304 ST. MARK’S REST

church under the central one, and consider the story of that.

Under its angles¹ are the four Evangelists themselves, drawn as men, and each with his name. And over them the inscription is widely different.*

“SIC ACTUS CHRISTI

DESCRIBUNT QUATUOR ISTI

QUOD NEQUE NATURA

LITER NENT, NEC UNTRINQUE FIGURA.”

“Thus do these four describe the Acts of Christ. And weave His story, neither by natural knowledge, nor, contrariwise, by any figure.”²

Compare now the two inscriptions. In the living creatures, Christ Himself is seen by nature and by figure. But these four tell us His Acts, “Not by nature-not by figure.” How then?

127. You have had various “lives of Christ,” German and other, lately provided among your other severely historical studies. Some, critical; and some, sentimental. But there is only one light by which you can read the life of Christ,-the light of the life you now lead in the flesh; and that not the natural, but the won life. “Nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”³

Therefore, round the vault, as the pillars of it, are the Christian virtues; somewhat more in number, and other in

* I give, and construe, this legend as now written, but the five letters “liter” are recently restored, and I suspect them to have been originally either three or six, “cer” or “discer.” In all the monkish rhymes I have yet read, I don’t remember any so awkward a division as this of natura-liter.

¹ [In the spandrels below the circle of Virtues.]

² [Ruskin had, however, misread the inscription, which in his time was much obscured. The last two lines are in reality “quod neque naturas Retinent, nec utrinque figuras” (see Pasini, Guide de la Basilique de Saint Marc, 1888, p. 111, and La Basilica di San Marco, by Camillo Boito, p. 789). The meaning would seem to be that the Evangelists “so describe Christ’s life that they keep back neither substance nor, on the other hand, figure”; i.e., “they describe His acts as realised in life and as foretold in prophecy” (see Dr. Robertson’s Bible of St. Mark, p. 293, and p. 129 n. of the Italian translation of St. Mark’s Rest).]

³ [Galatians ii. 20.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]