4 Sitjyposed Injiuence of the Eastern Church on English Ecclesiastical 



in the Tabernacle and the Temple. This would claim the deepest 

 respect as being the plan of the Divine Architect, and the subject 

 of a Divine injunction : — " See that thou make all things according 

 to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount." The veil which 

 separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was reproduced 

 in Christian Churches, and undoubtedly the earliest mode of 

 separating the officiating priest from the people during the cele- 

 bration of the mysteries was by a veil or curtain. In the Church 

 of St. Mellon, at Eouen, believed by French archaeologists to date 

 from the middle of the 3rd century, there is, at the height of some 

 10ft. from the floor, an iron crook, from which it is believed that, 

 in those early times, a veil or curtain was suspended for this 

 purpose. This apparently, gave way to an open lattice or colonnade, 

 such as is found in the Arian crypt Church at Tepekermann, in 

 the Crimea, attributed by Dr. Neale to the middle of the 4th 

 century. "This," writes the Eev. Edmund Venables, in the 

 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, " is not a close screen, but 

 consists of four pillars standing on a solid stylobate, the panels of 

 which are ornamented with boldly incised crosses. The columns 

 reach to the roof of the cave. The openings between them may 

 have been probably closed with curtains." In early times, 

 throughout the Churches of the East, the eastern wall of the 

 sanctuary was adorned with frescoes, which were -sisible to the 

 worshippers through the openings of the colonnade, or at such 

 times as the veil or curtain (if such there happened to be) was 

 drawn aside, the object being to stimulate devotion. It is in a 

 great measure from the presence of such frescoes in ancient Oriental 

 Churches that Philomonoft" argues the absence of any solid inter- 

 cepting screen. In process of time, pictures being the books of 

 the unlearned, sacred paintings would probably occupy the panels 

 of the screen itself. These would, at first, consist of one row only. 

 Then came the Iconoclastic controversy, headed by Leo the Isaurian, 

 early in the 8th century, followed (as such things ever are) by a 

 marked reaction. Can we not imagine how the veneration for 

 sacred pictures would increase, and, tier by tier, the screen would 

 grow in dignity and height, until at last it assumed its present 



