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OF SYMBOLS.
113



who indulged in it on the Sunday of the Lcetare
itself.^

We have, moreover, a more direct proof that
the representation of the stalk, surmounted by a
Fir-cone, and placed between animals facing one
another, figured in Christian imagery from the
eighth century of our era. The sculptures in
question are taken, one from the parapet of the
cathedral of Torcello, near Venice (fig. 58), and





Fig. 58. From the Cathe-
dral OF Torcello.
Fig. 59. From the Athens
Cathedral.
the other from a bas-relief on the Athens cathe-
dral (fig. 59). Both of them are reproduced in
the remarkable work of M. R. Cattaneo, L' archi-
tecture en Italie}

3. The Cross. — Tradition relates that the Chris-
tian missionaries everywhere overthrew, amongst
the Belgians, the altars of Thor and of Wodan.
But the fate of the column of Hildesheim shows
us how monuments of this kind managed to escape.
destruction by placing themselves, so to speak,
under the protection of the new faith. At Hilde-
sheim, they placed a Virgin on the column, trans-
formed into a candelabrum. At Liege, a Cross

* EcKART. Op. city p. 221. — Meibom. De Irminsula
Saxonicay p. 20.
^ Translated into French by M. Lemonnier. Venice, 1891,
figs. 19 and 165.
