Although the dolmen is no longer underground, I must refer to that of Confolens near S. Germain-sur-Vienne, because it was originally under a tumulus. It is a dolmen, of which only the cover, a huge mass of granite remains intact, in an island of the Vienne. Underneath the slab are sculptured a stone axe with handle, and one without, also a cross. The capstone rests on four pillars of the twelfth century. Mr. Ferguson erroneously claimed the dolmen as evidence that rude stone monuments continued to be erected till late in the Middle Ages. But, in fact, the pillars are not of equal length, their capitals are not in line, nor are their bases. What is obvious is that the rude stone supports were removed one by one, and the Gothic pillars inserted in their place were cut exactly to the length required. Thus altered, the dolmen served as a baldachin or canopy over the stone Christian altar that is still in place beneath it. About this monument a chapel had been erected with apse to the east, measuring 36 feet by 15 feet. This has been destroyed, but the foundations remained till recently. The cross on the capstone was cut when the prehistoric monument was converted to use by Christians. To descend to the floor of the chapel a flight of steps had been constructed. The chapel was dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen.
In Egypt, in the Levant, cave-churches are common. The chapel of Agios Niketos, in Crete, is now merely a smoke begrimed grotto beneath a huge mass of rock on the mountain side. The roof is elaborately ornamented with paintings representing incidents in the Gospel story, and the legend of S. Nicolas. Though it is no longer employed as a church, an event that is said to have happened some centuries ago invests it with special regard by the natives. The church was crowded with worshippers on the eve of the feast of the patron, when the fires which the villagers who had assembled there had lighted near the entrance, where they were bivouacking for the night, attracted the attention of a Barbary corsair, then cruising off the island, and guided him to the spot unobserved. Suddenly and unexpectedly he and his crew, having stolen up the hill, burst upon the crowd of frightened Cretans. The Corsairs thereupon built up the entrance, and waited for day, the better to secure their captives for embarkation. But happily there was another exit from the cavern behind the altar, and by this the whole congregation escaped into another cave, and thence by a passage to a further opening, through which they stole out unobserved by the pirates.
The rock-hewn church of Dayn Aboo Hannes, "the convent of Father John,"
in Egypt, near Antinoe, has its walls painted with subjects from the
New Testament; the church is thought to date back to the time of
Constantine.
The passion for associating grottoes with sacred themes is shown in the location of the site of the Nativity at Bethlehem. There is nothing in the Gospel to lead us to suppose that the event took place in a cave, though it is not improbable that it did so. The scene of the Annunciation was also a rock-hewn cave, now occupied by a half- underground church, out of which flows the Virgin's Fountain.
In Gethsemane, "the chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, over the traditional spot where the Mother of our Lord was buried by the Apostles, is mostly underground. Three flights of steps lead down to the space in front of it, so that nothing is seen above ground but the porch. But even after you have gone down the three flights of steps you are only at the entrance to the church, amidst marble pillars, flying buttresses, and pointed arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care. Far below the ground you find a church thirty-one yards long and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother of the Virgin, and that of Joseph and the Virgin herself. And as if this were not enough, a long subterranean gallery leads down six steps more to a cave eighteen yards long, half as broad, and about twelve feet wide, which you are told is the Cavern of the Agony." [Footnote: Geikie (C.), "The Holy Land and the Bible," Lond. 1887, ii.p.8.]
Stanley says: [Footnote: "Sinai and Palestine," Lond. 1856, p.150.] "The moment that the religion of Palestine fell into the hands of Europeans, it is hardly too much to say that as far as sacred traditions are concerned, it became 'a religion of caves,' of those very caves which in earlier times had been unhallowed by any religious influence whatever. Wherever a sacred association had to be fixed, a cave was immediately selected or found as its home. First in antiquity is the grotto of Bethlehem, already in the second century regarded by popular belief as the scene of the Nativity. Next comes the grotto on Mount Olivet, selected as the scene of our Lord's last conversation before the Ascension. These two caves, Eusebius emphatically asserts, were the first seats of the worship established by the Empress Helena, to which was shortly afterwards added a third—the sacred cave of the Sepulchre. To these were rapidly added the cave of the Invention of the Cross, the cave of the Annunciation at Nazareth, the cave of the Agony at Gethsemane, the cave of the Baptism in the Wilderness of S. John, the cave of the Shepherds of Bethlehem. And then again, partly perhaps the cause, partly the effect of the consecration of grottoes, began the caves of the hermits. There were the cave of S. Pelagia on Mount Olivet, the caves of S. Jerome, S. Paula, and S. Eustochium at Bethlehem, the cave of S. Saba in the ravine of Kedron, the remarkable cells hewn or found in the precipices of the Quarrantania or Mount of the Temptation above Jericho. In some few instances this selection of grottoes would coincide with the events thus intended to be perpetuated, as for example, the hiding-place of the prophets on Carmel, and the sepulchres of the patriarchs and of Our Lord. But in most instances the choice is made without the sanction, in some instances in defiance of, the sacred narrative."
It is questionable whether Dean Stanley is right in attributing the identification of caves with sacred sites to Europeans, it is probable enough that the local Christians had already fixed upon some if not all of them. After the pilgrims or the Crusaders had come in their thousands and visited the holy sites, they returned to their native lands deeply impressed with the association of caves with everything that was held sacred, and this, added to the dormant sense of reverence for places underground consecrated to holy purposes that had come to them from their parents, must have tended to the multiplication of subterranean churches.
In some venerated caves and in certain crypts are springs of water that are held to be invested with miraculous properties. The crypts of S. Peter in the Vatican, S. Ponziana and S. Alessandro, have such flowing springs. In the crypt of the church of Gorlitz is a well, and from that of the cathedral of Paderborn issues one of the sources of the river Pader. The Kilian spring rises in the crypt of the New Minster in Würzburg. Out of the cave of the monastery of Brantôme, to be described in another chapter, streams a magnificent source. Most of the water is employed for the town and for the washerwomen, but one little rill from it is conducted to an ornate fountain, that bears the name of S. Sicarius (Little Cut-throat), one of the Innocents of Bethlehem slain by order of Herod. It is explained that by some means or other Charlemagne obtained his bones, but how the infant of a Hebrew mother acquired a Latin name has not been attempted to be explained.