Author(s): Florin Jula / Language(s): Romanian
Issue: 1/2009
The associations of the symbol named chrismon with other
symbolic images and texts. The chrismon represents the name and the abbreviation
of Jesus Christ and it occurs in association with basic symbols of early
Christianity. The research works related to the associations of the chrismon
encountered on different objects have been the topics for numerous researchers
in the field. Nevertheless, it hasn’t come to my knowledge of studies which
should synthetize these efforts and gather the results of the discoveries to present
them in an integrate manner. The difficulties derive from the strenuous access
to the objects which make the repertory of the work, as well as from the lack of
catalogues which should contain colorful images with these objects.
The author proposed himself to analyze the causes which led to the elaboration
of the associations and their use by both the persons who created
them and the ones who employed them. The appeal to distinct symbols
was, among other things, a measure to dissimulate, to avoid the state’s
control, to assert and develop the dogma of faith, to propagate and expand
faith, but also to express the high level of artistic manifestation existing in
the Roman society.
The study tries to analyze each of these symbols and associated texts, starting
from the eventual taking-over from pagan art or the dogma of other
beliefs, going on with the scriptural and patristic foundation on which the
acceptance by Christians is based and finishing with the evolution of associated
symbols in Christian iconography.
The significances of the associations are extremely complicate, being in
many cases related to a certain word order of the text and to the message
which is revealed by its understanding. They are constantly found being
organized in the form of ample subjects of association. But these subjects
or ample topics are not being created by chance, by no logical order and by
a unitary symbolic interpretation.
The entire typology of the chrismon can be found in association with other images and symbols. We refer here both to the main typology, represented
by the simple, complex chrismon having a horizontal stick, and to the secondary
typology, in which the simple chrismon having a horizontal stick,
the complex type with horizontal stick, the Latinized type, as well as the
variants of the chrismon appear.
The following classification of symbols associated with the chrismon was
used: in the first category, the symbols representing persons were included:
the Christ and Mary, the Good Shepherd, the apostles and saints, the angels
and Christian family; in the second category there are symbols representing
animals: the fish, the lamb and the sheep, the donkey, the horse and the
camel, the serpent, the birds and the butterfly; in the third category there
are the vegetal symbols: the palm, the bay stick and the olive tree, the
plants, the crown and the ribbon and the vine leafs; in the fourth category
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