Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/642

 MOSAICS

5S1

MOSAICS

The Tabernacle was the centre of public worship. This was a portable tent moasurin;; fifty-two by seven- teen feet, and divided by a veil into two unequal parts, the Holy Place and the smaller Holy of Holies. The latter contained only the Ark of the Covenant, and might be entered by no one but Moses and the high priests. Any priest might enter the Holy Phice. This was furnished with a table for the Loaves of Proposition, a seven-branched golden candlestick, and the Altar of Incense. Outside, in the surrounding court, were the Altar of Holocausts and the brazen laver for priestly ablutions. The tribe of Levi fur-

York, 1S97). Invaluable (■)r thoroughness and concenlrnted form are tables XXIX-XXXIX and XLII-LVI in Concor- danliarum U. S. S. Thesaurus. Auctoribus P. P., S. J. (Paris. 1897), sect. I.

Thos. .( K. Reilly.

Mosaics, as a term, according to the usual author- ities is deri\'ed through generations of gradual change from the Creek nova-tiof, "appertaining to the Muses." In the hiter Latin there are the terms o/ik.s- jiiiisimmi, "mosaic work," mtisivariu^i. "mosaic worker"; but probably the English word "mosaic" is derived immediately from the French }nosaique, which with

nished the ministers, the descendants of Aaron being its earlier form mousnique can only be borrowed

priests, and the remaining ma- jority, Levites properly so- called. The priests were con- secrated, wore special vest- ments, offered sacrifice, at- tended to the Holy Place, and acted as judges and teachers. For the peculiar distinction of highpriesthood, see the article Aahon (section II). The Le- vites were the priests' assist- ants. They carried the Tab- ernacle whenever it was moved. Bloody and unbloody sacrifice s were prescribed. The former class embraced the Holocaust , in which the entire victim was consumed on the altar by fire and the Expiatory and Pacific sacrifices, when only the fat was burned on the altar. The rest was either burned elsewhere or given to the priest as in the first instance, but divided be- tween priest and offerer as in the second, and followed by a sacrificial meal. The Unbloody sacrifices included first-fruits, tithes, meat and drink offerings, and incense. Both oblations and sacrifices were seasoned with salt.

The most striking feature of the ceremonial legislation is the distinction between legal clean- ness and uncleanness, with its concomitant provision for nu- merous external purifications. The faithful Hebrew had al- ways to abstain from blood. He might not use for food any quadruped that did not divide the hoof and chew the cud, nor

from the Italian or Provencal, and cannot be the descendant of the earlier French form inusikc. It is, however, ques- tionable if these terms were applied to all the different spe- cies of work which may now be classed as "mosaic", and it is probable that they were only properly applied to the prod- ucts of the worker in opus tessellalum or verniiculatum, formed of small cubes of glass, marble or other material. If we define mosaic as a col- location of pieces of marble, glass, ceramic material, or jjrccious stone embedded in some species of cement so as to form an ornamental entity, we should have to include the opns Alexnmlrinum, and other ordinary pavings such as were used for the less dignified por- tions of Roman houses. The term mosaic would also be made to apply to the opus sec- lile (Vitruvius, \'II, i) made of pieces of marble anrl glass form- ing geometrical or foliated pat- terns, each piece being ground exactly to fit into the design, or in the case of pictures, ground to make the shapes necessary for the completion of the sub- ject. We also apply the term to the pavement work of later date, like that in St. Mary Major's in Rome, and that in Canterbury Cathedral and in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey in England, as well as to mosaics of a miniature species

Fig. 2 — Columns decorated with glass mosaic From Pompeii, now in National Museum. Naples any fish that did not have both fins and scales, nor used for jewellery and small pictures — suchastheHead birds of prey, nor water fowl, nor reptiles, nor insects, of Our Lord which was presented by Pope Sixtus IV to the locust excepted. To do so would make him un- Philip de Croy in 147.5 and is now in the Treasury of clean. The use of marriage, childbirth, and leprosy Sts. Peter and Paul's, Chimay. This latter tradition of also induced uncleanness. It is true that this legis- work still exists, and every visitor to Rome or south- lation is largely hygienic, but the Hebrews did not ern Italy is acquainted with the cheap but wonder- commonly conceive it in that light. As diseases were fully executed mosaic jewellery which is sold in most regarded as direct from Jahweh, precautions against of the shops, and even in the streets of Rome. There them were designed primarily to avert them by appeas- is little doubt but that mosaic in jewellery is of con- ing the sender. Those, therefore, who failed to take siderable antiquity.

such precautions, either necessarily or otherwise, were displciising to Jahweh, and legal defilement was the re- sult. How efTectually the Torah prepared the Hebrews for the acceptance of the Xew Law is attested by the work of Christ, who came not to destroy but to perfect

History. — In passing these various species in his- torical review, the earliest to be mentioned is that in Exodus, a pavement (xxiv, 10), "a work of sap- phire stones", and the pavement of Ahasuerus at Su.sa "paved with porphyry and white marble, and

it. It was only those who, while sitting in the chair of embellished with painting of wonderful variety",

Moses, preferred for their personal guidance the tradi- which here, probably, means varied inlaid colour,

tions of men, who proved inimical to our Saviour's work, since surface painting would be out of place on a

GiooT, Outlinen of Jewish Hisinry (Xew York. 1897): Hot- pavement. And we may well believe that the Per-

»^',°frFr»nWnrt"i7Vfi?"' Fl.1n°3' ,Z^,?fln? rL^'fr'^Z",'^ slaus kncw of tessellatcd' work when we consider the

Kiius (rrankiort, 171n); ji,wald, Antiqmttes of Israel, tr. oOllt h i i • i i • i i n i i i ■ j

(London, 1876); Sayce, Eariu Huiory of the Hebrews (New enamelled bricks, wjjich may be called a large kma