3.3 Early Christian
3.3.1 Animals of the Evangelists
3.3.2 Bestiaries
graphic
Sarcophagus; late 3rd-early 4th cent AD Rome
The Europe animal sacrifice ended with the establishment of Christianity; and nothing could show more vividly the absolute newness of the Christian religion than the choice of its symbolic animal. After the lions and bulls of Mithras and Mesopotamia came the lamb and the sheep. Innocent, gentle and docile, they are either the symbol of sacrifice, or exist to follow the will of the Good Shepherd, and to enjoy His protection. In the same spirit the dove takes the place of the eagle or falcon. Although the lamb is alluded to as a symbol of Christian humility in early Christian texts, it does not appear in art till it can safely be substituted for the hermetic fish. The sheep are the chief symbolic animals of the evolved Christianity of the late fifth century, and inhabit the mosaics of Ravenna, beginning with the beautiful representation of the Good Shepherd in the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.
Just when Christians began to use and to create pictorial art is therefore not settled. There are a number of images which fall on the cusp between the Christians' using images which they acquired from pagan culture and their creation of images as 'their own.'   The first collection of Christian iconic art is in the emetery of S. Callistus (Callixtus) from which there are funereal decorations (frescoes) which were painted approximately at the end of the second century.  This development took place at about the same time as the early Christian apologists were writing. Both were a sign that a hitherto small, poor and loosely organized group, that is, the Christians, began to go public. The paintings in the catacomb, including their decorations (borders, birds, fish, and so on), demonstrate a group who were employing the basic funereal nature iconography of paganism and beginning to Christianize it. A chief element in this development was the fact that Christians had begun to arrive at a period in their growth when they were (1) organized enough to plan for such a project, and (2) had the economic means to purchase the land and to pay for the excavation and decoration of the cemetery.
Several of the 'Shepherd Oil Lamps' can be acceptably dated in the period of 175—225 CE.  It is not only on lamps of the late second and early third centuries that the Good Shepherd appears.  In Rome, the shepherds carrying their sheep began to appear around 260 in relief sculpture . . . commissioned by the new religionists. Within the literary culture of the new religionists there existed a long-standing etradition that associated the founder of the movement with shepherding metaphors. Here we find iconic representations that can be positively identified as produced by a Christian aesthetic.
The Good Shepherd was the most popular figurative Jesus image in the very beginnings of Christian iconic art.  It is is the criophorus (literally, the ram- carrier). The figure is usually of a young man. beautiful and, most often, a beardless youth; he is dressed for outdoor work, that is. with a short tunic and boots or high-laced sandals; he stands carrying a sheep across his shoulders. It is well known that the image of the ram-carrier was originally pagan and was at least a thousand years old before it was used by the Christians. Hermes, Apollo and Dionysos were all represented by the ram-carrier.
The metaphor of the shepherd who cares for his flock is prolific throughout the early church's literature (and not only in John 10 and Luke 15:3—7). The image did not carry over to the church only in the traditions it received from ancient Israel (as in Psalm 23); the shepherd as leader of the flock permeates the Greek and Roman cultures of the Mediterranean basin from before the times of the Odyssey. It is not therefore the rarity of the image which gives rise to considerable and often contentious discussions about early Christians' use of the iconic bonus pastor, the case is just the opposite. The image is employed so often and is so permeated with a pagan scent that it seems the Christian use of these images had to be justified in some way by art historians and theologians.17
The most common device in art history's canonization of the Good Shepherd has been to suggest that it is an 'abbreviated representation,' and the image therefote points to scriptural passages, namely, Luke 15:3—7 and John 10. The broader presentation of a sheep carrier with his flock introduces a bucolic theme, which, in this context, is to be understood as a symbolic reference to John 10:II.'
The Christian apocrypha join virtually the whole corpus of early Christian literature in their employment of references to Jesus as Shepherd. The Acts of Thomas 39 uses the phrase 'Good Shepherd' (agathos poimen). That the Shepherd of Hermas uses the image is self-evident in the title given that work; it is an especially relevant image in the fourth vision. The list of passages throughout Christian literature is vast, and in the rhetorical images it is not only Jesus who is the shepherd. God and the apostles are also shepherds of the flock. In the latter reference, the phrase in the Acts of Paul and Thecla21 is poignant and touching: Thecla, having been condemned to be burned, 'as a lamb in the wilderness looks around for the shepherd, so Thecla kept searching for Paul. And having looked into the crowd she saw the Lord sitting in the likeness of Paul and said, "As if I were unable to endure, Paul has come to look after me.'"
3.3.1 Animals of the Evangelists
graphic
The Lion of St Mark: Venice

The ancient pagan symbols of the bull, the lion and the eagle make their way back into Christian iconography by a curiously roundabout route. The first vision of the Prophet Ezekiel describes an image in terms which are almost incomprehensible, both visually and philologically, but which mention four faces, those of a lion, an ox, an eagle and a man. About six hundred years later the author of the Apocalypse, who was so frequently indebted to Ezekiel, speaks of the four beasts that are before the Throne of God.

'The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast was like a calf, and the third beast had the face of a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle.'

These ancient symbolic animals, in a sacred book believed to have been written by one of the Evangelists, had an overwhelming influence in the early Middle Ages.  The question, like so many in early Christian doctrine, was solved by St Jerome. In his famous commentary on Ezekiel he lays it down that these animals are the proper symbols of the four Evangelists, the eagle for St John, the ; lion for St Mark, the bull for St Luke and the man for St Matthew.

For over seven hundred years almost the only animals in Christian art were representations of the Evangelists. They pass from the extreme stylization of the Echternach Gospels and the Books of Kells to the magnificent realism of the bull on the facade of Siena Cathedral, and on Donatello's altar of the Santo in Padua to the lion of St Mark on the Piazzetta, or Donatello's Marzocco in Florence.
3.3.2 Bestiaries
graphic
11th cent illustration from Beatus' Commentary on the Apocalypse
A fabulous bird of the East, distguising itself with dirt and making itself insignificant, surprises and kills a serpent. The bird is Christ, distguising His divine nature in order to conquer the Devil

Apart from the symbols of the Evangelists, three other categories of what may be loosely classed as symbolic animals occupied the attention of the Middle Ages, early and late. First, there were the monsters who appear frequently in Romanesque sculpture. They are represented biting and tearing their victims and symbolize with irresistible power the energy of evil. Then, at the opposite pole, is the series of MSS. known as bestiaries. The sources of the bestiaries are unknown. The entries often quote the authority of a writer known as the Physiologus (which may mean no more than 'the natural historian'), about whom we may conjecture from internal evidence that he lived in late Antiquity, although probably in Christian times. The bestiary claimed to give information, and some of it did in fact go back to Pliny. But the greater part was based on legend and folklore. For example, a drawing in a MS. in the University Library in Cambridge shows the eagle flying up to the sun in order to burn away its old plumage and the film over its eyes, after which it can take a rejuvenating plunge into the sea. No bestiary is complete without the famous scene of sailors anchoring on the back of a whale which they had mistaken for an island. Another example of the fabulous shows the dog seeing the reflection of its cake in the water, and losing it in his greedy attempt to get two.
Top