EMORROISSA. — Early Christian funerary art represented the healing of the E. narrated by the three Synoptic Gospels (Mt. 9:20–22; Mk. 5:25–34; Lk. 7:43–48), either at the moment when the woman, ill for twelve years, approaches the Lord from behind and touches the hem of his garment and immediately feels herself healed, or at the instant when the Lord turns and, after asking who touched him, says to the woman prostrate at his feet: «Your faith has saved you; go in peace, you are healed.» The E. was a symbol of the profound faith of the early Christians in the Redeemer’s power to work miracles.
The oldest scene is in the cemetery of Praetextatus, dating from between the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 20); other examples are found in the cemeteries of Domitilla and of SS. Marcellino and Pietro (id., loc. cit., pls. 98, 130; G. P. Kirsch, Un gruppo di cripte dipinte del cimitero dei SS. Pietro e Marcellino, in Riv. di arch. crist., 7 [1930], p. 211, fig. 3); in funerary sculpture, examples occur on sarcophagi from Rome, Civitacastellana, Clermont-Ferrand, and Milan (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, II, p. 300; pls. 39, 1; 123, 2; 124, 3; 143, 3).
But the representation of the miracle was not confined to funerary art. In the 5th century, St. Asterius of Amasea lamented the immoderate luxury of certain Christians who had Gospel scenes painted on their garments, and among these he names the miracle of the E. (PG 40, 165). Later it was reproduced in the mosaics of the basilica of S. Martino in cielo aureo (now S. Apollinare Nuovo) in Ravenna; the superscribed explanatory text attests that it was also represented in the Ambrosian Basilica in Milan; some ivories, such as the pyxis of Pesaro and the casket of Brescia, likewise reproduce II. Later still, it appears in the biblical cycles of churches, as at S. Angelo in Formis (11th century).