So do all dogs go to heaven, or what? This question is important to many of us, so I have sought out

So do all dogs go to heaven, or what? This question is important to many of us, so I have sought out the very roots of our answer in the theological complexities of Christian mosaic art. First in line we have a lovely shot of the ceiling of the mausoleum of Santa Costanza (4th century C.E.), built for the daughters of Emperor Constantine I, herself probably a Christian but also politically shrewd enough to include some ambiguous traditional themes such as animals drinking water in a net of vines in her mausoleum. Following, a detail of the same.

Next up we have the apse of the Basilica of San Clemente (late 11th/early 12th century C.E.), and following a detail of the same. Both of these beauties are in Rome, and I assure you this is not the last you will hear of them from the worst classicist.

So so so! What do these mosaics have to do with dogs going to heaven, you ask? Well, like I said that first mosaic in Santa Costanza draws heavily on traditional Greco-Roman wall decoration. The Romans loved elegant pastoral fantasy worlds, and what is more elegant and pastoral than animals drinking water out of fountains in a mystical grapevine landscape?

Yet the imagery of Santa Costanza is no mere secular aesthetic romp! As Christianity developed its own set of imagery based in older Greco-Roman motifs, but with new meanings, these kinds of pastorals could take on way heavier symbolic loads. Those birds aren’t just drinking water, they’re drinking the waters of the rivers of Paradise, and those endless grapevines make sure you get the point: Eternity! Paradise!

Seven hundred years later or so at San Clemente, the acanthus curliques springing from the cross are doing about the same work as those grapevines, although they are surely more fantastical. Just so, we have all kinds of birds and deer and other creatures drinking from the rivers of Paradise.

Though the history of early and medieval Christianity is rife with the heresies of Arians, Nestorians, and Iconoclasts, it seems to me very clear that Christianity has always come down on the side of all dogs going to heaven. Case closed!