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HTR 102:3 (2009) XXXXX

The Crucixion Conundrum and the

Santa Sabina Doors*

Allyson Everingham Sheckler and Mary Joan Winn Leith

Stonehill College

The earliest extant public image of the crucixion of Christ appears on a single

relief panel on the early-fth-century wooden doors of the Church of Santa Sabina

on the Aventine Hill in Rome [FIGURES 1 and 2]. General scholarly consensus

dates the construction of the church to the ponticate of Pope Celestine I (422433

C.E.) as stated in the surviving inscription on the churchs interior west wall.1

Construction probably continued into the ponticate of Sixtus III (432440 C.E.)

* The authors would like to acknowledge especially the members of the Spring 2006 andFall 2008 Pagans and Christians Sophomore Learning Community, Stonehill College; a casual

observation during class in 2006 provided the starting point for this article. We also thank our

colleague, Anthony Celano, for sharing his Latin expertise and Jeffrey Spier, who read through an

early draft and provided valuable feedback and advice. Images for publication are expensive, so

we are grateful to William Storage for sharing his photographs of the Santa Sabina doors and to

the British Museum for its generous image rights policy. Stonehill College Dean of Faculty Joseph

Favazza found the necessary funding for the illustration rights. Finally, we thank the anonymous

HTR reader whose observations and queries helped us improve our arguments.1The inscription reads, Culmen apostolicum cum Caelestinus haberetprimus et in toto fulgeret

episcopus orbe . . .(When Celestine held the foremost and highest apostolic rank and as bishop

was illustrious in the whole world. . .). The basic studies of the Santa Sabina doors are Flix M. D.

Darsy, Les portes de Sainte Sabine. Methode danalyse formelle et de critique interne en histoireet de lart, in Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 37 (1961); idem, Recherches archologiques

Sainte-Sabine sur lAventin. Gologie, topographie, sanctuaries archaques, culte isiaque, ensemble

architectural palochrtien (Vatican City: Pontio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1968) 1314;

Gisela Jeremias,Die Holztr der Basilika S. Sabina in Rom(Tbingen: Wasmuth, 1980) 15; Jean-

Michel Spieser, Le programme iconographique des portes de Sainte-Sabine, Journal des Savants

(1991) 4781; Eugenio Russo, Apparati Decorativi, inAurea Roma. Dalla citt pagana alla citt

cristiana (ed. Serena Ensoli and Eugenio La Rocca; Rome: Bretschneider, 2000) 19199; Dina

Tumminello,La crocissione del portale di S. Sabina e le origini delliconologia della crossissione

(Rome: Severino Tognon, 2003) 1618. Gaetano Rubbino less convincingly dates the church to the

ponticate of Innocent I (402417 C.E.) inLa basilica di Santa Sabina sullAventino. Un esempio

di classicismo nella Roma de V secolo (Genova: Ferrari, 2002) 46.


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2 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

when the church was formally consecrated.2Although in the ensuing centuries the

image of the Crucied Christthe Crucixattained canonical status, scholars

seeking precedents for Santa Sabinas crucixion scene have failed to determine

its pedigree satisfactorily within the Christian artistic tradition. We propose that

broadening our understanding of artistic prototypes for the Santa Sabina crucixion

image to include both formal and theological elements allows for a more nuanced

and promising investigation.The scarcity of crucixion images before the early fth century has generally been

attributed to Christian embarrassment over the shameful circumstances of Jesus

death on a cross.3Nevertheless, the Santa Sabina crucixion could scarcely have

2Louis Duchesne, ed.,Liber Ponticalis 2me(Paris: Boccard, 1955) 235.3Robin Jensen provides a judicious summary of this issue in Understanding Early Christian Art

(London: Routledge, 2000) 13337. The standard work on crucixion is Martin Hengel, Crucixion

in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), repr.

in idem, The Cross of the Son of God(London: SCM Press, 1986) 93185. See also the helpful entry

on crucixion by Gerald G. OCollins in the Anchor Bible Dictionary(ed. David Noel Freedman;Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992). John Granger Cook summarizes inscriptional evidence for

Figure 1

Crucixion panel on the wooden doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome28 x 40 cm, ca. 420430 C.E.

Photo credit: William Storage and Laura Maish


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SHECKLER AND LEITH 3

materialized out of nowhere, and art historians have employed various strategiesto identify a supposedly lost Christian iconographic prototype for later images of

Christ on the cross.Dina Tumminello, for example, in her 2003 monograph4looks

at slightly later crucixion images and extrapolates backward to the Santa Sabina

panel. On the basis of early-seventh-century pilgrim ampullae from Palestine,5

crucixion in Envisioning Crucixion: Light from Several Inscriptions and the Palatine Grafto,

NovT 50 (2008) 26285.4Tumminello,La crocissione.5 Ibid., 3346. These pilgrim ampullae, which Vikan (see below) dates to ca. 600, are not

crucixions; they show Jesus nimbed head or bust hovering over an empty cross (although the two

anking thieves do hang on crosses). See Gary Vikan,Byzantine Pilgrimage Art(Dumbarton OaksByzantine Collection Publications 5; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine

Figure 2

Wooden Doors: Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome

5.35 x 3.35 m, 420430 C.E.

Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.


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a painted sixth-century pilgrims reliquary box,6 the crucixion painting in the

Rabulla Gospels (586 C.E.),7and a hypothetical image in the Church of the Holy

Sepulchre in Jerusalem,8Tumminello has suggested that the Santa Sabina panel

derives from an Eastern, possibly monastic, Christian artistic prototype, earlierexamples of which are now lost.9Her suggestions, however, remain speculative,

and in any case, the composition of her proposed parallels include more symbolic

and narrative elements than the relatively stark Santa Sabina scene.

In the catalog to a recent exhibition of Christian art,10Felicity Harley and Jeffrey

Spier also struggle with the puzzling rarity of depictions of the crucixion in

Studies, 1982). Contemporary with the pilgrim ampullae, however, is a true crucixion scene on

a Coptic magical papyrus illustrating the prayer of Jesus that he uttered upon the cross (British

Library, London Oriental Manuscript 6796), published inAncient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of

Ritual Power(ed. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith; San Francisco: Harper, 1994) 292.6Originally in the treasury of the Sancta Sanctorum near St. John Lateran, now in the collection

of the Museo Sacro of the Vatican. See R. Morey, The Painted Panel from the Sancta Sanctorum,

in Festschrift zum sechzigsten Geburtstag von Paul Clemen(Dsseldorf: Schwan, 1926) 15067. See

also Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 1819 and g. 13a; also the color photographs in Herbert

L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim (New Haven, Conn.:

Yale University Press, 2000) 5153 and gs. 4647.7Tumminello,La crocissione, 4763. According to the catalog entry for the Rabula Gospels

(cat. no. 82) in Jeffrey Spier, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art(New Haven, Conn.:

Yale University Press, 2007) 276, Massimo Bernab has determined that the crucixion page was

removed from an earlier Greek Gospel book and inserted in the Rabula Gospel in 586 when the

Syriac gospel text was completed.8

Eusebius, reporting on Constantines commissioning of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, makesno mention of images even as he catalogues the lavishness of the churchs walls, ceilings, doors, and

furniture (Life of Constantine3.2543). Eusebius was capable of describing images he considered

relevant; in 4.69 he reports that at Constantines death Rome honored him with dedications of his

portrait. They depicted heaven in colored paintings, and portrayed him resting in an aetherial resort

above the vaults of heaven. Translation by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, Life of Constantine

(Oxford: Clarendon, 1999). The pilgrim Egeria, visiting the Holy Sepulchre in the early 380s, reports

ceremonies in front of the cross (24.7; 25.89). This seems to be a different cross from the much

smaller true cross, a portion of which was preserved in a silver-gilt casket and only periodically

exhibited to the faithful (37.1). In any case, she writes of a cross and not a crucixion. In the apse

mosaic of Sta. Pudenziana (ca. 400 C.E.) the view of Jerusalem in the background is dominated by

the rock of Golgotha surmounted by a richly bejeweled cross, not a crucix.

9Tumminello,La crocissione, 6976.10Spier, Picturing the Bible.

Figure 3

Magical Amulet with Crucixion

Eastern Mediterranean (Syria?)

late 2nd3rd century C.E.

Bloodstone, 3x2.5x0.58 cm

British Museum, Department of Prehistory and Europe London

(MME 1986.05-01.1)

Photo credit: Trustees of the British Museum


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Christian art.11They consider the crucixion conundrum especially in relation to

three early crucixion representations in miniature from the Roman East: a magicalamulet of the late second/early third century with Jesus on the cross12(FIGURE 3)

and two fourth-century engraved gems13on which the crucied Jesus is anked

by six disciples on either side (FIGURE 4). Harley and Spier identify the amulet

as the earliest surviving representation of Jesus on the cross, and speculate that

pictures of the subject (now lost) may have been widespread even in the late second

or early third century, most likely in conventional Christian contexts.14

The amulet, however, is also inscribed with a multitude of occult names: not

only Son, Father, Jesus Christ, but also the Egyptian derived Badetophothand

Satraperkmephthe, among others. The catalog entry concedes that the amulet could

reect the activity of a pagan magician who, like the family of Jewish exorcistsin Acts 19:1317, included Jesus name in his repertory of magical powers.15The

amulet might equally come from a Jewish orgiven the periods uid religious

boundariesJewish-Christian occult practitioner.16For the origin of the engraved

gems, Harley, not unlike Tumminello, looks to the East and suggests that the gems

provide rare evidence for the existence of unconventional Christian images . . . at

a relatively early date in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire (Syria?).17

With regard to the amulet, it is important to recognize that magic in the Greco-

Roman world often depended on an underlying transgressive element involving

11Felicity Harley, introduction to Section Five, The Crucixion, in Spier, Picturing the Bible,

227.12Harley and Spier, cat. no. 55 (British Museum MME 1986.0501.1) in Spier, Picturing the

Bible, 22829.13Harley, cat. no. 56 (British Museum MME 1895.1113.1) and g. 1 (plaster cast, German

Archaeological Institute, Rome) in Spier, Picturing the Bible, 229.14Harley and Spier, cat. no. 55, Spier, Picturing the Bible, 229.15Ibid., 22829.16See David W. Chapman,Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucixion(Tbingen:

Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 18285. Chapman cites Talmudic debates over the legitimacy of crucixion

articles in magic. He also mentions a suggestive, albeit later, Jewish spell from the Cairo Geniza which

species that a crucixion nail be formed into a seal and engraved with magic words (183).17Harley and Spier, cat. no. 55 in Spier, Picturing the Bible, 229.

Figure 4

Engraved Gem: Crucixion with Apostles.

Romania?, fourth century C.E.

Carnelian

13.5x10.5 cm

British Museum, M&LA 95,1113,1

Photo Credit: Trustees of the British Museum


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demons and danger-laden materials and images.18Precisely because of its innate

ghastliness, crucixion had a role in Greco-Roman magic, which may explain the

motivation behind the amulet image here.19In the Golden Ass, a witchs potion

requires nails covered with the esh of crucied men,20and Pliny cites a cross

nail and a rope from a cross in a list of ingredients for amulets and spells.21From

Paul on, church leaders condemned, or at least were uncomfortable with, the use

of amulets by Christians despite the fact that this practice was widespread before

and after Constantine.22

18This is not the place for a discussion of the knotty problem of magic. Good studies include

Graham Cunningham,Religion and Magic: Approaches and Theories(New York: New York University

Press, 1999); Fritz Graf,Magic in the Ancient World(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1997); Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki, eds.,Ancient Magic and Ritual Power(Leiden: Brill, 1995).

The term magic, as we use it here, refers to forms and gestures considered by a societys elite tobelong in some way outside the framework of socially sanctioned religious activity. Often (but not

always) such activity occurs among the socially marginalized, such as foreigners, women, and the

very poor. Magic so understood may belong to so-called little or local traditions as described

by Robert Redeld in Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), or may serve as a hidden transcript of resistance

among the powerless as argued by James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden

Transcripts(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990) 14244. David Frankfurter provides

a thoughtful second wave social analysis of magic in Dynamics of Ritual Expertise in Antiquity

and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of Magicians, in Meyer and Mirecki, Ancient Magic

and Ritual Power, 59178.19According to Roy Kotansky, the names inscribed on magical amulets frighten evil demons

away. By engraving both the image of the crucied Jesus and his magic name, the fashioner of theamulet doubly thwarted the demons (Greek Exorcistic Amulets, in Meyer and Mirecki, Ancient

Magic and Ritual Power, 262). The point is that the image, like other apotropaic amuletic gures,

was frightening and dangerous, notthat the image reected the Christology of early church writers.

Henry Maguire explains that late antique magic had a tendency to create devices that were powerful

in and of themselves. In other words, the devices did not representsuch and such a specic holy

power or event, but they were self-sufcient. Magic and the Christian Image, in Early Byzantine

Magic(ed. Henry Maguire; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995) 64. On the British Museum

amulet the gure of Jesus appears in a form unconnected to any early Christian discourse on the

crucixion. Contrary to the observation of Harley and Spier (228) that Jesus nudity afrms Jesuss

spiritual power, the legs of the frontal nude gure splay painfully open over the vertical upright

of the cross and call to mind emasculation by impalement; this Jesus has more of horror than

triumph about him. He shares this posture with the second-century donkey-headed crucixionvictim on the Alexamenos Grafto (see Figure 5); both images reect the contemporary attitude

of revulsion associated with crucixion. On the association of emasculation with crucixion in

Greco-Roman thought, see Stephen D. Moore, O Man, Who Art Thou?: Masculinity Studies

and New Testament Studies, in New Testament Masculinities (ed. Stephen D. Moore and Janice

Capel Anderson; Atlanta: SBL, 2003), esp. 1122.20Apuleius,Metam. 3.17.21Pliny the Elder, Nat. 28.6. In terms of Greco-Roman magic, Jesus was an aoros, one who

had died a violent death. Names of aoroigure prominently in ancient curse tablets according to

Kimberly B. Stratton, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology and Stereotype in the Ancient World

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) 118.22For Christian amulets and spells from the fourth through seventh centuries, see Meyer and

Smith, Ancient Christian Magic; also David Frankfurter, Religion inRoman Egypt: Assimilationand Resistance(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); note especially p. 277, where,


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Furthermore, unlike the Santa Sabina panel, amulets (and gems23) are private

art. Amulets were created throughout the Roman world by artists/practitioners

who often may have been responding to local needs and assumptions. As in the

case of the British Museum amulet, the frequently eclectic mixture of Jewish,

Christian, Greco-Roman, and Egyptian divine names on magical amulets obscures

the religious afliation(s) of an amulet maker or consumer or, perhaps more to the

point, suggests uid religious boundaries.24In some cases at least, the amulet artists

may have been challenged to create an unprecedented image with no extant visual

prototype.25One problem with Harleys contention (above) that these earlier images

suggest the existence of unconventional Christian imagery is that despite the best

efforts of heresiologists like Irenaeus of Lyons, conventional Christianity, let

alone conventional Christian imagery, did not yet exist.26Furthermore, because so

much surviving Christian art comes from Rome, it is easy to forget that Christiansoccupied the entire empire throughout which they, too, were creating images. As

Christian patronage evolved beyond an interpretatio christianaof available pagan

regarding Bishop Athanasiuss complaints in 370 about exorcisms at martyrs shrines, Frankfurter

writes, And so also in the Christian saints and leaders who killed, cursed, or crafted amulets, in

the magical spells that invoked esoteric angels, Egyptian Christianity assimilated a universe of

ambiguous powers. See also Mary Joan Winn Leith, Amulets, in NewInterpreters Dictionary

of the Bible(ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld et al.; Nashville: Abingdon, 2006).23

See Jeffrey Spier,Late Antique and Christian Gems(Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2007).24Justin Megatt cautions that in the Greco-Roman world healing (often perceived as magical)

need not lead to the patients adoption of the healers worldview. Magic, Healing, and Christianity,

in The Meanings of Magic from the Bible to Buffalo Bill(ed. Amy Wygant; New York: Berghahn,

2006) 105. Roy Kotansky discusses the eclectic mixture of Jewish and Greek religious elements

in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris and contemporary texts and amulets in Greek Exorcistic

Amulets, in Meyer and Mirecki, Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, esp. 26177. See also Meyer

and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, no. 25 (sixth century) and no. 26 (fourth or fth century).

Possibly even earlier than the British Museum amulet is a privately-owned Jewish-Christian (?)

gold lamellaof the early second century which calls upon Jesus, Iao Sabaoth, Gabriel, and Uriel

to protect the bearer from a demon named Gorgopa. Published by Roy Kotansky, A Crucixion

Lamellafor Headache, inMagic and Ritual in the Ancient World, 3646.25

Paul Corby Finney argues along these lines for the new Christian image of Jesus as amagician in Do You Think God is a Magician? in Akten des Symposiums Frhchristliche

Sarkophage: Marburg, 30.6.4.7.1999(ed. Karin Kirchhainer and Guntram Koch; Mainz: Zabern,

2002) 99108.26See Bart Ehrmans accessibleLost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We

Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Regarding the question of conventional

Christian art, note Henry Maguires cautionary observation that Christian images on early Byzantine

domestic textiles were decentralized in their production and not standardized in their iconography.

Many images were ambiguous (Magic and the Christian Image, in Maguire, Byzantine Magic,

69); see also Annewies van den Hoek and John J. Herrmann, Jr., Thecla the Beast Fighter: A

Female Emblem of Deliverance in Early Christian Popular Art, inIn the Spirit of Faith: Studies in

Philo and Early Christianity in Honor of David Hay(ed. David T. Runia and Gregory E. Sterling;

SPhilo 13; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2001) 213. We are indebted for this last referenceto the anonymousHTRreviewer.


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imagery to explicitly Christian images,27a variety of bespoke Christian images

in miniature could have been created independently and in diverse locations across

the vast Roman Empire with only a few, if any, making a lasting impact on what,

after 314 C.E., would become ofcial Christian art.28

Paul Corby Finney has observed that there is no evidence for Christian art before

the third century.29Nor is there any evidence at all for a public representation

of the crucixion of Christ before Santa Sabinas fth-century paneldespite

the fact that crucixion had been banned by Constantine a century earlier.30The

traditional explanation for this absence seems correct to us: Christian artists

avoided representing Christ on the cross because it was shameful.31Non-Christian

allusions to crucixion bear this out. Cicero, in his defense of Gaius Rabirius

asserted that

the very word cross should be far removed not only from the person of a

Roman citizen but his thoughts, his eyes,and his ears. For it is not only the

actual occurrence of these things but the very mention of them that is unwor-

thy of a Roman citizen and a free man.32

27Paul Corby Finney, Images on Finger Rings and Christian Art, Dumbarton Oaks Papers

41 (1987) 18186.28The compositional template for the two fourth-century gems depicting Jesus on the cross anked

by his twelve disciples is probably the traditio legiswhich involved a symmetrical arrangement of

gures anking a central axis. See Jean-Pierre Caillet, Note sur la coherence iconographique des

sarcophages des dcennies 32040, in Kirchhainer and Koch,Akten des Symposiums Frhchristliche

Sarkophage,4445. On both gems the massed groupings of apostles suggest nothing so much as a

Byzantine liturgical procession. The apostles are not present in any New Testament account of the

crucixion, suggesting that this unhistorical composition was motivated by a specic stimulus,

possibly the power struggle during the fourth century between church leaders and imperial authority;

bishops in particular claimed that they were the inheritors of apostolic authority, an argument that

underlies the traditio legisand may have inspired the scene on the gems that links the apostles to

Christs most important gestus.29Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art(New York: Oxford

University Press, 1994) 99145.30Sozomenus (Historia ecclesiastica 1.8.13), writing in 440443 C.E.in Constantinople, reports

that Constantine outlawed crucixion. Eusebius, Constantines contemporary, neglects to mention

Constantines ban on crucixion in his accounts of the emperors good deeds, as if crucixion

were still a taboo topic in formal history writing. As OCollins points out, Josephus the provincial

Jew reports numerous crucixions by the Romans during the First Jewish Revolt (J.W.5.44951)

while Tacitus, an aristocratic Roman ofcial and writer, says nothing about them in hisaccount of

the war(Hist. 5.813).31Eduard Syndicus provides a classic articulation of this position: Pictures of the Passion and

the Crucixion did not begin until late because Christians had to be gradually educated to regard

the symbol of shame as the symbol of victory. Christian Art (trans. J. R. Foster; London: Burns

& Oates, 1962) 103 (cited in Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 205 n. 12).

32Cicero,Rab. Perd.16 [translation and emphasis ours]. See also Cicero, Verr. 2.5.165: crucixionis that most cruel and disgusting penalty.


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Among the Roman underclass, Crux! was a common profanity,33and clearlya

reex of the dynamic underlying Ciceros admonition.

Squeamishness at the idea of crucixion apparently extended to imperial Roman

reliefs on triumphal arches and columns depicting military victories,even though

Roman armies crucied their opponents during sieges and rebellions.34The Romans

may have crucied some 500 Jewish rebels during the siege of Jerusalem, 35but

crucixions do not appear among the images of General Tituss victory on his

triumphal arch overlooking the Roman Forum. Hengel observes, Crucixion was

widespread and frequent, above all in Roman times, but the cultured literary world

wanted to have nothing to do with it, and as a rule kept quiet about it.36Without

a full awareness of the crucixion taboo in Roman society,37 the malice behind the

well-known second-century donkey-headed crucixion victim on theAlexamenos

grafto38

(FIGURE 5) or the way in which the British Museum crucixion amuletparticipates in Greco-Roman societys rich vocabulary of alterity39cannot be

fully grasped.

While acknowledging the stigma associated with crucixion, Harley sees

a contradiction between Christians putatively conscious refusal to depict the

Crucixion and the internal focus of the early church, where the preaching

of Christ crucied was central.40 However, pacePauls deant assertion that

Christians proclaim Christ crucied, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to

Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23),a palpable tension exists between text and image, between

Pauls advocacy of the wisdom of Christ crucied and the developing Christian

iconographical tradition, which could not afford to associate the culturally offensive

image of crucixion with the Jesus movement. Clement of Alexandria (b. ca. 150

C.E.), for example, never refers to the cross in his catalog of devices suitable for

Christian seal rings.41In the visual record even into the fth century the crucied

33Hengel, The Cross of the Son of God, 1012 with citations. Cook (Envisioning Crucixion,

277 n. 38) cites a grafto in the Stabian baths at Pompeii that reads, Get nailed to a cross! and

suggests that this was the Roman equivalent of Go to hell!34Hengel, The Cross of the Son of God, 13842 and passim.35Josephus,J.W.5.44951.36Hengel, The Cross of the Son of God, 130.37As Hengel points out (ibid., 173), the protagonists of Hellenistic romances are often threatened

with death by crucixion but are always rescued in one way or another; only outright evildoers

perish on the cross.38 If the Alexamenos grafto had a visual prototype, it was more likely to be found in genres

mauditssuch as grafti or magic than in Christian circles.39Jonathan Z. Smiths phrase in Trading Places, in Meyer and Mirecki,Ancient Magic and

Ritual Power, 19.40Harley, in Spier, Picturing the Bible, 227.

41Paedagogus 3.57.13.60.1. Paul Corby Finney discusses this passage at length in Imageson Finger Rings, 18186.


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Christ is all but invisible,42whereas Christian writers discussed the cross and Christs

crucixion in a variety of contexts.43

Crucixion, in fact, was not the only mode of public humiliation and torture that

Christians avoided representing in visual media. While early Christian martyrologies

described in gruesome, if loving, detail the torments of Christians in the arena,

correspondingly graphic imagesof torture do not seem to appear until the fourth

century at the earliest.44 Christian writers, according to Elizabeth A. Castelli,

privileged memory and words over the idolatry of material representations.45

Eusebius and Augustine typically call for Christians to create, in Eusebiuss words,

an imperishable monument to sainted martyrs not by statues of stone, nor by

pictures of mingled pigments, nor by colors or images of lifeless terrestrial things,

but by the true word uttered before God.46

42

Crosses, not crucixes, are the rule in extant church mosaics of the fourth to sixth centuries,for example, the oor of Hinton St. Mary, England (fourth century), and the apses of Sta. Pudenziana

(ca. 400) and of SantApollinare in Classe (549).43Jean-Marc Prieur,La croix chez les Pres (du IIe au dbut du IVe sicle) (Strasbourg: Universit

Marc Bloch, 2006).44Elizabeth A. Castelli,Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making(New York:

Columbia University Press, 2004). Castelli discusses the ekphrasis (i.e., verbal evocation of a

visual object or situation) by Bishop Asterius of Amasea (fourth century) of a series of church

panel paintings depicting in graphic detail the torture of Saint Euphemia. She cautions, however,

that the actual existence of this artwork is debated (12830). Note the similar observation by van

den Hoek and Herrmann in Thecla the Beast Fighter, 228.45Castelli,Martyrdom and Memory, 104.

46 Eusebius of Caesarea, Martyrs of Palestine (longer recension [Syriac], preface, 2) cited inCastelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 104. See also Augustine, Serm. 51.2.

Figure 5

Line drawing after the Alexamenos Gratto

Second century C.E., Rome, Italy

Drawing Courtesy of Amy Bartlett-Wright, www.AmyBartlettWright.com


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Even images of the cross on its owndo not make a signicant appearance in

Christian contexts until Constantines adoption of the Chi-Rhoas his imperial

insignia,47and notably, under Constantine the rst formulation of the Nicene Creed

(325 C.E.) afrms only that Christ suffered and died, not that he died on the cross.48

However, Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, did not hesitate to draw

a parallel between the imperial tropaeumand the cross of Christ.49In an ironic

turn of affairs, Tertullian (ca. 160240 C.E.) and Minucius Felix (. 200240 C.E.)

are at pains to provide a palatable interpretatio graecaforthe cross by drawing

analogies to cross-like images and objects with positive connotations in Greco-

Roman culture: a ships mast or an oared ship, a tropaeum, a person praying, even

pagan statues of gods.50Another palliating strategy was to divert the focus from

Christs crucixion to Old Testament prophetic type-scenes such as the stories of

Moses upraised arms in the battle against Amalek (Exod 17:1112) and the brazenserpent of Moses (Num 21:69).51Also attractive was the docetic/gnostic idea that

Jesus only seemed to suffer on the cross or even that the cross was a symbol for

something else.52While the church fathers, despite their various, even contradictory,

theological agendas, viewed the cross as a symbol of salvic power, in the words

of Jean-Marc Prieur, the apologetic preoccupation is never far, and their concern

is to make the cross comprehensible and, if possible, acceptable to the detractors

of Christianity, whether Jewish or Pagan.53

An additional explanation for this disjunction between the early Christian

textual and visual record regarding crucixion lies in the Greco-Roman rhetoric

of masculinity, in which crucixion constituted a primary signier of passivity

and emasculation.54Colleen M. Conwayhas observed that, barring the passion

accounts, the much-vaunted focus on the cross in the New Testament has been

exaggerated. For example, she observes of Paul that outside Galatians and 12

Corinthians direct references to the cross are not as ubiquitous as the strong

47R. H. Storch, The Trophy and the Cross: Pagan and Christian Symbolism in the Fourth and

Fifth Centuries,Byzantion40 (1971) 10517, esp. 11112.48 A complicated story, most easily accessible in Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What

Christians Believe and Why it Matters(New York: Doubleday, 2005) 34 and passim.49Apology1.150.50Tertullian,Apology 12.3, 16.68; Minucius Felix, Octavius29.2, 67.51Jean-Marc Prieur,La croix chez les Pres, 62, notes that in the pagan world the Hebrew Bible

enjoyed the prestige of antiquity and of being a text in the collection of the library of Alexandria.52I.e., in theActs of Peter, 37, standing before his own cross, Peter instructs his hearers, For you

which hope in Christ, let not the cross be this which appeareth; for it is another thing, different from

that which appeareth, even this passion which is according to that of Christ (emphasis ours).53Jean-Marc Prieur,La croix chez les Pres, 197 (our translation). A sculptural case in point is

the so-called Passion Sarcophagus, dated ca. 350 (Vatican inv. 31525; Spier, Picturing the Bible,

cat. no. 46, pp. 21920) where the central empty cross has morphed into a Chi-Rho labarum

topped by a victory wreath, patently an image of triumph. In the left register Christ carries his

cross over which hovers a similar victors wreath, as if Jesus march to Golgotha constituted an

imperial triumph.54Stephen D. Moore, O Man, Who Art Thou? 11.


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hermeneutical tradition of his theology of the cross would suggest.55When Paul

speaks explicitly of the cross in Galatians and 12 Corinthians, he is defending

himself against accusations of weakness or lack of authority.56He parries these

charges by resorting to a philosophical ideal popularized in Hellenistic Stoicism,

that the highest degree of manliness accrues to one who willingly suffers and dies

on behalf of others.57Accordingly, Paul asserts that while extrinsically Jesus death

on the cross might appear humiliating, in actuality his suffering and vicarious death

demonstrated the heroic self-sacrice of a true man.58In these letters Paul aligns

his own apparent weakness (the feminine qualitypar excellence) with the nobility

of Christs passive endurance.

Tellingly for our argument, Conway asserts that the concept of the noble,

manly death and the emasculating crucixion are not ideas that are easily held

together in the gendered ideology of the rst century. The gendered implicationsof both images are like similar poles of a magnet, repelling rather than attracting

one another.59Early Christian writers could control the discourse of the cross by

providing any number of culturally acceptable interpretations for the crucixion

of Christ. Visual representations, on the other hand, like movies today, were fair

game for interpretation by anyone with eyes to see. Early Christians could not risk

associating themselves with an image from which the majority of their neighbors

would avert their eyes.

Any attempt to understand the background to the Santa Sabina panel requires

a willingness to work with, rather than against, this tension between text and

image. Our research supports Robin Jensens proposal that there is, in fact, a

complete absence of crucixion imagery in Christianity.60We are interested in

following up on her admonition that if narrative subjects functioned symbolically

or metaphorically in addition to broadly illustrating particular narratives, new

possibilities emergesome of which might be subtle or veiled references to the

cross.61It is with this perspective in mind that we should reconsider the Santa

Sabina crucixion.

55Colleen M. Conway,Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity(Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2008) 70. Conways chapter on Paul and the Pauline tradition argues that in the

deuteropauline epistles the crucied Jesus recedes before the exalted resurrected imperial Christ

(83). In Col 2:14, not Christ but the sinners decree of accusation is nailed to the cross, while in

Col 1:20 the blood of the cross brings peace with no suggestion of suffering. The Pastoral Epistles

avoid mention of the cross, according to Conway, because they are interested in refuting early-

second-century accusations of Christian shamefulness (87).56Ibid.,75.57Ibid., 70.58Ibid.,73.59Ibid., 73.

60Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art,137.61Ibid.,137.


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The Santa Sabina Panel and Roman Christian Iconography

First, because the Santa Sabina crucixion relief hails from Rome, it is important

to consider it within its Roman Christian context. Whereas the nationality of the

Santa Sabina sculptor is not relevant to our question of the formal model for this

image, art produced in Rome during the fourth and fth centuries is. The only

Roman crucixion scene contemporary with the Santa Sabina doors appears on

one of four narrative panels of the so-called Maskell ivories (420430 C.E.) in the

British Museum (FIGURE 6).62Of particular interest on this privately commissioned

Roman pyxis is the narrative ivory relief of the crucixion, which clearly shows

both the entire cross and Christ. While both the Santa Sabina wooden relief and

the ivory relief depict crucixions, however, many differences are apparent. TheSanta Sabina panel is public whereas the ivory casket is a private work of art; the

ivory shows both the full cross and Christ hanging on it, while on the wooden door

panel Christ seems to stand on the ground with the cross itself barely visible. In

addition, unlike the stark Santa Sabina panel, the ivory has a complex narrative

composition involving not only the crucixion but the suicide of Judas and, more

importantly, the Virgin Mary and John, as well as the centurion.

62British Museum website, Panel from an Ivory Casket: The Crucixion of Christ, http://www.

britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/p/panel_from_an_ivory_casket_th.aspx

and Felicity Harley, Ivory Plaques with the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (the MaskellIvories), in Spier, Picturing the Bible, cat. no. 57, 22932.

Figure 6

Panel from an Ivory Casket: The Crucixion of Christ (Maskell Ivories)

c. 420-430 C.E.,Rome, Italy

Photo Credit: Trustees of the British Museum


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Both images do show compositional innovations, albeit different ones. The

ivory juxtaposes the ignominiously dead and hanging Judas with an open-eyed

Christ triumphantly alive on the cross;the wooden door panel, on the other hand,

shows a frontal Christ alive between the two thieves with only the barest hint of

a cross visible behind each of the three gures. In fact, all three gures appear to

be standing sturdily rather than hanging. In both works, the artists are grappling

with a new scene, the crucixion, and have brought two very different solutions

to the compositional problem. On the ivory relief the artist has chosen to omit the

two thieves and instead has juxtaposed two separate narrative moments of the

passion. Here the cross is a fully articulated part of the scene; the viewer is in no

doubt that this is Christs crucixion and is encouraged to meditate on the irony

of Judas hanging dead on a living tree while the living Christ hanging on a dead

tree triumphs over death.If the Santa Sabina panel has no visual precedents in earlier Christian

representations of the crucixion, where then should one turn to nd a model for

its crucixion composition? Because the panel is a Roman work of art, it makes

sense to examine Christian Roman art from the preceding two centuries,63and the

two most fruitful sources of Christian art from the third and fourth centuries are

catacomb paintings and sarcophagi. In our search for a theoretical prototype for

the Santa Sabina scene, we developed a basic template consisting of:

three standing frontal male gures

gures with outstretched arms

an iconographic context of salvation.

With this template in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to nd a familiar

scene with all the necessary characteristics, and that scene appears both in catacomb

paintings and on sarcophagus reliefs: the Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace from

Daniel 3. These images exactly matched all the requisite formal and iconographic

criteria. For example, the Three Boys fresco in the early-fourth-century Velatio

chamber of the Catacomb of Santa Priscilla64provides a striking parallel to the Santa

63

See Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God, 99145, who explains why Christian art onlyappeared in the third century, and Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 911, for a discussion

of the late emergence of crucixion images and how Christian subject matter drew on earlier

decorative and pagan imagery and biblical stories. Investigating prototypes or formal templates

for crucixion compositions is a methodology employed by Jas Elsner in Pharaohs Army Got

Drownded: Some Reections on Jewish and Roman Genealogies in Christian Art, (The Estelle

Shohet Brettman Lecture delivered at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, April 6, 2008). Along the

same lines, van den Hoek and Herrmann identied Daniel in the lions den as the iconographical

prototype for representations of Theclas miraculous preservation from wild beasts (Thecla the

Beast Fighter, esp. 22829).64As dated by Norbert Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen rmischer Katacombenmalerei(Mnster:

Aschendorff, 2002) 165. An earlier dating (late second to early third century) is found in Jensen,

Understanding Early Christian Art,79, and C. Dagens, A propos du Cubiculum de la , Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana47 (1971) 11920. Despite Zimmermanns later dating of the fresco,


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Sabina crucixion (FIGURE 7A/B). This scene remainedpopular in both catacomb

decoration and Christian sarcophagi throughout the fourth century C.E.65

Before turning to a detailed comparison between the Three Boys images and the

Santa Sabina crucixion panel, it is important to consider the panels composition.

The Santa Sabina crucixion panel shows the larger standing frontal Christ gure in

the center anked by the two smaller thieves who are similarly frontal and standing.

The facial features of all three gures are rudimentary at best, although their eyes are

manifestly open. Christ, however, has long hair and a beard, while the two thieves

appear short-haired and clean shaven. All three gures have outstretched arms and

wear identical loincloths. Behind the gures is a wall of rectangular stones. Each

gure is separated from the other by a vertical wooden pier that supports a wooden

triangular pediment above his head. Both thieves heads are below the pediment

while Christs head extends into and is framed by the triangular pediment. In thepediment above the thief on Christs proper right is a small arched window.

While this is clearly a crucixion scene, the only indications of a cross are small

rectangular blocks behind the hands of the gures, the nails in the hands, and a

bit of the cross barely extending above each thiefs head. All three gures stand

squarely on the bottom edge of the panel with only the suggestion of a supedaneum

sculpted in the center of each gures feet. Except for his height and his long hair,

Christ and the two thieves are almost identical.

A comparison of the Santa Sabina panel with the Three Boys fresco from the

Santa Priscilla Velatio chamber reveals striking similarities. For instance, the

general composition of both images contains three standing, identically-clothed

male gures with arms stretched out in the horizontal orantposition. A prominent

difference between the images is the greater size accorded on the Santa Sabina

panel to the central gure of Christ, which creates a visual disruption across the

image, especially because the arms and hands of the gures are now at different

levels; even so, as noted above, all three gures in the crucixion scene look

remarkably alike. Located in the dark upper-left corner of the door and with no

actual cross distinguishable in the scene, the Santa Sabina crucixion panel can

easily be mistaken for a Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace image until one notices

the lack of ames.66

the Santa Priscilla Catacomb is one of the earliest of the Roman catacombs, having been converted

for Christian use during the third century (Spier, Picturing the Bible, 175).65 See Josef Engemann, Zur Interpretation der Darstellungen der Drei Jnglinge in Babylon

in der frhchristlichen Kunst, in Akten des Symposiums frchristliche Sarkophage Marburg

30.64. 7. 1999 (ed. Karin Kirchhainer and Guntram Koch; Mainz: Zabern, 2002) 8191 for an

excellent summary and evaluation of the literature on the Three Boys images. Carlo Carletti, I tre

giovani ebrei di babilonia nellarte Cristiana antica, Quaderni di Vetera Christianorum 9 (1975)

provides the most complete catalog of the Three Boys images, including patristic sources as well

as paintings and reliefs.66 We accept that the current location of the crucixion panel in the upper-left corner of the

door was consciously intended in order to reduce its visibility. Tumminello suggests that the currentlocation is probably not original but proposes no alternative (La crocissione, 20). See Wolfgang


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Figure 7a

Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace

Catacomb of Santa Priscilla, Velatio Cubiculum

Late second to early third century C.E., Rome, Italy

Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.

Figure 7b

Santa Sabina Crucixion Panel

Photo Credit: William Storage and Laura Maish


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Both the catacomb artist and the sculptor of the door panel chose not to include

additional narrative attributes that would more easily identify the story in question.

For example, while some other contemporary images of the Three Boys include

a prominent furnace (an example of which is found in the same Santa Priscilla

Catacomb),67the Velatio chamber image does not include a furnace (only ames),

so that the three boys stand on the ground. So, too, does the sculptor of the Santa

Sabina panel downplay the crosses because, similarly, Christ and the two thieves

stand on the ground line.

For both the Santa Priscilla Velatiochamber image of the Three Boys and the

Santa Sabina crucixion relief the artists followed the biblical text to illustrate the

Old and New Testament stories. The Velatiochamber Three Boys image shows

three fully-clothed male gures standing in ames, the essentials of the story in

Daniel 3. Similarly, the Santa Sabina crucixion image also relies on the biblicaltext for its visual iconography. All three of the synoptic gospels describe Jesus

crucied between two criminals (Matt 27:44; Mark 15:32; Luke 23:3943). In the

panel, however, the artist simply shows two crucied men anking the crucied

central gure of Jesus. At this early point in time, the artist has no interest in

depicting narrative details such as the distinction between the good and bad thief,68

the centurion, Mary and John at the foot of the cross, or other bystanders.

The translation of the three orantgures in the ery furnace into the three

crucied gures has its roots in early Christian theological typology. As early as the

mid-second-century letter concerning the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, Christian

writers perceived a parallel between orantprayer and crucixion.69In the third

century Tertullian of Carthage wrote of the orantgesture: We, however, not only

raise our hands, but even expand them; and taking our model from the Lords

Kemp, Christliche Kunst. Ihre Anfnge, ihre Strukturen (Munich: Schirmer-Mosel, 1994) 22330

and 224 for a chart illustrating his proposed conguration of the door panels. In Kemps chart the

crucixion is moved lower on the door and to the extreme right of the left door panel, making it

more readily visible. Jeremias also suggests another location (Die Holztr der Basilika, 10810).

Also see Jean-Michel Spieser, Le programme iconographique des portes de Sainte-Sabine,Journal

des Savants (1991) 4781, esp. 7478, where he suggests that the current location of the passionscene may be the original one. Regardless of its original position, the crucixions relegation to

one of the smaller panels suggests reticence with regard to the image.67Spier, Picturing the Bible, cat. nos. 5A and B, 17576.68The story occurs only in Luke (23:3943). We do not agree with Tumminello, who detects

indications of a good and bad thief in the doors depiction. She identies the good thief as the taller

of the two anking gures, the gure on Christs left (La crocissione, 14). Flix M. D. Darsy also

points out the good and bad thief and identies the good thief as the taller of the two thieves. Santa

Sabina(Rome: Edizioni Roma, 1961) 74. As we argue, the artist of this panel is uninterested in such

ne distinctions. In any case, the artistic convention as early as the sixth-century Rabula Gospels

was to place the good thief at Christs right.69The original letter dates to 177 C.E. Eusebius quotes the letter in which the writer compared

the martyr Blandina, as she prayed in the arena of Lyons, to one hanging on a cross (Hist. eccl.5.13).


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passion, even in prayer we confess to Christ.70Likewise Minucius Felix (also third

century) describes the cross: We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in

the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with

expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and

when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched.71In view of

such conscious comparisonsof orantgures to Christ on the cross, the borrowing

of the Three Boys image as a prototype for the rst public Roman crucixion scene

is not surprising.

Moreover, considered thematically, the Three Boys motif, like the crucixion

scene, is an image of salvation and thus the reliance on the Three Boys composition

for the rst public image of Christs crucixion makes sense both formally and

iconographically. The earlier painting has all the elements necessary for a crucixion

scene: a torture motif (ames), three male gures standing and facing forward, andorantarms. In addition, both images are based on the biblical text, and we know

that the early church fathers used the image of the Three Boys as a basic type of

Christian martyrdom and salvation.

The Three Boys as a type scene of Christian martyrdom appears rst in 1

Clement(late rst century), where the author describes the ordeal of the Three

Boys in the context of Gods saving power.72Tertullian follows this trend in the

third century when he describes the Three Boys refusal to worship the idol of King

Nebuchadnezzar: There is no necessity for our making answer to this command

of yours. For our God whom we worship is able to deliver us from the furnace

of re and from your hands.73Indeed, in the representation of the Three Boys

from the Velatiochamber of Santa Priscilla, the inclusion of a dove with a piece

of foliage in its beak conrms, according to Marilyn Stokstad, that the ames are

incapable of harming believers.74On Christian sarcophagi, the frequent pairing of

the Three Boys with Noah heightens the signicance of salvation for both images.

Robin Jensen suggests that both scenes emphasize rescue as resurrection, rather

than the salvation of the righteous alone. . . . The story of the three children in the

furnace is a demonstration of the preservation or resurrection of the physical body

and seen along with Noah in his ark, both images serve as typologies of baptism

(which itself contains the promise of physical resurrection).75

These themes of salvation come together in an extraordinary example: the

sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, securely dated by its inscription to 359 C.E. In

the spandrels of the lower register are small biblical scenes (badly damaged,

unfortunately) in which lambs surprisingly substitute for human actors. The three

70Tertullian, Or. 14.71Minucius Felix, Oct.29.721Clement45:773Tertullian, Scorp. 8.74Marilyn Stokstad,Medieval Art(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2004) 12.

75Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art,82; Engemann, Interpretation der Darstellungen,8191; and Carletti, I tre giovani ebrei, 96102.


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lambs in the ery furnace appear on the outer left spandrel and are matched with the

spandrel scene on the outer right, the raising of Lazarus.76Because this sarcophagus

dates after 312 C.E., we can surmise that the lambs are a symbol of Christ, the Lamb

of God, and may also stand for the Christian community.77On the sarcophagus the

pairing of the three youths/lambs with the resurrection of Lazarus communicates

salvation themes and ultimately leads the viewer to understand the scenes as types

of Christs resurrection.78According to Malbon, the three youths and the raising of

Lazarus symbolize for Christians the salvation from the ames that threaten life

[and] pregure salvation from the tomb that marks the end of life.79Surely, then,

the Three Boys images effectively serve as a prototype for the ultimate Christian

scene of martyrdom and salvation, Christs crucixion.

Technical SimilaritiesAnother similarity between some of the Three Boys sarcophagus reliefs and the

Santa Sabina crucixion panel lies outside the formal, iconographic, and theological

ties already discussed. It is, instead, a technical or functional link. When examining

the crucixion panel, we understood the abbreviated, almost shorthand, wooden

squares behind the hands of all three gures as simply a result of the artists

reluctance to show an entire cross. While this is probably true, a close inspection

of several of the Roman sarcophagus reliefs (FIGURE 8a) suggested to us a

technical reason for the strange Santa Sabina wooden blocks. The sculptors of the

sarcophagus reliefs solved the problem of bringing the boys raised hands forwardto the same plane as their fuller bodies by leaving a small stone block behind the

hands.80Braced in this manner, the hands were less likely to break off, and they

were more realistically in line with the gures bodies.

This technical solution to a sculptural problem found on some of the Three Boys

sarcophagi has perhaps been grafted onto the Santa Sabina crucixion panel. In other

words, the sarcophagus brace has become the indication for the cross (FIGURE

8b). Perhaps the sculptor of the crucixion relief also sculpted sarcophagi. Even

if he did not, he was surely familiar with the Three Boys sarcophagus scenes that

used this technical method to brace the gures hands.

76See Elizabeth Malbon, The Iconography of the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus(Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1990) 7290 for a complete discussion of the spandrel scenes.77Ibid., 7376.78Ibid., 7677.79Ibid., 77.80See, for example, Vatican, Museo Pio Cristiano, 31471, 31472 and 31489. See also Sarcophagus

Lid with Noah and the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace, in Spier, Picturing the Bible,cat. no. 42,p. 210, a sarcophagus from the Musei Capitolini-Centrale Montemartini, Rome (M.C. 68).


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Papal Patronage?

Not only are there formal, theological, and technical reasons for the use of the

Three Boys as a template for the Santa Sabina crucixion panel, but it is worth

considering the question of patronage as well. Pope Celestine, during whose

ponticate Santa Sabina was constructed, had close ties to the cemeterial basilicaerected by Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314335 C.E.) over the catacomb of Santa

Priscilla.81 In fact, Celestine, like Sylvester and three later pontiffs (Liberius,

352366 C.E.; Siricius, 385399 C.E.; and Vigilius, 537555 C.E.), was originally

buried at Santa Priscilla.82The sacredness of the Santa Priscilla location predates

even the erection of Pope Sylvesters cemeterial basilica at Santa Priscilla because

two earlier popes, Marcellinus (296304 C.E.) and Marcellus (308309 C.E.) were

already buried here.83Because so many early pontiffs chose burial here, the early

excavators proposed that Santa Priscilla had a connection to the place where St.

81See Orazio Marucchi,La basilica papale del Cimitero di Priscilla ritrovata ed in parte ricostruita

dalla Commissione di Archeologia Sacra (Rome: Libreria Spithver, 1908) esp. 2233.82 See ibid., 6189 for discussion of papal inscriptions and 3440 for tomb locations. See

also Francesco Tolotti, Il Cimitero di Priscilla. Studio di topograa e architettura (Vatican City:

Societ Amici delle Catacombe, 1970) 23757 and esp. 25257, where he argues for the location

of the papal burials in an octagonal room of the catacomb and not in the basilica of St. Sylvester

as originally thought by the early excavators of the catacomb, Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi and

Orazio Marucchi.83 For Marcellinus see Orazio Marucchi, Il sepolcro del papa Marcellino nel cimitero di

Priscilla, Nuovo Bulletino di archeologia Cristiana(1907) 115 and following. For Marcellus see

Louis Duchesne, ed., Liber Ponticalis, 2me (Paris: Boccard, 1955) 164; Marucchi, La basilicapapale del Cimitero di Priscilla, 6167, and Tolotti,Il Cimitero di Priscilla, 25257.

Figure 8a

Detail: The Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace

Relief on a marble sarcophagus,

Sarcophagus 31471Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums,

Vatican State

Photo Credit: Vanni/Art Resource, N.Y.

Figure 8b

Detail: Santa Sabina Crucixion Panel

Photo Credit: Bill Storage

and Laura Maish


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Peter, traditionally the rst pope, was known to have preached and baptized, making

this cemetery a suitable resting place for later pontiffs.84

Additional visual evidence of the papal connection to Santa Priscilla and,

presumably, its decoration, is a now-lost mid-fourth-century fresco in the Santa

Priscilla catacomb that depicted the apostolic succession, the traditio legis, Christ

giving the law to St. Peter. This fresco was often cited as visual evidence for St.

Peters early ties with this location.85In a recent study Linda Sue Galate mentions

the lost fresco and then suggests that the fresco scenes in the Velatiochamber in

Santa Priscilla illustrate episodes from the second-centuryActs of Peter.86Whether

the seated male gure in the Velatiofresco is St. Peter or not, the gure is shown

in a position of authority, seated on a throne-like chair. This is the same chamber

that contains the Three Boys image discussed above, which so strikingly resembles

the composition of the Santa Sabina crucixion. It is certainly conceivable thatCelestine, a pope who chose to be buried in the same sacred locationSanta

Priscillawhere previous pontiffs were interred, would have been familiar with

the images in the catacomb.87Although no archaeological or archival evidence

exists to substantiate this proposal, it is not unreasonable to imagine that Celestine

himselfintimately familiar with both the catacomb of Santa Priscilla and the

84Marucchi,Labasilica papale, 90113.85See ibid. for an extensive discussion of Peters connection to Priscilla. See Tolotti,Il Cimitero

di Priscilla, 33940, for the location and discussion of the lost traditio legisfresco.86

Linda Sue Galate mentions the lost fresco and suggests that the chamber at the catacomb ofSanta Priscilla where the Velatiois located is another instance in which miracles of Peter narrated

in the second-century Acts of Peter are depicted. She proposes that the two anking scenes are

depictions of resurrection miracles performed by St. Peter. According to Galate, the scene on the

left depicts the resurrected senator and his mother bringing offerings to Peter (Acts of Peter28).

The suckling mother and child scene on the right she interprets as the talking baby episode in the

Acts of Peter 15 (The Apostle Peter in Rome? Archaeology Online News, 10 January, 2002:

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/peter.html). For other interpretations of the Velatioimagery,

see Nicola Denzey, The Bone Gatherers(Boston: Beacon, 2007) 7579 and 85, who suggests that

interpretations of the Velatioimages as either a marriage ceremony or the consecration of a church

virgin are incorrect. She proposes that the image on the left shows the deceased woman in the act

of reading before a bishop, an act the woman wanted to portray because it was both learned and

pious (85). Dagens identies the depictions as the rst representation of a Christian marriage(129). Marucchi identied the seated male church gure depicted on the left of the veiled orant

woman as a pope and used this image as well as other incised grafti of a cathedra to propose

a connection between Peter, according to tradition the rst pope, and Santa Priscilla (La basilica

papale del Cimitero di Priscilla, 1089).87Celestine himself is known to have commissioned paintings depicting the Council of Ephesus

at St. Sylvesters cemeterial basilica over Santa Priscilla. De Rossi rst mentioned the paintings

in an article published in 1880 in the Bullettino di archeologia cristiana,3d ser., 5 (1880) 4346.

See Tolotti, 31819, who does not discount the existence of paintings commissioned by Celestine

in the cemeterial basilica and recorded in the letter of Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne. See also

Marucchi, Guida del cimitero Priscilla (Paris: Descle, 1903) 106. Darsy points out that the rst

two lines of the Santa Sabina inscription (see n. 1, above) allude to the Council of Ephesus, called

by Celestine and at which he succeeded in securing the primacy of Rome over the other bishops(Santa Sabina, 9596).


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Church of Santa Sabinachose the iconographical prototype of the Three Boys

for the Santa Sabina crucixion panel.

Conclusion

The search for a single iconographic prototype behind the various, and quite

different, representations of the crucixion of Christwhether on a magical amulet

from Egypt, a door panel of the Church of Santa Sabina in Rome, a small ivory

box, or the Syrian Rabula Gospelsis essentially based on the false premise of a

homogeneous Christianity, a seductive ideal dating back to the earliest Christian

centuries, with which New Testament and church historians have only begun to

come to terms in recent decades. There was, of course, a general trajectory toward

a Christian textual canon, a constant alertness on the part of each Christian faction

for what they would consider heresy in others, and, with the Peace of the Church

in the fourth century, an imperial policy to organize the church and bring its

various factions into line. Nevertheless, if we include, as we surely must, visual

representations of the crucixion in the body of what Averil Cameron has called

Christian discourse, then, to paraphrase Cameron, we must avoid giving a false

impression of Christian unanimity if we wish to do justice to the spread of that

discourse.88

The fact that the earliest surviving Christian art is concentrated in Rome can

also create a distorting lens through which to contemplate Christian imagery when

artistic traditions in other areas of the empire have not survived to any great extent.In other words, there were probably a number of different inspirations, rather than

some single lost tradition, for the images of the crucixion that start to appear

in the early fth century, including the Santa Sabina crucixion.89Even in Rome,

as we have seen, two fth-century crucixion scenes have different inspirations.

The Maskell Ivory version probably reects learned theological rhetoric about the

crucixion, perhaps a homily that drew a parallel between Jesus good death and

Judass bad one. On the other hand, the prototype for the Santa Sabina panel was

a widely known, popular image of salvation, the Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace.

With no established convention for the crucixion scene, artists and patrons

were faced with the challenge of creating a new composition almostbut notquitefrom scratch.90

88 Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian

Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) 41. This comment is propos of the

rst and second centuries, but applies to the third through fth centuries as well.89As for the sixth- and seventh-century crucixion images presented by Tumminello, Vikans

work on pilgrimage art suggests that Eastern examples arose in connection with pilgrimage to

the Holy Land.

90Why the Santa Sabina and Maskell Crucixions appear in Rome when they do is a subjectwe will be investigating further.

leithsheckler102 3 libre

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