“Allegory,” says M. Michiels, “was the first language of Christian painting; not only did it express typically the Evangelical teachings, but the Divine personages themselves were metamorphosed into symbols. Sometimes, for instance, Christ appeared in the form of a young shepherd, bearing on his shoulders and carrying back to the fold a wandering sheep; sometimes He was represented as the Orpheus of the new faith, charming and taming ferocious animals by the sound of His lute.... He also was made to assume the form of the lamb without spot, or of a phœnix spreading its wings, the conqueror of death and the spirits of darkness. Thus was the transition softened down; thus did they escape the raillery of Pagans who would have turned into ridicule the heroic sufferings and the glorious humiliations of the Son of man. But this timidity could not long continue.... The council held at Constantinople in 692 commanded that allegory should be repudiated, and that the objects of their veneration should be displayed to the faithful without the veil hitherto employed. Now was exhibited to view a spectacle new indeed to men; a Deity crowned with thorns, enduring the outrages of a vile populace, or stretched upon a cross and pierced with a lance, turning His sad glance to heaven and wrestling with His agony. The Greeks and Latins were but slow in adopting this mode of representation, and did so with regret.... But the perception of moral dignity was destined to eclipse the vain pomp of Pagan grandeur. The generous sufferings of sacrifice were to become the greatest of all glories.” “Christian painting, when once established as an art on the banks of the Bosphorus, assumed a certain immobility of character. Forms, attitudes, groups, and vestments--all were regulated by ecclesiastical prescription. There was, as it were, an inflexible text-book, to which artists were bound to submit. Delicacy of colouring and nobility of attitude were the only things to recall the beauty of ancient art. Even in our days the Greek and Russian painters follow a similar plan, drawing and arranging their figures in the same manner as their ancestors of the time of Honorius and the Palæologi.”