A visit to the Roman catacombs

by J. Spencer Northcote

It is from another inscription of Pope Damasus that we learn the history of the noble young acolyte and martyr, St. Tharsicius, who was seized one day as he was leaving a catacomb in which the holy mysteries had just been celebrated, and was carrying the Blessed Sacrament secretly about his person to convey to some of the absent faithful, who were either sick, or had not dared to fly in the face of the law prohibiting the Christian assemblies. The youth sacrificed his life rather than betray to Pagan eyes the priceless treasure that had been intrusted to his keeping. Then they rifled his corpse, yet their profane curiosity was not gratified; and the holy martyr was buried in the cemetery of St. Callixtus, whence he had probably set out.

St. Agnes also belongs to the same period which we are trying to illustrate, but she belongs to its very last stage, during the persecution of Diocletian, when, as we have said, the Catacombs were altogether confiscated. Still this did not succeed in rigorously excluding the faithful. We know, from the irrefragable testimony of dated inscriptions, that even at such times as these the Christians managed to gain admission and to bury there. There is nothing, therefore, strange or inconsistent with history in the story of her parents having been engaged in prayer at her tomb two days after her martyrdom, when they were consoled by the vision of her glory in heaven; nor in that other story that her foster-sister, St. Emerentiana, was in the same place baptized in her own blood.

CHAPTER III.
THEIR HISTORY FROM A.D. 310 TO A.D. 850.

The persecution of Diocletian ended in 306, but it was not until 311 that the Catacombs were restored to their natural owners and protectors, the Bishops of Rome. In that year the Pope Melchiades sent, by the hands of some of his deacons, letters from the Emperor Maxentius to the Prefect of the city, that he might recover legal possession of all “the ecclesiastical places” of which the Christians had been plundered; and amongst these places, the cemeteries were the most precious. About this time, if not earlier, other cemeteries also were made, more easily and at less cost, above ground instead of below; and during the next hundred years both places of burial were in use. If we may take the dated inscriptions as a guide in estimating the relative proportions in which they were used, we should say that burial in the Catacombs remained in the greatest favour until the latter half of the century. From the year 364 to the end, the balance is considerably on the other side; only one-third of the burials appear to have been in the subterranean cemeteries, and two-thirds above ground. Then from the year 400 to 410, burial in the Catacombs became more and more rare, until in that year it ceased altogether.

The portions of the Catacombs that were excavated during the fourth century vary considerably in character. In some parts, everything is on an exceptional scale of grandeur; the chambers are not only double, one on either side of the gallery, but even treble and quadruple, and of magnificent proportions. In other parts, on the contrary, there is nothing but a number of miserable galleries, executed with great economy, and destitute of all ornament; evidently they were required to meet the increasing wants of a large Christian population. It is during this same period that we meet with inscriptions recording contracts for the purchase of graves, and many more which, without entering into details, merely declare that the deceased had provided during his lifetime a place of burial for himself alone, or for himself and his wife, and perhaps some other relatives also. These have very rarely been found in the more ancient parts of the Catacombs. Indeed, such purchases would have proved a fruitful source of embarrassment in the days of persecution, when the fossors often used galleries whose walls had been already filled with graves as a convenient place in which to deposit the soil removed from the new galleries they were excavating, and sometimes even buried corpses in the pathways which they had thus filled. But this could not have been done if it had been necessary to reserve particular spots as the private property of persons hereafter to be buried there.

In the earliest of the inscriptions which record the purchase of graves, the fossors appear as the vendors; indeed, towards the end of the fourth century, it would almost seem as though the whole administration of the Catacombs had fallen into their hands. Each fossor now worked either independently, or with a partner if he preferred it; at least, the purchase is generally stated to have been made from one fossor, occasionally from two; and if the names of others of the same class are added, it is only to say that they assisted as witnesses of the contract. Once we even find the family of a fossor selling the graves which their father had excavated. In several of the inscriptions the price is named, as well as the names of the contracting parties; and some authors have attempted to estimate from these examples the ordinary cost of a grave in the Catacombs. Their calculations, however, cannot be accepted, for several reasons. First, the recorded prices are, in every instance, out of all proportion with the labour really expended on the grave; and secondly, they vary immensely, yet not according to any fixed principle. It seems safer, therefore, to conclude, with De Rossi, that the price was in each case proportionate to the means and good-will of the purchaser, that so provision might be made for the gratuitous burial of the poor out of the superabundant payments of the wealthy.

Another and a more important change than any which has yet been mentioned came over the Catacombs during the fourth century. It has been already mentioned that the devotion of the faithful naturally led them to look on the tombs of the martyrs with feelings of the most tender and pious affection; they desired, therefore, to manifest their love by some outward tokens—to exchange the primitive simplicity of their humble graves for something more suitable to their own altered condition. From the first moment, then, that it was possible, even in the very age of Constantine, grand basilicas were built over the tombs of the more celebrated saints, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Agnes, St. Sebastian, and others. In all these instances, they aimed at enclosing the tomb they desired to honour within the precincts of the church; indeed, this was, of course, the central point of devotion in the new building. But it was impossible to dig the foundations and build the walls of such vast edifices without a great destruction of subterranean graves and galleries throughout the whole neighbourhood. Probably there were always some who regretted this necessity, and who would have preferred to see these venerable monuments of primitive Christianity left in their original form. Certainly at the end of some fifty or sixty years, about the year 370, there sat in the chair of Peter one who seems to have entertained these feelings, and who devoted himself therefore with singular zeal and prudence to the work of their preservation.