Oxford University Press The Journal of Theological Studies

ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH
Author(s): Sister Charles Murray

Source: The Journal of Theological Studies, NEW SERIES, Vol. 28, No. 2 (OCTOBER 1977),
pp. 303-345
Published by: Oxford University Press
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ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH
to art.1 The view recently received confirmation in a relazione to
IT the
is universally
held to beCongress
a fact that
the earlyArchaeology
Church was which
hostile
Ninth International
of Christian
met at Rome in 1975, and has also been made the basis for an assessment
of the background to the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy in a recent
book by L. W. Barnard.2 However, it is the purpose of this paper to
investigate whether this accepted fact has any foundation in reality,
or whether it is simply an example of the phenomenon by which

repeated assertion raises to the level of established truth what was
initially a matter of scholarly opinion.
The reason why a matter of conjecture should appear to be a matter of
fact is not hard to find : repetition has not only standardized the content
of the theory, but the form in which it receives presentation has by
now become classical.3
Although it receives slight modification as it is rehandled, neverthe

less the basic outline and content remain the same, and it may be briefly
summarized as follows. From its origins in Judaism Christianity in
herited its pure and spiritual worship of God 'in spirit and in truth' and
along with this therefore a hostility to religious artistic representation
1 In direct discussions in the field of Christian archaeology itself, e.g. J.
Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (London, 1970), p. 37. In indirect
discussions among church historians, e.g. the section on Christian art in the
most recent and widely read history of the early Church, . Chadwick, The
Early Church (Pelican history of the Church, 1967), pp. 277-84, esp. p. 280.
In Byzantine studies, e.g. the first two chapters on early Christian images in
P. J. Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople (Oxford, 1958),
PP 1-53
2 J. D. Breckenridge, 'The Reception of Art into the Early Church', in

Ueberlegungen zum Ursprung der fruehchristlichen Bildkunst (IX Congresso
Internazionale di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome, 1975, preliminary acts), pp.
29-38, esp. p. 31, 'an absolutely monolithic opposition to imagery existed

among responsible ecclesiastics from the earliest days of the Christian era
through at least the reign of Constantine . . and p. 30, where he echoes the
view of G. B. Ladner, 'The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the
Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy', D.O.P. vii (1953), pp. 3-34 and p. 5, that
the founders of Christian theology were 'anything but friendly to the images of
art'. L. W. Barnard, The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the

Iconoclastic Controversy (Leiden, 1974), pp. 51-64, esp. p. 53 and pp. 89-91.
3 It is found, for example, in Chadwick and Alexander and see also E.

Kitzinger, 'The Cult of Icons before Iconoclasm', D.O.P. viii (1954), pp. 85
150, esp. pp. 88-9.
[Journal of Theological Studies, N.S., Vol. XXVIII, Pt. 2, October 1977]
304 CHARLES MURRAY
which both religions identified with pagan practice. The second

of the Ten Commandments had forbidden Israel the making of any
graven image and the authoritative leaders of the Christian community
such as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and Epiphanius

right up to Augustine considered this prohibition as absolute and
binding on Christians also. Yet by the end of the second century Christ
ians were expressing their faith in artistic terms in a movement gathering
evermore momentum. Nevertheless the older and purer strain of religion

was not lost for it remained operative at the official level, among the
church authorities, who continued to manifest their disapproval in the
matter. Originally, artistic displays had been shy of portraying Christ
and of making representations of the central mysteries of the Christian
religion, particularly of the Cross and Resurrection. But by the fourth
century, if not earlier as is sometimes said, any sense of restraint or
inhibition had vanished, and images or icons representing individual
persons had become the characteristic form of personal piety. They
had thus entered the Church from below against the older form of
austerity which was always present at a higher level, and mistrust of
the icon erupted in the eighth century into the bitter struggle of the
iconoclastic controversy which ended ultimately in 843 with the icon
triumphant over the purer spirit of Christianity.
When the theory is summarized in this way it becomes clear what the
problem was to which it addressed itself : there appears to be a diver
gence between the art and the literature of the early Church. And since
the material remains are evidently in conflict with the texts of the
Fathers a hypothesis was necessary which would explain it. So the

difficulty was resolved by making the art originate with the laity in
opposition to the clergy. One can only say that the solution looks
extremely neat; it covers all eventualities and is apparently foolproof.
It is unsurprising therefore that despite the wealth of new material
which has been discovered in the interim, it has remained unexamined
for more or less fifty years.
Who invented it is a fascinating question, and a search for its

origin appears to lead to Renan, who made Christianity a normatively
iconophobic religion because of its Jewish matrix.1 In his view the

early Church was completely opposed to images prior to the third
century when, as the result of its transplantation to a Greco-Roman
environment friendly to art, it lost its essentially aniconic nature through
pressure to conform. Since this was basically deviationist in terms of the
1 See . Renan, Histoire des origines du christianisme 7 : Marc Aurle et la
fin du monde antique, 6th edn. (Paris, 1891), pp. 539 f.
ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH 305

initial purity, Renan made Gnosticism the origin of Christian art.1
The presupposition here is obvious: as Judaism was hostile to art, so any
religion of which it was the source must automatically be hostile too.
This same presupposition also underlies the monumental work of von
Dobschiitz.2
Von Dobschiitz was the scholar from whom the classical presentation
of the theory received its framework, with its opening sentence describ
ing Christianity as the worship of God in spirit and in truth according to
John iv. 24, and the reference to the Decalogue prohibition, which has
been repeated ever since. Von Dobschiitz too seems to have been the
first to compose the standard list of patristic texts regarded as supporting
the view of a rigorous official attitude towards art.3
But the major substantiation, giving the hypothesis the general

acceptance it has had ever since, came with the analysis of the literary
evidence made by Koch and Elliger.4 Their study led them to conclude
that a continuous thread of official hostility to art could be traced in
leading churchmen from the beginning to Augustine. In a second

exhaustive monograph Elliger attempted to co-ordinate his literary
analysis with the archaeological evidence so as to make clear the factors
favouring or retarding the development of Christian art and to define
the contributions of the various regions of the Roman empire to it.5
Both scholars worked from Renan's and von Dobschiitz's viewpoint of a
purely spiritual definition of Judaism and Christianity and the adherence
of the Christian leadership to the second commandment. This question
of the Decalogue prohibition was probed more deeply still by Klauser,
and he elaborated yet more fully the theory that Christian art
was the product of certain circles of the laity who opposed them
selves to the teaching authority of the Church.6 In constructing
1 For Renan Christianity was 'une grandiose maison de la prire, voil tout',
op. cit., p. 539.
2 E. von Dobschiitz, Christusbilder (T.U. 18, Leipzig, 1899). Both scholars

derived their assumption from Harnack who had begun the publication of his
History of Dogma a few years earlier (1885). Von Dobschiitz was in fact discus
sing one category of Christian images only, the so-called acheiropoietaithose
not made by human hands, but his profound study led him to consider all
manner of general questions connected with religious images ; he discussed art in
the early Church in his second chapter. 3 Belege, pp. 98*-i22*.
4 H. Koch, Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen (Forsch.
zur Relig. und Lit. des A. und N. Testaments, x, Gttingen, 1917); W. Elliger,
'Die Stellung der alten Christen zu den Bildern in den ersten vier Jahrhunder
ten', Studien iiber christliche Denkmaler, xx (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 1-98.
5 'Zur Entstehung und friihen Entwicklung der altchristlichen Bildkunst',
ibid, xxiii (1934), pp. 1-284.
6 Th. Klauser, 'Erwgungen zur Entstehung der altchristlichen Kunst',
Z.K.G. lxxvi (1965), pp. 1-11.

J.T.S. 2
3o6 CHARLES MURRAY

his view he acknowledged his debt to the literary work of Koch and
Elliger.1
Elliger's interpretation of the patristic evidence finally became canon
ical with the use made of it by Ernst Kitzinger in a magistral article
on the cult of icons before iconoclasm, in the section in which he
dealt with the centuries of the Church before Justinian.2 And it is

Kitzinger's study, based on the interpretation of the literature made
by Elliger, which is now regarded as authoritative in all subsequent

discussions, including those of Breckenridge and Barnard.3
Why this should be so may at first appear to be surprising when it is
remembered that Kitzinger's work was not in the main concerned with
the early period. His purpose was to analyse the cult of images at a time
already recognized as crucial,4 the period between Justinian and

Iconoclasm. But it was in order to throw into relief the phenomena new
at this time that he went back to look at the attitude of the early Church,
with the intention of setting out the maximum amount of textual

evidence witnessing to an intensification of cult practices then and to
explore the motives for their development. He took his evidence from
the by now standard treatment of Elliger5 and arrived at the view that
'an undercurrent of at least potential iconoclasm does in fact run

through the entire history of the Church in the intervening centuries'6
and to the necessity of thinking in terms of a continuing conflict which
finally 'erupted into an explosion of well-nigh world historical import'.7
Ultimately he reached a thesis 'of practice, opposition and apologetic
theory' as characteristic not only of the sixth to the ninth centuries
but of the third and fourth as well.8
Kitzinger's authority is not therefore to be wondered at since what he
has done is to add a further dimension to the hypothesis. In seeing the
whole sweep of antagonism to art from the beginning of the Church to
the iconoclastic controversy as a genetic and organic development, he
has linked it indissolubly with Byzantine iconoclasm. And in doing so
has carried it out of the field of early church history into that of Byzan
tine studies where it remains as the accepted interpretation of the

attitude of the early church in any discussions connected with the
iconoclastic controversy. The patristic evidence therefore has changed
its context.
1 p. 4 . 19. 2 pp. 85-160, cf. section I.

3 For their acknowledgements see Breckenridge, p. 37 n. 27: Barnard, p. 52
n. 5.
4 By von Dobschutz passim, and esp. p. 35, and A. Grabar, Martyrium, ii

(Paris, 1946, repr. 1972). PP 343 f
5 For example, p. 86 nn. 5 and 6; p. 87 n. 7.
p.
85.
Ibid.
p.
86.

It will be noted from the foregoing historical sketch that there are,
so to speak, two peak periods of presentation of the hypothesisthe
initial one at the end of the nineteenth century, which gave it the pre
suppositions upon which it is based,1 and the confirmation in the work
of Kitzinger which provided it with a new content ; both are associated,
though in different ways, with crises in the discussion of images. So
although the theory ultimately stands or falls according to whether the
documentary evidence from the Fathers, normally adduced in support
of it, has in fact been correctly interpreted, nevertheless since the
interpretation rests on these presuppositions about the nature of

Christianity as understood by the Fathers of the early period, and about
the unbroken link in the matter of attitude of the early Church with the
Byzantine Church, it is first of all necessary to discover whether these

presuppositions are correct. For if it is found that they are not his
torically representative of the social context in which the literary

evidence was composed then the interpretation of the texts becomes
seriously weakened from the outset. From the point of view of the
literary evidence as it touched on matters of art, the essentially spiritual
nature of Christianity was regarded as proved by the continual attempt
to enforce the second commandment. So a short examination is needed
of what is actually known of the use of the Decalogue in the early

Church to get the context right, and to see if there is any ground for
continuing to believe that the prohibition of the second commandment
was taken seriously at the 'official level' since all agree that it was
disregarded at the 'popular level'.
It seems clear from the study made by Grant2 that there was no real
theological analysis of the meaning of the Old Testament Law as it

should be reinterpreted in the life of the Church until the mid second
century and then it was made by the Valentinian heretic, Ptolemy.3
1 On the notion of Christian art as part of what J. B. Bury, History of the
Later Roman Empire, i (London, 1923), p. 372, called 'the pagan transmutation
of Christianity', see A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, ii, 4th edn.
(Tubingen, 1909), p. 467, who speaks of 'Christentum zweiter Ordnung', and
Mission und Ausbreitung, i4 (Leipzig, 1924), pp. 300-1 ; and Elliger, 'Zur
Entstehung', p. 272 and passim for 'Ethnisierung'. On churches as sacred objects
see Koch, pp. 93-9, and on the relationship of acheiropoietai with image worship,
see von Dobschutz, pp. 277-9 and passim.
2 R. M. Grant, 'The Decalogue in Early Christianity', Harv. Theol. Rev. xl
(i947), PP 1-17
3 See the Letter to Flora in R. M. Grant, Gnosticisman Anthology (London,
1961), pp. 184-90, which synthesizes the sayings of Jesus as found in the gospel
of Matthew with the varying levels of inspiration in the Old Testament; part
of the Law is from God, part from Moses, part from the Elders, a part mixed
with evil, and a purely typical or symbolical part. The example of the pure
3o8 CHARLES MURRAY

Indeed if Grant's theory of the origin of the Shepherd of Hermas is
true,1 the whole of the Jewish Law was in disrepute in Rome in the
earliest, sub-apostolic centuries and the Decalogue itself had fallen

out of use among Christians at this time. Justin's Apology i. 14-17
makes no explicit use of the Decalogue in this collection of sayings on
particular virtues;2 and even in the case of converts instructed by

Christian Jewish leaders, where apparently the Decalogue seems to be
superficially of high value, the content is quietly altered.3 Clement of
Alexandria, writing for the more elementary pupils of the Paedagogus
iii. 89, observes that the Decalogue was proclaimed openly and not
through enigmas, that is, it does not need allegorization, but when it
comes to the Stromateis vi. 133-48, written for the more advanced, his
real opinion comes out and he explains almost all of it symbolically.
The true Christian does not need the Decalogue but it is useful for
proving the divine origin of Christian gnosticism.4 As regards the
specific prohibition of the second commandment, the Fathers do not
seem to have had any clear idea about the interpretation of Mosaic
texts, and so their explanations are not always coherent. A clear
example can be seen in the case of Tertullian, normally regarded as
proof of the rigorous attitude of church leaders on the point. For a
sound principle of approach we have his Adv. Marc. ii. 22 : representa
tion is not illegal because it is not idolatrous; yet De Sped. xx. 3 and
Adv. Marc. iv. 22 seem to suggest that Exodus xx. 4 forbids repre
sentation of all living things. What we have is not really Tertullian's
legislation of the Law of God is the Decalogue, but even this did not reach
perfection, it needed the fulfilment of the Saviour.
1 He considers it was written to bring back the Roman community to a sense

of the importance of the ten commandments, see 'Decalogue', p. n.
2 For Justin as here representing the standard and traditional teaching see
W. Bousset, Jiidisch-christliche Schulbetrieb in Alexandria und Rm (Gottingen,
1915), pp. 282-308.
3 Theophilus of Antioch offers great praise but in iii. 9 the first and second
commandments consist of 'piety' and the third and fourth are simply omitted.
Theophilus of Antioch, ed. R. M. Grant (Oxford, 1970).
4 In other words the pattern at Alexandria reflects that in Rome: Strom, vi.
147, theft is the imitation of true philosophy; 146, adultery means leaving the
true knowledge to be found in the Church for vain opinion. According to
Sthlin, G.C.S. ii, pp. 499-508, Clement is much indebted here to the Jewish
tradition of allegorization found in Aristobulus and Philo. See also P. Heinisch,
Der Einfluss Philos auf die lteste christliche Exegese (Miinster, 1908), pp. 273-7.
For the ban imposed on the daily recital of the Decalogue in the synagogues by
the Jewish authorities, some time in the early Christian period after the destruc
tion of the Temple, in order to restrain heretics from claiming its pre-eminence
over the rest of the Law, see C. K. Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism
(London, 1975), p. 49.

own view about the legality of making images, but a confusion of exegesis
resulting from the inability to harmonize one part of the Old Testament
with another. Scholars, and in particular Klauser, have credited the

Fathers with a consistency in the matter which they do not have. It
seems therefore that the protagonists of the hostility theory have begun
with a wrong assumption. This is further borne out if one looks

briefly at the supposition underlying this assumption: that historical
Judaism itself was aniconic because of continuous enforcement of the
same legal prescription. Presumably this idea is also to be related to
theories held in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century; for
the standard view of the Jewish attitude towards images at the time when
the analysis of the Christian one was being made was based on that of
Harnack's friend Schiirer, who stated categorically that 'Judaism

rejected all images of men and animals',1 and regarded the prohibition
as founded on the mosaic law. That this view of the matter could have
been held at all seems extraordinary in view of the fact that the history
of the Old Testament itself shows that the law was never interpreted
as completely forbidding images. The descriptions of the Temple

and the palace of Solomon immediately come to mind, the fashioning
of the Brazen Serpent also;2 though admittedly there is no mention
of sculptured statues, and classical Hebrew has no word for 'to

paint', and certainly the commandment was strictly enforced in
that, so far as we know, Judaism never made an image of God.3
What is more surprising, however, is that when Schiirer made that
statement in 1907 there was already well-known and published a
wealth of Jewish archaeological evidence from the Jewish catacombs

of Rome.4
The Vigna Randanini already explored in the sixties of the nine

teenth century has chickens, bulls, and rams engraved on its doors;
one bull is on a sepulchral tablet of a doctor of the Law. There is also a
chamber adorned with paintings in which birds appear, and the same
catacomb has yielded fragments of a sarcophagus on which winged

grifflns are combined with specifically Jewish emblems. Still richer in
1 . Schiirer, Geschichte das Judischen Volkes im Zeitalter jfesu Christi, ii,
4th edn. (Leipzig, 1907), p. 65.
2 For the flowers, palms, and cherubim of the Temple see 1 Kgs. vi-vii. For
the lions of Solomon's throne, ibid. x. 18-20. For the brazen serpent, Num.
xxi. 8-9.
3 None has ever been found. For the celebrated Yahweh hoax at the begin
ning of the century see H. Vincent, 'Pseudo-figure de Iahv rcemment mise en

circulation', Rv. Biblique (1909), pp. 121-7.
4 See R. Garrucci, Cimitero degli antichi Ebrei scoperto recentamente in Vigna
Randanini (Rome, 1862).
310 CHARLES MURRAY

painting is the Villa Torlonia1 where side by side with Jewish symbols
(roll of the Law, seven-branched candlestick, etc.) are dolphins, lion's
heads, peacock, ram, sun, and moon. However, the most serious
contradictory piece of evidence is the sarcophagus of a Jew whose
profession was that of 'zoographos' 'painter of living things'.2 Finally,
at Gamart in Tunisia, near the site of ancient Carthage, Jewish sepul
chral chambers have been discovered decorated with painted stucco

figures in relief. These represent winged genii, horsemen, and a
vintage scene with men carrying amphorae, and a female figure.3
The representation in human form on the Jewish sarcophagi and in the
catacombs presented a problem for Elliger, and he was forced to con
jecture that they were made for proselytes who had been pagans.4
This is possible, although we do not really know, but it seems un
necessary, for even if the cases so far referred to are explained away
as pieces executed for Jewish individuals who were indifferent in

matters of religion, such an explanation will not cover the representa
tions of animals and men and even the hand of God, found in the public
synagoguesabove all that of Dura-Europos, where all the evidence

points to the orthodox and pious nature of the Jewish community
there and the official sponsoring of its amazing decoration.5 All these
products of Jewish art in the Christian period prove conclusively that,
however the second commandment was interpreted, it was not regarded
as literally prohibiting artistic representations of anything either on,
above, or beneath the earth, or of human beings. All these images are
1 See H. W. Beyer and H. Lietzmann, Die jiidische Katakombe der Villa
Torlonia in Rom (Studien zur spdtantiken Kunstgeschichte 4, Jiidische Denkmdler,
i, 1930). Elliger disputed the dating: 'Entstehung', pp. 22 f. The generally
accepted view is that the Jewish catacombs date from about, but slightly after, the
first Christian catacombs; for the dating of these see F. Wirth, Romische Wand
malerei vom UntergangPompejs bis ans Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1934).
2 It was found in the Vigna Randanini and is inscribed: kltc ()

v (without iota subscript) [] () [].
It was originally published by Garrucci in Civilt Cattolica Series V, vol. vi

(1863), p. 104, and is now accessible in J. B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judai
carum, vol. i, Europe (1936-52), no. 109, p. 76.
3 See P. Delatte, Gamart ou la ncropole juive de Carthage (1895). Note also
the Jewish sarcophagus in the Museo Nazionale, Rome, with the menorah
supported by victories and seasons; see F. van der Meer and C. Mohrmann,
Atlas of the Early Christian World (Edinburgh and London, 1958), fig. 36.
4 'Entstehung', p. 15.
5 On the Jewish synagogues in general see E. L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues
in Palestine and Greece (London, 1934). For Dura see C. H. Kraeling, The
Excavations at Dura-Europos. Final Report VIII, Part I : The Synagogue (Yale,
1956), and E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period, vol.
ix (Bollingen Series XXXVII, 1964). On the orthodoxy of the community see

A. Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford, 1973), p. 56.

two-dimensional, flat and of a narrative character. The question of a
cult image does not come in. It must mean therefore that the prescrip
tion was understood as qualified by the second part which forbade the
adoring or serving of them1that is, what was being forbidden were
idolatrous images. The question of art therefore for Judaism seems to
have been one of forbidden and permitted images, not of blanket

prohibition.
So we seem to have arrived at a point in the discussion of the second
commandment where it has become clear that in the early Christian
period the prohibition was regarded in contemporary Jewish circles as
definitely modified, while by Christians it was regarded as irrelevant
save in matters of Old Testament exegesis. Therefore it cannot be used
as a background for supporting a spiritual view of Christianity necessita
ting a hostile interpretation of Christian texts with regard to matters of
Art. The conceptual framework within which the first presentation of
the theory was expressed may therefore be regarded as outmoded.
But since the modern presentation of the hypothesis is now within
the context of the iconoclastic controversy let us begin again from this
point, and with the large and explicit body of evidence for the religious
views of the period, and most notably with the Definition of the icono
clastic Council of Hiereia of 754 together with its discussion among
the iconodules of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and also with the
Horos of the iconoclastic Council of 815,2 in order to be clear about the
1 The wording of the commandment is ambiguous, since what in a classical
or modern language would be grammatically represented by a subordinate clause
in logical dependence on the first clause, Hebrew often renders by simple
sequence. The commonest rabbinic interpretation appears to have been that it
was wrong to make an image intended for worship but that an image might be
made of any living creature save a human being; this also seems to have been
the opinion of the medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides; see J. B. Frey,

'La Question des Images chez les Juifs la lumire des Rcentes Dcouvertes',
Biblica, xv (1934), pp. 265-300. Some rabbis considered it impious to portray
the dragon; why is unclear, but W. A. L. Elmslie, The Mishna on Idolatry,
'Aboda zara (T.S. viii. 2,1911), pp. 46-7, plausibly suggests that it was because
the worship of a sea-monster (the ktos from which Perseus rescued Andromeda)
was established at Joppa and presented a problem of conduct to the local Jewish
community. That in England also, in the Middle Ages, the understanding of the
prohibition was more or less tempered by a sense of reasonable necessity is seen
from the figure of the rampant lion, in two representations, on the seal of Jacob
the Jew on a document of 1267 transferring Halegod's house in Merton Street,
Oxford, to Walter de Merton (Merton College Record, 188). For the text see
H. W. Garrod and P. S. Allen, Merton Muniments, p. 20; for the iconography of

the seal see R. Highfield, Early Rolls of Merton College (O.H.S. 1964, N.s. vol.
xviii), p. 406.1 would like to express my thanks to Dr. Highfield and the authori
ties of Merton for allowing me to examine the seal.
1 Available in ed. H. Hennephof, Textus Byzantini ad iconomachiam pertinen
tes (Leiden, 1969), nos. 200-64, 265-86, pp. 61-78, 79-84, extracted from J. D.
312 CHARLES MURRAY

position and attitude to art expressed then and so to see whether these
can really be read back into the period of the early Church, as is usually
done by scholars seeking always to understand the earlier origins of the
iconoclastic movement.1 The case made is very reasonable and ap

parently well supported. For, in the first place, Iconoclasm seems to
have been a crisis within Christianity itself ; recently converging studies
of its origins are becoming increasingly cautious of invoking the

influence of any non-Christian culture.2 It was this recognition of
Iconoclasm as a Christian phenomenon which led Kitzinger to link
the 'uniconic [rte] phase of early Christianity' with Byzantine Icono
clasm.3 But, as he made very clear in his study, it was the rise of the
cult of icons in the sixth and seventh centuries, and not the origin of
the movement, which is the central problem of the controversy. And,
as we have seen, his explanation of this central problem was based on the
opposition of church leaders in contradistinction to the 'naive animistic
attitudes of the masses',4 whose adherence to magical belief had resulted
in the production of and semi-idolatrous attitude towards works of
art. This attitude he was able to isolate as going back to the time of the
Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio, xiii (Florence, 1759
ff.), pp. 205-364. See also the relevant pages in C. Hefele-H. Leclercq, Histoire
des Conciles, ii. 2 (Paris, 1907 ff.), pp. 693-709.
1 As done, for example, by Ladner, who considers Basil's fourth-century anti
Arian treatise On the Holy Spirit, xviii, p. 45, Gregory of Nyssa's de Opificio
Hominis v, and Basil's Twenty-fourth Homily against Sabellius and the Arians as
characteristic of the whole relationship between orthodox Byzantine image
doctrine and patristic thought, see op. cit., pp. 4-5.
2 On Byzantine-Arab relations in the eighth century see A. Graber, L'lcono
clasme byzantin: dossier archologique (Paris, 1957) and P. Lemerle, Le Premier
Humanisme byzantin (Paris, 1971); on Islamic attitudes to images see K. A. C.
Cresswell, 'The Lawfulness of Painting in Early Islam', Ars Islamica, xi-xii
(1946), pp. 159-66, and U. M. de Villard, Introduzione alio Studio dell'archeo
logia islamica (1966), esp. pp. 249-75. For the position of Jews see A. Sharf,
Byzantine Jewry from Justinian to the Fourth Crusade (1971), pp. 61-81. For a
consideration of the early Church and images based on the standard view of
hostility see . H. Baynes, 'Idolatry and the Early Church', Byzantine Studies
and other Essays (London, 1955), pp. 116-43, and cf. also his, 'The Icons before
Iconoclasm', Harv. Theol.Rev. Ixiv(i95i), pp. 93 f. For the discovery of an icono
clastic movement in Christian seventh century Armenia see S. der Nersessian,
'Une Apologie des Images du Septime Sicle', Byzantion, xvii (1944-5), PP
58-87, and P. J. Alexander, 'An Ascetic Sect of Iconoclasts in Seventh Century
Armenia', Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias
Friend Jr., ed. K. Weitzmann (Princeton, 1955), pp. 151-60. For an interpreta
tion in socio-religious terms see P. R. L. Brown, Dark Age Crisis: Aspects
of the Iconoclastic Controversy', Eng. Hist. Rev. lxxxviii (1973), pp. 1-34, and
its critique and supplement by P. Henry, 'What was the Iconoclastic Controversy
About?', Church History, xlv. 1 (1976), pp. 16-31.
P-
85.
p.
146.
early Church. It was the final resistance to pressure on the part of

church authorities which, in the late sixth century, was a major factor
in the development of the outbreak.1 In the second place, it is also

true, that whatever the root cause underlying their rise, the con
troversy was undoubtedly about images; or at least it is perhaps more
exact to say that it focused on images. For if one asks what in essence
the controversy was about, when stripped of all the learned explanations
given, and theological subtleties of expression, the fundamental concern
was with idolatry. As the Horos of 754 saysthe basic sin of man
kind is idolatry.2 Here we begin to approach the heart of the matter, for
this is the text which provides the clue to the reason for the assembling,
by both sides, in the dispute, of biblical and patristic texts which

would support a doctrine about images; for idolatry had been the
besetting sin of Israel, and also of the pagan milieu against which the
Fathers had struggles. And it seems clear, as far as one can tell from
the literature preserved, that the iconoclasts, on their side, genuinely
believed that the early Church has been hostile to images.
The whole iconoclastic case rested on an appeal to antiquity in which
of course the scriptural proofs were paramount. The major proof

was taken to be the Old Testament prohibition of images which became,
as is clear from the literature, the real hub of the theological debate.3
There was plenty of material to hand since there had been prior to the
outbreak of iconoclasm a Jewish-Christian controversy on the point and
Byzantine apologists had compiled testimonia to vindicate the Christian
position.4 It was to be expected therefore that in the literature of the
1 pp. 119-20.
2 Hennephof, nos. 202-6, pp. 61-2, esp. no. 205, p. 62. The Horos had begun
with an account of creation, the corruption of man by Lucifer, the inventor of
idolatry, the incarnation which had liberated man from idol-worship, the
renewed introduction of idolatry under the cover of Christianity and of the
first six Ecumenical Councils which had established the doctrine of Christ's
two natures in one hypostasis.

3 The influence of the Old Testament on the public image of the Byzantine
empire had been growing since the early seventh century, see the evidence in
Brown (p. 25) where it is attributed, along with other wider-world examples, to
the sense of the threat of Islam as God's punishment for Christian apostasy in
the form of idolatry.
* Fragments dating from c. 630 of John, bishop of Thessalonica (610-49)

were read at the Second Council of Nicaea, apparently from a comprehensive
work called Contra Paganos etjudaeos, see Mansi, xiii. 164-8 ; and also from the
Fifth Speech in Defence of Christianity against the Jews of Leontius, bishop of
Neapolis in Cyprus (582-602), see Mansi, xiii. 44-53 and P.G. xciii, 1597-1609.
This text gives the main outline of the Jewish attack as based on the Torah
prohibition of idolatry (Exod. xx. 4-5 ; Lev. xxvi. 1 ; Deut. v. 8) while Leontius
argued the existence of another legal tradition: the divine command to fashion
314 CHARLES MURRAY

iconoclastic controversy much space should be devoted to the theological
meaning of the second commandment.
However, in the totally Christian context of this latter debate it was
the appeal to the Fathers, the other witnesses of antiquity, which made
more sense, and in the whole exposition of the theory of identification
of or distinction between icons and idols, it was the use of the texts
of the Fathers which provided the evidence; and immense trouble was
taken to assemble florilegia, regardless of the original context from
which the passages came.1 Now in fact we have arrived at the position
of seeing how the Byzantine Church got its information about the
early period. The collection of evidence assembled for the Council of
754 was state-organized and extensive and, because the Fathers in their
own contexts had said little on the subject of images, very attentively
made. An illustration of the care taken is most interestingly found in
The Admonition of the Old Man concerning the Holy Images, which
dates from between 750 and 754.2 It describes a dispute which took
place between the iconodule monk George of Cyprus and the icono
clastic bishop Cosmas who used the early writers Epiphanius of Salamis,
George of Alexandria, and Severus of Antioch in support of his case,
and says that their writings were perused in the palace every day.
But since, as George of Cyprus pointed out, George of Alexandria and
Severus of Antioch were both heretics,3 there was the problem of

orthodoxy; and since, as he also stated, the writings attributed to
Epiphanius were the fabrications of the Novationists, there was also
the problem of authenticity.4
two gold cherubim (Exod. xxv. 18), God's vision to Ezekiel of a temple with
palms, lions, men, and cherubim (Ezek. xli. 18), and Solomon's decoration of
the Temple with all manner of carved and molten images.
1 From the fifth to the seventh century church councils had relied increasingly
on patristic testimony in the form of florilegia; the trend is particularly evident
at the Lateran Council of 649 and even more markedly at the Sixth Ecumenical
Council, and so the tradition of assembling extracts can be traced back before
Iconoclasm. There is surprisingly little evidence that John Damascene's work
on images was known at the council of 787; see P. Van den Ven, 'La Patristique
et L'Hagiographie du Concile de Nice de 787', Byzantion, xxv-xxvii (1955-7),
pp. 325-62, esp. pp. 332-8.
2 Ed. B. M. Melioranskij, Georij Kiprijanin: Ioann lerusalimljanin (St.
Petersburg, 1901). The text is the record of one of the silentia or propaganda
meetings arranged in 752-3 by the Emperor Constantine V in which he ex
plained, or had explained by his sympathizers, his theological views ; see Theo
phanes, Chronographia, 427, 19 f. de Boor.
3 p. xxviii. George, bishop of Alexandria (356-61) was a radical Arian;
Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (d. 538) was monophysite.
4 Pp. xxviixxviii.
ar , ,
. Asia Minor, the home of the first
That this was quite serious the Acts of the Second Council of
Nicaea show, where scrupulous attention was given to the patristic
texts quoted, because falsification, according to the Fathers of Nicaea,
had been characteristic of the Council of 754.1 It must be noted here,
although for the moment only in passing, that some of the crucial
patristic passages alleged in favour of the hostility theory only survive
here in these iconoclastic florilegia.
The point which emerges from this brief review of the iconoclastic
background to the hypothesis is that in any polemic about idolatry at
any period, emphasis will automatically fall on material objects. And
what seems to have happened in the Byzantine period is that the

iconoclastic controversialists took up these sort of emphases from
patristic polemics against idolatry and used them to construct a theory
about the making of material objects themselves. What they have done
is to tie down patristic references to idolatry to matters of art and
Christian worship. It is the failure to observe this on the part of modern
scholars that has resulted in the identification of what was in the early
Church a statement, possibly an overstatement of the case against

idolatry in general, with the Byzantine controversy about the Tightness
of the use of images for religious purposes within the Christian Church
itself.
It seems essential then to detach the literary evidence from a pre

conceived notion of Christianity, and also from the Byzantine context
in which it has become lodged, both things which automatically have
coloured its interpretation, and to see if it will still, in its own right,
support the standard view of art and the early Church; for so far it
seems to have become entangled in the various accidents of controversy.
iconoclastic bishops, Thomas of Claudiopolis and Constantine of Nacoleia, had
large Novationist communities and George's assertion which is extremely direct
and goes unchallenged by Cosmas offers an attractive possibility ; no one has yet,
so far as I know, explored this hypothesis.
1 The Acts of the Council of 787 are compelling reading. The Fathers alleged
that at Hiereia in 754 the iconoclasts did not produce the original books but
circulated extracts on loose sheets referred to as /, extracts which were

sometimes falsified or taken out of context, cf. Mansi, xiii. 36E, 37B-C, 173D.
The two bishops who had taken part in the iconoclastic council, Gregory of
Neocaesarea and Theodosius of Amorium, and who, by what appears to modern
sensitivity as sheer cruelty, were asked to read the Horos, were repeatedly
questioned about these sheets and their own failure to demand to see the books.
They had no reply save that their minds were darkened (37B). This time the
Nicene Fathers insisted on the production of the actual codex in each case; the
lector began with the incipit and then read the relevant passage. The Acts cry
out for a critical edition. On this value of Mansi see H. Quentin, Jean-Dominique
Mansi et les grandes collections conciliaires (1900); rsum by S. Vailh, .. iv
(1900-1), pp. 235-8.
3l6 CHARLES MURRAY

Before a re-examination of the texts is made, a few relevant pre
liminary observations must be put forward in summary form. Firstly,
it is normally the same passages which are repeated from scholar to
scholar, although a few which obviously lack seriousness lose them

selves on the way.1 Secondly, the number of the Fathers represented
in the evidence, and also the number of passages from their works is
remarkably small in view of the weight given to them. Thirdly,

because of the supposition that a continuous stream of hostility can
be traced from one Father to another through the centuries, the method
employed in discussion is always to treat them chronologically, and

end with the immediate pre-iconoclastic period into which they are
considered to feed. Fourthly, evidence from those writers who may
be understood as not merely non-inimical to, but positively receptive
of, artistic representation are omitted ; as are passages from apparently
'hostile' Fathers which in fact support an opposite view. This is

particularly true in the case of Origen. Fifthly, Fathers like the Cappa
docians who are too important to be omitted but not sufficiently

hostile, are explained away on other grounds. Sixthly, passages in a
writer, known to be hostile, which seem to conflict with each other are
always explained away in terms of pressure from below.
The theory also presupposes two more things: (a) that the views of
any Christian writer, however idiosyncratic he is known historically
to be, for example Tertullian, automatically reflect the view of the

whole Church because of his eminent position, and (b) that only the
church leaders represent genuine Christianity and therefore constitute
the essence of the Church, a view which overlooks the fact that, far
from being mere ciphers or nave animistic masses, the laity were
responsible in view of their baptism for electing the official leaders of
their own community.2 It is beginning to emerge from the outset

therefore that the evidence is not quite so clear-cut as the normal
interpretation presumes, and needs to be taken away again from another
preconception: this time an idea of a monolithic Church which gives

no credit to differences of temperament, interest, theological stand
point, geography, or time. It needs to be examined carefully piece by
piece. But here again it must be remarked that in fact the handling of
these pieces is a delicate and difficult matter because of the way the
sources survive. Some of the pieces we still have intact in the context in
1 For example the fragments of Porphyry's wepi preserved in
Eusebius' Praep. Ev. iii. 7-13, which were regarded by von Dobschiitz, p. 106,
as going back to a gnostic source.
2 From the earliest days the voice of the laity had been substantially more
than mere assent in the election of their bishop, as in the paradigm case of the
election of Ambrose of Milan by popular acclaim as late as 374.

which they were written, and so they can be checked without difficulty
in the actual works of the Fathers who wrote them. But others, and
this applies to the key pieces on which the theory rests, do notas
was noted earlier, they survive only in iconoclastic florilegia. Since the
purpose of the examination is to re-appraise the content of the passages
and therefore of the theory, it seems best from the methodological
point of view not to proceed chronologically, as is usually done, but
to treat the evidence in terms of minor and major pieces: for not all
are of the same importance, and some may be dealt with briefly, whereas
others require longer discussion.
Finally, this preamble may be concluded by saying that no pro

tagonist of the hostility theory has yet been able to produce one single
clear statement from any early Christian writer which says that non
idolatrous artistic representation is wrong.
The only text which might seriously be regarded as supporting this
view is the 36th Canon of the Council of Elvira, though even here
again the question of worship is involved.
The Fathers of Elvira, the Roman city of Illiberis in southern Spain,
near modern Granada, who met in a synod about the year 300, laid it
down: 'picturas in ecclesia non debere, ne quod colituret adoraturin

parietibus depingatur': which means literally that there ought to be
no pictures in a church (or in the Christian Church) lest what is

worshipped and adored be depicted on walls.1 And round that sentence
has grown up a voluminous controversial literature. It has been claimed
that the canon does not forbid representation completely or that it
forbids a certain kind of bad church art which had come into vogue in
Spain about a.d. 300.

Funk years ago disposed of the more spectacular kinds of argument
and recognized quite clearly that the canon really does forbid pictorial
representations of religious content.2 This certainly seems to be

1 The exact date is unknown. For the text see J. Vives, Concilies Visigticos
e Hispano-Romanos (Espana Cristiana, i, Barcelona-Madrid, 1963), p. 8.

2 F. X. Funk, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen,
i (1897), pp. 346-52. A. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums
in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, ii, 4th edn. (Leipzig, 1924), p. 925, tried to read
into the language a declaration against offering homage to pictures but this is
unquestionably a mistake. The canon is saying that what is worshipped is not
to be painted on walls, not vice versa. Bevan's solution is even more extraordin
ary. He believes that underlying the prohibition was the 'current' idea that a
picture was essentially derogatory to the divine because it was made of perishable
material ; since he could produce no Christian evidence for the idea he relies on
Buddhist evidence from Gandhara, see p. 115. But there is no trace of any con
nection of the canons of Elvira with Buddhist theological ideas current on the
North West Frontier at an imprecisely defined period. The Kushan patrons of
3l8 CHARLES MURRAY

unquestionable, and should be taken as the one clear piece of evidence
which forbids representations in churches. But because the circum

stances to which it refers are lost, and because it comes only from a
local synod and not a major church council, one can only guess what
lies behind it and no conjectures can be made on the basis of it with any
degree of security. What therefore is it possible to say by way of

interpretation without indulging in any extremity of view and without
departing from the text ? The ne quod of the wording appears to refer
to a divine person, perhaps Christ, because whoever it is is adored and
worshipped.
Secondly, the emphasis seems to be against depicting this person on
the walls of churchesthat funerary monuments are excluded is

proved by the series of the Spanish sarcophagi which still survive.1
Thirdly, there seems to be missing the reason for which it is forbidden
to put what is holy on walls. Now all these observations may be drawn
together and a tentative conclusion arrived at if one remembers that,
archaeologically speaking, the Council belongs to the period of the

house-church; and this may be why the Council is emphatic about the
walls of churches. Such houses are known to have been vulnerable:
to raids by the imperial police ; or in the case of Elvira, where judging
from the other canons which imply an atmosphere which the fathers
found threatening, to desecration by pagans; or even to use by some
Christians for purposes of black magic now known to have been

operative in Spain at the time.2 If the Christian building at Dura is
Buddhism had used the services of journeying Eastern Roman craftsmen to
produce a form of late antique art dedicated to Buddhism, i.e. Graeco-Roman
form and Indian iconography. This so-called 'Gandhara Art' flourished from
the first to the fifth centuries a.d. when in Gandhara proper it came to an end
with the invasion of the Huns, but its style survived in Kashmir and in isolated
Buddhist establishments in Afghanistan as late as the seventh or eighth cen
turies. For art in India see B. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, 3rd
edn. (London, 1967), esp. pp. 73-90; for Afghanistan see P. Levi, The Light
Garden of the Angel King (London, 1972), passim.
1 See G. Bovini, I Sarcofagi paleocristiani della Spagna (Rome, 1954). 'The
Saragossa sarcophagus' (there are in fact two) was particularly difficult for Koch
to explain, see p. 37 n. 1. Of early Christian Spanish antiquities, apart from these
sarcophagi, scarcely anything survives. For the Visigothic period see P. de Palol
and M. Hirmer, Early Medieval Art in Spain (London, 1967), esp. fig. 23,
illustrating a very interesting piece : a sixth-seventh century bronze terret four

inches high, showing a figure of the Good Shepherd with a lamb on his shoulder,
now in the Museo Arquelogico in Madrid, which must reflect earlier Romano
Christian influence.
2 See H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila, the Occult and the Charismatic in the
Early Church (Oxford, 1976). The 6th Canon excommunicates those responsible
for causing death by sorcery. Whatever the ultimate reason for the prohibition
of the 36th Canon it is virtually certain that it was neither a refined theological
typical, and if the later villa of Lullingstone in Kent is accepted as

containing a house church,1 then it is known that these churches
were painted and some included figures of Christ. Beyond this it
is impossible to go and in the absence of knowledge of the original
circumstances what was in fact in question we cannot know.
Minor Pieces of Evidence

Tertullian
Two quotations from Tertullian's treatise on idolatry are usually

taken as showing in him a hostile attitude to art.2 But de Idol. iv. 1 is
speaking clearly of the making of an idol and cannot support any

inference that he regarded it as wrong to make images not intended for
worship. The same is true of the later sentence where there is a

reference to the second commandment, normally taken to express an
attitude supporting the prohibition. But the context herea discussion
on whether the profession of a sculptor or painter is open to a Christian
is again concerned with idolatry not art. Tertullian fears that such a
Christian may be associated with the production of something which
may become an idol.
Early Church Orders
Von Dobschutz had omitted the idolatry passages from Tertullian

but listed the following extracts from the early Church Orders as
one nor due to lay-official tension on the question of art in Spain ; for the style
and quality of the Spanish bishops in the fourth century and their almost total
lack of theological training see Chadwick, p. 11. For Koch's view of the prohibi
tion as due to reverence for the second commandment, see pp. 39-40, and for
confirmation of it, Elliger, p. 34; Klauser, p. 4.
1 For the Christian building at Dura see Kraeling, Final Report VIII, II,
the Christian Building. For the Roman villa at Lullingstone with its enigmatic
painted figures and chi-rho symbol see J. M. C. Toynbee, Art in Britain under
the Romans (Oxford, 1964), pp. 220 f. and pis. liii-lv. There is no evidence at
Lullingstone of a figure of Christ, but the polychrome mosaic of an uncertain
date in the fourth century from Hinton St. Mary appears to contain a bust of
Christ with the chi-rho monogram behind the head. See J. M. C. Toynbee,
J.R.S. liv (1964), pp. 7-14. Its position on the floor makes it impossible as an
icon. Likewise the bearded and nimbate bust of Christ on the east wall of the
fourth-century hall at Ostia, a simple element in an architectural design, is in

the wrong position for a cult image. As Becati suggests, it is probably only a
symbol of protection. See G. Becati, Scavi di Ostia, vi. (1969), Edificio in opus
sectile fuori Porta Marina, pp. 161-5, and pis. 53, 55, 56.
2 De Idol. iv. 1, viii. 1-2; cf. iii. See Koch, p. 3; cf. Klauser, p. 2.
320 CHARLES MURRAY
forbidding art.1 The Syriac Didascalia says: no oblations may be

received from those who paint with colours, from those who make
idols, or workers in silver and bronze. And in the Pseudo-Clementine
Church order, a painter is put into the same list with a harlot, a brothel
keeper, drunkard, actor, and athlete. But it is possible that in these
two cases, as in the passage from Tertullian, what is understood by a
painter is meant a painter of idolatrous images. That this is virtually
certain seems clear if it is interpreted in the light of the Egyptian

Didascalia which says clearly: if anyone is a sculptor or a painter let
him be instructed not to make idols; he must either cease from doing
so or be expelled from the Church. This seems to distinguish between
artists and the makers of idols and renders the position clear.
These passages then may be taken as evidence of hostility to the

making of idols but not necessarily to the making of images of art.
Clement of Alexandria
Here is a positive quarry for passages regarded as hostile to the

making of images,2 and one text, made much of by Bevan,3 may be
singled out as an illustration of the standard kind of interpretation.
This is Strom, vi. 16. 147, 'The artist would rob God: he seeks to
usurp the divine prerogative of creation and by means of his plastic
or graphic art pretends to be a maker of animals or plants.' As was

said earlier, this passage is part of the allegorization of the Decalogue
and so, apparently, evidence for the enforcement of the Old Testament
prohibition by Clement. But in fact the commandment under dis

cussion is the eighth: thou shalt not steal, and the substance is really a
somewhat inflated prohibition about not robbing the creator God of
his glory. While superficially it may look like a prohibition of art,

Clement can scarcely have meant it to be taken at its face value, in view
of the reason he gives for it: no artist ever claimed to be a maker of
plants and animals. It is rather, then, a curious line of argument,

1 pp. ioo*-ioi*. For the Syriac Didascalia he refers to A. Harnack, Geschichte
der altchristl.Litteratur, I. i, pp. 456 f. For the Pseudo-Clementine Church
order to the edition of P. de Lagarde, Reliq. luris Eccles. antiq. graece (1856,
repr. 1967), p. 87. For the Egyptian Didascalia to H. Achelis (T.U. 6, 4), pp. 78 f.
Repeated by Koch, pp. 12-13. The 'Egyptian Didascalia' referred to is the
Sahidic church order (ed. Leipoldt and Till, T.U. 58) which drew on the
'Apostolic Tradition' of Hippolytus (ch. 16, p. 34, Botte) or the work of
the third century commonly so described. For the Syriac Didascalia, see
R. H. Connolly's edition (Oxford, 1929, repr. 1970), p. 158.
2 According to Elliger, p. 38, we pass with the great Alexandrians into the
clear air of spirituality.
3 E. Bevan, Holy Images (London, 1940), p. 87.
unusually expressed and based on the platonic doctrine of ideas and

theory of imitation. Yet even though it has no connection, save by
way of incidental illustration, with the question of art: being concerned
to emphasize the transcendence of God, Bevan regards it as evidence
that Clement went even further than the Moslem view in the matter of
aniconism. Unlike Islam, Clement even forbids the portraying of

plants. But this is obviously preposterous and to make Clement into
the forerunner of Islam seems to be carrying solemnity of inter

pretation a little too far.
But it does serve to make us aware of where misinterpretation of
other passages in the Alexandrians,1 normally brought forward, have

occurred. As we have seen, the passage from the Stromateis is rhetorical
language stressing the transcendence of God in a context allegorizing
the whole of the Decalogue. And it should be recognized that language
used in a depreciative way of images in comparison with direct ap

prehension of the invisible, does not necessarily imply that the use of
images is wrong or forbidden. The language is relative only and the
result of the Platonic background from which the Alexandrian Fathers
drew their thinking. What either of them would have said on the
general question of artistic representation cannot be known, it was
never a question they considered. It is important therefore to be cautious
in taking language expressive of a relative depreciation of material

symbols to be an absolute repudiation of their use at all.
1 For Origen the standard texts alleged are C. Celsum, iv. 31 (answering the
charge that the Jews were runaway slaves who never did anything important),
vi. 66 (on passing into the radiant light of the knowledge of God), vii. 64 (the
second commandment forbids idolatry), viii. 17-19 (discussion of anthropology);
none of which are directly discussing the question of art. But Koch concludes
his examination, p. 22, by saying that Origen unmistakably enforces the second
commandment and considers artistic representation to be dead, unnatural, and
deceitful. One wonders what he would have made of a passage like In Gen. Horn.
xiii. 4. 119 f., if he had discussed it, where Origen treats of man, the image of
God, a painting painted by Christ the best painter (G.C.S. vi, pp. 119 f.).
Whether this form of the idea is original with Origen is uncertain, but it appears
to be part of an old theological tradition of God as artist, see 'Excursus XXI

Gott als Bildner', in E. R. Curtius, Europaische Literatur und Lateinisches
Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), pp. 529 f., which goes back at least to the demiurge of
the Timaeus. Cf. also Origen's contemporary the elder Philostratus', Life of
Apollonius of Tyana, ii. 22, where the conception of God as painter could blend
with that of the divine image in the human soul according to C. Celsum, viii.
17-19. A similar idea is to be found in Methodius of Olympus, e.g. Symp. 1. 4
(G.C.S. xiii), who frequently uses metaphors from the realm of art to emphasize
the full reality of the incarnation and man's bodily resurrection. Christ assumed
a human body as if he had painted his picture for us so that we might imitate him
its painter, cf. de Res. I. xxxv. 3-4; II. x. 7-12; III. vi.
J.T.S. 2
322 CHARLES MURRAY
Major Pieces of Evidence

Now let us turn to the more serious passages and comparatively
rare occurrences in which the Fathers do discuss the case of a material
image in a non-idolatrous context and are apparently antagonistic
towards it.
Tertullian, De Pud. VII. x. 12

The first and most famous of these is Tertullian and the Good
Shepherd cups.1 Close examination of the context here makes clear

that it will not be the standard interpretation of showing Tertullian as
hostile to art. The context is one of rhetorical mockery. Tertullian had
a particular hatred of the Shepherd of Hermas because it allowed the
readmission of fornicators, if penitent, to communion and so the figure
of the Shepherd was associated in his mind with a plea for moral
laxity in the Church. He describes it as the 'idol of drunkenness and
the sanctuary of adultery', and Christians who at the Eucharist drank
from a cup with the Good Shepherd on it, while relying on the freedom
to sin afforded by a second repentance, had chosen their symbol well.
In other words, this is not an example of Tertullian's rigorism in the
matter of art but the treating of a particular symbol with contempt
because it was used by Christians for whom he felt contempt.
Clement, Paedagogus III. 12. I
Here, according to the normal view, is a passage which shows

Clement making a concession to pressures being forced on him from
below, in the matter of the designs to be put on signet-rings. It is

pointed out, to save him from inconsistency with his usual hostility,
that the wearing of signet-rings was essential in antiquity and that he
only concedes the representation of inanimate things or those of neutral
content: ship, lyre, anchor. Bevan expresses surprise that he allows

1 Koch, pp. 9-10, explains Tertullian's hostility to art here as excessive
reverence for the Eucharist. Elliger (pp. 28 f.) felt Koch had not used Tertullian
sufficiently to illustrate the dogmatic connotations of hostility and developed
these further. For Klauser, pp. 2-3, the passage was an example of compromise
in the matter of the second commandment in Christian lay circles in Carthage
c. 213 and official opposition to it ; it was also the proof that the passages from
the de Idol, were not merely reactionary and peculiar opinion on Tertullian's
part. No examples of these chased cups survive from the early period but an idea
of the type may be gained from the silver-gilt Great Chalice of Antioch in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, variously dated between the fourth and
sixth centuries because of its damaged and rubbed condition and provincial
execution. It is decorated with twelve seated figures: including two representa

tions of Christ, the four evangelists and six apostles set between vine-scrolls,
vases, and birds. For an illustration see Beckwith (above p. 303 n. 1), fig. 47.
a dove or a fishgood Moslems should notbut salvages Clement's

reputation by adding that it seems unlikely he would have allowed a
human figure.1 For Klauser the passage was crucial as indicative that
the laity were really beginning to get out of hand. The mass production
of Good Shepherd cups in the Mediterranean had already begun to

force the issue against authority as the passages from Tertullian, in
Klauser's view, already show. And here in Clement's reluctant con

cession, the forced introduction of art into the early Church in spite
of official prohibition is clearly seen.2
But reference to the original context shows that the opposition is the
other way round. The hesitancy about design is on the part of in

quiring Christian converts, used to the iconographie oddities of gnostic
gems, and this is encouragement from Clement as to what can cheer
fully be admitted. What has been lost in wrenching the passage from
its context is the tone of Clement's voice. There seems to be good

indication elsewhere that Clement had a positive appreciation of art
and that in fact it is a passage from his Protrepticus which may well
lie behind the figure of the Christian Orpheus in the catacomb of

St. Callixtus.3
Asterius of Amaseia
Klauser omitted from his evidence another passage which had been
brought forward by Koch.4 Asterius of Amaseia refers in one of his
sermons (c. a.d. 400) to the fashion for Christians of his day to have
woven on their robes representations of the Gospel scenes : Christ with
the disciples, the raising of Lazarus.
1 p. 87. He seems to be unaware of the fisherman-apostle seal of Paed. iii.
59 2
2 p. 4. The neutrality of content is stressed as a desperate effort on Clement's
part to salvage some sort of religion out of the compromise. For examples of
ancient signets both pagan and Christian, Britain is extremely well placed, see
H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Cameos in the British Museum
(B.M., 1926) and M. Henig, A Corpus of Roman Engraved Gemstones from British
Sites, parts I and II, B.A.R. 8 (1974), and The Lewis Collection of Engraved
Gemstones in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, B.A.T.-S1. (1975).

3 See Sister C. Murray, 'The Christian Orpheus', Cahiers Archologiques (to
appear).
4 pp. 64-7, cf. von Dobschiitz, Beilagen, p. 102, for his view of the passage as
a humorous and satirical treatment showing Asterius' opposition to biblical

or at least Christian images. For the Homily on the Rich Man and Lazarus see
Homilies I-XIV, ed. C. Datema (Leiden, 1971). For an illustration of the kind
of robe in question, cf. the portrait of the Empress Theodora (probably c. 547) in
the apse of San Vitale, Ravenna, where her purple chlamys is embroidered in
gold with figures of the three Magi. See G. Bovini, Ravenna Mosaics (London,
1957), fig. 33 (uncoloured).
324 CHARLES MURRAY

If they take my advice they will sell such garments and pay honour to
the living images of God. Do not paint a picture of Christ. That of
his humiliation when he took upon himself our humanity for our sakes of
his own will is enough. Rather carry about within your soul in a spiritual
way the immaterial Logos. Do not have the paralytic man of the Gospel
upon your clothes, but go and visit those who are bedridden. Do not
look so steadfastly on the sinful woman at the feet of the Lord but have
contrition for your own sins and shed tears yourself for them . . .
Yet the same bishop gives an emotional description of the martyrdom

of Euphemia depicted in her basilica at Chalcedon, and also speaks of it
as customary in his time to offer homage to the Cross.1 The dis

crepancy in attitude which troubles Koch is found not to exist when
reference is made back to the sermon from which the passage came.
The title of the homily is itself sufficiently instructive: it is On the
Rich Man and. Lazarus and appears to have been addressed to a wealthy
audience. Reading of it shows that it is not a discussion of the legitimacy
of art but a moral exhortation to virtuous living and avoidance of

luxury: the demands of Christian service to God are not satisfied by
wearing his image but by active love of one's neighbour. It does not
reflect, as it is supposed to do, any official opposition to art at the
beginning of the fifth century. The Cappadocians could not on any

score be made into opponents of art, nor could they be ignored as
representing the official level of the Church, so they are explained
away by the hypothesis as 'fleeting references'2 to a more positive

approach. And this gets over difficulties like the passage in Basil's
sermon on the Martyr Balaam in which he calls upon all proficient
painters to depict the martyr's sufferings and those of the Master who
ordains and judges the contest, Christ. Gregory of Nyssa also described
a picture of Christ Agonothetes in another representation of martyr
dom;3 and John Chrysostom inconveniently kept a picture of St.

1 For the whole question of Euphemia see F. Halkin, Euphmie de Chalce
doine, Subsidia Hagiogr. 41 (Brussels, 1965). For the literary genre of ecphrasis,
which was a standard form of exercise in late antique rhetoric, see the lovely
description of Hagia Sophia by Paul the Silentiary in ed. P. Friedlnder,
Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentarius und Prokopios von Gaza: Kunstbeschrei
bungen justinianischer Zeit (Hildesheim, 1969). And for a discussion, see H.
Maguire, 'Truth and Convention in Byzantine Descriptions of Works of Art',
D.O.P. xxviii (1974), pp. 113-40. On the homage to the cross see Homily XI
in Praise of St. Stephen. Kitzinger, p. 90 n. 13, includes this reference to pros
kynesis as evidence for the paving of the way of image worship in the
fourth century, but omits the passage from the sermon and the ecphrasis of
H. Euphemia.
2 Kitzinger, p. 86, following as he admits (p. 87 n. 7) Koch, pp. 69 f. and
Elliger, pp. 60 f.
3 That of the martyr Theodore, see P.H. xlvi. 737CD.

Paul before him, according to John Damascene.1 But these texts are
glossed over in the standard treatments; they are omitted by Klauser,
explained away by Koch and Elliger, and alluded to by Kitzinger.

There are two other passages which also appear to have been wrongly
interpreted and so made to support the theory.
Augustine, de Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae I. 34
Augustine's famous passage reads : 'novi multos esse sepulchrorum
et picturarum adoratores, novi multos esse qui luxuriosissime super
mortuos libant et epulas cadaveribus exhibentes, super sepultos seipsos
sepeliant, et voracitates ebrietatesque suas dputent religioni.'
On this passage Kitzinger says: 'It is from St. Augustine that we
first hear in unambiguous terms of Christians worshipping images.
Among those who had introduced superstitious practices in the Church,
he mentions "sepulcrorum et picturarum adoratores", thus linking the
cult of images to the cult of tombs.'2
It will be noticed that he has quoted only one phrase from the
passage and this may well have reference to abuses at the tomb during
the funeral cult, and to the worshipping of structures and their painted
decoration. What it will not do is support any idea of Augustine's

attitude to art, as can be seen if it is put back into its context. Augustine
is not singling out the adoration of pictures for condemnation, much
less the making of them. The passage refers to the practice of a particu
lar set of Christians only, in the context of the funeral cult, whose
banquets in Augustine's opinion are a scandalous indulgence of the

sensual appetite for food and drink. Wrongful indulgence at banquets
is the point. When he uses the phrase quoted by Kitzinger to describe
these people it is to imply depreciation of this method of honouring
the dead; the presence of the pictures and their worship, if more than
rhetorical emphasis of description is intended, he simply accepts as
facts. Since this passage would not support Elliger's thesis in an

entirely specific way, he tried to reinforce his point by bringing in,
irrelevantly, Augustine's attitude to church music as an example of the
danger of the appeal of the senses in religion.3 Augustine is known from
the Confessions to have been by temperament as sensitive to the appeal
of music as to that of language, and his view of the legitimacy of it
fluctuated because he was always alive to the possibility of danger for
himself. But he seems to have been much less stirred by the appeal of
visual art.4
1 Ed. . Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos III (P.T.S. 17,
Berlin, New York, 1975), p. 161. 2 p. 92. 3 pp. 86 f.
4 See esp. x. 33. 49-50. For a generalized discussion of art, x. 34. 53.
326 CHARLES MURRAY

Paulinus of Nola, Carm. XXVII. 542 f.
Paulinus in his poem is naming particular churches richly decorated
with biblical personages and scenes. When he describes them as

executed 'raro more' Koch tries to understand the phrase to mean that
at that time pictorial decoration in churches was still uncommon.1

But given Paulinus' enthusiasm for church decoration recorded else
where, it is far more likely that Paulinus took pleasure in these paintings
because they were exceptionally good. He even mentions a representa
tion of the Trinity in mosaic.2
Paulinus is from the fourth century and a most influential member of
the 'official church' who is omitted, unsurprisingly, by Klauser and
Kitzinger.
However, with the fourth century we have reached the key pieces of
evidence on which the whole hypothesis of hostility really rests and
which are apparently irrefutable. Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and

Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, really seemed to have thought it wrong
to make representations of religious things and personages, notably of
Christ.
We seem to have in Eusebius of Caesarea an important and influential

figure at the beginning of the fourth century who categorically opposed
himself to the making of representations of Christ. The evidence is, of
course, in the celebrated letter to the Empress Constantia which
figures prominently in all discussions of the subject and yet surprisingly
is never itself submitted to discussion. It is always referred to but

never analysed; presumably because it is regarded as self-evidently
hostile to art. Since it obviously supported his view and therefore
required no comment, Koch gives a brief summary of its contents and
then devotes the remainder of his section on Eusebius to a long dis

cussion of the cross and the labarum. Elliger says almost nothing and,
1 Koch, p. 74, 'pingere sanctas raro more domos animantibus adsimulatis'.
For the frequent use of 'rarus' in the sense of 'outstanding' see Lewis and Short,
Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879).
2 For the Trinity in mosaic see Dp. xxxii. 10 to Sulpicius Severus. The
representation avoided human figures: the Father was symbolized by some
emblem which stood for the voice of thunder from heaven, the Son by a lamb,
the Spirit by a dove. One would give much to know how one represents a voice
in mosaic. This apse mosaic from Paulinus' famous church of St. Felix at Nola
is lost, but for an attempted reconstruction see Wickhoff, illustrated as fig. 77 in
M. Lawrence, The Sarcophagi of Ravenna (New York, 1945). Wickhoff repre

sents the Father by a hand. For a major analysis of the culture and mind of
Paulinus see W. H. C. Frend, 'The Two Worlds of Paulinus of Nola' in Religion
Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries (London, 1976), pp. 100
33. On the basilicas see H. Belting, Die Basilica der SS. Martiri in Cimitile
(Wiesbaden, 1961).

astonishingly, makes his few references in a Latin translation and not to
the Greek original as it is given by Pitra and Mansi. Bevan repeats

Koch more emphatically, Kitzinger refers to the letter in passing, and
for Klauser it was a fundamental example of his thesis.1 However,

as I hope to show, had the letter ever been subjected to critical analysis
a very different view of it might have been taken, and a much greater
reserve employed in the matter of regarding it even as indicative of
Eusebius' personal opposition to imagery, much less that of the whole
Church; because, for Klauser and Bevan Eusebius was a representative
figure, and his witness was crucial as proof of the universal attitude of
the Church in the fourth century.2 Neither in fact say why; one
assumes that what is implied is that Eusebius was the Constantinian
bishop par excellence,3 and at a time when art was evidently beginning
to run mad. What then may be learned of the letter when careful
investigation is undertaken ?
The first, fundamental and completely astonishing fact to emerge, and
of capital importance not merely for the purposes of this paper but
also for other issues for which it is a vital piece of evidence, is that not
only is there no critical edition of the text but the manuscript tradition
of the letter has never in fact been examined.
The text as it stands at the moment is not an ancient but a modem
one, first put together in the eighteenth century and reprinted with
additions in the nineteenth, its latest reprinting being in Hennephof's
collection of documents published in 1969. There is no trace of it in
the fourth century among the authentic works of Eusebius and pre
sumably this is why it has been omitted from the volumes of his work
in the Berlin corpus. Further, the text nowhere exists in its entirety,
nor is there any trace or reference to the letter from the empress to
which this is supposed to be the reply. Boivin and Pitra assembled it
piecemeal from a passage in the iconoclastic florilegium of 754 which
was read and refuted by the orthodox in 787, who dismissed it on the
grounds that Eusebius was an Arian, and gave no attention to the

question of its authenticity, as they did to the passages alleged from
the orthodox Epiphanius. This passage is not to be found in the other
florilegium, attributed to the ninth century, belonging to the Church
of Rome and surviving in the Paris codex gr. 1115, where the
1 Koch, pp. 41-58; Elliger, pp. 47-53; Bevan, pp. m-12; Kitzinger, p. 93
n. 28; Klauser, pp. 4-5.

2 Klauser, p. 5; Bevan, p. in.
3 Yet Ossius of Cordova was Constantine's chief ecclesiastical adviser; see
V. C. de Clerq, Ossius of Cordova: A Contribution to the History of the Constan
tinian Period (Cath. Univ. America Studies in Christian Antiquity 13. Washing
ton, 1954).
328 CHARLES MURRAY

correspondence of hagiographie texts with that of 754 is remarkable, but
not that of the patristic passages. It was also omitted from the florilegium
of the iconoclastic council of 815. Other parts were added from the
work of Nicephorus of Constantinople and Pitra printed the whole
thing as chapter nine, book four, of his edition of the Antirrhetici of
Nicephorus. It is quite certain therefore in the circumstances of the
text as we have it at present we cannot even be sure which sentence
consecutively follows which, even if the letter is in fact authentic.1
For the textual problem immediately raises the question of authen
ticity. In all discussions this normally passes unquestioned, and the

few scholars who do mention the possibility of spuriousness do so in
order to dismiss it without any solid reason being given.2 Only an

examination of the manuscript tradition, which I have undertaken and
hope to publish later, will finally settle this problem. In sum therefore
all that can be said of the letter from the point of view of the text
itself is that there is no mention of it earlier than the eighth century
when it comes into play at the time of the iconoclastic controversy in
a source hostile to the making of images. Accordingly, since at the

moment there is no evidence to show that, if it ever existed as an entire
composition, it was composed in the fourth century, it cannot be taken

as evidence of the view of the historical Eusebius towards art, and even
less as a testimony to the general view of the official church in the fourth
century.
But suppose for the sake of argument this matter is allowed to rest and
1 For the extract from the Horos of 754 quoted at Nicaea in 787 see Henne
phof, p. 72 no. 242 and Mansi, xiii. 313ABCD. For Boivin see in Nicephori
Gregorae Byzantina Historia Graece et Latine (cum annotationibus H. Wolfi, Car.
Ducangii, Io. Boivini et Cl. Caperonnerii), ed. L. Schopen, vol. ii ( = Corpus

Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, vol. 31, Bonn, 1829). In his note, p. 1300,
Boivin assembles a text of the letter based on the Labbe edition of the conciliar
acta (actio vi, p. 494), and also on a source which he produces for the first time
and gives as Cod. Reg. 1980, fols. 191 f. A letter from M. Astruc informs me
that this number should read 1989. It therefore needs correction in the Bonn
edition of Nicephorus Gregoras and in Migne, P.G. xx. 1545 n. 1. The manu
script in question is the present Parisinus gr. 910. I would like to express my
thanks to M. Astruc for his help in locating Boivin's manuscript. For Cardinal
Pitra and his additions see Spicilegium Solesmense Sanctorum Patrum, i (Paris,
1852), pp. 383-6. For his unreliability as an editor of the Antirrhetici see Alex
ander, Nicephorus, pp. 173-8.
1 K. Holl, 'Die Schriften des Epiphanius gegen die Bilderverehrung', Gesam
melte Aufsatze zur Kirchengeschichte II, der Osten (Tubingen, 1928), p. 387 n. 1,
asserted that it was undoubtedly genuine since style, standpoint, and under
standing all agreed with the works of Eusebius. This was repeated by G.
Florovsky, 'Origen, Eusebius and the Iconoclastic Controversy', Church History,

xix. 2 (1950), pp. 77-96 at p. 84 n. 21, in which he quoted Holl verbatim. Neither
attempted to substantiate the statement.
it is assumed, until shown otherwise, that the letter is authentic,

what can be said of it from the point of view of the hostility theory?
First of all and clearly, it is not a manifesto opposing religious artistic
representations in general. The point is specific: it is speaking of an
image of Christ, and what appears to be objected to is the idea of an
icon, as a true portrait claiming to represent the actual features of

Christ. Presumably Eusebius had in mind some large-scale rendering
of the head and shoulderssomething like the seventh-century icon
of St. Peter from Mt. Sinai. That it was portable is clearly shown from
the fact that it was to be sent to Constantia.
Yet of icons of this type, portable representations of historical

figures, there is so far no trace in the fourth century.1 In third- and
fourth-century art Christ appears either as a symbolic figure: good
shepherd, fisherman, or in the painted and sculpted scenes where he is
shown in the teacher/philosopher type not really differentiated from
the surrounding figures. He never appears isolated, as a cult image, and
there is no attempt to depict him as a real and distinctive personality.
This is true not only of the Christ figures on the crowded frieze sarco
phagi but also of the more beautiful and distinctive representations
of him with the Apostles on those of S. Ambrogio and Ravenna. There
are indeed portraits in the strict sense on the sarcophagi, but they are
those, usually framed in shells or medallions, of the dead interred

within : but even here where the idea is to represent definite individuals,
it is unlikely that realistic personal features were carved.

Still they are more sharply contrasted with the personally neutral
character of Christ and the biblical figures, and this is because the
religious scenes are incidental: they are only the background to the
1 See . Weitzmann, M. Chatzidakis, . Miatev, and S. Radojcic, Icons
from South Eastern Europe and Sinai (London, 1968), p. 13, who date it to the
seventh century. See also E. Kitzinger, 'On Some Icons of the Seventh Century'
in Late Classical and Medieval Studies (as above p. 312 n. 2), pp. 132-50 at
p. 136 and pi. xx, fig. 7. The earliest surviving icons are in the collection from the
Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and none is firmly dated. On stylis
tic grounds the earliest tentative date is given to a Virgin and Child between two
saints with two very hellenistic-looking angels; it is attributed to the sixth
century. Dating is the major problem in the study of icons, which is still in its
infancy, particularly with regard to those of the Byzantine period. The few
icons preserved in Rome are old but it is unlikely that any were earlier than the
sixth century. On the chronology and provenance and for a catalogue of the
major icons see D. and T. Talbot-Rice, Icons and their Dating (London, 1974).
However, it is pointed out to me by Dr. H. Chadwick that the portrait in
question may rather have been in the nature of a simple souvenir from the
bazaar such as the likenesses of apostles painted on gourds mentioned by
Jerome, in Ionam, iv. 6 (425 Vallarsi), and I would like to thank him warmly
for the suggestion.
330 CHARLES MURRAY
illustrious dead whose portraits occupy the central position and the
centre of interest in the designs.1 Again, this is in keeping with the
fact that in late antiquity religious art is always allegorical and sym
bolic.
Secondly, there are two other passages in the undoubted works of

Eusebius which mention religious representations and with which this
letter may be compared. The Vita Constantini, iii. 48 f., speaks with
zest of the representations of the Good Shepherd and Daniel with the
lions with which Constantine adorned the fountains in the public

squares of Constantinople, figures made of brass and resplendent with
gold-leaf and the Church History, vii. 8, mentions the bronze group of
Paneas, thought in Eusebius' time to be a representation of Christ and
the woman with the issue of blood. This group was again a fountain
ornament, described by Eusebius with sympathy and interest.
For some reason these figures had made an impression on him, for he
refers to them again in his fragmentary commentary on Luke viii.2
But the rights and wrongs of making the images he does not consider
at all, simply considering the group as an offering made in the manner
of pagan votive statues on the part of the woman. The positive approval
of the Vita, the absence of hostile comment in the Church History

compared with the sharply hectoring tone of the Letter was a difficult
1 For the complete catalogue of subjects so far discovered in the Roman
catacombs see A. Nestori, Rpertorie Topografico delle Pitture delle Catacombe
Romane (Rome, 1975) and for the illustrations see J. Wilpert, Die Malereien der
Katakomben Roms (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1903). For the sarcophagi of Rome
and Ostia see F. W. Deichmann, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage,
Texte und Tafeln (Wiesbaden, 1967). For Ravenna see M. Lawrence (above
p. 326 n. 2); for S. Ambrogio see D. Strong, Roman Art (London, 1976), pi. no.
225. For a very characteristic example of the portraits of the deceased see the
sarcophagus of Adelphia in the Archaeological Museum at Syracuse, and that
so-called of the Two Brothers, in the Vatican, both illustrated in Beckwith,
figs. 27 and 29.
2 The authenticity of the Vita is generally accepted though the bibliography
on the question is long. Much of it was covered when the authenticity was
defended by . H. Baynes, Constantine and the Christian Church (Proc. Brit.
Acad, xv, 1929, and separately, repr. 1972). I. A. Heikel, G.C.S. i., Einleitung
(1902) also accepted the authenticity which is still doubted, however, by W.
Seston, J.R.S. 1947, pp. 127-31, and H. Grgoire, Byzantion, 1938, pp. 551
60 and 561-83, who made some very pertinent comments, chiefly as they affect
the military campaigns of Licinius; the archaeological passages normally go

unquestioned. Though these fountain ornaments are lost, they must have been
similar to the Orpheus fountain figures of Istanbul, Athens, and Sabratha, see
J. M. C. Toynbee, Animals in Roman Art (London, 1973), pp. 290-2. If the
Cleveland Jonas figures are also accepted as coming from a nymphaeum, then
further evidence of the type in question is available, see W. D. Wixom, 'Early
Christian Sculptures at Cleveland', Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art,
liv (March 1967), pp. 66-88 k.

inconsistency for the hostility theorists, particularly Klauser, who was
reluctant to think that Eusebius, and with him the whole church, had
changed their minds about art in the ten years which he regarded as
lying between the (undated) Letter and the Church History and Vita.
So he fell back on a theory of interpolation into the text of the Vita
at the end of the fourth century without stopping to prove it.
Nevertheless he seems really to think that Eusebius did change his
mind, for on the following page he speaks of 'Eusebius' memorable

change of position'.1 Bevan's explanation is a little more low-level.
He believes that either Eusebius considered Good Shepherds in
offensive, or his adulation of Constantine got the better of him : which
amounts to a personal aspersion about Eusebius' integrity.2
Of course if the truth is that Eusebius never was an opponent of art
then explanation is unnecessary since there is no inconsistency of

attitude ; the Letter is objecting only to one kind of artistic form. So much
therefore seems to be relevant about the fact of representation of Christ

according to the Letter : the portrait in question appears to be an icon.
Now it is necessary to examine on what grounds the Letter condemns
such a portrait. The reasons given are theological, and they differ
according to whether Constantia requires 'the true, unalterable image
which bears his essential characteristics', that is his divinitybut

Eusebius feels the empress is not referring to this'or his image as a
servant that of the flesh he put on for our sake', that is Christ's human
ity.3 The theological problem of representation in this case is, accord
ing to the Letter, that 'the flesh was so mingled with the glory of the
divinity that the mortal part was swallowed up by life even when he
was on earth', as the Transfiguration proves. But how is it possible to
represent the transfigured countenance 'when even the superhuman
disciples could not bear the sight'. If the incarnate form of Christ
possessed such power, it was even less susceptible to painting after the
Resurrection. And when one arrives at the idea of 'form' as applicable
to the divine and human essence 'one is left like the pagans to the repre
sentation of things that bear no possible resemblance to anything, for
this is what their cult figures are'. But Constantia knows perfectly
well that if the subject of the request is really a picture of the historic
Christ on earth not only is it forbidden by the second commandment
but there are no such examples to be found. 'Have you ever heard
anything of the kind yourself in church or from another person ? Are
1 pp. s and 6.
2 p. III.
3 For the translation see C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312
1453, Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, 1972), pp. 16-18.
332 CHARLES MURRAY
not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the
world; and is it not common knowledge that such practices are not
permitted to us alone ?'
The presentation of the arguments can scarcely be called clear but it
seems possible to unpack them eventually. To take the 'archaeological'
argument firstthat Constantia is asking for a representational in

novation. If the Letter does refer to a Byzantine style icon, then quite
clearly it is an innovation since, as already indicated, there is no evi
dence of such icons in the fourth century. But what rather seems to be
the point is that because the second commandment forbids representa
tion of the earthly Christ altogether, no representations of him are to be
found at all in fourth-century churches; in other words, Eusebius

seems to be denying the existence of material representations of Christ
in the fourth century. If this really is the point of the passage, it can
be disproved as historically inaccurate by the use of one spectacular
example: the emperor's sister, and Eusebius himself, can scarcely

have been unaware of the five foot high, hundred and twenty pounds
weight, silver figure of Christ with the Apostles and Angels which
adorned the 'fastigium' of the Basilica Constantiniana, the Lateran.1
Ignorance of a production like this must have been impossible in the
fourth century; it must have caused a sensation when it was first in
stalled and revealed. So far then, it appears that Eusebius' denial of the
existence of the material objects such as those he refers to in his Letter
is at variance with the archaeological material of the fourth century as it
is recorded or survives : we do not have the icons and there are images
of Christ.
To test the theological argument it is necessary to see if it is con

sistent with what is known of the theological position of the historical
Eusebius. Basic to the reasoning of the Letter, and to the hostility

theory built on it, is the enforcement of the obligation of the second
commandment; a prohibition already seen as neglected by the early

Church but figuring prominently in Byzantine discussions. What of
1 According to the Liber Pontificalis, vol. i, ed. L. Duchesne (Paris, 1886,
repr. 1955-7), P 172> in the record under the Life of Sylvester, a structure of
hammered or beaten silver weighing 2025 lb., a 'fastidium' or 'fastigium', was
given to the Lateran Basilica. It had in front a seated figure of the Saviour
5 feet high, weighing 120 lb. and figures of the twelve apostles each 5 feet and
weighing 90 lb. with crowns of pure silver. Behind, looking into the apse, was
a figure of the Saviour enthroned, made of pure silver, 5 feet high, weighing
140 lb. and four silver angels, each again 5 feet and 105 lb. weight with gems set
in their eyes and holding spears. The exact purpose, position, and form of it
remain a mystery ; for a discussion and attempted reconstruction see . easdale
Smith, 'The Lateran Fastigium. A Gift of Constantine the Great', Iiiv. A.C.
xliv (1970), pp. 149-75.

Eusebius ? As Wallace-Hadrill clearly shows, it was crucial to the whole
theological position of the historical Eusebius to discount the Mosaic
Law as of significance for Christians. It interfered with his interpreta
tion of history.1 History was the proof of the truth of the Gospel for
Eusebius, because the truth must be materially demonstrable. So his
four major works form a unit,2 setting out the history of mankind from
remote antiquity to the persecutions of his own day, and drawing the
theological lesson from the historical process through which God makes
himself known.
Since the axis of history is along the line Abraham, Christ, Constan
tine, he had to show that the roots of Christianity lay not in Judaism
founded on the Mosaic Law but further back in the age of the Patri
archs.3
The Mosaic Law was local, temporary, applicable to Jews and only to
Palestinian Jews at that. It was a lower and less perfect way and the
destruction of the Temple by the Romans signified the destruction of
the Mosaic dispensation altogether. The keeping alive of imperfect

Jewish ideals was pointless in view of the Incarnation of the Word.4
Because of this historical dimension, the Incarnation was central to

his thinking and this meant therefore that for history the evidence of
scripture was primary. And it is here that the link comes with what
is of great interest to the purpose of this discussion; for not only

did Eusebius write commentaries on scripture but he allied with them
'archaeological field-work', if one may be permitted so to call it.

His interest in identifying and developing the archaeological sites most
closely linked with the historical associations of Christianity, as re

corded in the narrative of the scriptures, and to which he gave expres
sion in his topographical works such as the Onomasticon, was meant to
be the material reinforcement of the documentary evidence, which
proved the truth of his view of history.5 And this, despite his so-called
Origenism, 'gave the humanity of Christ an importance for him that it
had never had for Origen, and centred his theology in the Incarnation'.6
A further point should be added here as fundamental to this outlook
and yet usually dismissed as some sort of sycophancy or adulation of
1 D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, Eusebius of Caesarea (London, i960), pp. 171-2.
2 i.e. The Chronicle, History, Preparation for, and Demonstration of the Gospel.
3 See D.E. 1. iii. 40 and cf. Proph. Eel. ii. 5 ; Comm. Is. xlv. 19. 24 (on the
temporary nature of the Law); D.E. I. vi. 39 (destruction of the Temple);
P.E. I. v. (the incarnation as the bright intellectual daylight of the truth).
4 Wallace-Hadrill, ibid.
5 The Onomasticon, ed. E. Klostermann (G.C.S. ii. 1, Euseb. iii. 1, 1966) is,
in essence a record of all the memorials still extant of the great biblical figures ;
notably of the site of the oak of Abraham, which was of vital importance as
concrete evidence of the ancestor of Christian mankind. 6 p. 97.
334 CHARLES MURRAY

Constantine, this is the lavish praise bestowed on the emperor as the
material founder of the Church. When it is recollected that what gave
Eusebius his motivation towards a theological interpretation of history
was personal experience of what persecution could do to the Church1
and that the persecution had had for its aim the destruction of scripture
the documentary proof of God's work in historyand the material
monuments of the Church,2 then the amount of space devoted to

church buildings,3 decorated canon-tables,4 and religious statues ap
pears as what it really is : a major theological theme.
The material restoration of the Church was essential as part of the
visible proof of God's culminating historical work in Constantine.

Quite clearly the Vita and the concomitant Laus are works of serious
thought and not sycophancy.5 Quite clearly also, therefore, a theological
1 See H.E. viii and Mart. Pal. According to A. Momigliano, 'Pagan and
Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.' in ed. Momigliano, The
Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford,
1963), pp. 79-99, see pp. 89-93, it's the theological interpretation of history
which distinguishes Eusebius as a historian in the strict sense from an annalist.
1 For a discussion of the Edict of Diocletian and the course and consequences
of the Great Persecution see W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the
Early Church (Blackwell, Oxford, 1965), pp. 477 f.
3 Churches from various provinces, built under varying patronage illustrate
the vast variety of Constantinian church planning. See, for example, the double
cathedral of Aquileia, G. Brusin, Aquileia e Grado (Aquileia, 1956); the rectan
gular form at Orlansville, S. Gsell, Les Monuments antiques de l'Algrie, ii
(Paris, 1901). For the christological martyria of the Holy Land see J. W. Crow
foot, Early Churches in Palestine (London, 1941), and for the buildings of Jerusa
lem, L. H. Vincent and F. M. Abel, Jrusalem Nouvelle, ii. 1 and 2 (Paris, 1925)
this latter especially for the building of the terebinth of Mambre. Of the lavish
decorations of the interiors, recurrent commonplaces in contemporary prose
and poetry, nothing survives save the vault mosaics of the ambulatory of S.
Costanza, see H. Stern, 'Les Mosaques de l'glise de Sainte-Constance
Rome', D.O.P. xii (1958), pp. 157-258, and nine of the 'barley-sugar' columns
of Old St. Peter's, see J. B. Ward-Perkins, 'The Shrine of St. Peter and its
Twelve Spiral Columns', J.R.S. xiii (1952), pp. 21-33.
4 See V.C. iv. 36. 37. The decorative, illuminated ornamentation of the
Eusebian canon-tables, produced in Caesarea in the second quarter of the fourth
century, became known in Italy slightly later, through the Vulgate of St. Jerome ;
the oldest extant date from sixth century, see C. Nordenfalk, Die Spatantiken
Canontafeln (Goteborg, 1938). St. Jerome refers to purple codices in terms of
contempt, partly because he found them not always textually accurate and partly
because he found them difficult to read; see his preface to Job. An extant
example which appears to date from the middle of the sixth century is the Vienna
Genesis, a manuscript de luxe in which the parchment is painted purple and the
script in silver with the illuminations executed in a singular and refined style.
It is now only a quarter of the original. See W. Ritter von Hartel and Fr. Wick
hoff, Die Wiener Genesis (Vienna, 1895).
5 Accepting with . H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602, i
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1973), p. 77, the authenticity of the Laus. Both works seem

theme of such major importance must be taken to be representative of
the attitude of the historical Eusebius towards matters of Christian
imagery and art. So far from being antagonistic, the stress on the
monumental evidence of Christianity was for Eusebius as essential as
that on the literary evidence for the demonstration of, and propagation
of, the truth. It is no accident that he wrote four books on archaeology
of which only the Onomasticon is extant.1
Turning back to the theology of the Letter one cannot fail to observe
that the whole christological thrust is curious in one who has been
celebrated through the centuries as an Arian; for the basic tenet of
Arianism, whatever its variety of manifestation, was that in the rela
tionship between the Father and the Son the latter was in some way
subordinate.
Yet the emphasis throughout is on the true nature of Christ as divine

and therefore the impossibility of representing him in portrait form.
Nor is there, if the foregoing statement of Eusebius' theology is true,
any trace of Origenism in the historical Eusebius, as it is understood

by Florovsky to be characteristic of the Letter, which he used as evidence
in an influential article attempting to trace the roots of Iconoclasm to
Origenism through Eusebius.2
A minor point, this time concerning Eusebius' style and habit of

mind, may finally be added to this survey. It is the Vita and the Laus
again which provide some means of judging his normal and deeply
to combine unrestrained eulogy and religious interpretation of Constantine's
significance. I. A. Heikel (G.C.S. i. t), p. xlv, draws attention to the correct
title of the work as being not 'the Life of Constantine' but 'on the life of Constan
tine' ('Jedenfalls wird die Arbeit nicht als ein sondern als eine
Schrift Els de Vita Constantini genannt.')
1 The lost works are the Interpretation of Ethnological Terms, the Chorography
of Ancient Judaea, and the Plan of Jerusalem.
2 See, for example, p. 87, 'The Origenistic character of the letter in question
is beyond doubt We could not fail to observe the close and intimate
resemblance between Origen's ideas and those of the Letter of Eusebius to
Constantia. Origen's christology was the background and presupposition of
Eusebius.' Origen's position he defines thus: 'the whole set of his (Origen's)
metaphysical presuppositions made it very difficult for him to integrate the
Incarnation as a unique, historical event, into the general scheme of Revela
tion. Everything historical was for him but transitory and accidental. Therefore
the historical Incarnation had to be regarded only as a moment in the continuous
story of permanent theophany of the Divine Logosa central moment in a
sense, but still no more than a central symbol. . . . The historical was, as it were,
dissolved into the symbolic.' His thesis was accepted and developed by P. J.
Alexander, 'The Iconoclastic Council of St. Sophia (815) and its Definition
(Horos)', D.O.P. vii (1953), pp. 35-66, esp. p. 51, and M. V. Anastos, 'The
Ethical Theory of Images Formulated by the Iconoclasts in 754 and 815',
D.O.P. viii (1954). PP 1-6, esp. p. 154.
336 CHARLES MURRAY

respectful method of address to the members of the imperial family;
and in his discussion of Theophany ii. 4, Wallace-Hadrill is able to

remark that it is one of the few passages where Eusebius' scorn goads
him to one of his rare exhibitions of vigorous and effective prose.1
In keeping with this, his hesitations and sufferings at the Council of
Nicaea, dismissed by ancient authorities and modern scholars alike,2
may very well be interpreted rather as the hesitations of a scholarly
mind which disliked being forced by pressure into a decision on a

matter of first importance without due opportunity for calm and ob
jective thought. Yet the language of the Letter has been described by
Professor Mango as 'vitriolic' and by Klauser as 'irritiert'.3 Once more
we seem to encounter a discrepancy with what is known from the

authentic works. But this brings the discussion back to its starting
point. After passing the evidence in review one is forced to conclude
that the Letter seems to be of so uncertain a nature, in so many areas,
that it cannot be used as evidence of an attitude of general hostility
to art on the part of Eusebius and through him of the entire fourth
century Church. And since its origin is so completely obscure, and its
content so much at variance with what is known of the views of Eusebius
himself, even its authenticity is doubtful. If it is, in spite of all, genuine,
the most that can be said is that it relates specifically to an icon of

Christ and could therefore be considered to suggest a demand for them
in the fourth century, from which there are no actual known examples.
Epipkanius of Salamis, Letter to John of Jerusalem
If the ultimate problem of the Letter of Eusebius is one of authen

ticity, the case of the passages from Epiphanius is quite different: it is
this time one of interpretation.
The authenticity of the fragments attributed to Epiphanius by the
iconoclasts in 754 and 815 has been controverted since the time of the
iconoclastic controversy itself, and they have been discussed ex

haustively from this point of view in more recent times by Holl and
Ostrogorsky.4 Ostrogorsky denied the authenticity of all but the

1 V.C. and Laus passim. Wallace-Hadrill, p. 145.
2 The Fathers of 787, having heard Epiphanius the Deacon read Jerem. ii.
13, welcomed it as apposite in the case of Eusebius who was an Arian and double
minded in the manner of James i. 8, see Mansi, xiii. 316, cf. B.C.D. For Eusebius'
hesitancy as a commonplace of modern theological discussion see J. Stevenson,
Studies in Eusebius (Cambridge, 1929), p. 77, and C. N. Cochrane, Christianity
and Classical Culture (Oxford, 1940), p. 218.

3 Mango, p. 4; Klauser, p. 5.
4 Holl, op. cit., and G. Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen
Bilderstreites: Historische Untersuchungen, Heft 5 (1929, repr. Amsterdam,

1964), pp. 61-113.

Testament of Epiphanius and Holl accepted the attribution of them all.
The argument on both sides turned in the last analysis on the christology
contained in the fragments and to Holl the witness of Epiphanius was
essential as proof of a dogmatic connotation of the whole problem of
images which he believed to be present as early as the fourth century;
this was the reason why he discussed the authenticity at all. Ostro
gorsky's work was severely reviewed after its publication, and he
capitulated on the authenticity of the Letter to John of Jerusalem.'
The question with regard to the fragments still remains obscure.
But one fact which is of the highest importance for the purpose of
this paper has emerged from the controversy, and it concerns the text
of this letter to John of Jerusalem. It is now known that the Greek
original of the famous curtain episode, preserved in the Latin transla
tion of St. Jerome and believed to be lost does in fact survive.2 As will
appear this is crucial with regard to the use of this letter as evidence
of Epiphanius' 'taking up the matter of Christian religious images as
an issue' and the fact that 'even the most sceptic do not doubt that
Epiphanius was an opponent of Christian religious imagery'.3 For it is
the letter which is the real basis of this view.
It is the tearing down of the curtain with its figured representation

from the church door of a village in Palestine that is regarded as the
locus classicus for Epiphanius' monophobia. For this reason the less
important fragments are left aside in discussions of his supposed
hostility to art, particularly as there is always the possibility that they
are spurious; the curtain passage seems to be undoubtedly authentic
1 See F. Dlger in Gttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1929, pp. 353 f. ; H. Gr
goire, Byzantion, iv (1927-8, published 1929), pp. 769 f. ; V. Grumel, E.O. xxix
(1930), pp. 95 f. Ostrogorsky, see B.Z. (1931), p. 389.
2 The question is complicated. The letter is first found in Latin in the transla
tion in ep. 51 of Jerome, secondly and partially in the Libri Carolirti, iv. 25;
thirdly in Greek in the work of Nicephorus of Constantinople against the Coun
cil of 815. D. Serruys, 'Les Actes du Concile Iconoclaste de l'An 815', Ml.
d'Arch. et d'Hist. xxiii (cole Franaise de Rome, 1903), pp. 345-51, first drew
attention to the Greek text when he discovered the codex 1250 in the Biblio
thque Nationale. The letter is quoted by Nicephorus with a series of passages
from Epiphanius attributed to him by the Iconoclasts ; all these texts figured in
a list of patristic extracts alleged in their florilegium by the Council of 815. The
writings of Epiphanius from which these passages are taken are the Testament,
the Letter to John of Jerusalem, a dogmatic encyclical, and a letter to Theo

dosius II. For the texts see Hennephof, pp. 44-51, nos. 111-39, but consult also
Ostrogorsky, op. cit., pp. 73 f. and Alexander, 'The Iconoclastic Council . . .'
(fragment 30D), p. 65, for the text of Nicephorus' quotation of the letter. See
also P. Maas, 'Die ikonoklastiche Episode in dem Brief des Epiphanius an

Johannes', B.Z. xxx (1929-30), pp. 279 f., who proves the existence of a
ninth-century archetype for the two manuscripts of Nicephorus' Refutatio et
Eversio. 3 Kitzinger, pp. 92-3, repeated by Barnard, p. 89.

J.T.S. 2
338 CHARLES MURRAY

because of the contemporary witness of St. Jerome. However, so
far as I know, the Greek and Latin texts have never been compared in
order to see what Epiphanius actually wrote, and if therefore the

usual interpretation is correct.
The scholarly tradition with which this paper is concerned has

always based its interpretation only on the Latin text of St. Jerome and
this appears to be the basic mistake which has led to misinterpretation.
Koch was writing before Ostrogorsky's work, although Serruys had
isolated the Greek text before his publication; Elliger published his
monograph much later but ignored Serruys and Ostrogorsky and relied
entirely on Holl.1 Klauser too makes reference only to the Latin text,2
and Schneemelcher who wrote the article on Epiphanius in the Real

lexicon also relied on Jerome for his statement of the traditional view
of Epiphanius and imagery; Dr. Kelly relied on Schneemelcher, and

this may be how he was led into an error of fact in his recent dis
cussion of the passage.3 Before comparing the two texts some remarks
are perhaps in order. It is not usually made clear when Jerome's text
is used that there is a question of his having, if not falsified, at least
tampered with the letter of Epiphanius which he was translating. The
question was so pointed that it drew from Jerome a reply in the form of
a letter on the principles of good translation. It should be further noted
that the substance of the accusation was that he had failed to reproduce
the courteous and quiet tone of the original.4
In addition it is important to emphasize, from the archaeological

point of view, that the curtain episode has a context. It is in essence an
apology for not sending sooner a curtain to replace the one he had
pulled downfor it should be observed that the immediate criticism
made of Epiphanius' action by the people involved was not a protest
that he had destroyed an image of Christ but that he had removed a
valuable curtain and not replaced it. Epiphanius excused the delay
1 53
2 p. 6 . 27
3 See W. Schneemelcher, . und die Bilder', R.A.C. v, pp. 925 f. and cf. P.
Nautin, 'piphane-ouvrages contre les images', D.H.G.E. xv, 628. See J. N. D.
Kelly, Jerome (London, 1975), p. 20: 'He had noticed a curtain embroidered
with a portrait of Christ or of a saint hanging before a church door and ... in
his iconoclastic zeal had pulled it down and torn it in pieces', and p. 201 n. 24:
'Epiphanius tells the story without a blush, in letter 51.9. He was one of the
leading denouncers of the cult of images in the fourth century: see W. Schnee
melcher . . .'. But when Epiphanius had pulled down the curtain he did not tear
it in pieces, he directed that it should be given to some poor dying man as a
shroud. Dr. Chadwick, Early Church, p. 281, thinks there was more than one
figure on the curtain: 'a curtain in a church porch with a picture of Christ and
some saints'but this is unsupported either by the Latin or the Greek.
4 Jerome, Ep. 57.
because he wanted to find a really good one and so felt it better to

send to Cyprus for one of the right quality as well as of religious
acceptibility. It is the detaching of the episode from its context and the
loss of the over-all courteous presentation and excusing of his action
that has caused attention to be focused on a rabid tearing down of

curtains and, according to the Latin, a sharp reminder about the second
commandment, resulting in the standard picture of Epiphanius as a

raving iconoclast.
Another matter of context, this time of social context, should also be
considered here, for context seems to disappear altogether whenever
Epiphanius and art are discussed. It is well to be reminded of the

background against which Epiphanius moved so as to have a perspective
from which to approach the literary evidence; the works of St. Jerome
are a mine of information about Epiphanius and enable us to see him in
his own time.
As a visitor to Rome he was a welcome friend of Damasus, the Pope

famous in his own day and since for the care and money he lavished
on the material monuments of the Church, in particular the Catacombs.
Sunday walks through the Catacombs with their painted decorations,
so conducive to meditation, were a favourite form of recreation with
Jerome and his friends; works of art were essential to the piety of
aspirants to the priesthood in official church circles in the fourth

centuryalthough this seems to have escaped the attention of the
hostility theorists. Epiphanius is known to have received hospitality
from, and given it to, the cultured and wealthy lady Paula, and he
also preached in the Anastasis at Jerusalem on the feast of the Dedica
tion. Yet in all this there is no surviving record that he felt himself
threatened by revolutionary images put up by the laity in the teeth of
the bishops and clergy.1
Does the literary evidence then confirm the traditional view of

Epiphanius' attitude to art or not? In Ep. 51. 9 of Jerome we read
that on entering the village of Anablata and seeing a lamp burning and
learning that there was a church in the place, he went in to pray and :
inveni ibi velum pendens in foribus eiusdem ecclesiae tinctum atque

depictum et habens imaginem quasi Christi vel sancti cuiusdam, non
enim satis memini, cuius imago fuerit. Cum ergo hoc vidissem, in
ecclesia Christi contra auctoritatem scripturarum hominis pendere

1 Ibid., Ep. 127. 7 (Epiphanius' visit to Rome); Comm. Ez. xl. 5-13 (walks
through the Catacombs); Ep. 108. 6-14 (Epiphanius and Paula), cf. Apol. 3.
22; Against John, 11. 14 (Epiphanius in Jerusalem). For the work of Damasus
who became Pope in 366 and whom Jerome was later to serve as secretary {Ep.
123. 9) see A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana (Rome, 1942).
340 CHARLES MURRAY

imaginem, scidi illud et magis dedi consilium custodibus eiusdem loci, ut
pauperem mortuum eo obvolverent et eferrent. Illique contra mur
murantes dicere : 'si scindere voluerat, iustum erat, ut aliud daret velum
atque mutaret . .
The Greek reads: ,

,
ivos . ' ? ,
iv ,
.
.
The fact which emerges plainly here is that while the Latin speaks of
an 'image' as of Christ or some saint, identifying (although not very
clearly) apparently a Christian image, the Greek makes quite clear what
it was. It was an idol in the shape of a man; and furthermore it was
only alleged to represent Christ or one of the saints by the bystanders,
not by Epiphanius. This too is missing in the Latin. In other words

what seems to have been on the curtain was not a Christian figure at
all, and was recognized as such by Epiphanius. It would be quite

consistent with known Christian practice for the Christian community
of this church to have bought what they regarded as a beautiful curtain
for their church regardless of the design. Examples of the extra

ordinarily pagan things which Christians made use of are the Projecta
casket from the Esquiline Treasure and now in the British Museum,
or the Traprain Treasure in Edinburgh. These all fall into the class
of luxury objects; and from what is known of the manufacture, geo
graphical distribution, and expense of high-quality textiles in the

Roman world this curtain of Anablata should perhaps be put into the
same class.1
1 Luxury craftsmanship whether in the service of individuals or of the Church
consistently illustrates this marriage of pagan and Christian. For the Projecta
casket, see Strong, pi. 248 ; on the lid a chi-rho monogram precedes an inscrip
tion exhorting Projecta and Secundus to live in Christ, but the decoration repre
sents Venus, nereids, tritons, and sea monsters. The Traprain Treasure contains
a flagon with biblical scenes and two fragmentary flasks of pagan mythological
content, see Toynbee, pp. 312-14. For the Mildenhall dishesthe large, famous
one with the head of Oceanus and the smaller Bacchic plattersand the five
inscribed Christian spoons see J. W. Brailsford, The Mildenhall Treasure (B.M.
1947) and K. S. Painter, 'The Mildenhall Treasure: A Reconsideration', B.M.
Quarterly, xxxvii (1973), pp. 154-80. But for the most startling piece of support
ing evidence, of undoubted religious and not secular use and now known to be
the earliest Christian silver hoard (third-fourth century) see the newly discovered
Water Newton Silver. K. S. Painter, Fourth Century Christian Silver

Treasure found at Water Newton, England in 1975', Riv. A.C. li. 3-4 (1975),

It would therefore scarcely be surprising that the authorities took
a dim view of Epiphanius' removal of, and slowness in replacing, such
an object. If, on the other hand, the representation was Christian,

as is usually thought, then it seems to imply a single figure, frontally
placed, of the type found in pagan cultic representations but of which
there is no evidence in fourth-fifth-century Christian art. The im

plication therefore seems to be again, as in Eusebius' Letter, that it
was an icon. Epiphanius does not appear to mind what it represents,
it was the possibility of its interpretation as a cult figure to which he
objected.
The second point made clear in the comparison of the two texts is that
only the Latin speaks of the authority of scripture forbidding human
representation. While the exact prescription is not specified, Klauser
and other scholars are surely right in identifying here the prohibition
of the second commandment.1 But the Greek simply says that mount
ing of idols is a hateful practice in the Church and omits all mention of
scripture. The Greek passage therefore will not support the traditional
view here either : that Epiphanius was hostile to the making of images
on the grounds of the second commandment.
This discussion of the evidence from Epiphanius may be concluded
with reference again to the study of Kitzinger.2 As quoted earlier, he
believed Epiphanius to be an opponent of Christian, not merely pagan,
imagery. And when he wished to find confirmation of this from a text
about which no questions of authenticity could be raised he looked to
the Panarion 27. 6. 10, the Greek of which he quotes: . . .
rs . This he translates as:
'when images are put up the customs of the pagans do the rest'.
And he comments, 'This surely reflects the experience of his own
age.' Unfortunately it does not. Consultation of the original context of
the Panarion shows that the sentence comes from a passage in which
333~45 Its most arresting feature is a number of silver religious votive
plaques of a type known all over the Roman Empire but hitherto only found in
pagan contexts ; these are the first to be discovered with Christian symbols and
inscriptions. For what is known of Christianity in Britain in general see M. J.
Green, The Religions of Civilian Roman Britain, B.A.R. 24 (1976), pp. 60-4.
For Christian miniatures as part of the whole field of book illumination see
those of the fourth century Quedlinburg Old Testament, H. Degering and A.
Boeckler, Die Quedlinburger Italafragmente (Berlin, 1932). For one of the finest
and earliest Christian ivories see the so-called Lipsanotheca, now in the Museo
Cristiano at Brescia, an oblong box richly carved with episodes from the scrip
tures, probably late fourth century, whose real purpose is unknown; illustrated,
Beckwith, fig. 35. Ancient textile fabrics and the methods used to produce them
are badly documented; for what is known of them in the Roman period see
J. P. Wild in Roman Crafts, ed. D. Strong and D. Brown (London, 1976),

pp. 167-77. 1 P 6. Koch, p. 59. 2 p. 93 and n. 30.
342 CHARLES MURRAY

Epiphanius, following Irenaeus, is simply giving information about the
Carpocratian gnostics and saying that when they have put up their
images, then pagan customs complete the matter. Not only has
Kitzinger misunderstood the reference of the passage but, as can be
seen, he has also mistranslated it; and by turning the aorist active
participle into a passive, he has made into a generalization about images
what in Epiphanius was a specific reference to a specific group of

heretics, and not a discussion of imagery at all. Both the mistranslation
and the misconception have been adopted by Barnard.1
Finally, how very slender the case for Epiphanius' hostility really is
may be judged from one more piece of evidence. Holl, and following
him Kitzinger, interpreted the writings and activities of Epiphanius
against the background of the passage from Augustine discussed

earlier.2 But as the primary reference is to excessive eating at funeral
meals, and perhaps to real idolatry, practised by a group of deviant
Christians in Africa, it cannot well be used as the 'logical background'
for a supposed antagonism to Christian art on the part of Epiphanius.
In conclusion, therefore, if the foregoing analysis of the literary
evidence is correct, it seems a reasonable assessment of the case to say
that there is very little indication indeed that the Fathers of the early
Church were in any way opposed to art.
Since then, according to the traditional view taken of the literature
so many difficulties and inconsistencies have to be explained away, to
say nothing of explaining away the art itself, it seems far simpler
and far more in accord with what the Fathers actually wrote, to con
clude that there never was a dichotomy between the art and the litera
ture of the early Church; and an apparently insoluble problem proves
never to have been a problem at all. It does seem impossible to believe,
nor does there now seem to be any evidence for doing so, that all the
wealth of art which survives was produced in the face of the Church
authorities. Some of the Dura paintings are, if one considers it,

remarkably sketchy, and although Christ is represented there, there
is no question of portraiture. Nor could the innumerable figures on the
sarcophagi and in the Catacombs be considered in any way objects of
worship. There is no question of idolatry arising in connection with
the art as we have it; yet idolatry was what the iconoclasts feared and
what the modern interpretation makes the basis of the hostility to
Christian art in the authorities of the Church. It would be unhistorical
to consider that these works provided such a possibility.

1 p. 9i, where he quotes Kitzinger verbatim; in view of S. Gero's review in
B.Z. Ixix, Heft (1976), pp. 103-5, this book must be regarded as a less than
independent study of the subject. 2 pp. 384 f. Kitzinger, p. 92.

Also it is extremely puzzling, if the standard hypothesis is correct,
that all this art should suddenly spring up at the end of the second
century, despite the Pope, in the official burying-ground of the Roman
church; for that the Catacombs were official we know beyond doubt
from Hippolytus.1
At the risk of possible overstatement the point of view opposite to
that normally adopted in discussions of Christian art needs stating,
and it is therefore very necessary to emphasize the universal character
of this art as it is found in the Catacombs and on sarcophagi, etc.

from all over the Roman empireand its completely non-idolatrous
character.
With this also should be put forward the major piece of literary evi
dence which unequivocally supports a positive attitude to art at the
unequivocally official level. Unlike any of the pieces of literary evidence
alleged for the opposing view, the 82nd canon of the Council in Trullo
(a.d. 692)* which, while later than the period under discussion, never
theless presupposes an earlier artistic tradition, provides evidence of an
art which accords with the material remains as they survive. It regards
the art of the earlier period as symbolic. From the theological point
of view the canon is extremely important, since it gives a doctrinal basis
for the representation of images: it repudiates the symbolic art of the
early Church in favour of the icon.
The Council forbids the symbolic representation of Christ as the

Lamb; apparently it was objecting to a semi-historical scene in which
John the Baptist pointed to the coming of Christ and Christ represented
symbolically. It is the reason for the prohibition which is highly

instructivethe Lamb is a 'typos' or an 'image' or 'figure' of the coming
grace which signifies the very Lamb, Christ.3
Now while types and shadows, that is symbols and signs, must be
respected, priority belongs to grace and truth which is the fullness of the
Law. The Council therefore prescribes that Christ should be depicted
as a man, instead of the 'ancient lamb', in remembrance of his Incar
nation, Passion, and redeeming Death, and of the universal redemption
1 Philosophumena, ix. 12. 2 Mansi, xi. 977 f.
3 For important remarks about language and texts concerning concepts like
imago, figura, etc. see H. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum (Paris, 1949), pp. 210 f.,
248 f. For the development of the concept of figure (rtmos, figura) in the Latin
West with some notice of corresponding Greek terms such as twos, ,
e'So;, , see E. Auerbach, 'Figura' in eue Dantestudien, Istanbuler Schriften,
(Istanbul, 1944). There is not, so far as I can discover, a detailed investigation
of the Greek patristic terms such as in their relationship to the image
concept, or a linguistic study of the word ', apart from that in Kittel,
T.W.B. ii (Stuttgart, 1933-35), p. 387, under eikon (Kleinknecht).
344 CHARLES MURRAY

thereby accomplished. It is a doctrinal programme and a true preamble
to all the subsequent literature on holy images. For while the case
the Council refers to seems to be a special one, it nevertheless lays
down a theological principle. What is remarkable is that the painting
of icons is linked with the contrast between 'types' and 'historical

truth'. So it seems then to be an encouragement of the new 'historical'
art so foreign to that of the earlier period which it is rejecting.
Nothing perhaps could illustrate more completely the real gulf

between the thought world of the early Church where types and shadows
can be used as description in a book devoted to the study of the Fathers,1
and that of the Byzantine Church. In archaeological terms the same

gulf is exemplified in the iconography of the fourth-century Sarigiizel
sarcophagus in Istanbul and that of the late-sixth-century Riha and

Stuma patens.2 It is perhaps to be explained because the link between
the two worlds was not the texts of the Fathers read in their entirety but
the catenae of quotations made from them in the period before Icono
clasm. The library resources of Constantinople were not large and the
copying of manuscripts was expensive.3
Clearly the 'genetic' theory of a continuously hostile tradition to art
which finally erupted into Iconoclasm cannot be maintained, and the
linking of discussions of early art to the period of Iconoclasm has been
mistaken.
It seems, therefore, that what has happened is that the materials of

church history have been mistaken for the history of the Church itself ;
because church history, in this matter, has been regarded primarily as
based on written documents. The material remains, ignored by church
historians, have been left to the analysis of art historians, Roman and
Byzantine social historians, or sub-departments of classical archaeology.
Yet the purpose of all this art was religious and therefore it is the theo
logical dimension which in the end is paramount ; discussions of types,
origins of motifs, etc. are only ancillary, though essential, studies.

Perhaps therefore it may be pleaded that the monuments of the Church
1 J. Danilou, From Shadows to Reality. Studies in the Biblical Typology of the
Fathers (tr. W. Hibberd, London, i960).
2 See J. Beckwith, The Art of Constantinople, 2nd edn. (London, 1968), p. 21,
pis. 23-6, and pp. 46-7, pis. 58 and 59. Basically the difference is that the icono
graphy of the patens, which depict the communion of the apostles, seeks to
avoid any sense of weight or volume which might suggest a third dimension and
so give a naturalistic appearance to the figures, while that of the sarcophagus
with angels bearing the monogram of Christ in a garland and the apostles on
either side of a plain cross is entirely classical in spirit and expression.
3 See C. Mango, 'The Availability of Books in the Byzantine Empire, A.D.
750-850' in Byzantine Books and Bookmen (Dumbarton Oaks, 1975), pp. 29-45.

should be put back into the context of church history alongside the
literary remains in order to arrive at a more rounded estimate of matters
of fact in the early Church. There is after all an excellent precedent

Sister
Charles
Murray
in the practice of Eusebius. Sister
Charles
Murray

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ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Author(s): Sister Charles Murray

ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH

to art.1 The view recently received confirmation in a relazione to

or whether it is simply an example of the phenomenon by which

Although it receives slight modification as it is rehandled, neverthe

2 J. D. Breckenridge, 'The Reception of Art into the Early Church', in

29-38, esp. p. 31, 'an absolutely monolithic opposition to imagery existed

art'. L. W. Barnard, The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the

3 It is found, for example, in Chadwick and Alexander and see also E.

[Journal of Theological Studies, N.S., Vol. XXVIII, Pt. 2, October 1977]

304 CHARLES MURRAY

which both religions identified with pagan practice. The second

such as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and Epiphanius

evermore momentum. Nevertheless the older and purer strain of religion

Fathers a hypothesis was necessary which would explain it. So the

Who invented it is a fascinating question, and a search for its

iconophobic religion because of its Jewish matrix.1 In his view the

ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH 305

the view of a rigorous official attitude towards art.3

But the major substantiation, giving the hypothesis the general

leading churchmen from the beginning to Augustine. In a second

2 E. von Dobschiitz, Christusbilder (T.U. 18, Leipzig, 1899). Both scholars

the early Church in his second chapter. 3 Belege, pp. 98*-i22*.

4 H. Koch, Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen (Forsch.

6 Th. Klauser, 'Erwgungen zur Entstehung der altchristlichen Kunst',

Z.K.G. lxxvi (1965), pp. 1-11.

3o6 CHARLES MURRAY

on the cult of icons before iconoclasm, in the section in which he

dealt with the centuries of the Church before Justinian.2 And it is

by Elliger, which is now regarded as authoritative in all subsequent

already recognized as crucial,4 the period between Justinian and

with the intention of setting out the maximum amount of textual

'an undercurrent of at least potential iconoclasm does in fact run

tine studies where it remains as the accepted interpretation of the

1 p. 4 . 19. 2 pp. 85-160, cf. section I.

4 By von Dobschutz passim, and esp. p. 35, and A. Grabar, Martyrium, ii

ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH 307

interpretation rests on these presuppositions about the nature of

Byzantine Church, it is first of all necessary to discover whether these

torically representative of the social context in which the literary

of what is actually known of the use of the Decalogue in the early

theological analysis of the meaning of the Old Testament Law as it

3o8 CHARLES MURRAY

earliest, sub-apostolic centuries and the Decalogue itself had fallen

particular virtues;2 and even in the case of converts instructed by

1 He considers it was written to bring back the Roman community to a sense

ART AND THE EARLY CHURCH 309

with another. Scholars, and in particular Klauser, have credited the

with a wrong assumption. This is further borne out if one looks

Harnack's friend Schiirer, who stated categorically that 'Judaism

as completely forbidding images. The descriptions of the Temple

of sculptured statues, and classical Hebrew has no word for 'to

statement in 1907 there was already well-known and published a

wealth of Jewish archaeological evidence from the Jewish catacombs

The Vigna Randanini already explored in the sixties of the nine

catacomb has yielded fragments of a sarcophagus on which winged

ning of the century see H. Vincent, 'Pseudo-figure de Iahv rcemment mise en

Randanini (Rome, 1862).

the early Church in his second chapter. 3 Belege, pp. 98-i22.