MARK OF HONOR


shone with a great light, "And when Aaron
and all the children of Israel saw Moses,


     Head of Christ: French; twelfth century
behold the skin of his face shone and they
were afraid to come nigh him."
  In form a halo may be triangular,
square, polygonal, or circular. The trian-
gular halo is confined in its application to
the Godhead, because it is composed of
three equal parts which stand for the three
Persons of the Trinitarian Divinity. The
square is given to representations of living
persons who are believed to be saintly, as
for example: the portrait of Pope Paschal
I. (817-824), in the mosaic he caused to be
erected in the Church of Sta. Maria in Do-


         Hand of the Creator: Assyrian
minica at Rome, is crowned with a square
halo; and there is also a bust of his mother,
in the church of Sta. Prassede at Rome,


placed there during her life-time, similarly
adorned. The square form is employed
because it symbolizes terrestrial life, or the
earth-a four-sided-world:
    "A tower of strength that stood
    Four square to all the winds that blow,"
a thought common to all people from
Egypt to Yucatan: the Egyptians held
that the Universe was a rectangular box,
that the earth was the bottom and the sky
the cover, which rested on four columns or
the horns of the earth-Bakhu (East),
Manu (West), Apet-to (South), Naz-oritt


      Hand of God the Father: tenth century
(North); a thought also-familiar to Chris-
tians from the following words of John:
"I saw four Angels standing on the four
corners of the earth, holding the four winds
of the earth." The polygonal halo is pure-
ly an ornament, having no esoteric mean-
ing, seldom used out of Italy, and applied
only to personifications.
  The circular form is given to the halo
of Christ and the saints, as a circle symbol-
ically stands for heaven, eternity, and celes-
tial life, and is obviously the most common,
and is usually a disc or a ring, which varies
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