Early Christian Art and Architecture Module 8 done

Mystery Cults and Early Christianity

For most adherents of mystery cults, there was no contradiction in participating in both the public cults and a mystery cult.
The different religious experiences appealed to different aspects of life.
In contrast to the civic identity which was at the focus of the public cults, the mystery religions appealed to the participant's concerns for personal salvation.
The mystery cults focused on a central mystery that would only be known by those who had become initiated into the teachings of the cult.

Monotheism and Christian Distinctiveness

Early Christianity shared characteristics with numerous other mystery cults.
Emphasis on baptism marked the initiation of the convert into the mysteries of the faith.
Consistent with other mystery cults: Christian emphasis on the belief in salvation and an afterlife.
Crucial difference: monotheism of Christianity.
Refusal of the early Christians to participate in the civic cults due to their monotheistic beliefs lead to their persecution; Christians were seen as anti-social.

Early Christian Art

Identifiable Christian art can be traced to the end of the second century and the beginning of the third century.
Important to consider why Christian art developed in the first place, considering the Old Testament prohibitions against graven images.
The use of images will be a continuing issue in the history of Christianity.
The best explanation for the emergence of Christian art in the early church is due to the important role images played in Greco-Roman culture.
As Christianity gained converts, these new Christians had been brought up on the value of images in their previous cultural experience and they wanted to continue this in their Christian experience.
Change in burial practices in the Roman world away from cremation to inhumation.
Outside the city walls of Rome, adjacent to major roads, catacombs were dug into the ground to bury the dead.

Burial Practices and Imagery

Families would have chambers or cubicula dug to bury their members.
Wealthy Romans would also have sarcophagi or marble tombs carved for their burial.
The Christian converts wanted the same things.
Christian catacombs were dug frequently adjacent to non-Christian ones.
Sarcophagi with Christian imagery were apparently popular with the richer Christians.

Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus

Junius Bassus, a Roman praefectus urbi or high ranking government administrator, died in 359 CE.
Scholars believe that he converted to Christianity shortly before his death accounting for the inclusion of Christ and scenes from the Bible.

Themes of Death and Resurrection

A striking aspect of the Christian art of the third century is the absence of the imagery that will dominate later Christian art.
We do not find in this early period images of the Nativity, Crucifixion, or Resurrection of Christ, for example.
This absence of direct images of the life of Christ is best explained by the status of Christianity as a mystery religion.
The story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection would be part of the secrets of the cult.
While not directly representing these central Christian images, the theme of death and resurrection was represented through a series of images, many of which were derived from the Old Testament that echoed the themes.

Old Testament Themes

The story of Jonah—being swallowed by a great fish and then after spending three days and three nights in the belly of the beast is vomited out on dry ground—was seen by early Christians as an anticipation or prefiguration of the story of Christ's own death and resurrection.
Images of Jonah, along with those of Daniel in the Lion's Den, the Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace, Moses Striking the Rock, among others, are widely popular in the Christian art of the third century, both in paintings and on sarcophagi.
All of these can be seen to allegorically allude to the principal narratives of the life of Christ.
The common subject of salvation echoes the major emphasis in the mystery religions on personal salvation.
The appearance of these subjects frequently adjacent to each other in the catacombs and sarcophagi can be read as a visual litany: save me Lord as you have saved Jonah from the belly of the great fish, save me Lord as you have saved the Hebrews in the desert, save me Lord as you have saved Daniel in the Lion's den, etc.
Early Christians would find great meaning in the story of Moses striking the rock to provide water for the Israelites fleeing the authority of the Pharaoh on their exodus to the Promised Land.

Christianity's Canonical Texts and the New Testament

One of the major differences between Christianity and the public cults was the central role faith plays in Christianity and the importance of orthodox beliefs.
The history of the early Church is marked by the struggle to establish a canonical set of texts and the establishment of orthodox doctrine.
Questions about the nature of the Trinity and Christ would continue to challenge religious authority.
Within the civic cults there were no central texts and there were no orthodox doctrinal positions.
The emphasis was on maintaining customary traditions.
One accepted the existence of the gods, but there was no emphasis on belief in the gods.
The Christian emphasis on orthodox doctrine has its closest parallels in the Greek and Roman world to the role of philosophy.
Schools of philosophy centered around the teachings or doctrines of a particular teacher.
The schools of philosophy proposed specific conceptions of reality.
Ancient philosophy was influential in the formation of Christian theology.
For example, the opening of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God…," is unmistakably based on the idea of the "logos" going back to the philosophy of Heraclitus (ca. 535-475 BCE).
Christian apologists like Justin Martyr writing in the second century understood Christ as the Logos or the Word of God who served as an intermediary between God and the World.

Early Representations of Christ and the Apostles

An early representation of Christ found in the Catacomb of Domitilla shows the figure of Christ flanked by a group of his disciples or students.
Those experienced with later Christian imagery might mistake this for an image of the Last Supper, but instead this image does not tell any story.
It conveys rather the idea that Christ is the true teacher.
Christ draped in classical garb holds a scroll in his left hand while his right hand is outstretched in the so-called ad locutio gesture, or the gesture of the orator.
The dress, scroll, and gesture all establish the authority of Christ, who is placed in the center of his disciples.
Christ is thus treated like the philosopher surrounded by his students or disciples.
An early representation of the apostle Paul (left), identifiable with his characteristic pointed beard and high forehead, is based on the convention of the philosopher, as exemplified by a Roman copy of a late fourth century BCE portrait of the fifth century BCE playwright Sophocles (right).

Global Connections: Transitional Style in Early Manuscripts

Books circulate easily because they are small and portable.
Monks and nuns in monasteries often copied and illustrated Bibles, linking classical traditions such as classical manuscripts, which have been lost, and later illuminated manuscripts.
As Dr. Nancy Ross notes, the artist who made the Vienna Genesis seems to be working between two systems and styles—one stemming from the ancient world and valuing naturalistic details and one stemming from a medieval preference for "valued symbolism and abstraction."
The book was believed to have been made in Syria or Constantinople, making the Vienna Genesis not only a luxury item, and a bit of a time capsule capturing this transitional time, but also a real global commodity due to the ways in which the artist integrated multiple styles in the visual representations.
The story of Rebecca and Eliezer comes from Genesis, and as Ross summarizes, is a story "about God intervening to ensure a sound marriage for Abraham's son."
The artist employs a continuous narrative, showing two consecutive scenes simultaneously.
Here, the artist suggests time passing by including Rebecca twice in the story, in the same pink dress.
In just this one image from the codex, which is estimated to have originally included 192 illustrations, the artist includes stylistic details that not only nod to classical architecture and sculptural poses, but embrace Early Christian art, with its emphasis on symbolism over a preoccupation with accurate or detailed spatial representation.

Dura-Europos: Origins of Byzantine Architecture

Officially Byzantine architecture begins with Constantine, but the seeds for its development were sown at least a century before the Edict of Milan granted toleration to Christianity in 313 CE.
Although limited physical evidence survives, a combination of archaeology and texts may help us to understand the formation of an architecture in service of the new religion.
The domus ecclesiae, or house-church, most often represented an adaptation of an existing Late Antique residence to include a meeting hall and perhaps a baptistery.
Most examples are known from texts; while there are significant remains in Rome, where they were known as tituli, most early sites of Christian worship were subsequently rebuilt and enlarged to give them a suitably public character, thus destroying much of the physical evidence.
Synagogues and mithraia from the period are considerably better preserved.
A notable exception is the Christian House at Dura-Europos in Syria, built c. 200 on a typical courtyard plan.
Modified c. 230, two rooms were joined to form a longitudinal meeting hall; another was provided with a piscina (a basin for water) to function as a baptistery for Christian initiation.
Dura-Europos, a border city between the Romans and the Parthians, was the site of an early Jewish synagogue dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244 CE.
It is also the site of Christian churches and mithraea, this city's location between empires made it an optimal spot for cultural and religious diversity.
The synagogue is the best preserved of the many imperial Roman-era synagogues that have been uncovered by archaeologists.
It contains a forecourt and house of assembly with frescoed walls depicting people and animals, as well as a Torah shrine in the western wall facing Jerusalem.
The synagogue paintings, the earliest continuous surviving biblical narrative cycle, are conserved at Damascus, together with the complete Roman horse armor.
Because of the paintings adorning the walls, the synagogue was at first mistaken for a Greek temple.
The synagogue was preserved, ironically, when it was filled with earth to strengthen the city's fortifications against a Sassanian assault in 256 CE.
The preserved frescoes include scenes such as the Sacrifice of Isaac and other Genesis stories, Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law, Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, scenes from the Book of Esther, and many others.
The Hand of God motif is used to represent divine intervention or approval in several paintings.
Scholars cannot agree on the subjects of some scenes, because of damage, or the lack of comparative examples; some think the paintings were used as an instructional display to educate and teach the history and laws of the religion.
Others think that this synagogue was painted in order to compete with the many other religions being practiced in Dura-Europos.
The new (and considerably smaller) Christian church (Dura-Europos church) appears to have opened shortly before the surviving paintings were begun in the synagogue.
The discovery of the synagogue helps to dispel narrow interpretations of Judaism's historical prohibition of visual images.

Santa Maria Antiqua Sarcophagus

This third century sarcophagus from the Church of Santa Maria was undoubtedly made to serve as the tomb of a relatively prosperous third century Christian.
Early Christian art borrowed many forms from pagan art.
The male philosopher type that we see in the center of the Santa Maria Antiqua Sarcophagus is easily identifiable with the same type in another third century sarcophagus, but in this case a non-Christian one.
The female figure beside him in the Santa Maria Antiqua sarcophagus who holds her arms outstretched combines two different conventions.

Orant

The outstretched hands in Early Christian art represent the so-called "orant" or praying figure.
This is the same gesture found in the catacomb paintings of Jonah being vomited from the great fish, the Hebrews in the Furnace, and Daniel in the Lions den.
The juxtaposition of this female figure with the philosopher figure associates her with the convention of the muse in ancient Greek and Roman art (as a source of inspiration for the philosopher).