The Catacombs of Rome, and Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity

by W. H. Withrow

[353] Sectae ipsius (Carpocratis) fuisse traditur socia quædam Marcellina, quæ colebat imagines Jesu et Pauli, et Homeri et Pythagoræ, adorando incensumque ponendo.—Aug., de Hæresib., c. vii; cf. Iren., advers Hæres., i, c. xxv, § 6. Rochette figures one of these Gnostic tessaræ or amulets with a head of Christ and the word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, accompanied by the symbolic fish.

[354] In larario suo ... Christum, Abraham et Orpheum, et hujusmodi ceteros, habebat ac majorum effigies, rem divinam faciebat.—Lamprid., in Alex. Sever., c. xxix.

[355] Lübke, vol. i, p. 316.

[356] Stanley’s Eastern Churches, passim.

CHAPTER II.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE CATACOMBS.

Primitive Christianity was eminently congenial to religious symbolism. Born in the East, and in the bosom of Judaism, which had long been familiar with this universal oriental language, it adopted types and figures as its natural mode of expression. These formed the warp and woof of the symbolic drapery of the tabernacle and temple service, prefiguring the great truths of the Gospel. The Old Testament sparkles with mysterious imagery. In the sublime visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, move strange creatures of wondrous form and prophetic significance. In the New Testament the Divine Teacher conveys the loftiest lessons in parables of inimitable beauty. In the apocalyptic visions of St. John the language of imagery is exhausted to represent the overthrow of Satan, the triumph of Christ, and the glories of the New Jerusalem.

The primitive Christians, therefore, naturally adopted a similar mode of art expression for conveying religious instruction. They also, as a necessary precaution in times of persecution, concealed from the profane gaze of their enemies the mysteries of the faith under a veil of symbolism, which yet revealed their profoundest truths to the hearts of the initiated. That such disguise was not superfluous is shown by the recent discovery of a pagan caricature of the Crucifixion on a wall beneath the Palatine, and by the recorded desecration of the

eucharistic vessels by the Apostate Julian.[357] To those who possessed the key to the “Christian hieroglyphs,” as Raoul-Rochette has called them,[358] they spoke a language that the most unlettered as well as the learned could understand. What to the haughty heathen was an unmeaning scrawl, to the lowly believer was eloquent of loftiest truths and tenderest consolation.