independent studies, as those of Hemans, Schulze, Roller, and others, have strengthened this unanimity. It will be further objected that, even if the antiquity of these pictures is probable, their interpretation is doubtful. The best authorities disagree. The same objection arises in respect to every teaching of the New Testament. And there is the same gratify. ing progress in respect to the teaching of these early pictures as in respect to that of the Canonical Scriptures. When the pictures are allowed to speak for themselves, there is not much room for doubt as to their meaning. The weightiest name in opposition to those who find unmistakable evidence of affusion in the Catacomb pictures is Victor Schulze's. In his work on the Catacombs he says: "The representations of baptism in the period before Constantine, amounting to three in number, all show subjects past the age of childhood (erwachsene Täuflinge), -in two cases boys of perhaps twelve years, in the third a young man. The act is performed by immersion." And by immersion is meant submersion. Fortunately, in another work 2 the author gives us his reasons for this summary judgment, and it is evident that the decisive one is derived not from the pictures, but from the patristic evidence that immersion was the established mode of baptism. That is, since Tertullian and the church generally, at the time these pictures were painted, knew only baptism by immersion, we must in terpret these pictures to signify the same thing. And so Schulze supposes that the sprays of water flying in all directions from the head of a boy standing perfectly erect and motionless in water quite below his knees are produced by his having just dipped! Singular water and no less remarkable boy! It is one of the benefits accruing from the discovery of the "Teaching," with its unmistakable testimony that baptism does not necessarily and always imply dipping or plunging, that the pictures can now be allowed to tell their own story without being forced to agree with Tertul lian or some other church teacher or father. And when this lesson is fully learned we believe that there will be no more doubt as to the meaning of these and other pictures in the Catacombs than there will be about the meaning of the Gospels when a truly scientific exegesis is established. But we are reminded here that De Rossi himself interprets these pictures to mean immersion. And perhaps it will be added that Kraus and Martigny recognize the same signification. They do use the term immersion in connection with these and similar 1 Die Katakomben, p. 136. 2 Archäologische Studien, p. 55. frescoes. But they do not intend, by immersion, submersion, nor attach to it primary importance. A not unnatural misunderstanding of De Rossi's language deserves to be set right, and the correction will answer for any similar misapprehension of Martigny or Kraus. He entitles his paragraph on the mode of baptism represented in these pictures: "Il rito del battesimo effigiato per poca immersione e simultanea infusione dell' acqua" (the rite of baptism represented by slight immersion and simultaneous affusion of water). In his exposition of the subject he calls special attention to the “slight immersion of the boy and the affusion or aspersion of water upon his head and upon his body," and adds that the conception of the rite (salutare lavacro) in the Callistan pictures, and other monuments which he cites, "is principally expressed by the water sprinkled upon the head and upon the whole person." 1 And elsewhere he speaks of baptism by contemporaneous partial immersion and affusion of water upon the head and upon the person." 2 So when Martigny uses the phrase, "la simple immersion,” he refers to standing in water, which in one of his pictures does not even cover the feet.3 Nor can anything more favorable to submersion, so far as we can discover, be derived from the learned and sometimes fanciful expositions of Garucci. He does, indeed, say that the lad (giovanetto) represented in Figure 3 is wholly immersed in a shower of water ("immerso interamente in un nembo di acqua "), but he immediately adds: "which bath is represented by great sprays of sea-green, thrown with the pencil around his [the lad's] person and even above his head. And thus baptism is represented." Baptism represented by sprays of water, even if suggestive of a shower of the same, is at most a symbolical immersion, and the moment symbolism is allowed in this matter a literal submersion is abandoned. Garucci's general position respecting the mode of baptism in the ancient church is, we judge, fairly shown by the following extract from the "Teorica": "Most ancient and especially established was the rite of immersing the person in the water, and three times the head also, while the ministrant pronounced the three names: it is not, however, to be believed that baptism never took place otherwise. Because when, for the occasion, either the amount of water requisite for immersion, or the capacity of the vessel, was insufficient, or when the condition of the 1 Rom. Sott., i. pp. 333, 334. 2 Bulletino di archeologia cristiana, 1876, p. 12. catechumen was such that it would have been dangerous for him to be entirely plunged in the waters, or for some other weighty motive, there was a substitution of the baptism spoken of as that of Infusion or Aspersion, by pouring or sprinkling the water on the head of him who was receiving baptism, while he stood either within a vessel which did not suffice to admit him wholly, or outside of this and upon the dry ground.” 1 Symbolically, however, there is no doubt that the original conception of baptism implied that the whole person was the subject of the purifying rite, and therefore it was natural and fitting, and doubtless was the primitive and ordinary practice, to apply the water to the entire body.2 When, somewhat later in the century in which these frescoes were painted, Cyprian expressed his ap proval of clinic baptism by sprinkling, he uses the expressive and instructive phrase, "the divine abridgments," (compendia),° meaning that any less total use of water than immersion is an abridgment of the full rite, though equally effective when sufficient reason exists for such curtailment. The representation in art of the candidate as standing in water is doubtless part of the symbolism which is more fully expressed in literal immersion, but which for good reason may be sufficiently expressed, even though only the head be sprinkled. 1 "Antichissimo e solenne fu il rito d'immergere la persona nell' acqua, e tre volte anche il capo, al pronunziare del ministro i tre nomi: non è pertanto da credere che altrimenti non si battezzasse giammai. Perocchè mancando al bisogna o la copia di acqua richiesta all'immersione, o la capacità della vasca, ovvero essendo la condizione del catecumeno tale che gli fosse pericoloso il tuffarsi interamente nelle acque, ovvero per alcun altro grave motivo supplivasi col battesimo detto di infusione od aspersione, versando o spargendo l'acqua sul capo di colui che si battezzava, stando egli or dentro una vasca che non bastava a riceverlo tutto, o fuori di essa e sulla terra asciutta." Op. cit. i. 27, 28. 2 The offices of the Syrian church of Jerusalem illustrate this conception, and all the more so because they appoint affusion as the mode. The priest, as directed, first lets the candidate down into the baptistery. Then laying his right hand on the head of the person to be baptized, with his left hand he takes up water successively from before, behind, and from each side of the candidate, and pours it upon his head, and washes his whole body (" funditque super caput ejus, et abluit totum ipsius corpus"). See Chrystal's History of the Modes of Christian Baptism, p. 123 et seq. So in Cyprian's letter to Magnus the form of the question proposed is, whether those "who obtain God's grace in infirmity and languor are to be accounted legitimate Christians because they have not been bathed [immersed or plunged], but thoroughly besprinkled (perfusi) with the saving water." 3 The word is mistranslated in Clark's Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. viii. p. 311. But these early pictures of affusion do not stand alone in early Christian art. Their testimony to the freedom of believers in the use of this sacred rite is perpetuated by a chain of witnesses running down through the centuries. On the frieze of the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, who died A. D. 359, a lamb lays his foot on the head of another lamb, while a stream of water descends from the beak of a dove.1 About the same date Christian families were living on the Esquiline, of whom numerous traces were discovered only a few years ago (1876), and among these the fragment of a glass cup, which is represented in full size in Figure 4.2 A young girl stands un der à stream of water flowing from an inverted vase hanging by a garland. A dove, with an olive-branch in its beak, is descending upon her head, on which rests the hand of a lost figure. On the right of the neophyte in the Figure-the design was to be seen by looking into the cup and through its walls, and the en See the engraving in Northcote and Brownlow's Rom. Sott., ii. p. 261, or Martigny, Op. cit. p. 27. 2 Figures 4 and 5 are copied from a Plate in De Rossi's Bulletin Fasc. 1, 1876. In the first and second Fasciculi for that year are explanatory articles. Cf. Martigny, Op. cit. p. 82. Schulze (Arch. Stud., p. 58) dates these figures near the close of the third century. This is probably a misprint. They belong to the latter part of the fourth or beginning of the fifth. graving shows it reversed - is a priest, named Mirax, in tunic and pallium, and with a halo in its simplest, perhaps earliest, form, a mark of dignity, not of sainthood. He appears to be looking in the same direction as the girl, and to be speaking of her, as indicated by his gesture. She is clothed in the white garment worn by newly-baptized persons, and its folds and the action of the right arm and hand indicate that the right knee is bent and raised as if she were ascending the steps to leave the font. Of her name remain only the letters Alba. Possibly it was Albana. The natural supposition is that the priest is presenting her, at the completion of the rite, to her parents and friends. FIGURE 5. The hand upon her head may be that of a sponsor. The glass was engraved as a memorial of her baptism, and the designer combined in the representation actions which were not contemporaneous, but successive. Figure 5 is from a marble found in Aquileja. A boyas the presence of Around the design engraving): "To He rests in peace, the godfather shows-stands in a basin or shallow font, under a sheet of water represented as falling from the starry skies, from which descends also the mystic dove. appears the inscription (not copied in our the innocent spirit whom the Lord has chosen. a believer, the tenth day before the kalends of September." It is a memorial of a child who had died soon after baptism. In another much later, though ancient representation, — a basrelief from Monza, -a dove holds in its beak a vase reversed, from which the water descends on the head of Jesus. Sometimes, as in the bas-relief already referred to, that of Junius Bassus, -the water flows directly from the dove. Such a design appears in an enameled silver spoon from the fourth century,—perhaps the first half, — of which Martigny gives an engraving. The boy stands in a basin, and the only water represented descends from the dove. 1 "Innocenti spo quem elegit Doms pausat in pace fidelis X Kal Septembres." "Sept" is repeated. |