells us, that " The definition of Ephesus respecting the Blessed Virgin was attended and followed by profound effects; in that city it was celebrated by illuminations, by exulting crowds, who, after the votes of the Council, led the fathers to their homes in triumph. Soon was added to the Angelic salutation (already, it seems, in devo- tional use,) the clause, ' Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us,' remarkable inas- much as it converts a simple memorial of the Annunciation into a prayer addressed to the highly-favoured one. In the range of Catacomb art, the figure of Mary in- * Images^ p. 20, plate vL ^Dic, des Ant. Chr/i. Art. Vierge, p. 659. Nous parait ^trc un des premiers essais dc cc type apres le concile d'Ephise. Jesus Christ as Human. 209 deed appears from an early date, but exclusively in relation to the Divine Child ; as in two pictures of the Adoration of the Magi, where it may be referred to the second century, or, in one of them, to no later date than the beginning of the third, as published by De Rossi ; and the earliest ' Madonna and Child,* apart from all historic grouping in the St. Agnes Catacombs, to which Marchi ascribes the highest antiquity, is regarded by Martigny as a first essay of that art-subject, raised into universal popularity through the decree of Ephesus, but later than that Council. Mary often appears herself in the act of prayer among these primitive representa- tions; never with any attribute or circumstance that implies the directing of devo- tional regards towards herself." * St. Ambrose, in his treatise on Virginity, simply holds up the Virgin as an example of maidenly piety ; and St. Augustine says that the personal appearance of the Virgin Mary was not known, from whom He (Christ) was miraculously born without male intercourse, and without the corruption of child-birth. His language is in strict accord with that of the Gregorian Sacramentary, when it says in its collect for the festival of the Annunciation that she remained a pure, chaste virgin after conception and child-birth ; but is not invoked as a mediatrix.* {De Trin. 1. viii. c. 5.) Two other frescoes published by De Rossi, of the second century, one from the cemetry of Domatilla, and the other from that of Peter and Marcellinus, represent the scene of the adoration of the Magi very simply, but in case of the former with four Magi, and in the latter only two, both of which are unusual, the number of Magi in all other cases being three. Who knows when the tradition as to these Magi originated? May not these two frescoes have been painted before that tradition ? Or are they so made only for the symmetry of the picture? ' A History of Ancient Christianity and Sacred Art in Italy, Pp. 202-3. London and Florence, 1866. * Mttratori, torn. II. p. 315. This is the collect as given in the Liturgia Romana Vetus, for the eighth kalends of April. " Vertf dignum, &c., aeteme Deus. Qui per beats Mariae Virginis partum Ecclesis tuae tribttisti celebrare mysterium, et inenarrabile sacramentum, in qua manet intacta castitas, pudor integer, firma constantia ; quae laetatur, quod Virgo concepit, quod Caeli Dominum castis portavit visceribus, quod Virgo edidit partum. O admirandam divinae dispensationis operationem ! Quae virum non cognovit, et Mater est, et post ilinm Virgo est. Duobus enim gavisa est muneribus. Miratur, quod Virgo peperit, laetatur, quod Redemtorem Mundl edidit Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quern majestatem, &c." Here is positive statement as to the miraculous conception, &c., but not a trace of worship to the Virgin, or of invocation of her as mediatrix. But what is to be s.iid of this modern collect of the Missale Romanum^ for the festival of the Annunciation? " Deus, qui be^tae Marise Virginis utero verbum tuum, Angelo nuntiante, carnem suscipere voluisti ; prsesta supplicibus tuis ; ut qui vere eam genetricem Dei credimus, ejus apud te in* tercessionibus ^.1 U'-^mur. Per eumdem Dominum nostrum.'* Here is a decided change, or rather addition, in the words of supplication for aid by the intercessions of the Virgin to God, through Jesus Christ. 27 2IO Monumental Christianity, Far away in the secluded valley of Argub, in Cappadocia, whither the -per- secuted Christians had retired to escape the violence of Diocletian, and excavated places of concealment in the mountain sides, the chapels and oratories counted by hundreds, contain pictures of Christian subjects; and among the rest there is one of the Virgin seated in a chair clad in blue, with veil and nimbus, holding the naked child in her lap, who has an open book in his little hand, and points with his right forefinger to some passage in it ; while two angels hover over the bending figure of an aged man presenting a volume to the child. Another figure like a prophet stands behind the chair of the Virgin and Child, holding up his right forefinger towards heaven. It is published by Texier and Pullan, who say, ** Until the end of the fifth century the figure of the Virgin was never represented except as accom- panied by the infant Christ ; and the iconography in the East is quite Egyptian." * This agrees with what Bishop Mtinter says on the subject, in connexion with the portraiture of the Virgin, that no attempt was made at portraitwre either of the Virgin or Child ; but both were idealized. The traditionary portrait of St. Luke is unauthenticated. And besides, the artists of Christian antiquity may possibly have had Isis and Horus before them sometimes, in their representations of the Virgin and Child, without giving character to them.' R. Rochette confirms this view of the matter in his Tableau des Catacombs, (c. vi.) * Now, Isis and Horus are always seated in a chair ; and I have in my possession an antique little charm or amulet of this very subject, possibly to be worn round the neck, or to be hung up for worship ; and the two look exactly like the Chris- tian Mother and Child, even to the blue colour, still retained. It is about an inch and a half long, with a hole at the back of the neck for a* string or chain. It is apparently of baked clay, and one of the cheap sort used by the y:ommon people of ancient Egypt. Fig. 91 is the fac-simile of an ancient bronze, in my possession, of the more usual style. The chair is gone. On the head of Isis is the combined sun and moon, with a serpent's head issu- ing out of her forehead. Horus also has the serpent's head, emblematic of the Divine emanation or wisdom. These attributes of sun, and moon, and serpent, are never seen in early Christian art, in the treatment of the Mother and Child. They were essentially Pagan in a bad sense, and therefore excluded. In all other respects the treatment is the same, viz., that of holy maternity and the Incarnate God. Count Caylus publishes, among other examples of Isis and Horus, this inter- esting variety, bearing obvious traces of Greek workmanship.* ' Byzantine Architecture, &c., pp. 41-2, pi. V. ' Sinnbilder^ Zweit Heft. vi. 26-28. •Paris, 1837. ^Recueil^ &c., III. pi. ix. pp. 41-a. Jesus Christ as Human. 211 It is a beaatiful intaglio of three-coloured agate, the pecuh'arities of which are the lotus flower on the head of the goddess and her divine son, instead of the usual serpent ; and the termination of the chair in the fornn of the cross, or symbol of life. (See Fig. 92.) Is this Egyptian mother, too, meditating her son's con- flict, suflering, and triumph, as she holds him before her, and gazes into his face ? And is thi^ cross meant to convey the idea of life through suffering, and con- flict with Typho or Evil ? It looks like it ; and yet there is another Pagan type of Christ, of more marked significance and unusual clearness. (Fig. 93.) It is an image of baked clay found at Babylon, and described by Sir R. K. Porter as three and a half inches high, bearing traces of glazing in colour.' But he does not say what kind of colour. It ought to be blue like the baked clay figures of Isis and Horus, and like the blue drapery which Christian art gives to the Virgin Mary. The Babylonians wor- shipped a goddess mother and a son, who was repre- sented in pictures and in images as an infant in his mother's arms. Her name was Mylitta, the same as the Cyprian Venus. She was the mother of grace and mercy, the heavenly Dove, the hope of the world, the mediatrix ; and hence called Aphrodite, or wrath- subduer, — she, who by her charms, could soothe the breast of angry Jove, and soften the most rugged spirits of gods or men. At Athens she was called Amarusia, or the mother of gracious acceptance ; at Rome, Bona Dea, or the good goddess. The Divine Son was Tammuz or Adonis, the same as Horus, and invested with all his father's attributes and glory, and identified with Him. This son, wor- shipped in his mother's arms, was a most complete type, both in name and charac- ter, of the promised Messiah. As Christ has the prophetic title of Adonai, or Lord, in the Old Testament, so was Tammuz called Adom or Adonis. He was Fic. 91.— Isis And Horns. * Travels in Persia. &c.. II. pi. 80, No. 3, p. 425. 212 Monumental Christianity. Fig. 9a.— Isis and Horus. the same as Mithras, and worshipped as Medi- ator.* (Fig. 93.) The Babylonian Mylitta was doubtless a derivation from the Hindu Lakshmi, the Lotus or blue-eyed Camala, the mother of the uni- verse, goddess of prosperity and abundance, the consort or sacti of Vishnu, 1. e., the active energy of the preserving Power of the world. She is Ceres, Juno, Venus, all in one. Like Ceres she is the goddess of abundance ; like Juno Lucina she presides over marriage, and is invoked for children ; and like Venus she sprang from the foam of the sea, and became the consort of Vishnu.* She is represented in her husband's arms, of which there are many various examples. (Fig. 94.) The Lotus is in one hand, and the other embraces her lord. Vishnu is the youthful god, like Apollo; he is here Narayana, and identified with the Spirit of God, holding in his hands the Chank 2Xi^ the Chakra, t\ e.<, the wreathed shell and the discus, the latter of which is aflame, and like Xh^ fttlmen of Jupiter to hurl at the wicked. The Chank is the conch-shell once used as a trumpet in war. With his fore left hand he holds Lakshmi, and his right is giving a benediction. Lakshmi is called prosperity, in the Vishnu Pur ana ; and as Sri she is the sea-born goddess, the bride of Vishnu, the mother of the world, the eter- nal and imperishable ; as Vishnu is all-pervading, so is she omnipresent. Vishnu is meaning; she is speech. Vishnu is understanding; she is intellect. He is righteousness ; she is devotion. He is the creator; she is creation. . . . She, the mother of the world, is the creeping vine; and Vishnu is the tree round which she clings. She is the night ; the ^^^ 93.-Myutuand Tammux. * Hislop's Two BabyloHs, pp. 1 13-14. and 256-7. Fifth edition. • Moor's Hindu Panihe<m, pp. 132-144, plate 1 1. No. I. yssus Christ as Human. 213 god who is armed with the mace and the discus is the day. He, the bestower of bless- ings, is the bride- groom ; the lotus- throned goddess is the bride. Lakshmi is desire; Narayana, the master of the world, is covet- ousness. All that is male is Vishnu or Hari ; Lakshmi is all that is fe- male. As a specimen of the devotion offered to this goddess throned in heaven, I give this from the Vishnu Pur ana: ** I bow down to Sri, the mother of all beings, seated on her lotus throne, with eyes like full-blown lotuses, reclining on the breast of Vishnu. . . . The world is peopled by thee with pleasing or displeasing forms. Who else than thou, O goddess, is seated on that person of the god of gods, the wielder of the mace, which is made up of sacrifice^ and contemplated by holy ascetics t From thy propi- tious gaze, O mighty goddess, men obtain wives, children, dwellings, friends, har- Fio. 94.— Vishna and Lakthmi, or Lakthmi-Narayana. 214 Monumental Christianity. vests, wealth. Health and strength, power, victory, happiness, are easy of attain- ment to those upon whom thou smilest. Thou art the mother of all beings, as the god of gods, Hari, is their father: and this world, whether animate or inanimate, is pervaded by thee and Vishnu. O thou who purifiest all things, forsake not our treasures, our granaries, our dwellings, our dependents, our persons, our wives; abandon not our children, our friends, our lineage, our jewels, O thou who abidest in the bosom of the god of gods. . . . The tongues of Brahma are unequal to celebrate thy excellence. Be propitious to me, O goddess, lotus-eyed, and never forsake me more." * Colebrooke also gives a seven-fold invocation, which concludes thus : " I invoke the goddess who is endowed with the attributes of all the gods, who confers all happiness, who be^tow^ abodes in all worlds for the sake of all people. I pray to that auspicious goddess for immortality and happiness." * Sir Wm. Jones in his hymn to Lakshmi says : " So name the Goddess from h^r Lotos blue, Or Camala, if more auspicious deem*d." ' And so a lotus-eyed goddess is a blue-eyed one. This benignant Pagan mother of the world is the precise model of the Pagan- ized Virgin Mary of the modern Latin Church ; and the invocations addressed to both are much alike, as we shall soon see. And we shall also see this Virgin mother, this pure maid of Israel, this lowly spouse of the carpenter Joseph of Nazareth, rising like the goddess Lakshmi or Venus from the sea in her assumption, and seated on the same heavenly throne beside her Lord Christ, crowned a goddess and receiv- ing the adoration of the saints and angels. The proof of this will be given in its proper place, with another Hindu goddess sometimes identified with Lakshmi. Meanwhile, let us trace this female cultus into Italy, and consider it under that form of worship specially paid to Juno Lucina. whose image is here repro- duced from Count Caylus* collection.* Like the Babylonian Mylitta, it is of baked clay, and was found at Tarentum, A. D. 1774. (See Fig. 95.) Caylus suggests that it may be an ex voto offering to Juno Lucina, the goddess of marriage and child- birth, among the Greeks and Romans. Dr. Von DSllinger tells us that, " Originally Juno was the female deity of nature in its widest extent, the deification of womanhood, woman in the sphere « Wilson's Trans, pp. 54. and 78-9. ^Essays, yoI. i, pp. i79-®0- • Warks, vol. xiii., p. 292. * Recueil, &c., III., plate Ix.. No. I, p. aa^. Jesus Christ as Human. 215 of the divine, and therefore also her name of Juno was the appellative designation of a female genius or guardian spirit. Every wife had her own Juno, and the female slaves of Rome swore by the Juno of their mistresses; and as the genius of a man could be propitiated, so could also the Juno of a woman. The whole of a woman's life, in all its moments, from the cradle to the grave, was thus under the conduct and protection of this goddess, but especially her two chief destinations, marriage and maternity. Accordingly, the Roman women sacrificed to Juno Natalis on their birth-day, and observed in like manner the Matronalia in the temple of Juno Lucina, in commemoration of the institu- tion of marriage by Romulus, and the fidelity of the ravished Sabine women. The goddess, as Fluonia, in common with Mena, presided over the purification of women, and was worshipped as Juga, Curitis, Domiduca, Unxia, Pronuba, or Cinxia, according to the several usages immediately concerning the bride, in the solemnization of marriage. As Ossipaga she compacted the bones of the child in its'molher*s womb; as Opigena she assisted mothers in labour; and as Lucina she brought the child into the light of day; and therefore when the time of birth approached, Lu- cina and Diana were invoked, and a table was spread with viands for the former." ' As Matrona and Virginalis, too, Juno was the special protectress of females from the cradle to the grave. With Diana, she was the chaste and pure goddess. The month of June, originally called Junonius after her, was considered to be the most favora- ble period for marrying, and is still preferred by many. The sanctity and inviola- bility of marriage were especially dear to Juno, and all inchastity and inordinate love of sexual pleasures were hated by the goddess. A law of Numa ordained that no prostitute should touch the altar of Juno, or if she had done so, she must with dishevelled hair offer a female lamb to the goddess. In child-bed Juno Lucina was invoked to aid the labour of bringing the child to lights on which account she was like the Greek Artemis or Eileithyia, and sometimes identified with her. As Jupiter Fig. 95.— Juno Lucina and Child. ' yew and Gentile, II., pp. 48-9. 2i6 Monumental Christianity. was king of heaven and of the gods, so Juno was queen of both, the wife and sister of Jupiter. Ast egp^ quae Divum incido Regina, Jovisque Et soror et conjux, una cum gente tot annos Bella gero. Et quisquam numen Junonis adoret Pneterea, aut supplex aris imponat honorem ? * As queen of heaven and the chaste or immaculate protectress of women, Juno was substituted by the Church of the middle ages for the historic and lowly Jewish maiden, the mother of Christ, as she is represented in the New Testament and in early Christian art. It was a shrewd device thus to gain the ascendancy in all social and political life by securing the fervour, affection, and constancy of the women, who even yet are the most enthusiastic devotees of the worship of the Virgin Mary as Juno Lucina, in all countries where the Latin Church is established. Dante twice alludes to this, as when he says in the Purgatory: *' With weary steps and slow We pass'd ; and I attentive to the shades. Whom piteously I heard lament and wail ; And, midst the wailing, one before us heard Cry out, " O blessed Virgin ! " as a dame In the sharp pangs of child-bed ; and " How poor Thou wast," it added, '* wifhess that low roof Where thou didst lay thy sacred burden down." * And again, in the Paradise , the poet says : " In such composed and seemly fellowship, Such faithful and such fair equality, In so sweet household, Mary at my birth Bestow'd me, call'd on with loud cries."' In Dante's day, then, it was customary to invoke the Virgin Mary in child- birth, just as Juno Lucina was invoked by the Pagan ancestors of the Italian people ; so that Mary merely took the place of Juno. I doubt not that the custom still prevails. Now, to Christianize Paganism is one thing, but thus to Paganize Christianity is to give up a fact for a fiction, and to exalt a mere mortal into the rank of the Divine. This deifying of mortals is the essence of all Paganism the world over. It is bald pantheism, a thing of error bitterly denounced by the Roman Pontiff in » yC»«V^j. I., 46-50. •Canto XX. 'Canto XV, =J- r^\ Fig. 96~UeiraH ani Krishna. The Hindu Madonna and Child. Jesus Christ as Human. 217 his recent Syllabus, and yet essentially involved in the whole idea and cultus of the Virgin Mary as Mediatrix and Queen of heaven. For if she can hear and help every woman to a husband or in child-birth, she must, in some sense, have Divine qualities and attributes. Besides, this exaltation of the human into the Divine destroys the whole mystery of the Incarnation. A goddess could bring forth a divine son ; but how could a mere mortal do it ? Therefore a goddess is the logical necessity of Pagan rationalism or pantheism ; but a human mother — a pure virgin of our own race — is the higher and more consoling conception and mystery of the Christian Faith. And all the Madonnas of Pagan idolatry are alike in this respect, — all are goddesses;— none are human. Perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of this pantheistic transformation of a woman into a goddess is that of Devaki, the mother of Krishna, exhibited in the annexed plate, (Fig. 96,) which I here reproduce from Moor's Hindu Pantheon, for the special study of such fastidious and delicate Christian females as either cannot or will not have children, or when they have them make little or no use of the natural means of nourishment, but resort to gutta percha and the bottle.' Major Moor says of it, that it is an exact outline of a beautiful and highly finished picture which easily reminds us of the representations by Papists of Mary and the infant Jesus. From the glory that encircles her head, which, as well as that of the infant, is green, edged with gold, Moor imagines very justly that she who is nursing Krishna is his mother, who is sometimes described as Yesuda, his foster-mother, to whose care Vasudeva conveyed him to escape the cruelty of his uncle Kansa, the Herod or the Pharoah of Hindu mythology. The three trays of offerings, like the three Magi, convey the idea of Krishna's reign over the three great kingdoms of nature, viz., the vegetable, the animal, and the intellectual ; the tray of dishes, bottles, and cubes, contains food, poison, and Amrita or ambrosia, symbolical of life, death, and immortality, the cubes specially signifying the Trinity in unity, of which Krishna forms an integral part. The tree behind the Mother and Child, consisting of three branches, is not without its significance, as we shall see when we come to consider Jonah and his gourd, or Buddha and his nirwana under a similar tree. The garden seen through the open window is a symbol of the Paradise which Krishna came to restore. The female worshipper typifies the Church of God in all lands and among all nations, offering adoration and homage to the incarnate God, but in this instance, to the mother also. Were she really divine as her nimbus intimates, the worship would be proper and right; but being only a mortal, it is » Plate 59, and pp. 197-8. 28 2i8 Monumental Christianity, idolatrous. The animals remind us of the presence of cattle in the manger scene of Christ's nativity. Devaki was one of the eleven children of Devaka; and her husband wasVasu- deva, who also married her other six sisters. On the birth of Vasudeva, the gods foresaw that the divine being would take a human form in his family, and thereupon they sounded with joy the drums of heaven. And when the portion of Vishnu had become incorporate upon earth in the womb of Devaki, the planetary bodies moved in brilliant order in the heavens, and the seasons were regular and genial. No person could bear to gaze upon Devaki, from the light that invested her; and those who contemplated her radiance felt their minds disturbed. The gods, invis- ible to mortals, celebrated her praises continually from the time that Vishnu was contained in her person. •* Thou," said the divinities, ** art that Prakriti, infinite, and subtile, which formerly bore Brahma in its womb; then wast thou the goddess of speech, the energy of the creator of the universe, and the parent of the Vedas. Thou, eternal being, comprising in thy substance the essence of all created things, wast identical with the creation ; thou wast the parent of the triform sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things; thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds; ifiou art the wood^whose attrition engenders fire. Thou art light, whence day is begotten ; thou art humility, the mother of the true wisdom; thou art kingly policy, the parent of order ; thou art modesty, the progenitrix of affection ; thou art desire, of whom love is born ; thou art contentment, whence resignation is derived ; thou art intelligence, the mother of knowledge; thou art patience, the parent of forti- tude ; thou art the heavens, and the stars are thy children ; and from thee does all that exists proceed. Thou art wisdom, ambrosia, light, and heaven. Thou hast descended upon earth for the preservation of the world. Have compassion upon us, O goddess, and do good unto the world. Be proud to bear that deity by whom the universe is upheld.'* * From this account of Devaki, and her qualities and attributes like those of Lakshmi, and the worship paid her, we see how the Hindu pantheism has exalted a mere mortal into a goddess, precisely as the modern Romish Church has exalted the Virgin Mary. The Apocryphal History of the Nativity of Mary and the Infant Saviour y thus reptesents the Virgin when a vestal at the Temple of Jerusalem ; " her face was shining as snow, and its brightness could hardly be borne ; angels brought food to her; she was the most humble, pure, charitable, and perfect of all ; was never angry, never uttered a slander; her words were full of grace, and the truth ^ Wilson's Vishnu Purana, pp. 436, and 500-3. Jesus Christ as Human, 219 of God was ever on her lips ; her only nourishment was angelic food ; her conver- sation was with the angels ; the sick were healed by a touch of her hand ; and the poor were fed by her bounty." And this is the authority which certain Romish archaeologists, such as Le Blant and Martigny, bring forward to establish as early a cultus of the Virgin Mary as possible. Le Blant expressly admits that although this story of Mary as a vestal virgin at the Temple is not found in the New Testa- ment, yet it has been received as genuine by a great number of ecclesiastical writers, such as Nicephorus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Damascenus, Cedrenus, Greg- ory of Nicomedia, &c.* Cardinal Bona admits that the precise date of the worship of the Virgin Mary cannot be shown ; for he says, *' That this cultus has always flourished in the Church, and the date of its origin cannot be fixed. By no Papal decree, or sanction of council, and by no custom can its introduction be ascertained ; but the faithful have always, in every time and place, been accustomed to venerate the Queen of Heaven with the highest honour." * She is, in the hymn cited by Bona, ** Viigo Regina polorum ; Tu nostrae es gloria stirpis, Tu lux, tu vita, decusque, Hominum spes certa, tuumque. Observant omnia nutum, &c." Now, a Virgin Queen of all heaven, with light and darkness, summer and win- ter, and all things at her disposal, the glory of our posterity, the light, life, splen- dour, and sure hope of mankind, whose nod all things observe, is something more than human ; having the qualities of a Pagan goddess, a Pagan goddess she must be. Such, in fact, she has at last been decreed, on the eighth day of December, A. D. 1854, by the present aged Pontiff of Rome, Pius IX. The reaffirmation of this ex- traordinary decree, ten years later, is this, " In order that God may accede more easily to our and your prayers, and to those of all His faithful servants, let us employ in all confidence, as our Mediatrix with Him, the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who has * destroyed all heresies throughout the world, and who, the most loving mother of us all, is very gracrous, and full of mercy .... allows herself to be entreated by all, shows herself most clement towards all, and takes under her pitying care all our necessities with most ample affection,* {St, Bernard Serm. de duodecim prcerogativiSy ' Inscrip, Chret. de la GauU, II. pp. 262-3. The stoiy is also told in the Protevangelion, * ** Semper Deiparse cultum in ecclesia viguisse, ut csetera desint argumenta. ex hoc potissimum conjicere licet, quod nullum ejus principium ostendi potest. Nam nee Pontificis alicujis decreto, aut concilii sanctione, nee consuetudine aliqua, cujus sciatur origo, introductus fuit, sed omni aetate, omni tempore semper fideles coeli Reginam summo honore prosequi, ct venerari consueverunt." — Div, PsaL p. 471, c. 12, 3. Opera Omnia, Aut. 173^ 220 Monumental Christianity, B. V. M. &c. :) and, sitting as queen at the right hand of her only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in a golden vestment, clothed round with various adornments, there is nothing which she cannot obtain from Him." ' The late Romish archbishop of Baltimore, the Most Rev. Martin John Spald- ing, D.D., says of **our immaculate mother in heaven," that by the very fact of the incarnation of Christ, she became our mother also, just as Devaki, by the in- carnation of Vishnu in Krishna, became the mother of all. " What a privilege," he says, ** to have a mother in heaven ; and so tender, so powerful, and so sweet a mother ! Christ, who denied her nothing on earth, will surely deny her nothing in heaven ! Whatever we ask through Mary, with earnest and persevering faith, we shall most certainly obtain, if it be conducive to our salvation. . . . Our faith and devotion should be stimulated by the fact that she is the chosen patroness of our beloved country, for the welfare and prosperity of which, both temporal and spir- itual, she will not fail to raise her immaculate hands before the throne of her Divine Son."* I cite some rhapsodies in praise of the Virgin, from Cardinal Bona, equal to any, and much like those of the Hindus in praise of Lakshmi and Devaki. Thus St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, says, in the exordium of one his sermons on the Virgin, "If you can hold the earth in the hollow of your hand, or circumscribe the ocean with a cord ; if the heavens can be contained in a cubit, or the host of stars be numbered ; if the drops of rain, or blades of grass, or sands of the earth, or the force of winds can be estimated, then it might be possible for us to handle this great argument." The Abbot Arnoldus Bonaevallis says, " Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, I should not be able to say aught that is worthy of the glory of the holy and always Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, for there is no instrument qualified for sounding her praises, and dull is the finest sensibility." In one of the homilies of St. Amedus on the Virgin, this passage occurs: " Every holy and reasonable mind, investigating the secret mysteries of heaven and distinguishing between the orders of superior spirits, finds that she, the blessed among women, is first after the Redeemer ; that she is full of grace, who brought forth God without losing her virginity. This Blessed Virgin, brighter than all light, sweeter than all sweetness, higher than all might, illumines the whole world, and by the persuasiveness of her pre-eminent suavity, renews all things ; she transcends > Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius IX, Given at Rome Dec. 8th, 1864, on the tenth anniversary of the Dogmatic Definition of the Immaculate Conception of B. V. M. p. 33. Archbishop Spalding's trans. Balti- more, 1865. * Pastoral Letter, p. 21. Baltimore, 1865. Jesus Christ as Human. 221 in power and majesty the ranks of cherubim and seraphim. She is therefore second only to God, who has made her worthy to be honoured with praises, and •who has exalted the lowly to so great a dignity, than whom the omnipotence of God Himself cannot create a greater. This is the woman promised of old in Paradise, who by Divine power should bruise the serpent's head. This illustrious, this blessed among women, was foretold before all others by the ancient fathers, and typified by the Fire and the Bush, the Rod and its blossom, the dew and the fleece. She is the mystic ark of the covenant, the Golden Mercy-seat, Jacob's Ladder, the Rod of Jesse, the Throne of Solomon, the Bow of the Covenant, the Gate of Para- dise. She is the Fountain that waters the whole earth, the Dawn that precedes the True Sun. She is the health (salus) of all, the reconciler (conciliatrix) of the whole world, the inventress of grace, the generatrix of life, the mother of salvation. She is the Restorer of our first parents, the Renewer of their posterity, the true Mother of salvation, the true Mother of the living, the Solace of the despairing, the Comfort of the miserable, the Refuge of the afflicted, the only hope of sinners. In her is all the grace of the way and the truth ; in her is all the hope of life and of virtue." *' Sola fuit mulier, patuit qaae janua letho, Et qua vita redit, sola fuit mulier." " The woman who alone unfolded death's dark door. The woman who alone did life and light restore." ** Under her shade he may find rest who turns aside from the heat of the pas- sions, shelter from the oppression of the times, and stillness from toil and tumult." It is perplexing to one unaccustomed to Pagan theology, to understand the mysterious possibility of assigning to one poor lowly woman, saintly indeed, but finite, the whole care and charge of the entire universe, and all knowledge of past, present, and future events, as it is done in this extraordinary passage from one of St. Bernard's sermons, (^if/V«/^r(7j/,) as cited by Bona: "She as a most faithful Mediatrix in the court of Heaven attends to the business of all in every age, she who alone is capable of managing and ruling all ages, and who by her abilities trans- acts the business of all ages All that are in heaven and hell, all that have lived before us, we who now live, and all that come after us to future generations, look to Mary as a Mediatrix, as the Ark of God, as the Cause of things, as the Negotiatrix of the ages. They who are in heaven, look to Her for refreshment ; and they who are in hell, that they may be restored ; the faithful Prophets who have gone before, that they may be found of Her; and they who come after, that they may be glorified. Thus all generations call thee Blessed, Mother of life. Mistress 222 Monumental Christianity. of the world, Queen of Heaven. All generations, I say, for thou hast begotten the life and glory of all generations. In thee the angels find their joy, the righteous find grace, and sinners eternal pardon. Deservedly the eyes of every creature look to thee, for in thee, and through thee, and by thee, the kind hand of the Onnnipo- tent has renewed whatever He has created." And this is the pure milk drawn from the Virgin's breasts, rather than from the Word of God ; for Bona distinctly asserts that itwas St. Bernard's signal privilege to suck her breasts. (*' Lac merum loquitur, quod ab uberibus Virginis insigni privilegio suxit." Div. PsaLy c. xii., i and 2.) Rudolphus Ardens thus exhorts the votaries of Mary: "If, therefore, my brethren, any malignant spirit molests us, if the flesh restrains us, if the world opposes us, let us look to Mary, let us fly to Mary, let us cry to Mary. She alone is our advocate, with Gody the adjudicatress with Christ in the redemption of mankind, the height of our joy, the sweetness of believing souls, the hope and anchor of Christians. She is the ark of sanctification which contains the heavenly manna, its capacity holding Him whom nothing else can hold, the Heaven of Him who made heaven, the Receptacle of Divinity. She is the Fountain of light which enlightens every man, the rising of the sun which knows no setting, the well of ever-living water, the Good and the Joy of human kind, the source of purity and of piety, the door of penitence, the fountain marked with the sign of the whole Trinity, the destroyer of all heretical wickedness. She is the ship of the merchant bringing his goods from afar, the mother of clemency and virtue, the flower of the bush that has no thorn, the solace of the afflicted, the avenger of the oppressed, the friend of the destitute, who always embraces Christians in her arms. She is the light of the faithful, the nourisher of Him who feeds all, and the container of Him who holds all; the Bush burning yet not consumed ; the restorer of Adam ; the redemption of Eve; the mirror of chastity; the exemplar of virgin- ity ; the temple not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, by whom all things are reduced to unity and charity. She is the shield of all who fight against enemies, visible and invisible, by whose aid Christian princes have so often tri- umphed over barbarous nations. Be therefore our protectress, most Blessed Virgin ; hear the prayers of thy servants who cry to thee day and night ; deprecate thy only begotten Son for the transgressions of thy numerous children, so that through thee we may be accepted of Him who wast given to us. May thy integrity excuse before Him the fault of our corruption, and thy humility so pleasing to God procure the pardon of our pride and vanity. May thy abundant charity cover the multitude of our sins, and thy glorious abundance bestow upon us a multitude of merits. O our Queen, our Mediatrix, our Advocate, reconcile us to thy Son. Lo, I fall pros- Jesus Christ as Human. 223 trate before thee, O Blessed One, revealer of grace, mother of salvation ; most humbly do I prostrate myself before thee, that thou wouldst obtain for me the blotting out of my sins, that thou wouldst COMMAND the cleansing of the iniquity of my doings, that thou wouldst make me to love the glory of thy virtue above all things, and reveal to me the fulness of thy Son's delights; that thou wouldst ^rant me grace to confess and defend the true faith of thy Son ; grant that I may cleave to God and to thyself, serve thy Son and thee, be made like my Lord and thee. To Him as my Maker, to thee as the Mother of my Maker; to Him as the Lord of Powers, to thee as the handmaid of the Lord of all ; to Him as God, to thee as the Mother of God, I pray. Give ear, and by the grace which thou hast found and the prerogative ^which thou hast deserved, grant my petition, and disappoint not my hope. To thee I fly as the only comfort of my heart, that through thine interces- sion, Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, may make me a partaker of His glory, who through thy agency wast made a partaker of human sorrow and infirmity." And these are not Brahmins sounding the praises of Lakshmi or Devaki, and making invocations to them as mediatresses ; nor are they Babylonian priests ador- ing Mylitta, or Egyptian ones worshipping Isis ; nor yet Greek and Roman vota- ries of Ceres, or Juno, or Venus ; but they are learned and so-called Christian men, who have thus exalted the Virgin Mary into a veritable goddess and queen of heaven like any one of these. The translation of the passages above given from Cardinal Bona, can be verified by the reader on consulting the original.' And what is most lamentable about these essentially Pagan and pantheistic rhapsodies and blasphemies, is, that they are now imposed as articles of faith on all the members of the Latin Church, under the pains and penalties of eternal dam- nation, ever since the Pontifical decree of December 8th, 1854, and its reaffirmation in the Encyclical and Syllabus issued ten years afterwards. It is only a choice of errors, when men of sense and intelligence prefer scientific scepticism, or even materialistic atheism, to such pantheistic mysticism as underlies the whole doctrine of Mary as Mediatrix and Queen of Heaven, and of the Roman Pontiff as God's infallible representative or personated power on earth, in both Church and State. The earliest and only Christian father who seems to give any hint of the sub- ject of Mary as an advocate and mother of God, out of which modern ingenuity has made a mediatrix and a goddess, is Irenaeus, who flourished in the latter half of the second century, who runs this parallel between Eve and Mary: "Just as Eve was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word ; so did Mary, by an angelic communication, receive the ' Div, Psal. c. XII. 3 and 4 of paragraph 2. 224 Monumental Christianity. glad tidings that she should produce {portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness {advocatd) of the Virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin ; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience." * He whom Mary was the instrument of bringing into tlie world was God in one sense, and man in another ; and Mary was only Eve's advocate or helper, in the sense of making up her deficiency, both of them being finite and mortal women alike. For Irenaeus says in another place : " He, therefore, the Son of God, our Lord, being the Word of the Father, and the Son of man, since He had a generation as to His human nature from Mary — who was descended from mankind, and who was herself a human being — was made the Son of God."" This is emphatic and dis- tinct enough as to Mary's advocacy and motherhood of God. About the year of our Lord 390, St. Basil formed a small sect or society of female devotees for the special-worship of the Virgin Mary, who met on certain days, and made to her offerings of cakes called collyrida, i. e., thin cakes well kneaded, of a triangular shape, as idolatrous Israel did in the time of Jeremiah, (vii. 18,) when the women kneaded their dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven ; and this Christian female sect was hence called Collyridians. Their existence was short. The ceremonies practised at their meetings were considered idolatrous, and were reprimanded by the orthodox clergy." Already was Mary beginning to be regarded as something more than human. No wonder, then, that remonstrance was made. Anastasius, priest and friend of Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople, one day, in the year 428, or there- abouts, declared in a sermon, " Let no man call Mary the Mother of God, for she was a woman, and it is impossible that God should be born of a human creature." This utterance gave great offence, and produced a commotion among the orthodox both of the clergy and laity, who had always taught and believed that Jesus Christ was God, in no way separate as a man from Divinity; and that Jesus Christ, the God-man, was born of the Virgin Mary. Nestorius took sides with his priest against the people, a bold and unusual thing for a Bishop to do, in maintaining, as it is alleged, the two-fold personality as well as two-fold nature of Christ, instead of the orthodox belief in the two natures being joined together in but one person : and so he said that Mary should rather be called Christotokos than Theotokos. St, > Adv, Hares, V. c. 19, i. ' ^^v. Hares, III. c, XIX. 3. •Ducange, Collyrida, Tcxier and Pullan, p. 42. yesus Christ as Human. 225 Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, exposed and refuted the reputed mistake of Nestorius ; and the council of Ephesus, summoned in A. D. 431, by the joint Emperors Theodo- sius and Valentinian III. with the concurrence and co5peration of the Bishop of Rome, Celestine I., condemned as a heresy the teaching of Nestorius, and he was banished, first to Antioch, and then to Africa. He was harshly and unfairly dealt with. His expressions were perhaps no more than exaggerations into which he may have been betrayed in the heat of controversy, rather than denials of the truths which they seemed to contradict. He steadily disavowed the more odious opinions which were imputed to him; he repeatedly professed his willingness to admit the term Theotokos, provided it were guarded against abuses. The contro- versy more than once seemed on the point of being settled, but pride of conquest, or unwillingness to concede, and personal animosities, on both sides, prevented. The court of Theodosius was against Nestorius, partly influenced by Cyril's money, partly by Pulcheria whom Nestorius had offended, and partly by dread of the monks and the populace.' The wrong done to Nestorius must be laid to the charge of the secular or lay power of the State, rather than to the clergy and the Council of Ephesus, The Council was chiefly concerned to maintain the orthodox faith, and declared that it was " the real and inseparable union of the two natures of Christ in One Person, and that the human nature which Christ took of the Holy Virgin, never subsisted separately from the Divine Person of the Son of God." And this still remains the orthodox faith of Christendom proper ; or as Bishop Pearson says, " We must acknowledge that the Blessed Virgin was truly and prop- erly the mother of our Saviour. And so she is frequently styled the Mother of Jesus in the language of the Evangelists, and by Elizabeth particularly, the mother of her Lordf as also by the general consent of the Church ; because He that was so born of her was God, the Deipara^ which being a compound title begun in the Greek Church, was resolved into its parts by the Latins ; and so the Virgin was plainly named the Mother of God.*** But out of all this, or in spite of it, one can hardly say which, the cultus of the Virgin at length took possession of the whole Eastern Church in the eighth cen- tury ; and in the Western Church we find a special office, consisting of seven can- onical hours, and in a form which had hitherto been used for the worship of Almighty God alone, was instituted among the Benedictines, A. D. 1056, which was soon adopted by the regular clergy, and was made generally obligatory by the canons of the Council of Claremont, A. D. 1096. Pope Urban II. decreed that the ' Robertson's Ch, Hist,^ I. pp. 450-57. • Exposition 0/ the Creed, I. p. 218. Oxford, 3d Ed. 1847. 226 Monumental Christianity. hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary should be daily sung, and more solemnly ob- served on Sabbath days.* Cardinal Bona claims for this office of the Virgin a far more ancient date than the above, i. ^., the time of Gregory II., A. D. 715.' And both Martene and Johnson assert that the festival of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was established as early as A. D. 694, when the Council of Toledo fixed the date of its celebration on the eighth of December instead of the eighteenth. This of course implies an earlier celebration, although Martene says that St. Ildephonsus, Bishop of Toledo, was its reputed author.* Sixtus IV., A. D. 1476 and 1483, issued two bulls to quiet the dissensions of the Church occasioned by the fierce controversy of the Franciscans and Dominicans on the subject of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, to the effect that the new office composed by Leonard de Negoralis in honour of the Virgin might be used ; and indulgences were granted to all such as celebrated it or assisted at its celebration ; and they who asserted that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was false or heretical, or that it was a sin to celebrate this office of the Virgin, were condemned : while all such as contended about it, one*vay or the other, were excommunicated, until the whole matter in controversy should be settled by the Church of Rome and the Apostolical See. The office of the Virgin spread into England and was used in the time of Anselm, A. D. 1 102-8 ; and it became part of the Canon law in the time of Archbishop Mepham, A. D. 1328.* So, too, it spread into other coun- tries, the Church of Lyons, Irenaeus* Church, using it as early as A. D. 1136, when it became part of the canon law. The Council of Trent did not settle the long and fierce controversy in the Latin Church about the Immaculate Conception, but merely re-affirmed or renewed the decrees of Sixtus IV. Here is the declaration of that Council, as cited from the first Aldine edition of its acts: Declaret tamen hac sancta Synodus^ non esse suce'intentionis comprefiendere in hoc decreto^ ubi de peccato originali agitur^ beat am et tntmaculatatn virginetn Mariam^ Dei Genitricem ; sed Xysti Papa Quarti, sub poenis in eis constitutionibus quas innovate And so it has been reserved for this nineteenth century of boasted enlighten- ment and pusillanimous Churchmanship to witness the shameful and blasphemous spectacle of the Roman Pontiff declaring and defining this Dogma of the Immac- ulate Conception, in boldest effrontery, and in the face of centuries of opposition, > Martene De Ant, Monaeh Rit, II. c. XII. torn. IV, p. 82. ^Div. Psa!,, c. 12, 2, 2. * De Rit, IV., c. 2, 15. torn. iv. Canons, II., p. 347. Oxford, 1851. ¦ Johnson's Canons, II., p. 346. • Canones, &c., Aldus, Romae, MDLXIV. s •a Q 1 < > s a > o e i I <9 Jesus Christ as Human. 227 whereby a mere woman is exalted into the rank of Divinity, and the wife of Joseph made a goddess and the mother of God, like Devaki, or Mylitta, or Venus. M. Didron publishes the exact drawing of a sculpture at the Church of St. Denis, France, of the sixteenth century, representing the assumption of the Virgin Mary as Venus rising from the sea into heaven.* It is here exactly reproduced. This is to Paganize Christianity, and not to Christianize Paganism. The assump- tion or the translation of the Virgin bodily into heaven is entirely unknown to the Primitive Church, and is nowhere contained in the Bible; and it only makes its appearance in Mediaeval art about the time when the idolatrous veneration for Mary had culminated, that is, about the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century.* It is an article of faith in the Latin Church, notwithstanding its utter lack of foundation in truth. Any one curious to know how the subject has been treated by Mediaeval Christian art, is referred to Mrs Jameson's excellent work on the " Legends of the Madonna." The assumption into heaven is followed by the coronation of the Virgin, unknown to primitive Christian literature and art, but holding an equally conspicuous place in the literature and art of the middle ages wfth the assumption. As this corona- tion implies co-equality and co-operation with the Holy Trinity on the part of Mary, and is the acme of all Pagan idolatry, in common with that which worships images of the Virgin and of Christ," it may be well to compare some of the oldest Hindu representations of the subject with the Romish, and see how complete the resemblance is. Buddha (Fig. 98) is the symbol and incarnation of all Divine wisdom and intelli- gence ; he sits on his lotus-throne, in profound meditation, within a canopy and glory surmounted by winged angels, with the crescent moon or Yoni marked on his fore- head, indicative of the female principle and power, while the magic sign of the cross is on the palm of his left hand, symbolical of life and its perpetual reproduction. It is the enthronement of this female principle in Buddha that looks like the coronation of the same thing in the heavens of the Latin Church, the only difference consisting in the use of symbols in the one case, and of the actual woman in the other. We have seen something like Fig. 99 before, in the androgynous Brahma-Maya of the first chapter. This is essentially the same, the male and female principles ' Paganisffu dans VArt CMtun, p. 12-Z3. Paris, 1853. Icon, Chrii., Gr, and Lai,, p. 288. Also Piper's Myth,, p. 157. * Didron's Paganisme,8tc., p. 12. * Firmissime assezx) Imagines Christi, ac Deiparse semper Virginis. nee non alionim Sanctorum habendas, et retinendas, esse, atque debitum honorem, ac venerationem impertiendam. Form of oath, &c.. Lid. Symi. I., p. 100. Streitwolf et Klener. Gottingen, 1846. 228 Monumental Christianity. of the universe incar- nate, or brought from heaven to earth, and again transferred from earth to heaven. It is the whole manifesta- tion of life and the means of its produc- tion. The androgynous being, who is either hu- man or divine, stands in the vase of the world, flames issuing from one side, and water spout- ing from the other, fire and water being the two essential elements of life; the circle of deity is around them; and over all floats the Great Mother spread- ing the veil of creation of the heavens above them, and blessing the nup- tials with hands outstretched in the form of the cros6.** I admit that the union here is more that of real husband and wife than a mystical spiritual union, such as that which subsists between Christ and His Church ; but confessedly, the physical occupation of the same seat in heaven with Christ on the part of Mary, looks as if the Latin Church regarded her actual presence there as necessary to all the life, joy, and prosperity of the world. If not in the same precise way, it is still the same essential enthronement and co- operation of the female principle and power as characterized all Paganism the world over. Fig. ICO is the Papal representation of the matter, the exaltation of the Virgin to the same throne with Christ, and the union blessed by her coronation. Both are within the circle of Deity ; both have the Divine glory round their heads ; both are equally adored by standing and prostrate saints in heaven ; and the union, mystical indeed, must be traced back to the old Pagan notion of a goddess mother, ' Religions de VAntiquite^ vol. I. pp. 270-1. and plate XIII. Flo. 98.~Buddha. Fig. 99.— Androgynous Deity. i-:^ Pio. xex .^Coronation of Blutyani. yesus Christ as Human. 229 Fig. too.— Coronation and Adoration of Mary. Rome, t3th and S4tli centuries. Maria Maggiore, at Rome; and which says of it, that It wife, and sister, i, e.^ to some female as necessary to main- tain the life and happiness of the whole universe, the heavenly world as well as the earthly. I have reproduced this coronation scene from Agin- court's great work, copied from a Mosaic in the Basilica of Santa was begun during thirteenth century, the beginning of the pontificate of Nicholas IV., in the latter part of the by Giacomo Torrite, and finished by Gaddo Gaddi, in the fourteenth. There is another Mosaic greatly resembling this, in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, at Rome, executed between the years 1 1 30 and 1 143, during the pontificate of Innocent II.,* which represents Mary and Christ seated side by side on their heavenly throne. He holding her by the hand, and she already crowned queen of heaven ; both have the glory round their heads, and both equally receive the adoration of the saints grouped on either side. Perhaps the most complete counterpart of this in Paganism is the annexed representation, (Fig. loi,) from an ancient Hindu sculpture of Bhavani, or Parvati, the deified female principle of nature, and of fecundity, otherwise personated in Lakshmi- Devaki, Diana, Juno-Lucina, and Venus.* She is seated on a lion as a throne, and is richly decorated with gems, holding the Child in one hand, and a lotus in the other; and she is surrounded by all the great and holy beings of the animal and spiritual worlds, giving her honour and worship. As Maha-Devi she sits above, crowned as supreme goddess. The Papal representation is more refined and spiritual than the Pagan, but the same in fact ; Mary is a deified mortal, or a deified female principle as Bhavani is, and receives the same kind of religious homage. The pure theism of the Old Testament has no trace of this dualistic or androgynous principle, nor has the " Agincourt, Peinture, pi. XVIII. Nos. 6 and 18. • Moor*s Hindu Pan. and Coleman's Hindu MythoL, pi. 34. --•ji::- ^ jr-^; ? 230 Monumental Christianity. Christianity of the New Testament. Pagan and pantheistical from first to last, no apol- ogies or explanations can ever excuse or alter the fact, in the Latin Church, of Mary being exalted at the right hand of the throne of God as a co-ordinate function and power with Christ our Lord and hers, in the administration of all things, and more especially in the management of the Church, and the maintenance of its life, peace, and prosperity. And no one can witness, as I have done, the excessive devotion paid to jewelled, crowned, and sceptered images of the Virgin Mary at Rome and elsewhere, in churches of the Papal obedience, without being convinced that she is far more than an humble exemplar of piety to her devotees ; and that she has passed into the same rank with the three Persons of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, as an object of the higher worship, or at least as one to be worshipped in connec- tion with the Triune God. This codrdinate female influence with God is unnecessary and of mere human device. It is idolatrous and mischievous. That candid writer, John Henry New- man, well says, that " Christianity knows no difference of sex ; in it there is neither male nor female, because there is but One character to which all must conform, One likeness which all must imitate ; and from it man must learn all the gentleness and tenderness of a woman, and woman must learn all the strength and severity of man."' * Life of St Walbniiga. English Saints, I. p. 73. ^' Jtnd the wot[d wa$ made fl6$h and dwelt amoug u$.'' SL Jno,, i. 14. ^' B {$ wiiltten, $hou $hali woii$bip iba Loiid iby <|h)d, and him only ahali ihou aat(va.^ 5/. Matt,, iv. 10. Kic. im.— Reputed PortnUt of Christ. Fresco In St Calliztus. 3d Century JesTis Christ as Sufferer. 231 |