The Catacombs of Rome, and Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity
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Title: The Catacombs of Rome, and Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity
Author: W. H. Withrow
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THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
THE
CATACOMBS OF ROME,
AND
Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity.
BY THE REV.
W. H. WITHROW, M.A.
_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS._
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLXXXVIII.
Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld. Printers, London and Aylesbury.
PREFACE. 5
The present work, it is hoped, will supply a want long felt in the
literature of the Catacombs. That literature, it is true, is very
voluminous; but it is for the most part locked up in rare and costly
folios in foreign languages, and inaccessible to the general reader.
Recent discoveries have refuted some of the theories and corrected
many of the statements of previous books in English on this subject;
and the present volume is the only one in which the latest results of
exploration are fully given, and interpreted from a Protestant point
of view.
The writer has endeavored to illustrate the subject by frequent pagan
sepulchral inscriptions, and by citations from the writings of the
Fathers, which often throw much light on the condition of early
Christian society. The value of the work is greatly enhanced, it is
thought, by the addition of many hundreds of early Christian
inscriptions carefully translated, a very large proportion of which
have never before appeared in English. Those only who have given some
attention to epigraphical studies can conceive the difficulty of this
part of the work. The defacements of time, and frequently the original
imperfection of the inscriptions and the ignorance of their writers,
demand the utmost carefulness to avoid errors of interpretation. The 6
writer has been fortunate in being assisted by the veteran scholarship
of the Rev. Dr. McCaul, well known in both Europe and America as one
of the highest living authorities in epigraphical science, under whose
critical revision most of the translations have passed. Through the
enterprise of the publishers this work is more copiously illustrated,
from original and other sources, than any other work on the subject in
the language; thus giving more correct and vivid impressions of the
unfamiliar scenes and objects delineated than is possible by any mere
verbal description. References are given, in the foot-notes, to the
principal authorities quoted, but specific acknowledgment should here
be made of the author’s indebtedness to the Cavaliere De Rossi’s
_Roma Sotterranea_ and _Inscriptiones Christianæ_, by far
the most important works on this fascinating but difficult subject.
Believing that the testimony of the Catacombs exhibits, more
strikingly than any other evidence, the immense contrast between
primitive Christianity and modern Romanism, the author thinks no
apology necessary for the somewhat polemical character of portions of
this book which illustrate that fact. He trusts that it will be found
a contribution of some value to the historical defense of the truth
against the corruptions and innovations of Popish error.
CONTENTS. 7
Book First.
THE STRUCTURE AND HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE STRUCTURE OF THE CATACOMBS 11
II. THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS 49
III. THE DISUSE AND ABANDONMENT OF THE CATACOMBS 120
IV. THE REDISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION OF THE CATACOMBS 150
V. THE PRINCIPAL CATACOMBS 164
Book Second.
THE ART AND SYMBOLISM OF THE CATACOMBS.
I. EARLY CHRISTIAN ART 203
II. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE CATACOMBS 225
III. THE BIBLICAL PAINTINGS OF THE CATACOMBS 282
IV. OBJECTS FOUND IN THE CATACOMBS 362
Book Third.
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CATACOMBS.
I. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE INSCRIPTIONS 395
II. THE DOCTRINAL TEACHINGS OF THE INSCRIPTIONS 415
III. EARLY CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHARACTER AS READ IN
THE CATACOMBS 453
IV. MINISTRY, RITES, AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE PRIMITIVE
CHURCH AS INDICATED IN THE CATACOMBS 506
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 8
Fig. Page
1. Entrance to Catacomb of St. Priscilla 12
2. Entrance to Catacomb of St. Prætextatus 16
3. Part of Callixtan Catacomb 17
4. Gallery with Tombs 18
5. Interior of Corridor 20
6. Loculi--Open and Closed 23
7. Tomb of Valeria 24
8. Arcosolium with Perforated Slab 25
9. Plan of Double Chamber 26
10. Section of Gallery and Cubicula 27
11. Suite of Chambers 28
12. Vaulted Chamber with Columns 29
13. Cubiculum with Arcosolia 30
14. Section of Catacomb of Callixtus 32
15. Cubicula with Luminare 35
16. Gallery in St. Hermes 42
17. Part of Wall of Gallery in St. Hermes 42
18. Slab in Jewish Catacomb 51
19. Epitaph of Martyrus 66
20. Reputed Martyr Symbol 77
21. Epitaph of Lannus, a Martyr 98
22. Secret Stairway in Catacomb of Callixtus 101
23. Diogenes the Fossor 133
24. Fossor at Work 134
25. Tombs on Appian Way 165
26. Plan of Area in Callixtan Catacomb 171
27. Plan of Crypt of St. Peter and St. Paul 187
28. Crypt of St. Peter and St. Paul 188
29. Section of Catacomb of Helena 191
30. Entrance to Catacomb of St. Agnes 195
31. Mithraic Painting 216
32. Leaf Point 227
33. Phonetic Symbol--Leo 229
34. Phonetic Symbol--Porcella 230
35. Phonetic Symbol--Nabira 230
36. Wool-comber’s Implements 231
37. Carpenter’s Implements 231
38. Vine Dresser’s Tomb 232
39. Symbolical Anchor 234
40. Symbolical Ship 235
41. Symbolical Palm and Crown 236
42. Symbolical Doves 237
43. Symbolical Dove 238
44. Doves and Vase 238
45. Locus Primi 238
46. Symbolical Peacock 240
47. The Good Shepherd 245
48. Good Shepherd with Syrinx 246
49. Symbolical Lamb 249
50. Symbolical Fish 255 9
51. Symbolical Fish 256
52. Fish and Anchor 256
53. Fish and Dove 256
54. Eucharistic Symbol 256
55. Constantinian Monogram 265
56. Early Christian Seal 266
57. Various Forms of Monogram 267
58. Epitaph of Tasaris 267
59. Opisthographæ 268
60. Early Christian Seal 270
61. Monogram and Cross 270
62. The Temptation and Fall 284
63. Adam and Eve Receiving their Sentence 285
64. Noah in the Ark 286
65. Noah in the Ark 287
66. Noah in the Ark, from Sarcophagus 287
67. Apamean Medal 288
68. Sacrifice of Isaac 289
69. Sacrifice of Isaac 289
70. Moses on Horeb 290
71. Moses Receiving the Law 290
72. Moses and the Baskets of Manna 291
73. Moses Striking the Rock 291
74. Moses Striking the Rock 291
75. The Sufferings of Job 293
76. Ascension of Elijah 295
77. The Three Hebrew Children 296
78. The Three Hebrew Children 297
79. The Three Hebrew Children 298
80. Daniel in the Lions’ Den 299
81. The Story of Jonah 300
82. Jonah, Moses, and Oranti 301
83. Jonah and the Great Fish 302
84. Noah and Jonah 302
85. Jonah’s Gourd 304
86. Adoration of Magi 305
87. Adoration of Magi 306
88. Orante 309
89. Supposed Madonna 311
90. Earliest Madonna 312
91. Christ with the Doctors 324
92. Christ and the Woman of Samaria 325
93. Paralytic Carrying Bed 325
94. Woman with Issue of Blood 326
95. Miracle of Loaves and Fishes 327
96. Opening the Eyes of the Blind 327
97. Christ Blessing a Little Child 328
98. Lazarus (rude) 330
99. Lazarus (in fresco) 330
100. Lazarus (in relief) 331
101. Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem 331
102. Peter’s Denial of Christ 332
103. Pilate Washing his Hands 333
104. Sculptured Sarcophagus 334
105. Painted Chamber 339
106. Oldest Extant Head of Christ (mosaic) 347
107. God Symbolized by a Hand 356
108. God as Pope 359
109. Domestic Group in Gilt Glass 366
110. Reputed Martyr Relic 371
111. Reputed Martyr Symbol 371
112. Symbolical Lamp 377
113. Symbolical Lamp 378
114. Vases from the Catacombs 381
115. Amphora from the Catacombs 382 10
116. Earthen and Metal Vessels 383
117. Early Christian Ring 385
118. Early Christian Seal 385
119. Impressions of Seals 386
120. Children’s Toys 387
121. Statue of Good Shepherd 390
122. Epitaph of Gemella 401
123. Epitaph of Ligurius Successus 402
124. Epitaph of Domitius 402
125. Epitaph Inverted 404
126. Epitaph Reversed 404
127. Epitaph of Cassta 405
128. Triple Epitaph 405
129. Belicia 500
130. Chamber with Catechumens’ Seats 531
131. Baptismal Font 537
132. Baptism of Our Lord 538
133. Baptismal Scene 539
134. Fresco of Early Christian Agape 546
BOOK FIRST. 11
STRUCTURE AND HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
CHAPTER I.
STRUCTURE OF THE CATACOMBS.
“Among the cultivated grounds not far from the city of Rome,” says the
Christian poet Prudentius, “lies a deep crypt, with dark recesses. A
descending path, with winding steps, leads through the dim turnings,
and the daylight, entering by the mouth of the cavern, somewhat
illumines the first part of the way. But the darkness grows deeper as
we advance, till we meet with openings, cut in the roof of the
passages, admitting light from above. On all sides spreads the
densely-woven labyrinth of paths, branching into caverned chapels and
sepulchral halls; and throughout the subterranean maze, through
frequent openings, penetrates the light.”[1]
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Entrance to the Catacomb of St. Priscilla.] 12
This description of the Catacombs in the fourth century is equally
applicable to their general appearance in the nineteenth. Their main
features are unchanged, although time and decay have greatly impaired
their structure and defaced their beauty. These Christian cemeteries
are situated chiefly near the great roads leading from the city, and,
for the most part, within a circle of three miles from the walls. From
this circumstance they have been compared to the “encampment of a
Christian host besieging Pagan Rome, and driving inward its mines and
trenches with an assurance of final victory.” The openings of the 13
Catacombs are scattered over the Campagna, whose mournful desolation
surrounds the city; often among the mouldering mausolea that rise,
like stranded wrecks, above the rolling sea of verdure of the
tomb-abounding plain.[2] On every side are tombs--tombs above and
tombs below--the graves of contending races, the sepulchres of
vanished generations: “_Piena di sepoltura è la Campagna_.”[3]
How marvelous that beneath the remains of a proud pagan civilization
exist the early monuments of that power before which the myths of
paganism faded away as the spectres of darkness before the rising sun,
and by which the religion and institutions of Rome were entirely
changed.[4] Beneath the ruined palaces and temples, the crumbling
tombs and dismantled villas, of the august mistress of the world, we
find the most interesting relics of early Christianity on the face of
the earth. In traversing these tangled labyrinths we are brought face
to face with the primitive ages; we are present at the worship of the
infant Church; we observe its rites; we study its institutions; we
witness the deep emotions of the first believers as they commit their
dead, often their martyred dead, to their last long resting-place; we
decipher the touching record of their sorrow, of the holy hopes by 14
which they were sustained, of “their faith triumphant o’er their
fears,” and of their assurance of the resurrection of the dead and the
life everlasting. We read in the testimony of the Catacombs the
confession of faith of the early Christians, sometimes accompanied by
the records of their persecution, the symbols of their martyrdom, and
even the very instruments of their torture. For in these halls of
silence and gloom slumbers the dust of many of the martyrs and
confessors, who sealed their testimony with their blood during the
sanguinary ages of persecution; of many of the early bishops and
pastors of the Church, who shepherded the flock of Christ amid the
dangers of those troublous times; of many who heard the words of life
from teachers who lived in or near the apostolic age, perhaps from the
lips of the apostles themselves. Indeed, if we would accept ancient
tradition, we would even believe that the bodies of St. Peter and St.
Paul were laid to rest in those hallowed crypts--a true _terra
sancta_, inferior in sacred interest only to that rock-hewn sepulchre
consecrated evermore by the body of Our Lord. These reflections will
lend to the study of the Catacombs an interest of the highest and
intensest character.
It is impossible to discover with exactness the extent of this vast
necropolis on account of the number and intricacy of its tangled
passages. That extent has been greatly exaggerated, however, by the
monkish _ciceroni_, who guide visitors through these subterranean
labyrinths.[5] There are some forty-two of these cemeteries in all now
known, many of which are only partially accessible. Signor Michele De 15
Rossi, from an accurate survey of the Catacomb of Callixtus, computes
the entire length of all the passages to be eight hundred and
seventy-six thousand _mètres_, or five hundred and eighty-seven
geographical miles, equal to the entire length of Italy, from Ætna’s
fires to the Alpine snows.
The entrance to the abandoned Catacomb is sometimes a low-browed
aperture like a fox’s burrow, almost concealed by long and tangled
grass, and overshadowed by the melancholy cypress or gray-leaved ilex.
Sometimes an ancient arch can be discerned, as at the Catacomb of St.
Priscilla,[6] or the remains of the chamber for the celebration of the
festivals of the martyrs, as at the entrance of the Cemetery of St.
Domitilla. In a few instances it is through the crypts of an ancient
basilica, as at St. Sebastian, and sometimes a little shrine or
oratory covers the descent, as at St. Agnes,[7] St. Helena,[8] and St.
Cyriaca. In all cases there is a stairway, often long and steep,
crumbling with time and worn with the feet of pious generations. The
following illustration shows the entrance to the Catacomb of St.
Prætextatus on the Appian Way, trodden in the primitive ages by the
early martyrs and confessors, or perhaps by the armed soldiery of the
oppressors, hunting to earth the persecuted flock of Christ. Here,
too, in mediæval times, the martial clang of the armed knight may have
awaked unwonted echoes among the hollow arches, or the gliding 16
footstep of the sandaled monk scarce disturbed the silence as he
passed. In later times pilgrims from every land have visited, with
pious reverence or idle curiosity, this early shrine of the Christian
faith.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Entrance to St. Prætextatus.]
The Catacombs are excavated in the volcanic rock which abounds in the
neighborhood of Rome. It is a granulated, grayish _breccia_, or
_tufa_, as it is called, of a coarse, loose texture, easily cut
with a knife, and bearing still the marks of the mattocks with which
it was dug. In the firmer volcanic rock of Naples the excavations are
larger and loftier than those of Rome; but the latter, although they
have less of apparent majesty, have more of funereal mystery. The
Catacombs consist essentially of two parts--corridors and chambers, or
_cubicula_. The corridors are long, narrow and intricate passages,
forming a complete underground net-work. They are for the most part 17
straight, and intersect each other at approximate right angles. The
accompanying map of part of the Catacomb of Callixtus will indicate
the general plan of these subterranean galleries.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Part of Catacomb of Callixtus.]
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Gallery with Tombs.]
The main corridors vary from three to five feet in width, but the
lateral passages are much narrower, often affording room for but
one person to pass. They will average about eight feet in height, 18
though in some places as low as five or six, and in others, under
peculiar circumstances, reaching to twelve or fifteen feet. The
ceiling is generally vaulted, though sometimes flat; and the floor,
though for the most part level, has occasionally a slight incline, or
even a few steps, caused by the junction of areas of different levels,
as hereafter explained. The walls are generally of the naked _tufa_,
though sometimes plastered; and where they have given way are
occasionally strengthened with masonry. At the corners of these
passages there are frequently niches, in which lamps were placed, 19
without which, indeed, the Catacombs must have been an impenetrable
labyrinth. Cardinal Wiseman recounts a touching legend of a young girl
who was employed as a guide to the places of worship in the Catacombs
because, on account of her blindness, their sombre avenues were as
familiar to her accustomed feet as the streets of Rome to others.
Both sides of the corridors are thickly lined with _loculi_ or graves,
which have somewhat the appearance of berths in a ship, or of the
shelves in a grocer’s shop; but the contents are the bones and ashes
of the dead, and for labels we have their epitaphs. Figure 4 will
illustrate the general character of these galleries and _loculi_.
The following engraving, after a sketch by Maitland, shows a gallery
wider and more rudely excavated. On the right hand is seen a passage
blocked up with stones, as was frequently done, to prevent accident.
The daylight is seen pouring in at the further end of the gallery, as
described by Prudentius,[9] and rendering visible the rifled graves.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Interior of Corridor.]
It is evident that the principle followed in the formation of these
galleries and _loculi_ was the securing of the greatest amount of
space for graves with the least excavation. Hence the passages are
made as narrow as possible. The graves are also as close together as
the friable nature of the _tufa_ will permit, and are made to suit the
shape of the body, narrow at the feet, broader at the shoulders, and
often with a semi-circular excavation for the head, so as to avoid any
superfluous removal of _tufa_. Sometimes the _loculi_ were made large
enough to hold two, three, or even four bodies, which were often
placed with the head of one toward the feet of the other, in order to 20
economize space. These were called _bisomi_, _trisomi_, and
_quadrisomi_, respectively. The graves were apparently made as
required, probably with the corpse lying beside them, as some
unexcavated spaces have been observed traced in outline with chalk or
paint upon the walls. Almost every inch of available space is
occupied, and sometimes, though rarely, graves are dug in the floor. 21
The _loculi_ are of all sizes, from that of the infant of an hour to
that of an adult man. But here, as in every place of burial, the vast
preponderance of children’s graves is striking. How many blighted buds
there are for every full-blown flower or ripened fruit!
Sometimes the _loculi_ were excavated with mathematical precision. An
example occurs in the Cemetery of St. Cyriaca, where at one end of a
gallery is a tier of eight small graves for infants, then eight,
somewhat larger, for children from about seven to twelve, then seven
more, apparently for adult females, and lastly, a tier of six for
full-grown men, occupying the entire height of the wall. Generally,
however, a less regular arrangement was observed, and the graves of
the young and old were intermixed, without any definite order.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to compute the number of graves in
these vast cemeteries. Some seventy thousand have been counted, but
they are a mere fraction of the whole, as only a small part of this
great necropolis has been explored. From lengthened observation Father
Marchi estimates the average number of graves to be ten, five on each
side, for every seven feet of gallery. Upon this basis he computed the
entire number in the Catacombs to be seven millions! The more accurate
estimate of their extent made by Sig. Michele De Rossi would allow
room for nearly four millions of graves, or, more exactly, about three
million eight hundred and thirty-one thousand.[10] This seems almost
incredible; but we know that for at least three hundred years, or for 22
ten generations, the entire Christian population of Rome was buried
here. And that population, as we shall see, was, even at an early
period, of considerable size. In the time of persecution, too, the
Christians were hurried to the tomb in crowds. In this silent city of
the dead we are surrounded by a “mighty cloud of witnesses,” “a
multitude which no man can number,” whose names, unrecorded on earth,
are written in the Book of Life. For every one who walks the streets
of Rome to-day are hundreds of its former inhabitants calmly sleeping
in this vast encampment of death around its walls--“each in his narrow
cell forever laid.”[11] Till the archangel awake them they slumber.
“It is scarcely known,” says Prudentius, “how full Rome is of buried
saints--how richly her soil abounds in holy sepulchres.”
These graves were once all hermetically sealed by slabs of marble, or
tiles of _terra cotta_. The former were generally of one piece,
which fitted into a groove or mortice cut in the rock at the grave’s
mouth, and were securely cemented to their places, as, indeed, was
absolutely necessary, from the open character of the galleries in
which the graves were placed. Sometimes fragments of heathen
tombstones or altars were used for this purpose. The tiles were
generally smaller, two or three being required for an adult grave.
They were arranged in panels, and were cemented with plaster, on which
a name or symbol was often rudely scratched with a trowel while soft,
as in the following illustration. Most of these slabs and tiles have 23
disappeared, and many of the graves have long been rifled of their
contents. In others may still be seen the mouldering skeleton of what
was once man in his strength, woman in her beauty, or a child in its
innocence and glee. The annexed engraving exhibits two graves, one of
which is partially open, exposing the skeleton which has reposed on
its rocky bed for probably over fifteen centuries.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Loculi--Open and Closed.]
If these bones be touched they will generally crumble into a white,
flaky powder. D’Agincourt copied a tomb (Fig. 7) in which this “dry
dust of death” still retained the outline of a human skeleton. Verily,
“_Pulvis et umbra sumus._” Sometimes, however, possibly from some
constitutional peculiarity, the bones remain quite firm notwithstanding
the lapse of so many centuries. De Rossi states that he has assisted 24
at the removal of a body from the Catacombs to a church two miles
distant without the displacement of a single bone.[12] The age of the
deceased and the nature of the ground also affect the condition in
which the remains are found. Of the bodies of children nothing but
dust remains. Where the _pozzolana_ is damp, the bones are often well
preserved; and where water has infiltrated, a partial petrifaction
sometimes occurs.[13] Campana describes the opening of a hermetically
sealed sarcophagus, which revealed the undisturbed body clad in
funeral robes, and wearing the ornaments of life; but while he gazed
it suddenly dissolved to dust before his eyes. Sometimes the
sarcophagus was placed behind a perforated slab of marble, as shown in
the following example, given by Maitland. The lower part of the slab
is broken.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Valeria Sleeps in Peace.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Arcosolium with Perforated Slab.]
The other essential constituent of the Catacombs, besides the
galleries already described, consists of the _cubicula_.[14] These are
chambers excavated in the _tufa_ on either side of the galleries, with 25
which they communicate by doors, as seen in Fig. 4. These often bear
the character of family vaults, and are lined with graves, like the
corridors without. They are generally square or rectangular, but
sometimes octagonal or circular. They were probably used as mortuary
chapels, for the celebration of funeral service, and for the
administration of the eucharist near the tombs of the martyrs on the
anniversaries of their death. They were too small to be used for
regular worship, except perhaps in time of persecution. They are often
not more than eight or ten feet square. Even the so-called “Papal
Crypt,” a chamber of peculiar sanctity, is only eleven by fourteen
feet; and that of St. Cecilia adjoining it, one of a large size, is 26
less than twenty feet square. Even the largest would not accommodate
more than a few dozen persons. These chambers are generally facing one
another on opposite sides of a gallery, as in the annexed plan of two
_cubicula_ in the Catacomb of Callixtus.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Plan of Double Chamber.]
It is thought that in the celebration of worship one of these chambers
was designed for men and the other for women. Sometimes separate
passages to the chapels and distinct entrances to the Catacombs seem
intended to facilitate this separation of the sexes. Sometimes three,
or even as many as five, _cubicula_, as in one example in the
Catacomb of St. Agnes, were placed on the same axial line, and formed 27
one continuous _suite_ of chambers. The accompanying section of
what is known as “The Chapel of Two Halls,” in the Catacomb of St.
Prætextatus, illustrates this: A is the main gallery, D a large
_cubiculum_ known as “The Women’s Hall,” to the right, and to the left
B, a hexagonal vaulted room with a smaller chamber, C, opening from
it. The length of the entire range from G to F, according to the
accurate measurement of M. Perret, is twenty-three and a half
_mètres_, or nearly seventy-seven feet. The larger engraving (Fig. 11)
gives a perspective view looking toward the left of the hexagonal
chamber, (D. Fig. 10,) and the smaller one, C, opening from it. By
means of these connected chambers the Christians were enabled in times
of persecution to assemble for worship in these “dens and caves of the
earth,” surrounded by the slumbering bodies of the holy dead.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Section of Gallery and Cubicula.]
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Perspective of Lower Chamber in Fig. 9.] 28
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Vaulted Chamber with Columns.]
The _cubicula_ had vaulted roofs, and were sometimes plastered or
cased with marble and paved with tiles, or, though rarely, with
mosaic. These, however, were generally additions of later date than
the original construction, as were also the semi-detached columns in
the angles, with stucco capitals and bases, as indicated in Fig. 9,
and shown more clearly in the following engraving, which is a
perspective view of the lower chamber in Fig. 9. The walls and ceiling 29
were often covered with fresco paintings, frequently of elegant design,
to be hereafter described.[15] Sometimes, as in some examples in the
Catacomb of St. Agnes, _tufa_ or marble seats are ranged around the
chamber, and chairs are hewn out of the solid rock.[16] These chambers
were used probably for the instruction of catechumens. Occasionally
the _cubiculum_ terminates in a semicircular recess, as in the upper
chamber in Fig. 9. These probably gave rise to the _apse_ in early
Christian architecture, of which a good example is found in the Church
of St. Clement, one of the most ancient Christian edifices in Rome.
Niches and shelves for lamps, an absolute necessity in the perpetual
darkness that there reigns, frequently occur, such as may be seen in
Italian houses to-day. Without the least authority, some Roman
Catholic writers have described these as closets for priestly 30
vestments and shelves for pictures.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Cubiculum with Arcosolia.]
A peculiar form of grave common in these chambers, as well as in the
galleries, is that known as the _arcosolium_, or arched tomb. It
consists of a recess in the wall, having a grave, often double or
triple, excavated in the _tufa_, or built with masonry, like a solid
sarcophagus, and closed with a marble slab. These are seen in the
plan, Fig. 9, in the section, Fig. 10, at G and E in Fig. 15, and in
perspective in Figs. 11 and 12. Sometimes the recess is rectangular
instead of arched, and is then called by De Rossi _sepolcro a mensa_,
or table tomb. Sometimes the arch was segmental, especially when
constructed of masonry.[17] An example of both sorts is seen in the
accompanying engraving of a _cubiculum_ in the Catacomb of St.
Prætextatus. The narrow door into the corridor is also seen, and the
stucco capitals and bases of the columns. In course of time these
_arcosolia_ were used as altars for the celebration of the eucharist, 31
and eventually grave abuses arose from the superstitious veneration
paid to the relics of the martyr or confessor interred therein.
Frequently, also, the back of this arched recess was pierced with
graves of a later date, often directly through a painting,[18] in
order to obtain a resting place near the bodies of the saints.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Section of the Catacomb of Callixtus.]
Hitherto only one level of the Catacombs has been described, but
frequently “beneath this depth there is a lower deep,” or even three
or four tiers of galleries, excavated as the upper ones became filled
with graves. Thus there are sometimes as many as five stories, or
_piani_, as they are called, one beneath the other. These are
carefully maintained horizontal, to avoid breaking through the floor
of the one above or the roof of the one below, the danger of which
would be very great if the strict level were departed from. For the
same reason the different _piani_ were generally separated by a thick
stratum of solid _tufa_. The relative position of these levels is
shown by the following engraving, reduced from De Rossi. It represents
a section of the Crypt of St. Lucina, a part of the Cemetery of
Callixtus. The dark colored stratum, marked I in the margin, is
entirely made up of the _débris_ of ancient monuments, buildings, and
other materials accumulated in the course of ages in this place to the
depth of eight feet. It has completely buried the ancient roads,
except where excavated, as shown in the engraving. The next stratum,
II, is of solid grayish _tufa_. In this the first level or _piano_,
φ, is excavated. It is not more than twenty feet below the surface,
and in many places only half that depth. Consequently its area is
comparatively limited, because if extended it would have run out
into the open air, from the sloping of the ground in which it is 32
dug. The next stratum, III, is softer and more easily worked, and
therefore is that in which are found the most important and extensive
_piani_ of galleries. The cross sections P and X, and the longitudinal
section U, will show how the lower surface of the more solid stratum
above was made the ceiling of these galleries, in order to lessen the
danger of its falling. At B will be observed the employment of masonry
to strengthen the crumbling walls of the friable _tufa_. The descent 33
of a few steps, some of which have been worn away, will also be
noticed at U. At IV a more rocky stratum is found, called _tufa
lithoide_, below which the ancient fossors[19] had to go to find
suitable material for the excavation of the third _piano_. This was
found in stratum V, in which are two _piani_ at different levels. The
lower one is not vertically beneath that here represented above it,
but at some little distance. It is here shown, to exhibit at one view
a section of all the stories of this Catacomb. The upper _piano_, _g_,
consists of low and narrow galleries, but the lower one, marked Γ Γ Γ,
seventy-one feet beneath the surface of the ground, is of great
extent. Several of the _loculi_, it will be perceived, are built of
masonry, in consequence of the crumbling nature of the soil. The three
large _arcosolia_ will also be observed. The floor of this _piano_
rests on a somewhat firmer stratum, in which is still another level of
galleries, Ω Ω Ω, ten feet lower down. This lower level is generally
subject to inundation by water, in consequence of the periodical
rising of the adjacent Almone, the level of which is shown at a depth
of one hundred and four feet, and that of the Tiber at one hundred and
thirty-one feet, below the surface.
To secure immunity from dampness, which would accelerate decomposition
and corrupt the atmosphere, the Catacombs were generally excavated in
high ground in the undulating hills around the city, never crossing
the intervening depressions or valleys. There is, therefore, no
connection between the different cemeteries except where they happen
to be contiguous, nor, as has been asserted, with the churches of
Rome. Where a Catacomb has been excavated in low ground, as in the 34
exceptional case of that of Castulo on the Via Labicana, the water has
rendered it completely inaccessible.
Access to these different _piani_ is gained by stairways, which
are sometimes covered with tile or marble, or built with masonry, or
by shafts. The awful silence and almost palpable darkness of these
deepest dungeons is absolutely appalling. They are fitly described by
the epithet applied by Dante to the realms of eternal gloom: _loco
d’ogni luce muto_--a spot mute of all light. Here death reigns
supreme. Not even so much as a lizard or a bat has penetrated these
obscure recesses. Nought but skulls and skeletons, dust and ashes, are
on every side. The air is impure and deadly, and difficult to breathe.
“The cursed dew of the dungeon’s damp” distills from the walls, and a
sense of oppression, like the patriarch’s “horror of great darkness,”
broods over the scene.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Section of Cubicula with Luminare.]
The Catacombs were ventilated and partially lighted by numerous
openings variously called _spiragli_, or breathing-holes, and
_luminari_, or light-holes. They were also probably used for the
removal of the excavated material from those parts remote from the
entrance. They were even more necessary for the admission of air than
of light. Were it not for these the number of burning lamps, the
multitude of dead bodies, no matter how carefully the _loculi_ were
cemented, and the opening of _bisomi_, or double graves, for
interments, would create an insupportable atmosphere. They were
generally in the line of junction between two _cubicula_, a branch of
the _luminare_ entering each chamber, as shown in the accompanying
section of a portion of the Catacomb of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter.
Sometimes, indeed, four, or even more, _cubicula_ were ventilated and
partially lighted by the same shaft. De Rossi mentions one _luminare_
in the recently discovered Cemetery of St. Balbina, which is not 35
square but hexagonal, or nearly so, and which divides into eight
branches, illumining as many separate chambers or galleries. Sometimes
a funnel-shaped _luminare_ reaches to the lowest _piano_; but from the
faint rays that feebly struggle to those gloomy depths there comes “no
light, but rather darkness visible.” In the upper levels, however,
some _cubicula_ are well lighted by large openings. The brilliant
Italian sunshine to-day lights up the pictured figures on the wall as
it must have illumined with its strong Rembrandt light the fair brow
of the Christian maiden, the silvery hair of the venerable pastor, or
the calm face of the holy dead waiting for interment in those early
centuries so long ago. These _luminari_ are often two feet square at
the top, and wider as they descend; sometimes they are cylindrical in
shape, as in the Catacomb of St. Helena.[20] The external openings, 36
often concealed by grass and weeds, are very numerous throughout the
Campagna near the city, and are often dangerous to the unwary rider.
In almost every vineyard between the Pincian and Salarian roads they
may be found, and through them an entrance into the Catacombs may
frequently be effected. After the persecution had ceased, and there
was no longer need for concealment, their number was increased, and
they were made of a larger size, and frequently lined with masonry, or
plastered and frescoed. In the Catacombs of St. Agnes and of Callixtus
are several in a very good state of preservation.
We have already seen the contemporary account of the Catacombs by
Prudentius, in the fourth century. Jerome also describes their
appearance at the same period in words which are almost equally
applicable to-day. “When I was a boy, being educated at Rome,” he
says, “I used every Sunday, in company with others of my own age and
tastes, to visit the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs, and to go
into the crypts dug in the heart of the earth. The walls on either
side are lined with bodies of the dead, and so intense is the darkness
as to seemingly fulfill the words of the prophet, ‘They go down alive
to Hades.’ Here and there is light let in to mitigate the gloom. As we
advance the words of the poet are brought to mind: ‘Horror on all
sides; the very silence fills the soul with dread.’”[21]
It must not be supposed that the features above described are always 37
perfectly exhibited. They are often obscured and obliterated by the
lapse of time, and by earthquakes, inundations, and other destructive
agencies of nature. The stairways are often broken and interrupted,
and the corridors blocked up by the falling in of the roof, where it
has been carried too near the surface, or by the crumbling of the
walls, and sometimes apparently by design during the age of
persecution. The rains of a thousand winters have washed tons of earth
down the _luminari_, destroyed the symmetry of the openings, and
completely filled the galleries with _débris_. The natural dampness of
the situation, and the smoke of the lamps of the early worshipers, or
the torches of more recent visitors, and sometimes incrustations of
nitre, have impaired or destroyed the beauty of many of the paintings.
The hand of the spoiler has in many cases completed the work of
devastation. The rifled graves and broken tablets show where piety or
superstition has removed the relics of the dead, or where idle
curiosity has wantonly mutilated their monuments.
The present extent of the Catacombs is the result, not of primary
intention, but of the contact of separate areas of comparatively
limited original size, and the inosculation, as it were, of their
distinct galleries. This is apparent from the fact that this contact
and junction sometimes take place between areas of different levels,
causing a break in their horizontal continuity, like the “faults” or
dislocations common in geological strata. Sometimes, too, this
junction between two adjacent areas takes place through a tier of
graves, and evidently formed no part of the original design. These
separate areas were originally, as we shall see in the following
chapter, private burial places in the vineyards of wealthy Christian
converts, and were early made available for the interment of the 38
poorer members of the infant Church. In accordance with a common Roman
usage the ground thus set apart for the purpose of sepulture was
placed under the protection of the law, and was accurately defined, to
secure it from trespass or violation. While the protection of the law
was enjoyed, the excavations were strictly confined within the limits
of these areas, and lower _piani_ were dug rather than transgress
the boundary. But when that protection was withdrawn the galleries
were horizontally extended, often for the purpose of facilitating
escape, and connections were made with adjacent areas, till the whole
became an intricate labyrinth of passages and chambers. These areas
are still further distinguished by certain peculiarities in the
inscriptions, _cubicula_, and paintings, and were greatly modified by
subsequent constructions.
It has till recently been thought that the Catacombs were originally
excavations made by the Romans for the extraction of sand and other
building material, and afterward adopted by the Christians as places
of refuge, and eventually of sepulture and worship. This opinion was
founded on a few misunderstood classical allusions and statements in
ancient ecclesiastial writers, and on a misinterpretation of certain
accidental features of the Catacombs themselves. It was held,
nevertheless, by such eminent authorities as Baronius, Severano,
Aringhi, Bottari, D’Agincourt, and Raoul-Rochette. Padre Marchi first
rejected this theory of construction, and the brothers De Rossi have
completely refuted it. An examination of the material in which these
sand pits and stone quarries and the Catacombs were respectively
excavated, as well as of their structural differences, will show their
entirely distinct character.
The surface of the Campagna, especially of that part occupied by the 39
Catacombs, is almost exclusively of volcanic origin. The most ancient
and lowest stratum of this igneous formation is a compact conglomerate
known as _tufa lithoide_. It was extensively quarried for building,
and the massive blocks of the Cloaca Maxima and the ancient wall of
Romulus attest the durability of its character. Upon this rest
stratified beds of volcanic ashes, pumice, and scoria, often
consolidated with water, but of a substance much less firm than that
of the _tufa lithoide_, and called _tufa granolare_. In insulated
beds, rarely of considerable extent, in this latter formation, occurs
another material, known as _pozzolana_. It consists of volcanic ashes
deposited on dry land, and still existing in an unconsolidated
condition. This is the material of the celebrated Roman cement, which
holds together to this day the massy structures of ancient Rome. It
was conveyed for building purposes as far as Constantinople, and the
pier on the Tiber from which it was shipped is still called the Porto
di Pozzolana. It is in these latter deposits exclusively that the
_arenaria_, or sand pits, are found. The _tufa granolare_ is too firm,
and contains too large a proportion of earth, to use as sand, and is
yet too friable for building purposes. Yet it is in this material,
entirely worthless for any economic use, that the Catacombs are almost
exclusively excavated; while the _tufa lithoide_ and the _pozzolana_
are both carefully avoided where possible, the one as too hard and the
other as too soft for purposes of Christian sepulture. Sometimes,
indeed, as at the cemeteries of St. Pontianus and St. Valentinus, for
special reasons, Catacombs were excavated in less suitable material;
but still the substance removed--a shelly marl--was economically
useless, and the galleries had to be supported by solid masonry. The
_tufa granolare_, on the contrary, was admirably adapted for the 40
construction of these subterranean cemeteries. It could be easily dug
with a mattock, yet was firm enough to be hollowed into _loculi_
and chambers; and its porous character made the chambers dry and
wholesome for purposes of assembly, which was of the utmost importance
in view of the vast number of bodies interred in these recesses.
The differences of structure between the quarries or _arenaria_
and the Catacombs are no less striking. To this day, the vast grottoes
from which the material for the building of the Coliseum was hewn,
most probably by the Jewish prisoners of Titus, may still be seen on
the Coelian hill. It is said that in those gloomy vaults were kept
the fierce Numidian lions and leopards whose conflicts with the
Christian martyrs furnished the savage pastime of the Roman
amphitheatre. But nothing can less resemble the narrow and winding
passages of the Catacombs than those tremendous caverns.
Nor is there any greater resemblance in the excavations of the
_arenaria_. These are large and lofty vaults, from sixteen to twenty
feet wide, the arch of which often springs directly from the floor, so
as to give the largest amount of sand with the least labour of
excavation. The object was to remove as much material as possible;
hence there was often only enough left to support the roof. The
spacious passages of the _arenaria_ run in curved lines, avoiding
sharp angles, so as to allow the free passage of the carts which
carried away the excavated sand. In the Catacombs, on the contrary, as
little material as possible was removed; hence the galleries are
generally not more than three, or sometimes only two, feet wide, and
run for the most part in straight lines, often crossing each other at
quite acute angles, so that only very narrow carts can be used in
cleaning out the accumulated _débris_ of centuries--a very tedious 41
process, which greatly increases the cost of exploration. The walls,
moreover, are always vertical, and the roof sometimes quite flat, or
only slightly arched. The wide difference in the principle of
construction is obvious. The great object in the Catacombs has been to
obtain the maximum of wall-surface, for the interment of the dead in
the _loculi_ with which the galleries are lined throughout, with the
minimum of excavation. The structural difference will at once be seen
by comparing the irregular windings of the small _arenarium_
represented in the upper part of Figs. 3 and 26 with the straight and
symmetrical galleries of the adjacent Catacomb. Connected with the
Catacomb of St. Agnes is an extensive _arenarium_, whose spacious,
grotto-like appearance is very different from that of the narrow
sepulchral galleries beneath. In the floor of this _arenarium_ is a
square shaft leading to the Catacomb, in which Dr. Northcote
conjectures there was formerly a windlass for removing the excavated
material. There are also footholes, for climbing the sides of the
shaft, cut in the solid _tufa_, perhaps as a means of escape in the
time of persecution. This _arenarium_, which was probably worked out
and abandoned long before its connection with the Catacomb, may have
been employed as a masked entrance to its crypts, when the more public
one could not be safely used. Its spacious vaults may also have been a
receptacle for the broken _tufa_ removed from the galleries beneath.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Gallery in St. Hermes.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Part of Wall of Gallery in St. Hermes.]
Many of these _arenaria_ may be observed excavated in the
hill-sides near Rome; but except when incidentally forming part of a
Catacomb, they have never been found to contain a single grave.
Indeed, in consequence of the utter unfitness of the _pozzolana_
for the purposes of Christian sepulture, the intrusion of a deposit 42
of that material into the area of a Catacomb prevented the extension
or necessitated the diversion of its galleries. Moreover, where the
attempt has been made to convert an _arenarium_ into a Christian
cemetery, the changes which have been made show conclusively its
original unfitness for the latter purpose. The accompanying section of
a gallery in the Catacomb of St. Hermes will exhibit the structural
additions necessary to adopt an _arenarium_ for Christian sepulture.
The sides of the semi-eliptical vault had to be built up with
brick-work, leaving only a narrow passage in the middle. The _loculi_
were spaces left in the masonry, in which the mouldering skeletons may
still be seen. The openings were closed with slabs in the usual
manner, as shown in the elevation, (Fig. 17,) except at the top, where
they cover the grave obliquely, like the roof of a house. The vault is
often arched with brick-work, and at the intersection of the galleries 43
has sometimes to be supported by a solid pier of masonry. In part of
an ancient _arenarium_ converted into a cemetery in the Catacomb of
St. Priscilla similar constructions may be seen. The long walls and
numerous pillars of brick-work concealing and sustaining the _tufa_,
and the irregular windings of the passages, show at once the vast
difference between the _arenarium_ and the Catacomb, and the immense
labour and expense required to convert the former into the latter.
It has been urged in objection to this theory, that the difficulty of
secretly disposing of at least a hundred millions of cubic feet of
refuse material taken from the Catacombs must have been exceedingly
great, unless it could be removed under cover of employment for some
economic purpose. It will be shown, however, that secrecy was not
always necessary, as has been assumed, but that, on the contrary, the
Christian right of sepulture was for a long time legally recognized by
the Pagan Emperors; and that the Catacombs continued to be publicly
used for a considerable time after the establishment of Christianity
on the throne of the Cæsars. During the exacerbations of persecution
there is evidence that the excavated material was deposited in the
galeries already filled with graves, or, as we have seen, in the
spacious vaults of adjacent _arenaria_. If the Catacombs were merely
excavations for sand or stone, as has been asserted, we ought to find
many of their narrow galleries destitute of tombs, and many of the
_arenaria_ containing them; whereas every yard of the former is
occupied with graves, and not a single grave is found in the latter,
nor do they contain a single example of a mural painting or
inscription. The conclusion is irresistible that the Catacombs proper
were created exclusively for the purpose of Christian burial, and in 44
no case were of Pagan construction.
The erroneous theory here combated has arisen, as we have said,
chiefly from certain classical allusions to the _arenaria_, and from
passages in the ancient ecclesiastical records describing the burial
places of the martyrs, as _in cryptis arenariis_, _in arenario_, or
_ad arenas_. Some of these localities, however, have been identified
beyond question, and found to consist merely of a sandy kind of rock,
and not at all of the true _pozzolana_. In others a vein of
_pozzolana_ does actually occur in the Catacombs, or they are
connected with ancient _arenaria_, as at St. Agnes and at Calixtus. In
the other instances the localities are either yet unrecognized, or the
expression merely implies that the cemetery was _near_ the sand
pits--_juxta arenarium_, or _in loco qui dicitur ad Arenas_.
The mere technical description of the Catacombs, however, gives no
idea of the thrilling interest felt in traversing their long-drawn
corridors and vaulted halls. As the pilgrim to this shrine of the
primitive faith visits these chambers of silence and gloom,
accompanied by a serge-clad, sandaled monk,[22] he seems like the
Tuscan poet wandering through the realms of darkness with his shadowy
guide.
“Ora sen’ va per un segreto calle
Tra l’ muro della terra.”[23]
His footsteps echo strangely down the distant passages and hollow
vaults, dying gradually away in the solemn stillness of this valley of
the shadow of death. The graves yawn weirdly as he passes, torch in 45
hand. The flame struggles feebly with the thickening darkness, vaguely
revealing the unfleshed skeletons on either side, till its redness
fades to sickly white, like that _fioco lume_,[24] that pale light, by
which Dante saw the crowding ghosts upon the shores of Acheron. Deep
mysterious shadows crouch around, and the dim perspective, lined with
the sepuchral niches of the silent community of the dead, stretch on
in an apparently unending vista. The very air seems oppressive and
stifling, and laden with the dry dust of death. The vast extent and
population of this great necropolis overwhelm the imagination, and
bring to mind Petrarch’s melancholy line--
“Piena di morti tutta la campagna.”[25]
Almost appalling in its awe and solemnity is the sudden transition
from the busy city of the living to the silent city of the dead; from
the golden glory of the Italian sunlight to the funereal gloom of
these sombre vaults. The sacred influence of the place subdues the
soul to tender emotions. The fading pictures on the walls and the
pious epitaphs of the departed breathe on every side an atmosphere of
faith and hope, and awaken a sense of spiritual kinship that overleaps
the intervening centuries. We speak with bated breath and in whispered
tones, and thought is busy with the past. It is impossible not to feel
strangely moved while gazing on the crumbling relics of mortality
committed ages ago, with pious care and many tears, to their last,
long rest.
“It seems as if we had the sleepers known.”[26]
We see the mother, the while her heart is wrung with anguish, laying 46
on its stony bed--rude couch for such a tender thing--the little form
that she had cherished in her warm embrace. We behold the persecuted
flock following, it may be, the mangled remains of the faithful pastor
and valiant martyr for the truth, which at the risk of their lives
they have stealthily gathered at dead of night. With holy hymns,[27]
broken by their sobs, they commit his mutilated body to the grave,
where after life’s long toil he sleepeth well. We hear the Christian
chant, the funeral plaint, the pleading tones of prayer, and the words
of holy consolation and of lofty hope with which the dead in Christ
are laid to rest. A moment, and--the spell is broken, the past has
vanished, and stern reality becomes again a presence. Ruin and
desolation and decay are all around.
The exploration of these worse than Dædalian labyrinths is not
unattended with danger. That intrepid investigator, Bosio, was several
times well nigh lost in their mysterious depths. That disaster really
happened to M. Roberts, a young French artist, whose adventure has
been wrought into an exciting scene in Hans Andersen’s tale, “The
Improvisatore,” and forms an episode in the Abbé de Lille’s poem,
“_L’Imagination_.” Inspired by the enthusiasm of his profession, he
attempted to explore one of the Catacombs, with nothing but a torch
and a thread for a guide. As he wandered on through gallery and
chamber, he became so absorbed in his study that, unawares, the thread
slipped from his hand. On discovering his loss he tried, but in vain,
to recover the clew. Presently his torch went out, and he was left in
utter darkness, imprisoned in a living grave, surrounded by the relics
of mortality. The silence was oppressive. He shouted, but the hollow 47
echoes mocked his voice. Weary with fruitless efforts to escape his
dread imprisonment he threw himself in despair upon the earth, when,
lo, something familiar touched his hand. Could he believe it? it was
indeed the long lost clew by which alone he could obtain deliverance
from this awful labyrinth. Carefully following the precious thread he
reached at last the open air,
And never Tiber, rippling through the meads,
Made music half so sweet among its reeds;
And never had the earth such rich perfume,
As when from him it chased the odor of the tomb.[28]
Still more terrible in its wildness is an incident narrated by
MacFarlane.[29] In the year 1798, after the return to Rome of the
Republican army under Berthier, a party of French officers, atheistic
disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau, and hardened by the orgies of the
Revolution, visited the Catacombs. They caroused in the sepulchral
crypts, and sang their bacchanalian songs among the Christian dead.
They rifled the graves and committed sacrilege at the tombs of the
saints. One of the number, a reckless young cavalry officer, “who
feared not God nor devil, for he believed in neither,” resolved to
explore the remoter galleries. He was speedily lost, and was abandoned
by his companions. His excited imagination heightened the natural
horrors of the scene. The grim and ghastly skeletons seemed an army of
accusing spectres. Down the long corridors the wind mysteriously
whispered, rising in inarticulate moanings and woeful sighs, as of
souls in pain. The tones of the neighbouring convent bell, echoing
through the stony vaults, sounded loud and awful as the knell of 48
doom. Groping blindly in the dark, he touched nothing but rocky walls
or mouldering bones, that sent a thrill of horror through his frame.
Though but a thin roof separated him from the bright sunshine and free
air, he seemed condemned to living burial. His philosophical
skepticism failed him in this hour of peril. He could no longer scoff
at death as “_un sommeil éternel_.” The palimpsest of memory recalled
with intensest vividness the Christian teachings of his childhood. His
soul became filled and penetrated with a solemn awe. His physical
powers gave way beneath the intensity of his emotion. He was rescued
the next day, but was long ill. He rose from his bed an altered man.
His life was thenceforth serious and devout. When killed in battle in
Calabria seven years after, a copy of the Gospels was found next to
his heart.
Even as late as 1837 a party of students with their professor,
numbering in all some sixteen, or, as some say, nearly thirty, entered
the Catacombs on a holiday excursion, to investigate their
antiquities, but became entangled amid their intricacies. Diligent
search was made, but no trace of them was ever found. In some silent
crypt or darksome corridor they were slowly overtaken by the same
torturing fate as that of Ugolino and his sons in the Hunger Tower of
Pisa.[30] The passage by which they entered has been walled up, but
the mystery of their fate will never be dispelled till the secrets of
the grave shall be revealed.
[1] Haud procul extremo culta ad pomœria vallo,
Mersa latebrosis crypta patet foveis....
--_Peristephanon_, iv.
The origin of the word Catacombs is exceedingly obscure. Father
Marchi derives it from κατὰ, down, and τύμβος, a tomb; or from
κατὰ and κοιμάω, to sleep. Mommsen thinks it comes from κατὰ and
_cumbo_, part of _decumbo_, to lie down. According to Schneider
(_Lex. Græk._) it is derived from κατὰ and κύμβη, a boat or
canoe, from the resemblance of a sarcophagus to that object. The
more probable derivation seems to the present writer to be from
κατὰ and κύμβος, a hollow, as if descriptive of a subterranean
excavation. The name was first given in the sixth century to a
limited area beneath the Church of St. Sebastian: “_Locus qui
dicitur catacumbas._”--S. Greg., _Opp._, tom. ii, ep. 30. It was
afterward generically applied to all subterranean places of
sepulture. The earliest writers who mention those of Rome call
them _cryptæ_, or crypts, or _cæmeteria_--whence our word
cemetery, literally, sleeping places, from κοιμάω, to slumber.
Similar excavations have been found in Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus,
Crete, the Ægean Isles, Greece, Sicily, Naples, Malta, and France.
[2] These great roads for miles are lined with the sepulchral
monuments of Rome’s mighty dead, majestic even in decay. But only
the wealthy could be entombed in those stately mausolea, or be
wrapped in those “marble cerements.” For the mass of the
population _columbaria_ were provided, in whose narrow
niches, like the compartments of a dove-cote--whence the
name--the _terra cotta_ urns containing their ashes were
placed, sometimes to the number of six thousand in a single
_columbarium_. They also contain sometimes the urns of the
great.
[3] Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_.
[4] Aringhi, in the elegant Latin ode prefixed to his great work,
exclaims, “_Sub Roma Romam quærito_”--Beneath Rome I seek
the true Rome.
[5] Even so accurate and philosophical a writer as the late
Professor Silliman reports on their authority that the Catacombs
extend twenty miles, to the port of Ostia, in one direction, and
to Albano, twelve miles, in another. _Visit to Europe_, vol.
i, p. 329. This is impossible, as will be shown, on account of
the undulation of the ground, and the limited area of the
volcanic _tufa_ in which alone they can be excavated. The
number of distinct Catacombs has also been magnified to sixty;
and Father Marchi estimated the aggregate length of passages to
be nine hundred miles.
[6] Fig. 1.
[7] Fig. 30.
[8] Fig. 29.
[9] Primas namque fores summo tenus intrat hiatu
Illustratque dies limina vestibuli.--_Peristephanon_, ii.
[10] In the single crypt of St. Lucina, one hundred feet by one
hundred and eighty, De Rossi counted over seven hundred
_loculi_, and estimated that nearly twice as many were
destroyed, giving a total of two thousand graves in this area.
The same space, with our mode of interment, would not accommodate
over half the number, even though placed as close together as
possible, without any room for passages.
[11] Compare Bryant’s _Thanatopsis_:
“All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.”
[12] _Rom. Sott._, ii, 127.
[13] D’Agincourt, _Histoire de l’art par les Monumens_, i, 20.
[14] Literally, little sleeping chambers, from _cubo_, I lie
down. The same name was also given to the cells for meditation
and prayer attached to the Church of Nola. Paulin., ep. 12, _ad
Sever._
[15] Book II.
[16] See Fig. 130 and context, where the entire subject is
discussed.
[17] See in the Cemetery of St. Helena, Fig. 29.
[18] As in Fig. 12, and more strikingly in Fig. 76.
[19] An organized body of diggers, by whom the Catacombs were
excavated. See Book III, chap. iv.
[20] See Fig. 29.
[21] “Dum essem Romæ puer, et liberalibus studiis erudirer,
solebam cum cæteris ejusdem ætatis et propositi, diebus Dominicis
sepulchra apostolorum et martyrum circuire, crebròque cryptas
ingredi, quæ in terrarum profunda defossæ, ex utraque parte
ingredientium per parietes corpora sepultorum, ... ‘Horror ubique
animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.’”--Hieron. in _Ezech._,
Cap. xl.
[22] Unfortunately for Protestant visitors most of the Catacombs
are open for inspection only on Sunday, when the work of
exploration is suspended.
[23] “And now through narrow, gloomy paths we go,
’Tween walls of earth and tombs.”--_Inferno._
[24] “Com’io discerno per lo fioco lume.”--_Inferno._
[25] “Full of the dead this far extending field.”
[26] _Childe Harold_, iv, 104.
[27] Hymnos et psalmos decantans.--Hieron., _Vit. Pauli_.
[28] From “_L’Imagination_,” by Abbé de Lille, MacFarlane’s
translation.
[29] _Catacombs of Rome._ London, 1852. P. 94, _et
seq._
[30] _Inferno_, Canto xxxiii, vv. 21-75.
CHAPTER II. 49
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
It is highly probable that the first Roman Catacombs were excavated by
the Jews.[31] Many Hebrew captives graced the triumph of Pompey after
his Syrian conquests, B. C. 62. The Jewish population increased by
further voluntary accessions. They soon swarmed in that Trans-Tiberine
region which formed the ancient Ghetto of Rome. They made many
proselytes from paganism to the worship of the true God, and thus, to
use the language of Seneca, “The conquered gave laws to their
conquerors.”[32]
All the national customs and prejudices of the Jews were opposed to
the Roman practice of burning the dead, which Tacitus asserts they
never observed;[33] and they clung with tenacity to their hereditary
mode of sepulture. Wherever they have dwelt they have left traces of
subterranean burial. The hills of Judea are honeycombed with 50
sepulchral caves and galleries. Similar excavations have been found in
the Jewish settlements of Asia Minor, the Ægean Isles, Sicily, and
Southern Italy.[34] So also in Rome they sought to be separated in
death, as in life, from the Gentiles among whom they dwelt. They had
their Catacombs apart, in which not a single Christian or pagan
inscription has been found. Bosio describes one such Catacomb, which
he discovered on Monte Verde, which was much more ancient than the
Christian Catacomb of St. Pontianus in the same vicinity. It was of
very rude construction, and contained not a single Christian monument,
but numerous slabs bearing the seven-branched Jewish candlestick, and
one inscription on which the word ϹΥΝΑΓΩΓ--Synagogue--was legible.[35]
It was situated near that Trans-Tiberine quarter of the city inhabited
at the period of the Christian era by the numerous Jewish population
of Rome. It cannot now, however, be identified, having been
obliterated or concealed by the changes of the last two centuries.
Maitland gives the following Jewish inscription from a MS. collection
in Rome. The figure to the left may be a horn for replenishing the
lamp with oil. The letters at the right are probably intended for the
Hebrew word שָׁלוֹם _Shalom_, or Peace, so common in its classical equivalent
upon Christian tombs. The palm branch is a Pagan as well as Jewish and
Christian symbol of victory. The central figure is a rude
representation of the seven-branched candlestick which appears also in 51
bass-relief on the Arch of Titus at Rome.
[Illustration: “Here lies Faustina. In Peace.”
Fig. 18.--Slab from Jewish Catacomb.]
In the year 1859 another Jewish Catacomb was discovered in the Vigna
Randanini, on the Appian Way, about two miles from Rome. It has been
minutely described by Padre Garrucci.[36] In this the graves and
sarcophagi are sunk in the floor as well as in the walls. They are
closed with terra cotta or marble slabs, and are otherwise similar to
those of the Christian Catacombs. It contains several vaulted
chambers, one of which has some very remarkable paintings of the
seven-branched candlestick on the roof and walls. The same figure is
frequently scratched on the mortar with which the graves are closed.
The dove and olive branch and the palm are also frequently repeated.
Although nearly two hundred inscriptions have been discovered, not one
of either pagan or Christian character has been met with.
The names are sometimes strikingly Jewish in form, and where the
epitaphs refer to the station of the deceased it is always to officers 52
of the synagogue, as ΑΡΚΟΝΤΕϹ, rulers, ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΕΙϹ, scribes. The
following examples are from the Kircherian Museum:
ΩΔΕ ΚΕΙΤΕ ϹΑΛΩ[ΜΗ] ΘΥΓΑΤΗΡ ΓΑΔΙΑ ΠΑΤΡΟϹ ϹΥΝΑΓΩΓΗ ΑΙΒΡΕΩΝ ΕΒΙΩϹΕΝ
ΜΑ ΕΝ ΕΙΡΗΝΗ ΚΟΙΜΗϹΙϹ ΑΥΤΗϹ. Here lies Salome, daughter
of Gadia, Father of the Synagogue of the Hebrews. She lived
forty-one years. Her sleep is in peace. ΕΝΘΑΔΕ ΚΕΙΤΕ ΚΥΝΤΙΑΝΟϹ
ΓΕΡΟΥϹΙΑΡΧΗϹ ϹΥΝΑΓΩΓΗϹ ΤΗϹ ΑΥΓΥϹΤΗϹΙΩΝ. Here lies Quintianus,
Gerousiarch (that is, Chief Elder) of the Synagogue of the
Augustenses. ΕΝΘΑΔΕ ΚΕΙΤΑΙ ΝΕΙΚΟΔΗΜΟϹ HΟ ΑΡΧΩΝ ϹΙΒΟΥΡΗϹΙΩΝ ΚΑΙ
ΠΑϹΙ ΦΕΙΛΗΤΟϹ ΑΙΤΩΝ Λ ΗΜΕΡ ΜΒ ΘΑΡΙ ΑΒΛΑΒΙ ΝΕΩΤΕΡΕ ΟΥΔΕΙϹ
ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟϹ. Here lies Nicodemus, ruler of the Severenses, and
beloved of all; (aged) thirty years, forty-two days. Be of good
cheer, O inoffensive young man! no one is exempt from death.
This inscription will recall another “ruler of the Synagogue” of the
same name. Many of the sleepers in this Jewish Cemetery were
evidently, from their names,[37] Greek or Latin proselytes. Sometimes,
indeed, this is expressly asserted, as in the following:
MANNACIVS SORORI CRYSIDI DVLCISSIME PROSELYTE.--Mannacius to his
sweetest sister Chrysis, a proselyte.
It may be assumed that this Catacomb was exclusively Jewish, and we
know, from the testimony of Juvenal[38] and others, that numbers of
the Jews inhabited the adjacent part of Rome, about the Porta Capena
and the valley of Egeria. It is not, however, certain whether it is
the original type, or a later imitation, of the Christian cemetery.
But the Jewish population must have had extra-mural places of
sepulture before the Christian era; and it is probable that the early
Jewish converts to Christianity may have merely continued a mode of 53
burial already in vogue, substituting the emblems of their newly
adopted faith for those which they had forsaken; or, rather--for we
find that they frequently retained certain Jewish symbols, as the
dove, olive branch, and palm--supplementing them with the emblems of
Christianity. De Rossi has expressed the opinion that the earliest
mode of Christian burial was in sarcophagi, as in the Jewish cemetery
above described.
The date of the planting of Christianity in Rome is uncertain.
Probably some of the “strangers of Rome” who witnessed the miracle of
the Pentecost, or, perhaps, the Gentile converts of the “Italian band”
of Cornelius, brought the new evangel to their native city.[39] But
certain it is that as early as A. D. 58 the faith of the Roman Church 54
was “spoken of throughout the whole world.” “Christianity,” says
Tertullian, “grew up under the shadow of the Jewish religion, to which
it was regarded as akin, and about the lawfulness of which there was
no question;”[40] and it doubtless adopted the burial usages of
Judaism.
But even without the example of the Jews the Roman Christians would
naturally revolt from the pagan custom of burning the dead, with its
accompanying idolatrous usages,[41] and would prefer burial, after the
manner of their Lord. They showed a tender care for the remains of the
dead, under a vivid impression of the communion of saints and the
resurrection of the body. They seemed to regard the sepulchre as
“God’s cabinet or shrine, where he pleases to lay up the precious
relics of his dear saints until the jubilee of glory.”[42] Even the
Jews designated the grave as _Beth-ha-haim_, the “house of the
living,” rather than the house of the dead. It is probable, therefore,
that the origin of the Christian Catacombs dates from the death of the
first Roman believer in Christ.
Many of the Catacombs were probably begun as private sepulchres for 55
single families; indeed, some such tombs have been discovered in the
vicinity of Rome, which never extended beyond a single chamber. They
were excavated in the gardens or vineyards of the wealthy converts to
Christianity, in imitation of that rock-hewn sepulchre consecrated by
the body of Christ. The following inscription, which may still be seen
in the most ancient part of the Catacombs of Sts. Nereus and Achilles,
seem to refer to such a family tomb. Another inscription, found in
the Catacomb of St. Nicomedes, restricts the use of the sepulchre to
the original owner, and those of his dependents who belong to his
religion--AT [AD] RELIGIONEM PERTINENTES MEAM.
[Illustration:
M · ANTONI
VS · RESTVTV
S · ECIT · VPO
GEV · SIBI · ET
SVIS · FIDENTI
BVS · IN · DOMINO.
M. Antonius Res[ti]tutus made [this] hypogeum for himself and his
[relatives] who believe in the Lord.[43]]
The names of many of the burial crypts commemorate these original
owners. Among others those of Lucina, Priscilla, and Domitilla are
considered to belong to the First Century, and the two former to the
times of the Apostles. Some of these may have been originally
designed, or afterwards opened, for the reception of the poor
belonging to the Church; and thus the Catacombs would be indefinitely
extended till they attained their present dimensions. Tertullian
expressly declares that the provision made for the poor included 56
that for their burial--_egenis humandis_.[44]
There is reason to believe that, even from the very first, the
Christian Church at Rome contained not a few who were of noble blood
and of high rank. In one of the apostolic epistles Paul conveys the
salutation of Pudens, a Roman Senator, of Linus, reputed the first
Roman bishop, and of Claudia, daughter of a British king;[45] and we
know that even in the Golden House of Nero, the scene of that colossal
orgy whose record pollutes the pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, were
disciples of the crucified Nazarene. In remarkable confirmation of
this fact is the discovery in the recent explorations of the ruins of
the Imperial Palace of several Christian memorials, including one of
those lamps adorned with evangelical symbols, so common in the
Catacombs. Much of the evidence on this subject has been lost by the
zealous destruction of ecclesiastical records during the terrible
Diocletian persecution; but from inscriptions in the Catacombs, and
from the incidental allusions of early writers, we learn that persons 57
of the highest position, and even members of the Imperial family, were
associated with the Christians in life and in death. Some of the
noblest names of Rome occur in funeral epitaphs in some of the most
ancient galleries of the Catacombs. There is evidence that even during
the first century some who stood near the throne became converts to
Christianity, and even died as martyrs for the faith.[46]
But doubtless the preservation and advancement of true religion was
better secured amid the dark recesses of the Catacombs, during the
fiery persecutions that befel the Church, than it would have been in
the sunshine of imperial favour, in an age and court unparalleled for
their corruptions. The sad decline of Christianity after the accession
of Constantine makes it a matter of congratulation that in the earlier
ages it was kept pure by the wholesome breezes of adversity.
The new religion, notwithstanding all the efforts that were made for
its suppression, rapidly spread, even in the high places of the earth.
“We are but of yesterday,” writes Tertullian at the close of the
second century, “yet we fill every city, town, and island of the
empire. We abound in the very camps and castles, in the council
chamber and the palace, in the senate and the forum; only your 58
temples and theatres are left.”[47]
It is evident from an examination of the earliest Catacombs that they
were not the offspring of fear on the part of the Christians. There
was no attempt at secrecy in their construction. They were, like the
pagan tombs, situated on the high roads entering the city. Their
entrances were frequently protected and adorned by elegant structures
of masonry, such as that which is still visible at the Catacomb of St.
Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina;[48] and their internal decorations and
frescoes, which in the most ancient examples are of classic taste and
beauty, were manifestly not executed by stealth and in haste, but in
security and at leisure.
There was, in classic times, a sacred character attached to _all_
places set apart for the purposes of sepulture. They enjoyed the
especial protection of the law, and were invested with a sort of
religious sanctity.[49] This protection was asserted in many
successive edicts, and the heaviest penalties were inflicted on the
violators of tombs, as guilty of sacrilege.[50] Reverence for the
sepulchres of the dead was regarded by the ancient mind as a religious
virtue; and the neglect of the ancestral tomb even involved disability
for municipal office.[51]
Being situated along the public highway, these pagan tombs were liable 59
to various pollutions, to which numerous inscriptions refer. Hence the
frequent CAVE VIATOR--“Traveller, beware!”--so common in classic
epitaphs. The SCRIPTOR PARCE HOC OPVS--“Writer, spare this
work”--sometimes met with, is, as Kenrick well remarks,[52] not the
address of an author to a critic, but of a relative of the deceased,
entreating the wall-scribbler not to disfigure a tomb. Electioneering
notices were sometimes written upon these wayside monuments--a
practice which is deprecated in the following: CANDIDATVS FIAT
HONORATVS ET TV FELIX SCRIPTOR SI HIC NON SCRIPSERIS--“May your
candidate be honoured and yourself happy, O writer, if you write not
on this tomb!” INSCRIPTOR, ROGO TE VT TRANSEAS MONVMENTVM--“Inscriber,
I pray you pass by this monument.”
As these sepulchral areas, often of considerable extent, were taken
from the fields in the vicinity of a great city, where the land was
very valuable for the purpose of tillage, they were in continual
danger of invasion from the cupidity of the heirs or of adjacent
land-owners, but for this legal protection. On many of the
_cippi_, or funereal monuments, which line the public roads in
the vicinity of Rome, the extent of these areas is set forth. Some of
them are quite small, as is indicated in the following inscription:
TERRENVM SACRATVM LONGVM P[EDES] · X · LAT · P[EDES] · X · FODERE
NOLI · NE SACRILEGIVM COMMITTAS[52a]--“A consecrated plot of earth, ten
feet long and ten feet broad. Do not dig here, lest you commit
sacrilege.”
More generally the size of the area is expressed, as in the following:
IN FRONTE P[EDES] · IX IN AGRO P[EDES] · X; that is, “Frontage on the 60
road, nine feet; depth in the field, ten feet.” This area, small as it
is, was designed for several families. The limited space occupied by
the cinerary urns rendered this quite possible. Frequently, however,
the size was much larger. An area one hundred and twenty-five feet
square would be of very moderate extent. Horace mentions one one
thousand feet by three hundred,[53] and sometimes they greatly exceed
this, as one on the Via Labicana, five hundred by eighteen hundred
feet, or over twenty English acres. There were also frequently
_exhedræ_, or seats by the wayside, for passers-by, who were sometimes
exhorted to pause and read the inscription, or to pour a libation for
the dead, as in the following: SISTE VIATOR TV QVI VIA FLAMINIA
TRANSIS, RESTA AC RELEGE--“Stop, traveller, who passest by on the
Flaminian Way; pause and read, and read again!” MISCE BIBE DA
MIHI--“Mix, drink, and give to me.” VIATORES SALVETE ET
VALETE--“Travellers, hail and farewell.”
These burial plots were incapable of alienation or transfer from the
families for whom they were originally set apart; who are sometimes
enumerated in the inscription, or more generally expressed by the
formulæ, SIBI SVISQVE FECIT, SIBI ET POSTERIS SVIS, or with the
addition, LIBERTIS LIBERTABVSQVE POSTERISQVE, that is, “He made this
for himself and his family,” or “for himself and his descendants;”
also “for his freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.”
Sometimes this limitation is plainly asserted to be, VT NE VNQVAM DE
NOMINE FAMILIAE NOSTRAE HOC MONVMENTVM EXEAT--“That this monument 61
may not go out of the name of our family.” The cupidity of the
inheritor of the estate is especially guarded against by the
ever-recurring formula, H · M · H · N · S ·, that is, _Hoc monumentum
hæredem non sequitur_--“This monument descends not to the heir.”
Sometimes within a stately mausoleum reposed in solitary magnificence
the dust of a single individual, who in sullen exclusiveness declares
in his epitaph that he has no associate even in the grave, or that he
made his tomb for himself alone--IN HOC MONVMENTO SOCIVM HABEO NVLLVM,
or, HOC SOLO SIBI FECIT.
The violation of the monument is earnestly deprecated in numerous
inscriptions in some such terms as these: ROGO PER DEOS SVPEROS
INFEROSQVE NE VELITIS OSSA MEA VIOLARE--“I beseech you, by the
supernal and infernal gods, that you do not violate my bones.”
Sometimes this petition is accompanied by an imprecation of divine
vengeance if it should be neglected, as, QVI VIOLAVERIT DEOS
SENTIAT IRATOS--“May he feel the wrath of the gods[54] who
shall have violated [this tomb.]” Another invokes the fearful
curse, QVISQVIS HOC SVSTVLERIT AVT LAESERIT VLTIMVS SVORVM
MORIATVR[55]--“Whoever shall take away or injure this [tomb] let
him die the last of his race.”
From a distrust of posterity many erected their monuments during their
life-time, and wrote their own epitaphs, leaving only a space for the
age. This is sometimes expressed by the words, SIBI VIVVS FECIT, or,
SE VIVO, SE VIVIS, or even by such solecisms as ME VIVVS, or SE VIVVS.
The following records the strange fact of the erection of a funereal
monument by one living person to another: SEMIRAMIAE LICINIAE QVAM 62
LOCO FILIAE DILIGO OB MERITA EIVS VIVVS VIVAE FECI--“To Semiramia
Licinia, whom I love in place of my daughter: on account of her
merits, alive, I made this to her alive.”
These classic usages have been thus detailed because traces of their
influence may be observed in many practices adopted by the primitive
Christians, and because they furnish an explanation of those
remarkable immunities and privileges which the Catacombs so long
enjoyed. These latter were constructed in separate and limited areas,
in like manner as the pagan sepulchres. De Rossi has given a map of
the Catacomb of Callixtus, in which these areas are accurately
defined. They vary in size and shape, that of the crypt of St. Lucina
being one hundred feet _in fronte_ and one hundred and eighty
_in agro_, that of St. Cecilia two hundred and fifty feet _in
fronte_ and one hundred _in agro_, and others still larger. By
the very tenor of the law these areas enjoyed the same protection as
those of the pagan sepulchres, of which protection it required a
special edict to deprive them. Even when Christianity fell under the
ban of persecution that freedom of sepulture was not at first
interfered with. Having wreaked his cruel rage upon the living body,
the pagan magistrate at least did not deny right of burial to the
martyr’s mutilated remains. A beneficent Roman law declared that the
bodies even of those who died by the hand of the public executioner
might be given up to any who asked for them.[56] So that even the
sentence of outlawry against the Christians did not affect the bodies
of the dead. Indeed, we know from ecclesiastical history that
frequently the faithful received the remains of the martyrs and gave 63
them Christian burial. It was not till the third century, when the
pagan opposition to Christianity became intense and bitter, that the
persecutors waged war upon the dead. Although both Diocletian and
Maximian confirmed the decree just cited, it often happened that, in
order that the Christians might not have even the melancholy
consolation of gathering up the martyrs’ bones, and honouring the
remains of their fallen heroes, those sacred relics were denied the
rites of sepulture which were freely accorded to the body of the
vilest malefactor.
These areas, Christian as well as pagan, were under the guardianship
of the Roman _Pontifices_, who, although pagans, were actually
confirmed in their authority by the Christian Emperor Constans. In
consequence of this protection the Christians were enabled to conduct
their worship and celebrate their _agapæ_ in the oratories or
other buildings erected over the Catacombs, the ruins of which are
still to be seen at the Catacombs of St. Domitilla and Sts. Nereus and
Achilles, and which to the popular apprehension would seem to
correspond to the pagan structures for the celebration of funeral
banquets. Even when oppressed and persecuted above ground, they found
a sanctuary beneath its surface, and were permitted by the ignorance
or indifference of their foes to worship God among the holy dead. So
long as their sepulchral areas were uninvaded the Christians
scrupulously abstained from extending their excavations beyond their
respective limits, digging lower _piani_ instead, when insatiate
death demanded room for still more graves. But when the ruthless
persecutor pursued them even beneath the earth, they felt at liberty
to transcend those limits and burrow in any direction for safety or
escape.
The Christian inscriptions often strongly deprecate the violation of 64
the graves to which they are attached, in like manner as we have seen
in pagan epitaphs, and against this crime the Fathers intensely
inveigh. Sometimes the petition assumes a most solemn character, as
this: [ADIVRO] VOS PER C[H]RISTVM, NE MIHI AB ALIQVO VIOLENTIAM
[_sic_] FIAT ET NE SEPVLCRVM MEVM VIOLETVR--“[I conjure] you by Christ
that no violence be offered me by any one, and that my sepulchre may
not be violated.” Still more awful in its adjuration is the following:
CONIVRO VOS PER TREMENDVM DIEM IVDICII VT HANC SEPVLTVRAM NVLLI
VIOLENT[57]--“I conjure you by the dreadful day of judgment that no
one violate this sepulchre.”
Sometimes a most terrible imprecation is expressed, as in the
following:
MALE · PEREAT · INSEPVLTVS
IACEAT · NON · RESVRGAT
CVM · IVDA · PARTEM · HABEAT
SI · QVIS · SEPVLCHRVM · HVNC · VIOLAVERIT--
If any one shall violate this sepulchre,
Let him perish miserably and remain unburied;
Let him lie down and not rise again,
Let him have his portion with Judas.[58]
....[EMI]GRAVIT AD XPM
....SEPVLCRVM VIOLARE
....SIT ALIENVS A REGNO DEI.
... Has departed to Christ. [If any one dare] to violate
this sepulchre, let him ... and be far from the kingdom of
God.[59]
It is probable that this dread of the violation of the grave arose, in 65
part at least, from the fear that the dispersion of the remains might
impede the resurrection of the body; and also from that natural
aversion to the disturbance of the slumbering dust, so passionately
expressed on the tombstone of England’s greatest dramatist.[60]
We sometimes find also the announcement upon Christian as well as upon
pagan tombs, that they have been prepared while the tenants were yet
alive, as in the following: LOCVS BASILIONIS SE BIBO FECIT--“The place
of Basilio, he made it when alive;” SABINI BISOMVM SE BIBVM FECIT SIBI
IN CEMETERIVM BALBINAE IN CRYPTA NOBA [_sic_]--“The bisomus of
Sabinus, he made it for himself during his life-time, in the cemetery
of Balbina, in the new crypt.” As Sabinus could only occupy one half
of this, the other half was probably intended for his wife. Observe in
the following the beautiful euphemism for the grave. It is calmly
chosen as the last long home, as the “house appointed for all 66
living.” (Fig. 19.[61])
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Epitaph from Lapidarian Gallery.[61]]
But there was another and still more remarkable resemblance between
the funeral usages of the pagans and Christians than any yet
mentioned, and one which greatly contributed to the freedom of action
and security of the latter. There is abundant monumental and other
evidence of the existence in Rome, in the time of the later Republic
and of the Empire, of certain funeral confraternities--_collegia_, as
they were called--much like the modern burial clubs. A remarkable
inscription of the time of Hadrian, A. D. 103, found at Lavigna,
nineteen miles from Rome, on the Appian Way, gives an insight into
their constitution and objects. With much legal tautology it sets
forth the privilege of this _collegium_ of the worshippers of Diana
and the new divinity Antinous appointed by a decree of the Roman
Senate and people, to assemble, convene, and have an association for
the burial of the dead.[62] The members of this confraternity were to 67
pay for that purpose a hundred _sesterces_ at entrance, besides an
_amphora_ of good wine, and five _ases_ a month thereafter,[63] all of
which was forfeited by the non-payment of the monthly dues. Three
hundred _sesterces_ were expended on the funeral, fifty of which were
to be distributed at the cremation of the body. If a member died at a
distance from Rome three of the confraternity were sent to fetch the
body. Even if they failed to obtain it the funeral rites were duly
paid to an effigy of the deceased. There was also provision made for
the members dining together on anniversary and other occasions
according to rules duly prescribed by the _collegium_.
The names of very many of these _collegia_ have been preserved, each
of which consisted of the members of a similar profession or
handicraft. Thus we have the _Collegium Medicorum_, the association of
the physicians; _Aurificum_, of the gold-workers; _Tignariorum_, of
the carpenters; _Dendrophororum_, of the wood-fellers; _Pellionariorum_,
of the furriers; _Nautarum_, of the sailors; _Pabulariorum_, of the
forage merchants; _Aurigariorum_, of the charioteers; and
_Utriculariorum_, of the bargemen.[64]
They were frequently also connected by the bond of nationality or of
common religious observance, as _Collegium Germanorum_, the
association of the Germans; _Pastophororum_, of the priests of Isis;
_Serapidis et Isidis_, of Serapis and Isis; _Æsculapii et Hygeiæ_, of
Æsculapius and Hygeia.[65] Sometimes they were _Cultores Veneris_,
_Jovis_, _Herculis_, worshippers of Venus, Jupiter, Hercules, or, as
we have seen, of Diana and Antinous.
These associations were often favoured with especial privileges, 68
immunities, and rights, like those of incorporation, such as the
holding of territorial property. De Rossi has shown, by ample
citations, that the emperors, who were always opposed to associations
among the citizens, made a special exemption in favour of these
funeral clubs.[66]
By conformity to the constitution of these corporations the Christian
church had peculiar facilities for the burial of its dead, and even
for the celebration of religious worship. Indeed, it has been
suggested, and is highly probable, that it was under the cover of
these funeral associations that toleration was conceded, first to the
sepulchres, then to the churches. Tertullian describes the practice of
the Christian community in the second century as follows: “Every one
offers a small contribution on a certain day of the month, or when he
chooses, and as he is able, for no one is compelled; it is a voluntary
offering. This is our common fund for piety; for it is not expended in
feasting and drinking and in wanton excesses, but in feeding and
_burying the poor_, in supporting orphans, aged persons, and such as
are shipwrecked, or such as languish in mines, in exile, or in
prison.”[67] Thus the _Ecclesia Fratrum_, the “Congregation of the
Brethren,” who restored the funeral monument described on page
fifty-six,[68] suggests the pagan college of the _Fratres Arvales_; 69
and the _Cultor Verbi_, or worshipper of the Divine Word, in the same
inscription, would seem to the heathen magistrate analogous to the
_Cultores Jovis_ or _Cultores Dianæ_ of the pagan _collegia_. Indeed,
it is difficult to decide from the names of some of these associations
whether they were Christian or pagan. Thus we read of the _Collegium
convictorum qui una epulo vesci solent_--“The fraternity of
table-companions who are accustomed to feast together.” De Rossi
suggests that there may be here a covert reference to a Christian
community, and probably to the celebration of the Agape or of the
Eucharist.[69] Another is the _Collegium quod est in domo Sergiæ
Paulinæ_--“The association which is in the house of Sergia Paulina.”
This possibly may have been a Christian community, like “the church
which was in the house” of Priscilla and Aquila.[70]
That the primitive Christians availed themselves of the privileges
granted to the funeral associations, is confirmed by a discovery made
by De Rossi in the Cemetery of St. Domitilla in the year 1865, and
already referred to. At the entrance was found a chamber, with stone
seats like the _schola_, or place of meeting of the pagan tombs where
the religious confraternity celebrated the funeral banquet of the
deceased. Here the Christians celebrated instead the _Agape_, or Feast
of Charity, and the _Natalitia_, or anniversary of the martyrs who
were buried there, just as the pagan associations commemorated the
anniversaries of their deceased patrons.
The ancient privileges of these _collegia_ were confirmed by an edict
of Septimius Severus about the year A. D. 200. It is a curious
coincidence that precisely at this time Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome,
appointed Callixtus to be “guardian of the cemetery,” as well as 70
head of the clergy.[71] In order to secure to the funeral association
the protection of the law it was necessary that one of its members
should be appointed agent or “syndic,” by whom its business should be
transacted, and in whose name its property should be held.[72] Thus
Callixtus became the syndic of the public cemetery of the church,
which still bears his name. De Rossi conjectures that this was the
first cemetery set apart for the use of the whole Christian community.
Hence it was taken under the care of the ecclesiastical authorities,
and became, as we shall see hereafter, the burying-place of the Roman
bishops, and the especial property of the church.[73]
We will now trace briefly the history of those persecutions which
glutted the Catacombs with victims, and at times drove the church for
sanctuary to their deepest recesses. We have seen that Christianity
grew up under the protection accorded to Judaism as one of the
tolerated religions of Rome. But this toleration did not long
continue. In Rome as well as elsewhere the new creed was doomed to a
baptism of blood. The causes of this persecution are not far to seek.
The Christian doctrine spread rapidly, and early excited the jealousy
of the Roman authorities by its numerous converts from the national
faith, many of whom were of exalted rank. These carefully refrained
from the idolatrous adulation by which the servile mob were wont to 71
express their loyalty to the imperial monster who aspired to be a god.
Hence they were accused of disaffection, of treason.[74] They were the
enemies of Cæsar, and of the Roman people.[75] They were supposed to
exert a malign influence on the course of nature. If it did not rain
the Christians were to blame.[76] “If the Tiber overflows its banks,”
says Tertullian, “or the Nile does not; if there be drought or
earthquakes, famine or pestilence, the cry is raised, ‘_The Christians
to the lions!_’”[77] If the pecking of the sacred chickens or the
entrails of the sacrificial victims gave unfavourable omens, it was
attributed to the counter spell of “the atheists.” At Rome, as well as
at Ephesus and Philippi, the selfish fears of the shrine and image
makers, whose “craft was in danger,” and the hostility of the priests
and dependents on the idol-worship, inspired or intensified the
opposition to Christianity, as did also the jealousy of the Jews, who
regarded with especial hostility the believers in the lowly Nazarene,
whom their fathers with wicked hands had crucified and slain.[78]
The terrible conflagration which destroyed the greater part of the
city during the reign of Nero was made the excuse for the first
outburst of persecution against the Christian community. By public
rumour this deed was attributed to Nero himself. “To put an end to 72
to this report,” says Tacitus, “he laid the guilt, and inflicted the
most cruel punishment, upon these men, who, already branded with
infamy, were called by the vulgar, Christians.... Their sufferings at
their executions,” he adds, “were aggravated by insult and mockery;
for some were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and worried to
death by dogs; some were crucified, and some, wrapped in garments of
pitch, were burned as torches to illumine the night.”[79]
During this persecution St. Paul fell a victim, A. D. 64. He was
beheaded “without the gate,” on the Ostian Way, and weeping friends
took up his bleeding corpse and laid it, according to tradition, in
one of the most ancient crypts of an adjoining Catacomb, where
Eusebius asserts that his tomb could be seen in his day.[80]
From this time Christianity was exposed to outbursts of heathen rage,
and express decrees were published against it.[81] No longer sharing
the protection of Judaism, it fell under the ban of the empire. At
times the rage of persecution slumbered, and again it burst forth with
inextinguishable fury. But, like the typical bush that “flourished
unconsumed in fire,” the Christian faith but grew and spread the more.
Yet the sword ever impended over the church. Sometimes its stroke 73
was for a time deferred, when the little flock took courage and
rejoiced; but often it fell with crushing weight, smiting the
shepherds and scattering the sheep. One of these periods of rest
extended from the time of the Neronian persecution till near the end
of the century, when Domitian, “a second Nero,”[82] stretched forth
his hand again to vex the saints. During the short reign of the
“justice-loving Nerva” the Christians again enjoyed repose, so that
Lactantius even asserts that they were restored to all their former
privileges.
To the first century De Rossi refers the construction of at least
three or four of the Catacombs. These are, (1) the Cemetery of
Priscilla, excavated, according to an ancient tradition, in the
property of the Roman Senator Pudens, mentioned by St. Paul, and in
which, it is said, were interred his daughters Pudentiana and
Praxides; (2) the Catacomb of Domitilla, the grandniece of the Emperor
Domitian, in which she herself was buried, together with her
chamberlains Nereus and Achilles, who were beheaded for their
steadfastness in the Christian faith; (3) the Crypt of Lucina,
afterwards part of the Catacomb of Callixtus, in which some of the
most ancient inscriptions have been found. De Rossi conjectures that
this lady is the same as the Pomponia Græcina before mentioned, the
wife of Plautius, the conqueror of Britain. (4) De Rossi is also of
the opinion that he has discovered another, and the oldest of all the
Catacombs, dating from the very times of the apostles themselves, in
that known as the Fons Petri, or the Cemetery of the Font of Peter, in
which tradition asserts that he himself baptized. The classical style
of the architecture, frescoes, and graceful stucco wreaths and
garlands, and the character of the inscriptions, all point to a very 74
ancient period, before art had degenerated, and before long-continued
persecution had banished Christianity into seclusion and poverty.
The law of Trajan against secret assemblies, synchronous with the
opening of the second century, gave a new occasion of persecuting the
Church. With such severity was this done that, according to Pliny, the
deserted temples became again frequented, and their neglected rites
revived.[83]
The Emperor Hadrian is described by his contemporaries as diligently
practising the Roman rites, and despising all foreign religions.[84]
Although he restrained the tumultuous attacks of the populace upon the
Christians, he nevertheless favoured their legal prosecution.[85]
The following epitaph given by Maitland commemorates a martyrdom of
this reign. The last sentence seems to imply that it was erected in a
time of actual persecution; but no dated example of the monogram which
accompanies it appears before the time of Constantine. The inscription
was probably written long after the death of Marius, or the monogram 75
may have been added by a later hand:
[Illustration:
TEMPORE ADRIANI IMPERATORIS MARIVS
ADOLESCENS DVX MILITVM QVI SATIS VIXIT
[leafed DVM VITAM PRO |CHO| CVM SANGVINE CON ☧
branch] SVNSIT IN PACE TANDEM QVIEVIT BENE
MERENTES CVM LACRIMIS ET METV POSVE
RVNT I. D. VI.
In Christ. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, Marius, a young
military officer, who had lived long enough, when, with his
blood, he gave up his life for Christ. At length he rested in
peace. The well-deserving set up this with tears and in fear, on
the 6th, Ides of December.]
In this reign also suffered Alexander, bishop of Rome, whose tomb has
been found on the Nomentan Way, together with Eventius and Theodulus,
a presbyter and deacon.
Under the humane and equitable Antoninus Pius,[86] Christianity seems
to have enjoyed a partial toleration, although the edict of Trajan was
still unrevoked. Yet several outbreaks of popular fury against the
Christians took place, and in the very first year of his reign
Telesphorus, the bishop of the church at Rome, suffered martyrdom.[87]
One of the strangest phenomena in history is the persecution of the
primitive church by the philosophical emperor Marcus Aurelius,[88]
whose “Meditations” seem almost like the writings of an apostle in
their praise of virtue, yearning for abstract perfection, and contempt
of pomp and pleasure. Nevertheless, he was one of the most systematic
and heartless of all the oppressors of the Christian faith--a faith so
much loftier than even his high philosophy, and yet having so much 76
akin. With the cool acerbity of a stoic, he resolved to exterminate
the obnoxious doctrines. An active inquisition for the Christians was
set on foot, and the odious system of domestic espionage, which even
Trajan had forbidden, was encouraged. Shameless informers, greedy for
gain, fed their rapacity on the confiscated spoils of the believers,
whom they plundered, says Melito, by day and by night. Though gentle
to other classes of offenders, and even to rebels, Aurelius exceeded
in barbarity the most ruthless of his predecessors in the refinements
of torture, by rack and scourge, by fire and stake, employed to
enforce the recantation of the Christians; and every year of his long
reign was polluted with innocent blood.
From Gaul to Asia Minor raged the storm of persecution. The
earthquakes, floods, and famine, the wars and pestilence, that wasted
the empire, were visited upon the hapless Christians, who were
immolated in hecatombs as the causes of these dire calamities. From
the crowded amphitheatre of Smyrna ascended, as in a chariot of fire,
the soul of the apostolic bishop Polycarp. The arrowy Rhone ran red
with martyrs’ blood. The names of the venerable Pothinus, of the
youthful Blandina and Ponticus, and of the valiant Symphorianus, will
be memories of thrilling power and pathos to the end of time. At Rome
the persecution selected some of its noblest victims. Justin, the
Christian philosopher, finding in the Gospels a loftier lore than in
the teachings of Zeno or Aristotle, of Pythagoras or Plato, became the
foremost of the goodly phalanx of apologists and defenders of the
faith, and sealed his testimony with his blood. With six of his
companions he was brought before the prefect for refusing obedience to
the imperial decree. “We are Christians,” they said, “and sacrifice 77
not to idols.” They were forthwith scourged and beheaded, and devout
men bore them to their burial, doubtless in these very Catacombs,
where their undiscovered remains may yet lie. In this reign also
suffered the seven sons of St. Felicitas--the tomb of one of whom De
Rossi believes he has found--and St. Cecilia and her companions, to be
hereafter mentioned.[89]
The legend of the Thundering Legion, supported as it is by the medals 78
and the column of Antoninus, commemorates, indeed, the deliverance of
the Roman army by a timely shower; but the Emperor ascribed that
deliverance not to the prayers of the Christians, but to his own
appeal to the heathen gods,[90] and there is no evidence that he ever
relaxed the severity of the persecution.
The ferocity of the brutal Commodus[91] was tempered by the influence
of his concubine, Marcia, and Christianity spread among the highest
ranks; but persecution did not entirely cease. Apollonius, a senator 79
of the empire, was put to death at Rome, and we read of numerous
martyrdoms elsewhere. A Christian inscription commemorates an officer
of Commodus, and Procurator of the Imperial household, who was
“received to God”--RECEPTVS AD DEVM--A. D. 217.[92]
On the death of this emperor the persecution raged with such violence
that, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, many martyrs were burned,
crucified, and beheaded every day.[93] _Non licet esse vos_--“It
is not lawful for you to exist”--was the stern edict of extermination
pronounced against the saints.
Christianity had little favour to expect from a military despot like
Septimius Severus, whose dying counsel to his successor expressed the
principle of his government--“Be generous to the soldiers and trample
on all besides.”
The revived accusations against the new faith called forth the bold
defence, or rather defiance, of Tertullian, one of the noblest
monuments of the primitive ages. In this reign the sanctity of the
Christian cemeteries was first violated, and that not at Rome but in
Africa, where the persecution was most virulent. “The mob assails us
with stones and flames with the frenzy of bacchanals,” says
Tertullian; “They do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them
from the rest of the tomb, from the asylum of death, cut them in
pieces, and rend them asunder.”[94]
After the cessation of this persecution the Church enjoyed a period of 80
unwonted rest. Although under the ignoble Heliogabalus the sensual
Asiatic worship of Baal was introduced to Rome, and human sacrifice
was even offered to this Eastern Moloch,[95] yet the religion of peace
and purity shared the toleration accorded to the most obscene and
cruel rites. The just and amiable Alexander Severus inaugurated a new
era for Christianity,[96] to which he was favourably disposed,
probably through the influence of his mother, Mammæa, who had enjoyed
at Antioch the instruction of Origen.[97] He used frequently to quote
with approval the Golden Rule of Our Lord, and caused it to be
inscribed on his palace walls, and also ceded to the Christians a
piece of public ground for the erection of a church.[98] But Alexander
was only a religious eclectic, honouring what he thought best in the
current systems of belief. Of this reign is the epitaph of Urban,
bishop of Rome, which has been found in the so-called “Papal Crypt,” 81
bearing his name and the initial letter of his title--ΟΥΡΒΑΝΟϹ Ε....
The accession of the Thracian savage, Maximin, A. D. 235, was the
signal for a fresh outburst of persecution. To have been favoured by
Severus was sufficient to incur the hate of his murderer. His rage was
especially directed against the chief pastors of the flock of Christ.
Pontianus, the Roman bishop, was exiled to Sardinia, and there slain.
Antherus, his successor in this dangerous dignity, for his zeal in
preserving the records of the martyrs himself suffered martyrdom a few
weeks after his accession, and was laid in that narrow chamber
destined to receive so many of Rome’s early bishops, where a slab
bearing his name and title--ΑΝΤΕΡΩϹ · ΕΠΙ--has been found. In this
reign also suffered the celebrated Hippolytus, bishop of Pontus, and
author of the “Philosophoumena.”
Under Gordian and Philip a respite was again granted to the persecuted
church. The latter, indeed, is claimed by Eusebius as a Christian; but
his character and conduct are inconsistent with such a supposition.
A violent reaction took place on the accession of Decius, whose name
became an object of execration to mankind.[99] He resolved to entirely
crush and extirpate Christianity, whose bishops and churches began to
rival the pontiffs and temples of the gods of Rome. At his instigation
a persecution of unprecedented virulence raged like an epidemic
throughout the empire. The imperial edicts enforced conformity to the
pagan ritual under penalty of the most horrible tortures. This unwonted
severity produced the first great apostasy of the primitive church; 82
and many of the less stable converts procured exemption from martyrdom
by sacrificing to the gods, burning incense on their altars, or
purchasing certificates of indulgence from the heathen magistrate.[100]
“Pale and trembling, and more like sacrificial victims than those
about to sacrifice,” says an eye-witness, “some approached the heathen
shrines; but others, firm and blessed pillars of the Lord, witnessed a
good confession unto death.”[101] The bishops of the church, who, as
the leaders of Christ’s sacramental host, bore gallantly the battle’s
brunt, were naturally the earliest victims of the tyrant’s rage.
Accordingly, at the very outbreak of the Decian slaughter, the
venerable Fabian, head of the Roman church, perished by decapitation;
and the Catacombs were glutted with a host of unknown martyrs. In the
very chamber in the Cemetery of Callixtus to which his mutilated
corpse was borne, may still be seen the Bishop’s epitaph--ΦΑΒΙΑΝΟϹ ·
ΕΠΙ--with the monogram of his martyrdom, the conjoined letters ΜΤΡ,
added probably by a later hand. The church seemed paralyzed with fear, 83
and for sixteen months no successor was elected. But, undismayed by
the tragic fate of Fabian, Cornelius, allied with some of the noblest
families of Rome, became the leader of the forlorn hope of
Christianity against all the power of the empire. After a year’s
episcopate he was first banished and then beheaded under Gallus, a
worthy successor in persecution of Decius. Through the archæological
researches of De Rossi have been recovered, first his epitaph--CORNELIVS
· MARTYR · EP--and then his tomb, with a Damasine inscription, in one
of the most interesting crypts of the Catacombs. Lucius, his
successor, in six months shared his fate, and was buried in the
chamber consecrated by the dust of so many martyr-bishops, where his
brief epitaph--ΛΟΥΚΙϹ--is still legible.
Valerian,[102] who revived in his own person the ancient office of
Censor, was at first so favourable toward the Christians that his
house, says Dionysius of Alexandria, was filled with pious persons,
and was, indeed, a congregation[103] of the Lord. This favour was
doubtless the result of the Censor’s approval of Christian influence
on public morals.[104] In the latter part of his reign, however, the
Emperor passed under the dominion of the most abject superstition.
Through the influence of Macrianus, a pagan bigot learned in the dark
lore of Egypt, he became addicted to magic arts, and is said to have
sought the auguries of the empire in the entrails of human
victims.[105] The most relentless decrees were launched against the
Christian church. The bishops, priests, and deacons were forthwith to
be put to the sword; all others were to share the same fate, or to be
punished by exile and fetters.[106] The holding of assemblies, or even 84
entering the Christian cemeteries, was strictly prohibited A. D.
257.[107] By this unwonted invasion of the immemorial sanctity of the
sepulchre the Christians were forbidden even these last refuges from
persecution.
Among the most illustrious victims of Valerian whose bodies lie in the
lowly Catacombs, but whose names live for evermore, were Stephen I.
and Sixtus II., bishops of the persecuted church, and a number of
distinguished ecclesiastics, as well as many laymen of noble rank.[108]
Stephen, as the head of the Christian community, was especially
obnoxious to heathen rage. According to the Acts of his martyrdom he
sought concealment in these sepulchral crypts,[109] where he was
secretly visited by the faithful, and where he administered the
sacraments. He was traced by the Roman soldiers to his subterranean
chapel, but, awed by the mysterious rites, they allowed him to
conclude the service in which he was engaged. He was then beheaded,
with several of his adherents,[110] and buried in the Catacomb.
Sixtus, the successor of Stephen, within a year received the martyr’s 85
crown. Like another Daniel setting at defiance the emperor’s decree,
he was leading the devotions of the persecuted flock in the Catacomb
of Prætextatus, probably because it was less known than the public
cemetery of Callixtus, when he was apprehended by the fierce soldiery,
who had tracked his footsteps thither. He was hurried away to summary
judgment, brought back to the place of his offence, and there
beheaded, sprinkling with his blood the walls of the chamber. With him
were also executed four of his deacons,[111] the monuments of two of
whom, Agapetus and Felicissimus, De Rossi discovered in the very
Catacomb in which they suffered. Sixtus himself was buried in the
“Bishops’ Tomb” in the Callixtan Cemetery, where the following
inscription, fragments of which have been found in the _débris_,
was afterward set up by Damasus:
TEMPORE QVO GLADIVS SECVIT PIA VISCERA MATRIS
HIC POSITVS RECTOR COELESTIA IVSSA DOCEBAM
ADVENIVNT SVBITO RAPIVNT QVI FORTE SEDENTEM
MILITIBVS MISSIS POPVLI TVNC COLLA DEDERE
MOX SIBI COGNOVIT SENIOR QVIS TOLLERE VELLET
PALMAM SEQVE SVVMQVE CAPVT PRIOR OBTVLIT IPSE
IMPATIENS FERITAS POSSET NE LAEDERE QVEMQVAM
OSTENDIT CHRISTVS REDDIT QVI PRAEMIA VITAE
PASTORIS MERITVM NVMERVM GREGIS IPSE TVETVR
At the time when the sword pierced the tender heart of the Mother 86
[church,] I, the ruler buried here, was teaching the laws of
heaven. Suddenly came [the enemy,] who seized me sitting as I
was. Then the people presented their necks to the soldiers sent
against me. Soon the old man saw who sought to bear away the
palm, and was the first to offer himself and his own head, that
impatient rage might injure no one else. Christ who bestows the
rewards of life, manifests the merit of the pastor: he himself
defends the flock.[112]
Thus seven bishops of the church at Rome fell in succession by the
hand of the headsman, five of them in the space of eight years--heroic
athletes of Christ who, at the very seat of paganism, as in a mighty
theatre of God, bore the brunt of persecution, and, conquering even in
death, received the martyr’s crown and palm.
The accession of Gallienus[113] restored peace to the church. His
decree granting complete religious toleration, the restoration of
confiscated ecclesiastical property, and permission to “recover what
they called their cemeteries,”[114] won the gratitude of his Christian
subjects. His character, however, by no means justified the epithet of
“holy and pious emperor” bestowed by Dionysius of Alexandria.[115]
This was the first formal recognition of Christianity as a _religio
licita_, or legalized faith, and for forty years the church enjoyed
comparative repose; at least such repose as was possible while twenty 87
rival emperors--fantastic things “that likeness of a kingly crown had
on”--struggled for the supremacy, and harried the land with their
mutual devastations. During this period, Felix, the bishop of the
Roman church, who, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_, was
exceedingly diligent in honouring the martyrs of the Catacombs, became
himself a conscript of that noble army, and was beheaded, in
accordance with an imperial decree, as was also Agapetus, a Christian
of noble rank.
The mild and amiable Tacitus[116] ruled over a turbulent people only
six months. His brother Florian retained the purple only half that
time. Probus, “the just,” whose name, says his epitaph, expressed his
character,[117] fell by the hands of his own tumultuous legionaries.
The sensual and abominable Carinus displayed the extravagancies of
Heliogabalus, aggravated by the cruelty of Domitian. In his reign died
Eutychianus, whose epitaph and title--ΕΥΤΥΧΙΑΝΟϹ ΕΠΙϹ--have been
found in the “Papal Crypt” of Callixtus.[118]
Christianity was destined to undergo a final ordeal before it should 88
ascend the throne of the Cæsars. The church must pass once more
through the purifying flames of persecution before it was fit to be
entrusted with the reins of empire. The long peace and temporal
prosperity had fostered pride and luxury, and relaxed the morals of
the Christian community. Schisms and feuds destroyed the unity of the
faith, and the bishops had begun to aspire to temporal power, and to
assert an unwarranted authority. “Prelates inveighed against
prelates,” says Eusebius, “and people rose against people, assailing
each other with words as with darts and spears.”[119] The blasts of
adversity were necessary to winnow the spurious and false away, and to
leave the tried and true behind. From the fatal slumber of religious
apathy into which the church was falling it was to be rudely awakened.
Its former afflictions sank into insignificance compared with this
great tribulation, which was pre-eminently called _The_ Persecution by
the historian of the times.[120]
The close of the third century witnessed the strange spectacle of the
government of the Roman world by a group of men who had climbed to the
giddy height of power from the lowest stations in life. Diocletian,
originally a slave, or at least the son of a slave, reduced the
haughty aristocracy of Rome to a condition of oriental servility.
Maximian, a Pannonian peasant, betrayed the savageness of his nature
by his bloodthirsty cruelty. Galerius, an Illyrian herdsman, but
exhibited more conspicuously upon the throne of empire the native
barbarity of his character. Constantius was of nobler birth than any
of his colleagues, and he alone adorned his lofty station by dignity,
justice, and clemency. The world groaned under the oppression of its
cruel masters. So exhausting were their exactions that none remained 89
to tax, says Lactantius,[121] but the beggars.
The early years of the reign of Diocletian were characterized for the
most part by principles of religious toleration. Indeed, his wife and
daughter, the empresses Prisca and Valeria, favoured, if they did not
adopt, the Christian faith, and some of the first officers of the
imperial household belonged to the now powerful sect.[122] But even
during this period the Christians were not free from danger. Caius,
the Roman bishop, is said to have lived for eight years in the
Catacombs on account of the persecution, and at last underwent
martyrdom in the year A. D. 296.[123] Marcus and Marcelianus, two
Roman Christians of noble rank, who have given their name to one of
the Catacombs, suffered about this time. Others, especially in the
army, where the ancient faith had firmest hold, and where, indeed,
Eusebius says, the persecution began,[124] endured martyrdom as the
valiant soldiers of Christ. The storm, of which these events were the
precursors, at length burst with fury on the Christians in the year
303. A series of cruel edicts, written, says Eusebius, with a dagger’s
point,[125] were fulminated for the extirpation of the Christian
name.[126] They were framed with malignant ingenuity, so as to leave 90
no chance of escape save in open apostasy. All ecclesiastical property
was confiscated. The churches were razed to the ground, and the sacred
scriptures burned with fire.[127] All assemblies for worship were
prohibited on pain of death. The clergy of every order were zealously
sought out, and thrust into dungeons designed for the worst of
felons.[128] The whole Christian community was outlawed, degraded from
every secular office, deprived of the rights of citizenship, and
exposed to the punishment of the vilest slaves. With intensifying
violence edict followed edict, like successive strokes of thunder in a
raging storm. A universal and relentless proscription of the Christian
name took place. The truculent monster Galerius, of whom his Christian
subjects said, that he never supped without human blood,[129] proposed
that all who refused to sacrifice to the gods should be burned alive;
and the fiendish ingenuity of the persecutors was exhausted in
devising fresh tortures for their victims.
In Italy, and especially at Rome, the work of destruction was eagerly
carried on by Maximian, an implacable enemy of the Christians; and
after his death by the abominable voluptuary Maxentius, in whom the
twin passions of cruelty and lust struggled for the mastery. These 91
monsters of iniquity revelled in a carnival of blood, and glutted the
Catacombs with victims, some of the most illustrious of whom will
shortly be mentioned. On the retirement of Diocletian, satiated with
slaughter and weary with the cares of state, to his retreat at
Salonica, Galerius continued the persecution with increased zeal. It
was the expiring effort of paganism, the death throes of its mortal
agony. But the Christian religion, like the trodden grass that ranker
grows, flourished still in spite of the oppression it endured. Like
the rosemary and thyme, which the more they are bruised give out the
richer perfume, it breathed forth the odours of sanctity which are
fragrant in the world to-day. Though the frail and the fickle fell off
in the blast of adversity, the staunch and true remained; and from the
martyr’s blood, more prolific than the fabled dragon’s teeth, a new
host of Christian heroes rose, contending for the martyr’s starry and
unwithering crown.
But the period of deliverance was at hand. Smitten by the power of
that God whose titles and attributes he had usurped, the wretched
Galerius, amid the agonies of a loathsome disease, implored the
intercessions of the Christians whom he had so ruthlessly proscribed.
With sublimest magnanimity the church exhibited the nobility of a
Gospel revenge, and obeyed the injunction of its divine Master to pray
for those who persecuted and despitefully used it. From the dying
couch of the remorseful monarch came an abject apology for his cruel
deeds; and, in late atonement for his crime, a decree of amplest
recognition of Christianity, and restoration of the right to worship
God. Like the trump of jubilee, the edict of deliverance pealed
through the land. It penetrated the gloomy dungeon, the darksome mine,
the catacomb’s dim labyrinth; and from their sombre depths vast 92
processions of the “noble wrestlers of religion”[130] thronged to the
long forsaken churches with grateful songs of praise to God.
But this treacherous calm was soon to be again broken. The
superstitious tyrant Maximin endeavoured to revive the dying paganism,
and to renew the persecution. He paid Christianity the high compliment
of attempting a complete organization of the heathen priesthood on the
model of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and restored the ancient
worship with unwonted pomp. He prohibited the assemblies in the
cemeteries, and reiterated the edict of extermination against the
Christians.[131] But the loathsome death of this brutal voluptuary
soon delivered the church from the most implacable of its foes. From
the distant island of Britain--that ultimate far Thule of the
empire--had arrived the Cæsar who should enthrone the new faith on the
seat of its persecutors, and establish it as the religion of the
state,[132] an event more perilous to its purity and spiritual power
than the direst oppression it had ever endured. Constantine having
overcome the enemies of Christianity, who were also his own, became
its protector, more, it is easy to believe, either from conviction of
its truth or from policy than on account of the alleged miraculous
vision of the cross of Christ, the presage of a bloody victory.[133]
He issued at Milan, A. D. 313, that decree of full and unlimited 93
toleration[134] which became thenceforth the charter of the church’s
liberties.[135]
The sufferings of the more illustrious victims of persecution are 94
alone recorded in history, which is silent concerning the great army
of unknown martyrs, whose names are recorded only in the Book of Life.
The bishops of the church were ever the first to feel the tyrants’
rage. The episcopal chair was often but the stepping-stone to the
scaffold. Yet faithful shepherds were not wanting to lead the flock of
Christ, and to testify their devotion to their trust by the sacrifice
of their lives. We have seen how Caius suffered even before the final
outbreak of persecution. Marcellinus, his successor, incurred the
resentment of the tyrant Maxentius, was degraded to the office of
groom of the public stables, where the horses of the circus were kept,
and soon sank beneath the weight of his miseries and those of the
church.[136] Marcellus, sometimes confounded with Marcellinus, paid
the penalty of exile for his firmness in maintaining the
ecclesiastical discipline against those who apostatized from the faith
in those times of fiery trial. This event is recorded in the Damasine
inscription:
VERIDICVS RECTOR LAPSOS QVIA CRIMINA FLERE
PRAEDIXIT MISERIS FVIT OMNIBVS HOSTIS AMARVS
HINC FVROR HINC ODIVM SEQVITVR DISCORDIA LITES
SEDITIO CAEDES SOLVVNTVR FOEDERA PACIS
CRIMEN OB ALTERIVS CHRISTVM QVI IN PACE NEGAVIT
FINIBVS EXPVLSVS PATRIAE EST FERITATE TYRANNI
HAEC BREVITER DAMASVS VOLVIT COMPERTA REFERRE
MARCELLI VT POPVLVS MERITVM COGNOSCERE POSSET.[137]
The truth-speaking ruler, because he preached that the lapsed 95
should weep for their crimes, was bitterly hated by all those
unhappy ones. Hence fury, hence hatred followed, discord,
contentions, sedition, and slaughter; and the bonds of peace were
ruptured. For the crime of another, who in a time of peace had
denied Christ, he was expelled the shores of his country by the
cruelty of the tyrant. These things Damasus having learned, was
desirous to relate briefly, that the people might recognize the
merit of Marcellus.
Neither Marcellus nor Marcellinus was buried in the Catacomb of
Callixtus--which, as Diocletian had confiscated all the public
cemeteries, was inaccessible to the Christians--but in the private
crypt of the Christian matron Priscilla, on the Salarian Way.
Eusebius, the successor of Marcellus, was also banished on account of
the controversy concerning the “lapsed.” New light has recently been
thrown on this subject by De Rossi’s discovery, in the tomb of the
bishop, of the following Damasine inscription in a fragmentary
condition:
HERACLIVS VETVIT LABSOS [_sic_] PECCATA DOLERE
EVSEBIVS MISEROS DOCVIT SVA CRIMINA FLERE
SCINDITVR [IN] PARTES POPVLOS GLISCENTE FVRORE
SEDITIO CAEDES BELLVM DISCORDIA LITES
EXTEMPLO PARITER PVLSI FERITATE TYRANNI
INTEGRA CVM RECTOR SERVARET FOEDERA PACIS
PERTVLIT EXILIVM DOMINO SVB IVDICE LAETVS
LITORE TRINACRIO MVNDVM VITAMQ · RELIQUIT.
Heraclius forbade the lapsed to grieve for their sins. Eusebius
taught those unhappy ones to weep for their crimes. The people
were rent in parties, and with increasing fury began sedition,
slaughter, fighting, discord, and strife. Straightway both were
banished by the cruelty of the tyrant, although the ruler was
preserving the bonds of peace inviolate. He bore his exile with
joy, looking to the Lord as his Judge, and on the Trinacrian
shore gave up the world and his life.
The Heraclius mentioned in the inscription is probably the heretical
leader referred to in the epitaph of Marcellus, previously given. No
reference to this event occurs in any of the ecclesiastical writers,
and this inscription, says Dr. Northcote, is the recovery of a lost 96
chapter in the history of the church.[138] The remains of Eusebius
were brought from Sicily, the place of his exile, by his successor,
Melchiades, and interred in the Catacomb of Callixtus, but not with
the other bishops, the approaches to whose tomb were blocked up with
earth, probably to prevent its violation by the enemies of the faith.
Melchiades, with whom the long succession of Rome’s martyr bishops
comes to a close, was the last of his order who was buried in the
Catacombs, and De Rossi conjectures that he has discovered in the
Cemetery of Callixtus his tomb, and the very sarcophagus in which he
lay.[139]
One of the most illustrious of the lay martyrs of the Diocletian
persecution was the gallant young soldier Sebastian, who has given his
name to one of the most ancient basilicas of Rome and to the adjacent
Catacomb, and Adauctus, a treasurer of the imperial palace. In the
Damasine epitaph of the latter occur the fine lines:
INTEMERATA FIDE CONTEMPTO PRINCIPE MVNDI
CONFESSVS |XRM| CAELESTIA REGNA PETISTI.[140]
With unfaltering faith, despising the lord of the world, having
confessed Christ, thou didst seek the celestial realms.
Several of the Christian cemeteries receive their designation from the 97
martyrs of this period, among others those of Saints Agnes, Peter, and
Marcellinus, of Pancratius, Generosa, Zeno, Soteris, and _Quattro
Incoronati_, notice of whom will be more appropriate in the accounts
of their respective sepulchres. History has also preserved the names
of many other valiant confessors, who proved faithful even unto death
amid the fiery trials and cruel mockings and scourgings to which they
were exposed. Among these may be mentioned Cosmo and Damian, two holy
brothers of Cilicia, who practised in Rome with great skill the
healing art, from pure love to God and to their fellow-men, refusing
to receive aught for their services;[141] Simplicius and Faustinus,
who were drowned in the Tiber by the tyrant’s orders, and their
martyred sister Beatrice, whose tombs and epitaphs De Rossi believes
he has recovered.[142] Most of the legends, however, of what may be
called the Romish mythology are disfigured by absurd and superstitious
additions; and the martyrs themselves have become the objects of
idolatrous veneration far alien from the spirit of that primitive
Christianity for which they died.[143]
The following inscriptions from the Catacombs are the only records of 98
the victims of persecution whose names they bear.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Lannus, the martyr of Christ, rests here.
He suffered under Diocletian. For his successors also.]
[Illustration: ☧] PRIMITIVS IN PACE QVI POST
MVLTAS ANGVSTIAS FORTISSIMVS MARTYR
ET VIXIT ANNOS P · M · XXXVIII CONIVG · SVO
PERDVLCISSIMO BENEMERENTI FECIT.
Primitius in peace, after many torments, a most valiant martyr.
He lived thirty-eight years, more or less. [His wife] raised this
to her dearest husband, the well-deserving.
HIC GORDIANVS GALLIAE NVNCIVS
IVGVLATVS PRO FIDE CVM FAMILIA TOTA
QVIESCVNT IN PACE
THEOPHILA ANCILLA FECIT.
Here lies Gordianus, deputy of Gaul, who was executed for the
faith, with all his family: they rest in peace. Theophila, a
handmaid, set up this.[144]
The history of the Catacombs is inextricably interwoven with that of 99
Christianity. Their very structure reflects the character of the times
in which they were made. The absence of constraint or concealment, and
the superior construction and ornamentation of those belonging to the
earliest times, indicate the comparative security of the church before
it had awakened the jealousy or fear of the Roman emperors. Their
immense extension and crowded galleries testify to the rapid increase
of the Christian community. The altered character which they gradually
assumed, the obstructed passages, the masked entrances, devious
windings, and devices for concealment or escape, and the rudely
scratched inscriptions and uncouth paintings, betray the sense of fear
and the kindling rage of persecution which pursued the hunted
Christians to these subterraneous sanctuaries of the faith. Their
greater magnificence and more ornate structure, the costly mosaics,
the marble stairways, and richly carved sarcophagi of the later ages,
tell of the enthronement of Christianity on the seat of the Cæsars,
and of the homage paid to the relics and shrines of the saints and
martyrs. And their debased architecture, barbarous paintings, and
progressive ruin during the later years of their history indicate the
gradual eclipse of art, and their final abandonment. We must therefore
carefully determine at least the proximate date of any particular
feature if we would correctly interpret its significance.
The last and most terrible persecution of the church before its final 100
triumph left abundant evidence of its violence and lengthened duration
in the changes which contemporaneously took place in the Catacombs.
God prepared a place for his saints, and hid them in the clefts of the
rock as in the hollow of his hand. When the public observance of
Christianity was proscribed by law the believers withdrew from the
light of day, and in the inmost and darkest recesses of these
subterranean crypts, by the graves of their martyred dead, enjoyed the
consolation of religious worship, and broke the bread and drank the
wine in memory of their dying Lord.[145]
But after the decree of Valerian which forbade the entering or holding
any assemblies in the Christian cemeteries, even these retreats were
not safe, and the last sanctuaries of the faith were unscrupulously
invaded. Persecution relentlessly followed the Christians through the
labyrinthine windings of the Catacombs, and violated the sepulchres of
the sainted dead by sacrilegious tumult and bloodshed. Sometimes the
heathen soldiery, fearing to pursue their victims into these unknown
passages, blocked up the entrance to prevent their escape; and many
were thus buried alive and perished of hunger in these chambers of
gloom.[146]
An entire change in the construction of the Catacombs now took place.
They became obviously designed for purposes of safety and concealment.
The new galleries were less wide and lofty, and the _loculi_ more
crowded on account of the greater difficulty of removing the excavated 101
material. At this time, too, many of the lower _piani_ were made
for additional graves and greater secrecy. The main entrances were
blocked up and the stairways demolished. Sometimes entire galleries
were filled with earth, the removal of which is the chief obstacle to
modern exploration, or were built up with masonry to obstruct pursuit;
and means of escape were provided, in case of forcible invasion of
these retreats. A striking example of this occurs in the Catacomb of
Callixtus. The ancient stairway was partially destroyed, the entrance
completely obstructed, and some of the galleries walled up. Narrow
passages for escape were made connecting with an adjacent
_arenarium_, and a very narrow secret stairway constructed from
the roof of the latter to the surface of the ground, as shown in the
section above [Transcriber’s Note: Fig. 22, below], which stairway
could only be reached by a movable ladder connecting it with the
floor.[147]
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Secret stairway into Arenarium.]
It is impossible that the mass of the Christian community, or even any 102
considerable proportion of it, could ever have taken refuge in these
subterraneous crypts. Their vast extent and the number of chambers
would indeed permit a great multitude to remain concealed for a time
in their depths; but the difficulty of procuring a regular supply of
food, the confined atmosphere, and the probable exhalation of noxious
gases from the graves--especially on the opening of a _bisomus_, or
double tomb, for its second inmate--seem insuperable obstacles. As
it was the religious leaders of the Christian community who were
especially obnoxious to those in power, they would be the most likely
to seek concealment in the Catacombs, not from inferiority of courage,
but, like the afterward martyred Cyprian, that they might the better
guide and govern the persecuted church. Hence the examples before
given of bishops and other ecclesiastics lying hidden, some for years,
in these depths, and visited by the faithful for instruction or for
the celebration of worship.[148] There is evidence, however, that
during the exacerbations of persecution private Christians sought
safety in these recesses, and, burrowing in their depths, evaded the
pursuit of their enemies. Tertullian speaks of “a lady, unaccustomed
to privation, trembling in a vault, apprehensive of the capture of her
maid, upon whom she depends for her daily food.” The heads of
Christian families, and those most obnoxious to the pagan authorities,
would be especially likely to leave the fellowship of the living in
order to live in security among the dead. Father Marchi conjectures
that supplies of grain were laid up for the maintenance of the hidden 103
fugitives, and De Rossi describes certain crypts in the Catacomb of
Callixtus which were probably employed for storing corn or wine in
time of persecution. Frequent wells occur, amply sufficient for the
supply of water; and the multitude of lamps which have been found
would dispel the darkness, while their sudden extinction would prove
the best concealment from attack by their enemies.[149] Hence the
Christians were stigmatized as a skulking, darkness-loving race,[150]
who fled the light of day to burrow like moles in the earth.
These worse than Dædalian labyrinths were admirably adapted for
eluding pursuit. Familiar with their intricacies, and following a
well-known clew, the Christian could plunge fearlessly into the
darkness, where his pursuer would soon be inextricably lost. Perchance
the sound of Christian worship, and the softened cadence of the
confessors’ hymn, stealing through the distant corridors, may have
fallen with strange awe on the souls of the rude soldiery stealthily
approaching their prey; and, perhaps, not unfrequently with a saving
and sanctifying power. But sometimes, tracked by the sleuth-hounds of
persecution, or betrayed by some wretched apostate consumed by a
Judas-greed of gold, the Christians were surprised at their devotions,
and their refuge became their sepulchre. Such was the tragic fate of
Stephen, slain even while ministering at the altar; such the event
described by Gregory of Tours, when a hecatomb of victims were
immolated at once by heathen hate; such the peril which wrung from a
stricken heart the cry, not of anger but of grief, _Tempora infausta,
quibus inter sacra et vota ne in cavernis quidem salvari 104
possimus!_--“O sad times in which, among sacred rites and prayers,
even in caverns, we are not safe!” It requires no great effort of
imagination to conceive the dangers and escapes which must have been
frequent episodes in the heroic lives of the early soldiers of the
cross.
In the Catacombs more safely than elsewhere could the Christians
celebrate the ordinances of religion, often under cover of the rites
of sepulture, which might even yet be sacred in the eyes of their
enemies. And next to their funeral purposes this seems to have been
their chief use. For this many of their principal chambers and chapels
were excavated, supplied with seats, ventilated by _luminari_, and
adorned with biblical or symbolical paintings. With what emotions must
the primitive believers have held their solemn worship and heard the
words of life, surrounded by the dead in Christ! With what power would
come the promise of the resurrection of the body, amid the crumbling
relics of mortality! How fervent their prayers for their companions in
tribulation, when they themselves stood in jeopardy every hour! Their
holy ambition was to witness a good confession even unto death. They
burned to emulate the zeal of the martyrs of the faith, the plumeless
heroes of a nobler chivalry than that of arms, the Christian athletes
who won in the bloody conflicts of the arena, or amid the fiery
tortures of the stake, not a crown of laurel or of bay, but a crown of
life, starry and unwithering, that can never pass away. Their humble
graves are grander monuments than the trophied tombs of Rome’s proud
conquerors upon the Appian Way. Lightly may we tread beside their
ashes; reverently may we mention their names. Though the bodily
presence of those conscripts of the tomb--the forlorn hope of the 105
army of Christianity--no longer walked among men, their intrepid
spirit animated the heart of each member of that little community of
persecuted Christians, “of whom the world was not worthy; who wandered
in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, ...
being destitute, afflicted, tormented.”[151]
It is impossible to arrive at even an approximate estimate of the
number of victims of the early persecutions. That number has
sometimes, no doubt, been greatly exaggerated. It has also, in
defiance of the testimony of contemporary history, been unreasonably
minified.[152] Tacitus asserts that under Nero a great multitude[153]
were convicted and punished. Pliny says the temples were almost
deserted[154] through this contagious superstition. Juvenal, Martial,
and other classical authors, notice the extraordinary sufferings of
the Christians. Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, says, “It
is impossible to number the martyrs of Christ.”[155] Eusebius, an
eye-witness of the last persecution, states that innumerable
multitudes suffered during its prevalence. After describing their
excruciating tortures, he adds: “And all these things were doing not 106
for a few days, but for a series of whole years. At one time ten or
more, then twenty, again thirty or even sixty, and sometimes a hundred
men, with their wives and children, were slain in one day.”[156] He
also describes the destruction of a Christian town, with all its
inhabitants, by fire.[157] Lactantius, also a contemporary witness,
tells us that the Christians were often surrounded on all sides and
burnt together.[158]
It is very remarkable that so few martyrs’ epitaphs have been found in
the Catacombs, not more than five or six altogether, and some of these
are not of unquestioned genuineness. But this may be attributed to the
humility and modesty of the early Christians, who shrank from claiming
for the sufferers for the truth the august title of martyr, which they
restricted to the one faithful and true witness, Jesus Christ. “We,”
said the victims of persecution at Lyons, “are only mean and humble
confessors.”
There do occur, it is true, certain inscriptions of a memorial
character and of later date than the time of the persecution, some of
which commemorate a large number of martyrs, but they are of little or
no historic value. Such is the inscription to three thousand martyrs
in the Catacomb of Priscilla, already given,[159] and the following
from the Callixtan Catacomb: MARCELLA ET CHRISTI MARTYRES
CCCCL--“Marcella and four hundred and fifty martyrs in Christ.”
Ancient itineraries speak of eighty, or even eight hundred, martyrs
buried in one spot in the Catacombs; and Prudentius declares that he 107
saw the remains of some sixty in a single grave.[160] But surpassing
all the others in exaggeration is an inscription in the church of St.
Sebastian commemorating one hundred and seventy-four thousand holy
martyrs, and forty-six bishops, also martyrs, said to be interred in
the neighbouring Catacomb. Another ancient tradition asserts that
twelve thousand Christians, who were employed in building the Baths of
Diocletian, were buried in the Catacomb of St. Zeno.[161] Piazza
asserts that two hundred and eighty-five Christians were put to death
in two days, under the Emperor Claudius II., A. D. 268, and that more
than two thousand were executed for refusing to sacrifice to the image
of the sun. Indeed, some Roman archæologists discern in every palm
branch or cup, which are so frequently found in the Catacombs,
irrefragable evidence of the martyr’s tomb.[162]
Such atrocious cruelty and lavish destruction of life as these 108
traditions, even if exaggerated, imply, seem incredible; but the pages
of the contemporary historians, Eusebius and Lactantius, give too
minute and circumstantial accounts of the persecutions of which they
were eye-witnesses to allow us to adopt the complacent theory of
Gibbon, that the sufferings of the Christians were comparatively few
and insignificant. “We ourselves have seen,” says the bishop of
Cæsarea, “crowds of persons, some beheaded, others burned alive, in a
single day, so that the murderous weapons were blunted and broken to
pieces, and the executioners, wearied with slaughter, were obliged to
give over the work of blood.[163] ... They constantly vied with each
other,” he continues, “in inventing new tortures, as if there were
prizes offered to him who should contrive the greatest cruelties.”[164]
Men whose only crime was their religion were scourged with iron wires
or with _plumbatæ_, that is, chains laden with bronze balls, specimens
of which have been found in the martyrs’ graves, till the flesh hung
in shreds, and even the bones were broken; they were bound in chains
of red-hot iron, and roasted over fires so slow that they lingered for
hours, or even days, in their mortal agony; their flesh was scraped 109
from the very bone with ragged shells, or lacerated with burning
pincers, iron hooks, and instruments with horrid teeth or claws,
examples of which have been found in the Catacombs;[165] molten metal
and plates of red-hot brass were applied to the naked body till it
became one indistinguishable wound; and mingled salt and vinegar or
unslaked lime were rubbed upon the quivering flesh, torn and bleeding
from the rack or scourge--tortures more inhuman than savage Indian
ever wreaked upon his mortal foe. Men were condemned by the score and
hundred to labour in the mines, with the sinews of one leg severed,
with one eye scooped out and the socket seared with red-hot iron.
Chaste matrons and tender virgins were given over--worse fate a
thousand-fold than death--to dens of shame and the gladiators’ lust,
and subjected to nameless indignities, too horrible for words to
utter.[166] And all these intense sufferings were endured often with
joy and exultation, for the love of a divine Master, when a single
word, a grain of incense cast upon the heathen altar, would have
released the victims from their agonies. No lapse of time, and no 110
recoil from the idolatrous homage paid in after ages to the martyr’s
relics, should impair in our hearts the profound and rational
reverence with which we bend before his tomb.
We are left, however, for the most part, without authentic record of
the tragic scenes of Christian martyrdom. The primitive church,
indeed, treasured up these memories of moral heroism as her most
precious legacy to after times. Clement of Rome, it is said, appointed
notaries to search out the acts of the martyrs;[167] and, as we have
seen, Fabian suffered death for his zeal in preserving these
records.[168] But these precious documents for the most part perished
in the Diocletian persecution, although fragments were probably
incorporated with the later martyrologies. The earlier Acts are the
more authentic, and the more simple in character. Those of later date
become more and more florid in style, and are overladen with the
incredible and impossible, till their historic value is entirely
destroyed, except when they are corroborated by collateral testimony,
or by the monumental evidence of the Catacombs. Prudentius, attracted
to Rome by the fame of these repositories of the martyrs’ ashes, wrote
a treatise[169] on their sufferings, in which his fervid imagination
and rhetorical style found amplest indulgence. Later writers still
further embellished and exaggerated the original Acts, till the
wildest stories of ancient mythology, or mediæval legend, were
surpassed by the monkish martyrologists.
This “holy romance,” as Gibbon contemptuously calls it, becomes little 111
else than a record of the most astounding miracles, the most horrible
tortures, and of more than human endurance.[170] It minutely describes
the conflict between the Christian and his heathen persecutor: _hinc
martyr, illinc carnifex_--here the martyr, there the executioner.
The one wreaks his rage upon his victim, the other exhibits a stoical
endurance of suffering rivaling that of the American savage at the
funeral stake, or else an insensibility to pain that lessens the merit
of his acts. “It is cooked, turn and eat,”[171] says St. Lawrence,
broiling on a gridiron. He feels no pain from the vinegar and salt
rubbed on his bleeding wounds. “Salt me the more, that I may be
incorruptible,” says Tarachus to his torturer. He continues to speak
after his tongue is torn out by the roots. The lacerations of the
ungulæ assume to the excited imagination the form of the name of
Christ.[172] Divine odours breathe from the body, which shines like
gold amid the flames that refuse to kindle upon it. A voice from
heaven hails the invincible conqueror, and his soul in the form of a
dove ascends to the skies.[173] The undying instincts of nature are 112
flagrantly violated in some of the Acts. A mother rebukes her child
for begging a cup of water while suffering under the rods of the
lictors; and while it is beheaded before her eyes she, alone unmoved,
sings a versicle of thanksgiving.[174] Often the martyr endeavours to
exasperate with taunts and defiance the heathen magistrate, who
gnashes his teeth and rolls his eyes in impotent rage.[175] “Be dumb,
wretch! O serpent of darkest mind, a curse be upon thee!” exclaims St.
Boniface to his executioner. Vincentius menaces his judge with the
fiery fate of the bottomless pit.[176] These Acts of the Martyrs were
appointed to be read in the churches,[177] till they were prohibited
by the Council of Trullo, A. D. 706.
The enthusiasm for martyrdom prevailed, at times, almost like an
epidemic. It was one of the most remarkable features of the ages of
persecution. Notwithstanding the terrific tortures to which they were
exposed, the fiercer the tempest of heathen rage the higher and
brighter burned the zeal of the Christian heroes. Age after age
summoned the soldiers of Christ to the conflict whose highest guerdon 113
was death. They bound persecution as a wreath about their brows, and
exulted in the “glorious infamy” of suffering for their Lord. The
brand of shame became the badge of highest honour. Besides the joys of
heaven they won imperishable fame on earth; and the memory of a humble
slave was often haloed with a glory surpassing that of a Curtius or
Horatius. The meanest hind was ennobled by the accolade of martyrdom
to the loftiest peerage of the skies. His consecration of suffering
was elevated to a sacrament, and called the baptism of fire or of
blood.
Burning to obtain the prize, the impetuous candidates for death often
pressed with eager haste to seize the palm of victory and the martyr’s
crown. They trod with joy the fiery path to glory, and went as gladly
to the stake as to a marriage feast. “Their fetters,” says Eusebius,
“seemed like the golden ornaments of a bride.”[178] They desired
martyrdom more ardently than men afterward sought a bishopric.[179]
They exulted amid their keenest pangs that they were counted worthy to
suffer for their divine Master. “Let the ungulæ tear us,” exclaims
Tertullian,[180] “the crosses bear our weight, the flames envelope us,
the sword divide our throats, the wild beasts spring upon us; the very
posture of prayer is a preparation for every punishment.” “These
things,” says St. Basil, “so far from being a terror, are rather a
pleasure and a recreation to us.”[181] “The tyrants were armed,” says
St. Chrysostom, “and the martyrs naked; yet they that were naked got 114
the victory, and they that carried arms were vanquished.”[182] Strong
in the assurance of immortality, they bade defiance to the sword.
Though weak in body they seemed clothed with vicarious strength, and
confident that though “counted as sheep for the slaughter,” naught
could separate them from the love of Christ. Wrapped in their fiery
vesture and shroud of flame, they yet exulted in their glorious
victory. While the leaden hail fell on the mangled frame, and the eyes
filmed with the shadows of death, the spirit was enbraved by the
beatific vision of the opening heaven, and above the roar of the mob
fell sweetly on the inner sense the assurance of eternal life. “No
group, indeed, of Oceanides was there to console the Christian
Prometheus; yet to his upturned eye countless angels were
visible--their anthem swept solemnly to his ear--and the odours of an
opening paradise filled the air. Though the dull ear of sense heard
nothing, he could listen to the invisible Coryphæus as he invited him
to heaven and promised him an eternal crown.”[183] The names of the
“great army of martyrs,” though forgotten by men, are written in the
Book of Life. “The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
There is a record, traced on high,
That shall endure eternally;
The angel standing by God’s throne
Treasures there each word and groan;
And not the martyr’s speech alone,
But every wound is there depicted, 115
With every circumstance of pain--
The crimson stream, the gash inflicted--
And not a drop is shed in vain.[184]
This spirit of martyrdom was a new principle in society. It had no
classical counterpart.[185] Socrates and Seneca suffered with
fortitude, but not with faith. The loftiest pagan philosophy dwindled
into insignificance before the sublimity of Christian hope. This
looked beyond the shadows of time and the sordid cares of earth to the
grandeur of the Infinite and the Eternal. The heroic deaths of the
believers exhibited a spiritual power mightier than the primal
instincts of nature, the love of wife or child, or even of life
itself. Like a solemn voice falling on the dull ear of mankind, these
holy examples urged the inquiry, “What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And that voice awakened
an echo in full many a heart. The martyrs made more converts by their
deaths than in their lives. “Kill us, rack us, condemn us, grind us to
powder,” exclaims the intrepid Christian Apologist; “our numbers
increase in proportion as you mow us down.”[186] The earth was drunk
with the blood of the saints, but still they multiplied and grew,
gloriously illustrating the perennial truth--_Sanguis martyrum semen
ecclesiæ._[187]
Christianity, after long repression, became at length triumphant. The 116
church on the conversion of Constantine emerged from the concealment
of the Catacombs to the sunshine of imperial favour. The legend of the
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus strikingly illustrates the wondrous
transformation of society. These Christian brothers, taking shelter in
a cave during the Decian persecution, awoke, according to the legend,
after a slumber of over a century, to find Christianity everywhere
dominant, and a Christian emperor on the throne of the Cæsars.[188]
The doctrines of Christ, like the rays of the sun, quickly irradiated
the world.[189] With choirs and hymns, in cities and villages, in the
highways and markets, the praises of the Almighty were sung.[190] The
enemies of God were as though they had not been.[191] The Lord brought 117
up the vine of Christianity from a far land, and cast out the heathen,
and planted and watered it, till it twined round the sceptre of the
Cæsars, wreathed the columns of the Capitol, and filled the whole
land. The heathen fanes were deserted, the gods discrowned, and the
pagan flamen no longer offered sacrifice to the Capitoline Jove. Rome,
which had dragged so many conquered divinities in triumph at its
chariot wheels, at length yielded to a mightier than all the gods of
Olympus. The old faiths faded from the firmament of human thought as
the stars of midnight at the dawn of day. The banished deities forsook
their ancient seats. They walked no longer in the vale of Tempe or in
the grove of Daphne.[192] The naiads bathed not in Scamander’s stream
nor Simois, nor the nereids in the waters of the bright Ægean Sea. The
nymphs and dryads ceased to haunt the sylvan solitudes. The oreads
walked no more in light on Ida’s lofty top.
O ye vain false gods of Hellas!
Ye are vanished evermore!
Long before the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the
empire its influence had been felt permeating the entire community.
Amid the disintegration of society it was the sole conservative
element--the salt which preserved it from corruption. In the midst of
anarchy and confusion a community was being organized on a principle
previously unknown in the heathen world, ruling not by terror but by 118
love; by moral power, not by physical force; inspired by lofty faith
amid a world of unbelief, and cultivating moral purity amid the
reeking abominations of a sensual age.
Yet this mighty energy thus at work eluded the notice, or excited only
the disdain, of some of the keenest observers and greatest thinkers
the world has seen. Classical literature contains only a few short
notices of that religion which was transforming the age. A galaxy of
philosophers and historians, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of
moral putrefaction around them, and profoundly conscious of its
apparently cureless evil, treated as contemptible the most powerful
moral agent in the world--that regenerative principle which was to
reorganize society on a higher type than ever was known before.[193]
The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation, and paganism seemed
entirely unconscious of its impending doom.
But this wonderful influence, which accomplished so much, seemed at
length strangely to lose its power, and did not fulfil the
regenerative work which it began. It failed to check the degeneracy of
the age or to avert the dissolution of the empire. The many crimes of
that colossal orgy cried to heaven for vengeance. The taint was too
inveterate to be eradicated; the evil was immedicable; Rome was
already effete and moribund. It was weighed in the balance and found
wanting. Therefore the inexorable penalty, which evermore follows
wrong, as a shadow its substance, was suffered to descend. An awful
Nemesis, like an avenging Fate, overtook the great and wicked city 119
in its pride and guilt; and the mystical Babylon of the West, reeking
with sensuality, idolatry, and blood, soon beheld the Goths at her
gates, and the Huns within her walls.[194]
[31] A deal of fanciful theory has been indulged in as to the
origin of the Catacombs. They have been attributed to a
pre-historic race of Troglodytes, who loathed the light of day,
and burrowed like moles in the earth. MacFarlane has an eloquent
apostrophe to the old Etrurians, by whom he imagined they were
excavated twelve hundred years before the Christian era. We have
seen also how they were erroneously attributed to the pagan
Romans.
[32] _Victoribus victi leges dederunt._ On the Tiber, the
Tigris, and the Nile, this saying was strikingly verified. Yet
Judaism is an essentially conservative, not an aggressive,
religion. It was unadapted for such wide-spread conquests as
those of Christianity, or even of Mohammedism. The ancient mould
of thought, having served its purpose, was broken. Judaism may be
said to have died in giving birth to Christianity.
[33] _Hist._, v, 5.
[34] In 1853 a Jewish Catacomb was discovered at Venosa, in
Southern Italy, containing one gallery seven feet high and four
hundred feet long. In 1854 another was discovered at Oria, with
many Hebrew symbols and inscriptions. There were many Jews in
Apulia and Calabria.
[35] In eo quippe haud ulla, ut in reliquis, Christianæ religionis
indicia et signa apparebant--Bosio, _Rom. Sott._, 142.
[36] _Cimitero degli Antichi Ebrei Scoperto recentemente in
Vigna Randanini, illustrato da Raffaele Garrucci._ 8vo. Roma,
1862.
[37] See Fig. 18.
[38] Nunc sacri fontis nimus, et delubra locantur
Judæis.--_Sat.,_ iii, 13.
[39] It is incredible that the Apostle Peter had any share in
planting the Roman Church. If he had, Paul would not, as he does,
utterly ignore his labours. “_Only Luke_ is with me,” writes
St. Paul, just before his death; yet he and Peter are feigned to
have suffered on the same day. The story of St. Peter’s
twenty-five years’ episcopate at Rome is too absurd to require
disproof. The very minuteness of detail in the legends of St.
Peter is their own refutation. In vain are we shown the chair in
which tradition asserts that he sat, the font at which he
baptized, the cell in which he was confined, the fountain which
sprang up in its floor, the pillar to which he was bound, the
chains which he wore, the impression made by his head in the wall
and by his knees in the stony pavement, the scene of his
crucifixion, the very hole in which the foot of the cross was
placed, and the tomb in which his body is said to lie; they all
fail to carry conviction to any mind in which superstition has
not destroyed the critical faculty. The mighty fane which rises
sublimely in the heart of Rome in honour of the Galilean
fisherman, like the religious system of which it is the visible
exponent, is founded on a shadowy tradition, opposed alike to the
testimony of Scripture, the evidence of history, and the
deductions of reason. The question whether Peter _ever_ was
in Rome has recently been publicly discussed under the very
shadow of the Vatican. Verily, _Tempora mutantur_.
[40] Nos quoque ut Judaicæ religionis propinquos, sub umbraculum
insignissimæ religionis certé licitæ.--_Ad Nat._, i, 11.
[41] Execrantur rogos, et damnant ignium sepulturas.--Minuc.
Felix, _Octav._, ii, 451. Tertullian declared it to be a
symbol of the fires of hell. Possibly, also, the expense and
publicity inseparable from the practice of cremation made it a
matter of necessity for the early Christians to adopt the less
costly and more private mode of subterranean interment. Merivale,
indeed, asserts that the early Roman Christians burned their
dead, (vi, 444,) and adduces in support of this strange theory
only the pagan dedication D. M., found on some Christian tombs.
As will be shown, (Book III, i,) these letters were part of a
common epigraphic formula, and give no warrant for this startling
statement.
[42] Bishop Hall.
[43] It would appear from this inscription that some of the
family of Restitutus were still pagans, and were buried apart
from the rest. The early Christians regarded it as unlawful to
commingle the heathen and believers in common burial. St. Cyprian
makes it a capital charge against the heretical Bishop of
Asturia, that he “buried his children in profane sepulchres and
in the midst of strangers.” See also Ruth i, 17. Compare Cic.,
_de Leg._, ii, 22, and _de Off._, lib. ii.
[44] Apol. xxxix. The following inscription, recently discovered
in the ruins of Cæsarea, a Roman town in Africa, attests the
provision made by wealthy Christians for the burial of their
poorer neighbours:
AREAM AT [AD] SEPVLCHRA CVLTOR VERBI CONTVLIT
ET CELLAM STRVXIT SVIS CVNCTIS SVMPTIBVS
ECCLESIÆ SANCTÆ HANC RELIQVIT MEMORIAM,
SALVETE FRATRES PVRO CORDE ET SIMPLICI
EVELPIVS VOS SATOS SANCTO SPIRITV.
ECCLESIA FRATRVM HVNC RESTITVIT TITVLVM....
A worshipper of the Word has given this area for sepulchres, and
has built a vault at his own cost; he left this memorial to the
Holy Church. Hail, brethren! with a pure and simple heart,
Euelpius [salutes] you, born of the Holy Spirit.
The congregation of the brethren replaced this inscription....
[45] 2 Tim. iv, 21. Suet., _Vit. Ner._, c. 28, 29; Tac.,
_Ann._, xv, 37. See also Dio., lxiii, 13.
[46] E.g. Flavia Domitilla, the niece of Domitian, and her
husband, Clemens. Their children had been adopted by the Emperor,
and designated as his successors. So near came Christianity to
grasping the sceptre of the Cæsars in the first century. Dio
Cass., _Hist._, lxvii, 13. Suet. in _Domit._, xv. The niece of
Domitilla, also of the same name, suffered exile for the faith,
A. D. 97. She gave the land for the Catacomb which still bears
her name.
Marcia, Mammæa, the mother of Alex. Severus, the Emperor Philip,
and Prisca and Valeria, the wife and daughter of the
arch-persecutor Diocletian, either embraced or greatly favoured
Christianity.
[47] _Apol._, c. 37.
[48] [Transcriber’s note: Footnote missing in the original.]
[49] Religiosum locum unusquisque sua voluntate facit, dum
mortuum infert in locum suum. _Marcian. Digest._, i, 8, 6, § 4.
[50] _Cod. Justin._, lib. ix, tit. 19, _de Sepulchro
Violato_, leg. 1, 5; _Cod. Theod._, lib. ix, tit. 17.
Proximum sacrilegio majores semper habuerunt. So the poet
exclaims:
Res ea sacra, miser; noli mea tangere fata:
Sacrilegae bustis abstinuere manus.--
“Touch not my monument, thou wretch; it is a sacred thing: even
sacrilegious hands refrain from the violation of graves.”
[51] Xen., _Mem._, ii, 2, § 13.
[52] _Roman Sepulchral Inscriptions_, p. 9, London, 1858.
[53] Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum
Hic dabat; heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.
Hor., _I Sat._, viii, 12.
[54] Literally, “the angry gods.”
[55] Reinesius.
[56] Corpora animadversorum quibuslibet petentibus ad sepulturam
danda sunt. _Digest._, xlviii, 24, 2.
[57] Both of these are given by Dr. McCaul in his _Christian
Epitaphs of the First Six Centuries_, an admirable little
volume, my indebtedness to which will be elsewhere acknowledged.
He also quotes the following from Henzen’s _Inscr. Lat. Select.
Col._, No. 6371: PETO A BOBIS [VOBIS] FRATRES BONI PER
VNVM DEVM NE QVIS VI TITVLO MOLESTET POST MORTEM--“I beseech
you, good brothers, by the one God, that no one by force injure
this inscription after my death.”
[58] Aringhi, lib. iv, c. xxvii.
[59] Sometimes an anathema was invoked upon the disturber of the
grave, as in the following interesting example, found in the
island of Salamis, and quoted by Dr. McCaul from Kirchoff,
_Corpus Inscript. Græc._, No. 9303: Οἶκος αἰώνιος Ἀγάθωνος
ἀναγνώστου καὶ Εὐφημίας ἐν δυσὶ θήκαις ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν. Εἰ δέ
τις τῶν ἰδίων ἢ ἕτερός τις τολμήσῃ σῶμα καταθέσθαι ἐνταῦθα παρὲξ
τῶν δύω ἡμῶν, λόγον δῴη τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἀνάθεμα ἤτω μαραναθάν--“The
everlasting dwelling of Agatho, a reader, and Euphemia, in two
graves, one for each of us separately. If any one of our
relatives, or any one else, shall presume to bury a body here
beside us two, may he give an account of it to God, and may he be
anathema maranatha.”
[60] It is remarkable that Shakespeare’s epitaph should present
almost as uncouth a specimen of epigraphy as any of the barbarous
inscriptions of the Catacombs. See the following copy:
Good Friend for Iesus SAKE forbeare
To diGG T-E Dust EncloAsed HERe
Blest be T-E Man T/Y spares T-es Stones
And curst be He T/Y moves my Bones.
[61] Maitland reads thus: IN CHRISTO. MARTYRIVS VIXIT ANNOS
XCI PLVS MINVS ELEXIT DOMVM VIVVS. IN PACE.--“In Christ.
Martyrius lived ninety-one years, more or less. He chose a home
during his life-time. In peace.”
[62] Collegium salutare Dianæ et Antinoi, constitutum ex Senatus
Populique Romani decreto, quibus coire, convenire, collegiumque
habere liceat. Qui stipem menstruam conferre volent in funera, in
id collegium coeant, neque sub specie ejus collegii nisi semel in
mense coeant, conferendi causa unde defuncti sepeliantur.
[63] The _sesterce_, or _sestertius_, was about 2d·5 farthings,
the _as_ about 3d·4 farthings. The _amphora_ held about six
gallons.
[64] Muratori, tom. ii, classis vii, _Collegia Varia_.
[65] _Ibid._
[66] Trajan regarded with suspicion even fire brigades and
charitable societies, (Pliny, X _Epis. 43 et 94_,) and forbade
the assemblies of the Christians, but permitted the monthly
contribution of the clubs--Permittitur tenuioribus stipem
menstruam conferre. _Digest._, xlvii, 22, 1.
[67] Modicam unusquisque stipem _menstrua die_, vel quum velit,
et si modo velit, et si modo possit, apponit: nam nemo
compellitur, sed sponte confert.... Nam inde non epulis ... sed
egenis alendis _humandisque_ ... etc. Tert., _Apol._, c. 39.
[68] See first footnote.
[69] _Bullettino_, 1864, 62.
[70] Rom. xvi, 5, 3.
[71] _Philosophoumena_, ix, 11.
[72] Actorem sive syndicum, per quem, quod communiter agi
fierique oporteat, agatur, fiat.--_Digest._, iii, 4, 1, § 1.
[73] E veramente che almeno fino dal secolo terzo i fideli
abbiano possiduto cemeteri a nome commune, e che il loro possesso
sia stato riconosciuto dagl’imperatori, è cosa impossibile a
negare.--De Rossi, _Rom. Sott._, tom. i, p. 103.
[74] The dreaded _crimen majestatis_.
[75] Hostes Cæsarum, hostes populi Romani.
[76] Non pluit Deus, duc ad Christianos.--Aug., _Civ. Dei_, ii, 3.
[77] Si Tiberis ascendit in mœnia, si Nilus non ascendit in arva,
si coelum stetit, si terra movit, si fames, si lues, statim,
“Christianos ad leones.”--_Apol._, x. “But I pray you,” he adds,
“were misfortunes unknown before Tiberius? The true God was not
worshipped when Hannibal conquered at Cannæ, or the Gauls filled
the city.”
[78] Eusebius describes their activity in bringing wood and straw
from the shops and baths for the burning of Polycarp. _Eccl.
Hist._, iv, 15.
[79] Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdedit reos et quæsitissimis
poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos
appellabat.... Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis
contecti laniatu canum interierint, aut crucibus affixi, aut
flammandi atque, ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis
urerentur.--_Ann._, xv, 44.
[80] A telegraphic despatch from Rome of date January 16, 1873,
announces that the Pope claims to have discovered the bodies of
the apostles Philip and James. Highly improbable, and of no
practical importance if true. Not the bones of the saints buried
centuries ago, but the spirit which animated them and the
principles for which they died, are the true sources of the
church’s power.
[81] Sulpic. Sever., _Hist._, ii, 41.
[82] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, iii, 17. A. D. 93-96.
[83] Prope jam desolata templa coepisse celebrari; et sacra
solennia diu intermissa repeti.--_Epis. ad Traj._ Among the
most distinguished sufferers during this persecution was Clement,
third bishop of Rome, exiled to Pontus, and, it is said, cast
into the sea, A. D. 103; also the venerable Ignatius, bishop of
the church at Antioch, linked by tradition with the Saviour
himself, as one of the children whom he took in his arms and
blessed. Condemned by Trajan to exposure to wild beasts in the
amphitheatre at Rome, a passion for martyrdom possessed his soul.
“Suffer me to be the food of the wild beasts,” he exclaimed, “by
whom I shall attain unto God. For I am the wheat of God; and I
shall be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may become the
pure bread of Christ.”--_Epis. ad Romanos_, §§ 4, 5.
[84] Sacra Romana diligentissimè curavit, peregrina
contempsit.--Spartian. in _Hadrian._ A. D. 117-138.
[85] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, iv, 9. Jus. Mar., _Apol._, i, 68,
69.
[86] A. D. 138-161.
[87] Irenæus, iii, 3, § 3.
[88] A. D. 161-180.
[89] The following inscription, referring to the Antonine period,
is given by Maitland, (page 40,) as from the Catacomb of
Callixtus. Although it seems to imply the actual prevalence of
persecution, it is evidently, even if genuine, of later date than
the time alleged. The presence of the sacred monogram, as well as
the somewhat florid and pleonastic style, indicate an origin not
anterior to the age of Constantine, when it became the fashion
with outward pharisaism to adorn the sepulchres of the martyrs,
although the truths for which they died were often treated with
neglect:
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Reputed Martyr Symbol.]
ALEXANDER MORTVVS NON EST SED VIVIT SVPER ASTRA ET CORPVS
IN HOC TVMVLO QVIESCIT. VITAM EXPLEVIT SVB ANTONINO IMP
QVI VBI MVLTVM BENEFITII ANTEVENIRE PRAEVIDERET PRO
GRATIA ODIVM REDDIDIT. GENVA ENIM FLECTENS VERO DEO
☧ SACRIFICATVRVS AD SVPPLICIA DVCITVR. O TEMPORA INFAVSTA
QVIBVS INTER SACRA ET VOTA NE IN CAVERNIS QVIDEM SALVARI
POSSIMVS. QVID MISERIVS VITA SED QVID MISERIVS IN MORTE
CVM AB AMICIS ET PARENTIBVS SEPELIRI NEQVEANT TANDEM IN
COELO CORVSCANT. PARVM VIXIT QVI VIXIT IN. X. TEM.
“In Christ. Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars, and
his body rests in this tomb. He ended his life under the Emperor
Antonine, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from
his services, returned evil for good. For while on his knees and
about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to execution.
O sad times! in which, among sacred rites and prayers, even in
caverns we are not safe. What can be more wretched than such a
life? and what than such a death? when they cannot be buried by
their friends and relations--at length they sparkle in heaven. He
has scarcely lived who has lived in Christian times.”
Maitland renders the concluding letters, IN. X. TEM, by “In
Christianis temporibus.” The furnace seems to indicate that the
martyr suffered death by fire, or, possibly, by immersion in
boiling oil--a mode of punishment which St. John is said to have
undergone, but without receiving any harm.
Another still more apocryphal inscription is given by Maitland,
(page 65.) It is probably of the fifth century. The Pudentiana
referred to is said to have spent her patrimony in relieving the
poor and burying the martyrs.
HOC EST COEMETERIVM PRISCILLAE
IN QVO EXISTVNT CORPORA TRIVM MILLIVM MARTYRVM
MARTYRIO PER ANTONINUM IMPERATOREM
AFFECTORVM QVOS S. PVDENTIANA
FECIT IN HOC SVO VENERABILI TEMPLO SEPELIRI.
“This is the Cemetery of Priscilla, in which are the bodies of
three thousand martyrs, who suffered under the Emperor Antonine,
whom St. Pudentiana caused to be buried in this her own place of
worship.”--Aicher, _Hortus Inscriptionum_. More authentic relics
of this reign are the large tiles with which part of the Catacomb
of Callixtus is paved. They all bear the words, OPVS DOLIARE EX
PRAEDIIS DOMINI N ET FIGL NOVIS, which, according to Marini, is
the stamp of the imperial manufactory of Marcus Aurelius.
[90] “Hanc dextram ad te Jupiter, tendo, quae nullius unquam
sanguinam fudit,” is the form of prayer given by Claudian.
Euseb., v, 5.
[91] A. D. 180-193.
[92] See chap. ii, book iii.
[93] _Strom._, lib. ii, A. D. 193.
[94] _Apol._, 37. Sicut sub Hilariano præside, cum de areis
sepulturarum nostrarum adclamâssent, areæ non sint.--_Ad
Scap._, c. iii. A. D. 203.
No more pathetic episode is contained in the whole range of the
Martyrology than that of the youthful mother, Perpetua, who
suffered at Carthage under Severus. Few can read unmoved the acts
of her martyrdom, which bear the stamp of authenticity in their
perfectly natural and unexaggerated tone, and the absence of
miracle. Young--she was only twenty-two--beautiful, of noble
family, and dearly loved, her heathen father entreated her to
pity his gray hairs, her mother’s tears, her helpless babe. But
her faith proved triumphant over even the yearnings of natural
affection; and, wan and faint from recent childbirth pangs, she
was led, with Felicitas, her companion, into the crowded
amphitheatre, and exposed to the cruel horns of infuriate beasts.
Amid the agonies of death, more conscious of her wounded modesty
than of her pain, with a gesture of dignity she drew her
disheveled robe about her person. She seemed rapt in ecstasy till
by a merciful stroke of the gladiator she was released from her
suffering, and exchanged the dust and blood of the arena, and the
shouts of the ribald mob, for the songs of the redeemed, and the
beatific vision of the Lord she loved.
[95] Cædit et humanas hostias.--Lamprid., _Heliogabalus_.
[96] A. D. 222.
[97] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, vi, 21.
[98] The site, according to tradition, of St. Maria in Trastevere.
[99] A. D. 250-253. Execrabile animal Decius, qui vexaret
ecclesiam.--Lactan., _de Mort. Persec._, c. 3, 4. He would rather
tolerate, he said, a rival for his throne, than a bishop in Rome.
Cypr., _Ep._ 53.
[100] Called respectively _Sacrificati_, _Thurificati_, and
_Libellatici_, of whom the first were esteemed the most guilty.
The indignant rhetoric of Cyprian expresses his holy horror at
this vile apostasy: “They made haste to give their souls the
mortal wound.... That altar where he was about to die--was it not
his funeral pile? Should he not have fled, as from his coffin or
his grave, from that devil’s altar, when he saw it smoke and fume
with stinking smell?... Thou thyself wast the sacrificial victim.
Thou didst sacrifice thy salvation, and burn thy faith and hope
in these abominable fires”--Nonne ara illa, quo moriturus
accessit, rogus illi fuit? Nonne diaboli altare quod foetore
tætro fumare et redolere conspexerat, velut funus et bustum vitæ
suæ horrere ac fugere debebat?... Ipse ad aram hostia, victima
ipse venisti. Immolâsti illic salutem tuam, spem tuam, fidem
tuam, funestis illis ignibus concremâsti.--_De Lapsis_, p. 124.
[101] Dionysius of Alexandria, in _Euseb._, vi, 41.
[102] A. D. 254-259.
[103] Ἐκκλησία, Euseb., vii, 10.
[104] Milman, _Hist. of Christianity_, Am. ed., Book II.,
chap. vii.
[105] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, vii, 10.
[106] Ut episcopi et presbyteri et diacones incontinenter
animadvertantur, ... capite quoque mulctentur.--_Cypr._, ep.
72, _ad Successum_.
[107] Οὐδαμῶς ἔξέσται ὑμῖν ἢ συνόδους ποιεῖσθαι ἢ εἰς τὰ καλούμενα
κοιμητήρια εἰσιέναι--Dionys., in _Euseb._, vii, 11.
Jussum est, ut nulla conciliabula faciant, neque coemeteria
ingrediantur.--Pontius, _Passio Cypriani_.
[108] In Africa, Cyprian, the intrepid bishop of Carthage, after
a stormy episcopate, obtained the crown of martyrdom. On
receiving the sentence condemning him to death, he exclaimed,
“God be thanked!” and went as joyous to his fate as to a marriage
feast.--Pontius, _Passio Cypr._
[109] “Vitam solitariam agebat in cryptis.” Of St. Urban it is
similarly said, “Solebat in sacrorum martyrum monumenta.”--_Acts
of Cecilia._
[110] Baronius: _Ann._, tom. iii, p. 76. Among his companions in
death was Hippolytus, a Roman convert, of whom a beautiful legend
is recorded. His pagan relatives, entrusted with the secret of
his retreat, supplied his wants by means of their children, a boy
and girl of ten and thirteen years. He one day detained the
children in the hope that their parents would seek them, and thus
have the opportunity of religious instruction from the good
bishop. His plan succeeded, and eventually they with their
children were baptized and suffered martyrdom together! Baron.,
_Ann._, iii, 69. Even though unauthentic, this story is a type,
doubtless, of many incidents which occurred in the strange social
relations of the church in the Catacombs.
[111] Xistum in cimiterio animadversum sciatis ... et cum eo
diaconos quatuor.--Cypr., _Epis._, lxxx, _ad Successum_.
[112] Another martyr whose Acts, although disfigured with some
grotesque and exaggerated circumstances, contain elements of
great beauty, was Lawrence, a deacon of the bishop Sixtus.
Esteeming it no sacrilege, but rather the highest consecration of
the property of the church, he distributed it in alms among the
suffering Christians. Being commanded to surrender to the emperor
the confiscated ecclesiastical treasure, he presented to the
commissioner a number of aged and impotent poor, saying, “These
are the treasures of the church.” After incredible tortures,
which form the subject of many a picture of Roman Catholic art,
he is said to have been roasted to death over a slow fire.
Ambros., _Officin._, i, 41.
[113] A. D. 259.
[114] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 13.
[115] _Ib._, viii, 23.
[116] A. D. 275.
[117] _Probus et vere probus situs est._ Obiit A. D. 283.
[118] Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, asserts
that under Numerian, the brother and contemporary of Carinus,
Chrysanthus and Daria suffered martyrdom in a Catacomb on the
_Via Salaria_. A number of the faithful being observed to visit
their tombs, the emperor ordered the entrance to be built up and
covered with a heap of sand and stones, that they might be buried
alive in common martyrdom. When their remains were discovered by
Damasus, in the fourth century, he refrained from removing them,
and simply made an opening from an adjacent gallery, that
pilgrims to the early shrines of the faith might behold, without
disturbing it, this “Christian Pompeii.” Gregory asserts that
these interesting relics were still to be seen in his day--the
skeletons of men, women, and children lying on the floor, and
even the silver vessels (_urcei argentei_) which they used.
[119] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 1.
[120] _Ibid._
[121] _De Mort. Persec._, c. xxiii.
[122] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 1.
[123] Caius ... fugiens persecutionem Diocletiani in cryptis
habitando, martyrio coronatur.--_Lib. Pontif._; cf. Euseb.,
_Hist. Eccles._, vii, 32.
[124] Ἐκ τῶν ἐν στρατείαις ἀδελφῶν καταρχομένου τοῦ
διωγμοῦ.--_Hist. Eccles._, viii, 1.
[125] _Vita Const._, ii, 54.
[126] The following inscription, found in Spain, and given by
Gruter, seems designed as the funeral monument of dead and buried
Christianity. But though apparently destroyed, like its divine
Author, instinct with immortality it rose triumphant over all its
foes.
DIOCLETIAN · CAES · AUG · GALERIO · IN ORIENTE · ADOPT ·
SVPERSTITIONE CHRIST · VBIQ · DELETA ET CVLTV DEOR · PROPAGATO.
“To Diocletian, Cæsar Augustus, having adopted Galerius in the
East, the Christian superstition being every-where destroyed, and
the worship of the gods extended.”
[127] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 2. The effects of the
persecution were felt even in Britain. (Gildas, _de Excid.
Britan._, in Bingham, viii, 1.) Alban was the first British
martyr at a somewhat earlier date.
[128] “The dungeons destined for murderers,” says Eusebius, “were
filled with bishops, presbyters, deacons, readers, and exorcists,
so that there was no room left for those condemned for
crime.”--_Hist. Eccles._
[129] Nec unquam sine cruore humano coenabat.--Lactan., _de
Mort. Persec._
[130] Date of Edict, April 30, A. D. 311. Euseb., _Hist.
Eccles._, ix, 1.
[131] Eusebius gives the edict, taken from a brazen tablet at
Tyre, in which the Emperor speaks of “the votaries of an
execrable vanity, like a funeral pile long disregarded and
smothered, again rising in mighty flames and rekindling the
extinguished brands.” _Hist. Eccles._, ix, 9.
[132] The courtly panegyrist of Constantine gratefully speaks of
him as a “light and deliverer arising in the dense and
impenetrable darkness of a gloomy night.” Euseb., _Hist.
Eccles._, x, 8.
[133] Eusebius compares the victory of the Milvian Bridge to that
of Moses and the Israelites over Pharaoh and his hosts. _Hist.
Eccles._ ix, 9.
[134] Daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem
sequendi religionem quam quisque voluisset--“We give to the
Christians, and to all, the free choice to follow whatever mode
of worship they may wish.”--Decree of Milan, preserved in
Lactantius, _de Mort. Persec._, and in Euseb., _Hist.
Eccles._, x, 5.
[135] In the violent deaths or loathsome diseases of many of
their persecutors the Christians recognized the retributive
judgments of the Almighty, which were considered so remarkable as
to occasion the special treatise _de Mortibus Persecutorum_,
attributed to the pen of Lactantius. Nero died ignominiously by
his own hand. Domitian was assassinated. During the reign of
Aurelius war, famine, and pestilence wasted the land. Decius
perished miserably in a marsh, and his body became the prey of
the prowling jackal and unclean buzzard. Valerian, captured by
the Persians, after having served as a footstool to his haughty
foe, is said to have been flayed alive and his skin stuffed with
straw. Aurelian was slain by the hand of a trusted servant, and
Carinus by the dagger of a husband whom he had irreparably
wronged. Diocletian, having languished for years the prey of
painful maladies, which even affected his reason, it is said
committed suicide. Galerius, like those rivals in bloodshed and
persecution, Herod and Philip II., became an object of loathing
and abhorrence, being “eaten of worms” while yet alive. Maximian
fell by the hand of the public executioner; and Maxentius, in the
hour of defeat, was smothered in the ooze of the Tiber beneath
the walls of his capital. Severus opened his own veins and bled
to death. The first Maximin was murdered; the second, a fugitive
and an exile, committed suicide by poison, and, according to
Eusebius, was so consumed by internal torments that “his body
became the tomb of his soul.” Licinius, the last of the
persecutors, was slain by his ferocious soldiery, and his name,
by a decree of the Senate, forever branded with infamy. Thus with
indignities and tortures, often surpassing those they inflicted
on their Christian subjects, perished the enemies of the church
of God, as if pursued by a divine retribution no less inexorable
than the avenging Nemesis of the pagan mythology. See Lactantius,
_de Mort. Persec._, _passim_; Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 17;
ix, 9, 10; Tertul., _Ad. Scap._, c. 3.
[136] The church of St. Marcello, in the Corso, commemorates the
scene of his indignities. There is reason to believe that each
church or _titulus_ within the city had its own cemetery
without the walls, over which the presbyter of the title had
jurisdiction. Marcellinus, as bishop, had charge of the
ecclesiastical Cemetery of Callixtus, as appears from a
contemporary inscription.
[137] Gruter, _Inscrip._, p. 1172, No. 3.
[138] _Rom. Sott._, p. 172.
[139] There is a pleasing tradition recorded of Sylvester, the
successor of Melchiades, to the effect that, having fled, on
account of the persecution, to the caverns of Mount Soracte, the
Emperor Constantine sent for him to receive religious
instruction. Seeing the soldiers approach, as he thought to lead
him to martyrdom, Sylvester exclaimed, “Now is the accepted time,
now is the day of salvation,” but was in a few days installed as
bishop of Rome in the imperial palace of the Lateran. Soracte,
once sacred to Apollo and the Muses, but now to Christ and the
saints, is known, in commemoration of this event, as _Monte San
Silvestro_.
[140] Gruter, p. 1171, No. 8.
[141] Their names and piety are commemorated by two churches in
Rome. Eusebius also records with approbation the story of the
Christian matron Sophronia, wife of the Prefect of Rome, who
committed suicide to escape the polluting embraces of the tyrant
Maxentius. _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 14.
[142] _Bullettino_, January, 1869.
[143] The following satirical remarks of De Brosses, a Romanist
writer, concerning the supply of relics from the Catacomb of St.
Agnes, will indicate how unauthentic are these objects of
veneration: “Vous pourriez voir ici la capitale des Catacombes de
toute la chrétienté. Les martyrs, les confesseurs, et les
vierges, y fourmillent de tous côtés. Quand on se fait besoin de
quelques reliques en pays étranger, le Pape n’a qu’à descendre
ici et crier, _Qui de vous autres veut aller être saint en
Pologne?_ Alors s’il se trouve quelque mort de bonne volonté
il se lève et s’en va.”
[144] From the Catacomb of St. Agnes. The ancient Martyrology
records the conversion of a Roman nobleman of this name in the
time of Julian, together with that of his wife and fifty-three
members of his household, and his subsequent martyrdom and burial
in the Catacombs. It is probable that Theophila had learned in
Gaul to write Latin, though only in those singular Greek
characters which, as Julius Cæsar informs us, were used in that
country, and that, after the death of the whole family, she
employed some equally unlettered stone-mason to engrave this
remarkable inscription.
[145] De Rossi gives several dated inscriptions of the reign of
Diocletian, (Nos. 16 to 28,) thus absolutely identifying the age
of those portions of the Catacombs.
[146] In Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun” there is a fantastic legend of
“The Spectre of the Catacombs,” the ghost of an apostate betrayer
of the Christians, which still haunts the scene of its hateful
perfidy.
[147] See plan of this _arenarium_ and stairway in chap. v,
fig. 26.
[148] In A. D. 359 Liberius, bishop of Rome, lay hid for a year
in the Catacomb of St. Agnes, till the death of the Arian
Constantius; and in A. D. 418 Boniface I. in the Catacomb of St.
Felicitas, during the usurpation of the antipope Eulalius.
[149] The similar excavations of Quesnel, in France, were long
inhabited by both human beings and cattle.
[150] Latebrosa et lucifugax natio.--_Minuc. Felix._
[151] Compare the following spirited lines of Bernis:
“La terre avait gémi sous le fer des tyrans;
Elle cachait encore des martyrs expirans,
Qui dans les noirs détours des grottes reculées
Dérobaient aux bourreaux leurs têtes mutilées.”
_Poëme de la Religion Vengée_, chap. viii.
[152] See especially Dodwell’s learned but unsatisfactory Essay,
_De Paucitate Martyrum_, and Gibbon’s laboured extenuation of the
severity of the persecutors.
[153] Ingens multitudo.--_Ann._, xv.
[154] Jam desolata templa.--_Epis._, 97, lib. x.
[155] Exuberante copia virtutis et fidei numerari non possunt
martyres Christi.--_Lib. de Exhort. Martyr._, c. xi.
[156] Euseb., _Hist. Eccles._, viii, 9.
[157] _Ibid._, viii, 11.
[158] Universum populum cum ipso pariter conventiculo
concremavit. Lactan., _Instit. Divin._, v, 11: Gregatim
amburebantur.--_Ibid._
[159] Page 78.
[160] Sexaginta illic defossas mole sub una
Reliquias memini me didicisse hominum.--_Peristeph._, xi.
[161] The story of the martyrdom of ten thousand Christians on
Mount Ararat, under Trajan, and of the massacre of the Thundering
Legion, consisting of six thousand Christians, by Maximian, are
fictions of later date. In the Church of St. Gerion at Cologne
are many reputed relics, chiefly hea
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