A visit to the Roman catacombs

by J. Spencer Northcote

We have said that the Acts of the Saint’s martyrdom assert that Pope Urban had buried her near to his own colleagues. The itineraries of ancient pilgrims mention her grave, either immediately before, or immediately after, those of the Popes. Finally, Pope Paschal says that he found her body close to the place whence he had withdrawn the bodies of his predecessors. Are these topographical notices true or false? This is the question which must have agitated the mind of De Rossi when he discovered this chamber so immediately contiguous to that in which he had learnt for certain that the Popes had been buried; or rather—for his own conviction upon this subject had been already formed—would there be anything in the chamber itself to confirm his conclusion, and to establish it to the satisfaction of others? We may imagine with what eagerness he desired to penetrate it. But this could not be done at once. The chapel was full of earth, even to the very top of the luminare, and all this soil must first be removed, through the luminare itself. As the work of excavation proceeded, there came to light first, on the wall of the luminare, the figure of a woman in the usual attitude of prayer, but so indistinct as to baffle all attempts at identification. Below this there appeared a Latin cross between two sheep, which may still be seen, though these also are much faded. Still lower down the wall—the wall, that is, of the luminare, not of the chamber itself—we come upon the figures of three saints, executed apparently in the fourth, or perhaps even the fifth century; but they are all of men; and as their names inscribed at the side show no trace of any connection with the history of St. Cecilia, we will postpone what we have to say about them for the present, and proceed with our work of clearance of the whole chamber.

As we come nearer to the floor, we find upon the wall, close to the entrance from the burial-place of the popes, a painting which may be attributed, perhaps, to the seventh century, of a woman, richly attired, with pearls hanging from her ears and entwined in her hair, necklaces and bracelets of pearls and gold; a white dress covered with a pink tunic ornamented with gold and silver flowers, and large roses springing out of the ground by her feet. Everything about the painting is rich, and bright, and gay, such as an artist of the seventh century might picture to himself that a Roman bride, of wealth and noble family, like St. Cecilia, ought to have been. Below this figure we come to a niche, such as is found in other parts of the Catacombs, to receive the large shallow vessels of oil, or precious unguents, which, in ancient times, were used to feed the lamps burning before the tombs of the martyrs. At the back of this niche is a large head of our Lord, represented according to the Byzantine type, and with rays of glory behind it in the form of a Greek cross. Side by side with this, but on the flat surface of the wall, is a figure of a bishop, in full pontifical dress, with his name inscribed, S. VRBANVS.

Crypt of St. Cecilia.

Examination of these paintings shows that they were not the original ornaments of the place. The painting of St. Cecilia was executed on the surface of ruined mosaic work, portions of which may still be easily detected towards the bottom of the picture. The niche, too, in which our Lord’s head is painted bears evident traces of having once been encased with porphyry, and both it and the figure of St. Urban are so rudely done, that they might have been executed as late as the tenth or eleventh century. Probably they belong to the age of the translation of the relics—i.e., the ninth century. A half-obliterated scroll or tablet by the side of the figure of St. Urban states that it was intended as an ornament to the martyr’s sepulchre—Decori Sepulcri S. Cæciliæ martyris. When we add that immediately by the side of these paintings is a deep recess in the wall, capable of receiving a large sarcophagus, and that between the back of this recess and the back of one of the papal graves in the adjoining chamber, there is scarcely an inch of rock, we think the most sceptical of critics will confess that the old traditions are very remarkably confirmed.

It will be asked, however, if this is really the place where St. Cecilia was buried, and if Paschal really visited the adjoining chapel, how is it possible that he could have had any difficulty in finding her tomb? To this we reply, first, by reminding our readers of the condition in which the Catacombs were at that time: these translations of relics were being made, because the cemeteries in which they lay were utterly ruined. But, secondly, it is very possible that the doorway, or the recess, or both, may have been walled up or otherwise concealed, for the express purpose of baffling the search of the sacrilegious Lombards. Nor is this mere conjecture. Among the débris of this spot De Rossi has found several fragments of a wall, too thin ever to have been used as a means of support, but manifestly serviceable as a curtain of concealment; and, although, with that perfect candour and truthfulness which so enhances all his other merits, he adds that these fragments bear tokens of belonging to a later date, this does not prove that there had not been another wall of the same kind at an earlier period; for he is able to quote from his own discoveries the instance of an arcosolium in another Catacomb, which was thus carefully concealed in very ancient times by the erection of a wall. However, be the true explanation of this difficulty what it may, our ignorance on this subject cannot be allowed to outweigh the explicit testimony of Paschal and the other ancient witnesses now so abundantly confirmed by modern discoveries.

But it may be objected yet once more, that there is an inscription in the Catacomb under the Basilica of St. Sebastian, more than a quarter of a mile off, which states that St. Cecilia was buried there. Most true, but consider the date of the inscription. It was set up by William de Bois-Ratier, Archbishop of Bourges, in the year 1609; and there are other inscriptions hard by, of the same or of a later date, which claim for the same locality the tombs of several popes, as well as of thousands of martyrs. The inscriptions were set up precisely during that age in which the Catacombs were buried in the most profound darkness and oblivion. We have already explained ([page 50]) how it came to pass that whilst the other ancient cemeteries were inaccessible and unknown, this one under the Church of St. Sebastian still remained partially open; and we can heartily sympathise with the religious feelings which prompted the good Archbishop and others to make an appeal to the devotion of the faithful not to lose the memory of those glorious martyrs who had certainly been buried in a Catacomb on this road, and at no great distance, yet not in this particular spot. But whilst we admire their piety, we cannot bow to their authority upon a topographical question, which they had no means of deciding, and in respect to which recent discoveries, as well as the testimony of more ancient documents, prove to a demonstration that they were certainly wrong.

Dismissing, then, all these objections, which it was quite right and reasonable to raise, but which, on critical examination, entirely disappear, we may rest assured that we have here certainly recovered the original resting-place of one of the most ancient and famous of Rome’s virgin saints. Let us take one more look round the crypt before we leave it. If we examine the picture of the saint more closely, we shall find it defaced by a number of graffiti, which may be divided into two classes; the one class quite irregular, both as to place and style of writing, consisting only of the names of pilgrims who had visited the shrine, several of whom were not Romans but foreigners. Thus, one is named Hildebrandus, another Lupo, another is a Bishop Ethelred, and two write themselves down Spaniards. But the other class of graffiti is quite regular, arranged in four lines, and contains almost exclusively the names of priests; the only exceptions being that one woman appears amongst them, but it is added that she is the mother of the priest (Leo) who signs before her, and that the last signature of all is that of a scriniarius, or secretary. There is something about this arrangement of names which suggests the idea of an official act; neither can it be attributed to chance that several of the same names (including the unusual name of Mercurius, and written too in the same peculiar style, a mixture of square and of cursive letters) appear on the painting of St. Cornelius, presently to be visited in a catacomb under this same vineyard, whence his body was translated some thirty or forty years before St. Cecilia’s. In both cases these priests probably signed as witnesses of the translation.

It only remains that we should fulfil our promise to say a word or two about those saints whose names and figures we saw in the luminare. They are three in number, St. Sebastian, St. Cyrinus, and St. Polycamus. We know of no other Sebastian that can be meant here but the famous martyr, whose basilica we have mentioned before as being not far off. Cyrinus, or Quirinus, was Bishop of Siscia in Illyria, and martyr. In the days of Prudentius his body lay in his own city, but when Illyria was invaded by the barbarians it was brought to Rome and buried in the Basilica of St. Sebastian about the year 420. Of Polycamus the history is altogether lost; neither ecclesiastical historians nor martyrologists have left us any record of his life. We know, however, from the Itineraries of the old pilgrims that there was the tomb of one Polycamus, a martyr, near that of St. Cecilia, and the same name appears among the martyrs whose relics were removed from the Catacombs to the churches within the city. It would seem then that the figures of these three saints were painted in the luminare of this chamber, only because they were saints to whom there was much devotion, and whose relics were lying at no great distance.