Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/211

Rh saints and suffering martyrs. The serene, youthful appearance of Jesus, sometimes symbolised by Orpheus, or modelled on the type of Apollo, gives place in the Byzantine period to the exalted Christ, the King on His throne, glorious, majestic, awful to approach. The walls of Byzantine churches were decorated in fresco or mosaic with illustrations of Old and New Testament history. The purpose of this was educational, in order that, as St. Nilus said, "Those who could not read the Scriptures could learn from the pictures the good actions of those who have served God faithfully." For the same reason scenes of martyrdom, which the early Christians had avoided, were now rendered with brutal realism. Originally the object in view was as innocent as our modern illustrated Bibles, school-room pictures, and mission-hall lantern exhibitions. Then first the picture of Christ was worshipped, then pictures of the Virgin and of saints came in for similar adoration,

Although the iconoclastic dispute led to an immense destruction of pictures, it does not seem probable that many valuable works of art, were lost to the world in this way. But the victory of the image worshippers gave a great impulse to the arts of painting and mosaic work which was followed by a veritable renaissance in the Greek Church. Here, then, we come upon one of the points at which it is incumbent upon us to free our minds from) the narrowness of Western prepossessions if we would understand the very different course of Church history in the East. We are accustomed to regard the period between the short, brilliant epoch of Charles the Great and Alcuin on the Continent and King Alfred and Bede in England on the one hand, and the great revival under St. Bernard, with the subsequent rise of scholasticism and Gothic architecture on the other, as containing emphatically "the dark ages." No doubt the lamp of learning was kept alive by the monks even during this gloomy period; but the flame did little more than shed a mild radiance through the dim cloisters. Any MS. decoration of this period is Byzantine