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Nimbus

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Dictionaries
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
• Nimbus
Webster Dictionary
• Nimbus
Encyclopedias
McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Glory, Aureole, or Nimbus
• Nimbus
The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Nimbus

(from the Latin, cloud, hence glory) is the name given in sacred art to the disk or halo which encircles the head of the sacred personage who is represented. Its use is almost universal in those religions of which we possess any artistic remains — the Indian, the Egyptian, the Etruscan, the Greek, and the Roman. It appears on Hindiu monuments of the most remote antiquity. The Hindfi goddess Maya is surrounded by a semi- aureole of light, and from the top of her head-dress and the neighborhood of her temples issue groups of stronger rays. The coincidence of this decoration with the Christian cruciform nimbus may be accidental. It occurs likewise in Roman sculpture and painting. The emperor Trajan ap. pears with it on the arch of Constantine; in the paintings found at Herculaneum it adorns Circe as she appears to Ulysses; and there are many examples of it in the Virgil of the Vatican. Hence its origin is involved in some obscurity; but a consideration of its various changes of form leads to the conclusion that it was originally meant to indicate light issuing from the head. The importance attached to an appearance of that kind, in remote times, as an augury of good, appears in many classical legends. It is illustrated in the second book of the Eneid by the flame descending upon the head of the young Iulus, which Anchises, versed in Oriental symbolism, saw with joy, and which proved to be an augury of good, though the other bystanders were alarmed at it;

"Ecce levis summo de vertice visus

Iuli Fundere lumen apex, tactuque innoxia molles

Lambere flamma comas, et circum tempora pasci.

Nos pavidi trepidare metu, crinemque fagrantem

Excutere, et sauctos restinguere fontibus ignes."

In the Hebrew Scriptures we trace, in the absence of representations, the same symbolized idea in the light which shone upon the face of Moses at his return from Sinai (Exodus 34:29-35), and in the light with which the Lord is clothed as with a garment (Psalms 103:1, Vulg.; civ. 1, Auth. Vers.); and in the N.T. in the transfiguration of Christ (Luke 9:31), and in the "crowns" of the just, to which allusion is so often made (2 Timothy 4:8; 1 Peter 5:4; Revelation 4:4). Nevertheless, the nimbus, strictly so called, is comparatively recent in Christian art. It was originally given in Christian art to sovereigns and allegoric personages generally as the symbol of power or distinction; but with this difference, that around the heads of saintly and orthodox kings or emperors it is luminous or gilded; round those of Gentile potentates it is colored red, green, or blue. About the middle of the 3d century it begins to appear, and earliest on these glasses, as the special attribute of Christ; later it was given to the heads of angels, to the evangelists, to the other apostles, and finally to the blessed Virgin and all saints, but not as their invariable attribute till the 7th century (see Buonarotti, Vasi Antichi). What must seem strange, however, is that the nimbus does not appear at all on the sarcophagi, the most ancient of Christian monuments. This, together with the fact that the nimbus did not come into constant use in the West until the 8th century, leads to the supposition that it was borrowed by the Christian Church from the classical customs referred to above. After the 6th century we find the nimbus very frequent in Christian symbolism, more particularly in the Eastern Church, where it was far more generally used, until the cultivation of sacred art by the Western. Church made it almost a necessary appendage of all representations of God or of the saints.

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