g 110. IMAGES OF CHRIST. 569
Bacrifice on the cross; the miracle of Moses drawing forth water from the rock with his rod — which was interp>'cted, either, according to 1 Cor. x. 4, of Christ Himself, or, more cspeciaily and frequently, of tlie birth of Christ fi-om the womb of tlic Virgin ; the suffering Job — a type of Christ in His deepest humiliation ; Daniel in tlie lion's den — the symbol of the Redeemer subduing the devil and death in the underworld ; the miraculous deliverance of the prophet Jonah from the whale's belly — foreshadowing the resurrection ; ' and the translation of Elijah — foreshadowing the ascension of Christ.
About the middle of the "fifth century, just when the doctrine of the person of Christ reached its formal settlement, the first representations of Christ Himself appeared, even said by tradition to be faithful portraits of tiie original.^ From that time the difficulty of representing the God-Man was removed by an actual representation, and the recognition of the images of Christ, especially of the Madonna with the Child, became even a test of orthodoxy, as against the Nestorian heresy of an abstract separation of the two natures in Christ. In the sixth century, according to the testimony of Gregory of Tours, pictures of Christ were hung not only in churches, but in almost every private house.'
Among these representations of Christ there are two distinct types received in the church :
(1) The Salvatok picture, with the expression of calm serenity and dignity, and of heavenly gentleness, without the faintest mark of grief. According to the legend, this was a portrait, miraculously imprinted on a cloth, which Christ Himself presented to Abgarus, king of Edessa, at his request.* The
' Comp. Matt. xii. 39, 40.
" The image-hating Nestorians ascribed the origin of iconolatry to their hated opponent, Cyril of Alexandria, and put it into connection with the Monophysite here?y (Assem., Bibl. orient, iii. 2, p. 401).
* De gloria martyrum, lib. i. c. 22.
* First mentioned by the Armenian 1 jstorian Moses of Chorene in the fifth cen tury, partly on the basis of the spurious correspondence, mentioned by Eusebiui ^H. E. i. IS), between Christ and Abgarus Uchorao of Edessa. The Abgarus like ness is said to have come, in the tenth century, into the church of St. Sophia aV Constantinople, thence to Rome, where it is still shown in the church of St. Syl« vester. But Genoa also pretends to possess the original. The twodj not look
570 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
original is of course lost, or rather never existed, and is sim ply a mytliical name for tlie Byzantine type of the likeness of (Mirist which appeared after the fifth century, and formed the basis of all the various representations of Christ until Raphael and Michael Angelo. Tliese pictures present the countenance of the Lord in the bloom of youthful vigor and beauty, with a free, higli forehead, clear, beaming eyes, long, straight nose hair parted in the middle, and a somewhat reddish beard.
(2) The EccE Homo picture of the suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns. This is traced back by tradition to S:. Veronica, who accompanied the Saviour on the way to Golgotha, and gave Him her veil to wipe tlic sweat from His face; whereupon the Lord miraculously imprinted on the cloth the image of Llis thorn-crowned head.'
The Abgarus likeness and the Yeronica both lay claim to a miraculous origin, and profess to be et/coi/e? d-x^eipoTroiTjrai, pictures not made with human hands. Besides these, however, tradition tells of pictures of Christ taken in a natural way by Luke and by Nicodemus. The Salvator picture in the Lateran diapel Sancta Sanctonim in Rome, which is attributed to Luke, belongs to the Edessene or Byzantine type.
With so different pretended portraits of the Lord we cannot wonder at the variations of the pictures of Christ, wliich the Iconoclasts used as an argument against images, in tnith, every nation formed a likeness of its own, according to its existing ideals of art and virtue.
Great influence was exerted upon the representations of Christ by the apocryphal description of his person in the Latin epistle of Publius Lentulus (a supposed friend of Pilate) to the Roman senate, delineating Christ as a man of slender form,
much alike, and are of course only copies. Mr. (Jliiclfselig (Christus-Archceologio, I'rag, 1863) has recently made an attempt to restore from many copies an Edessenum redivivum.
' This Veronica likeness is said to have come to Rome about a. d. 700, where it id preserved among the relics in St. Peter's, but is shown only to noble person ages. According to the common view, advocated especially by Mabillon and Papebroch, the name Veronica arose from the simple error of contracting the two wordd vera icon {ftKwv), the true image. W. Grimm considers the whole Veronica story r Latin version of the Greek Abgarus legend.