The subject of the catacombs and the early inscriptions on Christian graves is one so widely known and so copiously illustrated by many learned works, both English and foreign, that it would be superfluous to say much about it. Yet Cardinal Wiseman is so popular an author, and Fabiola so standard a novel, that we may be forgiven for drawing a little on treasures so temptingly ready to our hand. There is in the first chapter of the second part of Fabiola an interesting reference to the old established craft of the fossores, or excavators of the Christian cemeteries. Cardinal Wiseman says that some modern antiquarians have based upon the assertion of an anonymous writer, contemporary with S. Jerome, an erroneous theory of the fossores having formed a lesser ecclesiastical order in the primitive church, like a lector or reader. “But,” he adds, “although this opinion is untenable, it is extremely probable that the duties of this office were in the hands of persons appointed and recognized by ecclesiastical authority.... It was not a cemetery or necropolis company which made a speculation of burying the dead, but rather a pious and recognized confraternity, which was associated for the purpose.” Father Marchi, the great Jesuit authority on ancient subterranean Rome, says that a series of interesting inscriptions, found in the cemetery of S. Agnes, proves that this occupation was continued in particular families, grandfather, father, and sons having carried it on in the same place. The fossores also transacted such rare bargains as were known in those days of simplicity and brotherly love, when wealthy Christians willingly made compensation for the privilege of being buried near a martyr's tomb. Such an arrangement is commemorated in an early Christian inscription preserved in the Capitol. The translation runs thus: “This is the grave for two bodies, bought by Artemisius, and the price was given to the fossor Hilarus—that is ... (the number, being in cipher, is unintelligible.) [pg 273] In the presence of Severus the fossor, and Laurentius.”
Cardinal Wiseman, jealous of Christian traditions, particularly notes that the theory of the subterranean crypts, now called catacombs, ever having been heathen excavations for the extraction of sand, has been disproved by Marchi's careful and scientific examination. He then describes the manner of entombment used in these underground cemeteries: “Their walls as well as the sides of the staircases are honeycombed with graves, that is, rows of excavations, large and small, of sufficient length to admit a human body, from a child to a full-grown man.... They are evidently made to measure, and it is probable that the body was lying by the side of the grave while this was being dug. When the corpse was laid in its narrow cell, the front was hermetically closed either by a marble-slab, or more frequently by several broad tiles put edgeways in a groove or mortise, cut for them in the rock, and cemented all round. The inscription was cut upon the marble, or scratched in the wet mortar.... Two principles, as old as Christianity, regulate this mode of burial. The first is the manner of Christ's entombment; he was laid in a grave in a cavern, wrapped up in linen, embalmed with spices, and a stone, sealed up, closed his sepulchre. As S. Paul so often proposes him for the model of our resurrection, and speaks of our being buried with him in baptism, it was natural for his disciples to wish to be buried after his example, so as to be ready to rise with him. This lying in wait for the resurrection was the second thought that regulated the formation of these cemeteries. Every expression connected with them alluded to the rising again. The word to bury is unknown in Christian inscriptions: ‘deposited in peace,’ ‘the deposition of ...’ are the expressions used; that is, the dead are left there for a time, till called for again, as a pledge or precious thing, entrusted to faithful but temporary keeping. The very name of cemetery suggests that it is only a place where many lie, as in a dormitory, slumbering for a while, till dawn come and the trumpet's sound awake them. Hence the grave is only called the ‘place,’ or more technically ‘the small home,’[120] of the dead in Christ.”
The old Teutonic Gottes-Acker, the acre or field of God, denotes the same eminently Christian idea; the dead are thus likened to the seed hidden in the ground for a while, to ripen into a glorious spiritual harvest when the last call shall be heard. We have read somewhere, in an English novel whose name has escaped our memory, the same beautiful idea most poetically expressed. It was something to this effect: “We put up a stone at the head of a grave, just as we write labels in the spring-time for the seeds we put into the earth, that we may remember what glorious flower is to spring from the little gray, hidden handful that seems so insignificant just now”—a Catholic thought found astray in a book that had nothing Catholic about it save its beauty and poetry; for beauty is a ray of truth, and truth is one and Catholic. One other remark is worth remembering about the early Christian inscriptions on the tombs of the departed. There is generally some anxiety to preserve a record of the exact date of a person's death, and, in modern days, if it happened that there was no room for both the day and the year, no doubt the day, would be left unnoticed, and the year carefully chronicled. “Yet,” says [pg 274] Cardinal Wiseman, “while so few ancient Christian inscriptions supply the year of people's deaths, thousands give us the very day of it on which they died, whether in the hopefulness of believers or in the assurance of martyrs. Of both classes annual commemoration had to be made on the very day of their departure, and accurate knowledge of this was necessary. Therefore it alone was recorded.”
O ages of faith! when it was the ambition of Christians to be inscribed in the Book of Life, instead of leaving names blazoned in gold in the annals of an earthly empire!
Prayers for the dead were in use among the primitive Christians, and in one of the inscriptions mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman the following reference to these prayers is found: “Christ God Almighty refresh thy spirit in Christ.” That this hallowed custom is akin to the natural feelings of a loving heart is self-evident; the coldness of an “age of philosophy” alone could doubt it. Well might it be called the age of disorganization and not of philosophy (which is “love of wisdom”), for the wisdom that seeks to pull down instead of building up is but questionable. The disorganization of political society which we see at work through the International and the Commune; the disorganization of moral society which we behold every day increasing through the ease with which the marriage-tie is dissolved, and the hold the state is claiming on children and even infants; the disorganization of religious society which we find in the ever-multiplying feuds of sects, like gangrene gradually eating away an unsound body; these are all fitting companions to that most ruthless severing of this world from the next which pretends to isolate the dead from the spiritual help and sympathy of the living, and to dwarf in the souls of men what even human laws commanded, or at least protected, concerning their bodies. The want of our age is a want of heart; heartlessness and callousness to the most sacred, the most natural feelings, is shown to a fearful extent among our modern mind-emancipators and reformers. On the one hand, nature is held up as a god to which all moral laws are to be subject, or, rather, before whose fiat they are to cease to exist, while, on the other, nature (in everything lawful, touching, noble, generous) is told that she is a fool, and must learn to subdue “childish” aspirations and outgrow “childish” beliefs!
But the belief of a communication between the living and the departed is not only a natural one; it is also Biblical. S. Matthew speaks of the middle state of souls when he mentions the strict account that will have to be rendered of “every idle word.”[121] S. Paul says that “every man's work ... shall be tried in fire: and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”[122] S. Peter makes mention of “the spirits in prison,”[123] and S. John, in the Apocalypse, implies a state of probation when he says that “there shall not enter into it [the New Jerusalem] anything defiled or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.”[124] In the Second Book of Machabees, one of the most national of the Jewish records, and the most favorite and consolatory of the religious books held by the Jews as infallible oracles, the whole doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the departed is most plainly adverted to.
After a great battle and victory, Judas Machabeus searches the bodies of his slain warriors, and finds that some of them had appropriated heathen votive offerings made to the idols whose temples they had burnt at Jamnia a short time before. Upon this discovery, according to the sacred text, which is here too precious a testimony to be condensed, he, “making a gathering, sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead.) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.”[125]
It may not perhaps be generally known that, among the Jews, the custom of praying for the dead exists, and has always existed uninterruptedly. Some of the supplications are very beautiful, and we do not hesitate to give them here, as an interesting corroboration of the assertions we have made throughout.
The chief prayers for the dead are contained in the “Kaddisch” for mourners, which forms part of the evening as well as the morning service for the Jewish Sabbath. Although the dead are not mentioned by name, it is to them alone that the prayers apply, as we understand from persons of that persuasion. The text is the following:
“May our prayers be accepted with mercy and kindness; may the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted in the presence of their Father who is in heaven, and say ye Amen. [The congregation here answer Amen.] May the fulness of peace from heaven with life be granted unto us and to all Israel, and say ye Amen.” “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. May he who maketh peace in his high heavens bestow peace on us and on all Israel. And say ye Amen.”