Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

He took us into a chapel containing the tombs of some of the early martyred popes, as St. Fabian, St. Lucius, and St. Sextus. In some of these chapels, or cubicula, are beautiful inscriptions to Pope Damasus, whose labor of love it was to restore and preserve these tombs of the Christians. At the end of a long inscription over the door of one of the largest of these sepulchral chambers, which records that here lie heaped together a number of the holy ones, the good Pope has humbly added:

"Here I, Damasus, wished to have laid my limbs,

But feared to disturb the holy ashes of the saints."

We then entered a chamber with an air-shaft above, like most of the cubicula, where, on the walls, were a number of Byzantine paintings of St. Urban, St. Cecilia, and a head of Christ. The guide told us that this chamber contained the remains of St. Cecilia until they were removed to the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Without a word of warning, Ludovico drew us across the room to a niche in the wall, where we saw, lying upon her side, the loveliest of girlish figures. The first impression, in the semi-obscurity, with all the light falling on the recumbent figure, was that of a veiled woman asleep.

"Santa Cecilia!" said Ludovico, in a hushed voice. Zelphine bent forward as if ready to fall on her knees, when the official guide broke the reverent silence by reciting in a sing-song tone, but in quite comprehensible English:

"This rich Roman lady was sentenced to death by the prefect of Rome because she would not sacrifice to idols. After trying to smother the lady in her own bath, but not succeeding, because the saints were watching over her, a lictor was sent to cut off her head; but the saints took the strength out of his arm and he only wounded her, after which she lived three days preaching to the people. Step nearer and you will see the wound on the lady's neck. It is partially covered by a gold necklace."

In the sixteenth century the tomb of St. Cecilia was opened, and her embalmed body was found, beautiful and perfect, as if asleep in her own bed rather than lying in a tomb. Pope Clement III. and all Rome went to the Catacombs to look upon the saint, and Stefano Maderno, the greatest sculptor of his time, was called upon to model the marble statue of the lovely sleeping saint. Maderno's original statue of St. Cecilia we had seen in the Church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, and also the artist's inscription, in which he says that he has modelled her in the very same posture of body as that in which she was found lying incorrupt in her tomb. Beautiful as is the marble in the church, it failed to impress us as did this replica in the appropriate setting of the cubiculum.

Tears were in our eyes as we turned away, and I heard Angela say to Ludovico, in her softest tone, "It is the most real thing I have seen in Rome!"

"Ludovico has good reason to be pleased with the success of his strategy," whispered Zelphine, and then, wishing to carry away undisturbed this exquisite memory of St. Cecilia, we made our way out toward the open, where we found our carriage awaiting us.

We were all very subdued, for pleasure-seekers, and were silent as we drove on past the vast tomb of Cæcilia, the daughter of Metellus and the beloved wife of the younger Crassus. Above the inscription are Gallic trophies which belonged to the elder Crassus, who was Cæsar's legate in Gaul. The tomb itself, a great round tower seventy feet in diameter, seems more like a fortress than a tomb, and we were not surprised to learn that the monument of this noble Roman lady had been used as a fortress in the thirteenth century.