DEXTERARUM IUNCTIO. — For the Romans, the solemn act of the celebration of marriage culminated in the clasping of the spouses’ right hands, by which they thus symbolically expressed their will to be husband and wife and to lead a life in common. This gesture, designated by the expression d. i. or coniunctio manuum, is represented several times in early Christian art on sarcophagi, more rarely on the bases of gold-glass vessels and on other small objects; it is absent from paintings and mosaics, except for the biblical scene in one of the mosaic panels of the Roman basilica of S. Maria Maggiore representing the marriage of Moses and Sephora.
This scene was taken over by Christian artists completely from classical art, so much so that in the earliest Christian representations, as, for example, may be seen on two sarcophagi of the late Tetrarchic period—one from the church of S. Salvatore a Vescovo and one found not far from the Porta Salaria (now in the museum of the Campo Santo Teutonico), both decorated with the figure of the Good Shepherd at the corners—the image of Iuno Pronuba, the goddess entrusted with the protection of marriages, appears between the two spouses. The same representation is found on a small fragment of a sarcophagus from the beginning of the 4th century, set into the façade of Villa Doria-Pamphil in Rome; it is particularly valuable because the personage represented beside several scenes drawn from the New Testament identifies himself as a consul by means of the sceptre in his left hand, and is therefore, in this respect, unique in early Christian funerary sculpture.
In the act of the d. i., the spouses always appear full-length and standing; the sole exception is the sarcophagus of Catervius and Severina in the cathedral of Tolentino, where the spouses, between whose heads the divine hand extends a crown, are represented half-length and within a clipeus. Here, as in many other cases, the husband holds a rolled volumen in his left hand. Since these are nuptial scenes, it is more than probable that this volumen represents the tabulae nuptiales and the libellus on which the marriage contract was drawn up and which recorded the amount of the dowry brought by the bride, generally destined ad onera matrimonii sustinendo.
According to Wilpert, a notarius may perhaps be represented in a scene of d. i. carved on the side of a large sarcophagus in the cathedral of Mantua: a personage dressed in a tunic and paenula is indeed seen holding a diptych and a stylus in his hands.
The scene of the d. i. appears at the end of the 4th century on two gold-glass bases, one formerly belonging to the Christian collection of the Kircherian Museum and the other now in the Museo Sacro of the Vatican Library; in the middle of the 5th century it is found on the reverse of a gold coin issued by the mint of Constantinople (now in the Glasgow Museum), representing the marriage of the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria.