Among the minor arts may be mentioned that of gold-glass, which commenced early in the 3rd cent., and has preserved for us many Christian pictures and symbols. Miniature illustration came into general use in the 4th cent, in MSS of books of the Bible ; it was not decorative like that of the Middle Ages ; the miniatures were separated from the te.\t, and were devoted to giving pictures of the Scripture events described, much as in present-day book illustration. The handicrafts of pottery, metal, and jewel work, etc. , gradually adopted Christian symbolism, — thus it first appears on lamps in the 3rd century. The magnificence of church plate after the Peace of the Church almost passes belief. An early instance is given in the Pilgrimage of Sylvia (A.D. 385), which was discovered in 1888.
of the Anastasis, or of the cross in Jerusalem or in Bethlehem for there you would see nothing but !?old and gems or silk ; for if you see the vefls, they are all of silk, with stripes of gold ; if you see the curtains, they are the same. Every kind of gold and gemmed vessel is used on that day. It is impossihle to relate the number and weight of the lights, tapers, and lamps and other utensils. And what shall I say of the adornment of the fabric, which Constantine, with all the power of his king-
With this may be compared the gifts, recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, which Constantine made to certain churches : among them he gave to St. Peter's '3 golden clialices with emeralds and jacinths, each having 45 gems and weighing 12 pounds ' ; and ' a golden paten with a tower of purest gold, witli a dove adorned with emeralds and jacinths, and 215 pearls, weighing 30 pounds'; while to St. John Lateran he gave no fewer than 174 candlesticks and cliandeliers of various sorts, as to wliich Fleury reckons that altogether they furnished 8730 separate lights. Tliese figures
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suggest a magnificence of the surroundings of worship that is far removed from the simple two- handled cup of the ^nd cent, fresco of the Fractio Panis. None tlie less, the fact that Constantine's gift was made shows that there was no tradition of dislike to such magnilicence. Such descriptions bear out the general impression that the early Church made free use of whatever richness of art her opportunities could provide, though when necessity required she was content, as Jerome says, ' to carry the body of Christ in a basket of osiers and His blood in a cup of glass.'
Mosaic art, of which there are extant such splendid examples in the churches of the Imperial cities, Rome and Ravenna and Constantinople, followed upon architecture, and flourislied between the 4th and 7th centuries. Its magnificence and durability make it to us the most characteristic feature of the Christian art of that period. The principal subjects represented are the great figures of Christ enthroned, figures of the Apostles and other saints, apocalyptic and other symbolic sub- jects, scenes from the Old and New Testaments, and pictures of imiierial personages and bLsliops.
In architecture there have been many theories as to the origin of the basilica. It is now very generally agreed that the Christian church is a development of the classical atrium, the central colonnaded court of dwelling-houses in the Imperial age. The earliest gatherings for worship took place in the atrium of some wealthy convert, and were thus surrounded with all the greater and lesser arts of the period. Now, the Greek and Roman temples were constructed for a worsliip in which both the altar and the worshippers stood out.side. The Chris- tian worship began in the home (Ro 16^ and perhaps Ac 2^"), and tlie purpose of tlie earliest churches was to hold a large number of worshippers before the Lord's Table ; thus, though the style was tliat of the age, the manner of its use was ditt'erent from the first. The basilica is a distinctively Christian building, marked out by its oblong shape, clerestory, colonnaded aisles, and apse. It was probably in process of development in the centuries before the Peace of the Church, — we read, e.g., of church buildings in the newly found Canons of Hippolytits, c. 220-250 A.D., — though no extant edifice is known (unless the startling theory just put forth by Dr. Richter and Mr. C. Taylor in their books on S. Maria Jlaggiore in Rome comes to be accepted — the theory Ijeing that this church and its mosaics belong to the 2nd century). The churches destroyed by Diocletian were rebuilt under Constantine, and it is to the Constantinian period that the earliest surviving basilicas belong, whether in Italy, Syria, or Africa. In the East there was later one marked development, the use of the dome, which culminated under Justinian in St. Sofia, and has continued to be characteristic of the Greek and Russian churches down to our own day. In the West the basilica continued un- changed till the 8th, and in some parts till the 10th cent., when it was modified by the growth of what is called Romanesque architecture, of which Gothic is but a development ; but the main features of the basilica — nave, clerestory, aisles, projecting sanctuary, and often transepts— remain unclianged to-day.
The decline of Western art in what are called the Dark Ages is often attributed to Christianity and its supposed liatred of human nature. 'The truth is, that while Byzantium maintained a high culture far better ami longer than used to be sup- posed, tlie whole Roman civilization well-nigh dis- appeared under the invasions of the northern races; these peoples wci.- conM'itc.l and gradually civilized by Chri-stianit v. an.l, as their civilization grew up, their art dexclopcl from the barbaric