Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/97

Rh the Father, and is frequently represented in the act of creating, as well as in other acts and attributes belonging to the Father. In the following figure (fig. 10.), from a fresco of the eighteenth century, at Salamina, Christ is represented as the Almighty—. In some instances we find the second Person of the Trinity placed in a superior position, or with higher attributes, than the first. In other instances we find the Father clothed in the attributes of pagan deities, as the god of combats, &c. Some of the singularities of this kind may perhaps be attributed to sectarian doctrines which ruled at the time and place where they were made. Platonism, Judaism, and Gnosticism, are sometimes traced distinctly in early monuments. The Father is frequently represented by a mere hand, inclosed in a nimbus, and issuing from the clouds: he generally appears aged and with a beard, and is frequently clad in the mantle and crown of a Pope.

The different events of the history of our Saviour, and his immediate intercourse with mankind, give to the Son a much more varied character than the Father in the hands of the medieval artists. "In iconography," as M. Didron observes, "the God par excellence is Jesus." We prefer sending our readers to the book itself than to attempt giving any notion of the mode in which this extensive part of the subject is treated. It embraces many collateral emblems, such as the cross, the fish, &c. With regard to the fish, we think that M. Didron has shewn satisfactorily that this figure, when sculptured on the early Christian sarcophagi in the catacombs, signified nothing more than that the person buried there was a fisherman. There has been a tendency in archæology to extend too widely the system of symbolism. The Holy Ghost, the third Person of the Divine Trinity, also occupies a considerable space in Christian iconography. Its most common form is that of a dove, always accompanied with the nimbus. The following miniature (fig. 11.), taken from a French manuscript of the fifteenth century, represents the Holy Ghost carried upon the face of the waters in the work of creation. The nimbus of the Creator is here not bounded by an outline.

At other times (and not unfrequently) the Holy Ghost is represented in a human form, sometimes with the dove seated upon the head or arm of