“To the well-deserving sister Bon ... The eighth day before the calends of Nov. Christ God Almighty refresh thy spirit in Christ.”
In spite of this digression on prayers inscribed over tombs, the reader will not, we trust, have forgotten, that we were establishing the fact, that the Christian cemeteries of Rome owe their origin to the earliest ages. We have now to state down to what period they were used. After peace was restored to the Church, the devotion of Christians prompted them to desire burial near the martyrs, and holy people of an earlier age. But, generally speaking, they were satisfied to lie under the pavement. Hence the sepulchral stones which are often found in the rubbish of the catacombs, and sometimes in their places, bearing consular dates of the fourth century, are thicker, larger, better carved, and in a less simple style, than those of an earlier period, placed upon the walls. But before the end of that century, these monuments become rarer; and interment in the catacombs ceased in the following, at latest. Pope Damasus, who died in 384, reverently shrunk, as he tells us, in his own epitaph, from intruding into the company of the saints.
A Lamb with a Milk Pail, emblematic of the Blessed Eucharist, found in the Catacombs.
Restitutus, therefore, whose sepulchral tablet we gave for a title to our chapter, may well be considered as speaking in the name of the early Christians, and claiming as their own exclusive work and property, the thousand miles of subterranean city, with their six millions of slumbering inhabitants, who trust in the Lord, and await His resurrection.[90]
CHAPTER III.
WHAT DIOGENES COULD NOT TELL ABOUT THE CATACOMBS.
When peace and liberty were restored to the Church, these cemeteries became places of devotion, and of great resort. Each of them was associated with the name of one, or the names of several, of the more eminent martyrs buried in it; and, on their anniversaries, crowds of citizens and of pilgrims thronged to their tombs, where the Divine mysteries were offered up, and the homily delivered in their praise. Hence began to be compiled the first martyrologies, or calendars of martyrs’ days, which told the faithful whither to go. “At Rome, on the Salarian, or the Appian, or the Ardeatine way,” such are the indications almost daily read in the Roman martyrology, now swelled out, by the additions of later ages.[91]
An ordinary reader of the book hardly knows the importance of these indications; for they have served to verify several otherwise dubious cemeteries. Another class of valuable writers also comes to our aid; but before mentioning them, we will glance at the changes which this devotion produced in the cemeteries. First, commodious entrances, with easy staircases were made; then walls were built to support the crumbling galleries; and, from time to time, funnel-shaped apertures in the vaults were opened, to admit light and air. Finally, basilicas or churches were erected over their entrances, generally leading immediately to the principal tomb, then called the confession of the church. The pilgrim, thus, on arriving at the holy city, visited each of these churches, a custom yet practised; descended below, and without having to grope his way about, went direct, by well-constructed passages, to the principal martyr’s shrine, and so on to others, perhaps equally objects of reverence and devotion.