A Letter from Mr. John Monro to the Publisher, concerning the Catacombs of Rome and Naples.
SIR,
The Catacombs are an obscure Argument. I have seen those of Rome, I have seen those of Naples, and as they say there are Catacombs in the Neighbourhood of all the great Towns of that part of Italy, I had been glad to have seen them where-ever they are. They are an obscure argument indeed; but perhaps the greatest obscurity about them is, that a Matter that has so much exercis'd the Pens of the Moderns, shou'd be totally neglected by the Ancients: Neither the name nor the thing is found in the latter, whereas among the former, Antiquaries and Travellers are full of them. All they into whose way they come, think they do nothing if they do not exhaust them before they leave them; they take all their dimensions, and measure their height, their breadth and their length; they survey all the little Rooms, search every hole and corner, Criticize nicely on the quality, and calculate the Age of the poor Painting and Inscriptions, and make excursions into other Arguments, to find out the end for which they were made. The Catacombs are a narrow Gallery dug and carried a vast way under Ground, with an infinite number of others going off it on all hands, and an infinite number of little Rooms going off the Principal, and them too. Those commonly shew'd Strangers are those of San Sebastiano, those of San Lorenzo, those of San Agnese, and the others in the Fields a little off of Sant Agnese. They take their Names from the Churches in their Neighbourhood, and seem to divide the circumference of the City without the Walls between them, extending their Galleries every where under, and a vast way from it, so that all the Ground under, and for many Miles about it, is said to be hollow. Now there are two sorts of Authors that run into extravagance on this subject; the one will have them made by the Primitive Christians, adding, that in the times of Persecution they liv'd, held their Assemblies, and laid up the Bodies of their Martyrs and Confessors in them. This is the Account that prevails at Rome, and consequent to it there are Men kept constantly at Work in them. As soon as these Labourers discover a Repository, with any of the marks of a Saint about it, Intimation is given to the Cardinal Treasurer, who immediately sends Men of Probity and Reputation to the place, where they find a Palm painted or ingraven, or the Cypher XP, which is commonly read pro Christo, or a small round projection in the side of the Gallery, a little below the Repository; what is within it is carried to the Palace. Many of these Projections we have seen open, with pieces of the Vials in them; the Glass indeed was tinctur'd, and 'tis pretended that in these Vials was conserved the Blood of the Martyrs, which was thus laid up nigh their Bodies, towards the Head, to distinguish them from those of the others that were not called to the Honour of laying down their Lives for the Faith of the Gospel. After the Labourers have survey'd a Gallery, they do up the entry that leads into it; thus most of them are shut; nor are more left open than what is necessary to keep up the Trade of shewing them to Strangers, which they say is done to prevent what has often happen'd, I mean Peoples losing themselves in these subterraneous Labyrinths; by this conduct depriving us of the means of knowing whither and how far they were carried. To this it may be justly excepted, that allowing the Catacombs to be proper for the end for which they are presum'd to be made, and that the Christians of that Age were in a capacity of making that convenience, for themselves to live and assemble in below Ground, at a time when 'twas so very unsafe to appear above it; yet to suppose that a work of that Vastness and Importance cou'd be carried on without the knowledge of the Government, is to suppose the Government asleep, and that that was actually done under its Nose, that must necessarily have alarm'd it, had it been attempted on the frontiers of the Empire.
The other sort of Authors give indeed a mighty Idea of the Catacombs, represent them as a work of that Vastness, that the Christians in the persecuting times had not number enough to carry it on; but then most unadvisedly with the same breath they confound them with the Puticuli in Festus Pompeius, where, at the same time that the Ancient Romans us'd to burn the Bodies of their dead, the custom was, to avoid expence, to throw those of the Slaves to rot.
This is not all, the Roman Christians, say they, observing at length the great veneration that certain Places gain'd by the presence of Relicts, resolv'd to provide a stock for themselves; entring therefore the Catacombs, they made in some of them what Cyphers, what Inscriptions, what Painting they thought fit, and then shut them up; intending to open them again upon a Dream, or some other important incident. The few that were in the secret of this Artifice either dying, or as the Monks, who were the only Men that seem to have had Heads adapted to a thought of this quality, were subject to so many removes, being transported to other Places, the contrivance came to be forgot, and those Galleries continu'd shut, till Chance, the Parent often of great discoveries, open'd them at last. Thus they conclude, the Remains of the vilest part of Mankind are trump'd up in the Church for the Bodies of the most eminent Confessors and Martyrs.
To leave the latter part of this Tale to shift for it self as well as it can, either the Catacombs are not that great work they are represented to be, nor to be found every where about the City, or 'twas very improper in Festus Pompeius to call them by the little name of Puticuli, and so confine them to one place only, that I mean unknown now without the Esquilin-Gate. Indeed the Characters of the Places are so very unlike, that one wou'd wonder how a common Burying place, where in holes Bodies were thrown together to rot, came to be confounded with Repositories cut in the face of a long Gallery, one over another, sometimes to the number of seven, in which Bodies were singly laid, and handsomly done up again, so that nothing cou'd offend the view of those that went in, especially with the little Rooms of the fashion of Chappels, that have all the Appearances of being the Sepulchers of People of distinction.
The Remark, Puticulos Antiquissimum sepulturæ genus appellatos, quod ibi in puteis sepirentur homines, is that of an Etymologist, that would be now thought to speak against all the property of Language, if he apply'd the name to our Graves or Vaults, to which it may with more Justice and Reason be apply'd, than to the Galleries of the Catacombs, and the Rooms that go off them. What the particulars were is not difficult to define, after what we have seen so often. When the Persecutors spilt the Blood of so many Martyrs, they us'd to dig holes perpendicularly in the Ground, and to throw their Bodies promiscuously in them; of this the Memory is still conserv'd, Churches being built in the Places where the holes were made, and little Monuments erected over the holes themselves, to which the name of Putei is continued to this day.