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THE REVEREND
CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY, Jr.,
OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
Among the most cherished recollections of the
past, is one of a morning in the early spring, when
two youth stood on the banks of the Potomac,
about to separate, as they feared, perhaps for ever.
They talked of the pleasant past when their tastes
and pursuits had been the same, and of the shadowy
future which to them was radiant with all that the
imagination could picture.
And so they parted. Years have since gone by.
Of the companions of those happy months, some
are now scattered over the land, wearily waging
the warfare of life, and some are sleeping in their
6 DEDICATION.
quiet graves. Seldom have the two friends, who
parted in the morning of life, met face to face; yet
time has not severed those early bonds, and often
have greetings passed between their distant homes,
to brighten the chain of brotherhood which bound
them together. And now, when the whole length
and breadth of the land is about to be placed be-
tween them, and they may never meet again in
this world, the one would dedicate this little vol-
ume to the companion of his early days, as a trib-
ute to that friendship which has been steadfast
through youth and manhood, and which, he trusts,
may one day be renewed in that land where there
shall be no more partings.
Albany, Advent, 1S5S.
PKEFACE.
The writer believes that the argument derived
from the Catacombs of Rome, in defence of primi-
tive truth, is but little known in this country, and
that he might therefore be doing some service by-
placing it in an accessible form. To most readers
it will be a new chapter in the past history of the
Church. Hitherto, the descriptions have been locked
up in ponderous, folios, or foreign languages, with
the exception of two or three small volumes pub-
lished in England. He believes that no work on
this subject has ever been printed in this country.
The first writer whose attention was turned to
these remains of the past, was Father Bosio. He
spent more than thirty years (1567 to 1600) in ex-
ploring the Catacombs, penetrating into some of
the innermost crypts which had been closed for
centuries, and in making drawings of ancient mon-
uments, inscriptions, and paintings. It became
the absorbing passion of his life, until, we are told,
8 PREFACE.
" lie lived so much in the dark catacombs, that the
bright light of the sun was painful to his eyes."
Yet he did not survive to see the result of his la-
bors made known to the world, but died while
writing the last chapter of his work. His accu-
mulated manuscripts and drawings, with the partly-
finished engravings, passed into the hands of Father
Severano, who added a chapter of his own, and pub-
lished the work at Eome, in the year 1632, under
the title of " Roma Sotterranea." This work was
translated into Latin by Father Arringhi, and pub-
lished in two very large folio volumes, at Eome, in
1651 and 1659. These publications first awakened
the interest of the learned in Europe to the subject
of the Catacombs.
In 1702, Fabretti published a collection of epi-
taphs, under the title, " Inscriptionum antiquarum,
&c. explicatio." But the most important work
was by Father Boldetti, canon of Santa-Maria in
Trastevere, and custode of the Catacombs. It ap-
peared in 1720, in a large folio volume, entitled,
" Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii dei Santi Martiri,
&c. di Roma." He too passed more than thirty
years in the examination of the tombs and crypts.
Bottari then published, in 1737 and 1754, three
large folio volumes on Christian art, under the title,
" Sculture e pitture sagre, estratte dai Cimiteri di
Roma." His companion, Father Marangoni, a la-
borious Jesuit, also brought out two works con-
PREFACE. 9
nected with the subject, between the years 1740
and 1744.
The next distinguished writer in this catalogue
was M. D'Agincourt, an ardent student of Christian
archaeology, who toward the close of the last cen-
tury settled himself in Rome, to investigate these
relics of primitive days. He intended to stay six
months, but, like Bosio, it became the study of his
life; and he remained for fifty years solely occu-
pied in collecting and arranging the materials of
his w r ork, which did not appear till after his death.
It is entitled, " Histoire de l'Art par les Monu-
mens." Among* the more modern writers on this
subject, on the continent, are Munter, a Danish
bishop, M. Raoul Kochette, the Abbe Gaume, and
the Abbe Gerbet. M. Ferret, a French artist, hns
recently devoted six years to the study of the Cata-
combs and their contents, and returned to Paris
with the materials for a great work which will
soon be published. It will probably, however,
relate more to art than to Christian doctrine or
antiquities.
In England, the only work of any research is,
" The Church in the Catacombs," by Charles Mait-
land, M. D., published in 1846. There is also a
small volume by Charles Macfarlane, Esq., intend-
ed, how r ever, only to give a popular view of the
outward appearance of the Catacombs, and pur-
posely entering into no theological discussions.
1*
10 PREFACE.
"I have," says the author, " carefully avoided con-
troversial points."
In compiling the present volume, the writer must
of course disclaim all attempts at originality. The
subject does not admit of it. Having been exceed-
ingly interested in the study of these Christian anti-
quities, when in Rome in 1845, he has endeavored
to impart to his descriptions the freshness of his own
recollections. Still, for the materials, he must de-
pend principally upon the voluminous works of
those who had gone before him. While " other
men have labored," he has " entered into their
labors." His great authority has been Arringhrs
"Eoraa Subterranea," of which he believes there is
but a single copy in this country. This he has
studied carefully, endeavoring to avail himself of
the labors of this distinguished antiquarian on the
points he has brought forward, and the illustrations
he has employed.
To Maitland, also, he must acknowledge his in-
debtedness. He has pursued somewhat the same
plan, and availed himself in some instances of his
pages, to procure fac-similes of inscriptions which
were not to be found in older works. Often, how-
ever, in his study of Arringhi, he has subsequently
discovered lie had been anticipated by Maitland,
and that they had both copied the same inscriptions
to illustrate the points brought forward. Believing,
however, that this volume may be used by Ameri-
PREFACE. . 11
can readers, who would not meet with the expen-
sive English work, he has not thought it necessary,
on that account, to alter his manner of treating
any particular subject.
This work might have been much extended, but
if materially enlarged, it would have defeated the
object of the writer. His aim has been, not to at-
tempt the production of a volume displaying anti-
quarian or classical learning, but a simple and
popular view of these great historical facts which
in this country are so little known. He has en-
deavored to present a picture of the early Church
in Home, in the manliness and purity of its faith,
that those who are dreaming of Home as she is in
this age, may see that approximation to her, as she
now sits upon her Seven Hills, is no approach to
the simplicity and truth of primitive times. The
dogmas of Trent have placed a " great gulf" be-
tween the apostolic Church of Rome, and the mod-
ern Church of the popes.
To his brethren, then, he commits this volume,
as an attempt to aid in that great contest which
every year is becoming of deeper interest — the
contest between primitive truth and modern inno-
vations. Bunyan, in his day, spoke the popular
voice, when he described Giant Pope, as "yet
alive, but by reason of age, and also of the many
shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger
days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he
12 PREFACE.
now can do little more than sit in Lis cave's mouth,
grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his
nails because he can not come at them." Yet in
this age, that power seems to be putting forth new
and unwonted efforts, and we may yet have once
more to wage that warfare, which three centuries
ago was so successfully carried on by the English
reformers. And in doing this, we must go back to
the early days of the Church, and learn, as far as
we can, how the first followers of our Lord thought
and trusted and acted. And, we believe, that in
accumulating this testimony, it will be found, that
not the least important is that which comes from
the tombs of the early Soman Christians.
CONTENTS.
L
Visit to the Catacombs * page 17
II.
Origin and History of the Catacombs 29
III.
Description of the Catacombs 49
IV.
The Inscriptions in the Catacombs 69
V.
The Martyrs of the Catacombs 87
VI.
The Symbols in the Catacombs 103
VII.
Ministry and Rites of the Early Church 151
VIII.
The Changes of Modern Rome 171
IX.
Conclusion 201
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS.
I. .
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS.
About two miles from the gates of Rome, on that
same Appian Way, over whose pavements once the
legions of victorious Rome marched on their way to
the Capitol, and whose stones were bedewed with
the tears of captive princes as they were dragged
along to swell the glory of the triumph, stands the
church of St. Sebastian. The tide of population
has flowed away from it — the dwellers about have
fled from the deadly miasma which broods over
these wastes — the ruins of their habitations have
sunk beneath the soil, as the rank vegetation rose
around them — and the church, with its adjoining
monastery, stands nothing but a monument of the
saint who is said to have suffered martyrdom on
that spot.
It w r as on one of those genial mornings when an
Italian winter is rapidly changing to its early spring,
that we stood opposite to this time-worn relic of the
past. A scene which presented the image of more
perfect repose could not be imagined. Around us,
18 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
far and wide, stretched the desolate Campagna, till
in the dim horizon rose the purple hills of Albano,
consecrated on the classic page as having on their
slopes the villa of Horace, and the now vanished
palace of Maecenas, where once the princely patron
gathered around him the wit and genius of Rome
in her most intellectual days. Before us were the
broken arches of the Claudian aqueduct, the ruined
shrine of Egeria, from which the Nymph and Dry-
ad have long since fled, and the massive tomb of
Coecilia Metella,
" with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of Eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown."
The Eternal city was sleeping in the distance, the
still air brought no murmur of its population, and
the whole wide landscape gave no sign of life. A
beggar was slumbering in the porch of the appa-
rently deserted church, and not a sound broke the
stillness, but the droning of some insects which
were wheeling around in ceaseless circles in the
sunlight. It was a scene to be found nowhere but
among the solemn ruins which encircle this "Niobe
of nations."
Beneath this church is the only entrance to the
Catacombs by which admittance is usually gained.
There is another indeed at the church of St. Agnes,
but, for some reason, strangers are seldom permit-
ted to enter it. The writer made many attempts
while in Rome ; but though several times promised
admission by ecclesiastics, he never succeeded in
effecting it. And such, he has found, was the tes-
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS. 19
timony of all his friends. The only individual he
has met with, who was able to inspect the Catacombs
of St. Agnes, was the late Thomas Cole, the artist,
from whom he once received so interesting an ac-
count, as to deepen his regret at his own failure.
Mr. Cole represented these passages as being much
richer in inscriptions and paintings than those of
St. Sebastian, fewer having been removed from
their original positions to be placed in the gallery
of the Vatican.*
There are also numberless openings scattered over
the Campagna for miles, which, overgrown with
vines, often prove dangerous to the incautious
rider. It was of these that D'Agincourt availed
himself, on several occasions, to enter the Cata-
combs ; though without guides or landmarks, the
experiment was a dangerous one. Some of them
w T ere in existence during the persecutions in early
Christian times, and were used as air-holes. They
are spoken of in the " Acts of the Martyrs," as lu-
minaria cryptce. Others were probably produced
in later ages by the falling in of the ground where
the roof of a passage had too nearly approached the
* Professor Weir of West Point, to whom Mr. Cole also gave an
account of his visit, has lately confirmed the writer's impressions
with regard to the conversation. Among other things, Mr. Cole
stated, that he was so impressed with the resemblance of some of
the clerical garments, portrayed in fresco, to those now used in our
Church, that he commenced copying them, but was prevented from
finishing by those in charge of the cemetery. He then attempted
at home to sketch them from memory. Unfortunately these draw-
ings have not been found among his papers, and we have given in a
succeeding chapter, the only passage in his letters relating to this
subject.
20 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
surface. Traditions tell ns of attempts made to
overwhelm these galleries with mounds of earth, in
order to destroy those who had taken refuge in their
intricacies. But for various reasons the caves near
the Basilica of St. Sebastian are considered by an-
tiquarians as having been those first occupied by
the Christians, and a portion of these, therefore, is
kept open to gratify the interest of the curious.
We entered the church, whose interior seemed as
silent and deserted as the exterior. Wandering
about from chapel to chapel, no one was to be seen
but the mendicant who, awakened from his sleep in
the sunshine, followed us in, whining forth his pe-
tition for alms in the name of every saint in the cal-
endar. At last, an old monk appeared from the
adjoining monastery, and having made known our
wish to visit the Catacombs, he furnished each of
the party with a light, and led the way down the
stone steps into the passages below. How many
thousands, for centuries past, have trodden these
well-worn steps : the careless and the irreverent, as
well as those who went to this cradle of our faith as
to a holy shrine ! Age after age the sandalled
monk has glided over them, and through mediaeval
times they have rung with the tread of the mailed
knight. At the bottom of the stairs, we entered a
winding passage which w r as the commencement of
the Catacombs. Here they branch off in all direc-
tions, and the contrast to the dark caves is far
greater from leaving the balmy Italian atmosphere
above. The air is not " the dew of the dungeon's
damp," but something far more oppressive. It is
hot, dry, and stifling, smelling of earth and dust.
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS. 21
The intricate passages cross and recross, often not
more than three feet wide, and so low that we
were obliged to stoop. The difficulty of following
them is greater from the fact, that they are gener-
ally constructed in three stories, so that you con-
stantly meet with steps which ascend or descend.
At times, however, they expand into apartments
arched overhead, and large enough to contain a
small company. On ^ach side are cavities in
which were placed the bodies of the dead, and
small apertures where lamps were found. But few
sarcophagi were discovered here, and these proba-
bly date from the fourth century, when persecution
had ceased, and more of the higher classes had be-
gun to hand in their adherence to the faith. Before
this, no pomp or ceremony attended the burial of
the Christians, when their friends hastily laid them
in these dark vaults. They sought not the sculp-
tured marble to enclose their remains, but were
contented with the rude emblems which were
carved above, merely to show that for the body
resting there they expected a share in the glory of
the Resurrection. Yery many of the graves are
those of children, and sometimes a whole family are
interred together. The cavities were cut into the
soft stone, just large enough for the body, with a
semi-circular excavation for the head, and the open-
ing was closed with a thin slab of marble.
"When for the first time Sir Walter Scott was con-
ducted to the lone and silent city of Pompeii, the
only exclamation he uttered was, "The city of the
dead! the city of the dead!" We felt how much
more appropriately the epithet could be bestowed
22 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
upon subterranean Rome. It was, indeed, a most
interesting scene, as we followed the old monk with
his trailing garments and noiseless tread, through
these dark and silent passages. On each side of
us were the yawning graves. For a moment they
seemed to open, as the taper we carried brought
them into the little circle of light, and then, as we
passed, they closed again in the darkness. We
were wandering among the dead in Christ, who
more than sixteen centuries ago were borne to their
rest. Around us were the remains of some, who,
perhaps, had listened to the voices of apostles,
and who lived while men were still upon the earth,
who had seen Jesus of Nazareth, as He went on
His pilgrimage through the length and breadth of
Judea. It was a scene, however, to be felt more
than to be described — a place in which to gather
materials for thought for all our coming days, car-
rying us back, as it did, to the earliest ages of our
faith — ages when the only strife was, as to who
should be foremost in that contest through which
their Lord was to " inherit the earth." The holy
spirit of the place — the genius loci — 'Seemed to
impress itself upon all. They were hushed into a
reverential silence, or if they spoke, it was in low
and subdued tones.
Yet we were glad to ascend the worn steps and
find ourselves once more in the church above.
We noticed, indeed, that the corners we turned in
these intricate passages were marked with white
paint to guide us, yet a sudden current of air extin-
guishing our lights would make these signs useless,
and from the crumbling nature of the rock there is
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS. 23
always danger of the caving in of a gallery, or some
other accident, which might involve a party in one
common fate. We were told, indeed, that no
longer ago than 1837, a school of nearly thirty
youth, with their teacher, descended into these Cata-
combs on a visit, and never reappeared. The pas-
sage through which they entered, and which has
since been walled up, was pointed out to us. Every
search was made, but in vain ; and somewhere in
these labyrinths they are mouldering by the side of
the early disciples of our faith. The scene which
then was exhibited in these dark passages, and the
chill which gradually crept over their young spirits
as hope yielded to despair, could be described only
by Dante, in terms in which he has portrayed the
death of Ugolino and his sons in the tower of Fam-
ine, at Pisa.*
There was, a few years since, a singular escape
from the Catacombs, by a young French artist, M.
Robert, which is still well remembered at Rome.
Hans Christian Andersen, in his story of "The Im-
provisator, or, Life in Italy," has wrought it up
into an exciting scene, and it forms an episode in
the Abbe de Lille's poem, " L'Imagination." We
can not forbear quoting the version of the latter,
from the pen of Mr. Macfarlane : —
"Eager to know the secrets of the place,
The holy cradle of our Christian race,
A youthful artist threads those inmost cells,
And lowest crypts, where darkness ever dwells.
No friend to cheer him, and no guide to lead,
He boldly trusts a flambeau and a thread.
* Inferno, xxniii., 21-75.
24 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
Brave and alone he cherishes his light,
And trusts the clew will guide him back aright
Onward he goes, along the low-arched caves,
Crowded with martyrs' relics and thefr graves;
Through palaces of death, by countless tombs,
Through awful silence and through thick'ning glooms;
Yet pausing oft, as walls and slabs impart
Some lesson of the earliest Christian art,
Or some black chasm warns him to beware,
And change his steps, and trim his torch with care.
Onward he goes, nor takes a note of time,
Impelled, enchanted, in this dismal clfme;
Thrilling with awe, but yet untouched by fenr,
He passes on from dreary unto drear!
The crypts diverge, the labyrinths are crowed —
He will return — alas! his clew is lost!
Dropped from his hand, while tracing out an urn ;
The faithless string is gone, and dimly burn
The flambeau's threads. He gropes, but gropes in vain,
Recedes, advances, and turns back again ;
A shivering awe, a downright terror next
Seizes his soul, and he is sore perplexed!
He halts, he moves, he thinks, he rushes on,
But only finds that issue there is none.
Crypt tangles crypt, a perfect network weaves
This dark Daedalian world, these horrent caves.
He mutters to himself, he shouts, he calls,
And echo answers from a hundred walls.
That awful echo doubles his dismay,
That grimmer darkness leads his head astray.
Cold at his heart! his breath, now quick, now slow,
Sounds in that silence like a wail of wo!
Oh ! for one cheering ray of Heaven's bright sun,
Which through long hours his glorious course hath run,
Since he came here! And now his torch's light
Flickers, expires in smoke — and all is night!
Thick-coming fancies trouble all his sense,
He strives but vainly strives, to drive them thenec;
Cleaves his dried tongue unto the drier roof,
Nor word, nor breath, hath he at his behoof;
VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS. 25
That dying torch last shone upon a grave,
That grave his tomb, for who shall help and save?
Alone! yet not alon£, for phantoms throng
His burning brain, and chase the crypts along.
And other speetres rusli into the void —
Bj-.ssings neglected, leisure misemployed,
And passions left to rise and rage at will,
And faults, called follies, but were vices still;
And wild caprice, and words at random spoken,
By which kind hearts were wounded, though not broken,
Bootless resolves, repentance late and vain —
All these and more come thundering through his brain;
Condensing in one single moment rife,
The sins of all his days, the history of his life ;
And death at hand! not that which heroes hail,
On battle-field, when 'Victory!' swells the gale,
And love of country, Glory standing by,
Make it a joy and rapture so to die!
But creeping death, slow, anguished, and obscure,
A famished death, no mortal may endure!
But this his end! our prisoned artist's fate,
He young, he joyous, and but now elate
With every hope that warms the human breast,
Before experience tells that life's a jest;
Full of his art, of projects, and of love,
Must he expire, while creeping things above,
On the earth's surface, in the eye of day,
Revel in life, nor feel this drear dismay?
But hark! a stepl alas, no step i6 there!
But see! a glimmering light! oh, foul despair!
No ray pervades this darkness, grim and rare.
He staggers, reels, and falls, and falling prone,
Grapples the ground where he must die alone,
But in that fall touches his outstretched hand
That precious clew the labyrinth can command,
Lost long, but now regained! O happy wight,
Gather thy strength, and haste to life and light
And up he rises, quick, but cautious grown,
And threads the mazes by that string alone;
Comes into light, and feels the fanning breeze,
Sees the bright stars, and drops upon his knees;
2
26
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
His first free breath is uttered in a prayer,
Such as none say but those who've known despair!
And never were the stars of heaven so sheen,
Except to those who'd dwell where he had been,
And never Tiber, rippling Aough the meads,
Made music half so sweet Aong its reeds;
And never had the earth sJfh rich perfume,
As when from him it chaseAthe odor of the tombT
II.
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
II.
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.
It has been conjectured by some writers, that
these excavations were commenced long before the
founding of the Eternal city by that race who made
it famous under the name of Rome. There are
traces everywhere of a former mighty people in-
habiting these sites, long anterior to the age as-
signed to Romulus and Remus, when the massive
Etruscan tombs were reared, and those temples
built in Psestum, which, two thousand years ago,
the Romans were accustomed to visit as antiquities.
But they were a people all knowledge of whose lan-
guage and records has perished. No Rosetta stone
has yet been found to furnish a key to the literature
of this mysterious race, and their existence is only
known by the inscriptions, and sculptures, and
vases, dug out of the earth, and filling the muse-
ums of Italy, or by their rifled tombs presenting
objects of curious study to the antiquarian. "We
speak of them as the Etruscans, but beyond tliie
everything with regard to them is a blank.
It is supposed that by them these quarries may
have been first opened, for there is a ma^iveness in
30 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME.
tli e character of their architecture which enables us
at once to distinguish it, even from the earlier Ro-
man. These ancient quarries abound, too, not only
at Rome, but at Naples, and through all the south
of Italy. They are traced, too, in Sicily, in Greece,
in nearly all the Greek isles, and in Asia Minor;
and perhaps the celebrated labyrinth in the island
of Crete was formed originally by excavations of
this kind. But they are never found except in the
vicinity of some considerable and ancient city, or
near the spot where some such city once stood.
The Romans inherited the domains of this mys-
terious race, and we find allusions to the Catacombs
in their writers long before the Christian era. The
great increase of the city in the latter days of the
republic, led again to the working of quarries in the
immediate neighborhood, to procure the materials
necessary for building. The soil of the Campngna
rests on tufa and puzzolana, a volcanic, sanely rock,
easily quarried, and from its texture well adapted
to the excavation of long galleries, while the Es- '
quiline hill was undermined to obtain sand for ma-
king cement. These subterranean works were
referred to by Cicero in his oration for Cluentius,
when Asinius, a young Roman citizen, was in-
veigled to the gardens of the Esquiline, and precip-
itated into one of the sand-pits — "in arenarias
quasdam extra portam Esquilinam." It was, too,
in these caverns, Suetonius tells us, Nero was after-
ward advised to conceal himself in his hour of dan-
ger; on which occasion he made answer to his
freedman, Phaon, that "he would not go under
the ground while living."
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 31
pin tins way it was that these crypts or galleries
were first formed, until the whole subsoil on one
side of Rome was in the course of time perforated
by a network of excavations, which ultimately ex-
tended to a distance of fifteen or, as some say, twen-
ty miles. But when these quarries were exhausted
of their original stores, they stood vacant, ready to
be appropriated to any other use. And none, of
course, would know their intricate windings but
those whose hands had formed them, and by whose
labor these excavations had been made.
Then came the advent of the Christian faith.
The arenariij or sand-diggers, and the workmen in
the quarries, were persons of the lowest grade, and
cut off by their occupation from the crowds in the
busy city, probably formed a separate and distinct
community. There is reason to believe, that Chris-
tianity found among them its earliest proselytes,
for its first followers everywhere were the lowest in
k the social scale. These " hereditary bondsmen," in-
deed, scarcely calling their lives their own in this
world, would most naturally gladly welcome the
hopes which dawned upon them from the world to
come. One of the most common figures found por-
trayed in nearly all these quarries — and which can
easily be distinguished from the Christian order of
the fossors — is that of a man carrying some imple-
ment of labor, often for the purpose of excavation,
and wearing the short tunic and scanty dress of the
slave. In times of persecution, therefore, the con-
verts employed in the subterranean passages had
already provided for them a secure retreat, which
also they opened to their brethren in the faith, until
32 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME.
it became the place of refuge of the Roman Church.
In addition to this, we learn from a number of testi-
monies, that the early Christians themselves, as a
punishment for abandoning the ancient faith, were
often sentenced to labor in these sand-pits. In the
"Acts of the Martyrs," we are told, that the Em-
peror Maximian " condemned all the Roman sol-
diers, who were Christians, to hard labor ; and in
various places set them to work, some to dig stones,
others sand. He also ordered Ciriacns and Sisinnus
to be strictly guarded, condemning them to dig sand,
and to carry it on their shoulders." Thus it was
that the members of the early Church, and they
alone, became familiar with these winding recesses.
"We can easily imagine how concealment in these
gloomy labyrinths became practicable. The earli-
est victims selected in a persecution would, of
course, be those most prominent in the Church —
its bishop, or ministers, or officers.* These, there-
fore, would at once take refuge in the Catacombs,
where the humbler members of the Church, whose
obscurity for a time gave them safety, could easily
supply them with all the necessaries of life.
Springs, too, which still exist in various corridors,
and wells — some of which are supposed to have
been dug for the purpose of draining parts of the
Catacombs — show some of the means by which life
was preserved.
* When, in 1809, Napoleon was pressing his demands upon Pius
VII., that pontiff, in refusing to comply, said: "I shall make no re-
sistance; I am ready to retire into a convent, or into the same Cata-
combs of Rome that afforded shelter to the first successors of St.
Peter."
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 33
And may we not trace in this the hand of a pro-
tecting Providence? The Church, was about to
enter the furnace of affliction, and to be encircled
by the rage of the adversaries ; here, then, had pre-
viously been provided a sure refuge, where it could
abide until the storm was overpast. This was the
cradle of the infant community. And, perhaps, we
may go a step farther, and assert, that while the
church in Rome owed much of the rapidity of its
triumph to the protection afforded by the Cata-
combs, by furnishing a place of refuge where the
faithful generally had a secure retreat, in later
times the lessons taught by these ancient sepulchres
must have long served to arrest the progress of in-
novation, as the Roman Christians beheld recorded,
before their eyes, evidences of the faith held "in
their fathers' day, and in the old time before them."
That the Catacombs were, throughout, well known
to the early Christians, is evident; for all parts
bear trace of their occupancy. "We meet on every
side with tombs and chapels, paintings and inscrip-
tions, and for three hundred years the entire Chris-
\ tian population of Eome found sepulture in these
recesses.
"N^ The " Acts of the Martyrs" relate many attempts
made by the persecutors of the early Christians, to
trace them in these retreats. But the entrances
were so numerous, scattered for miles over the
Campagna, and the labyrinths below so compli-
cated, and blocked up in various places, that pur-
suit was generally useless. Occasionally, however,
these efforts were successful, and the Catacombs be-
came not only the burial-place of the martyrs, but
34 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
also the scene of their last sufferings. In the time
of Cyprian, Xystus, bishop of Rome, together with
Qnartus, one of his clergy, poured out their blood
on this spot; and Stephen, another bishop of Rome,
was traced by the heathen soldiers to his subter-
ranean chapel. They allowed him to conclude the
service in which he was engaged, when he was
thrust back into his episcopal chair, and thus be-
headed.*
In the life of this St. Stephen, the first Roman
bishop of that name, there are many scenes con-
nected with the Catacombs. It was there that he
was obliged to pass much of his time, sending forth
the priest Eusebius and the deacon Marcellus, to
invite the faithful to come to him for personal con-
ference. There he assembled his clergy and col-
lected the neophytes, to instruct and baptize them.
Among his followers was Hippolytus, a Christian
of Rome, who had also taken refuge in the Cata-
combs. His sister Paulina, and her husband Adri-
as, both pagans, who were intrusted w T ith the secret
of his retreat, supplied him with the requisites of
life, by means of their two children, a boy of ten,
and a girl of thirteen years of age. They were in
the habit of repairing to their uncle's hiding-place
at stated times, with a basket of provisions. Hip-
polytus, sorrowing over the heathen darkness of his
relatives, sought the venerable bishop, and con-
sulted him on the subject of his painful solicitude.
The advice he received was, to detain them on their
next visit, in the hope that their parents, alarmed
by their absence, would themselves seek them in
* Baronius: Annals, torn, iii., p. 1Q.
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY.
35
the Catacombs, when a favorable opportunity would
be afforded for placing before them the claims of
our faith. The expedient was adopted, and when
the children next made their usual visit, they were
easily persuaded to remain. Their parents, at the
expiration of the ordinary interval, became alarmed,
and hurried to the cemetery, where they found their
son and daughter with St. Stephen, who used all his
persuasive eloquence, but apparently in vain, to
make them converts to the Christian faith. They
retired unbelievers; but the good seed was sown.
They returned again, at the request of the bishop,
and after repeated meetings, and a course of in-
struction, they and their children were baptized;
and all four, as well as St. Stephen and Hippolytus,
were honored with the crown of martyrdom and
buried in the Catacombs.*
St. Chrysostom, who although not living in the
age of persecution, was near enough to it to receive
its traditions in all their original freshness, uses on
one occasion an illustration plainly drawn from
these scenes. He 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."
We have, too, the testimony of Prudentius, who
also in a most graphic manner portrays these re-
treats. After speaking of the care shown by the
church in gathering the mangled remains of the
martyr Hippolytus, he thus minutely describes the
catacomb in which they are deposited : —
* Baronius : Annals, torn, ill-, p. 09.
36 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
" Haud procul extreme culta ad pomeria vallo,
. Mersa latebrosis crypta.patet forcis,
Hnjus in occultum gradibus via prona reflexis
Ire per an fr actus luce latente docet ;
Primas namque fores sum mo tenus intrat hiatu;
Illustratque dies limina vestibuli.
Inde ubi progressu facili nigrescere visa est
IS"ox obscura loci per specus ambiguum,
Occurrunt eelsis immensa foramina tectis,
Quaa jaciunt claros antra super radios.
Quamlibet ancipites texant hinc inde recessus,
Arcta sub umbrosis atria porticibus;
Attamen exeisi subter cava viscera montis
Crebra terebrato fornice lux penetrat;
Sic datur absentis per subterranea solis
Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.*
"Beyond the rampart, 'mid the garden-grounds,
Darkles a crypt in the sequestered mine:
With tortuous steps, a swift descent and prone,
Dives down into its heart. The cavern's mouth
Lies open freely to the day, and drinks
A light that cheers the shadowy vestibule ;
But, in its bosom, night, obscure and vast,
Blackens around the explorer's way, nor yields
Save where, down fissures slanting through the vaults,
Clear rays, though broken, glance on roof and wall.
On all sides spreads the labyrinth, woven dense
"With paths that cross eaeh other; branching now
In caverned chapels and sepulchral halls;
But ever through the subterranean maze
That light from fissure and from cleft looks down,
Fruition granting of an absent sun."
There is one inscription over the grave of a mar-
tyr, which shows that lie was surprised by the emi-
Baries of Antonine while praying in the Catacombs.
The date of this event was during the fifth persecu-
* Peristephanon : Hymn iv.
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 37
tion, iii the reign of the second Antonine (for the
first was friendly to the Christians), which began
in the year 161. We copy a portion only of the
epitaph : —
" GENVA ENIM FLECTENS VERO DEO SA
CRIFICATVRVS AD SVPPLICIA DVCTTVRO
TEMPORA INFAVSTA QVIBVS INTER SA
CRA ET VOTA NE IN CAVERNIS QVIDEM
SALYARI POSSIMVS"
" For while on his knees, and about to sacrifice to the true God,
he was led away to execution. O sad times! in which sacred rites
and prayers, even in caverns, afford no protection to us !"
The edicts of the Roman emperors, indeed, often
referred to the cemeteries as places of worship.
Such was the case when JEmilianus, a prsefect of
Egypt during the persecution under Valerian,
issued an edict, one sentence of w T hich was —
" Moreover, it shall no longer be lawful for you or
for others to hold assemblies, nor to enter the ceme-
teries, as they are called." Orders to the same im-
port were sent forth by Maximian, on the renewal
of the Diocletian persecution, forbidding the Chris-
tians to meet in the Catacombs. The attempt how-
ever proved futile, and the followers of Christ still
found a refuge in their accustomed places of meet-
ing, until the adherents of the old religion, under
the government of Ililario, were so exasperated
that they demanded the destruction of the Cata-
combs.* No effort was made, however, to carry
this into effect, peace came once more at the close
of the Valerian persecution, and when the Empe-
* Tertullian, Ep. and Scapulam, cap. 5.
38 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME.
ror Gallieims sent forth an edict, declaring that the
ministers of the faith might perform the customary
duties of their office with freedom, particular refer-
ence is made to the Catacombs which had been
seized by his officers. He grants permission to the
bishops, "to recover what are called the ceme-
teries."* So well known at this time had become
these caves as places of Christian worship. Even
after the general establishment of Christianity, as
late as the year 352, during a temporary persecu-
tion by the Arians, Liberius, bishop of Rome, took
up his abode in the cemetery of St. Agnes.
" To our classic associations, indeed, Rome w r as
still, under Trajan and the Antonines, the city of
the Csesars, the metropolis of pagan idolatry — in
the pages of her poets and historians we still linger
among the triumphs of the Capitol, the shows of
the Coliseum — or if we read of a Christian being
dragged before the tribunal, or exposed to the
beasts, we think of him as one of a scattered com-
munity, few in number, spiritless in action, and
politically insignificant. But all this while there
was living beneath the visible, an invisible Rome
— a population unheeded, unreckoned — thought
of vaguely, vaguely spoken of, and with the fa-
miliarity and indifference that men feel who live on
a volcano, yet a population strong-hearted, of quick
impulses, nerved alike to suffer or to die, and in
numbers, resolution, and physical force, sufficient
to have hurled their oppressors from the throne of
the world, had they not deemed it their duty to
kiss the rod, to love their enemies, to bless thoso
* Eueebius : Hist. Eccles., lib. vii., cap. 13.
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 39
that cursed them, and to submit, for their Redeem-
er's sake, to the ' powers that be.' Here, in these
' dens and caves of the earth,' they lived ; here,
they died — a 'spectacle' in their lifetime 'to men
and angels,' and on their death a ' triumph' to man-
kind — a triumph of which the echoes still float
around the walls of Rome, and over the desolate
Campagna, while those that once thrilled the Capi-
tol are silenced, and the walls that returned them
have long since crumbled into dust."*
Thus, three centuries passed by, and Christianity
emerging from these recesses, w r alked boldly on the
soil beneath which she had so long been glad to
seek concealment. Then, for a time, the Cata-
combs were places which the Christians, now living
in security, visited with reverence, as the scenes of
their brethren's sufferings. St. Jerome thus speaks
of them in the middle of the fourth century : u When
I was at Rome," says the monk of Palestine, " still
a youth, and employed in literary pursuits, I was
accustomed, in company with others of my own
age, and actuated by the same feelings, to visit on
Sundays the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs,
and often to go down into the crypts dug in the
heart of the earth, where the walls on either side
are lined with the dead ; and so intense is the dark-
ness, that we almost realize the words of the proph-
et, 'They go down alive into Hades.' Here and
there a scanty aperture, ill deserving the name of
a window, admits scarcely light enough to mitigate
the gloom which reigns below ; and as we advance
through the shades with cautious steps, we are for-
* Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, vol. i., p. 4.
40 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
cibly reminded of the words of Virgil : c Hor-
ror ubique amnios, simul ipsa silentia terrent. —
Horror on all sides, even the silence terrifies the
mind.'"*
But these crypts became more than places to be
visited by the curious with melancholy interest.
"When " the calamities were overpast," and the
true-hearted needed no longer for safety to " wan-
der in dens and caves of the earth," reverence for
these dark abodes which had been the scenes of the
sufferings and constancy of those from whom they
had inherited their faith, was witnessed in their
still continuing to be selected as places of sepulture.
Compelled, no longer by the rage of the adversary,
to spend their lives in these gloomy retreats, they
turned to them in the hour of death, and enjoined
that their last resting-place should be with the mar-
tyrs in this terra sancta. Popes and prelates, kings
and queens, emperors and empresses, the highest in
rank and the most devout in life, or most penitent
in death, were for some centuries interred in these
crypts, in the neighborhood of the tombs of Roman
slaves and criminals, Christian laborers and hewers
of stone, and the early martyrs. Even from the re-
mote parts of Europe, the bodies of illustrious per-
sons were carried thither for sepulture, as, a few
centuries later, princes and nobles commanded in
their wills, that their bodies, or, at least, their
hearts, should be carried to Palestine and buried
in the Holy Land. The following are a few of the
illustrious dead who were inhumed in the Eoman
Catacombs during the Middle Ages : —
* Hieronymus in Ezechiel, cap. xl.
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 41
Anaclitus, fifth bishop of Rome.
Pope Leo 1.
Pope Gregory the Great, who first undertook the conversion of
the Anglo-Saxons.
Popes Gregory II. and III.
Pope Leo IX. He died A. D. 1050, and was the last pope buried
in the Catacombs.
The Emperor Honorius.
The Emperor Valentinian.
The Emperor Otho II.
Cedwalla, a king of the Western Saxons.
Conrad, a king of the Mercians.
Offa, a Saxon king.
Ina, a king of the Anglo-Saxons, with Queen Eldiburga, his wife.
The Princess Mary, daughter of Stilicho, and wife of the Empe-
ror Honorius.
The Empress Agnes.
The unfortunate Charlotte, queen of Cyprus.
The celebrated Countess Matilda, who lived in the twelfth cen-
tury, and to whom the Roman see was much indebted for the in-
crease of its wealth and territorial possessions.*
But it was not long after the firm establishment
\jof Christianity as the religion of the state, that the
flood of barbarian invasion rolled over Italy, when
neither works of art, or holy places, or consecrated
churches, were respected by their rude northern
conquerors. When the army of the Huns under
Attila, and then that of the Goths under Totila,
were gathered about the walls of Rome, pressing
its siege, they ransacked the Catacombs and tore
open the graves, in the hope of finding buried
treasures. And these were followed by the Lom-
* This list is given by Macfarlane, p. 36. He has taken it from
that of the Abbe" Gaume, Les Trois Homes, v. iv., p. 39. Arringhi
has also devoted a chapter to this subject, in which he gives sub-
stantially the 6ame catalogue : " De imperatoribus ac regibus, qui
apud Vaticanum sepulturae traditi sunt." — Lib. ii., cap. 9.
49 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
bards and Saracens, and other devastators. Each
added to the desecrations, until the Catacombs were
necessarily deserted by the Christian population of
Rome. Burials ceased in the crypts, and services
in the chapels, until the neglected caverns were
left to bats and obscure birds and beasts, or became
the hiding-places of runaway debtors, thieves, and
'/banditti. The Roman peasants avoided them in
dread, or when, on their way to and from the mar-
ket-places of the city, they were obliged to pass the
mouths of the caverns under the Esquiline mount,
they did so in companies, hurrying by with trem-
bling steps, as they muttered a prayer, or chanted
a psalm or Hymn.
Then came the tumultuous times of the Middle
Ages, when the country was surrendered up to the
warfare of factious nobles and an unruly populace,
when often, for long seasons, all was utter anarchy,
and in the language of Dante —
" Never was Romagna without war
In her proud tyrants' bosoms."
Every tomb and monument was turned into a
fortress, and the visiter to Rome can still see about
them the remains of these mediaeval battlements.
The Frangipani held the massive arch of Janus Qu-
drifons and the Coliseum; the Orsini, the tomb of
Hadrian, and the theatre of Pompey ; the Colonna
family, the mausoleum of Augustus and the baths
of Constantine; the tomb of Csecilia Metella was
converted into a fortress by the Savelli and the
(^cetani; the ruins of the Capitol were held by
the Corsi ; the Quirinal by the Conti ; and the
Pantheon by the garrison of the popes.
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 43
It was not to be expected therefore that the Cata-
combs should escape the same desecration. The
contests of the feudal retainers of these warlike
nobles penetrated even to these secluded caverns,
conspiracies were arranged in their dark recesses,
and armed insurgents assembled there, to wait for
reinforcements from the neighboring towns and
villages, and for the fierce banditti from the moun-
tains. During that long contest between the pow-
erful families of Colonna and Orsini, the combats
between their vassals and retainers took place, not
only on the Esquiline mount, but also in the caverns
beneath. The awfulness of the spot, the dread pres-
ence of the departed, and the emblems of religion,
imposed no restraints upon the furious combatants,
but often these dark passages rang with the rival
w r ar cries — u The Colonna! the Colonna!" and
" Beware the bear's hug!" So too was it when
Sciarra Colonna seized Pope Boniface and made
him prisoner in his own palace. He had called
down from the mountains of the Abruzzi, and his
other fiefs and castles in the Apennines, bands of
fierce retainers, who arrived in small parties, and
to prevent suspicion concealed themselves in these
caverns until their leader could summon them
forth at the moment for action. \f
Nor was the case different when in the next age
the papal court was removed to Avignon, during
the seventy years which Petrarch calls "the Baby-
lonian captivity." Then, a darker ruin gathered
about the Imperial city. The country around was
inundated, and the stagnant wafers, mixed with
decomposed vegetable matter, evaporated under
44 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
the intense summer sun, until the whole neighbor-
hood of the city, where the openings of the Cata-
combs \v T ere situated, became a prey to the v most
deadly malaria. At certain seasons these passages
were occupied by shepherds and their flocks, while
spending the winter months in grazing on the
wide-spread Campagna, but ordinarily they seem
to have been the resorts of robbers and felons.
This is the testimony of Petrarch : —
" They are become like robbers' caves,
So that only the good are denied entrance;
And among altars and saintly statues,
Every cruel enterprise seems to be concerted."*
Amid the revolutions caused by the efforts of
Cola di Rienzi, " the last of the Tribunes," the Cata-
combs are again mentioned as places of muster and
concealment, and one of the old chroniclers tells us,
that when the final hour of the Tribune had come,
and the furious populace were gathered against
him, being advised by some of his friends to take
temporary refuge in the Catacombs, he answered,
as Nero had done thirteen hundred years, before,
that "lie would not bury himself alive." y
Yet even in the darkest times, when most persons
shunned the Catacombs as places of danger, there
seem to have been some who, moved by piety or
curiosity, occasionally visited the few crypts which
were most accessible, and left behind them, on the
walls or tombstones, brief inscriptions, hastily and
* " Quasi spelunca di ladron son fatti,
Tal ch' a buon solamente uscio si chiude ;
E tra le altari, e tra statue ignude,
Ogni impressa crudel par che 6i tratti."
CANZONE/ XI.
.,..
THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 45
slightly cut, to record their visits. Thus we find in
one place, a few words denoting that a Bishop of
Pisa and his companions had been there at the be-
ginning of the fourteenth century ; and in another
place are traced the names of six individuals — Ger-
man names, Latinized — with the sign of the cross
after each name, and the date, A. D., 1397, under-
neath them all. On one of the early Christian
tombs, too, were found a palm-leaf worked in sil-
ver, and a small coronet of silver, gilded and in-
scribed with a name, and the date 1340. They had
been concealed and preserved by the pozzolano
and earth falling upon them and burying them. In
another crypt was found this inscription, with the
date 1321 above it, and the names of three visi-
ters beneath it : " Gather together, O Christians, in
these caverns, to read the holy books, to sing hymns
to the honor of martyrs and the saints that here lie
buried, having died in the Lord; to sing psalms
for those who are now dying in the faith. There is
light in this darkness. There is music in these
tombs."*
It is evident that, during these ages, these sanctu-
aries of the ancient Church were gradually forgot-
ten. The mouths of most of the Catacombs were
blocked up by the accumulation of rubbish, by the
falling in of the tufa and earth over the arches, or
by the rapid growth of gigantic weeds, dense bushes,
and trees. It required constant use to preserve a
knowledge of their intricate windings, and there-
fore a few only of the principal entrances were
* For many of these facts with regard to the Middle Ages we are
indebted to Macfarlane, p. 36.
46 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
kept open. Even these gradually became neglected,
until the Church scarcely remembered her ancient
home. It was not until the sixteenth century that,
through the labors of Bosio, the entire range of the
Catacombs was reopened, after being untouched for
more than a thousand years. They were found to
be a vast treasury, rich in memorials of saints and
martyrs — an enduring testimony, every page of
which bore witness to the truth of Christian history,
and recorded in letters " graven on the rock," the
trials and persecutions of the early Church. Then,
when the revival of letters enabled the learned to
profit by the discovery, investigations commenced,
which have been prosecuted to the present day, as
the question has been agitated, whether Rome
shall be permitted to claim identity in discipline
and doctrine with these ancient disciples, who have
thus bequeathed to us the memorials of their faith
and sufferings.
Such is the history of the Catacombs. These dark
and gloomy passages once formed the cradle of the
Christian faith in Europe. As one age of perse-
cution after another drew its dark pall over the
Church, it was here that the true-hearted found
their place of refuge — their impregnable fortress
against the might of pagan Rome. These narrow
passages "rang with their hymns of lofty cheer" —
here, they were trained for those victories which
" wrote their names among the stars ;" and when
the conflict was over, here their brethren laid them
to their rest, in the very spot which had been so
often hallowed by their prayers. " And their sep-
ulchres are with us unto this day."
III.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS,
III.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS.
In the account of our visit to the Catacombs, we
have somewhat anticipated the general features of
these retreats. We will endeavor, however, to give
a more particular description, to enable our readers
to understand their connection with primitive times,
and the nature of the testimony they bear to early
faith.
"We have mentioned the manner in which these
winding passages are excavated from the rock.
They are stated b}^ D'Agincourt, to follow the di-
rection of the veins of pozzolano ; but this is a point
which it would be difficult to prove. Nor can we
at this day tell their extent ; as the very intricacy
of their crossings and recrossings, together with the
danger of passages caving in so as to render a re-
turn impossible, would be sufficient to prevent their
thorough exploration. In the sacristy of St. Sebas-
tian hangs a map of the passages for a few miles,
the very sight of whose complicated turnings would
be sufficient to extinguish any such wish in one
who had a regard for his life. Arringhi, in his
3
50 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
"Roma Subterranea," gives a plan of a portion — ■
that known as the Cemetery *of St. Calixtus —
which we have copied.*
They are said by some writers to extend as far as
Ostia, nearly twenty miles distant. f It is certain
that many miles from the Church of St. Sebastian
there are openings into the Catacombs, but whether
they communicate with those which are entered at
that place, it is impossible to determine. The prob-
ability is, that all this section of country without
the gates of Rome is excavated so as to form a per-
fect labyrinth of passages. They resemble a sub-
terranean city with its streets and alleys, and so
encircle the walls, that they have been called " the
encampment of the Christian host besieging pagan
Rome, and driving inward its mines and trendies
with an assurance of final victory."
In the twelfth century, Petrus Mailing enumer-
ated nineteen of these cemeteries. Another writer,
in the next century, counted twenty-one, and in
dwelling on their extent, says: " There are Cata-
combs that run three miles under ground ; it was
in these that the holy martyrs concealed themselves
in times of persecution." In the sixteenth century,
Panvini counted thirty-nine, and gave the distinc-
tive name of each; while the latest writer on this
subject, the Abbe Gerbet,+ asserts that they amount
* See Frontispiece.
f "They are continued underground, as is said, twenty miles to
Ostia, the port of Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber, in one direction,
and to Albano, twelve miles in another." — Visit to Europe, by Pro-
fessor Silliman, vol. i., p. 329.
\ Esquisse de Rome Chrtticnne, vol. ii. ; Paris, 1850.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 51
to fifty.* This enumeration, however, is very un-
certain, as openings into the Catacombs being scat-
tered all over the country, it is impossible to tell
whether they are separate excavations, or connected
by crypts and galleries. /
The character of the Catacombs is always the
same, and answers the description given by Baro-
nius of the cemetery of Priscilla, which was dis-
covered in his day near the Yia Latina. Speaking
of Dion's account of the subterranean passages
made by the Jews in Jerusalem, as places of safe-
ty, on their revolt against Hadrian, he remarks :
" This description of Dion's of the underground pas-
sages made by the Jews, is also precisely applicable
to the cemeteries once constructed at Rome, in the
caverns of the arenaria ; which were not only used
for the purpose of burying the dead (whence they
derive their name), but likewise in time of persecu-
tion as a hiding-place for Christians* Wonderful
places are these ! We have seen and often explored
the cemetery of Priscilla, lately discovered and
cleared on the Salarian Way, at the third mile-
stone from the city. This, from its extent, and its
many various paths, I call by no more appropriate
name than a subterranean city. From the entrance
onward opens out a principal street, wider than the
rest. Others diverge from it at frequent intervals;
these again are separated off into narrower ways
and blind alleys. Moreover, as is the case in cities,
broader spaces open out in particular spots, each
like a kind of forum, for holding the sacred assem-
blies ; these are adorned with images of tlie saints.
* Maefarlanc y p. 60.
52 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
Apertures have likewise been pierced (though now
blocked up), for receiving the light from above.
The city was amazed at discovering that she had in
her suburbs long-concealed towns, now filled only
with sepulchres, but once Christian colonies in days
of persecution ; and she then more fully understood
what was read in documents, or seen in other ceme-
teries partially laid open. From what she had read
of these places in St. Jerome, or in Prudentius, she
gazed upon them with lively astonishment when
she beheld them with her own eyes."*
We have already spoken of the visit of Thomas
Cole, the artist, to the Catacombs of St. Agnes. In
his recently published works, we find the following
account — unfortunately all that he has left — of
this interesting passage in his life : —
"I have seen tljaJ; to-day, which will be a lasting
subject of thought — which has made an impression
on my mind that can never be effaced — the Cata-
combs of St. Agnes. I went in the company of Mr.
Greene, the consul, Mr. G , Mr. P , and the
padre, who has the charge of the excavations, and
has made a plan of the subterranean labyrinth.
The sky was cloudless, and before we entered the
gloomy regions of the dead, we stood for some time
in the vineyard, gazing at the mountains that rise
around the Campagna di Eoma. The entrance,
about two miles out of the Porta Pia, is by a flight
of steps, partly antique, I believe. At the bottom,
we found ourselves in a narrow passage cut in the
tufa rock. On either hand were excavations in the
walls, of various dimensions, which contain the
* Ad. an., 130.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 53
bones of the early Christians. For two hours, we
wandered in these gloomy regions. Now and then
we came to a chapel. The passages were, in gen-
eral, about six feet wide, and from five to twelve
high, arched, and sometimes plastered. The cells
are in tiers, one above another. Many of them
were open, and disclosed the mouldering bones of
those who flourished in the first centuries of the
Christian Church. Others were closed by tiles, or
slabs of marble with cement, which appeared with
the impressions of the trowel as fresh as yesterday.
Here were the remains of the early martyrs of
Christianity. | You know them by the small lamp,
and the little phial or vase which once contained
some of their blood. These vessels were inserted
in the cement that sealed up their graves. Impres-
sions of coins and medals, the date of the inter-
ment, are also to be seen in the cement, with in-
scriptions marked with the point of the trowel,
usually the name of the individual, with the words,
' in pace,' or ' dormit'in pace?- What pictures can
not the imagination paint here! Yet nothing so
impressive as the reality ; scenes where Christian
hope triumphed over affliction ; where the cere-
monies of their holy religion were performed far
from the light of day. \The chapels are generally
ornamented with pictures, some of which are in
good preservation. They are rudely executed, but
with some spirit One picture represented Moses
striking the rock ; another, Daniel in the lion's den ;
another, the three holy children in the fire ; and still
another, the Virgin Mary. There were several pic-
tures which represented bishops or priests — men
54 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
in clerical robes. Occasionally the dripping of
the water formed stalactites upon the walls and
ceilings. Some of the bones were coated with cal-
careous deposit^)
"Some notion of the extent of the Catacombs
may be formed from the length of time we were
walking. There were many passages we did not
enter, and many impossible of access from the nib-'
bish with which they were choked up. We came
into the open air — into the light of the glorious
sun — and again stood and gazed upon the moun-
tains. There they are, as eighteen hundred years
ago ; they are not changed. As they looked then,
they look now.''*
Some of the larger galleries are in height about
eight or ten feet, and the width from four to six,
but the lateral passages are much more contracted
in their dimensions. On each side are the graves
cut into the walls, either in a straggling line, or in
tiers one above the other, sometimes amounting
to six in number. A single glance at the accom-
panying engraving (for which we are indebted to
Maitland), will give a better idea of these passages
than an elaborate description.
"We have represented, on the opposite page, the
opening of one of the larger galleries. The day-
light is seen pouring in at the mouth of the cav-
ern, showing the rifled sepulchres.
" The tombs contain no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of. then* heroic dwellers."
* Life and Works of Thomas Cole, by Rev. L. L. Noble, p. 818.
56 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
Beneath the most distant of these is a square
hole, which once probably contained a cup. On
the right is a lateral passage, blocked up to prevent
"accidents, so liable to happen to those who might
wander away and be lost in these intricate windings.
In some places the passages expand into the
apartments mentioned by Baronius, which traditions
state to have been intended as places of worship by
the proscribed and suffering followers of our Lord.
In one of these little chapels, which tradition has
thus consecrated, we saw still remaining, a simple
earthen altar, and an antique cross cut in the rock
above it. It was with no ordinary feelings that we
stood on this spot and looked on these evidences of
early worship. In this gloomy cavern the follow-
ers of our Lord were accustomed to meet in secret
to eat the bread of life, and with bitter tears to
drink the water of life. What solemn services must
this spot have witnessed ! "With what a depth of
feeling must they have heard of the Resurrection,
surrounded by the dead in Christ, and the symbols
of that hidden and eternal life which lies beyond
the grave ! How earnest the prayers which were
here poured forth by men, whose faith was certain,
because they had received it from the lips of apos-
tles themselves, and glowed more brightly because
they stood in jeopardy every hour ! These relics of
their worship may perhaps have remained here un-
changed, since the name of Jesus of Nazareth was
first uttered as a strange sound in the neighboring
city, and where we w r ere, men may have bowed in
prayer who had themselves seen their Lord in the
flesh. The remains were around us of those who
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 57
I
had. received the mightiest of all consecrations,
that of suffering, and whose spirits were as noble
as any who had their proud monuments on the
Appian Way, and whose names are now as "fa-
miliar in our ears as household words." But no
historian registered the deeds of the despised Naz-
arenes. They had no poet, and they died. \l
" Carent quia vate sacro."
A stone chair formerly stood in this little chapel,
but it >vas unfortunately removed to Pisa by Cosmo
III., of Tuscany.
The earliest of these chapels, like the one we
have just mentioned, were of the simplest form,
evidently mere enlargements of the gallery into an
oblong or square chamber, often lined with graves
on every side. Others, probably of later construc-
tion, were more elevated, with a hole pierced
through to the soil above for light and airV\ Some
of these openings in the roof are the holes to which
we have already referred, as scattered over the
Campagna and frequently mentioned in the "Acts
of the Martyrs." In one place, for instance, they
tell us of Candida, a saint and virgin, who was
thrown down the light hole of the crypt and over-
whelmed with stones.
V*When the days of persecution had passed and
these places became objects of superstitious rever-
ence, the custom began of ornamenting these
chapels with architecture and more elaborate fres-
co paintings. We are told that, before the year
400, the tomb of Hippolytus had been adorned with
Parian marble and precious metals. The roof was
8*
58
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
extended and vaulted, and the skill of the artist ex-
hausted in representing sacred subjects on the walls?)
Arringhi has numerous engravings of chapels when
thus changed, by the taste of later times, one of
which we copy, to show at a glance the wide dif-
ference between their appearance and that which
they bore in earlier days as represented in the last
engraving we gave. In this we have instances of
the " arched monument" — a grave cut like a sar-
cophagus from the rock and an arch constructed
above it.
In one case, copied by Maitland, the sarcopha-
gus or case for the body, at the end of the chapel,
was separated from it by a cancellated slab of mar-
ble, which is now broken.
The largest of these chapels are in the cemetery
of St. Agnes. One of them, it is estimated, would
hold eighty persons.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 59
The graves were originally closed by a thin piece
of marble, often of most irregular figure, or some-
times by slabs of terra-cotta, cemented to the rock
by plaster. In the subjoined engravings, copied
originally by Boldetti, we' have a view of two
graves, the first of which is closed by three pieces
of cotta, while the latter is partially opened, so that
the skeleton lying within can be seen. The palm
branch and cup have been rudely scratched upon
the stone. It was thus on these slabs, were cut the
Christian emblems which the early followers of our
Lord so much delighted to use, and there too they
scrawled the brief epitaphs by which, in that age
60
TIIK CATACOMBS OF ROMK.
of fear and persecution, they marked the resting-
place of the brethren. While everything around
speaks of suffering, it tells also of the simple ear-
nest faith of men, with whom the glories of the
next world had swallowed up all the pains of their
brief mortal pilgrimage.
Our guide pointed out to us, as we passed along,
some tombs which had never been opened, and
whose inmates had been left to slumber as they
were laid to their rest seventeen centuries ago.
There was one the thin marble side of which had
cracked, so that he could insert a small taper. He
bade us look in, and there we saw the remains of
the skeleton, lying as it was placed by its brethren
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 61
in the faith in those early days of persecution and
trial. In some passages are unfinished tombs, which
the workmen never completed ; and, Boldetti tells
us, he found places where sepulchres had been
sketched upon the walls, but their excavation never
even begun. He states, too, that when some were
opened for the first time, in his presence, he per-
ceived an odor like that of spices* And this is in
accordance w T ith what we know of primitive usages-
That the anointing of the bodies of their friends
with " sweet spices,"* to prepare them for their
burial, was the custom of the early Christians, we
learn not only from Scripture, but at a later day
from Tertullian. When answering the objection,
that the new religion was unfavorable to commerce,
he says: "Is not incense brought from a distance?
If Arabia should cpmplain, tell the Sabeans that
more of their merchandise, and that of a more ex-
pensive quality, is employed in burying Christians
than in fumigating the gods."f
There is another circumstance connected with
these cemeteries, which we can not but notice. It
is the fact, that Christianity first introduced the
custom of common burial-places for persons of
every grade, and connected with each other only
by the profession of the same faith. With the
higher class of pagans, sepulchres were appropri-
ated only to the members of the same family — as
the tomb of the Scipios, which still remains on the
* Mark, xvi., 1.
f Apologeticuft, cap. 42. Arringhi devotes an entire chapter to
this subject: 4 * Cadavera unguentis, ct aromatibus condiuntur."
Roma Subterranea, lib. i., cap. 23.
62 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
Appian Way, not far from St. Sebastian — while
Horace speaks with undisguised contempt of the
" common sepulchre" w T hich was intended for the
dregs of the people. \ Even the history of each Jew-
ish patriarch generally concludes with the declara-
tion — "He was buried with his fathers." Christi-
anity first broke down these narrow distinctions —
introduced a nobler relationship than that of blood
— taught that in Christ Jesus all are one ; and here
we find them sleeping side by side, old men and
children, young men and maidens, all claiming
brotherhood to each other only in the Church of
their Lord. See how in the two inscriptions,
which follow, the extremes of life are brought to-
gether. The Latinity in the first is so barbarous as
to be hardly intelligible, but we give a fac-simile
to show what it is. The epitaph is now on the
wall of the Lapidarian Gallery.
X
A\RTW R U S
UIXLTA/Vl/D/V
XQIELEXJTD
0/W/VWIC5INPACE
" Martyrius vixit annos XCI
Elexit doraum vivus. In pace.
" In Christ, Martyrius lived ninety-one years.
He chose this spot during his life. In peace."
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 63
Then follows one on an infant of a few months —
J&SAN-ON QVI VIXII MEN
SES JfcjII NON OCT ^
It is impossible to form any idea of the numbers
who are interred in these Catacombs. The earliest
date which has been verified, is in the time of Ves-
pasian, that is, not forty years after the crucifixion.
VCVESPASIANO III COS IAN.
There is another epitaph of the same period on an
architect, who, after having been in the service of
the Emperor Vespasian, was put to death by his
order on account of his belief in Christianity.*
The earliest Consular date is of the year 98. An-
other refers to the consulship of Surra and Senecio,
which was in the year 107 : —
N XXX SVRRA ET SENEC. COSS.
It is an inscription rudely scratched on the mortar
which overspreads the mouth of the niche.f There
probably, however, are many slumbering around
who were interred long before these periods. But
from the time that these passages were first used
for this purpose, till after the year 400, we know
that the whole Christian population of Rome found
here their burial-place. At an early period the
number of Christians was so great in Rome, as to
give rise to complaints that the shrines and temples
of the gods were deserted. Y And yet the Imperial
* Rock's Hierurgia, vol. ii., 808. f Boldetti, p. 79.
6i THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
city at this time was peopled by more than one
million of inhabitants. AVe can judge, therefore,
how numerous must have been the Christians, and
of course the interments, in a city which was open
to such a charge. And it was more than a century
before these cemeteries were disused for this pur-
pose, that Constantine avowed the Christian faith,
from which day we know that the number of its
open disciples was necessarily very much increased.)
In times, too, of persecution, multitudes w£re~at
once hurried to their long home. A single extract
from Prudentius, in his hymn, thus sets forth .the
fact most clearly, as he describes the appearance
of the Catacombs in his day : —
"Innurneros cineres sanctorum Romula in urbe
Vidimus, O Christi Valeriane saeer.
Incisos tumulis titulos, et singula quaeris
Xomina? difficile est ut replicare queam.
Tantos justorum populos furor impius hausit,
Quam coleret patrios Troja Roma deos.
Phirima litterulis signata sepulchra loquuntur
Martyris aut nomen, aut epigramma aliquod.
Sunt et muta tamen tacitas claudentia tumbas
Marmora, quae solum significant numerum.
Quanta virum jaceant congestis corpora acervis,
>~osse licet, quorum nomina nulla legas ?
Sexaginta illic, defossas mole sub una,
Reliquias memini mc didicesse hominum :
Quorum solus habet comperta vocabula Christus,*
"Around the walls where Romulus once reigned,
"We see, Valerian, countless relics of the saints.
You ask, What epitaphs are graven on these tombs?
The names of those who there are laid to rest?
A question difficult for me to answer 1
For in the olden times of heathen i\ .
* Peristephanon : Hymn xi.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CATACOMBS. 65
" So great a Christian host was swept away,
When Rome would have her country's gods adored.
Yet in some martyr's sepulchre his name is seen,
Or else some anagram his friends have carved.
There too are silent tombs which dumb stones close,
Telling us nothing but the number buried there.
And thus we know how many rest below,
Though names and appellations all are lost.
Beneath one single mount some sixty lie,
Though Christ alone has kept the record of these names.
As being those of his peculiar friends."
Thus it is that now, as we stand in these passages,
we feel that around us is a " multitude which no
man can number." Little do the dwellers in mod-
ern Home think, that for every one who treads their
streets, there are hundreds sleeping in those gloomy
caverns, which everywhere surround the Eternal
city and perforate the very soil on which it stands.
Yet so it is. The ground has been drunk with the
blood of martyrs, and the earth on which we tread
is rich w T ith the garnered_dust of countless saints
whose record has utterly perished from the land
which was once hallowed by their footsteps.
" All that tread
The earth are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom."
IV.
INSCRIPTIONS IN THE CATACOMBS.
IV.
THE INSCRIPTIONS IN THE CATACOMBS.
There is an old Arabian fable, of a city whose
inhabitants at once were turned to stone. The
maiden at the fountain, the guest in the hall, the
listless wanderer in the streets, all were arrested
without a moment's w r arning, and in the posture in
which the stroke found them, were transmuted at
once into marble statues/) And there the city stood
in the desert, with the stillness of the grave resting
on it, everything unchanged, as age after age swept
over it. At last came a chance traveller, and for
the first time in centuries its deserted streets echoed
to the tread of human footsteps, as he w T andered on
through palace, and temple, and hall, with none to
answer his summons — none to oppose his entrance
— gazing in wonder on the memorials of generations
which had lived ages before, to the possession of
which none had succeeded, and, therefore, they had
remained unaltered.
In our day, the deserted cities of Ilerculaneum
and Pompeii almost furnish a reality to this fable.
There, we are at once transported back to the first
THE CAXA0O9EH ME.
century of the Christian era. We enter hon-
which it seems as if the lordly Roman had but j
quitted. His paintings, and statues, and inanuscrh
are about us. The sentinel still stands at the p
he dared not leave, even when the burning cind-
were raining about him, and the skeleton :
hollow in his armor, the strigil lies on the pavement
of the bath, as the frightened slave dropped it,
when he fled, and in the bedroom is the rouge with
which the faded beau inpeii once restored
her charms. W ;n all sides of us. the charac-
ter of that now forgotten civilization, which spread
charm over these gay Campanian cities. The
great gnlf," which separ fees ufl from the days of
Pliny, is bridged over. The intervening re
forgotten. We live among those who for nearly
eighteen centuries have been dnst — we understand
h arrangement of their domestic life — and i* re-
quires an effort to recall our minds to the realit:
of the living present.
What these long buried cities display fee
the social condition of the ancients, the Catacombs
reveal with regard to the Church of that day.
:le we often read, in the remains of Pompeii, a
commentary on the tin ivenal or Horace, in
the ins tfl which mark the tombs of the ea:
Chi nnd a confirmation of ranch that v
written by the Fathers of the first three eenturu
The same spirit pervades the- :ds graven in
the rock, and the ean> b which those leaders
of the Church sent forth to cheer their I - in
the faith. The two harmonize in tone, and remain
THE INSCRIPTIONS IN THE CATACOMBS. 71
to rebuke the changes which after-ages gradually
brought about
(But few of the inscriptions now remain in the
accessible parts of the Catacombs. Some years
ago, most of them were removed to a hall in the
Vatican, which from its containing little besides
sepulchral stones, is called the Zapidarian, or delle
lapidi. The side of this long corridor is completely
lined with them, fastened against the wall to the
number of more than three thousand. The letters
on the Christian monuments are generally cut into
the stone, and are from half an inch to four inches
in height. On some of them, the incision is colored
with a pigment, resembling Venitian red. It is to
these inscriptions in the stone that Prudentius
refers, when in his hymn in honor of the eighteen
martyrs of Saragossa, he speaks of washing with
pious tears the furrows in the marble tablets erected
to them : —
M Nos pio fletu, perhiamus
Marmorum sulcos -."
On the opposite side of the same hall are fastened
the monumental inscriptions of pagan Rome, gath-
ered from the ruins of the surrounding city. We
turn to them, and we have before us the fragment-
ary records of Rome in her most glorious days.
We see the epitaphs of those whose deeds made
her history, and who endeavored thus, by the en-
during marble, to record their protest against the
influence of "Time's effacing finger." And beside
these are votive tablets, dedications of altars, frag-
ments of edicts and public documents, all 'classed
72 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
under the divisions of Greek, Latin, and consular
monuments.
"I have spent," says Raoul Rochette, "many-
entire days in this sanctuary of antiquity, where
the sacred and profane stand facing each other, in
the written monuments preserved to us, as in the
days when paganism and Christianity, striving
with all their powers, were engaged in mortal con-
flic^ " * * And were it only the treasure of im-
pressions which we receive from this immense col-
lection of Christian epitaphs, taken from the graves
of the Catacombs, and now attached to the walls
of the Vatican, this alone would be an inexhausti-
ble fund of recollections and enjoyment for a whole
life."*
It is interesting to mark the difference between
the two sides of the gallery. We are at once trans-
ported back through eighteen centuries, and see
before us the w T ide social gulf which separated the
adherents of the two religions, when Christianity
first went forth to challenge to itself the sway of
the earth. On the pagan side we have the pride
and pomp of life, when under the old religion the
civil and ecclesiastical states were so closely en-
twined together. There are the lofty titles of Ro-
man citizenship — the traces of complicated political
orders, and the funeral lamentations over Rome's
mightiest and best — all neatly graven on the mar-
ble, and often in hexameters which will bear the
scrutiny of the scholar.! We see everywhere the
evidences of a dominant faith, secure in its position
before the world, proud in its authority and re-
sources.
* Tableau des Cataco?nbes, p. x.
THE INSCRIPTIONS IN THE CATACOMBS. 73
/We turn to the Christian side of the corridor, and
Uqw marked the contrast ! There are the simple
records of the poor, in accordance with no classical
rules, appealing to the feelings rather than to the
taste, to the heart and not to the head.^ An inco-
herent sentence, or a straggling, misspelt scrawl,
betray haste and ignorance in their very execution.
The Latinity of these epitaphs would shock a cul-
tivated reader, the orthography is generally faulty,
the letters irregular, and the sense not always ob-
vious. The first glance is enough to show, that, as
St. Paul expresses it, "not many mighty, not manj^
noble," were numbered among those, who, in the
first age of our faith, were here laid to their rest.
Such is the inscription : —
]*f Ac*
DOMITI
IN PACE
LEA FECIT.
Domitius in peace. Lea erected this.
Roughly carved upon the slab, over which its
letters straggle with no attention to order, it tells
plainly that it was placed there by the members
of a persecuted and oppressed community?)
So, too, is it with the following : —
Leguriu8 Successua, in peace.
4
74
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
f
.TV *
IpcYSPMMI §>$>
The place of Primus.
Or tliis, which records the names of three indi-
viduals, and bears also the figure of the Good Shep-
herd, carrying a lamb : —
Septimina, Aurelius, Galymenes.
We give the fac-simile of another, where the old
heathen formula, D. M., which they used for divis
manibns, it has been argued, was retained with a
Christian meaning as applied to our Lord, and is to
be interpreted Deo Maximo : —
D A\ f S
VITAUS DEroSlTADlAESy\BAT\/|
"Strange conquest, where the conqueror must die,
And he is slain that wins the victory 1"
VI.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
VI.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
The early Christians looked upon the fine arts
with suspicion. Their noblest efforts had been so
entirely devoted to the interests of paganism, in
bodying forth the imaginary gods which in the old
mythology peopled Olympus, that to the disciples
of the new faith painting and sculpture were asso-
ciated with " the worship of devils." " He paints
unlawfully," was one of the charges made by the
stern Tertullian against Hermogenes. Sculpture
had led captive the imaginations of men, and they
therefore dreaded its influence. A long time had
to pass before this feeling was obliterated, and the
fine arts with a new spirit came fortli once more to
minister in the service of the Christian faith.
The class of society, too, from which the earliest
disciples came — the poor and the lowly — was
composed of those who had no knowledge of the
refinements of the arts. Not for them had been the
pride and pomp of this world, but their lives were
condemned to obscurity and toil. On them, there-
fore, the treasures of Grecian art were wasted, and
104 THE CATACOMBS OF HOME.
the most rudely -formed image, if it expressed the
idea they wished to develop, was as valuable as the
finest production from the chisel of Phidias. If it
symbolized their faith, it was all they asked.
Of this ignorance of many of the early disciples,
some of the inscriptions we have already copied to
show other points, have given sufficient evidence.
In many cases, the orthography itself is so faulty
that it requires study to discover what must have
been the original meaning. They were evidently
the work of some who had not shared in the light
of the Augustan Age. Such, for instance, is the
following, which as a specimen of latinity is per-
fectly unrivalled : —
IIBER QVI VIXI QVAI QVO
PARE IVA ANOIVE I ANORV
M PL VI MINVI XXX I PACE
The probable reading is this : —
Liber, qui vixit cum compare
Sua annum I annorum
Plug minus xxx in pace.
Still more singular is one in the Lapidarian Gal-
lery, of which we give a fac-simile : —
1ATfX)V1VpAlTN^NIVAJJ3
M3lOVHKATfXlv3Vi)
Elia Vincentia, who lived — years and two months. She lived
with Virginius a year and a day.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 105
It will be perceived that the inscription is entire-
ly reversed. To render it legible, it must be held
before a mirror, and then its meaning will be as
plain as can be with a sentence so rudely sculp-
tured. Maitland conjectures that the stonecutter
endeavored to take off upon the marble the impres-
sion of a written inscription, and the husband of
Elia was too ignorant to perceive the error, or to
procure a more intelligible record of his wife.
But this very ignorance drove them to some form
of symbolism. They wished something to picture
to the eye, and in their ignorance of language were
obliged to resort to other representations. It is to
this we must ascribe the rudely-carved lion on the
tomb of Leo. The picture recalled his name at
once to the unlettered survivors, to whom the words
of the epitaph would have been unintelligible.
PONTIVS-LEO-S-EBIV
ET PONTIA • M
FECERVNT-FI
Besides those which in this way represented
proper names, there were two classes of symbols.
One of a purely secular kind, indicating the trade
of him who was buried beneath. Thus we some-
times find the adze and saw of the carpenter. This
was often the custom with the Romans, and at once
5*
106
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
recalls to our minds the sphere and cylinder on the
tomb of Archimedes, by which Cicero discovered
the resting-place of the mathematician. We will
give a single illustration of this, and the one which
we select is chosen rather from the curious fate to
which it has been subjected. In the successive
irruptions of barbarians, which, as we have already
described, inundated the Imperial city, and de-
stroyed its antiquities and works of art, the slabs on
which the inscriptions in the Catacombs were re-
corded, were often torn from their places and used
for the most common purposes. One of these
Maitland discovered built into the wall of a pas-
sage in the Piazza di Spagna, in Rome. It is the
epitaph on a wool-comber, and we copy it as a
good illustration of the point we would show. We
have here all the implements of his trade ; the
shears, comb, the plate of metal with rounded
handle, and the speculum : —
VENBdXElMPACAe
To Veneria, in peace.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 107
But we pass from these cases, as they have no
connection with the faith of those over whom they
were carved. In addition to which, they are com-
paratively few in number.
The other class, and by far the larger proportion,
refer to the profession of Christianity and those
hopes which had so lately dawned upon them, and
lived beyond the narrow grave which they had de-
prived of its terrors. Of these w r e naturally turn
first to the cross, the primal symbol of Christianity,
because it is the one most generally used. This
emblem of our common faith is everywhere to be
seen. Although so lately invested with the. most
humiliating associations, to the early Christians it
became at once a mark of dignity and honor. Un-
like but too many who, in this day, bear that holy
name which was first assumed at Antioch, they
gloried in the Cross. They used it as an emblem
on all occasions during life — for with them the
Cross explained everything — and it consecrated
their tombs when the conflict of life was over, and
they had exchanged it for the crown. But we post-
pone for the present any further discussion of this
emblem, as in the succeeding chapter we shall en-
deavor to trace the changes through which its rep-
resentation passed.
10S THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
We often, too, meet with the monogram of our
Lord's name, in what was undoubtedly its earliest
form, the X and P, the first letters of Xptr**, united.
For example, in the preceding and following simple
inscriptions: —
btrpiooWeace
TTe copy one more for a peculiarity connected
with it, which, however, is not uncommon in these
early epitaphs. The primitive Christians seem often
to have taken some tablet with a heathen inscrip-
tion, and erasing it, to have placed their own in its
stead. Such is the case with the following, where
the whole of the original epitaph is not obliterated ;
but we still trace the D. M., standing for DIVIS
MAXIBUS, "To the Divine Manes," and two
other letters, the meaning of which it would now
be impossible to discover: —
HERCULIO. INNOCENTI
JENXJARIA ALUMNOMERE.
IN PACE
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
109
The monogram was sometimes surrounded by
palms, which were much used in all these, em-
blems, as being to the Christians symbols of vic-
tory and triumph. We find it, therefore, repre-
sented in this way : —
The next step was that the monogram was
somewhat altered in form by the decussation (to
use the technical term) of the X, to produce the
form of a cross. The following figure, in which it
is so represented, is copied from the tomb of $
child, who died in his fourth year. The monogram
here has become a regular cross, which a figure is
holding : — -
Subsequently the A and a were sometimes added,
referring to the well-known passage in the Apoca-
lypse, where our Lord is styled the Alpha and
110
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
Omega. The use of these letters is frequently
mentioned by both Tertullian and Prudentius,
showing how general in that age must have been
the reception of the book of Revelations as a part
of the inspired canon. These letters are represent-
ed in the following fragment of an inscription : —
QUIESCIT IN PACE 1
IANUARIUS nf VIXIT A 1
There was a seal-ring found in the Catacombs, on
which were engraven the same emblems, while the
monogram seems to be sustained by two doves :-*-
Sometimes, probably from the ignorance of the
sculptor, these two symbolical letters were inverted,
as in the following rudely sculptured design : —
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. Ill
Besides these inverted letters, we have here the
monogram, together with the name of the individ-
ual. It is to be read, therefore, " Tasaris, in Christ,
the First and the Last."
Next to these, one of the most common symbols was
the fish. It was a majestic sign in which the early
Christians particularly delighted, not only because
it was so expressive of the idea they wished to body
forth, but because it was an emblem whose meaning
their heathen foes would have found it impossible to
detect. The idea was originally derived from the
Greek word for fish, t^fli*, which contains the initials
Of Ipaovs Xpirog Qeov Yios £wr^, JeSUS CHRIST, THE SON OF
God, the Savior. Among the religious emblems
which St. Clement (A. D. 194) recommends to the
Christians of Alexandria, to have engraven on their
rings, he mentions the fish, and remarks, " that such
a sign will prevent them from forgetting their ori-
gin."* It furnished, too, a theme on which an ori-
ental imagination found much to dwell, in detecting
other resemblances. " The fish," says Tertullian,
" seems a fit emblem of Him, whose spiritual chil-
dren are, like the offspring of fishes, born in the
water of baptism."
The word ix e »s was often expressed at length in
their inscriptions, and at other times the fish itself
was figured.
We copy one of the earliest specimens, where it is
given in its rudest form, the mere outline scratched
upon the slab, together with the dove. Were it not
by comparison with other inscriptions, we should
not recognise the fish .
* Pcedag., 1. iii., c. xi.
112
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
A better representation is found upon a lamp dis-
covered in the Catacombs, where two fish are por-
trayed upon the upper part of the lamp, while the
handle shows the monogram of our Lord's name.
On some of the tombs we find an anchor pic-
tured, of which Clement of Alexandria speaks as a
Christian emblem. The association of ideas here is
obvious. They looked upon life as a stormy voy-
age, and glad were the voyagers when it was done,
and they had arrived safe in port. Of this the an-
chor was a symbol, and when their brethren carved
it over the tomb, it was to them an expression of
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 113
confidence that lie who slept beneath had reached
the haven of eternal rest.
A similar idea undoubtedly dictated the choice
of a ship as one of their most common emblems,
and which the Church of Eome has retained to this
day.* It was supposed to be sailing heavenward,
and they referred to the expression of St. Peter —
"So shall an entrance be ministered unto you
abundantly" — which they endeavored to illustrate
by the idea of a vessel making a prosperous en-
trance into port. It was not a symbol confined to
the Christians, but was with the heathen also a
favorite emblem of the close of life. It may be
seen at this day carved on a tomb near the Nea-
politan Gate of Pompeii. Perhaps, from them the
early fathers derived it, yet they gave it a Christian
and more elevated meaning. The allegory of the
ship is carried out to its fullest extent in the fifty-
* The writer once saw a miniature ship suspended from the beani3
of a little Indian chapel belonging to one of the Roman Catholic
missions on the borders of Lake Superior. It was a perfectly mod-
ern ship in all its equipments, and as unlike as possible those repre-
sented on the tombs of the early Christians ; still, it was the same
idea they had inherited.
114:
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
"seventh chapter of the second book of the " Apos-
tolical Constitutions," which is supposed to have
been compiled in the fourth century. It is repre-
sented also on a gem found in the Catacombs,
where the ship is sailing on a fish, while doves,
emblematical of the faithful, perch on the mast and
stern ; two apostles row, a third lifts up his hands
in prayer, and our Savior, approaching the vessel,
supports Peter by the hand when about to sink. It
was probably one of the signet-rings alluded to by
Clement of Alexandria, as bearing the vavs oipavotpo-
itovaa, the ship in full sail for heaven.*
Sometimes the mast was drawn as a cross, in al-
lusion to our Savior. The following, in the Lapi-
* Padagogus, lib. iii.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 115
darian Gallery, is the usual form in which it is
represented.
To show the way in which it was used in these
epitaphs, we copy one, where the simple outline of
a ship is given, while it is referred to in the in-
scription : —
NABIRA IN PACE ANIMA DVLCIS
QVI BIXIT ANOS n XVI M V
ANIMA MELEIEA
TITVLV FACTV
APARENTES SIGNVM NABE
Navira, in peace, a sweet soul,
Who lived sixteen years and Rye months:
A soul sweet as honey.
This epitaph was made
By her parents — the sign, a ship.
It was natural, however, that the most interest-
ing symbols to the early Christians were those
which were connected with the life and character
of our Lord. In the primitive days of the Church,
both in the east and west, " He was represented as
an abstraction, as the genius, so to speak, of Chris-
tianity,"* and among all phe drawings in the Cata-
combs there is but one form -in which he is por-
trayed. It is as a beardless youth, to signify — the
old writers tells us — "the everlasting prime of
Eternity."
Perhaps the most frequent character in which
He is introduced, is that of the Good Shepherd.
He is represented in a shepherd's dress and sandals,
carrying the " lost sheep" on his shoulders, while
* Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, vol. i., p. 42.
116
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
his flock feed around or look up to liirn. Often, the
landscape about is planted with olive-trees-, doves
resting on their branches, symbolical of the peace
of the faithful. Eusebius tells us that Constantine
erected a statue of the Good Shepherd in the Forum
at Constantinople.* The painting which we have
copied is from the cemetery of St. Callistus.
Another figure represents Him, a lamb with a
cross on his head, symbolical of the Atonement, as
* Vita Con*,, lib. iii., cap. xlix.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
117
standing on the rock or mountain of Paradise, from
which gush out four rivers, emblematical of the
Evangelists.
We now come to the scenes of His life. The
Adoration of the Magi is a favorite subject of rep-
resentation. In the following, from the cemetery
of St. Marcellinus, the three wise men are portrayed
wearing Phrygian caps.
In another case, on a sarcophagus found in the
cemetery of St. Sebastian, of course of a much
later date than the former, there is an elaborate
bas relief, in which the infant Jesus is represented
lying in the manger with the oxen around him,
while the Magi are approaching with their gifts,
and the star of Bethlehem is seen above them. —
118
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
One of the most elaborate paintings in any part
of the Catacombs, is a representation of our Lord's
baptism, discovered in the cemetery of Pontianus.
It will be observed, he is portrayed standing in the
Jordan, with John the Baptist pouring water upon
his head with his *hand.
Another common representation is that of our
Lord placing his hand on the head of a child and
blessing it. The one we have copied is from the
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
119
cemetery of St. Callistus. We have placed by its
side, our Lord conversing with the woman of Sama-
ria at the well, taken from a sarcophagus in the
Vatican. It is a scene repeated in many forms.
We frequently meet, too,- with our Lord's trium-
phant entrance into Jerusalem, the people with
palm-branches and strewing their garments in the
way, while Zacchgeus, who is the unfailing accom-
paniment in this scene, is seen in the tree. With
his early followers, this was not only an exhibition
of our Lord's triumph in the days of his flesh, but
it foreshadowed also his ultimate entrance as the
King of Glory into the New Jerusalem. The fol-
lowing representation is the most elaborate we
120 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
have met with, and is taken from a sarcophagus in
the Vatican.
The miracles of our Savior, however, were the
subjects on which the early Christians most de-
lighted to dwell. Strangely represented, indeed,
yet always in such a way that we at once recognise
the intention and design. In the following, our
Lord is portrayed when " a certain woman which
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
121
had an issue of blood twelve years, came in the
press behind and touched his garments ; and Jesus,
immediately knowing in himself that virtue had
gone out of him, turned about in the press and
said, " Who touched my clothes ?"
There is another of a much later date, on a sar-
cophagus, which we copy on account of the accom-
panying views. It brings before us a specimen of
Church architecture in the end of the fourth cen-
tury, to which period the details of this picture en-
able us to refer it with tolerable certainty. We
see before us a complete Christian basilica (appa-
rently the same one repeated in several positions),
with the circular baptistry at the side, yet detached
from it. At the end of the building, on the right,
we see the terminating absis. Before the doors
hang those veils which are even now common in
the Italian churches, to aid in preserving an equa-
122
THE CATACOMBS OF KOIIE.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
123
ble temperature, and to which St. Augustine refers
as used at the entrances of Pagan schools (as he ex-
presses it), " serving to conceal the ignorance that
took refuge within."
In the two on the preceding page, both of which
are in the cemetery of St. Callistus, our Lord is
touching the eyes of the blind man, and the man
cured of the palsy obeying the command, " Arise,
take up thy bed, and go unto thine house,"
The miracle of the loaves and fishes also fre-
quently occurs. In the following, from the ceme-
tery of St. Priscilla, the multitude seem to be
kneeling with their eyes turned to our Lord, who,
however, is not represented in the picture, as if
just receiving the miraculously-increased food from
his hands. At their feet we see the loaves and
fishes, while in the lower part of the picture stand
the " seven baskets full" that remained over.
As the Resurrection entered so much into their
thoughts, it was natural that they should often
bring forward the Eaising of Lazarus from the
dead. And it is curious to trace the progress of
art with reference to this favorite scene. In the
124
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
first which we copy, it is merely scratched on the
slab, just sufficient to represent Lazarus coming
forth from the tomb, though, perhaps, it would be
unintelligible, were it not for other representations
with which to compare it. The second, though
also rudely done, is executed with more care,
while the figure of our Lord is introduced as sum-
moning Lazarus forth to life. In all these he is
intended to be portrayed as " bound hand and foot
with grave-clothes."
The last one, from a later sarcophagus, is well
carved, as far as each individual figure is concerned,
though all rules of proportion are set at defiance in
the relative size of our Lord, the mummy-like fig-
ure of Lazarus, and his kneeling sister. (See next
page.)
There are numerous representations of the denial
of St. Peter, in many of which we should be unable
to define the subject, were it not for the accom-
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
125
paniment of the cock. The following is copied
from a sarcophagus in the Vatican.
But among all these delineations there is not a
single attempt by the early artists of the Church to
represent our Lord's crucifixion, or any of those
126 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
sorrows which at the end of his pilgrimage gathered
about the Son of man. They felt that they were
subjects for solemn thought, not to be pictured to
the outward eye. ; The most marked allusion to
this subject is a lamb bearing a cross. It was re-
served for a later age of superstition, to bring be-
fore the Church sufferings, on which our Lord's
'first disciples were contented to meditate with sol-
emn awe. " The agony, the crown of thorns, the
nails, the spear, seem all forgotten in the fullness of
joy brought by his resurrection. This is the theme,
Christ's resurrection, and that of the Church in his
person, on which, in their peculiar language, the
artists of the Catacombs seem never weary of ex-
patiating; death swallowed up in victory, and the
victor, crowned with the amaranth wreath of im-
mortality, is the vision ever before their eyes, with
a vividness of anticipation which we, who have
been born to this belief, can but feebly realize."*
Among all the scenes which accompanied the close
of his ministry on earth, there is but one which is
in any way brought forward in the Catacombs, and
this is evidently rather commemorated by his dis-
ciples as a testimony to the innocence of their
Lord, than from its connection with his sufferings.
It is a mutilated bas-relief on a sarcophagus in the
Vatican, representing Pilate, after washing his
hands, uttering the declaration — "I am innocent
of the blood of this just person : see ye to it." The
empty bowl is in accordance with what is still the
custom at the East, that, when washing, water
* Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, v. i., p. 51.
THE SYMBOLS IN" THE CATACOMBS. 127
should be poured over the hands, so that it should
not pass over them twice.
We now turn to the symbols taken from the Old
Testament. These are numerous, yet most of them
had a further object than merely to bring forward a
scene of Scripture history. Those events were se-
lected which they supposed to be typical of some-
thing in the dispensation which had just dawned
upon them, and thus the Old and the New were
linked together. It is a curious fact, indeed, that
subjects from the Old Testament are repeated at
least ten times more frequently than those from the
New. "This peculiarity, whether it arose from
reverence or fear, or want of skill, constitutes the
most marked feature in the early Christian art of
Rome, and distinguishes it in a very striking man-
ner from that of Byzantium. While the ({reeks
128 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
seem to recognise no medium between absolute
symbolism and direct representation, Rome seems
to have adopted from the first, and steadily adhered
to, a system of Typical Parallelism — of veiling the
great incidents of Redemption, and the sufferings,
faith, and hopes of the Church, under the parallel
and typical events of the Patriarchal and Jewish
dispensations."*
Beginning most naturally with that which repre-
sents the Fall of man, we copy a painting from the
cemetery of St. Callistus. Adam and Eve are
standing by the tree of Knowledge, round which
the serpent is coiled. From the " aprons of fig-
leaves" with which they are clothed, it is evidently
after the act of disobedience had been consum-
mated.
* Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, v. i.,. p. 47.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 129
There is another representation on a sarcophagus
in the Vatican, where our Lord (as the represent-
ative of the Deity) stands between, condemning
them, and offering a lamb to Eve, and a sheaf of
corn to Adam, to signify the doom of themselves
and their posterity to delve and to spin through all
future ages.*
Noah in the ark is one of the most common of
the earliest symbols. And yet, even in the barren-
ness of art in that day, there were no other subjects
which displayed such poverty of invention. Often
as it is used, the artists seemed never able to get
beyond one form of representation. Noah is stand-
ing in a box alone, welcoming the return of the
dove. His family, and the other numerous inmates
of the ark, are omitted. The one we copy, on the
following page, is from the cemetery of St. Priscilla.
* We copy this drawing from Iconographic Chretianic, p. 100.
Paris, 1843.
6*
130
THE CATACOMBS OF HOME.
Tins was the invariable form. The artist seemed
never to hazard an original idea, but contented
himself with varying the position of the patriarch
or the manner in which he is receiving the dove.
This is shown in the two following, which are
among the earliest illustrations of this scene.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
131
But with the early Christians, this was a favorite
subject. St. Peter had consecrated it to them as a
type,** and to them it w r as an emblem of reconcilia-
tion and peace through baptism, while the ark sym-
bolized the Church.
The sacrifice of
Abraham was natu-
rally often used, as
being so admirable a
type of that Greater
Offering, where, cen-
turies afterward, on
that same mount,
" God should pro-
vide himself a lamb
for a burnt-offering."
It is repeated in ev-
ery variety of form,
and, we are told by
early writers, that
Gregory of Nyssa
frequently shed tears
when contemplating
this composition. We
copy one from the
cemetery of St. Pris-
cilla.
"We give another
from the cemetery
of St. Marcellinus,
where the sacrifice has approached nearer to its
completion, and the victim is already bound.
* 1 Peter, iii. 20, 21.
132
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
There are several scenes in the life- of Moses
which they were accustomed to repeat. One is,
Moses on Mount Horeb, obeying the command,
" Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground." We copy
one from the cemetery of St. Callistus. Another,
from the cemetery of St. Marcellinus, is Moses re-
ceiving the Law, which was to be as a "school-
A third, from
master
to bring them to Christ."
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
133
the cemetery of St. Priscilla, is Moses pointing to
the pots of manna, as shadowing him who spake of
himself as " bread from heaven," and who gives us
spiritual food, his body broken for our sins.
The one most often occurring, however, is Moses
striking water from the rock, significant of spiritual
134
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
blessings derived to the Church through Christ
" And that Rock was Christ." We give two illus-
trations of this, of different ages. The first, an
early one from the cemetery of St. Marcellinus.
The second, from a sarcophagus discovered in the
cemetery of St. Agnes.
In a few instances only, we meet with the repre-
sentations of Job, sitting in his sorrow, as in the
above, from the cemetery of St. Marcellinus.
One of the most spirited representations was the
translation of Elijah, which to them was typical
of the ascension of their Lord. We have selected
one from the cemetery of St. Callistus, where the
prophet, as he ascends in his chariot of fire, be-
queaths his mantle to Elisha. It will be noticed
that, at some later period, two tombs have been ex-
cavated in the wall on which this drawing is made,
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 135
obliterating the head of the prophet, and the lower
portion of the other two figures.
The three children in the furnace at Babylon
represented the faithful in affliction, and in their
deliverance were a type of the Resurrection. In
the following, from the cemetery of St. Priscilla,
136
THE CATACOMBS OF KOME.
they are portrayed rather at standing on the fur-
nace, which some one is feeding with fuel below.
jlllllpiH
Jn
WWWZ^
There is another in the same cemetery, as seen on
the preceding page, which gives a much better exe-
cuted representation of the scene, and where the
dove is added, bringing to them the olive-branch,
the pledge of peace and victory.
Daniel in the lions' den taught them the same
lesson of suffering and deliverance. The scene is
often repeated in the most spirited manner. Take,
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 137
for instance, the following from the cemetery of St.
Marcellinns.
Still more so is the following from the cemetery
of St. Priscilla.
We have reserved to the last of these scenes, that
in the Old Testament on which the early Christians
most loved to dwell — the deliverance of Jonah.
Our Lord himself had mentioned it as a type of
his own death and resurrection,* and it was, thero-
* Matt, xii., 40.
138
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
fore, eagerly seized on by those who, meeting for
worship where a thin slab only separated them from
the martyred dead, were ready to aid their trem-
bling faith by any symbol which could suggest a
life to come. It is found, therefore, in every form
— the storm — the monster of the deep swallowing
Jonah — the prophet again restored to land, or sit-
ting in gloom and anger under the vine which had
grown up about him. There is, too, every style of
execution, from the earliest representations rudely
scratched upon the walls, to the more finished
sculpture in a later age displayed on the sides of
the sarcophagi. We give one of the former class
from a broken slab.
In the following, from the cemetery of St. Pris-
cilla, "the ship* 5 is reduced to a boat, and "the
mariners" to a single individual.
But it was not only our Lord's resurrection
which was thus shadowed forth. It spoke to them
also of their own course in this life, and in that
which is to come. Sometimes, too, the Christian's
whole existence was condensed, as it were, into
one single view.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS.
139
140 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
It would be difficult, indeed, for us to realize the
trains of thought suggested to the early Christians,
when they looked upon this single piece of rude
sculpture in which, in defiance of all rule, the
whole continuous history of Jonah was crowded
into one scene. To them, the ship, the whale, and
the gourd, represented the earth, the grave, and
Heaven. And most beautiful was the idea as they
shadowed it forth. Tempest-tossed for a time upon
life's stormy sea, the tired voyager was obliged to
descend into the jaws of the grave. There, for a
season, like his Lord, he rested. Tet death was
not permitted to retain him in its grasp. The
grave " had no dominion over him." It must give
up its prey. " Through the grave and gate of
death, he must pass to his joyful resurrection."
But then, when he has crossed the angry flood, he
rests in security on the shore, while above him
spread out the branches of the tree of life, its foli-
age protected him by its shade, while partaking of
its fruit endowed him with immortal existence.*
In the cemetery of St. Agnes is a representation
of the five wise virgins, as described in the parable.
They are walking in procession, as they "went
forth to meet the bridegroom." Each one has in
her hand a vessel to contain the oil for her lamp,
four have palm-branches, to denote that they are
engaged in an act of festivity, while the first carries
a candela, or candle made of wax, such as were
used by the poorer classes in Eome, long after the
houses of the more wealthy were lighted by lucer-
n€ DEPOSITS
IH ?ACE VIXIT. ANNOS XXXV
the infant Church of Rome was nurtured into
strength and manhood? It is generally easy to
tell the age of an epitaph. The earliest were in-
variably rude in the extreme, while they gradually
improved as the Church became more free from
persecution, and its members were enabled in peace
and safety to lay their brethren to their rest. There
is a wide difference, therefore, between the hastily
Bcratched emblems of the first century, and the
more carefully executed representations of Scrip-
ture scenes in the fourth. Yet, with regard to all
of them, we can not but adopt the language of
Lord Lindsay : " Considered as works of art, it
must be confessed, they are but poor productions
— the meagerness of invention only equalled by
the feebleness of execution — inferior, generally
speaking, to the worst specimens of contemporary
heathen art. There is little to wonder at in this,
when we remember the oppressed condition of the
Christians at the time, and (I am afraid I must add)
the poverty of imagination which uniformly char-
acterized Rome, even in her palmy period. ' ? *
But it is with far different views from those of
* Clmttio.n Art, \o\. i., p. S9.
THE SYMBOLS IN THE CATACOMBS. 147
artistic criticism that we have dwelt upon these
symbols. It was in these illustrations that the
primitive Christians wrote their creed, and we
wished to show the purity and simplicity of their
faith. Among these thousands of emblems and
scenes, there are none which countenance the
errors having their origin in later days, and which
still deform the Church of Rome. The early Chris-
tians may often have been singularly unskilful in
embodying the thought they wished to express, yet
still the idea was right and in accordance with
Scripture truth. Considering, indeed, the station
and character of the early converts — looked upon
by the rest of the world as " the offscouring of all
things," just reclaimed from heathenism — listening
to a teaching which was often interrupted, and
whose benefits they enjoyed at the peril of their
lives, it is truly wonderful how little of the errors
of their lately-abandoned systems was mingled
with their faith. But we see that these representa-
tions were not executed by those revelling in luxu-
rious ease. They tell of times of peril and conflict.
They show the purity of an age which was refined
in the furnace of affliction, and in suffering and fear
clung with steadfastness to the essential verities of
the faith.
VII.
MINISTRY AND RITES OF THE EARLY CHURCH,
VII.
MINISTRY AND BITES OP THE EARLY CHURCH.
We should naturally expect in the burial places
of the early Christians, to find some recognition of
the different orders of the ministry. Nor in this
case are we disappointed. It is generally, it is
true, a mere reference, for the inscriptions are too
brief to admit of more. Yet these few words con-
firm the views entertained by the great body of the
Christian world with regard to the polity and gov-
ernment of the early Church.
We turn first to the office of bishops. On the
walls of the Lapidarian Gallery is an epitaph which
clearly indicates this rank, by the use of the word
Papa or Father, which in that age was applied to
the bishops. For instance, in all the epistles ad-
dressed by the Roman clergy to Cyprian, bishop
of Carthage, he is styled " the blessed Father
(Papa) Cypri." We know not who the bishop was
over whom this inscription was written, yet the
reference to a perpetual seat, and the title papa
sanctissimus, in the phraseology of that ago show
152 THB CATACOMBS OF ROME.
episcopal rank. The consulship to which it refers
fixes the date at A. D. 392.*
PERPETVAM SEDEM NVTRITOR POSSIDES IPSE
HIC MERITVS FINEM MAGNIS DEFVNCTE PERICLIS
HIC REQVIEM FELIX SVMIS COGENTIBVS ANNIS
HIC POSITVS PAPA SANTIMIOO VIXIT ANNIS LXX
DEPOSITVS DOMINO NOSTRO ARCADIO II ET FL
RVINO
VVCCSS NONAS NOBEMB.
You, our nursing father, occupy a perpetual seat, being dead, and
deserving an end of your great dangers. Here happy, you find
rest, bowed down with years. Here lies the most holy father, who
lived ?0 year* Buried on the nones of November, our Lords Arca-
diui» £tr tiw ■ * — n d time, and Flavius Rufinus, being consuls.
The following inscription (Arringhi, lib. iii., cap.
iii.) records the burial place of one of the second
order in the ministry : —
LOCVS BASILI PRESB ET FELICITATI EIVS
SIBI FECERVNT.
The burial-place of Basilus the Presbyter, and Felicitas his wife.
They made it for themselves.
So also this, which we likewise copy from Ar-
ringhi : —
LOCVS VALENTINI PRESB. pf
The place of Valentinian, the presbyter.
In another case, there is a reference merely to
the pastoral office of the departed : —
ACATIVS • PASTOR.
Aca tiiis, the pastor.
This brief inscription is inscribed upon the tomb
of one of the lowest order of the ministry : —
* Jfaitland, p. 185, .
RITES, ETC., OP THE EARLY CHURCH. 153
LOCVS EXVPERANTI
DIACON.
The place of Exuperantius, the deacon.
But there were other offices in the early Church,
not always included in the ranks of the ministry,
but often serving as a preparation for it. Such are
the lectors, or readers, whose duty it was to read
the Scriptures aloud in the Church. It was an
honorable office to which persons of the greatest
dignity were sometimes appointed. Thus, Julian,
the apostate, was reader in the church at Nicome-
dia.* They were sometimes admitted to this office
by a kind of ordinafTon, as Cyprian speaks of one
who had been a confessor, and whom he had " or-
dained to the office of lector."
In some cases, they were appointed at a very
early age. Parents dedicated their children to the
service of God from their infancy, and they were
then trained and disciplined in these inferior offices,
to prepare them for higher usefulness in the Church.
Repeated instances are given of their being appoint-
ed at the age of seven and eight years, and a writer
of that day, in describing the barbarity of the Van-
dals in murdering the clergy of Carthage, adds —
" Among them were many infant readers."f At a
later period this was altered, when by one of Jus-
tinian's Novels, it was "forbidden that any one be
ordained reader before he was completely eighteen
years old."
This explanation will enable us to understand the
two following inscriptions, and particularly the
* Socrat. % lib. iii., c. 1. f Bing. Orig. Eccles. t lib. iii., c 5.
7*
154 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
youthfulness of the lector commemorated in the
second. The Velabrum, where he was employed,
is the part of Rome in which are situated the arch
of Janus, and the Cloaca Maxima.
CLAVDIVS-ATTICIA
NVS- LECTOR
ET CLAVDIA
FELICISSIMA
COIVX
Claudius Atticianus, the reader, and Claudia Felicissima, Lis wife.
LOCVS AVGVSTI X
LECTORIS DEBELA
BRV
DEPSVRICA y XGKALy
AVGy
QYE YIXIT AN1SOS
• PMXII CONS
SEBERINI.
The place of Augustus, lector in the Velabrum, buried in a
mound, on the 15th Kalends of August He lived twelve years
more or less. In the consulship of Severinus.
Another order in the Church in those days was
that of the exorcists. We know, both from Scrip-
ture and the writings of the early fathers, that
Satan in that age exercised strange influence over
the bodies of men, while miraculous power was
granted to the members of the Church, to cast him
out. At first, it is supposed, this power was pos-
sessed by any of the followers of our Lord, as Ter-
tullian challenges the heathen, that "if they would
bring any person possessed with a devil into open
court before the magistrate, any ordinary Christian
should make him confess that he was a devil."*
* Apologeticus, cap. 23.
RITES, ETC., OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 155
But with the withdrawal of extraordinary and
miraculous power, which probably took place by
degrees, and not at the same time in all places, the
order of the exorcists became a settled one in the
Church. We find this title given to an individual
at the close of this inscription : —
IANVARIVS • EXORCISTA
S1BI • ET • CONIVGI • FECIT.
Januarius, the exorcist, made this for himself and his wife.
The order of the fossors is one less known at the
present day. They were an inferior order of the
clergy in the primitive Church, whose business was
to take care of funerals, and provide for the decent
interment of the dead, particularly of the poor ; an
office, whose duties, in tiules of persecution, were
not discharged without peril. "The first order
among the clergy," says St. Jerome, " is that of
the fossarii, who, after the example of holy Tobias,
are admonished to bury the dead."* They re-
ceived their name of fossarii from their digging
the graves. Useful as their office must have been
in all parts of the Church, it was particularly so
among those whose lives were so much spent in
those galleries of stone, from which their last rest-
ing-place was to be hollowed out. "We copy three
inscriptions, in the first of which the word fossor
has been misspelt.
TERENTIVS-FOSOR
PRIMITIVE -COIVGI
ET-SIBI.
Terentius, the fossor. For Primitive, his wife, and himself.
* S. Hicron. de Sept. Grculibxu Ecci.
15«
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
SEELIX FOSSOR
IXIT ANNIS LXIII.
Felix, the fossor, lived sixty-three years.
MAIO FOSSORI.
To Maius, the fossor.
There were formerly many paintings in the Cata-
combs, the rude attempts of survivors to represent
the occupations of those they had here laid to their
last rest. Among these none were more numerous
than delineations of the fossors, sometimes employed
in excavating an overhanging rock, with a lamp
suspended near them, as ill the following.
One of them in particular, which was found by
Boldetti, bears over it the inscription : —
RITES, ETC., OF THE EARLY CIIURCH. 157
DIOGENES • FOSSOR ■ IN ' PACE • DEPOSITVS
OCTABV • KALENDAS • OCTOBRI&
Diogenes, the fossor, buried in peace, on the eighth kalends of
October.
It represents the fossor standing, surrounded by
all the implements of his calling. In his hands are
the pickaxe and lamp, the latter hanging by the
chain and spike by which he was accustomed to
suspend it to the rock. At his feet lay the cutting
instruments and compasses, used for marking out
the graves. He seems to be standing in a circular
chapel surrounded by tombs ; on different parts of
his woollen tunic is figured the cross, and on each
side of the arch above him is represented the dove
with the olive-branch, the usual emblem of Chris-
tian peace.
We copy two more of these representations, se-
lecting the most simple we can find. In the first,
the fossor is portrayed digging with a 6pade. In
the second, he is cutting down a rock.
158
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
There is another given by Arringhi, which con-
tains his name and occupation. Here the word
fosrotfimts is supposed to stand for fossor trophy-
MYS.
fosuotfimvs J>
In the early Church, there was a class of females
who, separating themselves entirely from all world-
ly interests, devoted their days to the service of
God. Sometimes it was in widowhood; and it is
to them that St. Paul refers, when he describes the
qualifications necessary for those who would thus
devote themselves for life to Christian labors:
" Let not a widow be taken into the number under
threescore years old, having been the wife of one
man, well-reported of for good works; if she have
brought up children, if she have lodged strangers,
if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have re-
KITES, ETC., OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 159
lieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed
every good work. But the younger widows refuse :
for when they have begun to wax wanton against
Christ, they will marry ; having damnation, be-
cause they have cast off their first faith."* The
council of Chalcedon forbid any to be admitted to
the order of consecrated women, called in that age
ministrce, under the age of forty. It is for such a
one that the following inscription was written : —
OC-TA-VI-AE-MA-TRO-NA-
VI-DV-AE-DE-I.
To Octavia, a matron, widow of God.
Nor was this confined to those alone whose state
was that of widowhood. For there were others, too,
who were willing, in singleness and voluntary pov-
erty, to forego the comforts of domestic life, that
they might have nothing to impede them in their
Christian labors. We can easily imagine, in a
state of society like that of primitive times, when
the rage of persecution was constantly rending the
dearest ties, there must have been many whose
only earthly hope was swept away, and who would
gladly devote themselves for the remainder of their
days to the self-denying duties of their faith. These
are they to whose voluntary consecration to a life
of sacrifice and toil the advocates of Christianity
were accustomed to point, in comparison with the
half dozen Vestal Virgins, the only parallel which
paganism could furnish.f We copy an inscription
referring to one of this class.
* 1 Tim., v. 9. f Prud. cont. Symmachum, lib. 2.
160 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
IURIA. HELPHIS
VIRGO DEVOTA
Furia Elpis, a consecrated virgin.
There is another of the same kind, given by Ar-
ringhi (lib. iii., c. xi., p. 272).
HOC EST
SEPVLCHRVM SANCT^E
LVCIN^E VIRGINIS.
This is the sepulchre of the holy Virgin Lucina.
The following epitaph is that of a catechumen,
for in primitive times the training of the Church
began from the earliest age.
VCILIANVS BACIO VALERIO
QVI BISIT-AN VIII-
VIII -DIES XXII CATECVM.
Ucilianus, to Bacius Valerius, a catechumen, who lived nine years,
eight months, and twenty-two days.
In the Catacombs of St. Agnes are two curious
crypts, which are stated to have been used for the
training of the catechumens. Soon after entering
this cemetery, we come to two square vaulted
chambers, one of which contains a massive stone
chair, which is said to have been occupied by the
priest or catechist in giving instruction. In the
RITES, ETC., OF THE EARLY CHURCH.
161
other, we find a chair on each side of the doorway
leading into the inner crypts. They are hewn out
of the solid tufa rock, while there ia a bench of
the same material running round the wall of the
apartment. We give a view of the latter, copied
from Arringhi (lib. iv., ch. xxv., p. 81).
Tradition states that this second chair marks the
chamber set apart for the catechizing of females,
and was probably used by the deaconess in whose
charge they were placed. The position of these
chambers near the entrance of the Catacombs,
would afford the disciples easy access to their
teacher, and these, particulars combine to strength-
en the view that these crypts were probably for
this primary teaching given to catechumens.
AVe may, however, go a step further back than
tliis ; for in some of the chapels in the Catacombs
fonts have been discovered, showing that the bap-
tismal rite was performed in these secret retreats.
162
THE CATACOMBS OF SOME.
The following inscription from one of these in the
Lapidarian Gallery, seems intended to convey the
same idea as the words— "Arise, and be baptized,
and wash away thy sins."*
CORPORIS ET CORDIS MACVLAS YITALI
•PVRGAT ET OHNE SIMVL . ABLVITVND.
The living stream cleanses the spots of body as well as of heart,
and at the same time washes away all (sin).
But there is one important truth which we think
we learn from these inscriptions, and that is, the
fact of Infant Baptism. We meet with the epi-
taphs of children who are called neophytes, a title
which, of course, could not have been bestowed
upon them unless they had been received by bap-
tism into the Church. The age at which they died
precludes the idea of that rite having been admin-
istered to them in any way but as infants : —
ROMANO NEOFITO
BEXEMERENTI QVI VI
XIT-ANNOS-VIII-
To Romanus, the well-deserving neophyte, who lived eight years.
• FL • IOVIN A • QVAE - VIX
• ANNIS • TRIBVS - D • XXX
• NEOFITA - IN PACE • XI .K.
Flavia Jovina, who lived three years and thirty days, a neophyte.
In peace (she died), the eleventh kalends.
* Acts, xxii., 16.
RITES, ETC., OF THE EARLY CHTTRCH. 163
TEG - CANDIDVS NEOF
Q VXT • M XXI • DP NON
SEP.
The tile of Candidus the neophyte, who lived twenty-one months,
buried on the nones of September.
There is but one more custom of the primitive
Church which we shall illustrate from these inscrip-
tions. In those early ages, the followers of our Lord
held at times a common feast where all met together
as disciples of the same master, and intended to show
the chain of brotherhood which bound them in one
body. It was called the Agape, or love-feast. The
spirit which originated it was beautiful, and in ac-
cordance with every precept of our faith, showing
that " the rich and the poor meet together, and the
Lord is the maker of them all." It generally either
preceded or followed the administration of the Eu-
charist ; and it is supposed to have been this con-
nection which led to the abuses St. Paul condemned,
when he wrote : " When ye come together, there-
fore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's
supper. For in eating, every one taketh before
other his own supper: and one is hungry and an-
other is drunken. What, have ye not houses to eat
and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God,
and shame them that have not ?"* St. Jude, too,
mentions it in the passage — "These are spots in
your agapse," & mis ayanatg vpw — translated in our ver-
sion, " feasts of charity ."f
Tcrtullian, in the second century, in a single pas-
sage describes its object and the manner of its ad-
ministration : " Our supper, which you accuse of
* 1 Cor. xl t 20. f St- Judo, v. 12.
164 THB CATACOMBS OF ROME.
luxury, shows its object in its very name. For it
is called ffi. 185
sion whicli gives countenance to the doctrine of
purgatory.*
So, too, is it with prayers for the dead. We con-
fess, indeed, that on this point we looked for some-
thing which might not be in strict accordance with
the teachings of Scripture, for we know that there
is no error to which the mind of man seems more
naturally to incline. "When the loved ones of this
world have been taken away, how gladly would
the living preserve their connection with them,
and follow them, if possible, with their prayers,
even into the world of spirits ! We should have
expected, therefore, to find this sentiment devel-
oped in these inscriptions, even when it was the
*The difficulty felt by the Romanists in making out an argument
for Purgatory, is shown by the course pursued by their writers.
The fond expressions of affection (some of which, of a similar char-
acter, we shall quote in a subsequent part of this chapter) are
seized upon and brought forward as implying a belief in this doc-
trine. For instance, the record of wishes like these : —
Aphthona ! mayst thou live in God.
O sweet Roxanus! mayst thou rest well
O Lea ! mayst thou rest in peace.
Olimpiodorus! mayst thou live in God.
On these and similar inscriptions, we have the following commen-
tary: "These exclamations, by expressing such an anxious, tender wish
that those departed friends, for whom they are ejaculated, may repose
in bliss, in reality betray some doubts about their enjoyment of that
happiness, and thus exhibit proof that the pious Christians who ut-
tered them, believed that the soul of the deceased might be in an
intermediate state, where the efficacy of such aspirations could
reach him, and his spirit could be refreshed and benefited by the
supplications of his surviving brethren." — Rock's liter urgia, p, 822*
It is left to the reader to estimate the force of fchfa argument;
bearing in mind, that it is the only one in favor of Purgatory which
can be extracted from these records of the first throe centuries.
186 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
offspring of a wish and a yearning of the heart,
rather than of a settled and authorized belief.
There was, too, a freedom of language in those
ages of faith, when no error was yet to be guarded
against, from which in these days men would
shrink, when surrounded by misconstruction and
heresy. The expression of feeling had not yet
been restricted by the fear of evil to the cold
rules of ordinary logic.
It is to be remembered, too, that through the
first ages, the majority of those who found here
their graves were not only the humble and the
illiterate, but converts lately redeemed from pagan-
ism, and perhaps cut off before they had become
grounded in any but the great essential doctrines
of the new faith. And so were they who laid them
to their rest, and wrote above them their epitaphs.
We should expect, therefore, to find from them at
times an expression of feeling, in which their love
for the departed had caused them to exceed the
bounds marked out by an authorized theology.
And when, too, the ages of purity had gone, and
those of superstition gathered over the Church —
when, as we have seen, through the Middle Ages
a feeling of reverence induced many to seek there
their tombs, the errors which had been developed
in the Church would naturally find their place also
in these epitaphs.*
* Maitland truly snys: "To decorate the chapels, adorn by mon-
uments the labyrinths of sepulchres, and pay an excessive regard
to all that belonged to martyrs and martyrdom, was the constant
labor of succeeding centuries. Hence arises a chronological confu-
sion, which calls for caution in deciding upon the value of any in-
THE CHANGES OF MODERN ROME. 187
These considerations render more remarkable the
fact, that we nowhere trace among these inscriptions
anything which sanctions the belief that the custom
of prayers for the dead was at all in use with the
early Christians. Among mrore than three thou-
sand monumental slabs arrayed in the Lapidarian
Gallery by the papal authorities, the writer was
able to discover nothing which sanctioned this
error,* nor could he in the voluminous work of
Bosio and Arringhi, the result of more than thirty
years' labor. There is nothing which conveys the
idea that they supposed any change was effected in
ference that may Be drawn from these sources, respecting points of
doctrine."— P. 14.
* We are informed by Maitland, that he found in this collection
one single epitaph containing the phrase, ora pro nobis. He does
not state, however, to what age it probably belonged.
In Rock's Hierurgia, a standard Romish work, some inscriptions
are given which contain a request for prayers for the dead.
Where these slabs are we know not, for they are certainly not
in the Lapidarian Gallery, where we should most naturally
look for them. Nor is any information given us by which we can
decide on their age. We have no proof that they were not erected
amid the superstitions of mediceval days, when, as we said, we
should expect to find them, as the Catacombs then were ornament-
ed in the debased taste of the times.
The difficulty, too, felt by Romish writers in making out a case,
is shown by their attempt to force a few inscriptions to declare
what it is probable those who erected them never intended they
should. For instance, in the Hierurgia (p. 244), we have a copy of
this mutilated epitaph : —
JOVIANE VIBAS IN DEO ET
ROG.
Romish writers have discovered that the last half word should be
completed ROGA, making it a request to Jovianus to pray for us,
though it irdone at considerable expense to the grammatical con-
struction.
188 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
the condition of the dead by the petitions of the
living. The utmost that can be discovered is an
ejaculatorv wish, the offspring a fond affection,
which would thus pursue the object of its love be-
yond the grave. It is, however, rather the expres-
sion of a wish, than a petition for the departed
soul. ' Some of these w r e have already quoted,
when speaking of purgatory. We give, however,
some further instances, and certainly nothing in
these words can be construed into a support of the
modern Romish practice on this subject.
xrYK\T0AJW/*«HltfMZS(BCt*
VALE SABINA
VIXIT ANNOS VIII. MENSES VIII.
DIES XXII.
VIVAS IX DEO DVLCIS.
Farewell, O Sabina! She lived viii. years, viii. months, and xxii.
days. Mayst thou live sweet in God !
Still more forced is the following inscription: —
BIMPLICIO
VENEMEREN
Tr.FILIO.TE-
IN PACEM
P.T.PR.N.S.
The meaning of the last line in this epitaph remained undiscov-
THE CHANGES OF MODERN ROME. 1S9
JNPAC£<£V<
ANtf.XXUI £*"
EXVPERI REQVIESCAS
IN PACE QVI VIXIT
ANNOS XXIII . ET
M. III. p. VI.
Exuperius, mayst thou rest in peace, who lived xxiii. years, iii.
months, and vi. days.*
ered for many years. Some late writers have, however, ingeniously
completed it thus : —
Pe Te PRo Nobi S.
Pray for us.
"We think, indeed, it is the decision of common sense, that if this
doctrine, so much in unison with many of the deepest feelings of
our nature, had been held by the primitive Church, we should have
found it written broadly and clearly everywhere through those
epitaphs. Its proof would not be left to half a dozen inscriptions
(and most of these doubtful and disputed), among thousands which
plainly declare the reverse.
* We have copied this inscription from Rock's Ulcrurgia (p. 317),
and given their rendering, to allow them the full benefit of it. It is
one of the epitaphs from which they attempt to derive an argument
for prayers for the dead. It will be seen that even with their trans-
lation it proves nothing with regard to this doctrine.
We would ask the reader, however, to observe how unwarrantable
is the manner in which they complete it, What authority have they
for filling up the word RKQ., as REQVIESCAS, to make it rend,
'* Mayst thou rest"? It might just ns well be filled up with the
present tense, for the sense would be much more in Conformity with
190 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
INPACE £TB£NreWC770//£
IN PACE ET BENEDICTIONE
SVFSVATE VIXIT ANIS XXX PLYS MINVS
REDDIDIT KAL FEBB.
Mayst thou be in peace and benediction, Sufsuatus! He lived
xxx. years, more or less. He departed in the Kalends of February.
FA VSTINA DVLCIS . BIBAS
IN DEO.
Sweet Faustina, may you live in God.
BOLOSA DEYS TI
BIREFRIGERET QVAE VI
XIT ANNOS XXXI RECESSIT
DIE XIII KAL OCT . B
Bolosa, may God refresh thee. She lived thirty-one years. She
departed on the thirteenth Kalends of October.
AMERIMNVS
RVFINAE • COIV
GICARIS • SIME
BENEMEREN
TI ■ SPIRITVM •
TVVM • DEYS
REFRI ■ GERET.
Amerimnus to Rufina, my dearest wife, the well-deserving. May
God refresh thy spirit.
In 1848, the Kev. Mr. Hobart Seymour, of the
Church of England, was at Rome ; and, through
the usual language of the epitaphs, if read — "The place of Exupe-
rius. He rests in peace, who lived," and that
he was thus praying to the martyr to pray to God
for him — asking for the intercession of the mar-
tyr — really, an ova pro nobis ; and it was thus a
clear proof or justification of i the Catholic Church,'
in praying to the departed saints to pray for us.'
" I answered this by saying, that 'I could not
think the figure represented the living Christian
who erected the tablet; that such an interpretation
198 THE CATACOMBS OP KOME.
was forced and unnatural, for that it was the cus-
tom of all ages and all nations to represent the dead
rather than the living on their monuments. I
could not but think that the figure was designed to
represent the dead, as one who had lived and died
a praying man.'
" He at once caught at my words, and said, c that
if I regarded the figure as representing the depart-
ed saint, then I must acknowledge it as evidence
that in the primitive Church they thought the de-
parted saints prayed ; and that, as they needed not
to pray for themselves, they must be praying for us.'
" I said, that ' I did not regard the figure as rep-
resenting the departed saint as praying for us in
heaven, but as having been a praying man in his
life ; that as the words, ' in peace, 5 and c in Christ,'
implied that the departed had lived or died in the
peace of God, and in the faith of Christ, so the
kneeling posture might imply that he lived or died
in prayer. I thought this the natural interpretation
of the figure ; and I said that in England, and, I
believed, in other countries, and certainly in the
Church of St. Peter, at Rome, the monumental
statues always represent the departed persons ; that
it was usual to represent them, not as they were
when dead, but as they were when alive ; the war-
rior as a warrior — the orator as an orator — the
painter as a painter — the clergyman as a clergy-
man ; and I observed that all the monumental fig-
ures of popes and nuns in St. Peter's represented
them as popes or nuns — represented them as they
were on earth, and not as they are supposed to be
in heaven ; and that, in the same way, we ought to
THE CHANGES OF MODERN ROME. 199
regard this kneeling figure as representing the de-
parted Christian as he lived or died on earth, a
praying man. He was represented kneeling, to
show he w r as a man of prayer — a Christian man.
There is an example of it in Scripture, where the
conversion of St. Paul is described in the simple
words, c Behold, he prayeth !'
" There was no direct reply to this."*
We think the folly of this reasoning, by those
who are on the spot, and who have the best oppor-
tunities for establishing an argument from the in-
scriptions of the Catacombs, were it possible to do
so, will show that they have no testimony to give
in support of the errors of the Church of Koine.
Mr. Sej^mour, indeed, in two concluding para-
graphs, thus gives his own experience, so entirely
in conformity with what we have already stated,
and, at the same time, admirably sums up the
whole argument : —
"Day after day, and week after week, have I
paused in this gallery, to examine these monument-
al inscriptions. It always occurred to me, that if
a belief in the sufferings of the dead in purgatory
— if a belief in the efficacy of the prayers of the
living in behalf of the dead — if a belief in the
matter of fact of the departed saints praying for
the living — if a belief in the efficacy of any pray-
ing to or invocation of the departed saints, was
held among the Christians of the Church in those
early ages, when the Church used to hide herself,
used to celebrate her worship, and used to bury
her dead, in the Catacombs, there ought to be, and
* Mornings among the Jesuits, pp. 223-231.
200 TIIK CATACOMBS OF ROME.
there should be, some evidence of such belief in
the inscriptions so numerous to be found in the
Catacombs. The absence — the total and perfect
absence — of everything of the kind, seems to
argue powerfully that no such things entered into
the religious belief of the Christians of those ages.
" It is observable that in a modern grave-yard in
any Roman Catholic country, there are always ex-
pressions in the monumental inscriptions which in-
timate the belief of the Church of Rome. There
is a request to the passing traveller to offer a
prayer for the dead ; there is a statement setting
forth that it is a good thing to pray for the dead ;
there is a prayer that the dead may rest in peace ;
there is a request for the assisting prayers of the
saints. These and others of a similar tendency are
found in every cemetery in Roman Catholic coun-
tries. But there is nothing like this — nothing that
has the faintest resemblance of this, or of any
opinion approaching to any of these — to be found
among the innumerable inscriptions collected from
the Catacombs. The whole collection of inscrip-
tions thus argues unanswerably that those opinions
that have been of late years so universally re-
ceived in the Church of Rome were wholly un-
known in the primitive Church."*
We will bring forward but one more error of
practice in the modern Church of Rome, and
whose claim to antiquity is entirely refuted by
these primitive epitaphs. We refer to the celib-
acy of the clergy. For the first three centuries,
no ecclesiastical law or regulation required the
* Mornings among the Jesuits, pp. 234, 236.
THE CHANGES OF MODERN ROME. 201
adoption of this practice.* Eusebius, in his his-
tory, often speaks of married bishops and presby-
ters; the council of Nice, in 325, confirmed to
them this right ; and Cyprian, in his account of
the martyrdom of Frumidicus, tells us how his joy
was increased at beholding his wife standing by his
side in the flames, his companion in suffering and
glory.
Such is the record of history. Yet how plainly
is this truth confirmed, when over the tombs of the
early Roman Christians we meet with epitaphs like
these : —
LOCVS BASILI PRESB ET FELICITATI EIVS
SIBI FECERVNT.
To Basilus, the presbyter, and Felicitas, bis wife. They made
this for themselves.
The following epitaph on the wife of a priest, is
given in Arringhi (lib. iii., c. iii.) :—
LEVITAE CONIVNX PETRONIA FORMA PVDORIS
HIS MEA DEPONENS SEDIBVS OSSA LOCO
PARCITE VOS LACRIMIS DYLCES CVM CONIVGE
NATAE
* VIVENTEMQVE DEO CREDITE FLERE NEFAS
DP IN PACE III NON OCTOBRIS FESTO VC CONSS.
Petronia, a priest's wife, the type of modesty. In this place I lay
roy bones ; spare your tears, dear husband and daughters, and be-
lieve that it is forbidden to weep for one who lives iu God. Buried
in peace, on the 3d Nones of October, Festus being Consul.
What must have been the custom of the Church
when these epitaphs were publicly sel up ! We
believe, indeed, that those bishops, who, by their
* Bingham's Orig. Eccles., lib. iv., c. v.
9*
202 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
support of matrimony among the clergy, drew
down upon themselves the indignation of Jerome,
w r ere introducing no new doctrine, but rather stri-
ving, in an innovating age, to prolong the early
simplicity of the Church. The very spirit, how-
ever, against which they warred, showed that
clouds were darkening the horizon about them.
We have thus dwelt upon a few points to illus-
trate the difference between the ancient Church of
Rome and its modern successor. We unhesitating-
ly assert, that not one of the doctrines or practices,
which we look upon as errors, can find support
from these primitive records. With regard to
many points, now much insisted on in the Church
of Rome, the very silence of these inscriptions in
the Catacombs is most conclusive. We feel, there-
fore, that in deciding on what is apostolical, we
w T ill take our part and lot with these early Chris-
tians, for in the very simplicity of their creed we
breathe the freshness of primitive times. And in
so doing, we are but adopting that rule of Tertul-
lian — " Whatever is first, is true ; whatever is more
recent, is spurious."*
* " Perseque adversus universas hsereses jam hino prejudicatum
sit ; id est verum, quodcunque primum ; id esse adulterum, quod-
cunque posterius." — TertulL adv. Prax. y Oper. ii., p. 405.
IX.
CONCLUSION
IX.
CONCLUSION.
There is a legend of the Eastern Church, which
has been preserved, not only by its beauty, but be-
cause it embodies a melancholy truth with regard
to the changes which a few centuries wrought in
the early faith. The scene was laid at Ephesus, in.
the Decian persecution, which so severely tried the
strength of those who then professed the Christian
name. But while the storm was raging, and the
stake and the arena were each day seeking new
victims, seven youth fled from their adversaries,
and sought refuge in a lonely cave in the neighbor-
hood of the city. And there God permitted them
to fall into a death-like slumber.
They slept on, in this miraculous way, without
injuring the powers of life, while years expanded
into centuries. One persecution after another
passed by, till the rage of the adversary was ex-
hausted, yet neither the sounds of sorrow or re-
joicing broke their enduring trance. Christianity
vindicated its claim to the dominion of the human
mind, the faith was heard in Caesar's palace, and
206 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
the imperial master of the world adopted the cross
as his badge of honor. Then, at last, one of them
awoke ; but to him it had only been the dream of
a night. He was ignorant of the mighty changes
which had passed, and leaving his companions
still slumbering, he cautiously crept from his
hiding-place and entered his native Ephesus.
There, he gazed about him bewildered, for centu-
ries had left scarcely a familiar feature in his an-
cient home. A gilded cross over the city-gate by
which he entered, particularly awakened his sur-
prise. At length, with fear and trembling, he
asked, " Whether there were any Christians in the
city?" — "Christians!" was the answer, "we are
all Christians here !" And then he learned how
long his slumber must have lasted, and how mighty
the changes, which during that interval had been
wrought in the condition of the world. A " great
gulf" separated him from the hour in which he
had fallen asleep. He looked in vain for the once
honored temples of heathenism, but saw them every-
where replaced by those dedicated to the worship
of his crucified Master. He found the cross a hal-
lowed emblem, and the gospel honored where be-
fore he had known its profession rewarded only
with the crown of martyrdom. The home of the
bigoted Jew was now a place of desolation — the
Greek philosopher had acknowledged his wisdom
to be foolishness, at the foot of the cross — and all
that might and power of the Western world, which
once guarded with such jealous care the rites of
paganism, were now pledged to maintain the su-
premacy of the faith which had supplanted it. The
CONCLUSION. 207
power of heathenism was broken, and all, from the
emperor down to his lowest subject, professed that
holy name which first the disciples assumed at An-
tioch.
His strange speech and antiquated garb attracted
the attention of those he encountered, until finally
he was brought before the prefect. There his
story was told, and- in amazement all — the magis-
trates, the bishop, and the emperor himself — fol-
lowed him to his hiding-place. They found his
companions still sleeping, and, in the language of
the legend, " their faces had the freshness of roses,
and a holy and beautiful light was about them."
At the call of those who had gathered in the
cave, they too awoke ; and we may imagine the
strange, bewildering joy which took the place of
all their fears. They felt that the Golden Age
promised by their Lord had come, and righteous-
ness was now to mantle the renovated earth. And
then their thanksgiving was offered up, that they
had been spared to witness these glorious times,
and to spend their days where everything around
them only ministered to devotion. But a brief
experience dispelled these bright visions. They
found that the world had been but Christianized in
name. They looked in vain for the faith and de-
votion of those who were once their brethren, for
these qualities seemed known but by tradition as
the traits of an age of martyrdom. They found
that expiring paganism, in its last convulsive strug-
gles, had thrown its mantle over the power which
conquered it, and in place of the pure faith of their
early friends, they witnessed a distorted religion,
208 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
possessing little resemblance to that which it had
Bupplanted. Forms, too, and ceremonies had been
imported from the heathen world, until the simple
rites of the first centuries were overloaded and ob-
scured. And thus they turned away in sorrow
from a world which called itself, indeed, by their
Master's name, but retained so little the lineaments
of the faith for which he died. The earth had be-
come darkened to them, and they found they could
live only in " the light of other days." And, there-
forQ, in their weariness and sorrow, they turned
once more to the cave, which for two centuries had
been their resting-place, beseeching God to restore
them again to that slumber which had been broken.
And to the crowds which followed them, they ex-
claimed : " You have shown us many heathen who
have given up their old idolatry without gaining
anything better in its room — many who are of no
religion at all — and many with whom the religion
of Christ is no more than a cloak of licentiousness
— but where, where are the Christians?"
And their prayer was granted. They had dis-
charged the duty assigned them, and uttered the
reproof for which they had been raised from their
long slumber. Once more, then, they sank to rest,
but now it was the sleep of death from which there
was to be no awakening, until their Lord came
again to visit his heritage. And thus their spirits
went to be with those who had once rendered the
earth fragrant with their footsteps, and whom they
remembered as the teachers and guides of their
early days.*
* In the latter part of this fable, we have followed the version
CONCLUSION. 209
Transfer this scene to Rome, and we believe the
fable would teach a melancholy truth. If a voice
could now summon forth from their tombs in the
Catacombs some of those who, in the purest ages
of the Roman Church, were there laid to their rest,
we believe that their disappointment on entering
the Imperial city would be as great as was that of
the sleepers at Ephesus. They would be able, in-
deed, to worship beneath gilded roofs, and find the
most gorgeous structures in the world erected in
honor of their crucified Lord ; but the faith which
there is enshrined would be widely different from
that which they had learned in their living day.
And this is the argument we have endeavored to
present. We wish to show the wide interval there
is in faith and practice, between the primitive
Christians of Rome, and those who now dwell
upon the Seven Hills- — how long the way which
the Church must travel back before she shall reach
again the path from which she has wandered, or
put on that " original brightness," which in the
apostle's day caused her "faith to be spoken of
throughout the whole world."*
The feeling with which we read these epitaphs is
the same, in some respects, with which we study
the epistles of the apostles. There is a plainness
and manliness with which they appeal to the con-
science of the reader, which he can not but at once
appreciate. They speak directly to the heart, and
bring forward those truths about which the affec-
given by Bishop Heber, rather than the usual legend. See Mrs.
Jamiesorts Legendary Art.
* Rom., i., 8.
210 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME;
tions and hopes can instinctively gather. They plnce
man in direct communication with the Deity. No
mediation of the Virgin or the Saints is mentioned
in the Epistles, and we trace none in the inscrip-
tions written by those who stood nearest to their
Lord. We have to ascend from these dim retreats
and enter the gorgeous temples of Rome's present
faith, to find ourselves in contact with the manifold
corruptions which ages of darkness have bequeathed.
The words of Scripture we believe to be clear
and explicit against what we regard as the addi-
tions of the Church of Rome, to the pure doctrines
of early times. And the testimony of history, too,
is equally plain. From the ages of a dim and dis-
tant past, the voice of centuries comes down to
us, rebuking the changes which superstition has
wrought since apostles went to their rest. Yet
nothing, we confess, has ever so deeply impressed
us with regard to the reality of primitive truth and
purity, as the study of these epitaphs. When the
gorgeous services of the Church were passing be-
fore us in the Sistine chapel, and cardinals, prelates,
and priests, in their richest robes, had gathered about
the altar — when the most splendid music in the
world w r as swelling through the lofty-frescoed
arches, and sounding back from the porphyry pil-
lars, so that it seemed as if the sublime anthem
could almost, by its glorious strains, recall the dead
to life — we have thought of the simple hymn of
praise which once echoed through the dim chapels
of the Catacombs, and wondered what those who
then joined in it would have thought of all this
show and pageantry. And when the hour of Yes-
CONCLUSION. 211
pers came, and the sun gilded with his last rays the
dome of St. Peters, before he sank to his golden
bed behind the Pincian Hill, and the stars came
out in the clear blue of an Italian sky, as a thou-
sand bells sent their chimings up through the dark-
ening heavens and away over the desolate Gam-
pagna, we have remembered how changed was the
service to which they summoned their worshippers
— how prayers went up to saints and martyrs,
" men of like passions with ourselves," instead of
the one Lord, with whose name alone upon their lips
these ancient saints had died, and it seemed to us
as if Rome had again put on somewhat the gar-
ments of her old heathenism. Oh, solemn and
mysterious city of the mighty dead ! city, rich
with the garnered dust of the saints, and more
consecrated by sacred memories of the past than
any spot on earth ; but that holy city, where our
Lord himself taught, and wept, and sorrowed, and
from which he bore his cross up the Hill of Suffer-
ing, how art thou fallen from the glory of thy
early youth ! How often is the pilgrim obliged to
tarn away from thy shrines, because the teachings
which they utter would have been strange to those
who sat at the apostles' feet.
It is for this reason we are thankful that Rome
thus bears within her own bosom, the proof of that
early purity from which she herself has wandered
— that the spirit of the First Ages is so indelibly
stamped on the Walls of the Catacombs, that no
sophistry can explain away its force. There the
elements of a pure faith are written " with an iron
pen, in the rock, for ever;" and the Church has
212 THE CATACOMBS OF SOUK.
only to look to " the hole of the pit whence she
was digged," to see what she should again become.
"Would that she could learn the lesson! Would
that, retaining the zeal with which she clings to the
essentials of faith, and that wide-spread policy which
embraces the whole earth in its grasp, she could cast
aside the corruptions which ages of darkness have
gathered over her, and use her mighty strength for
the renovation of this fallen world. We look back
with thankfulness to the hour, when the eye of
Gregory I. rested on the captive Angles, in a Ro-
man slave-market, and he planned that enterprise
which was to infuse new life into the expiring
Church of Britain, and our prayers go up, that the
hour may come when Rome shall be once more
linked in the bonds of a pure faith w r ith that Apos-
tolic Church, that side by side they may go forth
to that struggle which awaits the true-hearted in
urging on their Master's cause. But now, we feel
that an impassable barrier separates us from the
Church which sits enthroned upon the Seven Hills.
We • see too plainly the many errors with which
she has deformed the faith, and it is therefore with
a feeling of relief that w r e turn from the gorgeous
services of St. Peter's, to the traces of a simpler
faith in the Church in the Catacombs.
THE END.
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