The Origin and Development of Christian Art during the Early Church

Abstract

In the history of the Church, the first three centuries were a period of persecution and suffering for the Christians. During these centuries, Christians faced hostilities from the Jewish and Roman authorities. The situation was such that the followers of Christianity could not openly practice their faith. In spite of such obstacles and oppositions, the Church expanded and increased in number. In the history of the Church this period is called the “brave age”. This research shows how the believers of this period were steadfast in their faith in spite of the sufferings they faced and what artistic features they adopted to conduct their worship and to spread their religion. The believers of this period used indirect signs and used secret places to conduct their worships. They developed paintings in the secret places of their worship. The objective of this research is not only to review the fact that the art made it easy to put forward matters concerning religion, in a manner that people could easily understand it and to make it clear, that in spite of a background full of persecution, people were steadfast in their faith life but also to find out the indirect signs adopted to put ward Christian views to the people. So the research is being carried out to find out the common nucleus of the Christian Art in the history of the Church, to show the essentials of the life of the Christians during the first three centuries and to estimate how the artistic features helped in the enhancement of their spiritual life. Further research is carried out at a depth, to find out which artistic features originated during this period. The information obtained from books, journals and articles are analyzed by using descriptive methodology.