“Have there been no deaths in the convent since then?”
“Yes!” The disdainful growl was in good English. “We bury no more in this ground. Victor Emmanuel forbids it!”
An Italian murmur in the depths of his frowsy beard was not a benediction upon the tyrant. Members of monastic orders cursed him more deeply in private, as they would have banned him openly, by bell and by book, had they dared, when he commanded, that same year, the conscription of young men for the Italian army to extend to the native-born neophytes and pupils in convents and church-schools.
“Vittorio Emmanuele!” The musical name was very clearly printed at the foot of a placard, glazed and hung in the vestibule of the Collegio Romano. Guide-books of a date anterior to that enunciated so venomously by our Capuchin, in describing the museum attached to this institution, were fain to add:—“The museum can be seen on Sundays only, 10-11 o’clock, A.M. Ladies not admitted.”
By the grace of the printed proclamation, throwing open the collection of antiquities and library to well-behaved persons of both sexes, we passed the unguarded doors, mounted the stone staircase, dirty as are all Roman stairs, and were, without let or hindrance, in the midst of what we wished to examine and from which there is no conceivable reason for excluding women.
Most of the Catacomb inscriptions that could be removed without injury to the tablets bearing them, have been deposited elsewhere for safe-keeping and more satisfactory inspection than is consistent with the darkness of the underground cemeteries. The shelves, arranged like those in modern vaults, stripped of the stone fronts that once concealed their contents, are still partially filled with fine ashes—sacred dust, mixed with particles from the friable earth walling and flooring the labyrinth of narrow passages. Fragments of sculptured marble lie where they have fallen from broken altars or memorial slabs, and in the wider spaces used as oratories, where burial-rites were performed, and, in times of sorest tribulation, other religious services held, there are traces of frescoes in faded, but still distinguishable colors.
In the Collegio Romano are garnered most interesting specimens of the mural tablets brought from catacombs and columbaria. The Christian Museum of San Giovanni in Laterano embraces a more extensive collection, but in the less spacious corridors and rooms of the Collegio, one sees and studies in comfort and quiet that are not to be had in the more celebrated halls. In the apartment devoted to Christian antiquities are many small marble coffers, sculptured more or less elaborately, taken from columbaria. These were receptacles for the literal ashes of the departed. They are out of keeping with our belief that the early Christians regarded incremation with dread as destructive, in the popular mind, of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. They committed their beloved dead tenderly to the keeping of the earth, with a full recognition of the analogy between this act and seed-planting, so powerfully set forth by St. Paul. Else, why the Catacombs? These cinerary caskets, whether once tenanted by Christian or pagan dust, merit careful notice. They are usually about twelve or fourteen inches in height, and two or three less in width. The lid slopes gently up from the four sides to form a peaked centre like a square house-roof, with pointed turrets or ears at the corners. The covers were firmly cemented in place when deposited in the columbaria. We saw one or two thus secured to protect the contents, but all have probably been broken open, at one time or another, in quest of other treasure than relics precious to none save loving survivors. The lids of many have been lost.
The mural slabs were arranged against the wall as high as a man could reach. The lettering—much of it irregularly and unskillfully done—is more distinct than epitaphs not thirty years old, in our country church-yards. The inscriptions are often ungrammatical and so spelt as to betray the illiterate workman. But there is no doubt what were the belief and trust of those who set them up in the blackness and damps of a Necropolis whose existence was scarcely suspected by their persecutors.
“In Christo, in pace,” is the language of many, the meaning of all. It may be only a cross rudely cut into soft stone; it is often a lamb, sometimes carrying a cross; a dove, a spray meant for olive, in its mouth—dual emblem of peace and the “rest that remaineth.” The Greek Alpha and Omega, repeated again and again, testify that these hunted and smitten ones had read John’s glorious Revelation. On all sides, we saw the, to heathen revilers, mystical cypher, early adopted as a sign and seal by the Christians, a capital P, transfixing a St. Andrew’s Cross.
From one stained little slab, we copied an inscription entire and verbatim.