Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/191

Rh subjects represented (excepting of course the "signature," and Nos. 1 and 3), they find a type of the call of the Gentiles, or some special allusion to it.

We shall now, as we proposed, mention a few of the numerous symbols commented upon in the course of the work, premising however, that our notices of them are in general very much abridged.

In No. 13. of the diagram the words "Scribe thau" are found. The letter Thau, or T, particularly in some ancient alphabets, resembles a cross, and is here directed to be inscribed because it has been supposed that the mark placed by the Israelites on their door-posts was a cross. The words are taken from Ezekiel (ch. ix. ver. 3, 4), the Thau or mark there ordered to be placed on the foreheads of the righteous having been in the middle ages universally considered to be a T.

In Nos. 12. and 13. the wood, as has been noticed, is in the form of a cross. Death having been brought into the world by means of wood (the tree of knowledge), and the human race having been saved by means of wood (the cross), wood as a symbol attracts great attention in ecclesiastical writers, and in the mention of it in the Old Testament a symbol of the cross is generally detected.

No. 10. is the Crucifixion. The figures on the right and left of the cross represent respectively the Church and the Synagogue, or the old and the new law. These figures are of frequent recurrence, though with occasional variations. The Church is veiled and crowned, and bears a sceptre. In the window at Bourges, she has a cup to receive the blood which flows from our Saviour's side; sometimes she holds the chalice of the altar surmounted by the host; in the right hand she generally has a long pastoral staff. In a window at Chartres, her cross bears a veil (velum, sudarium, orarium, pallium) suspended from the upper part of the shaft. At Chartres too, instead of a cup, the left hand holds a church, or model of a church, a type often used by other artists; sometimes the figure is placed in a shrine, in the form of a church. The Synagogue is almost always represented with bandaged eyes, and a drooping head, from which a crown is falling. Commonly she has no cloak. Frequently she has a banner, the shaft of which is broken in two or three places; the banner is almost always pointed, sometimes it has two points, here it has three. The tablet inscribed on the windows at Bourges with the word Synagoga, which she bears in one hand, is the text of the Divine law, which in her blindness she suffers to fall. The figures of the Church and Synagogue are the only allegorical ones which occur in the present composition, but they are not surrounded by a polygonal nimbus, the usual mark of an allegorical personage, perhaps, because in the thirteenth century they were looked upon rather as real (though immaterial) beings than as mere personifications, (p. 43.) The cup in which the Church is receiving the Saviour's blood, shews that the Church is in possession of the true Sacrifice. This becomes more apparent when the Synagogue is accompanied by a sheep, goat, or ram, indicating that the figurative victims have given place to the real One.

The bandage on the eyes of the Synagogue is a Biblical type. Moses