Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/355

 io< s. v. APRIL 14, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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couple of summers or so since, not being there upon one of the appointed feasts, was distinctly refused a sight of it.

Mrs. Jameson, in her 'History of our Lord ' (1890) writes :--

"The first notices of the existence of a crucifix are quoted by most authentic writers from the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Bishop of Tours {A.D. 574), although some doubt may be expressed as to whether the latter refers to crucifixes in the present sense of the word."

This gifted authoress gives an illustration of a crucifix of great antiquity, ascribed to Cardinal Borgia. The figure represents a dead Christ. Another example (also dead) figured by Mrs. Jameson is at present in the treasury at Aix-la-Chapelle. It is known as the Cross of Lothario (son of the great Charlemagne). The prince died A.D. 855.

HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

In the Abbe Martigny's '.Dictionnaire ^es Antiquites Chretiennes,' 1877, p. 227, another edition of which is quoted in Smith's * Dic- tionary of Christian Antiquities,' the earliest public painting of the Crucifixion is claimed to have been possessed by France. The Abbe refers the reader to Gregory of Tours (' De Glor. Martyr.,' i. 23), and states that this picture must have been at least as old as the middle of the sixth century.

Crucifixes did not appear in churches, according to Guericke, till after the seventh century, and "all the most eminent Cruci- fixions known were objects of private devo- tion, like the pectoral cross of Queen Theo- dolinda and the Syriac MS. of the Medicean Library at Florence" ('Diet, of Christ. Antiq.'),

The Penny Post, which was often a more learned authority on such matters than the title might lead those who were ignorant of its editorship to suppose, says :

" It is generally allowed that no representation of the Crucifixion, that is, with a figure on the cross, is extant of a date before the end of the sixth century ; but the exact date and the earliest ex- amples are questions which have been much dis- cussed, and the Abbe Martigny 'does not think that archa3ological science has yet arrived at such a point as to determine them satisfactorily.' The earliest example usually quoted, namely, that of the early Syriac MS. of the Gospels in the Medicean Library at Florence, has the figure clothed ; but the two feet are shown beneath distinctly nailed to the cross, a nail in each foot This MS. is sup- posed to have been illuminated in 5S6." 1 Oct., 1896, pp. 27-2-3.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

I find that Mrs. Jameson, at p. 152 of vol. ii. of her * History of our Lord,' men- tions a picture of the Crucifixion in the

Catacombs, representing pur Saviour on the cross, with the Virgin and St. John standing alone on each side ; and there is an illustra- tion of it on the next page. Mrs. Jameson remarks: "The date is uncertain; later critics assign it to the eleventh century."

Dean Farrar, in his 'Life of Christ in Art,' p. 400, writes :

" In the sixth century we have the cross, but not the crucified. In the tenth century there are some crucifixes, but the crucified is represented in long

robes In the four following centuries the robe is

gradually stripped off and the physical agony unscripturally emphasized. The earliest known painting of the Crucifixion is that by Rabbula (A.D. 586)."

The subjects represented in the Catacombs in the first six centuries were the Adoration of the Magi, the Good Shepherd, the entry into Jerusalem, and the washing of the disciples' feet. The early Christians shrank from any representation of the Saviour suffering on the accursed tree ("Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree "), lest it should impede the work of inducing a pagan and heretic world to embrace Christianity, and turn it into ridicule, of which proba- bility there is evidence in the calumnious graffito, believed to be as old as the second century, discovered in a chamber of the Palace of the Caesars in 1857 (now in the Kircherian Museum, Rome). A photographic reproduction of this graffito is given at p. 122 of Lanciani's 'Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries,' and a woodcut at p. 94 of Farrar's * Life of Christ in Art.'

JAMES WATSON. Folkestone.

A graffito discovered in 1856 in excavations on the western angle of the Palatine, near to the church of St. Anastasia, and attributed to about A.D. 320, is a still earlier example than one named "the first representation" by HIPPOCLIDES. It depicts a caricature of the Crucifixion in a realization of the old pagan calumny that Jews and Christians worshipped an ass's head : " Somniastis caput asininum esse Deum nostrum" (Ter- tullian, * Apologet.,' c. xvi.). The cross is of the tau form, a simple letter T, and the figure of our Lord, clothed, is surmounted by the head of an ass, which looks down on a figure below. This figure represents the worshipper, who is on the left, and is shown in the act of saluting the object of his adoration by his uplifted left hand. Above the cross is the letter Y, and below are rudely scratched the letters AAE^AMENOS 2EBETE[TAI] 6EON (" Alexamenos adores God "). The graffito is preserved in the