§ 38.1. The Catacombs.—The Christian burying places were generally called κοιμητήρια, Dormitoria. They were laid out sometimes in the open fields (Areæ), sometimes, where the district was suitable for that, hewn out in the rock (κρύπται, crypts). This latter term was, by the middle of the 4th century, quite interchangeable with the name Catacumbæ, (κατὰ κύμβας=in the caves). The custom of laying the dead in natural or rock-hewn caves was familiar to pagan antiquity, especially in the East. But the recesses used for this purpose were only private or family vaults. Their growth into catacombs or subterranean necropolises for larger companies bound together by their one religion without distinctions of rank (Gal. iii. 28), first arose on Christian soil from a consciousness that their fellowship transcended death and the grave. For the accomplishment of this difficult and costly undertaking, Christian burial societies were formed after the pattern of similar institutions of paganism (§ [17, 3]). Specially numerous and extensive necropolises have been found laid out in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. But also in Malta, in Naples, Syracuse, Palermo, and other cities, this mode of sepulchre found favour. The Roman catacombs, of which in the hilly district round about the eternal city fifty-eight have been counted in fourteen different highways, are almost all laid out in the white porous tufa stone which is there so abundant, and useful neither for building nor for mortar. It is thus apparent that these are neither wrought-out quarries nor gravel pits (Arenariæ), but were set in order from the first as cemeteries. A few Arenariæ may indeed have been used as catacombs, but then the sides with the burial niches consist of regularly built walls. The Roman Catacombs in the tufa stone form labyrinthine, twisting, steep galleries only 3 or 4 feet broad, with rectangular corners caused by countless intersections. Their perpendicular sides varied greatly in height and in them the burial niches, Loculi, were hewn out one above the other, and on the reception of the body were built up or hermetically sealed with a stone slab bearing an inscription and a Christian symbol. The wealthy laid their dead in costly marble sarcophagi or stone coffins ornamented with bas-reliefs. The walls too and the low-arched roofs were adorned with symbols and pictures of scripture scenes. From the principal passages many side paths branched off to so-called burial chambers, Cubicula, which were furnished with shafts opening up to the surface and affording air and light, Luminaria. In many of these chambers, sometimes even in the passages, instead of simple Loculi we meet with the so-called Arcosolium as the more usual form; one or more coffin-shaped grooves hewn out in the rocky wall are covered with an altar-shaped marble plate, and over this plate, Mensa, is a semicircular niche hewn out spreading over it in its whole extent. These chambers are often held in reverence as “catacomb churches,” but they are so small in size that they could only accommodate a very limited number, such as might gather perhaps at the commemoration of a martyr or the members of a single family. And even where two or three such chambers adjoin one another, connected together by doors and having a common lighting shaft, accommodating at furthest about twenty people, they could not be regarded as meeting-places for public congregations properly so called.—Where the deposit of tufa stone was sufficiently large, there were several stories (Piani), as many as four or five connected by stairs, laid out one above the other in galleries and chambers.According to de Rossi’s[103] moderate calculation there have been opened altogether up to this time so many passages in the catacombs that if they were put in a line they would form a street of 120 geographical miles. Their oldest inscriptions or epitaphs date from the first years of the second century. After the destruction of Rome by the hordes of Alaric in A.D. 410, the custom of burying in them almost entirely ceased.Thereafter they were used only as places of pilgrimage and spots where martyr’s relics were worshipped. From this time the most of the so-called Graffiti, i.e. scribblings of visitors on the walls, consisting of pious wishes and prayers, had their origin. The marauding expedition of the Longobard Aistulf into Roman territory in A.D. 756, in which even the catacombs were stripped of their treasures, led Pope Paul I. to transfer the relics of all notable martyrs to their Roman churches and cloisters. Then pilgrimages to the catacombs ceased, their entrances got blocked up, and the few which in later times were still accessible, were only sought out by a few novelty hunting strangers. Thus the whole affair was nigh forgotten until in A.D. 1578 a new and lively interest was awakened by the chance opening up again of one of those closed passages. Ant. Bosio from A.D. 1593 till his death in A.D. 1629, often at the risk of his life, devoted all his time and energies to their exploration.But great as his discoveries were, they have been completely outdone by the researches of the Roman nobleman, Giov. Battista de Rossi, who, working unweariedly at his task since A.D. 1849 till the present time, is recognised as the great master of the subject, although even his investigations are often too much dominated by Roman Catholic prejudices and by undue regard for traditional views.[104]
§ 38.2. The Antiquities of the Catacombs.—The custom widely spread in ancient times and originating in piety or superstition of placing in the tombs the utensils that had been used by the deceased during life was continued, as the contents of many burial niches show among the early Christians. Children’s toys were placed beside them in the grave, and the clothes, jewels, ornaments, amulets, etc., of grown up people. Quite a special interest attaches to the so-called Blood Vases, Phiolæ rubricatæ, which have been found in or near many of these niches, i.e. crystal, rarely earthenware, vessels with Christian symbols figured on a red ground. The Congregation of rites and relics in A.D. 1668, asserted that they were blood-vessels, in which the blood of the martyrs had been preserved and stood alongside of their bones; and the existence of such jars, as well as every pictorial representation of the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9), was supposed to afford an indubitable proof that the niches in question contained the bones of martyrs. But the Reformed theologian Basnage shows that this assumption is quite untenable, and he has explained the red ground from the dregs of the red sacramental wine which may have been placed in the burial niches as a protection against demoniacal intrusion. Even many good Roman Catholic archæologists, Mabillon, Papebroch, Tillemont, Muratori, etc., contest or express doubts as to the decree of the Congregation. At the instigation probably of the Belgian Jesuit Vict. de Buck, Pius IX. in A.D. 1863 confirmed and renewed the old decree, and among others, Xav. Kraus has appeared as its defender. But a great multitude of unquestionable facts contradict the official decree of the church; e.g. the total absence of any support to this view in tradition, the silence of such inscriptions as relate to the martyrs, above all the immense number of these jars, their being found frequently alongside the bones of children of seven years old, the remarkable frequency of them in the times of Constantine and his successors which were free from persecution, the absence of the red dregs in many jars, etc. Since dregs of wine, owing to their having the vegetable property of combinableness could scarcely be discernible down to the present day, it has recently been suggested that the red colour may have been produced by a mineral-chemical process as oxide of iron.
§ 38.3. Pictorial Art and the Catacombs.—Many of the earliest Christians may have inherited a certain dislike of the pictorial arts from Judaism, and may have been confirmed therein by their abhorrence of the frivolous and godless abuse of art in heathenism. But this aversion which in a Tertullian grew from a Montanistic rigorism into a fanatical hatred of art, is never met with as a constituent characteristic of Christianity. Much rather the great abundance of paintings on the walls of the Roman and Neapolitan catacombs, of which many, and these not the meanest, belong to the 2nd century, some indeed perhaps to the last decades of the 1st century, serves to show how general and lively was the artistic sense among the earliest Christians at least in the larger and wealthier communities. Yet from its circumstances the Christian church in its appreciation of art was almost necessarily limited on two sides; for, on the one hand, no paintings were tolerated in the churches, and on the other hand, even in private houses and catacombs they were restricted almost exclusively to symbolico-allegorical or typical representations. The 36th Canon of the Council of Elvira in A.D. 306 is a witness for the first statement when it says: Placuit picturas in ecclesia non esse debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur. The plain words of the Canon forbid any other interpretation than this: From the churches, as places where public worship is regularly held, all pictorial representations must be banished, in order to make certain that in and under them there might not creep in those images, forbidden in the decalogue, of Him who is the object of worship and adoration. The Council thus assumed practically the same standpoint as the Reformed church in the 16th century did in opposition to the practice of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. It cannot, however, be maintained that the Canon of this rigorous Council (§ [45, 2]) found general acceptance and enforcement outside of Spain—Proof of the second limitation is as convincingly afforded by what we find in the catacombs. On the positive side, it has its roots in the fondness which prevailed during these times for the mystical and allegorical interpretation of scripture; and on the negative side, in the endeavour, partly in respect for the prohibition of images contained in the decalogue, partly, and perhaps mainly, in the interests of the so-called Disciplina arcani, fostered under pressure of persecution, to represent everything that pertained to the mysteries of the Christian faith as a matter which only Christians have a right fully to understand. From the prominence given to the point last referred to it may be explained how amid the revolution that took place under Constantine the age of Symbolism and Allegory in the history of Christian art also passed away, and henceforth painters applied themselves pre-eminently to realistic historical representations.
§ 38.4. The pictorial and artistic representations of the pre-Constantine age may be divided into the six following groups:—
- Significant Symbols.—To these belong especially the cross,[105] though, for fear of the reproaches of Jews and heathens (§ [23, 2]), not yet in its own proper form but only in a form that indicated what was meant, namely in the form of the Greek Τ, very frequently in later times in the monogram of the name of Christ, i.e. in a variously constructed combination of its first two letters Χ and Ρ, while the Χ, as crux dissimulatæ, has very often on either side the letters α and ω.
- Allegorical Figures.—In the 4th century a particularly favourite figure was that of the Fish, the name of which, ἰχθύς, formed a highly significant monogrammatic representation of the sentence, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωτήρ, and which pointed strikingly to the new birth from the water of baptism. Then there is the lamb or sheep, as symbol of the soul, which still in this life seeks after spiritual pastures; and the dove as symbol of the pious believing soul passing into eternal rest, often with an olive branch in its mouth (Gen. viii. 11), as symbol of the eternal peace won. Also we have the hart (Ps. xlii. 1), the eagle (Ps. ciii. 5), the chicken, symbol of Christian growth, the peacock, symbol of the resurrection on account of the annual renewal of its beautiful plumage, the dolphin, symbol of hastiness or eagerness in the appropriation of salvation, the horse, symbol of the race unto the goal of eternal life, the hare, as symbol of the Christian working out his salvation with fear and trembling, the ship, with reference to Noah’s ark as a figure of the church, the anchor (Heb. vi. 19), the lyre (Eph. v. 19), the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9), the garland (or crown of life, Rev. ii. 9), the lily (Matt. vi. 28), the balances, symbol of divine righteousness, fishes and bread, symbol of spiritual nourishment with reference to Christ’s miracle of feeding in the wilderness, etc.
- Parabolic Figures.—These are illustrations borrowed from the parables of the Gospels. To these belong conspicuously the figure of the Good Shepherd, who bears on His shoulder the lost sheep that He had found (Luke xv. 5), the Vine Stock (John xv.), the Sower (Matt. xiii. 3), the Marriage Feast (Matt. xxii.), the Ten Virgins (Matt. xxv.), etc.
- Historical Pictures of O. T. Types.—Among these we have Adam and Eve, the Rivers of Paradise (as types of the four evangelists), Abel and Cain, Noah in the Ark, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Scenes from Joseph’s History, Moses at the Burning Bush, the Passage of the Red Sea, the Falling of the Manna, the Water out of the Rock, History of Job, Samson with the Gates of Gaza (the gates of Hell), David’s Victory over Goliath, Elijah’s Ascension, Scenes from the History of Jonah and Tobit, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, etc. Also typical material from heathen mythology had a place assigned them, such as the legends of Hercules, Theseus, and especially of Orpheus who by his music bewitched the raging elements and tamed the wild beasts, descended into the lower world and met his death through the infuriated women of his own race.
- Figures from the Gospel History.—These, e.g. the Visit of the Wise Men from the East, and the Resurrection of Lazarus, are throughout this period still exceedingly rare. We do not find a single representation of the Passion of our Lord, nor any of the sufferings of Christian martyrs. Pictorial representations of the person of Christ, as a beardless youth with a friendly mild expression, are met with in the catacombs from the first half of the 2nd century, but without any claim to supply the likeness of a portrait, such as might be claimed for the figures of Christ in the temple of the Carpocratians (§ [27, 8]) and in the Lararium of the Emperor Alexander Severus (§ [22, 4]). Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, in accordance with the literal interpretation of Isa. liii. 2, 3, thought that Christ had an unattractive face; the post-Constantine fathers, on the contrary, resting upon Ps. xlv. 3 and John i. 14, thought of Him as beautiful and gracious.
- Liturgical Figures.—These were connected only with the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
§ 39. Life, Manners, and Discipline.[106]
When the chaff had been so relentlessly severed from the wheat by the persecutions of that age, a moral earnestness and a power of denying the world and self must have been developed, sustained by the divine power of the gospel and furthered by a strict and rigorous application of church discipline to the Christian life, such as the world had never seen before. What most excited and deserved wonder in the sphere of heathendom, hitherto accustomed only to the reign of selfishness, was the brotherly love of the Christians, their systematic care of the poor and sick, the widespread hospitality, the sanctity of marriage, the delight in martyrdom, etc. Marriages with Jews, heathens and heretics were disapproved, frequently even the celebration of a second marriage after the death of the first wife was disallowed. Public amusements, dances, and theatres were avoided by Christians as Pompa diaboli. They thought of the Christian life, in accordance with Eph. vi. 10 ff., as Militia Christi. But even in the Post-Apostolic Age we come upon indications of a tendency to turn from the evangelical spirituality, freedom and simplicity of the Apostolic Age toward a pseudo-catholic externalism and legalism in the fundamental views taken of ethical problems, and at the same time and in the same way in the departments of the church constitution (§ [34]), worship (§ [36]) and exposition of doctrine (§ [30, 2]). The teachers of the church do still indeed maintain the necessity of a disposition corresponding to the outward works, but by an over-estimation of these they already prepare the way for the doctrine of merit and the opus operatum, i.e. the meritoriousness of works in themselves. Even the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache reckon almsgiving as an atonement for sins. Still more conspicuously is this tendency exhibited by Cyprian (De Opere et eleemosynis) and even in the Shepherd of Hermas (§ [30, 4]) we find the beginnings of the later distinction, based upon 1 Cor. vii. 25, 26; Matt. xxv. 21, and Luke xviii. 10, between the divine commands, Mandata or Præcepta, which are binding upon all Christians, and the evangelical counsels, Consilia evangelica, the non-performance of which is no sin, but the doing of which secures a claim to merit and more full divine approval. Among the Alexandrian theologians, too, under the influence of the Greek philosophy a very similar idea was developed in the distinction between higher and lower morality, after the former of which the Christian sage (ὁ γνωστικός) is required to shine, while the ordinary Christian may rest satisfied with the latter. On such a basis a special order of Ascetics very early made its appearance in the churches. Those who went the length of renouncing the world and going out into the wilderness were called Anchorets. This order first assumed considerable dimensions in the 4th century (§ [44]).
§ 39.1. Christian Morals and Manners.—The Christian spirit pervaded the domestic and civil life and here formed for itself a code of Christian morals. It expressed itself in the family devotions and family communions (§ [36, 3]), in putting the sign of the cross upon all callings in life, in the Christian symbols (§ [38, 3]) with which dwellings, garments, walls, lamps, cups, glasses, rings, etc. were adorned. As to private worship the Didache requires without fixing the hours that the head of the household shall have prayers three times a day (Dan. vi. 30), meaning probably, as with Origen, morning, noon, and night. Tertullian specifies the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours as the hours of prayer, and distinctly demands a separate morning and evening prayer.—The concluding of marriage according to the then existing Roman law had to be formally carried through by the expressed agreement of the parties in the presence of witnesses, and this on the part of the church was regarded as valid. The Christian custom required that there should be a previous making of it known, Professio, to the bishop, and a subsequent going to the church of the newly married pair in order that, amid the church’s intercessions and the priestly benediction, a religious sanction might be given to their marriage covenant, by the oblation and common participation of the Lord’s Supper at the close of the public services. Tertullian’s Montanistic rigorism shows itself in regarding marriages where these are omitted, occultæ conjunctiones, as no better than mœchia and fornicatio. The crowning of the two betrothed ones and the veiling of the bride were still disallowed as heathenish practices; but the use of the wedding ring was sanctioned at an early date and had a Christian significance attached to it. The burning of dead bodies prevalent among the heathens reminded them of hell fire; the Christians therefore preferred the Jewish custom of burial and referred in support to 1 Cor. xv. 36. The day of the deaths of their deceased members were celebrated in the Christian families by prayer and oblations in testimony of their fellowship remaining unbroken by death and the grave.—Continuation § [61, 2], [3].
§ 39.2. The Penitential Discipline.—According to the Apostolic ordinance (§ [17, 8]) notorious sinners were excluded from the fellowship of the church, Excommunicatio, and only after prolonged trial of their penitence, Exomologesis, were they received back again, Reconciliatio. In the time of Cyprian, about A.D. 250, there was already a well defined order of procedure in this matter of restoring the lapsed which continued in force until the 5th century. Penance, Pœnitentia, must extend through four stages, each of which according to circumstances might require one or more years. During the first stage, the πρόσκλαυσις, Fletio, the penitents, standing at the church doors in mourning dress, made supplication to the clergy and the congregation for restoration; in the second, the ἀκρόασις, Auditio, they were admitted again to the reading of the scriptures and the sermon, but still kept in a separate place; in the third, ὑπόπτωσις, Substratio, they were allowed to kneel at prayer; and finally, in the fourth, σύστασις, Consistentia, they took part again in the whole of the public services, with the exception of the communion which they were only allowed to look at standing. Then they received Absolution and Reconciliation (=pacem dare) in presence of the assembled and acquiescing congregation by the imposition of the hands of the bishop and the whole of the clergy, together with the brotherly kiss and the partaking of the communion. This procedure was directed against open and demonstrable sins of a serious nature against the two tables of the decalogue, against so called deadly sins, Peccata or crimina mortalia, 1 John v. 16. Excommunication was called forth, on the one side, against idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy from the faith and abjuration thereof; on the other, against murder, adultery and fornication, theft and lying, perfidy and false swearing. Whether reconciliation was permissible in the case of any mortal sin at all, and if so, what particular sins might thus be treated, were questions upon which teachers of the church were much divided during the 3rd century. But only the Montanists and Novatians (§§ [40], [41]) denied the permissibility utterly and that in opposition to the prevailing practice of the church, which refused reconciliation absolutely only in cases of idolatry and murder, and sometimes also in the case of adultery. Even Cyprian at first held firmly by the principle that all mortal sins committed “against God” must be wholly excluded from the range of penitential discipline, but amid the horrors of the Decian persecution, which left behind it whole crowds of fallen ones, Lapsi (§ [22, 5]), he was induced by the passionate entreaties of the church to make the concession that reconciliation should be granted to the Libellatici after a full penitential course, but to the Sacrificati only when in danger of death. All the teachers of the church, however, agree in holding that it can be granted only once in this life, and those who again fall away are cut off absolutely. But excessive strictness in the treatment of the penitents called forth the contrary extreme of undue laxity (§ [41, 2]).The Confessors frequently used their right of demanding the restoration of the fallen by means of letters of recommendation, Libelli pacis, to such an extent as to seriously interfere with a wholesome discipline.[107]—Continuation § [61, 1].
§ 39.3. Asceticism.—The Ascetism (Continentia, ἐγκρατεία) of heathenism and Judaism, of Pythagoreanism and Essenism, resting on dualistic and pseudo-spiritualistic views, is confronted in Christianity with the proposition: Πάντα ὑμῶν ἐστιν (1 Cor. iii. 21; vi. 12). Christianity, however, also recognised the ethical value and relative wholesomeness of a moderate asceticism in proportion to individual temperament, needs and circumstances (Matt. ix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. 5-7), without demanding it or regarding it as something meritorious. This evangelical moderation we also find still in the 2nd century, e.g. in Ignatius. But very soon a gradual exaggeration becomes apparent and an ever-advancing over estimation of asceticism as a higher degree of morality with claims to be considered peculiarly meritorious. The negative requirements of asceticism are directed first of all to frequent and rigid fasts and to celibacy or abstinence from marital intercourse; its positive requirements, to the exercise of the spiritual life in prayer and meditation. The most of the Ascetics, too, in accordance with Luke xviii. 24, voluntarily divested themselves of their possessions. The number of them, men and women, increased, and even in the first half of the 2nd century, they formed a distinct order in the church, though they were not yet bound to observe this mode of life by any irrevocable vows. The idea that the clergy were in a special sense called to an ascetic life resulted in their being designated the κλῆρος Θεοῦ. Owing to the interpretation given to 1 Tim. iii. 2, second marriages were in the 2nd century prohibited among the clergy, and in the 3rd century it was regarded as improper for them after ordination to continue marital intercourse. But it was first at the Council of Elvira, in A.D. 306, that this opinion was elevated into a law, though it could not even then be rigorously enforced (§ [45, 2]).—The immoral practice of ascetics or clerics having with them virgins devoted to God’s service as Sorores, ἀδελφαί on the ground of 1 Cor. ix. 5, with whom they were united in spiritual love, in order to show their superiority to the temptations of the flesh, seems to have been introduced as early as the 2nd century. In the middle of the 3rd century it was already widespread. Cyprian repeatedly inveighs against it. We learn from him that the so-called Sorores slept with the Ascetics in one bed and surrendered themselves to the tenderest caresses. For proof of the purity of their relations they referred to the examinations of midwives. Among bishops, Paul of Samosata in Antioch (§ [33, 8]) seems to have been the first who favoured this evil custom by his own example. The popular wit of the Antiochenes [Antiocheans] invented for the more than doubtful relationship the name of the γυναίκες συνεισάκτοι, Subintroductæ, Agapetæ, Extreneæ. Bishops and Councils sent forth strict decrees against the practice.—The most remarkable among the celebrated ascetics of the age was Hieracas, who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt toward the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century and died there when ninety years old. A pupil of Origen, he was distinguished for great learning, favoured the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, a spiritualistic dogmatics and strict asceticism. Besides this he was a physician, astronomer and writer of hymns, could repeat by heart almost all the Old and New Testaments, wrote commentaries in Greek and Coptic, and gathered round him a numerous society of men and women, who accepted his ascetical principles and heterodox views. Founding upon Matt. xix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. and Heb. xii. 14, he maintained that celibacy was the only perfectly sure way to blessedness and commended this doctrine as the essential advance from the Old Testament to the New Testament morality. He even denied salvation to Christian children dying in infancy because they had not yet fought against sensuality, referring to 2 Tim. ii. 5. Of a sensible paradise he would hear nothing, and just as little of a bodily resurrection; for the one he interprets allegorically and the other spiritually. Epiphanius, to whom we owe any precise information that we have about him, is the first to assign him and his followers a place in the list of heretics.