AUREOLA, AUREOLE (diminutive of Lat. aura, air)

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 924 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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AUREOLA, AUREOLE (diminutive of Lat. aura, air) , the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, is represented as surrounding the whole figure. In the earliest periods of Christian art this splendour was confined to the figures of the persons of the Godhead, but it was afterwards extended to the Virgin Mary and to several of the saints. The

aureola

AUREOLA, AUREOLE (diminutive of Lat. aura, air)

, when enveloping the whole

body

BODY

, is generally

oval

OVAL (Lat. ovum, egg)

or elliptical in form, but is occasionally circular or quatrefoil. When it is merely a luminous disk round the head, it is called specifically a nimbus, while the combination of nimbus and aureole is called a

glory

GLORY (through the O. Fr. glorie, modern gloire, from Lat. gloria, cognate with Gr. KXebs, abets)

. The strict distinction between nimbus and aureole is not commonly maintained, and the latter

term

TERM

is most frequently used to denote the radiance round the heads of saints, angels or persons of the Godhead. The nimbus in Christian art appeared first in the 5th century, but practically the same device was .known still earlier, though its history is obscure, in non-Christian art. Thus (though earlier Indian and Bactrian coins do not show it) it is found with the gods on some of the coins of the Indian kings Kanishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva, 58 B.C. to A.D. 41 (Gardner's Cat. of Coins of Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India, Brit. Mus. 1886, plates 26-29). And its use has been traced through the Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans, representations of Trajan (arch of

Constantine

CONSTANTINE

) and Antoninus Pius (

reverse

REVERSE

of a

medal

MEDAL (Fr. medaille, from Lat. metallum)

) being found with it. In the circular form it constitutes a natural and even primitive use of the

idea

IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

of a crown, modified by an equally simple

idea

IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

of the emanation of light from the head of a superior being, or by the meteorological phenomenon of a halo. The probability is that all later associations with the symbol refer back to an early astrological origin (cf. MITHRAS), the person so glorified being identified with the sun and represented in the sun's image; so the aureole is the Hvareno of Mazdaism. From this early astrological use the form of "

glory

GLORY (through the O. Fr. glorie, modern gloire, from Lat. gloria, cognate with Gr. KXebs, abets)

" or " nimbus " has been adapted or inherited under ne* beliefs.

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