The Early Christians in Rome

by H. D. M. Spence-Jones

With great pathos Mr. Barnes, from whose translation of the Ubaldi Memoranda on the discoveries in the Cemetery of Anacletus these extracts are taken, describes the scene of the interment of these sad remains of the martyrs in the games of Nero. We quote a passage specially bearing on this strange and wonderful “find,” where, after describing what took place in the famous games, he went on thus:

“The horrible scene drew to a close at last; the living torches, burning slowly, flickered and went out, leaving but a heap of ashes and half-burnt flesh behind them; the crowds of sightseers wended their way back to the city, and silence fell again on the gardens of Nero. Then there crept out through the darkness, within the circus and along the paths of the gardens, a fresh crowd—men and women, maidens and even little children, taking every one of them as they went their lives in their hands, for detection meant a cruel death on the morrow; eager to save what they could of the relics of the martyrs: bones that had been gnawed by dogs and wild beasts; ashes and half-burnt flesh, and other sad remnants, all of them precious indeed in the sight of their brethren who are left, relics that must not be lost.... Close by the circus, on the other side of the Via Aurelia, some Christians had already a tiny plot of ground available for purposes of burial. There on the morrow, in a great chest of stone, were deposited all the remains that could be collected; for it was out of the question to keep them separate one from another.” It was the beginning of the Vatican Cemetery, hereafter to become so famous. “ ... More than 1600 years afterward, when the excavations were being made for the new baldachino over the altar tomb of S. Peter himself, the sad relics of this first great persecution were brought to light. But they were not disturbed, and still rest in the place where they were originally laid, where now rises above them the glorious dome of the first Church of Christendom.”

In the memoranda on the third foundation there is nothing of very special interest to note.

On the fourth foundation Ubaldi wrote the following strange and peculiarly interesting note: “Almost at the level of the pavement there was found a coffin made of fine and large slabs of marble.... This coffin was placed, just as were the others which were found on the other side, within the circle of the presbytery, in such a manner that they were all directed towards the altar like spokes toward the centre of a wheel. Hence it was evident with how much reason this place merited the name of ‘the Council of Martyrs.’ ... These bodies surrounded S. Peter just as they would have done when living at a synod or council.”

These apparently were the remains of the first Bishops or Popes of Rome, for whom Anacletus made special provision when he arranged this earliest of cemeteries. Their names are, Linus whose coffin lies apart but still close to the apostle’s tomb, Anacletus, Evaristus, Sixtus I, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius I, Eleutherius, and Victor. Victor was laid in this sacred spot in the year of grace 203. After him no Bishop of Rome was interred in the Cemetery of Anacletus on the Vatican Hill. Originally of but small dimensions, by that date it was filled up, and the successors of Pope Victor, we know, were interred in a chamber appropriated to them in the Cemetery of S. Callistus in the great Catacomb so named on the Appian Way.

The other interments in the sacred Vatican Cemetery in the immediate neighbourhood of the apostle’s tomb—some of the more notable of which have been noticed in our little extracts from the Ubaldi Memoranda—were apparently the bodies or the sad remains of martyrs of the first and second centuries of the Christian era, or in a few cases of distinguished confessors of the Faith whose names and story are forgotten, but to whom Prudentius (quoted on p. [216]) has alluded.

There is an invaluable record of what lies beneath the high altar and the western part of the great Mother Church of Christendom.

In a rare plan of this Cemetery of the Vatican drawn by Benedetto Drei, Master Mason of Pope Paul V, which apparently was made during the period of the first discoveries under Paul V, some time between A.D. 1607 and 1615, and which has received certain later corrections no doubt after the second series of discoveries consequent upon the excavations for the foundations in the neighbourhood of the tomb of S. Peter, for the great bronze baldachino of Bernini in the days of Pope Urban VIII, about A.D. 1626.

This plan of Drei is most valuable, though not accurate in detail. It marks the position of some of the graves which were found, but not of all that were disclosed in the second series of discoveries under Urban VIII. It was not issued until A.D. 1635. This later date explains the corrections which have been inserted.