Part Second.
CHAPTER I.
THE PAPAL CRYPT.
We have now acquired a sufficient general idea of the Catacombs to enable us to understand what we see when we come to examine any one of them in detail; and we will, therefore, proceed to pay a visit to the famous Cemetery of Callixtus.
But first we must explain what is meant by this title. It may be used in two senses. When first the Catacombs were made, and as long as the true history of their origin and gradual development was remembered, “the Cemetery of Callixtus” was only a small and well-defined area, measuring 250 Roman feet by 100, and situated on a little cross-road which united the Via Appia with the Via Ardeatina. But as time went on, other areæ were joined to this, until at length a vast and intricate subterranean necropolis was formed, measuring several hundred feet both in length and breadth; and to the whole of this space, for convenience’ sake, we continue to give the name of one of its most ancient and famous parts. In our visit we shall pass through some portions of several of these areæ; for we shall first descend into the original “Cemetery of Callixtus,” and we shall return to the upper world from the “Crypt of Lucina,” which in the old martyrologies is spoken of as “near” that cemetery, not as part of it.
Galleries in Cemetery of St. Callixtus breaking through graves.
The casual visitor cannot, of course, expect to be able to distinguish the limits of the several areæ which he traverses in his hurried subterranean walk; nevertheless, if he keeps his eyes open, he cannot fail to recognise occasional tokens of the transition; as, for instance, when he finds himself passing from a higher to a lower level, or vice versâ, or when the path which he is pursuing leads him through a wall of broken graves, so that it has been necessary perhaps to strengthen the points of connection by masonry. Any one who desires to study this branch of the subject, will find it fully treated of, and made easily intelligible, by numerous plans and illustrations either in the original work of De Rossi, or in the English abridgment of it. The present popular manual proposes to itself a more humble task. We propose to describe the principal objects of interest which are shown to strangers, and to supply such historical or archæological information as will give them a greater interest in, and a keener appreciation of, the importance of what they see.
Entrance to the Cemetery of St. Callixtus.
Without further preface, then, let us set out on our walk. Let us proceed along the Via Appia till we come to a doorway on the right-hand side, over which we read the words “Cœmeterium S. Callixti.” On entering the vineyard our attention is first arrested by a ruined monument standing close beside us. We shall have already seen others more or less like it on both sides of the road since we came out of the city; and in answer to our inquiries we shall have learnt that they are the remains of what were once grand Pagan tombs, covered, probably, with marble and ornamented with sculpture. Without stopping then to inquire whether anything special is known about the history of this particular mausoleum, we will walk forward to another more modest building standing in the middle of the vineyard. It looks small and mean; and if we could enter it, we should find that it is used only as a convenient magazine for the stowing away of fragments of sarcophagi, or tombstones, extracted from the cemetery which underlies it. Yet its apsidal termination, and the other apses on either side of the building, naturally suggest to us that it must once have had something of an ecclesiastical character. In truth, it was one of the “numerous buildings constructed throughout the cemeteries” by Fabian, pope and martyr, in the middle of the third century (see [page 27]), and was known to ancient pilgrims as the cella memoriæ, or chapel of St. Sixtus and of St. Cæcilia, being built immediately over the tombs of those martyrs. Originally, the end or fourth side of the building was unenclosed, that so larger numbers of the faithful might assist at the celebration of the holy mysteries: indeed the side-walls themselves were not at first continued to their present length, but the building consisted of little else than the three exedræ or apses.
If we examine the ground round this ancient chapel, we shall see that it was once used as a place of burial. All round it, but not within it, nor yet quite close to its walls, but just at a sufficient distance from them to allow space for the channels which carried off the water from the roof (traces of which channels still remain), deep graves are dug, of various sizes, but all arranged according to a regular plan of orientation. These graves are made chiefly with blocks of tufa; but bricks also are used, and thick layers of mortar. Some of them were cased inside with marble, or at least had slabs of that material at the top and bottom, the upper surface of the one serving as the bottom of another; and it is worthy of remark that on several of these slabs were inscribed epitaphs of the usual kind, though their position would necessarily conceal them from every human eye. Some of the graves were made of sufficient depth to receive ten bodies, one over the other; some could only receive four; and occasionally only a single sarcophagus occupied the grave. The average, however, may be taken at four bodies in each grave, which would give a total of eight thousand persons buried over the first area of the Catacomb of St. Callixtus. Of course this cemetery, being in the open air, is no part of the catacomb—properly so called; it is of later date, having been made in the fourth and fifth centuries, but it observes precisely the same limits as the catacomb. The boundary-wall may still be seen at no great distance from the chapel; and beyond it no graves are to be found either in the cemetery or in the catacomb; a fact which shows with what care the rights of private property were respected below ground as well as above.
But now let us no longer tarry in the open air, but go down at once into the catacomb. A staircase stands ready at our side, being in fact a mere restoration of the original entrance. When we get to the bottom, a keen eye may detect upon the plaster of the walls a certain number of graffiti, as they are called, or scribblings of names, ejaculations, &c., of very great antiquity. It is comparatively a new thing to pay any attention to these rude scribblings of ancient visitors on the walls of places of public resort, and to take pains to decipher them; but of late years they have proved to be a most interesting subject of study, whether found on the tombs of Egyptian kings in Thebes, on the walls of the barracks and theatres in Pompeii, in the prisons and cellars of Pagan Rome, or, lastly, in the Christian Catacombs. Here especially they have proved to be of immense importance, being, as De Rossi justly calls them, “the faithful echo of history and infallible guides through the labyrinth of subterranean galleries;” for by means of them we can trace the path that was followed by pilgrims to subterranean Rome from the fourth to the seventh century, and identify the crypts or chapels which were most frequently visited. Probably there is no group of ancient graffiti in the world to be compared, either for number or intricacy, with those which cover the wall at the entrance of the crypt we are about to enter; and it must have been a work of infinite labour to disentangle and decipher them. Now that the work has been done for us, however, by the indefatigable De Rossi, we can see that they may be divided into three classes. They are either the mere names of persons, with the occasional adjunct of their titles; or they are good wishes, prayers, salutations, or acclamations, on behalf of friends and relatives, living or dead; or, lastly, they are invocations of the martyrs near whose tombs they are inscribed.
Of the names we find two kinds; one, the most ancient and most numerous, scribbled on the first coat of plaster, and in the most convenient and accessible parts of the wall, are names of the old classical type, such as Tychis, Elpidephorus, Polyneicus, Maximus, Nikasius, and the like; the other, belonging manifestly to a somewhat later period, because written on a later coat of plaster, and in more inaccessible places, high above the first, are such as Lupo, Ildebrand, Ethelrid, Bonizo, Joannes Presb., Prando Pr., indignus peccator, &c., &c.
Prayers or acclamations for absent or departed friends are mixed among the most ancient names, and generally run in the same form as the earliest and most simple Christian epitaphs, e.g., Vivas, Vivas in Deo Cristo, Vivas in eterno, ΖΗϹ ΕΝ ΘΕΩ, ΒΙΒΑϹ ΙΝ ΘΕΩ, Te in pace, &c. “Mayest thou live in God Christ, for ever, Thee in peace,” &c. The feeling which prompted the pilgrims who visited these shrines thus to inscribe in sacred places the names of those they loved and would fain benefit, is so natural to the human heart, that instances of it may be found even among the heathen themselves.
But besides mere names and short acclamations, there are also in the same place, and manifestly belonging to a very early age, prayers and invocations of the martyrs who lay buried in these chapels. Sometimes the holy souls of all the martyrs are addressed collectively, and petitioned to hold such or such an one in remembrance; and sometimes this prayer is addressed to one individually. The following may suffice as specimens:—Marcianum Successum Severum Spirita Sancta in mente havete, et omnes fratres nostros. Petite Spirita Sancta ut Verecundus cum suis bene naviget. Otia petite et pro parente et pro fratribus ejus; vibant cum bono. Sante Suste, in mente habeas in horationes Aureliu Repentinu. ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΝ ΕΙΣ ΜΝΙΑΝ ΕΧΕΤΑΙ (for ΕΧΕΤΕ). “Holy souls, have in remembrance Marcianus Successus Severus and all our brethren. Holy souls, ask that Verecundus and his friends may have a prosperous voyage. Ask for rest both for my parent and his brethren; may they live with good Holy Sixtus, have in remembrance in your prayers Aurelius Repentinus. Have ye in remembrance Dionysius.”
The inspection of these graffiti, then, is enough to warn us that we are on the threshold of a very special sanctuary of the ancient Church, and to excite our deepest interest in all that we may find it to contain. But our first impression on entering will probably be one of disappointment. We were led to expect that we were about to visit a Christian burial-place and place of worship of very great antiquity, but the greater part of the masonry we see around us is manifestly of quite recent construction. The truth is, that when this chamber was rediscovered in 1854, it was in a complete state of ruin; access was gained to it only through the luminare, which, as usual, had served for many centuries as a channel for pouring into it all the adjacent soil, fragments of grave-stones from the cemetery above-ground, decaying brickwork, and every kind of rubbish. When this was removed, the vault of the chamber, deprived of its usual support, soon gave way; so that, if any portion of it was to be preserved and put in a condition to be visited with safety, it was absolutely necessary to build fresh walls, and otherwise strengthen it. This has been done with the utmost care, and so as still to preserve, wherever it was possible, remains of the more ancient condition of the chapel and of its decoration in succeeding ages. Thus we are able to trace very clearly in the arch of the doorway three stages or conditions of ornamentation by means of three different coatings of plaster, each retaining some remnant of its original painting. We can trace also the remains of the marble slabs with which, at a later period, the whole chapel was faced; and even this later period takes us back to the earlier half of the fifth century, when, as the Liber Pontificalis tells us, St. Sixtus III. platoniam fecit in Cœmeterio Callixti. The fragments of marble columns and other ornamental work, which lie scattered about on the pavement, belong probably to the same period, or they may have been the work of St. Leo III., the last pontiff of whom we read that he made restorations here before the translation of the relics by Pope Paschal I. Again, the raised step or dais of marble, which we see directly opposite to us at the further end of the chapel, having four holes or sockets in it, was of course found here as it now is, and it shows plainly where the altar once stood, supported on four pillars; but in the wall behind this platform we seem to detect traces of a yet older and more simple kind of altar—a sepulchre hewn out of the rock, the flat covering of which was probably the original mensa whereon the holy mysteries were celebrated in this place.
Thus, spite of the ruin and the neglect of ages, and spite of the work of restoration which has been thereby made necessary in our own time, many clear traces still remain both of its original condition and of the reverent care with which successive generations of the ancient Church did their best to adorn this chamber. The cause of this extraordinary and long-continued veneration is revealed to us, in part, by a few grave-stones which have been recovered from amid the rubbish, and which are now restored, if not to the precise spots they originally occupied (which we cannot tell), yet certainly to the walls in which they were first placed; in part also by an inscription of Pope Damasus, which, though broken into more than a hundred pieces, has yet been put together from the fragments discovered in this chamber, the few words or letters that have not been found being supplied in letters of a different colour; the whole, therefore, may now again be read just where our forefathers in the faith read it when it was first set up 1500 years ago. The tombstones are of St. Anteros and St. Fabian, who sat in the chair of Peter from A.D. 235 to 250; of St. Lucius, A.D. 252; and of St. Eutychianus, who died nearly thirty years later. No one having an intimate acquaintance with Christian epigraphy doubts that these are the original grave-stones of the Popes whose names they bear; and it is certain that other Popes of the same century were buried here also; but as their tombstones are not before our eyes, we will say nothing about them in this place, but go on to speak of the inscription of Pope Damasus. It runs in this wise:—
Hic congesta jacet quæris si turba Piorum,
Corpora Sanctorum retinent veneranda sepulchra,
Sublimes animas rapuit sibi Regia Cœli:
Hic comites Xysti portant qui ex hoste tropæa;
Hic numerus procerum servat qui altaria Christi;
Hic positus longa vixit qui in pace Sacerdos;
Hic Confessores sancti quos Græcia misit;
Hic juvenes, puerique, senes castique nepotes,
Quïs mage virgineum placuit retinere pudorem.
Hic fateor Damasus volui mea condere membra,
Sed cineres timui sanctos vexare Piorum.
“Here, if you would know, lie heaped together a whole crowd of saints.
These honoured sepulchres enclose their bodies,
Their noble souls the palace of Heaven has taken to itself.
Here lie the companions of Xystus, who triumphed over the enemy;
Here a number of rulers, who keep the altars of Christ;
Here is buried the Bishop, who lived in a long peace;
Here the holy Confessors whom Greece sent us;
Here lie youths and boys, old men, and their chaste relatives,
Who chose, as the better part, to keep their virgin chastity.
Here I, Damasus, confess I wished to lay my bones,
But I feared to disturb the holy ashes of the saints.”
The first lines of this inscription seem to allude to a number of martyrs laid together in one large tomb, such as we know from other witnesses were sometimes to be seen in the Roman Catacombs. The poet Prudentius, for instance, supposes a friend to ask him the names of those who have shed their blood for the faith in Rome, and the epitaphs inscribed on their tombs. He replies that it would be very difficult to tell this, for that “the relics of the saints in Rome are innumerable, since as long as the city continued to worship their Pagan gods, their wicked rage slew vast multitudes of the just. On many tombs, indeed,” he says, “you may read the name of the martyr, and some short inscription; but there are many others which are silent as to the name, and only express the number. You can ascertain the number which lie heaped up together (congestis corpora acervis), but nothing more;” and he specifies one grave in particular, in which he learnt that the relics of sixty martyrs had been laid, but their names were known only to Christ. To some such polyandrium, then, the words of Pope Damasus would seem to allude, and the martyrologies and other ancient documents speak of three or four such tombs “near St. Cecilia’s;” and here in this very chamber, just where (as we shall presently see) it touches the crypt of St. Cecilia, we can still recognise a pit of unusual size and depth, intended apparently for the reception of many bodies, or perhaps only of the charred remains of many bodies; for, where the victims were numerous, the capital sentence was not unfrequently executed by fire.
Of the martyrdom of St. Sixtus we have already spoken as having taken place in the Catacomb of Pretextatus ([page 31]), but his body was brought here to be laid with those of his predecessors. Pope Damasus only mentions his deacons, and not St. Sixtus himself, because he had composed another set of verses in honour of the holy Pontiff alone, and had set them up in this same crypt. It is easy to see where they were placed, above and behind the altar, and a copy of them has been preserved to us by ancient pilgrims and scholars. Scarcely a dozen letters of them, however, were found when the chapel was cleared out in 1854; they have not, therefore, been restored to their place, and need not be reproduced in this manual.
The numerus procerum in the fifth line of our present inscription are, of course, the Popes whose epitaphs we have seen, and others who were buried here; nor can we fail to recognise in the Bishop who enjoyed a long life of peace Pope Melchiades, who lived when the persecutions had ended. Finally, we have heard the story of some at least of “the holy confessors who came from Greece,” Hippolytus Maria and Neo, Adrias and Paulina ([page 37]); and the arenarium in which these martyrs were buried was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Papal crypt which we are describing.
CHAPTER II.
THE CRYPT OF ST. CECILIA.
A narrow doorway, cut somewhat irregularly through the rock in the corner of the Papal Crypt, introduces us into another chamber. As we pass through this doorway we observe that the sides were once covered with slabs of marble, and the arch over our heads adorned with mosaics. The chamber itself is much larger than that which we have left behind us. It is nearly 20 feet square (the other had been only 14 by 11); it is irregular in shape; it has a wide luminare over it, completely flooding it with light, and at the other end of it is a large portico, supported by arches of brick. Yet we see no altar-tomb, no contemporary epitaphs of popes or martyrs, nor indeed anything else which at once engages our attention and promises to give us valuable information. Nevertheless, a more careful examination will soon detect paintings and scribblings on the walls not inferior in interest to any that are to be seen elsewhere. We shall hardly appreciate them, however, as they deserve, unless we first briefly call to mind the history of the relics of St. Cecilia, before whose tomb we are.
We shall take it for granted that our readers are familiar with the history of the Saint’s martyrdom and pass on to the first discovery of her relics in the ninth century. Pope Paschal I. succeeded to the see of Peter in January A.D. 817, and in the following July he translated into different churches within the city the relics of 2300 martyrs, collected from the various suburban cemeteries, which, as we have seen, were lying at that time in a deplorable state of ruin. Amongst the relics thus removed were those of the popes from the Papal Crypt we have just visited. His cotemporary biographer, writing in the Liber Pontificalis tells us that Paschal had wished to remove at the same time the body of St. Cecilia, which the Acts of her martyrdom assured him had been buried by Pope Urban “near to his own colleagues;” but he could not find it; so at length he reluctantly acquiesced in the report that it had been carried off by Astulfus, the Lombard king, by whom Rome had been besieged, and the cemeteries plundered. Some four years afterwards, however, St. Cecilia appeared to him in a dream or vision, as he was assisting at matins in the Vatican Basilica, and told him that when he was translating the bodies of the popes she was so close to him that they might have conversed together. In consequence of this vision he returned to the search, and found the body where he had been told. It was fresh and perfect as when it was first laid in the tomb, and clad in rich garments wrought with gold, lying in a cypress coffin, with linen cloths stained with blood rolled up at her feet.
It is not essential to our history, yet it may be worth while to add that Paschal tells us he lined the coffin with fringed silk, spread over the body a covering of silk gauze, and then, placing it within a sarcophagus of white marble, deposited it under the high altar of the Church of Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere, where it was rediscovered nearly eight hundred years afterwards (A.D. 1599) by the titular cardinal of the Church, and exposed to the veneration of the faithful for a period of four or five weeks. All visitors to Rome have seen and admired Maderna’s beautiful statue of the saint; but not all take sufficient notice of the legend which he has inserted around it, testifying that he was one of those who had seen her lying incorrupt in her coffin, and that he has reproduced her in marble, in the very same posture in which he saw her.
Maderna’s Statue of St. Cecilia.
We have said that the Acts of the Saint’s martyrdom assert that Pope Urban had buried her near to his own colleagues. The itineraries of ancient pilgrims mention her grave, either immediately before, or immediately after, those of the Popes. Finally, Pope Paschal says that he found her body close to the place whence he had withdrawn the bodies of his predecessors. Are these topographical notices true or false? This is the question which must have agitated the mind of De Rossi when he discovered this chamber so immediately contiguous to that in which he had learnt for certain that the Popes had been buried; or rather—for his own conviction upon this subject had been already formed—would there be anything in the chamber itself to confirm his conclusion, and to establish it to the satisfaction of others? We may imagine with what eagerness he desired to penetrate it. But this could not be done at once. The chapel was full of earth, even to the very top of the luminare, and all this soil must first be removed, through the luminare itself. As the work of excavation proceeded, there came to light first, on the wall of the luminare, the figure of a woman in the usual attitude of prayer, but so indistinct as to baffle all attempts at identification. Below this there appeared a Latin cross between two sheep, which may still be seen, though these also are much faded. Still lower down the wall—the wall, that is, of the luminare, not of the chamber itself—we come upon the figures of three saints, executed apparently in the fourth, or perhaps even the fifth century; but they are all of men; and as their names inscribed at the side show no trace of any connection with the history of St. Cecilia, we will postpone what we have to say about them for the present, and proceed with our work of clearance of the whole chamber.
As we come nearer to the floor, we find upon the wall, close to the entrance from the burial-place of the popes, a painting which may be attributed, perhaps, to the seventh century, of a woman, richly attired, with pearls hanging from her ears and entwined in her hair, necklaces and bracelets of pearls and gold; a white dress covered with a pink tunic ornamented with gold and silver flowers, and large roses springing out of the ground by her feet. Everything about the painting is rich, and bright, and gay, such as an artist of the seventh century might picture to himself that a Roman bride, of wealth and noble family, like St. Cecilia, ought to have been. Below this figure we come to a niche, such as is found in other parts of the Catacombs, to receive the large shallow vessels of oil, or precious unguents, which, in ancient times, were used to feed the lamps burning before the tombs of the martyrs. At the back of this niche is a large head of our Lord, represented according to the Byzantine type, and with rays of glory behind it in the form of a Greek cross. Side by side with this, but on the flat surface of the wall, is a figure of a bishop, in full pontifical dress, with his name inscribed, S. VRBANVS.
Crypt of St. Cecilia.
Examination of these paintings shows that they were not the original ornaments of the place. The painting of St. Cecilia was executed on the surface of ruined mosaic work, portions of which may still be easily detected towards the bottom of the picture. The niche, too, in which our Lord’s head is painted bears evident traces of having once been encased with porphyry, and both it and the figure of St. Urban are so rudely done, that they might have been executed as late as the tenth or eleventh century. Probably they belong to the age of the translation of the relics—i.e., the ninth century. A half-obliterated scroll or tablet by the side of the figure of St. Urban states that it was intended as an ornament to the martyr’s sepulchre—Decori Sepulcri S. Cæciliæ martyris. When we add that immediately by the side of these paintings is a deep recess in the wall, capable of receiving a large sarcophagus, and that between the back of this recess and the back of one of the papal graves in the adjoining chamber, there is scarcely an inch of rock, we think the most sceptical of critics will confess that the old traditions are very remarkably confirmed.
It will be asked, however, if this is really the place where St. Cecilia was buried, and if Paschal really visited the adjoining chapel, how is it possible that he could have had any difficulty in finding her tomb? To this we reply, first, by reminding our readers of the condition in which the Catacombs were at that time: these translations of relics were being made, because the cemeteries in which they lay were utterly ruined. But, secondly, it is very possible that the doorway, or the recess, or both, may have been walled up or otherwise concealed, for the express purpose of baffling the search of the sacrilegious Lombards. Nor is this mere conjecture. Among the débris of this spot De Rossi has found several fragments of a wall, too thin ever to have been used as a means of support, but manifestly serviceable as a curtain of concealment; and, although, with that perfect candour and truthfulness which so enhances all his other merits, he adds that these fragments bear tokens of belonging to a later date, this does not prove that there had not been another wall of the same kind at an earlier period; for he is able to quote from his own discoveries the instance of an arcosolium in another Catacomb, which was thus carefully concealed in very ancient times by the erection of a wall. However, be the true explanation of this difficulty what it may, our ignorance on this subject cannot be allowed to outweigh the explicit testimony of Paschal and the other ancient witnesses now so abundantly confirmed by modern discoveries.
But it may be objected yet once more, that there is an inscription in the Catacomb under the Basilica of St. Sebastian, more than a quarter of a mile off, which states that St. Cecilia was buried there. Most true, but consider the date of the inscription. It was set up by William de Bois-Ratier, Archbishop of Bourges, in the year 1609; and there are other inscriptions hard by, of the same or of a later date, which claim for the same locality the tombs of several popes, as well as of thousands of martyrs. The inscriptions were set up precisely during that age in which the Catacombs were buried in the most profound darkness and oblivion. We have already explained ([page 50]) how it came to pass that whilst the other ancient cemeteries were inaccessible and unknown, this one under the Church of St. Sebastian still remained partially open; and we can heartily sympathise with the religious feelings which prompted the good Archbishop and others to make an appeal to the devotion of the faithful not to lose the memory of those glorious martyrs who had certainly been buried in a Catacomb on this road, and at no great distance, yet not in this particular spot. But whilst we admire their piety, we cannot bow to their authority upon a topographical question, which they had no means of deciding, and in respect to which recent discoveries, as well as the testimony of more ancient documents, prove to a demonstration that they were certainly wrong.
Dismissing, then, all these objections, which it was quite right and reasonable to raise, but which, on critical examination, entirely disappear, we may rest assured that we have here certainly recovered the original resting-place of one of the most ancient and famous of Rome’s virgin saints. Let us take one more look round the crypt before we leave it. If we examine the picture of the saint more closely, we shall find it defaced by a number of graffiti, which may be divided into two classes; the one class quite irregular, both as to place and style of writing, consisting only of the names of pilgrims who had visited the shrine, several of whom were not Romans but foreigners. Thus, one is named Hildebrandus, another Lupo, another is a Bishop Ethelred, and two write themselves down Spaniards. But the other class of graffiti is quite regular, arranged in four lines, and contains almost exclusively the names of priests; the only exceptions being that one woman appears amongst them, but it is added that she is the mother of the priest (Leo) who signs before her, and that the last signature of all is that of a scriniarius, or secretary. There is something about this arrangement of names which suggests the idea of an official act; neither can it be attributed to chance that several of the same names (including the unusual name of Mercurius, and written too in the same peculiar style, a mixture of square and of cursive letters) appear on the painting of St. Cornelius, presently to be visited in a catacomb under this same vineyard, whence his body was translated some thirty or forty years before St. Cecilia’s. In both cases these priests probably signed as witnesses of the translation.
It only remains that we should fulfil our promise to say a word or two about those saints whose names and figures we saw in the luminare. They are three in number, St. Sebastian, St. Cyrinus, and St. Polycamus. We know of no other Sebastian that can be meant here but the famous martyr, whose basilica we have mentioned before as being not far off. Cyrinus, or Quirinus, was Bishop of Siscia in Illyria, and martyr. In the days of Prudentius his body lay in his own city, but when Illyria was invaded by the barbarians it was brought to Rome and buried in the Basilica of St. Sebastian about the year 420. Of Polycamus the history is altogether lost; neither ecclesiastical historians nor martyrologists have left us any record of his life. We know, however, from the Itineraries of the old pilgrims that there was the tomb of one Polycamus, a martyr, near that of St. Cecilia, and the same name appears among the martyrs whose relics were removed from the Catacombs to the churches within the city. It would seem then that the figures of these three saints were painted in the luminare of this chamber, only because they were saints to whom there was much devotion, and whose relics were lying at no great distance.
CHAPTER III.
THE CRYPT OF ST. EUSEBIUS.
From the crypt of St. Cecilia we pass through a modern opening in one of its walls to a short gallery which leads to the sacramental chapels—i.e., to those chambers whose walls are decorated with a remarkable series of paintings having reference to the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. These paintings, however, having been sufficiently described and commented upon in another place, we may take our leave of this first area of the Cemetery of Callixtus, and, ascending a short staircase, pass on through the broken wall of a chamber into a wide and lofty gallery, which brings us presently to the chief object of interest in the second area—viz., the crypt of St. Eusebius, Pope, A.D. 310. Just before we reach it, we shall see on our left hand the staircase by which it was anciently arrived at; and if we stop here for a moment and look around us, we shall recognise an example of what has been already mentioned, the exemplary care and prudence with which the pilgrims of old were guided in their subterranean visits. Walls were built, blocking up all paths but the right one, so that they should not go astray or lose themselves in the labyrinth which surrounded them. They must needs go forward till they arrived at two chapels, which stood opposite to one another on different sides of the gallery.
One of these chambers was about 9 feet by 12, the other considerably larger, 16 by 13. The one had evidently been the chief object of devotion; the other was added for the convenience of the worshippers. The smaller one had an arcosolium on each side as well as at the end, the one opposite the door being the most important of the three; and all of these tombs were once ornamented with mosaics and paintings, and the walls of the chamber with marble. All is now sadly ruined; but it is still possible to distinguish among the remains of the mosaic work over the principal arcosolium traces of a very common Christian symbol, a double-handed vessel, with a bird on either side of it; also certain winged figures, which probably represent the seasons, and a few other accessories of ornament; but the main figures and general design have perished. The walls of the opposite chamber were never cased with marble, so that the pilgrims were able to leave here the same tokens of their visits as they left at St. Sixtus’. The graffiti are of the same general character, but of a somewhat later date; the old forms of prayer have disappeared; most of the names and inscriptions are in Latin; and among the few that are Greek, there are symptoms of Byzantine peculiarities.
The chief object of interest, however, now remaining in these chambers is the epitaph which stands in the middle of the smaller room. Of course, this was not its original position; but it has been so placed, in order that we may see both sides of the stone without difficulty, for both are inscribed. The stone was originally used for an inscription in honour of Caracalla, belonging to the year 214. The Christian inscription on the other side professes to have been set up by “Damasus, Bishop, to Eusebius, Bishop and Martyr,” and to have been written by Furius Dionysius Filocalus, “a worshipper (cultor) and lover of Pope Damasus.” But it is easy to see at a glance that it never was really executed by the same hand to which we are indebted for so many other beautiful productions of that Pope. At first, therefore, and whilst only a few fragments of this inscription had been recovered, De Rossi was tempted to conjecture that it might be one of the earliest efforts of the artist who subsequently attained such perfection. At length, however, the difficulty was solved in a more sure and satisfactory way. A diligent search in the earth with which the chamber was filled brought to light several fragments of the original stone, on which the letters are executed with the same faultlessness as on the other specimens of its class. The visitor to the Catacombs may see them painted, in a different colour from the rest, in the copy of the epitaph which De Rossi has caused to be affixed to the wall; and he will observe that amongst them are some letters which are wanting in the more ancient copy transcribed on the reverse of Caracalla’s monument. It is clear that the original must have been broken in pieces, by the Lombards or other ancient plunderers of the Catacombs, and that the copy which we now see is one of the restorations by Pope Vigilus or some other Pontiff about that time ([page 47]). The copyist was so ignorant that he could only transcribe the letters which were on the spot before his eyes, and, even when he was conscious that a letter was missing, he could only leave a vacant space, being doubtful how it should be supplied. Witness the space left for the first letter of Domino in the penultimate line of the inscription, and the word in altogether omitted in the third line.
“Heraclius forbad those who had fallen away [in times of persecution] to grieve for their sins.
But Eusebius taught those unhappy men to weep for their crimes.
The people are divided into parties; fury increases;
Sedition, murder, fighting, quarrelling, and strife.
Presently both [the Pope and the heretic] are exiled by the cruelty of the tyrant,
Although the Pope was preserving the bonds of peace inviolate.
He bore his exile with joy, looking to the Lord as his Judge.
And on the shore of Sicily gave up the world and his life.”
Having sufficiently considered the form of the inscription, let us now say a few words about its substance, which is important, because it restores to us a lost chapter of Church history. Every student knows how keenly contested in the early ages of the Church was the question as to the discipline to be observed towards those Christians who relapsed into an outward profession of Paganism under the pressure of persecution. There were some who would fain close the door of reconciliation altogether against these unhappy men (miseri), whilst others claimed for them restitution of all Christian privileges before they had brought forth worthy fruits of penance.
The question arose whenever a persecution followed after a long term of peace; for during such a time men’s minds were specially apt to decline from primitive fervour, and the number of the lapsed to increase. We are not surprised, therefore, to find the question agitated during the persecution of Decius in the middle of the third century. There is still extant a touching letter, written to St. Cyprian by the clergy of Rome at a time when the Holy See was vacant after the martyrdom of St. Fabian, which clearly defines the tradition and practice of the Church. In it they say that absolution was freely given to those of the lapsed who are in danger of death, but to others only when wholesome penance has been exacted; and they declare that “they have left nothing undone that the perverse may not boast of their being too easy, nor the true penitents accuse them of inflexible cruelty.” The same question arose under the same circumstances in the persecution of Diocletian. Pope Marcellus was firm in upholding the Church’s discipline, but he was resisted with such violence that public order was disturbed in the city by the strife of contending factions, and the Pope was banished by order of the Emperor Maxentius. This we learn from another inscription of Pope Damasus, who says that he wrote it in order that the faithful might not be ignorant of the merit of the holy Pontiff. Eusebius was the immediate successor of Marcellus, and the epitaph now before us is clearly a continuation of the same history, ending in the same punishment of the Pope, as the reward of his contention for the liberties of the Church. For it should be remembered that these Popes were driven from their see and died in exile, not because they refused to apostatize, but because they insisted on maintaining the integrity of ecclesiastical discipline. They may justly be reckoned, therefore, among the earliest of that noble army of martyrs, who, from those days even to our own, have braved every danger rather than consent to govern the Church in accordance with other than the Church’s rules.
It yet remains to make two further remarks upon the epitaph of Pope Eusebius before we leave it. The first is, that he is called a martyr, though it nowhere appears that he really shed his blood; but this is by no means the only instance in which the title of martyr is given in ancient documents to men who have suffered for the faith and died whilst those sufferings continued. And secondly, it is to be observed that although we have no record of the translation of the body of St. Eusebius from Sicily to Rome, there is no reason to doubt the fact. All the earliest monuments speak of him as buried in a crypt of the Cemetery of St. Callixtus, and although the law forbad the translation of the bodies of those who had died in exile unless the emperor’s permission had been previously obtained, the old lawyers tell us that this permission was freely given. Numerous examples teach us the great anxiety of the ancient churches to have their bishops buried in the midst of them; no doubt, therefore, the necessary permission was asked for, as soon as a change in the imperial policy towards the Church made it possible; and the body of St. Eusebius was recovered and brought to Rome soon after his death, just as that of one of his predecessors, St. Pontian, had been brought from Sardinia by St. Fabian.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TOMB OF ST. CORNELIUS.
We have not promised to conduct the visitor to everything that is worth seeing in this cemetery, but only to enumerate and explain the principal monuments of historical importance which every stranger usually sees. And the only specimen of this class which remains to be spoken of is the tomb of St. Cornelius, which lies some way off. In order to reach it we must traverse a vast network of galleries, narrow and irregular, connecting what were once independent cemeteries, or at least were areæ added at various times to the Cemetery of Callixtus. If our guide is not in too great haste, he may allow us to step aside into two or three chambers by the way, in which are certain objects of interest worth looking at. The first is a long inscription belonging to the last decade of the third century, in which the Deacon Severus records that he has obtained leave from the Pope Marcellinus to make a double chamber, with arcosolia and a luminare, in which himself and his family may have quiet graves (mansionem in pace quietam). This is in the third area of the cemetery, next to the area in which we visited the crypt of St. Eusebius.
In the adjoining area, and belonging probably to the same date, is a very curious fresco, much damaged by having been cut through for the sake of making a grave behind it, yet still easily distinguishable in all its main features. The Good Shepherd occupies the centre of the painting. On either side is an apostle, probably SS. Peter and Paul, hastening away from Christ, Who has sent them to go and teach all nations. These are represented by two sheep standing before each of the apostles; and over their heads hangs a rock, whence pour down streams of water, which the apostles are receiving in their hands and turning on the heads of the sheep. We need no special explanation of this; we have already learnt that the Rock is Christ, and that the waters represent all Christian graces and sacraments. But what is worth noticing in this picture is the various attitudes of the sheep, and the corresponding distribution of the water. A perfect torrent is falling on the animal that stands with outstretched neck and head uplifted, drinking in all he hears with simplicity and eagerness; whilst another, which has turned its back upon the apostle, is left without any water at all. Of the other two, one is standing with head downcast, as if in doubt and perplexity, and upon him too grace is still being poured out more abundantly than upon the fourth, which is eating grass, i.e., occupied with the affairs of this world.
On the right hand side of this arcosolium are two representations of Moses; in the one he is striking the rock, and one of the Jews is catching some of the water which gushes forth; in the other he is taking off his shoes, preparing to obey the summons of God, who is represented by a hand coming forth from the cloud. The painting on the other side of the arcosolium is even more defaced than that in the centre. A large semi-circular recess has been cut through it, and then the smoke of the lamp which burnt in this recess during the fourth and fifth centuries has almost obliterated the little that remained of the figure of our Lord. He stood between two of His apostles, who are offering Him bread and fish, and six baskets of loaves stand on the ground before them.
And now we will not linger any more upon the road, but follow our guide, who hurries forward along the intricate passages until he lands us at last in an irregularly shaped space, illuminated by a luminare, decorated with paintings, and bearing manifest tokens of having been once a great centre of devotion. There is the pillar to support the usual vessel of oil or more precious unguents to be burnt before the tomb of the martyr; and hard by is a gravestone let into the wall with the words Cornelius Martyr, Ep.
The stone does not close one of the common graves such as are seen in the walls of the galleries or of the cubicula, neither is the grave an ordinary arcosolium. The lower part of it, indeed, resembles an arcosolium inasmuch as it is large enough to contain three or four bodies, but there is no arch over it. The opening is rectangular, not circular, and yet there is no trace of any slab having been let into the wall to cover the top of the grave. It is probable, therefore, that a sarcophagus once filled the vacant space, and that the top of this sarcophagus served as the mensa or altar, an arrangement of which other examples have been found.
But how came Pope Cornelius to be buried here, and not with his predecessors in the Papal Crypt? He was Pope, A.D. 250, between Fabian and Lucius, both of whom were buried, as we have seen, in that crypt. It is to be observed, however, that Cornelius is the only Pope, during the first three centuries, who bore the name of a noble Roman family; and many ancient epitaphs have been found in the area round this tomb, of persons who belonged to the same family. It is obvious, therefore, to conjecture that this sepulchre was the private property of some branch of the Gens Cornelia. The public Cemetery of St. Callixtus may have been closed at this time by order of the Government; but even without such a reason, it may have been the wish of the family that the Pope should not be separated in burial from the rest of his race. The same circumstance would account for the epitaph being written in Latin, not in Greek, for many of the old patrician families clung to the language of their forefathers long after the use of Greek had come into fashion; and this departure from the official language of the Church (for such, in fact, Greek really was at that time) is quite of a piece with the preference of the domestic to the official burial-place.
But whatever may be the true explanation of these circumstances, the fact is at least certain that Cornelius was buried here; and above and below the opening of his tomb are fragments, still adhering to the wall, of large slabs of marble, containing a few letters of what were once important inscriptions. The upper inscription was unquestionably the work of Damasus. The letters of the lower, though closely resembling the Damasine type, yet present a few points of difference—sufficient to warrant the conjecture of De Rossi that they were executed by the same hand, but with slight variations, in order to mark that it belonged to another series of monuments. We subjoin a copy of both inscriptions, in the form in which De Rossi believes them to have been originally written. In the first inscription the difference of type will distinguish the earlier half of each line, which is a conjectural restoration, from the latter half which still remains in situ; and in estimating the degree of probability of the restorations, the reader should bear in mind two things: first, that the Damasine inscriptions were engraved with such mathematical precision that no emendations are admissible which would materially increase or diminish the number of letters in each line; and secondly, that whereas Damasus was in the habit of repeating himself very frequently in his epitaphs, several of De Rossi’s restorations are mere literal reproductions of some of his favourite forms of speech. Had the following epitaph been found in some ancient MS., and there attributed to Pope Damasus, we are confident that no critic would have seen reason to doubt its genuineness:—
ASPICE, DESCENSU EXSTRUCTO TENEBRISQUE FUGATIS,
CORNELI MONUMENTA VIDES TUMULUMQUE SACRATUM.
HOC OPUS ÆGROTI DAMASI PRÆSTANTIA FECIT,
ESSET UT ACCESSUS MELIOR, POPULISQUE PARATUM
AUXILIUM SANCTI, ET VALEAS SI FUNDERE PURO
CORDE PRECES, DAMASUS MELIOR CONSURGERE POSSET,
QUEM NON LUCIS AMOR, TENUIT MAGE CURA LABORIS.
“Behold, a new staircase having been made, and the darkness put to flight,
You see the monuments of Cornelius and his sacred tomb.
This work the zeal of Damasus has accomplished, at a time when he was sick;
That so the means of approach might be better, and the aid of the saint
Put more within the reach of the people; and that if you pour forth prayers
From a pure heart, Damasus may rise up in better health;
Though it has not been love of life, but rather anxiety for work, that has retained him in this life.”
The second inscription De Rossi would restore as follows:—
SIRICIUS PERFECIT OPUS,
CONCLUSIT ET ARCAM
MARMORE, CORNELI QUONIAM
PIA MEMBRA RETENTAT
—that is to say, he supposes that, Damasus having died, his successor Siricius completed the work that had been begun, and, furthermore, strengthened the wall which enclosed the tomb of St. Cornelius with this very thick slab of marble—a work which may have been rendered necessary by the alterations already made by Damasus. Of course, these restorations of the mutilated inscriptions must always remain more or less doubtful, for we fear there is no chance of any other fragments of the original ever coming to light. We publish them under the same reserve with which he himself proposes them, as at least approximations to the truth. He says that, without daring to affirm their literal correctness, there are certainly strong reasons for believing that they exactly reproduce the sense of the original.
This same tomb of St. Cornelius will supply us with an example of De Rossi’s power of happy conjecture, confirmed with absolute certainty by subsequent discoveries. He had often publicly expressed his confident expectation of finding at this tomb of St. Cornelius some memorial of his cotemporary, St. Cyprian. These two saints were martyred on the same day, though in different years; and their feasts were, therefore, always celebrated together, just as they are now, on the 16th of September, all the liturgical prayers for the day being common to both. Now, De Rossi had found in one of the old Itineraries, to whose accuracy of detail he had been greatly indebted, an extraordinary misstatement, viz., that the bodies of both these saints rested together in the same catacomb, whereas everybody knows that St. Cyprian was buried in Africa. He conjectured, therefore, that the pilgrim had been led into this blunder by something he had seen at the tomb of St. Cornelius. On its rediscovery, the cause of the error stands at once revealed. Immediately on the right hand side of the grave are two large figures of bishops painted on the wall, with a legend by the side of each, declaring them to be St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian.
On the other side of the tomb is another painting, executed in the same style, on the wall at the end of the gallery: two figures of bishops, again designated by their proper names and titles. Only one of these can now be deciphered, S̅C̅S̅ XUSTUS P̅P̅ R̅O̅M̅, i.e., Pope Sixtus II., of whose connection with this cemetery we have already heard so often. The other name began with an O, and was probably St. Optatus, an African bishop and martyr, whose body had been brought to Rome and buried in this cemetery.
These paintings are manifestly a late work: perhaps they were executed in the days of Leo III., A.D. 795-815, of whom it is recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, that “he renewed the Cemetery of Sts. Sixtus and Cornelius on the Appian Way;” and the legend which runs round them would have a special significance as the motto of one who had been almost miraculously delivered out of the hands of his enemies by the Emperor Charlemagne. It is taken from the 17th verse of the 58th Psalm: “Ego autem cantabo virtutem Tuam et exaltabo misericordiam Tuam quia factus es et susceptor meus.”... “I will sing Thy strength, and will extol Thy mercy, for Thou art become my support.” Of course, this had not been the earliest ornamentation of these walls. Even now, we can detect traces of a more ancient painting, and of graffiti upon it, underlying this later work. The graffiti are only the names of priests and deacons, who either came here to offer the holy sacrifice, or perhaps to take part in the translation of the relics: “Leo prb., Theodorus prb., Kiprianus Diaconus,” &c.
We are drawing very near to the end of our subterranean walk: indeed, the staircase which is to restore us to the upper air close to the very entrance of the vineyard is immediately behind us, as we stand contemplating the tomb of St. Cornelius. Nevertheless, if we are not too weary, nor our guide too impatient, we should do well to resist the temptation to escape, until we have first visited two small chambers which are in the immediate neighbourhood. They contain some of the most ancient specimens of painting to be found in the whole range of the Catacombs. The ceilings are divided into circles and other geometrical figures, and then the spaces are filled up with graceful arabesques, birds, and flowers, peacocks, and dancing genii. It was the sight of such paintings as these which led the Protestant writer quoted in a former chapter to express an opinion that, on first entering some of the decorated chambers in the Catacombs, it is not easy to determine whether the work is Christian or Pagan. Here, indeed, the Good Shepherd in one centre and Daniel between two lions in the other soon solve the doubt; but all the other details and the excellence of their execution may well have suggested it. No one can doubt that the paintings belong to the very earliest period of Christian art, when the forms and traditions of the classical age had not yet died away.
In the first of the two chambers we are speaking of, there is nothing special to be seen besides the ceiling; but the second and more distant is more richly decorated. Here, two sepulchral chambers open one into the other: over the doorway which admits to the inner vault is represented the Baptism of our Lord by St. John: He is coming up out of the water and the dove is descending upon Him. On the wall opposite to the entrance is that fish carrying the basket of bread and wine that has been already described ([page 81]). On the wall to the left is a pail of milk standing on a kind of altar between two sheep, and we know from St. Irenæus and from some of the earliest and most authentic acts of the martyrs that milk was an accepted symbol of the Holy Eucharist. Opposite to this are doves and trees, which are often used as types of the souls of the blessed in Paradise. Thus, on one side we have the faithful on earth standing around the Divine food which prepares for heaven; and on the other, souls released from the prison of the body have flown away and are at rest, reposing amid the joys of another world; so that it would almost seem as though the same sequence of ideas presided over the decoration of these chambers, as was certainly present to the minds of those who designed the ornamentation of the sacramental chambers in the Cemetery of St. Callixtus ([page 84]).
And now at length we must conclude our visit to St. Callixtus. We fear that we have already enumerated more than can be seen with advantage during the course of a single visit; yet it is worth an effort to see it all, because it includes monuments which illustrate nearly every century of the period during which the Catacombs were used. It is for this reason that a visit to St. Callixtus is so singularly valuable, whether it be intended to take this cemetery as a sample of all, or only to use it as an introduction to others. Those who propose to pursue the subject further would do well to visit next the Catacomb of SS. Nereus and Achilles, which lies at no great distance, off the Via Ardeatina; then the Cemetery of Pretextatus on the other side of the Via Appia; and finally, the Cœmeterium Ostrianum on the Via Nomentana. When these have been carefully examined, there will still remain many interesting monuments, of considerable historical importance, in other less famous cemeteries; but enough will have been seen to give an excellent general acquaintance with the main characteristics of Roma Sotterranea.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON