Walks in Rome

by Augustus J. C. Hare

"Hinc habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes,
Nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris.
Discipulos Oriens misit, quod sponte fatemur,
Sanguinis ob meritum Christumque per astra sequuti,
Aetherios petiere sinus et regna piorum.
Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives.
Hæc Damasus vestras referat sidera laudes."

"Here you should know that saints dwelt. Their names, if you ask them, were Peter and Paul. The East sent disciples, which we freely acknowledge. For the merit of their blood they followed Christ to the stars, and sought the heavenly home and the kingdom of the blest. Rome however deserved to defend her own citizens. May Damasus record these things for your praise, O new stars."

"The two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, were originally buried, the one at the Vatican, the other on the Ostian Way, at the spot where their respective basilicas now stand; but, as soon as the Oriental Christians had heard of their death, they sent some of their brethren to remove their bodies, and bring them back to the East, where they considered that they had a right to claim them as their fellow-citizens and countrymen. These so far prospered in their mission as to gain a momentary possession of the sacred relics, which they carried off, along the Appian Way, as far as the spot where the church of St. Sebastian was afterwards built. Here they rested for a while, to make all things ready for their journey, or, according to another account, were detained by a thunderstorm of extraordinary violence, which delay, however occasioned, was sufficient to enable the Christians of Rome to overtake them and recover their lost treasure. These Roman Christians then buried the bodies, with the utmost secrecy, in a deep pit, which they dug on the very spot where they were. Soon, indeed, they were restored to their original places of sepulture, as we know from contemporary authorities, and there seems reason to believe the old ecclesiastical tradition to be correct, which states them to have only remained in this temporary abode for a year and seven months. The body of St. Peter, however, was destined to revisit it a second time, and for a longer period; for when, at the beginning of the third century, Heliogabalus made his circus at the Vatican, Calixtus, who was then pope, removed the relics of the Apostle to their former temporary resting-place, the pit on the Appian Way. But in A.D. 257, St. Stephen, the pope, having been discovered in this very cemetery and having suffered martyrdom there, the body of St. Peter was once more removed, and restored to its original tomb in the Vatican."—Northcote's Roman Catacombs.

In the passages of this catacomb are misguiding inscriptions placed here in 1409 by William, Archbishop of Bourges, calling upon the faithful to venerate here the tombs of Sta. Cecilia and of many of the martyred popes, who are buried elsewhere. The martyr St. Cyrinus is known to have been buried here from very early itineraries, but his grave has not been discovered.

"When I was a boy, being educated at Rome, I used every Sunday, in company with other boys of my own age and tastes, to visit the tombs of the apostles and martyrs, and to go into the crypts excavated there in the bowels of the earth. The walls on either side as you enter are full of the bodies of the dead, and the whole place is so dark, that one seems almost to see the fulfilment of those words of the prophet, 'Let them go down alive into Hades.' Here and there a little light, admitted from above, suffices to give a momentary relief to the horror of the darkness; but as you go forwards, and find yourself again immersed in the utter blackness of night, the words of the poet come spontaneously to your mind: 'The very silence fills the soul with dread.'"—St. Jerome (A.D. 354), In Ezek. ch. lx.

"A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only guide down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by which we had come; and I could not help thinking, 'Good Heaven, if in a sudden fit of madness he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!' On we wandered, among martyrs' graves: passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which lives between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves; graves of men, of women, of little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, 'We are Christians! we are Christians!' that they might be murdered with their parents; graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyr's blood; graves of some who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and walled up; buried before death, and killed by slow starvation.

"'The triumphs of the Faith are not above-ground in our splendid churches,' said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. 'They are here! among the martyrs' graves!' He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how, perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken—how they would have quailed and drooped—if a foreknowledge of the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the great name for which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire."—Dickens.

"Countless martyrs, they say, rest in these ancient sepulchres. In these dark depths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution; there she laid her martyrs, and there, over their tombs, she chaunted hymns of triumph, and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that church I spend hours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pry among the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like to think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of their spirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city that massacred them.

"No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked triumph, and sighed to God, 'How long, O Lord, how long?'"—Schonberg Cotta Family.

"And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."—Rev. vi. 9—11.