[Footnote C: The passage in the Acts of St. Cecilia which led to her being esteemed the patroness of music is perhaps the following, which occurs in the description of the wedding ceremonies: "Cantantibus organis, Caecilia in corde suo soli Domino decantabat, dicens: 'Fiat cor meum et corpus meum immaculatum, ut non confundar.'">[
The consequences of the conversion of Constantine exhibited themselves not more in the internal character and spirit of the Church than in its outward forms and arrangements. The period of worldly prosperity succeeded speedily to a period of severest suffering, and many who had been exposed to the persecution of Diocletian now rejoiced in the imperial favor shown to their religion. Such contrasts in life are not favorable to the growth of the finer spiritual qualities; and the sunshine of state and court is not that which is needed for quickening faith or developing simplicity and purity of heart. Churches above ground could now be frequented without risk, and were the means by which the wealth and the piety of Christians were to be displayed. The newly imperialized religion must have its imperial temples, and the little dark chapels of the catacombs were exchanged for the vast and ornamental spaces of the new basilicas. It was no longer needful that the dead should be laid in the secret paths of the rock, and the luxury of magnificent Christian tombs began to rival that of the sepulchres of the earlier Romans. The body of St. Peter, which had long, according to popular tradition, rested in the catacombs of the Vatican, was now transferred to the great basilica which Constantine, despoiling for the purpose the tomb of Hadrian of its marbles, erected over the entrance to the underground cemetery. So, too, the Basilica of St. Paul, on the way to Ostia, was built over his old grave; and the Catacombs of St. Agnes were marked by a beautiful church in honor of the Saint, built in part beneath the soil, that its pavement might be on a level with the upper story of the catacombs and the faithful might enter them from the church.
The older catacombs, whose narrow graves had been filled during the last quarter of the third century with the bodies of many new martyrs, were now less used for the purposes of burial, and more for those of worship. New chapels were hollowed out in their walls; new paintings adorned the brown rock; the bodies of martyrs were often removed from their original graves to new and more elaborate tombs; the entrances to the cemeteries were no longer concealed, but new and ampler ones were made; new stairways, lined with marble, led down to the streets beneath; luminaria, or passages for light and air, were opened from the surface of the ground to the most frequented places; and at almost every entrance a church or an oratory of more or less size was built, for the shelter of those who might assemble to go down into the catacombs, and for the performance of the sacred services upon ground hallowed by so many sacred memories. The worship of the saints began to take form, at first, in simple, natural, and pious ways, in the fourth century; and as it grew stronger and stronger with the continually increasing predominance of the material element in the Roman Church, so the catacombs, the burial-places of the saints, were more and more visited by those who desired the protection or the intercession of their occupants. St. Jerome, who was born about this time in Rome, [A.D. 331,] has a curious passage concerning his own experiences in the catacombs. He says: "When I was a boy at Rome, being instructed in liberal studies, I was accustomed, with others of the same age and disposition, to go on Sundays to the tombs of the apostles and martyrs, and often to go into the crypts, which, being dug out in the depths of the earth, have for walls, on either side of those who enter, the bodies of the buried; and they are so dark, that the saying of the prophet seems almost fulfilled, The living descend into hell." But as the chapels and sacred tombs in the catacombs became thus more and more resorted to as places for worship, the number of burials within them was continually growing less,—and the change in the spirit of the religion was marked by the change of character in the paintings and inscriptions on their walls. By the middle of the fifth century the extension of the catacombs had ceased, and nearly about the same time the assemblies in them fell off. The desolation of the Campagna had already begun; Rome had sunk rapidly; and the churches and burial-places within the walls afforded all the space that was needed for the assemblies of the living or the dead.
When the Goths descended upon Italy, ravaging the country as they passed over it, and sat down before Rome, not content with stripping the land, they forced their way into the catacombs, searching for treasure, and seeking also, it seems likely, for the bodies of the martyrs, whom their imperfect creed did not prevent them from honoring. After they retired, in the short breathing-space that was given to the unhappy city, various popes undertook to do something to restore the catacombs,[D]—and one of them, John III., [A.D. 560-574,] ordered that service should be performed at certain underground shrines, and that candles and all else needful for this purpose should be furnished from the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Just at the close of the sixth century, Gregory the Great [590-604] again appointed stations in the catacombs at which service should be held on special days in the course of the year, and a curious illustration of the veneration in which the relics of the saints were then held is afforded by a gift which he sent to Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards. At this time the Lombards were laying all Italy waste. Their Arian zeal ranged them in religious hate against the Roman Church,—but Theodelinda was an orthodox believer, and through her Gregory hoped to secure the conversion of her husband and his subjects. It was to her that he addressed his famous Dialogues, filled with the most marvellous stories of holy men and the strangest notions of religion. Wishing to satisfy her pious desires, and to make her a very precious gift, he sent to her many phials of oil taken from the lamps that were kept burning at the shrines of the martyrs in the catacombs. It was the custom of those who visited these shrines to dip handkerchiefs, or other bits of cloth, in the reservoirs of oil, to which a sacred virtue was supposed to be imparted by the neighborhood of the saints; and even now may often be seen the places where the lamps were kept lighted.[E]
[Footnote D: An inscription set up by Vigilius, pope from A.D. 538 to 555, and preserved by Gruter, contains the following lines:—
"Dum peritura Getae posuissent castra sub urbe,
Moverunt sanctis bella nefunda prius,
Istaque sacrilego verterunt corde sepulchra
Martyribus quondam rite sacrata piis.
Diruta Vigilius nam mox haec Papa gemiscens,
Hostibus expulsis, omne novavit opus.">[
[Footnote E: The phials sent by Gregory to Queen Theodelinda were accompanied by a list of the shrines from which they were taken; among them was that of St. Cecilia. The document closes with the words, "Quae olea sca temporibus Domini Gregorii Papae adduxit Johannes indignus et peccator Dominae Theodelindae reginae de Roma." The oils are still preserved in the treasury of the cathedral at Monza,—and the list accompanying them has afforded some important facts to the students of the early martyrology of Rome. A similar belief in the efficacy of oils burned in lamps before noted images, or at noted shrines, still prevails in the Papal City. In a little pamphlet lying before us, entitled Historic Notices of Maria SSma del Parto, venerated in St. Augustine's Church in Rome, published in 1853, is the following passage: "Many who visited Mary dipped their fingers in the lamps to cross themselves with the holy oil, by the droppings from which the base of the statue was so dirtied, that hanging-lamps were substituted in the place of those that stood around. But that the people might not be deprived of the trust which they reposed in the holy oil, bits of cotton dipped in it were wrapped up in paper, and there was a constant demand for them among the devout." This passage refers to late years, and the custom still exists. Superstition flourishes at Rome now not less than it did thirteen hundred years ago; and superstitious practices have a wonderful vitality in the close air of Romanism.]
But although the memory of those who had been buried within them was thus preserved, the catacombs themselves and the churches at their entrances were falling more and more into decay. Shortly after Gregory's death, Pope Boniface IV. illustrated his otherwise obscure pontificate by seeking from the mean and dissolute Emperor Phocas the gift of the Pantheon for the purpose of consecrating it for a Christian church. The glorious temple of all the gods was now dedicated [A.D. 608, Sept. 15] to those who had displaced them, the Virgin and all the Martyrs. Its new name was S. Maria ad Martyres,—and in order to sanctify its precincts, the Pope brought into the city and placed under the altars of his new church twenty-eight wagon-loads of bones, collected from the different catacombs, and said to be those of martyrs. This is the first notice that has been preserved of the practice that became very general in later times of transferring bodies and bones from their graves in the rock to new ones under the city churches.
Little more is known of the history of the catacombs during the next two centuries, but that for them it was a period of desolation and desertion. The Lombard hordes often ravaged and devastated the Campagna up to the very gates of the city, and descended into the underground passages of the cemeteries in search of treasure, of relics, and of shelter. Paul III., about the middle of the eighth century, took many bones and much ashes from graves yet unrifled, and distributed them to the churches. He has left a record of the motives that led him to disturb dust that had rested so long in quiet. "In the lapse of centuries," he says, "many cemeteries of the holy martyrs and confessors of Christ have been neglected and fallen to decay. The impious Lombards utterly ruined them,—and now among the faithful themselves the old piety has been replaced by negligence, which has gone so far that even animals have been allowed to enter them, and cattle have been stalled within them." Still, although thus desecrated, the graves of the martyrs continued to be an object of interest to the pilgrims, who, even in these dangerous times, from year to year came to visit the holy places of Rome; and itineraries, describing the localities of the catacombs and of the noted tombs within them, prepared for the guidance of such pilgrims, not later than the beginning of the ninth century, have been preserved to us, and have afforded essential and most important assistance in the recent investigations.[F]
[Footnote F: Four of these itineraries are known. One of them is preserved in William of Malmesbury's Chronicle. The differences and the correspondences between them have been of almost equal assistance in modern days in the determination of doubtful names and localities.]