in the nineteenth century than to the testimony of an eye-witness, who was also pope, in the third? Had the order of acolytes been retained instead of being rejected by the Protestant communion, doubtless Mr. Withrow would have recognized the conclusiveness of the evidence of Pope Cornelius; he would have seen that the forty-two acolytes who were alive in A.D. 250 must sooner or later have died, and been buried in Christian cemeteries, and consequently that the non-discovery there of any dated epitaphs recording their decease is “valueless as evidence” against the antiquity of their order.
But we will not detain our readers any longer by pointing out the curiosities with which Mr. Withrow’s volume abounds, but proceed at once to redeem our promise of setting before them the real state of “the testimony of the Catacombs relative to primitive Christianity” on one or two of the more prominent doctrines of the Catholic faith. We have said that it is unreasonable to look for a profession of faith in an epitaph. But there is one point on which we should be disposed to make an exception to this remark. We think it is quite natural to expect from a large collection of sepulchral inscriptions considerable information as to the belief of those to whom they belonged with reference to the present condition or future prospects of the dead, and their relations with the survivors; and in this expectation the inscriptions from the Catacombs do not disappoint us. Let us call them into court, and hear what evidence they can give.
Mr. Withrow shall open the pleadings, and it must be allowed that he does so with a very loud blast of his trumpet, and one which “gives
no uncertain sound” (p. 418). “There is not a single inscription,” he says, “nor painting, nor sculpture, before the middle of the fourth century, that lends the least countenance to the erroneous dogmas of the Church of Rome. All previous to this date are remarkable for their evangelical character, and it is only after that period that the distinctive peculiarities of Romanism begin to appear.” Presently he quotes what he calls “the first dated inscription possessing any doctrinal character.” It belongs to the year 217, and states of the deceased that he was “received to God” (receptus ad Deum) on such a day; whereupon our author exclaims: “We have here the earliest indication of doctrinal belief as to the condition of the departed. It is not, however, a dark and gloomy apprehension of purgatorial fires, but, on the contrary, the joyous confidence of immediate reception into the presence of God.” Twenty pages later, however, he is obliged to acknowledge that “there occur in the Catacombs frequent examples of acclamations addressed to the departed, expressive of a desire for their happiness and peace; and these acclamations have been quoted by Romanist writers as indicating a belief in the doctrine of purgatory and in the efficacy of prayers on behalf of the dead”; and he proceeds to give a score of examples, such as these: Vivas in Deo, in Deo Christo—Mayest thou live in God, in God Christ; Vivas inter sanctos—Mayest thou live among the saints; Deus tibi refrigeret, spiritum tuum refrigeret—God refresh thee, or refresh thy spirit; Pax tibi—Peace be to thee, etc. But, he says, “it will be perceived that these are not intercessions for the dead, but mere apostrophes addressed to them; they were no more prayers for the
souls of the departed than is Byron’s verse, ‘Bright be the place of thy rest.’” Mr. Withrow continues, and is presently obliged to make a still further concession—viz., that “the wish does sometimes take the form of a prayer for the beloved one,” and he gives half a dozen examples, one of which he curiously misunderstands, and another we do not recognize as belonging to the Catacombs. However, five at least are genuine, and we could have furnished him with a score or two of others, all containing distinct prayers “to God,” “to the Lord,” “to the Lord Jesus,” “to remember the deceased,” “to remember him for ever,” “to refresh his spirit,” “not to suffer his spirit to be brought into darkness,” etc. How is such evidence as this to be withstood? Mr. Withrow shows himself quite equal to the occasion: “They are intense expressions of affection of the ardent Italian nature, that would fain follow the loved object beyond the barrier of a tomb” (p. 443). “They are the only witnesses that keen Roman Catholics can adduce from the Christian inscriptions of the first six centuries,” but “no accumulation of such evidence affords the slightest warrant for the corrupt practice of the Church of Rome.”
We need hardly say that Mr. Withrow is not the first who has thus “interpreted” these epitaphs “from a Protestant point of view.” Mr. Burgon had long since given the same explanation, and even quoted the same poetical illustration from Byron. But we must confine ourselves to Mr. Withrow, and follow him through his graduated scale of confessions. They may be cast in this form: the earliest inscription bearing on the subject of prayers for the dead discountenances
them; there are frequent examples of acclamations or good wishes for the departed, but these are not prayers; moreover, they are, comparatively speaking, few in number—Bishop Kip puts them as “half a dozen among thousands of an opposite character”—and, being undated, we may “assume” that they are of a late age; finally, there are a few prayers, but these are only the untutored outburst of the ardent Italian nature. Let us set side by side with these the statements of De Rossi on the same subjects. And, first, as to the antiquity of these formulæ. He says: “There are two distinct classes of epitaphs to be found in the Catacombs; the one, brief and simple, written apparently without a thought of handing down anything to the memory of posterity, but designed by the survivors mainly as a means of identifying, amid so many thousands of graves of the same outward form, those in which they were specially interested.[112] These are the more ancient, and most of them contain nothing beyond the name of the deceased and some of those short acclamations or prayers of which we have just given examples. Inscriptions of the second class record the age of the deceased, the day of his death, or more specially of his burial, and, in fact, omit nothing which is wont to be found on sepulchral monuments. They are also often defaced by bombastic exaggerations of praise and flattery; and the pious acclamations or prayers we have spoken of are rarely or never found.” It appears, then, according to the evidence of De Rossi—which on this question is surely of supreme authority—that the presence on a tombstone of acclamations
or prayers for the dead, so far from being evidence of the corruption of a later age, is an actual test or token of primitive antiquity. Some indication of this may be gathered, by a careful observer, even from an inspection of the volume of dated inscriptions already published. “May you live among the saints” is engraved on a tombstone of the year 249, and “Refresh thyself, or Be thou refreshed, with the holy souls,” on another of 291; that is to say, there are two distinct examples out of the 32 dated inscriptions prior to the conversion of Constantine. Among the 1,340 dated inscriptions subsequent to that event you will scarcely find another.
And next, as to the relative numbers of the epitaphs which speak positively (in the indicative mood) of the present happiness of the deceased, and of those which speak only optatively and breathe the language of prayer. We cannot, indeed, give any exact statement of figures until De Rossi’s great work on the inscriptions shall have been completed and the whole number brought together in print. But wherever we have had an opportunity of instituting a comparison, we have always found the optative or deprecatory form in the ascendant. It is so in the epitaphs collected in the Lapidarian Gallery of the Christian Museum at the Lateran in Rome; it is so in the inscriptions of each separate area of the great cemetery of San Callisto, so minutely registered by De Rossi in his Roma Sotterranea; and he himself writes as follows: “Some of these acclamations are affirmative, and these may be considered as salutations to the deceased, full of faith and Christian hope, substituted for the cold, hopeless dreariness
of the pagan vale;[113] but for the most part they are optative, and ask for the deceased life in God, peace, and refreshment. We should inquire whether these have not often a real deprecative value, and were not uttered or written with the intention of praying to God for the peace and refreshment of the departed souls.” A full and satisfactory answer to this question, he says, cannot be given till all the inscriptions of this class have been brought together, so that they may mutually explain and illustrate one another. Nevertheless, he refers to what he had said in another place[114] on the same subject; and there we read: “These auguries or good wishes are not mere apostrophes, giving vent to the feelings of natural affection (sfoghi d’affetto); some of them express confidence that the soul received into the heavenly peace of God and his saints is already in the enjoyment of a life of bliss, and these speak positively—vives; others, again, are equivalent to real prayers to obtain that peace, and are expressed in another mood—vivas.”