Although he never knew the Lord on earth and was called to be an Apostle even later than St. Matthias, St. Paul always takes rank next to St. Peter, chiefly because he received his call direct from Christ, but also on account of his strong personality and the great influence that personality enabled him to exercise over all with whom he came in contact. Endowed with a keen intellect, he was able immediately after his conversion to grasp the great principles of Christianity, whilst his wonderful insight into human nature taught him how to win over to his own belief Jew or Gentile, learned or simple. Absolutely fearless, never troubled by any thought of self, with a strength of will rarely surpassed, he even dared in the cause of truth to be inconsistent, facing the scorn of his fellow-Jews with a courage which compelled even their reluctant admiration. A great preacher and an untiring missionary, his incisive utterances appealed with equal force to the heart and reason of his hearers. He won over to the faith more converts than even St. Peter or St. John; and, once won, he knew how to reap the full fruit of his victory, for he gave to his disciples a definite rule of life, free from all petty, hampering restrictions. He appeared as a reformer just when reform was sorely needed, for Christianity was in danger of drifting into the mistakes of Judaism: an exaggerated reverence for outward forms was becoming general, resulting in a forgetfulness of the inner meaning, without which all forms are dead and useless.
Of the life and work of St. Paul nothing is known except what is told in the Acts of the Apostles, but that is enough to give a very definite idea of the greater part of his career. though the beginning and the end are both shrouded in obscurity. According to a very generally-received tradition, St. Paul, whose original name was Saul, was born at Giscala, in Galilee, and taken as an infant by his father, who was of the tribe of Benjamin and the sect of the Pharisees, to Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia. He was, therefore, as he himself claimed, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; and it is supposed that the Roman citizenship, which often served him in such good stead, was the result of his residence at Tarsus, the Emperor Augustus having conferred on that town the freedom of the Imperial City. When still a mere boy Saul was sent to Jerusalem, to be educated in the school of the great teacher Gamaliel, a distinguished member of the Sanhedrim, who did much to ameliorate the lot of the Gentiles, and, according to a touching legend, not, alas! founded on fact, is said to have been converted to Christianity before his death. Under the tuition of Gamaliel, Saul became an adept in all Jewish learning, and was admitted to be a Pharisee. As was compulsory amongst the Jews, he also learnt a trade by which he could earn his livelihood, and his knowledge of tent-making thus acquired was eventually of great service to him, for his conversion, of course, shut him out from employment amongst his own people.
In spite of the toleration inculcated by his great teacher, Saul seems to have left the school at Jerusalem full of burning zeal against the Christians, whose principles were so hostile to all he, as a Pharisee, held most sacred. The first use he made of his freedom was to become a violent persecutor of the hated sect, and having received authority from the chief priests, he felt it his duty, as he confessed later, to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth. He shut many of the Saints up in prison, and gave his voice against them when they were tried for their lives. To his own bitter regret and remorse in later life, he aided in bringing about the death of St. Stephen, whose garments were laid at his feet by the executioners; and ever afterwards, it is said, he was haunted by the remembrance of the angelic expression in the young martyr’s face. Nevertheless, he joined eagerly in the increased persecution which succeeded the stoning of the deacon, and, not content with all the horrors he had taken part in at Jerusalem, he begged the High Priest and Sanhedrim to send him to Damascus, to fetch thence all who confessed Jesus Christ, that they, too, might meet the due reward of their evil deeds in the sacred city where so many Christians had already been martyred.
How the eager persecutor was checked when at the very height of his success, how heart and brain were in the same moment convicted of the great mistake of his life, is one of the most thrilling episodes in the history of the Early Church. Saul’s first question as he fell to the ground blinded by the light was a confession of defeat. ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ he cried, thus acknowledging the divinity of Him he had hated so long; whilst the next inquiry, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ was a profession alike of faith and devotion, expressing as it did a readiness to obey as well as believe in the newly-found Master. His eyes blinded with the brightness of the vision, but his spirit enlightened by this remarkable revelation, the convert meekly asked those with him to lead him back to Damascus, and there he remained for three days, probably alone, for no hint is given of anyone having visited him, communing with God and with his own heart. At the end of that time of seclusion Ananias, in obedience to the command of Christ Himself, came to Saul and restored his sight. He was then received into the Christian Church by baptism, changing his name into Paul either then or a little later. He commenced his career as a preacher immediately afterwards, amazing all who heard him, and at once arousing the fierce animosity of the Jews, who to the end of his extraordinary career never ceased to endeavor to kill him. He was soon recognized as a power by the other disciples, and chosen by them to undertake the most dangerous missions. His many wanderings, his terrible adventures, and his remarkable escapes are so clearly related in the Acts of the Apostles and in his own Epistles that it is unnecessary to enumerate them here, but the record, so exceptionally full and minute, ends abruptly, and nothing is really known of the closing scenes of his life.
That, in spite of his having ventured to withstand the chief of the Apostles on the vexed question of the observance by Christians of Mosaic ritual, St. Paul won the friendship of St. Peter is proved by various hints in the Acts and Epistles; and there seems little doubt that the two were often together in Rome, before they shared the imprisonment in the Mamertine prison just before their martyrdom. Even this, however, cannot really be proved; and although the traditions as to the last days of St. Peter are numerous and varied, absolutely no details are given of the death of St. Paul. True, St. Peter of Alexandria, St. Jerome, and St. Chrysostom, with other early writers, assert that he was beheaded; and Pope St. Clement implies that Nero himself was present at the execution, which took place on a marshy piece of ground on the banks of the Tiber outside the Ostian Gate, where the Church of San Paolo fuori le Mura now stands. As already stated, half of the body of St. Paul is supposed to be buried there and the other half in St. Peter’s, whilst his head is in the Basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano.
A touching legend relates that a Roman matron named Plautilla, who had been converted by St. Paul, placed herself in the road he would have to pass along on his way to death to ask his blessing. He gave it, and anxious to cheer her, for she was weeping bitterly, he added a request that she would let him have her veil to bind over his eyes at the last, promising to return it to her when all was over. Plautilla at once gave the Apostle her veil, the bystanders mocking her and him. The veil was used for the purpose intended, and when the head of the martyr fell beneath the blow of the executioner the bandage was mysteriously removed. No one could imagine what had become of it, but a short time afterwards St. Paul appeared to Plautilla and restored to her, her veil all stained with his blood.
According to another legend, when the head of St. Paul was struck off it bounded three times from the ground, and from each of the three spots it touched a fountain welled up, the waters of which were endowed with miraculous power. Many centuries later a Christian monastery, known as Tre Fontane, was erected on the tradition^ scene of St. Paul’s martyrdom, and is now inhabited by a section of the order of the Trappists. Three churches, bearing the names of S. Paolo delle Tre Fontane, S. Vincenzo ed Anastasio and S. Maria Scala Coeli, of very ancient date, still remain, enclosing each a spring of water, said to be those miraculously originated by the touch of the martyr’s head.
The most constant attribute of St. Paul is the sword, an emblem to which several meanings are attached, and which in many old calendars’ marks both the 25th of January, the day of the conversion, and the 29th of June, the supposed day of the martyrdom of the Apostle. This sword has reference, of course, in the first instance, to the manner of his death, but it is also often taken as significant of his having wielded the Sword of the Spirit; and in the Middle Ages it became customary to explain its constant association with St. Paul by his having been a Roman soldier, a conclusion for which there is no foundation whatever. The belief became, however, so persistent, that the Apostle was chosen as their patron by mediaeval knights, who, it is said, were in the habit of rising in church when the Epistle was read if it happened to be taken from the writings of St. Paul. For the same reason it became customary amongst artists to give to the great teacher an officer’s armor, a peculiarity sometimes interpreted as referring to his having ‘put on the whole armor of God,’ as he so often urged his hearers to do. In pictures of his conversion, St. Paul is occasionally represented as having fallen to the ground from a horse, although there is nothing in the account in the Acts of the Apostles to justify any such idea, and as a strict Pharisee, he is not likely to have been a rider.
An ingenious interpretation of the sword of the Apostle of the Gentiles was accepted by some few in mediaeval times, and embodied in a quaint Latin line: ‘Mucro furor Sauli, liber est conversio Pauli,’ which may be roughly rendered: ‘The sword is the madness of Saul; the book is the conversion of Paul,’ implying that the sword had reference rather to the fury of the Pharisee against the Christians than to the Sword of the Spirit wielded by the Apostle. Occasionally two swords are given to St. Paul, one to express his martyrdom, the other his power as a teacher. When he leans on the weapon, it refers to his death; when he holds it aloft, to the good fight he fought for Christ.
As already mentioned, the sword of St. Paul is often associated with the key of St. Peter, notably as marking in calendars the 29th of June, the day set apart by the Church for celebrating the martyrdom of both. More rarely the sword is combined with a bow, the point of the former indicating January 25th, a double symbol somewhat difficult to interpret, though it is taken to mean that the winter hunting season commenced on that day. The 25th of January is also the feast day of the ropemakers, who have chosen St. Paul as their patron, why it is difficult to explain, unless it be true, as some assert, that by a play upon words, such as was much in vogue in mediaeval times, the workers in hemp compared his conversion to the faith to their change of raw material into rope. It seems more reasonable to suppose that the rope-making was connected with the profession of tent-making, known to have been practised by St. Paul.
Next to the sword, the book is the most constant emblem of the Apostle of the Gentiles; but this is common to all Saints who were known to be writers. Occasionally, St. Paul holds instead of the one book or scroll, a collection of twelve rolls, supposed to have reference to his Epistles; and in some old mosaics, as in one in the S. Maria in Cosmedin, at Ravenna, he is offering two volumes at the feet of the Lamb.
The serpent, for a reason readily understood, is another attribute of St. Paul; and his having felt no harm when the venomous beast hung on his hand, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, has led to a belief that the Apostle is able to cure those bitten by snakes. At Malta a cave is shown in which he is said to have taken refuge after the shipwreck he and his fellow-prisoners had suffered just before the incident of the viper, and the earth from this cave is supposed to be a remedy, not only for the bites of poisonous creatures, but also for fevers of every kind, on which account it is often sent to patients at a long distance off. That St. Paul is also invoked against perils of the sea is a natural sequence of his miraculous escape in the terrible tempest, in which all hope of salvation had been abandoned.
An emblem of even deeper significance than the sword, the book, or the serpent, constantly associated with St. Paul, is the phoenix, sometimes resting on a palm-tree, sometimes hovering above the head of the Saint. The palm and bird are both emblems of immortality, one Greek word expressing them both, and the double symbol has reference to the stress laid by St. Paul on the Resurrection of Christ and the doctrine of eternal life. On sarcophagi, in mosaics, and often at the bottom of old drinking vessels, the palm or phoenix appears behind St. Paul; and in one remarkable instance, an engraving on a glass bowl figured in the ‘Vetri,’ of which a new edition was issued in Rome in 1858, by Garrucci, the whole story of the relation of Christ to His Apostles is told in a wonderfully graphic manner. The Master stands on an eminence, with St. Peter on His right hand, holding his long-stemmed cross, and on His left St. Paul with a palm behind him, in which a phoenix is seated. Beyond, on either side, are two other Apostles, and beneath this group Christ appears again, this time as a ram, with three sheep on the right and three on the left, whilst from the hill on which the ram stands flow the four streams symbolizing the Evangelists.
The same idea is even more forcibly expressed in the series of bas-reliefs on the sarcophagus at Arles already referred to, in which Christ occupies the central niche, with six Apostles on His right and five on His left hand, St. Peter occupying the place of honor on one side and St. Paul on the other, the latter holding a rolled scroll, and with a palm and phoenix separating him from the next Apostle.
Strange to say, the nimbus, the most distinctive mark of sainthood, was given to St. Paul even before his conversion, and in certain old pictures he actually wears it at the martyrdom of St. Stephen, to mark the fact, perhaps, that even then the Lord had chosen him to be His servant. In the earliest known representation of St. Paul, a single figure discovered on the walls of the Catacomb of S. Priscilla, near Rome, he has the nimbus, and in mosaic representations of his conversion it is often very clearly indicated. When he is praying, he has his arms outstretched and head uplifted, as was the custom in the early days of the Church, for it was not until some centuries later that folded hands and bent head were associated with devotion.
When, as was so constantly the case, St. Peter and St. Paul were represented together, they formed a very marked contrast to each other. The supposed appearance of St. Peter has already been described. That of his brother-Apostle, founded, it is said, on an actual portrait, was not so majestic or dignified, yet it had a very distinctive charm of its own. St. Augustine says that a certain Roman lady, named Marcellina, had amongst her household gods images of Homer, Pythagoras, Jesus Christ, and St. Paul; and St. John Chrysostom refers to a portrait he himself owned of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Tradition, founded probably on these and other likenesses of St. Paul, assumed him to have been a man of small stature, with a lofty forehead, an aquiline nose, bright eyes, and a mouth indicating great firmness of character, though almost concealed by a brown beard, which was long, flowing and pointed. The dress in which he is generally represented resembles that of St. Peter, and the conventional colors are blue and white.
These peculiarities were adhered to with great persistency for the first few centuries of the Christian era, and in early sculptures, mosaics, enamels, etc., it is easy to recognize the two chief Apostles. Unfortunately, however, later artists deviated, in the case of St. Paul, from the original type, and perhaps with some idea of realizing his own description of his many infirmities, they represented him as a man of little personal attraction.
Devotional groups in which St. Paul appears without St. Peter are fairly numerous, and amongst them may be specially noted: the mosaics in Ss. Prassede, in which he is associated with SS. Praxedis and Paschalis; those in S. Clemente, where he is seen with St. Lawrence; and those in his own church without the walls of Rome, in which he is grouped with St. Luke and Pope Honorius; the frescoes in SS. Giovanni e Prassede, representing Christ with the two Archangels, Saints John and Paul; with the oil-paintings, ‘Christ Enthroned,’ by Andrea Orcagna, in S. Maria Novella, Florence; the ‘Madonna and Child,’ by Fra Bartolommeo, in S. Domenico, Pistoja; the ‘Group of Saints Mark, Jerome, John the Baptist, Nicholas, and Paul,’ by Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Frari, Venice; and the ‘St. Cecilia’ of Raphael, in the Pinacoteca of Bologna, in which St. Paul is in attendance on the maiden Saint, with Saints John, Mary Magdalene, and Augustine.
Single figures of St. Paul without St. Peter are rare, but there is one on the walls of the Catacomb of S. Priscilla, Rome, and another in the Catacombs of Naples. Fine portrait studies of him are the painting by Tintoretto in the Venice Academy; that by Albert Diirer in the Munich Gallery; those by Rubens and Ribera in the Prado Gallery, Madrid; and the various paintings by Rembrandt, who was thoroughly in touch with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The study for the head of St. Paul by Paolo Veronese, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, is also very fine.
Amongst representations of the Apostle of the Gentiles in sculpture the following are especially noteworthy: The statue by Peter Vischer on the bronze shrine of St. Sebaldus at Nuremberg; that in S. Stefano, Venice, by Pietro Lombardo; that by Paolo Romano, in St. Peter’s, Rome; and the group by Luca della Robbia, of the ‘Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and Paul,’ in S. Pietro a Ponte at Campi.
Though not nearly so numerous as those relating to St. Peter, there exist many celebrated series of scenes from the life of St. Paul, amongst which may be specially mentioned the quaint mosaics in the Cathedral of Monreale. The cartoons by Raphael, now in the South Kensington Museum, include the ‘Conversion of St. Paul ‘; ‘Saints Paul and Barnabas at Lystra’; the ‘Preaching at Athens’; and St. Paul in Prison,’ and the same incidents are treated in the margins of the tapestries of Raphael now in the Galleria degli Arazzi in the Vatican. The * Conversion of St. Paul’ by Michael Angelo, in the Capella Paolina of the Vatican, forming the pendant to the ‘Crucifixion of St. Peter,’ and the oil-painting of the same subject by Rubens in private possession in England, are especially beautiful renderings of the Martyrdom. Very fine, too, is the fresco of the same subject by Giotto, now in the Sacristy of the Vatican, in which Plautilla is introduced in the background receiving the veil from the martyr after his death; there is a beautiful old Greek picture in the Christian Museum of the Vatican, representing the * Meeting between Saints Peter and Paul,’ which was from the first a favorite subject with Christian artists; the Louvre contains paintings by masters so different as Domenichino and Nicholas Poussin of the ‘Vision of the Apostle of the Gentiles’ when he was caught up to the third heaven, with a ‘Death of Ananias and Sappnira’ by the latter. The ‘Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus,’ the ‘Apostle Healing the Sick before Nero,’ and the incident of the Leper at Melita, are the subjects of fine works in the same gallery by Eustache le Sueur; and in the Dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, are eight paintings by Sir James Thornhill of scenes from the life of the Apostle, which illustrate well the modem interpretation of his character.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints. By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901)