“Lucia Claudia, thou shalt see me suffer. Yes, I pray thee, follow my bier, watch me descending into my living grave, and bear witness to my constancy, I loved thee once, and I love thee still. Thou wilt be near me, thou wilt not deny me my last request?” and Lucia promised, wept, and departed.
Domitian, who was exceedingly anxious that his victim should submit to his sentence, had offered Cornelia a full pardon if she would asperse her own character, but in vain. He had pronounced judgment upon her at his Alban villa, while the poor prisoner remained at Rome, deprived of the means of defending herself, or engaging the talents of some eminent pleader in her defence. The measure was unpopular, and the emperor’s manner of exercising the office of supreme pontiff unprecedented even in that age of crime. Nobody believed the charges against the unfortunate Maxima, and when the covered litter that contained the condemned vestal priestess was seen proceeding along the silent streets, the ominous procession excited general commiseration. No reproachful word reached the ears of the victim, no malediction was heaped upon her devoted head, no injurious epithet added insult to injury, for the sympathies of a mighty people were with the calumniated Maxima. Two centuries had elapsed since such a dismal tragedy had been acted at Rome, and the advance of learning and knowledge had rendered the Romans less superstitious, though not more virtuous, and the immolation excited disgust and indignation against its actors. Wrapped in her pallium and closely veiled, Lucia Claudia clung trembling to the arm of her husband, and with faltering steps followed the procession from the prison through the thronged Forum to the Collina Gate, where the sepulchral cavern had been re-opened to enclose the living form of Cornelia Cossi. The bed, the lamp, the loaf, the bread-mill, the pitcher of water, and cruize of oil, had been already provided; the emperor in his character of supreme pontiff, wearing his sacerdotal robes, with his priestly attendants, stood by the dark yawning chasm to receive the victim; the litter was then unclosed, the unfortunate priestess was unbound, and faced Domitian, who extended his hands to utter the customary prayers in order to avert the consequences of the vestal’s imputed guilt from the heads of the Roman people.
The unfortunate Maxima turned her magnificent countenance from him to the vast assembly as she invoked Vesta and every deity of earth and heaven to attest her innocence; but her voice was distinct, clear, and even melodious. She was interrupted by the emperor, who charged her with the crime for which she was about to suffer, and urged her repeatedly to confess her guilt. To his severe remarks Cornelia calmly replied, “Cæsar believes me guilty of incest, who performed the sacred rites when he conquered and triumphed.” She had repeatedly uttered these mysterious words on her way to the Collina Gate. No one but herself and Domitian comprehended their meaning. Pliny the Younger, who was present, could not discover whether this speech was intended as a satirical allusion to the ill-success of the emperor’s Dacian campaigns, for which he had nevertheless triumphed, or whether the unfortunate vestal wished to conciliate her judge, and attest her own purity by this reply; the enigma was never solved by Cornelia. Then the imperial pontiff made his impious prayers, and after consigning the condemned vestal to her executioners departed with his priestly attendants. At this moment Lucia Claudia raised her veil, and turned her tearful eyes upon the unhappy Maxima, who returned her sympathising recognition with a glance of intelligent gratitude, and even smiled. No trace of the strong agony that had convulsed her noble figure on the pavement of the Tullianum remained on her dignified and placid countenance. She looked towards the temple of which she had been the presiding priestess, she gazed upon the Roman people, and cast a farewell look upon the bright blue heavens that canopied old Rome, and then resolutely advanced towards the chasm. As she placed her firm unshrinking foot upon the steps, the executioner put forth his hand to disengage her robe, but the vestal haughtily repulsed him, as if his touch were profanation to her purity. She was observed to gather her flowing drapery closely round her magnificent person as she descended into her living grave,[[28]] and this simple and intuitive trait of feminine modesty redeemed for ever the aspersed character of Cornelia Cossi Maxima, in the eyes of the vast assembly who witnessed it, from defamation; and that dark sepulchral vault was closed never to be re-opened to enclose another victim. The conviction that Cornelia had been unjustly immolated made a lasting impression upon the Roman people, and the mound that marked the awful spot was never again disturbed by the votaries of a cruel superstition. The extension of Christianity banished cruel heathen rites.
Adonijah drew the folds of her ample veil over the convulsed features of his fainting wife, and, wrapping her in her pallium, bore her inanimate form to the house of a Christian brother; but some time elapsed before she showed signs of life. When she recovered from her swoon, she wept long and prayed much; yet, in her deep commiseration for the unfortunate Maxima, the feeling that she had died a heathen, uncheered by the hope of a better life, was still surpassingly bitter—the bitterest drop indeed in a bitter cup. These thoughts and reflections were naturally succeeded by others of a less painful character. Her conversion to Christianity had not only been the means of bringing her out of idolatry and darkness into the bright refulgence of the Gospel day, but it had saved her from the suicidal despair of the vestals Ocelli and Veroilla, and the living interment of the calumniated Maxima Cornelia Cossi.
The Latin Church considered even the temporary residence of Lucia Claudia in Rome and Italy unsafe at such a period, and the converted vestal priestess quitted the metropolis of the world for ever. She returned with Adonijah to the Church at Jerusalem, and passed many tranquil years in the bosom of her Christian family, till the revolt of the Jews in the reign of Trajan, which was also a war with the Hebrew converts to Christianity, when, Adonijah being slain by his own countrymen, the widowed Lucia Claudia became a deaconess of the Church. She exercised this office at the time when Simeon the apostle was martyred, who, at one hundred and twenty years, excited by his patient fortitude the admiration of Atticus, the governor of Syria during the third persecution of the Christians in the reign of Trajan. She quitted Jerusalem before it was besieged by Adrian, and retired with the Hebrew Christian Church to Pella beyond Jordan, but never to return; for she fell asleep at an advanced age, in the full assurance of Christian hope.
The Hebrew Christian Church lost its distinctive character when it could no longer maintain its succession of Jewish bishops, nor retain its see; for the rescripts of Adrian, which forbade the Jews to dwell in Palestine, virtually put an end to the hierarchy:[[29]] for the second Church of Christ founded at Ælia—the name of the heathen city built by Adrian—was not composed of converted Jews, but of Gentiles who had forsaken idolatry to follow the Lord Jesus. In our own days another Hebrew Christian Church has been founded at Jerusalem, to which “kings have become nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers,” in fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, “that Jerusalem shall evermore become the joy of the whole earth.”
“Thou living wonder of Jehovah’s word!
Thou, that without a priest or sacrifice,
Ephod or temple, lone ’mid human-kind,
Cleavest to thy statutes with unswerving mind,