EARLY CHRISTIAN ART AND INSCRIPTIONS 



tured on the west side with the eagle of St. John, the lion of St. Mark 

 and the angel of St. Matthew, each enclosed within a circular medallion. 

 The three other sides have similar medallions enclosing beasts, some with 

 wings, others with their tails bent round between the hind legs, but all 

 looking backwards and grinning so as to show a horrible set of teeth. 



The top of the bowl is decorated in the same way as in the case of 

 the other fonts of the series. 



Having now given an account of all the details of the four fonts of 

 the Winchester type in Hampshire, we are in a position to examine the 

 group as a whole. 1 



The Hampshire series of fonts are interesting as perpetuating three 

 of the most ancient Christian symbols the dove, the cup or vase and 

 the vine, all of which were originally borrowed either from a Jewish 2 or 

 more probably from a classical 3 source, and are used either separately or 



1 It may be remarked that the Hampshire examples are not the only ones of the kind in England, 

 there being at least three others, namely (l) in Lincoln Cathedral ; (2) in St. Peter's church, Ipswich ; 

 and (3) in Thornton Curtis church, Lincolnshire. Fonts belonging to the same class exist at the 

 following places on the continent : 



BELGIUM 



Zedelghem near Bruges (Reliquary for 1898, p. 259). 



Termonde near Ghent (P. Saintenoy's Font Baptismaux, p. 91, and Messager des Sciences et des Arts 

 de la Belglque for 1838, p. 233). 



Lichtervelde (Messager des Sciences, etc., for 1857, p. 144). 



FRANCE 



Montdidier, Somme (Viollet le Due's Dictionnaire raisonnh de I' Architecture, v. 536, and C. Enlart's 

 V Architecture nmane dans la Region plcarde, p. 37). 



Nordpeene, Nord (Revue de f Art chretien for 1895, p. 313). 



Vermand, Aisne (ibid. p. 319). 



Ribemont, Aisne (ibid. p. 312). 



Noiron le Vineaux, Aisne (Nesfield's Continental Sketches'). 



St. Just, Oise (A. de Caumont's Court d* Antlqulth monumentales : Atlas, pi. 87). 



La Neuville les Corbie (La Plcardle Hlstorique et Monumentale, No. 6, 1899, p. 473). 



The Very Rev. G. W. Kitchin, D.D., F.S.A., formerly dean of Winchester and now dean of 

 Durham, has shown in his valuable paper on the ' History of the Cathedral Font, Winchester,' in the 

 Journal of the British Archteological Association (1. 6), that all the fonts enumerated in the above list were 

 made at Tournai in Hainault from a hard marble of a dark blue-black colour, obtained from the neigh- 

 bouring quarries on the banks of the river Scheldt. There appears to have been a very remarkable 

 school of ecclesiastical art in the twelfth century at Tournai, and the sculptured fonts which were pro- 

 duced there at that period were so much appreciated that they were exported from Belgium to the 

 north of France and to England. The transport of such bulky objects was in all probability effected as 

 far as possible by ship. Dean Kitchin points out that the popularity of St. Nicholas in Europe dates 

 from the time when 'in 1087 Italian merchants trading with the East brought over to Bari, on the 

 south Adriatic coast of Italy, besides their ordinary merchandise, the bones of St. Nicholas.' In Eng- 

 land St. Nicholas became known through the mystery play written by a Benedictine monk named 

 Hilary in A.D. 1125, and Wace's Anglo-Norman Life of St. Nicholas written in the middle of the twelfth 

 century. From these facts Dean Kitchin concludes that the date of the Winchester font must be some 

 time in the latter half of the twelfth century, and therefore must have been brought over from Belgium 

 either by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester (A.D. 1229 to 1271), or his successor in the episcopate, 

 Richard Toclive (A.D. 1174 to 1188). The shape of the mitre worn by St. Nicholas as represented on 

 the Winchester font points towards the same period. The only other instance of the occurrence of 

 scenes taken from the legendary life of St. Nicholas in Norman sculpture is on the font in the parish 

 church at Brighton, which is dedicated to that s-unt. The font at Brighton is cylindrical and therefore 

 of an entirely different kind from that at Winchester. The font at Zedelghem near Bruges however, 

 given in our list, has scenes from the life of St. Nicholas sculptured upon it, and treated very much in 

 the same way as on the Winchester font. 



2 Dean Burgon's Letters from Rome, pp. 130, 163, 233. 



3 The celebrated mosaic from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli now in the Capitoline Museum at Rome 

 represents four doves perched on the edge of a bowl of water, and one of them drinking from it, as 

 described by Pliny (lib. xxxvi. c. 60). 



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