MIRACLE OF THE FOUNTAIN. - The miracle worked by Moses in the desert was represented quite early in primitive Christian funerary art; the patriarch strikes the rock of Horeb and from it gushes the water that slakes the thirst of the people of Israel (Ex. 17:5). Already St. Paul teaches that Petra autem erat Christus (1 Cor. 10:4).
This concept is then extensively developed in ancient Christian literature; from St. Irenaeus, who sees in the water "the rivers of the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon the chosen people" (Adv. Haer., 4, 35, 19; PG 7, 1682), to St. Cyprian, who affirms that "if the Jews will thirst and seek Christ, they will drink among us, obtaining the Grace of Baptism" (Ep. 63, 8; CSEL 2, p. 706). The representation, therefore, of the miracle of the fountain is a symbol of Baptism and is already found in the cycle of the so-called Greek chapel in the cemetery of Priscilla (Wilpert, Pittura, pl. 13); it is then repeated in the cemeteries of Callistus, of Domitilla, of Praetextatus, of the Jordani, in the cemetery ad duas lauros, etc., and outside Rome also in the cemetery known as that of St. Januarius of the poor in Naples. Moses is always represented in tunic and pallium, with the virga virtutis, beardless in the earliest period; in a cubiculum of the cemetery of the Jordani the scene, instead of in the desert, is set between two trees (E. Josi, Le pitture rinvenute nel cimitero dei Giordani, in Rivista di archeol. crist., 5 [1928], pp. 188-89, fig. 3).
The scene is also found scratched on a sepulchral slab coming from the cemetery of Cyriaca (O. Marucchi, Monumenti del Museo Pio Lateranense, Milan 1910, pl. 57, no. 14), and sometimes on gilded glass, on ivory plaques, in one of the wooden panels of the door of St. Sabina, in bronze fittings, in a fabric coming from Alpin and now in Vienna in the Museum for Art and Industry, etc.
In a late sarcophagus of Aix there is a group of people slaking their thirst (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 97, 2).
A glass cup of the 5th century discovered at Podgontza (Albania) offers a crude scene of the miracle of the fountain with the legend: "Petrus virga percussit fontes cooperunt currere." Peter, therefore, stands in place of Moses; in fact, already in sarcophagus 119 of the Lateran Museum, coming from the Vatican Basilica, the iconographic type of St. Peter is recognizable, and those slaking their thirst at the fountain are three young men in military dress (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 9); dress also worn by the one who slakes his thirst in a scene of the same miracle in the cubiculum known as that of the little sheep in the cemetery of Callistus (Wilpert, Pittura, pl. 237). Wilpert interprets this scene, which recurs so frequently in the sarcophagi of Rome, Gaul and Spain, as a representation of the Baptism conferred by St. Peter on the centurion Cornelius and his followers.
The scene is also repeated on a bronze lamp in the Archaeological Museum of Florence (W. Neuss, Die Kunst der alten Christen, Augsburg 1926, pl. 92, fig. 184).