Antiquity Of The Madonna
ANTIQUITY OF THE MADONNA
As to the question of anachronism in interpreting the Madonna in the Virgin of the Apocalypse, so far from allowing it, I consider that it is built upon a mere imaginary fact, and that the truth of the matter lies in the very contrary direction. The Virgin and Child is not a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, He with His hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, and, I will add, of her influence with her Son. Why should the memory of His time of subjection be so dear to Christians, and so carefully preserved? The only question to be determined, is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans call the “undivided Church” is certain; but lately investigations have been pursued, which place some of them at an earlier date than anyone anticipated as possible.
In the Catacombs we have various representations of the Virgin and Child; the latest of these belong to the early part of the fourth century, but the earliest may be from the very age of the Apostles. This conclusion is reached from the style and the skill of its composition, and from the history, locality, and existing inscriptions of the subterranean in which it is found. However we do not go so far as to insist upon so early a date; yet the utmost concession could be to refer the painting to the era of the first Antonine Emperors, that is, to a date within half a century of the death of St. John. I consider then, that, as you would use in controversy with Protestants, and fairly, the traditional doctrine of the Church in early times, as an explanation of a particular passage of Scripture, or at least as a suggestion, or as a defense, of the sense which you may wish to put upon it, quite apart from the question whether your interpretation itself is directly traditional, so it is lawful for me, though I have not the positive words of the Fathers on my side, to shelter my own interpretation of the Apostle’s vision in the Apocalypse under the fact of the extant pictures of Mother and Child in the Roman Catacombs.
Again, there is another principle of Scripture interpretation which we should hold as well as Protestants, viz., when we speak of a doctrine being contained in Scripture, we do not necessarily mean that it is contained there in direct categorical terms, but that there is no satisfactory way of accounting for the language and expressions of the sacred writer s, concerning the subject-matter in question, except to suppose that they held concerning it the opinion which we hold,—that they would not have spoken as they have spoken, unless they held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of this principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy Trinity; I should not have found out that doctrine in the sacred text without previous traditional teaching; but, when once it is suggested from without, it commends itself as the one true interpretation, from its appositeness,—because no other view of doctrine, which can be ascribed to the inspired writers, so happily solves the obscurities and seeming inconsistencies of their teaching.
–Letter to Dr. Pusey