Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art:

The Nature Miracles of Christ

6 The Nature Miracles of Christ Nearly a century after the birth of Christian art in the catacomb of Callistus, the pervasive theme in Christian relief sculpture was the image of Christ the Miracle Worker.1 On Christian sarcophagi now housed in museums in Rome and Arles, the earliest examples bear a date of the late third century, while most date from the fourth to the fifth centuries.2 In the fourth century, the catacomb images and sarcophagi share some thematic overlap. In the catacombs of Via Latina and Peter and Marcellinus, images dating from the late third and the fourth centuries feature Christ’s healings and miracles, while parallel examples, such as the sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus, provide multiple portrayals of the miracles of Christ.3 Relief sculpture such as sarcophagi continued the popular tradition of depicting Christ’s miracles well into the late fourth and early fifth centuries. 4 While difficult to date with any certainty, several of the latest examples bear a provenance of the early fifth century. Several in particular at the Museo Pio Cristiano have a later dating from the end of the fourth century to the beginning of the fifth century (following Bovini and Brandenburg, and the Vatican Museum’s own dating): the sarcophagus with the Bethesda miracle (Figure 6), the sarcophagus of the traditio legis, and the sarcophagus with 1. David Knipp calls this art “Theodosian art” to mark the era of the later emperor—an odd choice, since the dating of artifacts is so difficult and there is obvious overlap with other ruling eras of other emperors. Knipp, “Christus Medicus” in der frühchristlichen Sarkophagskulptur: Ikonographische Studien der Sepulkralkunst des späten vierten Jahrhunderts (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 22. 2. These museums are the Museo Pio Cristiano in the Vatican, the Musei Capitolini and Museo Nazionale Romano delle Terme in Rome, and the Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence antiques in France. Deichmann is an invaluable resource for examining the chronology of Christian sarcophagi. For example, in his catalog of sarcophagi at the Vatican, one fragment dates from the late third century (pl. 696). Deichmann’s chronology supports an early dating for Christian sarcophagi of the late third century. 3. In the Terme museum in Rome, from the second quarter of the fourth century. 4. See Walther Kuhn, Frühchristliche Kunst aus Rom (Essen: Villa Hügel, 1962); and Erich Dinkler, Der Einzug in Jerusalem (Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1970). 129 the crossing of the Red Sea. Images of Christ performing healings, such as the paralytic scene, are interspersed in the same frame with images of Christ dividing loaves and raising Lazarus. Each individual scene displays the triumphant power of Christ. Within the sarcophagus frontal, the individual scenes operate as notes in a symphonic tableau, exuding an overall programmatic message of the superiority and unique nature of Christ. As late as the fourth century, the early Christians still had not completely developed their own visual language of salvation. Instead, images of Hercules, Orpheus, and the healing god Asclepius were used to evoke Christ. The art seems underdeveloped relative to the theological advancements taking place in fourth-century Christianity. Art, of course, operates differently than philosophy or theology, and the development of Christian art, in particular, was slowed by the fact that Christians did not have much land or capital until the third century. Therefore, it should not be entirely surprising that Greco-Roman images and prototypes were still in use in Christian art into the fourth century. Adaptation and annexation were key components in the construction of Christianity’s visual language. Early Christians experimented with different prototypes in the development of a visual language.5 Christian art did not arrive ex nihilo; the process of establishing visual representations included borrowing elements from outside influences. The evidence reveals that early Christians found the image of Christ’s healings and miracles particularly resonant. The early Christians made choices in their iconographical patterns, and several of those choices included representative images of Christ’s healings and miracles. These choices in early Christian art not only include representations of Jesus raising the dead, but also show Jesus performing miracles that are not directly related to healing—for example, dividing loaves or turning water into wine. Since these miracles suggest Jesus’ mastery over the natural world, they often carry the label “nature miracles,” a label that is quite appropriate. The division of loaves and the Cana miracle are not the only miracles from the gospels that can...