THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 315

Mosaics and Early Christian Art in Britain

21.8. Mosaics and Early Christian Art in Britain

The most splendid feature of the early churches was the mosaic work which from the Constantinian age adorned their vaults and especially the conches of their apses. Such mosaics were generally formed of small cubes of glass variously coloured and gilded. At the same time mosaics of marble of the more ordinary Roman kind were used for floors.

The glass mosaics and even gilt tesserae had been employed under the Roman Empire. Glass is found so far West as Cirencester, where small parts of a floor are of that material. Gold mosaic has been found on the vaults of the Baths of Caracalla and of the Palatine Palace; also in North Africa. Quite recently a mosaic having gilt cubes has been found at Pompeii. It is next to certain that, like the vessels of gilded glass, this kind of mosaic came from the factories of Egypt. There is in the British Museum a small glass plaque, decorated with a flowering plant of several colours fused into its substance. This was found in London, while similar pieces, now at South Kensington, have lately been discovered at Behnesa in Egypt. The earliest existing Christian mosaics are those of the vaults of the round church of Santa Costanza in Rome. Besides the mosaics mentioned above there are two small, much injured, conches which display figure subjects. In one of them God the Father gives the ancient Law to Moses, and in the other St Peter receives the new Law from the hand of Christ The whole of the central dome was once covered with mosaic, but of this only a slight drawing is now preserved.

The next mosaic in point of date, but more interesting and beautiful as a work of art, fills the apse of the basilica of Santa Pudentiana. This church, not far from the better known Santa Maria Maggiore, is deeply sunk in the ground, itself a mark of a primitive foundation. The apse mosaic forms part of a work undertaken about 390. On it Christ sits enthroned in the midst of a semicircle of apostles, while behind St Peter and St Paul stand two female figures robed in white and holding crowns; these are interpreted as the Churches of the Circumcision and of the Gentiles. Behind Christ on a mountain stands a vast jewelled cross, and on the sky are the four symbolic beasts. This noble work still retains much of classical grace, the fixity characteristic of Byzantine art is entirely absent. The colour, also, is fair and extremely beautiful, gold being used to illuminate the high lights of the draperies and other parts, but not in broad fields as in the later mosaics.

It is desirable to include here some account of Early Christian art in Britain. The discovery, about twelve years ago, of the perfect plan of a small early basilican church at Silchester makes more certain than anything else had done the existence of recognised Christian communities in British cities. The Silchester church occupied an important position near the civil basilica, but in itself was quite small. It had a nave about ten feet wide and aisles five feet; the length, including the apse, which was at the west end, was about thirty feet. The aisles had a small additional projection at the end next the apse, which made the whole plan cruciform. At the cast end was a narthex, and in front of that a court with a fountain in the centre. The position of the altar in the apse was marked by a square of pattern-work in the mosaic floor. This pattern, of the chess-board type, is in quarters, what heralds call quarterly. A very accurate model of this important relic is now in the Reading Museum.

It is well known that the XP monogram appeared on a mosaic floor found about a century ago at Frampton, and figured by Lysons. The monogram occurred in the centre of a band of ornament which separated an apse from a square compartment. Lysons thought that the general style of the ornaments of the apse scorned "inferior to that of the square part," and spoke of the monogram as "inserted." The last writer on Christian antiquities in Britain, in Cabrol's great Dictionary, says that the monogram must have been "inserted" at some time not earlier than the middle of the fourth century. Lysons tried to suggest, being interested in the Roman art point of view, that the pavement was pre-Constantinian, but he himself remarked that the pattern on a neighbouring area occurred also on the vault mosaics of Santa Cos Lanza at Rome, a work of the second half of the fourth century. This is, probably, the date of the whole of the Frampton mosaics, and a consideration of the sequence of the turns of the scroll ornament in the middle of which the monogram was found shews that the scroll-work and the symbol certainly formed part of one design. The only other subject figured on the floor of the apse, excepting patterns, was a single vase or chalice in the middle. At the Roman villa at Chedworth again the XP monogram has been found out in the foundation stones of some steps. In the museum on the site there is also a small plain stone cross.

Mr Romilly Allen suggested that two other Roman pavements found in this country may possibly be Christian; — that at Harpole which has a circle in the middle divided into eight parts by radial lines so as to resemble one form of the monogram of Christ, and that at Horkstow which has some small red crosses in the decoration. The latter not only has the crosses, but at the centre is Orpheus playing the lyre, a subject frequently found in Early Christian art. The writer in Cabrol’s Dictionary has independently come to the conclusion that this mosaic is Christian. "It has passed unrecognised," he says, "but we have no doubt of its Christian origin." Now, if this mosaic with the catacomb subject of Orpheus and the beasts is Christian, is it not probable that the several other British mosaics which display the same subject are also works of Christian art? All these mosaics probably date from about 350, when the Church must have been a recognised institution in every city, and it is difficult to think that the subject, once Christianised, should have been employed in another sense.

An Orpheus pavement was found at Littlecote Park, Ramsbury, at the centre of a triapsidal apartment resembling the Roman Christian burial chapels. Yet another pavement, at Stourton, had a quartered design practically identical with that of the altar space of the Silchester basilica. The subject of Orpheus is known to have occurred four times in the catacombs, but none of these appear to have been later than the third century, and it has indeed been suggested that the subject was taken over in profane art, especially in Gaul and Britain, but this is unproven, and in any case we get the Christian influence.

Several British pavements are known in which ornamental cross-forms appear. It has been said that these cannot be Christian, as the cross symbol did not come into general use at so early a time. But the many instances which have now been found contradicting this view reopen the question. With those Roman objects having crosses which have been found in England may be mentioned the chain-bracelet with an attached cross. A comparison with fig. 1606 in Cabrol’s Dictionary makes it almost certain that it is Christian. Perhaps the most important Christian documents found in Britain are ingots of pewter found in the Thames at Battersea which are stamped several times over with the XP monogram surrounded by the words, Spes in Deo. These look like official marks.

When a full history of Early Christian art in Britain is written it will be seen that it shared in the great movement of the time, although of course it was second to Gaul and third to Italy.

This marks the end of The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I

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