Caesar Worship and Christian Art

After Augustus Caesar (Emperor from 31 B.C. to 14 A. D.), Tiberius, his step-son, reigned from A.D.14 37, and then Gaius Caligula (A.D. 37 41) was the grandson of Tiberius’s brother Drusus. Everett Ferguson “Backgrounds of Early Christianity,” Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, © 1987, 1993, 2003) says, “he foolishly depleted the treasury and became convinced of his divinity, demanding divine honors.”

His reign was marked by conflict with the Jews. When his friend Agrippa I was returning from Rome to take possession of the kingdom assigned to him in northeast Palestine, he stopped in Alexandria. This became the occasion of an anti-Jewish riot in the city: an idiot was parated through the city in royal robes to mock Agrippa, statues of Gaius were set up in the synagogues, and there was burning and pillaging in the Jewish sections of the city. . . . Gaius was a personal friend of Agrippa’s, but he had no appreciation for Jewish religion and customs. When the Jews in Jamnia tore down an altar erected to him in A.D. 40, he ordered a statue of himself set up in the temple in Jerusalem (pg. 32).

This event is reported by three ancient historians, (Josephus, Philo, and Tacitus.) The statue was never actually placed there. Ferguson reports that “Petronius, the legate in Syria, knew what this would mean to Jewish sensibilities and successfully stalled on the order.” But the order had been given; such was the emperor’s desire to show his own divinity.

Ferguson elsewhere goes on to note theories for the beginnings of “Christian art”:

Certainly in style and technique, Christian art borrowed from both classical and non-classical influences on late antique art. As a specific context for the beginnings of Christian art, since pagans decorated their tombs, Christians did too. And, in fact, our earliest identifiable examples of Christian art come from the catacombs, the underground burial chambers, around Rome. The catacombs were not hiding places in times of persecution (the authorities knew of their existence), nor were they normally places of assembly, although funerary meals in memory of the deceased were held there. The rooms (cubicula and their entrances were sometimes decorated with small paintings, and the stone slabs covering the burial niches (loculi) in the galleries were sometimes chiseled with inscriptions or simple pictures. The paintings were often decorative scenes of plants and birds, but many depicted events from the Old or New Testaments. Most popular from the Old Testament was the story of Jonah; from the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus. Symbolic representations were even more common, and the symbolic nature of early Christian art is often noted.

Particularly frequent in Christian art as a whole, as well as in the catacombs, were the pictures of the Good Shepherd (besides its biblical precedents, it was an image associated with philanthropy) and a figure in the posture of prayer with arms extended and hands uplifted (orans—a symbol of piety). Occasionally Christian ceremonies are depicted, such as baptism and meal scenes, of which the feeding miracles of the Gospels, the Last Supper, the eucharist, the agape [meal], the funerary meals are now indistinguishable. Because of the difficulty of working underground with limited light from small lamps or torches, the pictures for the most part employ a limited range of colors and a minimum of detail, more alluding to the scene than describing it.

From the latter half of the third century there began to appear among Christians evidence of a more expensive form of burial, sarcophagi (stone coffins for depositing the bodies of the deceased) with sculptured scenes. The same repertoire of biblical and symbolic subjects continued to be employed, the selection and forms of which was often governed by the existence of an image available from Greco-Roman art. Free standing, three-dimensional sculpture is rather rare in Christian art for many centuries, but from the third century there do survive small images of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd and as a teacher, as well as images from the Jonah cycle (“Church History, Volume One, From Christ to Pre-Reformation,” Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 169 171).

Given the urge of the Roman emperors to enshrine themselves in statues, and also the developing Christian use of art (especially in funerary situations), Ferguson goes on to note some connections:

Christian art had arisen by the beginning of the third century. This was nearly simultaneous with the first evidence of Jewish pictorial art, so the theory that Christianity inherited a tradition of religious iconography from the Hellenized synagogues lacks evidence.

The earliest distinctive Christian art represented scenes from the Bible. It was decorative, but some have claimed that it helped to teach. The funerary art may further have served to enhance the sacred character of the monuments.

Marks of devotion to pictures seemingly evolved from the marks of respect paid to official portraits of reigning emperors during the late empire. These portraits were considered a substitute for the emperor’s presence, so the same signs of respect due the emperor were shown to his pictures: draperies to set them off, prostration before them, burning of incense and lighting of candles beside them, carrying them in solemn processions. The first Christian images known to have ben surrounded with these marks of cult were portraits of persons venerated as holy while they were still alive. A cult of images is first attested during the fifth century and became suddenly popular during the last half of the sixth and seventh century. The reserve that church leaders such as Epiphanius and Augustine had shown toward the first images at the end of the fourth century had now disappeared (pgs. 336-337).

It should be noted that this notion that “honor” given to images passes through to the person or reality behind them was later picked up by John of Damascus, the Council of Nicea II (A.D. 787) and also Aquinas. But here you have the source for it.

Henry Chadwick provides an account of Epiphanius’s resistance to this practice:

Epiphanius of Salamis (315 403) … was horrified to find in Palestine a curtain in a church porch with a picture of Christ or some saint. He tore it down and lodged a vehement protest with the bishop of Jerusalem. Though Epiphanius did all he could to prevent the introduction of pictures of churches, he was fighting a losing battle (The Early Church, first published in Pelican Books, ©1967, Reprinted in London: Penguin Books, LTD., revised edition ©1993, pg. 281).