 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Roman Statue of Zeus, redone as a statue of St Peter. |
The Catholics were very adept at reusing pagan forms in their imagery. In addition to using Jewish forms in their church designs, they also reused ancient statuary as Christian symbols. This is a Roman statue of Zeus. The hand was removed and changed to one with 2 keys (symbol of St. Peter), and the halo was modified a bit. The Catholics did a lot of recycling of ideas and statuary. This traces to Emperor Constantine, who introduced Christianity to Rome as its official religion. Roman holidays like the winter festival (dedicated to the Moon, therefore celebrated on the 23rd of December, the longest night of the year) were modified to be Christ's birthday (he actually was probably born around the 1st of October). Easter was the spring festival, dediated to the Roman God Easter, and it was changed to celebrate the ascension of the Holy Spirit. We even still call it Easter to this day.
Created with Web Album Generator