IV. OF CERTAIN EMBLEMS AND ATTRIBUTES.

To know something of the attributes and emblems of general application, as well as those proper to each saint, is absolutely necessary; but it will also greatly assist the fancy and the memory to understand their origin and significance. For this reason I will add a few words of explanation.

The GLORY, NIMBUS, or AUREOLE - the Christian attribute of sanctity, and used generally to distinguish all holy personages, is of pagan origin. It expressed the luminous nebula (Homer, Il. xxiii. 205.), supposed to emanate from, and surround, the Divine Essence, which stood "a shade in midst of its own brightness." Images of the gods were decorated with a crown of rays, or with stars; and when the Roman emperors assumed the honours due to divinity, they appeared in public crowned with golden radii. The colossal statue of Nero wore a circle of rays, imitating the glory of the sun. This ornament became customary; and not only the first Cæsars, but the Christian emperors, adopted the same divine insignia; and it became at length so common that we find it on some medals, round the heads of the consuls of the later empire. Considered in the East as the attribute of power only, whether good or evil, we find, wherever early Art has been developed under Byzantine influences, the nimbus thus applied. Satan, in many Greek, Saxon, and French miniatures, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, wears a glory. In a psalter of the twelfth century, the Beast of the Apocalypse with seven heads has six heads surrounded by the nimbus; the seventh, wounded and drooping, is without the sign of

power.

But in Western Art the associations with this attribute were not merely those of dignity, but of something divine and consecrated. It was for a long time avoided in the Christian representations as being appropriated by false gods or heathen pride; and when first adopted does not seem clear. The earliest example cited is a gem of St. Martin

"Avant le 5me siècle le nimbe Chrétien ne se voit pas sur les Monuments authentiques." Didron, Iconographie, p. 101.

of the early part of the sixth century, in which the glory round his head seems to represent his apotheosis: and in all instances it is evidently intended to represent divine glory and beatitude.

The glory round the head is properly the nimbus or aureole. The oblong glory surrounding the whole person, called in Latin the vesica piscis, and in Italian the mandorla (almond) from its form, is confined to figures of Christ and the Virgin, or saints who are in the act of ascending into heaven. When used to distinguish one of the three divine persons of the Trinity the glory is often cruciform or triangular. The square nimbus designates a person living at the time the work was executed. In the frescoes of Giotto at Assisi the allegorical personages are in some instances distinguished by the hexagonal nimbus. In other instances it is circular. From the fifth to the twelfth century the nimbus had the form of a disc or plate over the head.' From the twelfth to the fifteenth century, it was a broad golden band round, or rather behind, the head, composed of circle within circle, often adorned with precious stones, and sometimes having the name of the saint inscribed within it. From the fifteenth century it was a bright fillet over the head, and in the seventeenth century it disappeared altogether. In pictures the glory is always golden, the colour of light; in minatures and stained glass I have seen glories of various colours, red, blue, or green.2

The FISH was the earliest, the most universal, of the Christian emblems, partly as the symbol of water and the rite of baptism, and also because the five Greek letters which express the word Fish form the anagram of the name of Jesus Christ. In this sense we find the fish as a general symbol of the Christian faith upon the sarcophagi of the early

on the head of those statues placed in Some of the ancient glories are very from them.

A metal circle, like a round plate, was fastened the open air, to defend them from the rain or dust. like those plates, but I do not think they are derived 2 I believe these coloured glories to be symbolical, but am not sure of the application of the colours. Among the miniatures of the Hortus Deliciarum, painted in 1180, is a representation of the celestial paradise, in which the virgins, the apostles, the martyrs, and confessors wear the golden nimbus; the prophets and the patriarchs, the white or silver nimbus; the saints who strove with temptation, the red nimbus; those who were married have the nimbus green, while the beatified penitents have theirs of a yellowish white, somewhat shaded. Didron, Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 168.

Christians; on the tombs of the martyrs in the catacombs; on rings, coins, lamps, and other utensils; and as an ornament in early Christian architecture. It is usually a dolphin, which among the Pagans had also a sacred significance.

The passage in the Gospel, "Follow me, and I will make ye fishers of men," is supposed to have originated the use of this symbol; and I may observe here, that the fish placed in the hands of St. Peter has probably a double or treble signification, alluding to his former occupation as a fisherman, his conversion to Christianity, and his vocation as a Christian apostle, i. e. a fisher of men, in the sense used by Christ; and in the same sense we find it given as an attribute to bishops who were famous for converting and baptizing, as St. Zeno of Verona, and Gregory of Tours.

The CROSS.-About the tenth century the Fish disappeared, and the Cross-symbol of our redemption, from the apostolic times-became the sole and universal emblem of the Christian faith. The cross placed in the hand of a saint is usually the Latin cross (1), the form ascribed to the cross on which our Saviour suffered. Other crosses are used as emblems or ornaments, but still having the same signification; as the Greek cross (2), in which the arms are all of the same length; the transverse cross, on which St. Andrew is supposed to have suffered,

T+XT

(1)

(2)

(4)

in this form (3); the Egyptian cross, sometimes placed in the hands of St. Philip the apostle, and it was also the form of the crutch of St. Anthony, and embroidered on his cope or robe,- hence it is called St. Anthony's cross (4). There is also the Maltese cross, and various ornamental crosses. The double cross on the top of a staff, instead of the crosier, is borne by the Pope only; the staff with a single cross, by the Greek bishops.

At first the cross was a sign only. When formed of gold or silver, the five wounds of Christ were signified by a ruby or carbuncle at each extremity, and one in the centre. It was not till the sixth century that the cross became a CRUCIFIX, no longer an emblem but an image.

The LAMB, in Christian Art, is the peculiar symbol of the Redeemer as the sacrifice without blemish: in this sense it is given as an attribute to John the Baptist. The lamb is also the general emblem of innocence, meekness, modesty; in this sense it is given to St. Agnes, of whom Massillon said so beautifully, "peu de pudeur, où il n'y a pas de religion; peu de religion, où il n'y a pas de pudeur."

The PELICAN, tearing open her breast to feed her young with her own blood, was an early symbol of our redemption through Christ.

One or both of these emblems are frequently found in ancient crosses and crucifixes; the lamb at the foot, the pelican at the top, of the

cross.

The DRAGON is the emblem of sin in general, and of the sin of idolatry in particular; and the dragon slain or vanquished by the power of the cross, is the perpetually recurring myth, which, varied in a thousand ways, we find running through all the old Christian legends: not subject to misapprehension in the earliest times; but, as the cloud of ignorance darkened and deepened, the symbol was translated into a fact. It has been suggested that the dragon, which is to us a phantasm and an allegory, which in the middle ages was the visible shape of the demon adversary of all truth and goodness, might have been, as regards form, originally a fact: for wherever we have dragon legends, whether the scene be laid in Asia, Africa, or Europe, the imputed circumstances and the form are little varied. The dragons introduced into early painting and sculpture so invariably represent a gigantic winged crocodile, that it is presumed there must have been some common origin for the type chosen as if by common consent; and that this common type may have been some fossil remains of the Saurian species, or even some far-off dim tradition of one of these tremendous reptiles surviving in Heaven knows what vast desolate morass or inland lake, and spreading horror and devastation along its shores. At Aix, a huge