[To be continued.]
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.
[Continued.]
Vix fama nota est, abditis
Quam plena sancti Roma sit;
Quam dives urbanum solum
Sacris sepulchris floreat.
PRUDENTIUS.
Mille victoriose chiare palme.
PETRARCH.
II.
The results of the investigations in the catacombs during the last three or four years have well rewarded the zeal of their explorers. Since the great work of the French government was published, in 1851-55, very curious and important discoveries have been made, and many new minor facts brought to light. The interest in the investigations has become more general, and no visit to Rome is now complete without a visit to one at least of the catacombs. Strangely enough, however, the Romans themselves, for the most part, feel less concern in these new revelations of their underground city than the strangers who come from year to year to make their pilgrimages to Rome. It is an old complaint, that the Romans care little for their city. "Who are there to-day," says Petrarch, in one of his letters, "more ignorant of Roman things than the Roman citizens? And nowhere is Rome less known than in Rome itself." It is, however, to the Cavaliere de Rossi, himself a Roman, that the most important of these discoveries are due,—the result of his marvellous learning and sagacity, and of his hard-working and unwearied energy. The discovery of the ancient entrance to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, and of the chapel within, where St. Cecilia was originally buried, is a piece of the very romance of Archaeology. The whole history of St. Cecilia, the glorious Virgin Martyr and the Saint of Music, as connected with the catacombs, is, indeed, one of the most curious to be found in the annals of the Church. Legend and fact are strangely mingled in it, and over it hangs a perplexing mist of doubt, but not so dense as wholly to conceal all certainty. It is a story of suffering, of piety, of enthusiasm, of superstition, and of science;—it connects itself in many points with the progress of corruption in the Church, and it has been a favorite subject for Art in all ages. The story is at last finished. Begun sixteen hundred years ago, it has just reached its last chapter. In order to understand it, we must go back almost to its introduction.
According to the legend of the Roman Church, as preserved in the "Acts of St. Cecilia," this young and beautiful saint was martyred in the year of our Lord 230.[A] She had devoted herself to perpetual virginity, but her parents had insisted upon marrying her to a youthful and noble Roman, named Valerian. On the night of her marriage, she succeeded in so far prevailing upon her husband as to induce him to visit the pope, Urban, who was lying concealed from his persecutors in the catacombs which were called after and still bear the name of his predecessor, Callixtus,[B] on the Appian Way, about two miles from the present walls of the city. The young man was converted to the Christian faith. The next day witnessed the conversion of his brother, Tiburtius. Their lives soon gave evidence of the change in their religion; they were brought before the prefect, and, refusing to sacrifice to the heathen gods, were condemned to death. Maximus, an officer of the prefect, was converted by the young men on the way to execution. They suffered death with constancy, and Maximus soon underwent the same fate. Nor was Cecilia long spared. The prefect ordered that she should be put to death in her own house, by being stifled in the caldarium, or hot-air chamber of her baths. The order was obeyed, and Cecilia entered the place of death; but a heavenly air and cooling dews filled the chamber, and the fire built up around it produced no effect. For a whole day and night the flames were kept up, but the Saint was unharmed. Then Almachius sent an order that she should be beheaded. The executioner struck her neck three times with his sword, and left her bleeding, but not dead, upon the pavement of the bathroom. For three days she lived, attended by faithful friends, whose hearts were cheered by her courageous constancy; "for she did not cease to comfort those whom she had nurtured in the faith of the Lord, and divided among them everything which she had." To Pope Urban, who visited her as she lay dying, she left in charge the poor whom she had cared for, and her house, that it might be consecrated as a church. With this her life ended.[C] Her wasted body was reverently lifted, its position undisturbed, and laid in the attitude and clothing of life within a coffin of cypress-wood. The linen cloths with which the blood of the Martyr had been soaked up were placed at her feet, with that care that no precious drop should be lost,—a care, of which many evidences are afforded in the catacombs. In the night, the coffin was carried out of the city secretly to the Cemetery of Callixtus, and there deposited by Urban in a grave near to a chamber destined for the graves of the popes themselves. Here the "Acts of St. Cecilia" close, and, leaving her pure body to repose for centuries in its tomb hollowed out of the rock, we trace the history of the catacombs during those centuries in other sources and by other ways.
[Footnote A: The Acts of St. Cecilia are generally regarded by the best Roman Catholic authorities as apochryphal. They bear internal evidence of their want of correctness, and, in the condition in which they have come down to us, the date of their compilation cannot be set before the beginning of the fifth century. At the very outset two facts stand in open opposition to their statements. The martyrdom of St. Cecilia is placed in the reign of Alexander Severus, whose mildness of disposition and whose liberality towards the Christians are well authenticated. Again, the prefect who condemns her to death, Turchius Almachius, bears a name unknown to the profane historians of Rome. Many statements of not less difficulty to reconcile with fact occur in the course of the Acts. But, although their authority in particulars be thus destroyed, we see no reason for questioning the reality of the chief events upon which they are founded. The date of the martyrdom of St. Cecilia may be wrong, the reports of her conversations may be as fictitious as the speeches ascribed by grave historians to their heroes, the stories of her miracles may have only that small basis of reality which is to be found in the effects of superstition and excited imagination,—but the essential truth of the martyrdom of a young, beautiful, and rich Roman girl, of her suffering and her serene faith, and of the veneration and honor in which her memory was held by those who had known her, may be accepted without reserve. At least, it is certain, that as early as the beginning of the fourth century the name of St. Cecilia was reverenced in Rome, and that from that time she has been one of the chief saints of the Roman calendar.]
[Footnote B: The Catacombs of St. Callixtus are among the most important of the underground cemeteries. They were begun before the time of Callixtus, but were greatly enlarged under his pontificate [A.D. 219-223]. Saint though he be, the character of Callixtus, if we may judge by the testimony of another saint, Hippolytus, stood greatly in need of purification. His story is an amusing illustration of the state of the Roman episcopacy in those times. He had been a slave of a rich Christian, Carpophorus. His master set him up as a money-dealer in the Piscina Publica, a much frequented quarter of the city. The Christian brethren (and widows also are mentioned by Hippolytus) placed their moneys in his hands for safe-keeping, his credit as the slave of Carpophorus being good. He appropriated these deposits, ran away to sea, was pursued, threw himself into the water, was rescued, brought back to Rome, and condemned to hard labor. Carpophorus bailed him out of the workhouse,—but he was a bad fellow, got into a riot in a Jewish synagogue, and was sent to work in the Sardinian mines. By cheating he got a ticket of leave and returned to Rome. After some years, he was placed in charge of the cemetery by the bishop or pope, Zephyrinus, and at his death, some time later, by skilful intrigues he succeeded in obtaining the bishopric itself. The cemetery is now called that of Saint Callixtus,—and in the saint the swindler is forgotten.]