The eager desire amongst the early Christians to venerate all who were brought into contact with the Master or His immediate followers has led to a multiplication of Saints, all of whom are distinguished by special symbols, giving them a right to a place in any work on Christian art, but about whom very little is really known.
Chief amongst such contemporaries of Christ to whom accident, rather than merit, has given a prominent place is the soldier who pierced His side at the Crucifixion, whose real name is unknown, but who is called Longinus, from the spear he used. Some say he was identical with the centurion who exclaimed, Truly this was the Son of God,’ whilst others are of opinion that two of the guard were converted before the end. St. Longinus is honored alike in the Greek and Latin Church, and several versions of his legend are current. Of these, the most generally accepted is that he suffered from a disease of the eyes, and after having pierced the Master’s side, a few drops of the sacred blood fell upon them and cured him. This so touched his heart that he was converted on the spot. He is said to have been one of the soldiers set to guard the tomb of Christ, and to have refused to confirm the false testimony of the Jews that the disciples had come at night to take the Body away. Later he bore witness to the Resurrection of the Lord and had to flee for his life from the fury of the people. St. Gregory of Nazianzen implies that he survived most of the Apostles, and became Bishop of Caesarea, where he was beheaded by order of the Governor, whom he cured of blindness after his own death, for, being eager for martyrdom, he prophesied that the sight of his persecutor should be restored as soon as the victim’s life was extinct. The gaoler of St Longinus, Afrodicius by name, who was converted by him, is said to have shared his fate and to have had his tongue cut out before the end, but in spite of this he went on praising God till his head fell beneath the knife.
Another version of the martyrdom of St Longinus is that when Pilate sent soldiers to arrest him they did not recognize him: but he entertained them at his house for three days, all the time burning with desire to die for Him whose blood he had shed with his spear. At a banquet given to his guests he suddenly said to them, ‘I am the Longinus you seek. I am ready to endure death, and if you kill me, you will be repaying me with usury for all I have done for you. I ask no better reward.’ They could not at first believe him, and did not wish to hurt him, but as he really seemed anxious to die, and Pilate would have punished them had they let him escape, they decided to humor him. So, St. Longinus retired to robe himself in white for what he called his celestial wedding-feast; he then embraced his executioners, urging them to follow his example, showed them where he wished to be buried, and met his fate with a smile of joy upon his lips. His head was taken to Pilate, who set it up on one of the gates of Jerusalem as a warning to others, and later it was taken down and thrown into the common sewer. Now, it so happened that a poor blind woman had come to Jerusalem to pray to Christ there, and she fell asleep by the way. St. Longinus appeared to her in a dream, told her where to find his head, and added that when she touched it she would recover her sight. The dream came true, and the recovered head was reverently buried by the grateful woman, but where has never been ascertained.
Many churches, notably that of S. Marcello at Rome, claim to own relics of St. Longinus. A chapel is dedicated to him in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; on the islet of Barbe in the Saone a stately monastery rose up named after him, which, however, possibly really owed its origin to a local St. Longinus; and in St. Peter’s, Rome, an altar was erected in his honor, in which is a white marble statue of him in his Roman armor. Some, as related above, assert that St. Joseph of Arimathea took the sacred lance with him when he was banished from Palestine; others that it was buried at Calvary with the three crosses, and found there by St. Helena. A lance, purporting to be that of St. Longinus, was long venerated at Jerusalem, where Arculf says he saw it in the seventh century, when it was taken to Constantinople. In the twelfth century it appeared again, this time at Antioch, when the first of the Baldwins gave the point to St. Louis of France, whilst the remainder was sent to the reigning Pope, who placed it in its present resting-place in St. Peter’s. The point, long preserved in the Sainte Chapelle, Paris, was lost at the time of the Revolution, but is now back in St. Peter’s.
On account of the work said to have been done by him, St. Longinus has always been greatly honored by military men, and for a reason easily understood, he is invoked by all who suffer from defective sight. The chief characteristics by which he may be identified in works of art are his armor, his spear and a crystal vase or monstrance, containing a few globules of blood. He is also sometimes represented bolding bis hand over his eyes, in allusion to the miracle related above. He is often introduced standing or kneeling at the foot of the cross, as in many Greek carvings and enamels, notably in an ivory bas-relief reproduced by Pere Cahier in his Caracteristiques des Saints,’in which his attitude is full of reverence. More rarely he appears on horseback or be is trampling a dragon underfoot as a symbol of his victory over evil. In a miniature of the Menologium Graecorum, he appears without eyes, and in the edition of the same work known as that of Cardinal Albani, the blind woman is introduced recovering her sight on finding the Saint’s head beneath a pile of stones. The actual vase containing the drops of the Savior’s blood which cured St. Longinus is said to have been brought to Mantua from the Holy Land in the ninth century, and to have led to the foundation of the see of that city. The Roman soldier became in course of time the patron Saint of Mantua, and his vase is represented on its old coinage. In the celebrated ‘Nativity’ by Giulio Romano, painted for the Church of S. Andrea, Rome, but now in the Louvre, St. Longinus is introduced holding the reliquary containing the blood; and in an altar-piece by Andrea Mantegna he stands beside the risen Savior opposite to St. Andrew. In a ‘Crucifixion,’ attributed to Michele da Verona, now in the Brera Gallery, Milan, he is on horseback, and is gazing op at Christ with an expression of the greatest devotion; in Memlinc’s celebrated ‘Calvary’ a man on horseback guides the spear, and in Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Madonna della Vittoria,’ now in the Louvre, St. Longinus appears in his armor on the left of the Virgin.
Strange to say, the penitent thief, under the name of Dismas, is also admitted to the saintly hierarchy. He is the patron of condemned criminals, and is invoked by all who would secure a happy death or are afraid of robbers. There seems to be no actual foundation for the tradition that his name was Dismas, but he is referred to by it in mediaeval hymnology, as in the following lines:
‘Imparibus mentis pendent tria corpora malis;
Dismas, Gestasque, in medio sedet ima potestas;
Gestas damnatur, Dismas super astra levatur.’
‘Of merits so diverse the three bodies hang on the cross-beams;
Dismas and Gestas, and in the center the All-Powerful;
Gestas is condemned, Dismas is raised above the stars.’
In mediaeval times it became customary, as in an engraving reproduced in the Revue Archeologique for 1844-45, represent an angel bending over the drooping head of St. Dismas and about to receive his soul. The penitent thief is generally represented on the right hand of the Savior; and sometimes, as in the picture of the ‘Crucifixion’ by Jacques Callot, the touching prayer, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Thy kingdom,’ is made to issue from his lips. When St. Dismas appears amongst other Saints in devotional pictures, he generally holds a cross in his hand, in token of his having shared the fate of the Master, or a streamer, on which his plea for remembrance is printed. As a rule, artists in their pictures of the Crucifixion have made little or no distinction between the two malefactors, but some few have marked their sense of the superiority of Dismas by making bis death appear more peaceful, and Fra Angelico, in his Great Crucifixion in San Marco, Florence, has given the penitent thief a halo. A modem Frenchman has gone so far as to introduce a woman kissing his feet, and James Tissot, in his ‘Life of Christ,’ has included a series of incidents of the closing scenes, which amount to something like an apotheosis of the rescued sinner.
Another contemporary of Christ, who has been raised to a position after death which he certainly never dreamed of occupying in life, is Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, but who is said to have openly acknowledged his faith in the Lord even before the Crucifixion. As is well known, he assisted St. Joseph of Arimathea in removing the sacred body from the cross and placing it in the tomb. Driven from the synagogue by the Jews on account of what they called his apostasy, he is said to have taken refuge with Gamaliel, to have died a natural death in his house, and to have been buried by him in his own sepulcher.
According to a beautiful legend, Nicodemus was a sculptor, and after his conversion his one delight was to carve the figure of the Lord upon the cross. He could not, however, succeed in realizing his ideal of its beauty, and one day, when he had thrown aside his tools in despair, he fell asleep beside bis work. When he awoke the crucifix with the dying Lord was finished, and the angels who had come to his aid were just disappearing. So transcendent was the beauty of the completed crucifix, which is said to be still preserved at Lucca, where it is known as the Volto Santo, that the sculptor fell on bis knees to worship it. The incident is of course often represented in art, generally with St. Nicodemus asleep at the foot of his unfinished work; but some critics are of opinion that the legend rightly belongs to another person of the same name, who was at one time Abbot of St. Sabas.
In pictures of the Descent and Deposition from the Cross and of the Entombment, St. Nicodemus is generally represented as a strong man of Jewish type without a beard. In the first named subject he removes the nails from the hands or supports the upper part of the sacred body as it is being lowered from the cross. In the Entombment he holds the shroud at the feet, or when not thus engaged, he looks on with a vase of ointment or perfumes in his hand. He rarely appears in the purely devotional subject of the mourning over the dead body of the Lord, for he was ever anxious to take the lowest place; but in some few paintings he is aiding the holy women in the sacred task of anointing their lost Master. The figure of St. Nicodemus is especially fine in the ‘Descents’ from the Cross of Michael Angelo and Perugino, and the ‘Entombments’ of Raphael and Titian, already more than once referred to, with which may be mentioned the ‘Entombment’ by Perugino in the Pitti Gallery, Florence, in which St. Nicodemus is showing the nails he has drawn from the cross to the spectators, and the ‘Dead Christ,’ by Taddeo Gaddi, in the Florence Academy, in which he is laying the body in the tomb.
Cornelius the centurion, for whom the honor is claimed of having been the first heathen converted to Christ, but who, if St. Longinus and St. Dismas really became Christians, was the third only, is another military Saint who appears in devotional and other pictures in the armor of a Roman soldier. His baptism by St. Peter, related in Acts 10, is often introduced amongst scenes from the life of the great Apostle; and an overturned idol is sometimes represented beside him, in allusion to a Greek tradition that his prayers caused the fall of a much venerated god, with the destruction of the temple in which the heathen priests were trying to make the Saint offer sacrifice. To the Bible account of Cornelius, St. Jerome adds that his house was consecrated as a church by St. Peter, and some go so far as to say that he became Bishop of Caesarea.
With St. Cornelius the centurion may justly be classed St. George of Velay, who was one of the seventy-two disciples, and was sent by St. Peter to preach the Gospel in Gaul with St. Front, noticed below. On the way St. George suddenly fell down dead, and St. Front hastened back to Jerusalem to tell St. Peter the sad news. The Apostle consoled him, and, giving him his staff, told him to touch the tomb of his lost comrade with it. St. Front obeyed, and though his friend had been buried for six days, he arose at once and continued his journey as if nothing had happened, winning many souls to God in Velay and its environs before death again claimed him. The three chief scenes of this remarkable career are represented in some quaint fifteenth-century paintings still preserved in the Convent of Les Dames de I’Instruction at St. Paulien, not far from the scene of the labors of St. George, whose fete is held on the Sunday after All Saints’ Day.
St. Barnabas, whose name means the ‘Son of Exhortation,’ and who was a constant companion of St. Paul, is sometimes classed amongst the Apostles, although he was certainly not called to that dignity by Christ Himself. He is said to have been a man of very commanding presence, and when at Lystra with St. Paul he was called Jupiter. He preached the Gospel throughout Italy and Greece, and the city of Milan claims that he was its first Bishop. According to tradition, he carried the MS. of the Gospel of St. Matthew with him wherever he went, and healed many sick by simply touching them with the sacred book. He is supposed to have been stoned to death in Cyprus by Jews, and to have been buried where he fell by St. Mark, to whom he attached himself after the well-known dispute with St. Paul on the subject of that Apostle.
St. Barnabas is often introduced in devotional pictures, especially in Venice and Milan, and in scenes from the lives of St. Paul and St. Mark. His chief characteristics are: stones held up in his robes, a cross, a burning pyre, or more rarely a hatchet, all in allusion to various legends as to his death. He generally, however, holds a book only, and wears the dalmatica of a deacon, to mark, it is said, the secondary rank he held amongst the Apostles. In a church dedicated to him at Venice, however, he wears a Bishop’s robes, and is represented throned above the high altar with St. Peter standing at his feet; and in a beautiful devotional picture by Sandro Botticelli in the Florence Academy, he is placed with St. Michael close to the enthroned Virgin.
St. Timothy, whose father was a Gentile, though his mother was a Jewess, became the close friend and constant companion of St. Paul, and after a long period of probation was chosen Bishop of Ephesus. He is supposed to have been murdered by the priests of Diana, who in a sudden access of rage against him fell upon him with clubs and stones. For this reason, he is generally represented in art either with a club in one hand or, like St. Barnabas, holding up a number of stones in his robes, these symbols being, however, occasionally introduced in the background only. Sometimes the broken image of Diana lies at his feet, and his relics, some of which are supposed to rest with those of St. Andrew and St. Luke in the Church of the Apostles at Constantinople, are said still to have power over evil spirits. St Jerome remarks that demons always showed their uneasiness by their roarings when near his tomb, and St. Chrysostom tells how they fled if those possessed hy them approached it.
St. Titus, who with St. Timothy ranked first in the affections of St Paul, though he owns no particular art attribute, is generally to be identified in scenes from the life of his master by his outstretched arms, a peculiarity difficult to explain. Tradition supplements what is actually known of him by making him a great scholar, specially learned in Homer, whom he greatly loved; but be was ordered by a voice from heaven to give up study, for the profane science of the Greeks was no food for a Saint. After the death of St. Paul, St. Titus is said to have remained in Crete to look after the interests of the infant Church there, and one day when he was preaching he caused an image of Diana to fall to the ground, by ordering it to do so in the name of Christ. On another occasion, as he was passing a temple of Jupiter he cursed it, and it, too, was destroyed, much to the chagrin of the architect, who had but just completed it, and who hastened to St. Titus, reproaching him bitterly. The Saint, however, so won upon the heathen that he induced him to rebuild the temple, this time in the name of the one true God. It became a church, and in it the architect and his son were baptized. It is further related that Pliny the younger was won over to Christ by St. Titus, and became in his turn a fervent teacher of the truth. All that is really known, however, is that the first Bishop of Crete died a natural death at a very advanced age, and was buried at Gortyna, not far from Mount Ida. When that city was destroyed in the ninth century, the body was lost, but the head was safely brought to Venice and re-interred in the church of S. Marco, where it is still greatly venerated.
Another much-loved disciple of St. Paul, the Onesimus alluded to in Col. iv. g, is sometimes introduced in pictures and stained-glass windows, holding a club, in allusion to the tradition that he was beaten to death in the persecution under Domitian. Sometimes also the great Apostle of the Gentiles is associated with his master Gamaliel, who is much reverenced not only on account of bis love for his famous pupil, but because of his having buried the first martyr, St. Stephen, and from his home in heaven revealed to the Christians in the sixth century the spot where the sacred remains still lay. Sometimes St. Gamaliel is represented holding a reliquary supposed to contain the bones of St. Stephen. In the Roman Breviary for August 3 his apparition is referred to, and in several French Cathedrals, notably in that of St. Stephen at Bourges, the story of that apparition is graphically told, the Saint wearing his doctor’s robes, the cross on them marking his conversion.
A celebrated early convert to Christianity was St. Philip, one of the first seven deacons chosen by the Apostles to work amongst the poor. He it was who first put to shame the magician Simon, and it was his privilege to baptize the treasurer of Queen Candace, an incident which has been the subject of several fine paintings, and was introduced in landscapes, both by Claude de Lorraine and Salvator Rosa. The conversion of the Ethiopian is said to have led to St. Philip visiting the Court of Ethiopia, and the people of Abyssinia still claim him as their Apostle, but nothing certain is known of his later career. According to some authorities he had four daughters, who did great things for Christ, prophesying and healing in His name, but others give the daughters to St. Philip the Apostle.
Yet another convert whose story has been a theme in art was St. Anianus or St. Aignan, who, having suffered shipwreck on his way to Alexandria, was reduced to earning his bread as a cobbler. How St. Mark gave him his shoes to mend, and healed his hand when he cot it in his clumsy efforts to do work he was not accustomed to, is related in connection with the Apostle. Converted to Christianity through this incident, Anianus succeeded St. Mark as Bishop of the Greek city, and is still much reverenced there. His Cure and Baptism are the subjects of some bas-reliefs in the facade of the Scuola di San Marco, Venice, and there are pictures of both episodes in the Brera Gallery, Milan, and the Berlin Gallery.
In Southern Germany two Saints named Eucherius and Maternus are much honored and sometimes introduced in art, who are said to have been baptized by St. Peter, and to have been the subjects of the same experience as St. George and St. Front related above. Sent to Treves to preach the Gospel, St. Eucherius died by the way, and St. Maternus hastened back to the Apostle, who gave him his staff and told him to touch with it the grave of his comrade. He obeyed, and life was at once restored. On account of this and similar legends the Germans claim that the reason the Pope has no crozier is that the See of Treves, of which St. Eucherius became the first Bishop, owns St. Peter’s original staff. St. Maternus is generally represented with three churches, one in his hand and two at his feet, in allusion to his having planted the faith at Cologne, Treves, and Tongres, and some artists give him also three mitres.
In their turn the people of Limoges claim that St. Martial, the first Bishop of the See, was a contemporary of our Lord, and add the realistic detail that after his conversion he went about preaching the Gospel accompanied by seven angels. To him St. Valerie, after her martyrdom, related below, is said to have brought her head to lay it at his feet, as represented in the stained-glass windows of the Cathedral of Limoges, in many old pictures, and on the hilt of a crosier reproduced by Pere Cahier m his Caracteristiques des Saints. St Martial is said, moreover, to have been of Hebrew origin, of the royal tribe of Judah, and some assert that he was the little child whom Jesus ‘set in the midst’ of His disciples to point the force of His teaching on the subject of simple faith. He waited on the Lord the last time He partook of the Paschal feast, and his name is associated with the foundation of the Church of S. Maria in Via Lata, Rome. His life-story is told in various old painting in the churches of Southern France, and in some devotional pictures he appears in a group with the six other Bishops, who are said to have shared with him the work of the evangelization of Provence.
St. Front, already referred to in connection with St. Martha, St. Lazarus, and St George of Puy, the first Bishop of Perigueux, shares with St. Martial and St. Eucherius the honor of having been sent forth on his mission as an evangelizer by St. Peter himself. He is said to have slain a dragon on his first arrival in France, and for this reason he is sometimes represented with one at his feet; he holds the pastoral stall in token of his dignity as a Bishop, and he appears in representations of the funeral of St. Martha standing at her feet, whilst Christ Himself is at her head. At this funeral he is said to have dropped one of his gloves, which was long treasured up in his diocese.
In certain churches of Perigord St. Front is represented receiving baptism from St. Peter in an ornate Baptistery, his parents standing by; healing; a young girl possessed with evil spirits, who is kneeling; at his feet; kneeling at the feet of St. Peter, who is giving him his staff; and restoring St. George of Puy to life by touching him with this staff in the presence of a crowd of spectators; on his way to the palace of Aurelius — who advances to meet him in the background — to heal a boy prince of a terrible disease, and restoring a drowned child to life by the way; kneeling before a heathen temple, with the overturned statue of Venus before him, a dragon issuing from the mouth of the goddess, whilst seven heathen lie dead on the ground; appearing before the Governor of Vesunna to answer for his crimes; and, lastly, kneeling with head bowed beneath the axe of the executioner, which is arrested in mid air. This last scene has reference to a tradition that all attempts to kill St. Front were in vain, even decapitation, the last resource of the heathen, generally successful, being divinely frustrated.
Amongst the women said to have been converted to Christianity in the first century, but who escaped the martyrdom to which so many fell victims, may be named St. Petronilla, or Petrena, the supposed daughter of St. Peter, whose legend is related in connection with that Apostle; Jeanne, the wife of Chusa; Plautilla, the sister of Flavius Clemens, who is said to have given her veil to St. Paul at his execution ; and Marcella, the handmaid of St. Martha. The first-named may be identified in certain early pictures by the broom she holds in her hand, in allusion to her having waited on the guests of her father; and her First Communion, administered by him, her temporary Restoration to health, with her Death, are subjects often introduced in scenes from the life of St. Peter. Although it is difficult to explain why, St. Petronilla is invoked by those who travel in mountainous countries, and also, which is more easily explained, by those who suffer from fever. In Lucca Cathedral there is a fine painting of St. Petronilla by Daniele da Volterra.
St. Jeanne, the wife of the Procurator of Herod, who is venerated as one of the women who ministered to the needs of our Lord and the disciples, is occasionally represented with a lamb beside her, some say as a symbol of her having been present at the Crucifixion of the Lamb of God, others in allusion to her office as purveyor of food to the early Christians. She also sometimes holds a purse or a loaf of bread, in manifest allusion to the same office, or a vase of perfumes, to indicate that she aided in the Entombment of Christ.
St. Plautilla has no special attributes in art, but may be recognized in certain pictures of the Death of St. Paul by her dress of a Roman matron. She is also sometimes represented as receiving baptism at the hands of St. Peter, by whom she is supposed to have been converted some time before the martyrdom of the Apostles.
St. Marcella, who is said to have been the woman who cried aloud, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore Thee and the paps which Thou hast sucked!’ is often introduced with St. Martha in pictures of the latter’s destruction of the dragon at Tarascon, and there is a beautiful fresco representing her, attributed to Luini, now in the Brera Gallery, Milan, from the Church of S. Marta in that city.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).