His Picture with the Cross Above and the Dragon Below

Besides this, he had a picture painted on a tall panel and set up at the front of the porch of his palace, where all could see it. It showed the saving sign placed above his head, and below it that hateful and savage enemy of humankind, who had laid waste the church of God through the tyranny of the ungodly, falling headlong in the form of a dragon into the abyss of destruction. For the sacred words in the books of God’s prophets have described him as a dragon and a crooked serpent. That is why the emperor publicly displayed a painted likeness of the dragon beneath his own feet and his children’s, pierced through with a dart and hurled headlong into the depths of the sea. [a] In this way he meant to portray the hidden enemy of the human race, and to show that he had been thrown into the gulf of destruction by the power of the saving trophy placed above his head. This, then, was the allegory carried by the colors of a picture. And I am filled with wonder at the greatness of the emperor’s understanding, who, as if by divine inspiration, expressed in this way what the prophets had foretold about this monster, when they said that “God would bring his great and strong and terrible sword against the dragon, the flying serpent, and would destroy the dragon that was in the sea.” It was this that the emperor represented truly and faithfully in the picture just described. [c]