Here the monuments of pagan and of Christian Rome confront each other. The spectator stands between two worlds of widest divergence, and cannot but be struck with the immense contrast between them. “I have spent,” says M. Rochette, “many entire days in this sanctuary of antiquity, where the sacred and profane stand face to face in the written monuments preserved to us, as in the days when paganism and Christianity, striving with all their powers, were engaged in mortal conflict.”[668] On the one side are recorded the pride and pomp of worldly rank, the lofty titles and manifold distinctions of every class, from divinities to slaves. The undying historic names of Rome’s mighty conquerors, the leaders of her cohorts and legions, mingle with those of the proud patrician citizens, and alike display on their sepulchral slabs the august array of prænomen, nomen, and cognomen, which attest their
lofty social position or civil power.[669] The costly carving and elaborate bas reliefs of many of these monuments indicate the wealth of him whom they commemorate. The elegantly turned classic epitaph—with its elegiac hexameters breathing the stern and cold philosophy of the Stoa, or an utter blankness of despair concerning the future, or, perchance, a querulous and passionate complaining against the gods—shows how the races without the knowledge of the true God met the awful mystery of death. The numerous altars to all the fabled deities of the Pantheon, the vaunting inscriptions and lofty attributes ascribed to the shadowy brood of Olympus—“unconquered, greatest, and best”—read, by the light of to-day, like an unconscious satire on the high pretensions of those vanished powers. The fragmentary edicts of the emperors, the numerous military trophies, and the records of complicated political orders, indicate the might and majesty of the Empire in the days of its utmost power and splendour.
On the other side of the corridor are the humble epitaphs of the despised and persecuted Christians, many of which, by their rudeness, their brevity, and often their marks of ignorance and haste, confirm the truth of the Scripture, that “not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” Yet these “short and simple annals of the poor” speak to the heart with a power and pathos compared with which the loftiest classic eloquence seems cold and empty. It is a fascinating task to spell out the sculptured legends of the Catacombs—the vast graveyard of the primitive church, which seems to give up its dead at our questioning, to bear witness concerning the faith and hope of the Golden Age of Christianity.
As we muse upon these half-effaced inscriptions—
Rudely written, but each letter
Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter—
we are brought face to face with the church of the early centuries, and are enabled to comprehend its spirit better than by means of any other evidence extant. These simple epitaphs speak no conventional language like the edicts of the emperors, the monuments of the mighty, or even the writings of the Fathers; they utter the cry of the human heart in the hours of its deepest emotion; they bridge the gulf of time, and make us feel ourselves akin with the suffering, sorrowing, yet triumphant Christians of the primitive ages.
These inscriptions were found in situ in the explorations of the Catacombs, or were dug up in vineyards in the vicinity of the city. They have been diligently collected by antiquarians for the last three hundred years. Before the year 1578 there were not a thousand Christian inscriptions extant in all Italy. Of these not one was derived from the Catacombs, and the earliest date was the year 533. With all its boasted veneration for the past, and professed devotion to the antiquities of primitive Christianity, the Church of Rome allowed the memory of the Catacombs, the shrine and sanctuary of the faith in the early centuries, to be as completely forgotten as the site of Troy; and even after their rediscovery many of their principal records of the past were wantonly destroyed or recklessly lost through the ignorance or carelessness of their self-constituted guardians and preservers. Numerous invaluable inscriptions have perished from the effects of time;
many have been scattered throughout the public and private collections of Europe; and many more have been defaced or ruined by the feet of generations of worshippers in the churches of whose pavements they form a part. Bosio describes many monuments extant in his day of which De Rossi saw only the fragments, and the latter pathetically deplores the destruction and devastation of those precious relics of Christian antiquity.[670]
Christian epigraphy, however, was not altogether neglected during the Middle Ages. A manuscript collection of epitaphs found at Einsiedlen, and attributed to the ninth century, is partly Christian; and another, found at Kloster Newburg, is exclusively so. A manuscript in St. Mark’s Library at Venice contains about a hundred and fifty early Christian epitaphs. The first collection after the revival of letters was made by Pietro Sabini, and another was published by Onofrio Panvini. Leo X. commanded Raphael, the capo architetto of St. Peter’s, to preserve from injury the inscriptions—res lapidaria—of the older structure; but no systematic attempt at their preservation was made till Benedict XIV. appointed Francesco Brambini to that task. He collected a large number in the long gallery of the Vatican; but they were not arranged till the close of the last century, when they were classified by the distinguished
archæologist Geatano Marini at the command of Pius VI. A new collection was begun in the Lateran Museum by Padre Marchi, which has been greatly enlarged and admirably classified and arranged by Cavaliere De Rossi. There are also other collections in the Collegio Romano, and in the Kircherian and other Museums. Many sepulchral slabs are also affixed to the walls or inserted in the pavement of the churches of St. Paul, St. Gregory, St. Laurence, St. Mark, St. Maria in Trastevere, and in a few others in Rome.[671]