A visit to the Roman catacombs

by J. Spencer Northcote

Glass in the Vatican Library.

Representing Christ between SS. Peter and Paul; also Christ as the Lamb, and the faithful as Lambs—Jews and Gentiles coming from Jerusalem and Bethlehem (Becle) to Mount Sion, whence flow the four Evangelical Streams, united in the Mystical Jordan.

We may still further add, that the cycle of scriptural subjects was somewhat enlarged by the sculptors; at least, we do not know of any paintings in the Catacombs which represent our Lord giving sight to the blind, or raising the dead child to life, or healing the woman who touched the hem of His garment; or His nativity, His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, or certain scenes of His Passion; yet all these, and some others besides, may be seen carved on the old Christian monuments collected in the Lateran Museum at Rome and elsewhere. The sarcophagus which has the representation of the Nativity, and with the traditional ox and ass by the manger, has its own date upon it, A.D. 343; but, as we are not here writing a complete history of Christian art, it must suffice to have given this general idea of its earliest efforts both in painting and sculpture.

CHAPTER VI.
THEIR INSCRIPTIONS.

What student of antiquity, or what merely intelligent observer of men and manners, is content to leave an old church or churchyard without first casting his eye over its monumental inscriptions? In like manner, we think our readers would justly complain if we bade them take leave of the Catacombs without saying a word about their epitaphs. And if the study of any considerable number of epitaphs anywhere is pretty sure to be rewarded by the discovery of something more or less interesting, how much more have we not a right to expect from the monuments of Roman Christianity during a period of three or four hundred years!

And truly, if all these monuments had been preserved and gathered together into one place, or, better still, had all been left in their original places, they would have formed an invaluable and inexhaustible library for the Christian archæologist. This, however, has not been their lot. Hundreds and thousands of them have been destroyed by those who have broken into the Catacombs from time to time during the last thousand years, and drawn from them materials for building. Others, again, and amongst them some of the most valuable, have been given to learned antiquarians or devout ecclesiastics, who coveted them for their own private possession, and carried them off to their own distant homes, without reflecting upon the grievous injury which they were thus inflicting upon those that should come after them. A much larger number have been most injudiciously placed, even by persons who knew their value, and were anxious for their preservation, in the pavements of Roman churches, where they have been either gradually effaced by the constant tread of worshippers, or thoughtlessly removed and lost sight of on occasion of some subsequent restoration of this portion of the church. A few have been more securely placed in the museums of the Capitol and of the Roman College, in the porticoes of some of the Roman churches, or in the cloisters of convents. Lastly, twelve or thirteen hundred were brought together, some eighty or ninety years ago, in the Library and Lapidarian Gallery at the Vatican—a number sufficiently great to enable us to appreciate their value, and to increase our regret that so many more should have been dispersed and lost.

It is to the sovereign Pontiffs that we are principally indebted for whatever fragments have been preserved from the general wreck. As early as the middle of the fifteenth century, Pope Nicholas V. seems to have entertained the idea of collecting all the lapidarian monuments of early Christianity which had at that time been discovered; and both Eugenius IV., his immediate predecessor, and Calixtus III. who succeeded him, forbade, under heavy penalties, the alienation or destruction of anything belonging to this class of monuments. When Leo X., too, appointed Raphael to superintend the works at the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, he gave him a special charge that the res lapidaria should not be injured. In later times, these injunctions became more earnest and more frequent, in proportion to the increasing number and importance of the inscriptions that were brought to light. Still nothing practical appears to have been devised until the reign of Benedict XIV., who appointed the learned Francesco Bianchini to collect all the inscribed stones that could be found; and it was he who recommended the long narrow gallery leading to the Vatican Library and Museum as a convenient place for their preservation. Even then political and other difficulties interfered to prevent the execution of the design, so that it was not until the close of the last century that it was really carried out by Gaetano Marini, under the orders of Pope Pius VI. It is to be regretted that he took so little pains to make the most of such materials as he had. He merely inserted the monuments in the wall, without giving any indication of the places where they had been found, or making any attempts to classify them, beyond separating the few which contain the names of the consuls from those which are without this chronological note. A small selection has since been made, in our own day, by De Rossi, in obedience to the orders of Pope Pius IX., and placed in a gallery of the Lateran Palace, adjoining the Christian Museum. The arrangement of these specimens (few as they are, comparatively speaking) makes it a valuable guide to those who would study this part of our subject to any profit.

The collections at the Vatican and the Lateran together do not exceed two thousand. Hundreds of others, recovered by more recent excavations, have not yet found a suitable home; many have been left in their original sites. Still it will always remain true that the number actually in existence is quite insignificant when compared with those which have been destroyed or lost. A large proportion, however, even of these have not altogether perished; they were copied, not always with accuracy, yet with praiseworthy diligence, by various scholars, even from the eighth and ninth centuries; and since the invention of printing, similar collections have been, of course, more frequent. We need not enter into any detailed account of these; we will say but a brief word even about De Rossi’s collection, for as yet he has only published the first volume, which contains all the Christian inscriptions of Rome during the first six centuries, whose date is indisputably fixed by the names of the consuls having been appended to them.

Of these, only one belongs to the first century, two to the second, the third supplies twenty, and the fourth and fifth about five hundred each. Of this last century, of course, only those which belong to the first ten years can be claimed for the Catacombs, because, as we have already seen, they ceased after that period to be the common cemetery of the faithful. It appears, then, that all the dated inscriptions of gravestones found in the Catacombs up to the year 1864 do not amount to six hundred: whence some writers have argued that in the earliest ages Christians were not in the habit of inscribing epitaphs on their graves. This conclusion, however, is obviously illogical; for we have no right to assume that the proportion between dated and undated inscriptions remained uniform during the first four centuries. If there are only six hundred epitaphs bearing the names of consuls, there are more than twice as many thousands without those names; and we must seek, by independent processes of inquiry, to establish other chronological criteria, which, if not equally exact, may yet be shown to be generally trustworthy. And this is what De Rossi has done, with a zeal tempered by caution which is beyond all praise. It would be impossible to exaggerate, first, the slow and patient industry with which he has accumulated observations; then the care and assiduity with which he compares the innumerable examples he has collected with one another, so as to ascertain their marks of resemblance and difference; and finally, the moderation with which he has drawn his conclusions. These vary in value, from mere conjecture to the highest degree of probability, or even of moral certainty. In a popular work like this, there is no room for discussion; we must confine ourselves to a statement of some of the best ascertained and most important facts, resting upon certain chronological canons, which a daily increasing experience warrants us in saying are now demonstrated with palpable and almost mathematical exactness.