ST. PETER AS MOSES AND ARREST OF ST. PETER

From a sarcophagus in the Lateran Museum

From Marucchi's "I Monumenti del Museo Cristiano Pio-Lateranense" (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli)

of the New Covenant, the Lawgiver and Leader of the Catholic Church of Christ, specially sent and commissioned that he may bring the people of God through the wilderness of earthly life to the Land of Promise, the spiritual Canaan. No image could possibly have been chosen which would express more fully and conclusively the whole doctrine of the Supremacy of Peter and of his successors in the Pontifical office.

The giving of the Law on Sinai is not the only incident in the life of Moses which finds frequent representation in the monuments of the earliest centuries. Another attitude in which he is often depicted is striking the rock and causing the water to flow forth for the relief of the thirsty multitude. This representation, again, like all those which are found in the catacombs, must not be taken as merely historical, but as conveying a second and mystical interpretation drawn from the words of St. Paul: "And they drank of the Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. X. 4). Moses is the representative, that is, of the authority of the Church, who draws forth from the Rock the living stream of Divine grace for the nourishing and refreshment of the souls of her children. Here, again, it is interesting to note that St. Peter was regarded as the authority in the Church of whom the type in the older Covenant had been presented by Moses. It is not only that the features of the Lawgiver as he strikes the rock are generally those which every Roman Christian knew and recognized at once as those of the Prince of the Apostles, but that the actual name of Peter is not infrequently inscribed, especially in the gilded glasses of the third and fourth centuries, as if to ensure that the application should always be realized. There are two well-known examples in the Vatican Library, in each of which the inscription consists only of the name of PETROS, A still more

notable example, which we have already quoted in
another connection, is to be found in the well-known

dish, found originally at Podgoritza in Dalmatia, but

VASE FOUND AT PODGORITZA.

(From Marucchi's "Eléments d'Archæologie," Descle De Brouwer et Cie.)

now in the collection of M. Basilewski at Paris, on which the inscription is given in full, PETROS VIRGA PERQVODSET FONTES CIPERVNT QVORERE-Peter

struck with his rod, the fountains began to flow. Analogous again to these is a glass which is now preserved in the British Museum, on which is represented the Chair of Peter, surmounted by the monogram of Christ. It has in the background the rock, from which water is flowing, and on the top of the rock rises the Christian altar. The whole might well serve as an illustration of the words of Pope Innocent I to the Fathers of Africa, when he spoke of the Chair of Peter as being the source "whence all waters issue and flow through all the regions of the world as pure streams from a spotless fountain (Constant., “Epist. Rom. Pont.,” p. 801).

The Good Shepherd.

Another class of representations must next engage our attention. No figure is more frequent or

more characteristic of the art of the catacombs than that of our Blessed Lord in the character of the Good Shepherd. He is commonly represented as a beardless. youth bearing a lamb upon his shoulders. But sometimes, as notably in the case of an ancient statue found in the course of the excavating the lower church of S. Clemente at Rome, the same attitude was adopted for the statues of St. Peter, the Shepherd to whom Christ assigned His flock, and who was charged with the duty of feeding the sheep and guiding the flock in the place of his Master. Another important monument which sets forth the same idea in a slightly different manner may be found in a sarcophagus which is one of the most beautiful and interesting of those preserved in the Lateran collection. Christ, wearing the dress of a shepherd, and carrying the shepherd's staff in His hands, stands in the midst of the Apostles, all similarly habited as shepherds, and each one having in front of him a sheep to represent the portion of the

flock committed to his charge. On the right of our Lord stands St. Peter, and St. Paul in the corresponding place on His left. The general subject of the design is evidently the Shepherd of shepherds in the midst of those to whom collectively He has assigned the care of His flock. But He turns especially towards St. Peter, and lays His hand as if in benediction upon the sheep that belongs to him and stands immediately before him. It brings back irresistibly to the mind the words once spoken so solemnly to that Apostle: "Feed My sheep," and seems to repeat to us the truth that the flock of Peter is in a special way the flock of Christ, and that Peter, more than the other Apostles, is charged with the care of all and general superintendence.1

Papal Sepulchres.

The places of burial selected for the earliest Popes are worth a moment's consideration in this connection. It is manifest that they were generally considered to hold a relation to St. Peter, which was quite other than that in which they stood to St. Paul. The earliest bishops of Rome were buried on the Vatican close round the tomb which contained the relics of the Apostle. There their bodies were found, in the excavations in 1626, still largely preserved by the quasi-embalming process to which they had been subjected, and surrounding St. Peter like bishops attending a council.2 When no more space was available at the Vatican, the next series of Pontiffs, from Pope St. Zephyrinus onwards in A.D. 220, were laid in the so-called Papal Crypt, in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, since that cemetery had now become the official property of the Church. When this very fact led to its 1 See plate opposite p. 166.

2 Barnes, "St. Peter in Rome," p. 323.