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

by W. H. Withrow

In the Vatican Museum are certain truculent-looking objects, said by the Roman custodians to be instruments of torture taken from the graves of the martyrs.[632] But the locality in which they were found is seldom recorded, which deprives them of much of their historic value; and many of them are probably fictitious. Dr. Northcote admits that they are often “of doubtful authenticity,” and that “many look more like domestic utensils, and seem to be of Etruscan workmanship.” “These,” he adds, “were probably never taken from the Catacombs at all.”[633] Others have too modern an appearance to admit such a supposition, and look rather, as Maitland suggests, as if “taken from the chambers of the Holy Inquisition.”[634] Among the most formidable of these alleged instruments of martyrdom, as well as the most probably genuine, are the terrible plumbatæ and ungulæ. The former were scourges of small chains loaded with

bronze or lead, with which, it is recorded, the martyrs were often beaten to death.[635] Aringhi and others have affected to discover on the mouldering skeletons of the early Christians, after the lapse of fifteen hundred years, the marks made by these plumbatæ. In one exceptional instance given by Bosio,[636] an orante is represented with this dreadful instrument of torture lying beside her. The ungulæ, as the name implies, are iron claws or hooks, described in the Acts of the Martyrs as employed for lacerating their flesh. The dreadful wounds they inflict are referred to by Prudentius in his account of the martyrdom of St. Vincent: “One covers with kisses the double furrows of the ungulæ; another is glad to wipe the purple stream from the body.”

In the Catacomb of Calepodius was discovered an iron-toothed comb considered to have been similarly employed in torturing the martyrs; in the crypts of St. Alexander, among other iron instruments, was found a long narrow ladle, which it is thought was used in pouring molten lead down their throats; and in the cemetery of St. Agnes an iron hook, designed, as Aringhi conceived, for dragging their bodies after death. In the Vatican Museum is also a pair of iron forceps, with horrid trenchant teeth and the remains of wooden handles, probably employed in pinching and tearing the flesh of the helpless victims of heathen rage. A similar forceps is sometimes engraved on a funeral slab, where, in accordance with analogous examples, it probably indicated the trade of the deceased as a smith. The genius of primitive Christianity was averse to recording the circumstances of the believer’s death, and made slight allusion to the

sufferings of the martyrs. Although it is possible that some of these relics of persecution may be genuine, yet it is difficult to conceive how the Christians could obtain from the pagan authorities these instruments of torture, or why they should bury them with the martyred dead; and these considerations will account for the extreme rarity of their authentic occurrence.

Vast numbers of lamps have been found in the Catacombs, and specimens abound in almost every antiquarian museum. They must have been absolutely necessary to dispel the darkness of these gloomy crypts, so as to render them safe for the solemnizing of funeral rites, for worship, or for sanctuary from oppression. They are of varying material and design, but are for the most part of terra cotta of the ordinary antique pattern and of common workmanship. Many, however, were executed in bronze or iron, often with considerable taste and skill. Some of these had bronze chains by which to suspend them from the ceiling of the chambers or corridors. Those in terra cotta had frequently handles by which they could be carried; most, however, were without either, and were placed in niches in the tufa near the stairways, at the entrances of the principal galleries, at the angles of the corridors, and in the cubicula used for purposes of worship.

These lamps generally bore some Christian symbol, as the sacred monogram, the Good Shepherd, the palm, fish, or dove, and not unfrequently the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. Sometimes the lamp itself was made in the shape of a boat, the emblem of the church voyaging through a stormy sea to the shores of eternity; of the mystic fish, whose representation entered so largely into primitive art; of a dove, the symbol of the believer’s guilelessness and purity; or of a cock, the

emblem of vigilance, a monition that he should watch and be sober. They frequently bear inscriptions referring to the five virgins, or to the source of true spiritual illumination, the divine word, which is a lamp unto the feet and a light unto the path. On one example occurs the legend, QVASI LVCERNAE LVCENTI IN CALIGINOSO LOCO—“As a light shining in a dark place,” a sentiment peculiarly appropriate to those gloomy chambers of death, which were nevertheless illumined by the glorious hope of a blissful immortality.

Fig. 112.—Early Christian Symbolical Lamp.