Fig. 365.—Crypt of the Chapel of St. Agnes, in the Catacombs at Rome, set apart for the interment of Christians.—From M. Perret’s work, “Les Catacombes de Rome.”
The Catacombs are composed of very narrow galleries, from ninety-seven centimetres to one metre thirty centimetres in breadth (thirty-eight to fifty-one inches), cut irregularly through the stone. These galleries, most of them very short, crossing each other in such a way as to form an inextricable maze of streets and crossways, had an arched roof supported by masonry here and there. At intervals there were chambers, or cubicula (Fig. 365), hollowed out by the Christians to serve as chapels or oratories; these were either quadrangular or circular, of small dimensions, and often decorated with fresco paintings of different epochs dating from the first to the fourth century. But little fresh air could penetrate into these galleries by the openings which had been made here and there, and also through old shafts situated at intervals of about three hundred yards from each other, which had been used in working the quarries. In the lead-lined partitions, the graves, most of which are still intact, were ranged in rows one above the other. Each grave was a hollow of about the size of a human body hewn lengthwise in the side of the gallery and closed with a large brick, or with a stone or marble slab, set in cement. Five or six bodies—sometimes as many as twelve—were so placed one above the other. The paintings (Fig. 366), the sculptures, and the mosaics of the Catacombs, are the first products of Christian art as it shook off the traditions of paganism, and the subjects represented are generally taken from the Holy Scriptures; such as the Leaving the Ark, Abraham’s Sacrifice, Jonah, the Good Shepherd, the Raising of Lazarus. Many very touching funeral epitaphs have also been discovered on them.
Fig. 366.—Funeral Fresco discovered in the Cemetery of St. Pretextat, in the Catacombs at Rome. The two doves, emblems of marriage, indicate the tomb of the husband and wife.—From M. Perrét’s work, “Les Catacombes de Rome.”
Nor is it merely from the day when the triumphs of Christianity led to the building of the basilicas in Rome that personages of rank have been buried inside the churches. The bodies of bishops and leaders of the Catholic community, those of patricians and of barbarian princes who succoured the Church in her early days, were the first to be received within the sanctuary in as close proximity as possible to the relics of the saint to whom the building was dedicated.
Very soon these burial-places began to be classified according to the individual merit of the dead, and the importance of their rank or fortune. Laymen and priests had a right to be buried in the aisles of the church, or in the part corresponding to the apse, and it is no exaggeration to say that the interior was often so full of graves that they extended outside the building. Such was the case after the seventh century. A small space, either round or square, was left in front of the façade of the churches, to be reserved as a privileged place of burial, and was called the aitre or parvis (paradisus); hence the origin of the rural cemetery which extends along the sides of a country church, or forms a green in front of it.
Fig. 367.—The Cross of the Bureau Family, formerly in the Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris.—Lenoir’s “Statistique Monumentale de Paris.”
Fig. 368.—The Knight of Death, by Albert Dürer.—This celebrated engraving, so characteristic of the fantastic genius of the Middle Ages, represents a fully-armed knight going to the wars with a presentiment of coming evil, and accompanied by Sin and Death, personified as his running footman and esquire.—After the Fac-simile of the original Engraving, dated 1513, by one of the Wiericx (1564).