Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.”
—Prudentius, Peristephanon, Hymn iv.
The Catacombs of Rome were the birthplace of Christian art as well as the sepulchre of the children of the early church. It is only within a few years that the modern traveller has been induced, through the careful study which the Catacombs have received, to visit these subterranean homes of the persecuted Christian, so filled with the symbolism of his faith. From 1567, the year in which Father Bosio began his investigations in the Catacombs, till the present century, some minds of kindred interest in these burial-places of the martyrs have been fascinated with their Christian archæology, and from time to time have appeared works upon subjects connected with the Catacombs. F. Bosio spent thirty years in making explorations, and left for posthumous publication his Roma [pg 373]Sotterranea, which F. Severano issued from the press in Rome in 1632. Seventy years later came Inscriptionum antiquarum explicatio by the learned Fabretti, and eighteen years later still, F. Boldetti, who had devoted the greater part of his life to the examination of the monuments, inscriptions, and paintings of the Catacombs, embodied the results of his patience and industry in the great work Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii dei Santi Martiri, etc., di Roma. Then came Bottari's wonderful studies on the Christian art of the Catacombs entitled Sculture e pitture sagre, estratte dai Cimiteri di Roma. Following in the paths opened by these zealous Italian students, M. D'Agincourt, M. Raoul Rochette, Abbé Gaume, and the eminent artist M. Perret, have contributed to the archæological literature of France several important works on the Roman Catacombs.
To the pontificate of Pius IX. belongs the honor of producing the two greatest antiquarian scholars of our age. The one, the Cavaliere Canina, has treated with remarkable acuteness and judgment of the Appian Way from the Capenian Gate to Bovillæ;[150] the other, the Cavaliere de Rossi, of the Catacombs,[151] and it is of the latter that we propose to speak. It is impossible, in the brief space that is allotted to us, to do more than select one of the interesting subjects with which his works on the Catacombs abound, and as an Anglican student of the Catholic Church, its doctrines, its discipline, and its literature, there is none which so enkindles our enthusiasm as the Christian art of the early ages, and the symbolism with which it is clothed. We approach these pictures in the dark crypts and amid the countless tombs of the first martyrs of the faith with no little reverence. We lay aside our shoes, for the ground consecrated to the early dead is sacred, and the earnest wish of our heart is to put away the prejudice of ecclesiastical education and association. With this view before us, we make the noble words of Montesquieu our own: “Ceux qui nous avertissent sont les compagnons de nos travaux. Si le critique et l'auteur cherchent la vérité, ils out le même intérêt; car la vérité est le bien de tous les hommes: ils seront des confédérés, et non pas des ennemis.”[152]
From the early ages of the church till the close of the Vth century, the Christians of Rome were driven by the sword of persecution to seek a hiding-place wherein to exercise the holy mysteries of their religion, and to inter the remains of their dead. The vast subterranean caverns, now known as Catacombs, but more anciently called Areæ, Cryptæ, and Cœmeteria, afforded a shelter for the living and sepulture for the faithful departed. These Catacombs doubtless had their origin in the sand-pits, or arenariæ, arenifodinæ, which the pagans had excavated to procure materials for building purposes.[153] Suetonius[154] describes how Phaon exhorted Nero to enter one of these caverns made by excavations of sand, and Cicero alludes to the arenariæ, outside of the Porta Esquilina.[155] In the admirable essay by Michele Stefano de Rossi, entitled Analisi Geologica ed Architettonica, and annexed to the work of his brother, it is stated that the Catacombs, with perhaps the exception of two that are Jewish, [pg 374] are the work of the early Christians.[156]
By singular perseverance and careful discrimination in the study of documents running far back into the centuries, the Cavaliere de Rossi transferred the situation of the Catacombs of S. Callistus from the church of S. Sebastian, where they had erroneously been located, to a place a half mile nearer Rome, between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina; on the left of the road was the cemetery of S. Prætextatus, and on the right that of S. Callistus. The discovery of these hallowed crypts and sarcophagi of the early saints and popes, is of inestimable value in elucidating intricate questions of doctrine and practice, of history and tradition, which have vexed the theological world for centuries. We can scarcely resist the temptation to follow M. de Rossi through these dim cathedrals of our Christian ancestors, and reproduce a part, at least, of his masterly elucidation of their general topography, together with the history of heroic suffering and Christlike courage which the sites and names of those dark ages of danger suggest. But we must forbear, and proceed to the pictures and emblems in order to draw from them some lessons of that early fortitude, which the child of the church of the first centuries learned, as he knelt by the tomb of his companion in the faith, and looked up to the ceilings of crypts and semicircular compartments to catch by the glimmering light of smoking lamps the lineaments of some design of the religion which he professed.
The paintings of the Catacombs represent the cardinal truths of Christianity, and their types are taken from both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, as also, in rare instances, from heathen mythology. The picture, perhaps most common to the eye of the worshipper at those shrines of the martyred dead, was the representation of the Saviour in that character which exhibits the tenderest attributes of his sacred humanity, and appeals to the sympathetic element in man. Christ as the Good Shepherd conveys in its fulness of meaning what perhaps no other type of our Lord does. It is variously represented, and under different forms may refer to the foreshadowing of the Messiah's coming in the Old Testament and its fulfilment in the New. King David had been a shepherd, and understood the needs and labors of the shepherd life, and it may be that in the days of his pastoral innocence, when the lion and the bear were the destroyers of his flock, he wrote that psalm whose tone is one of quiet and trustfulness: “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”[157] Thus, in the days of persecution, the Christian of the Catacombs might read the sacred legend of our Lord under the figure of a shepherd—bearing the sheep upon his shoulders. The Good Shepherd was pictured again as bearing a goat, and in the Catacombs of S. Callistus he stands between a goat and a sheep; the former occupies the more honorable place, the right hand, and the latter the left. Often the Good Shepherd [pg 375] leans on his pastoral crook, and bears in his hand a pipe. All these typical allusions refer to his character as exhibited in the Gospels. They teach the merciful watchfulness of our Lord, and the readiness with which he takes back into his fold, the church, yea, to the more honorable place by his side, the wayward and the erring. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”[158] Protestant critics have not been wanting in an attempt to trace the symbolism of this figure of the Good Shepherd to a heathen origin, and adduce as an argument in behalf of their theory that its prototype is in the Tombs of the Nasones. Even in questions of Christian archæology is exhibited the same polemical spirit which animated the accomplished English scholar, Conyers Middleton, who lent all the resources of his vast learning in classical history to prove the resemblance and identity of pagan and Catholic rites. But a more learned and reverent critic in the field of antiquities is the incomparable Marangoni, whose splendid work, Cose Gentilesche trasportate ad Uso delle Chiese, sets at rest for ever many problems which Mr. Poynder, a shallow pretender to scholarship, revived in the Alliance of Popery and Heathenism.
While the ancient heathen lived in the atmosphere of a religion which incited to cheerfulness and pleasure in the present life, it portrayed but faintly any idea of immortality. The world around him was peopled with unseen spirits. They inhabited woods and streams, and he was ever watchful to interpret the slightest signs or omens which might yield him some token to enlighten the spiritual darkness of his soul. The mythological system of the pagan was a vital reality. It accompanied him not only to the solemn festival in the temple, but on the march, in the camp, and in the market-place. It was with him in hours of joy and of sorrow; but it penetrated not beyond the boundaries of this world. It offered no cross here, and knew nothing of the crown hereafter. There were no bright pictures of the rewards of eternity. This life was the narrow limit of his hope and his labor. Hades or the grave was dreaded because of its sunlessness. Iphigenia entreats her father for life in an impassioned appeal, which sums up the heathen's belief:
“To view the light of life,
To mortals most sweet; in death there is