Sometimes these inscriptions breathe a spirit of pious congratulation and good-will, as the following from Perret: HILARIS VIVAS CVM TVIS OMNIBVS FELICITER SEMPER IN PACE DEI ZESES—“Joyfully mayest thou live with all thine; happily mayest thou live forever in the peace of God.” Augustine, describing in his Confessions the devout celebration of the anniversaries of the saints by his mother, Monica, says she used to bring to the festivals “a small cup of wine diluted according to her own abstemious habits, which for courtesy she would taste.”[620]
Although it is impossible that all these vessels were designed for sacramental purposes, yet it is not improbable that some of them were used as patens and chalices in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Tertullian speaks of the representation of the Good Shepherd on the sacred cup in a manner which seems to imply similarity of material and ornamentation.[621] The Liber Pontificalis states that glass patens were in use in the third century. When these were superseded by gold and silver vessels they would not improbably be placed as memorials on the tombs of departed saints.[622]
It is difficult to determine even the proximate date of these glasses. From the degraded character of their art they are evidently of a comparatively late period. Garrucci and some other writers, indeed, assign them to the third or fourth century; but from the occurrence of the nimbus, and for other technical reasons, Marriott attributes many of them to the fifth or sixth century.[623] Other peculiarities of execution are characteristic of Byzantine art, and a writer in the Revue Chrétienne asserts that there is not a single example of this mode of treatment known to belong to the Roman period. The striking corruption of doctrine and practice indicated is also an evidence of late origin.
Numerous small cups or flasks, known as ampullæ, have been found affixed to the walls or imbedded in the plaster of the tombs, frequently containing in the bottom a reddish deposit. This Bosio concluded was dried blood, and therefore asserted that these cups were irrefragable proofs of the martyrdom of the persons to whose graves they were attached. The Roman ecclesiastical authorities received this theory with enthusiasm, and in the year 1688 issued a decree that, “The Holy Congregation of Relics, having carefully examined the matter, decides that the palm and vessel tinged with blood are to be considered most certain signs of martyrdom.” Eminent Romanist writers have unflinchingly asserted, without the least corroboration of their theory from contemporary evidence, that these cups were filled with the martyr’s blood and affixed to his grave;[624] —another example of the fatal mistake of Rome
in fortifying truth with the bulwark of falsehood, and thus shaking our confidence even in that which is real. The Acts of the Martyrs, indeed, mention the collecting of their blood in napkins, sponges, or veils, to keep as a talisman and heirloom at home; but never of its preservation in a cup, or burial beside their graves. This symbol does not occur on the tombs of some who were unquestionably martyrs;[625] and some who have it, from their extreme youth, or from some other reason indicated by the inscription, cannot have belonged to that honoured class.[626] Moreover, as Mr. Seymour remarks, some of these alleged martyr blood-cups are of a form and exhibit designs unknown till long after the age of persecution.[627] In the example on the following page, given by Aringhi, the inscription is unwarrantably translated by Romanist epigraphists, “the blood of Saturnius;” instead of, in analogy with numerous other inscriptions, “the place [locus] of holy Saturnius.”
The chemist Leibnitz analyzed the red deposit in these vessels, and found that it was composed of organic matter, but does not hazard the assertion that it is blood. It has been suggested by Röstell, with whom
Rochette agrees, that these cups were sacramental vessels, and that the sediment was the lees of wine, which would yield a similar organic residuum. The desire to express fellowship with the departed in the celebration of the Agape, or the Eucharist, which often took place beside their graves, may have led to the custom of affixing these vessels to the tombs and replenishing them with wine. We know that this yearning of the human heart led in course of time to the offering of the sacrament to the dead, and the burying it in their graves.[628]
Fig. 110. Reputed Martyr Relic from the Catacombs.