The first unmistakable indication of the public use of the painter's art for directly religious ends does not occur until A.D. 306, when the synod of Elvira, Spain, decreed (can. 36) that "pictures ought not to be in a church, lest that which is worshipped and adored be painted on walls."[1] This canon is proof that the use of sacred pictures in public worship was not at the beginning of the 4th century a thing unknown within the church in Spain; and the presumption is that in other places, about the same period, the custom was looked upon with a more tolerant eye. Indications of the existence of allied forms of sacred Christian art prior to this period are not wholly wanting. It seems possible to trace some of the older and better frescos in the catacombs to a very early age; and Bible manuscripts were often copiously illuminated and illustrated even before the middle of the 4th century. An often-quoted passage from Tertullian (_De Pudic._ c. 10, cf. c. 7) shows that in his day the communion cup was wont to bear a representation of the Good Shepherd. Clement of Alexandria (_Paedag._ iii. 11) mentions the dove, fish, ship, lyre, anchor, as suitable devices for Christian signet rings. Origen (c. _Celsum_, bk. 3) repudiates graven images as only fit for demons. During the 4th and following centuries the tendency to enlist the fine arts in the service of the church steadily advanced; not, however, so far as appears, with the formal sanction of any regular ecclesiastical authority, and certainly not without strong protests raised by more than one powerful voice. From a passage in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa (_Orat. de Laudibus Theodori Martyris_, c. 2) it is easy to see how the stories of recent martyrs would offer themselves as tempting subjects for the painter, and at the same time be considered to have received from him their best and most permanent expression; that this feeling was widespread is shown in many places by Paulinus of Nola (_ob._ 431), from whom we gather that not only martyrdoms and Bible histories, but also symbols of the Trinity were in his day freely represented pictorially. Augustine (_De Cons. Ev._ i. 10) speaks less approvingly of those who look for Christ and his apostles "on painted walls" rather than in his written word. How far the Christian feeling of the 4th and 5th centuries was from being settled in favour of the employment of the fine arts is shown by such a case as that of Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in reply to a request of Constantia, sister of Constantine, for a picture of Christ, wrote that it was unlawful to possess images pretending to represent the Saviour either in his divine or in his human nature, and added that to avoid the reproach of idolatry he had actually taken away from a lady friend the pictures of Paul and of Christ which she had.[2] Similarly Epiphanius in a letter to John, bishop of Jerusalem, tells how in a church at Anablatha near Bethel he had found a curtain painted with the