Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/431

 SYMBOLISM

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SYMBOLISM

Satan but of facing eastwards in making the profes- sion of faith, the white robe or chrysom bestowed as an emblem of innocence, the lighted candle typical of the illumination of faith (hence the baptized were early called ipuiTiaSivTt^, i. c. the illuminated), and finally the curious custom of giving milk and honey to the newly-baptized infant are all in the highest degree symbohcal. In confirmation we have the marking of the Sign of the Cross upon the brow and the use of oil representing the fatness and abundance of grace. The blow upon the cheek, significant of the warfare in which the resolute Christian is engaged, is of much later date and probably imitated from the sword blow by which the young Teutonic warrior was dubbed a knight. The laying of the hand upon the penitent's head, which was practised almo.st everywhere during the Middle Age.s when absolution was given, no doubt symbolized the imparting of grace, as the imposition of hands undoubtedly does in the Sacrament of Orders. Even in the ritual of matrimony such a pagan prac- tice as the giving of the espousal ring, which was probably in the beginning p:u-t of the arrhce, was in- vested at a later period with the mystic meanings of perpetuity and fidelity.

That much of the symbolism which is found in the medieval liturgists was invented ex postfaclo cannot be doubted. We may readily allow that the greater part of the ceremonial practices now adopted by the Church were utihtarian in their origin. For example, the priest washed his hands before the Preface because he had been using the thurible or at lea.st taking up the offerings of the faithful; it was not until later that this act was connected by the liturgist with spiritual purification or even with the hand-washing of Pilate. .\t the same time it is possible to exaggerate the utili- tarian explanation, and the hturgist Claude de Vert, who laid so much stress upon this aspect of the matter, in some instances went too far. For example, de Vert held that the candle given to the newly-baptized was only meant to help them to find their way back from the bapti-stery to the sanctuary in the darkness of the Easter vigil. But the very early use of the above- mentioned term (puTiaedt (illuminated) for a bap- tized person shows the extravagance of this explana- tion and, as Le Brun sagely pointed out, the cate- chumens would have needed candles as much to find their way to the baptistery as to return from it. Whether de Vert was wrong in maintaining that the extinction of the Tenebra; candles one by one had originally no symbolical reference to the abandon- ment of Christ by His disciples but was simply due to the fact that fewer candles were needed as dawn ap- proached and the office drew to an end, or again in his contention that the noise made at the end of Ten- ebne had no reference to the earthquake on Calvary but was simply the signal for departure given by the celebrant after an interval of silent prayer, may like many other familiar probh^ns be left an open question.

It is perhaps most of all in the matter of liturgical vestments that the tendency to attach symbolical meanings to usages originally adopted for some simple and practical purpose shows itself most conspicuously. The prayers recited by the celebrant in a.ssuming these attributes a my.stical significance to each, thus the chasuble which covers all denotes charity, and the girdle self-restraint and continence, while medieval liturgists have devised many more; but modern au- t horities are agreed that in hardly any case has a vest- ment been adopted in the Church for mystical reasons. The amice, for example, was simply a cloth u.sed like a modern collar to protect the rich chasuble or tunic from contact with the skin. It was only afterwards that the prie.st was bidden to regard it as a "helmet of salvation to overthrow the assaults of the evil one". And the same holds true of all the rest. Of the pal- lium, a white woollen band encircling the neck and hanging before and behind, it can at least be said that

from the time of St. Gregory the Great it has been sent by the pope to archbishops with the distinctly expressed purpose of symbolizing the archiepiscopal jurisdiction conferred upon them, a purpose for which it is expressly blessed and laid "upon the body of Blessed Peter" in the "confession" of the great Roman basihca" (see Tenebrae).

In any account of Cliristian symbolism an impor- tant place-must always be given to the Church, and that whether the institution or the material building is regarded. It is considered by some that the veiled Orans, already spoken of, which appears so frequently in the catacombs represents the Church (see the Pastor of Hernias, iii, 3, 10, and compare the term Virgin Mother Tvapdims fx-fiTTip used of the Church in thes(v'on(l century; Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.", V, i, 43). This is not certain, but the Church in early mosaics is undoubtedly often personified, as indeed we should expect from the early and widely-read visions con- tained in the Pastor of Hernias (see Hermas), and sometimes we find not one, but two, contrasted fig- ures representing respectively the Church of the Gentiles and the Church of the Circumcision. The contrast is also presented to us in the form of two towns set over against each other and duly labelled Bethlehem and Jerusalem, or even more frequently in the confronting portraits of St. Paul and St. Peter. At a later date also, beginning early in the Middle Ages, we repeatedly find two contrasted types, but here representing the Church and the Synagogue. The Church is a crowned and often sceptred figure with a chalice emblematic of her sacramental system. The Synagogue, on the other hand, has lost her crown, her staff is broken, and her attitude betokens defeat. These figures are constantly to be found on either side of early medieval representations of the Crucifixion. Here there is plain opposition between the two types (.see Sauer^ "Symbolik", p. 247), whereas in early Christian imagery the Church of the Circumcision and the Church of the Gentiles are depicted as con- stitutive parts of the one Kingdom of God upon earth. This example shows that continuity between prim- itive and medieval symbolism must not always be assumed, though in many cases we can securely trace back a type to its origins in the earliest ages.

Another early and accepted emblem of the Church was the ship. In the Apostohc Constitutions (II, xlvii) the bishop surrounded by the assembly of the faithful is compared to the helmsman of a ship; but the idea is as old as Tertullian (De bap., xii; P. L., I, 1214) and it Wius varied sometimes by comparing the Church to the .\rk of Noe. In any case the ship was a recognized Christian symbol and Clement of Alex- andria approved it for a signet ring. "Let the dove or the fish", he says, "the vessel flying before the wind, — or the marine anchor be our signets" (Pied. Ill, ii; P. G., VIII, 633), and numerous representa- tions of ships, sometimes serving as the design for a lamp, with the figure of Christ or St. Peter as helms- man are preserved to us. The name which we still retain for the "nave" (French, nef) of a church bears testimony to the persistence of the same idea. More- over, from the spiritual Church, idealized as the heavenly Jerusalem, to the material edifice the transi- tion was very eiisy. As early as the Pastor of Hermas the individual membere of the Church were looked upon as the stones of which the spiritual building was fashioned, the thought being perpetuated to all time in the magnificent hymn "Ccrlestis urbs Jerusalem". No wonder that the liturgists of the .Middle .Ages found no more fruitful theme than the interpretation of everj' detail in the fabric and ornamentation of their great cathedrals. Moreover, in this Ciise undoubtedly there was action and reaction. Not only did the teachers set themselves to give mystical e,\]ilanations of what already existed, but their spiritual concep- tions influenced the generations that came after, and