Here I, Damasus, confess I wished to lay my limbs, but I feared to vex the holy ashes of the saints.
The desire for communion with the holy dead continued throughout successive generations. Multitudes of pilgrims still visited the shrines of the martyrs, and, after the wont of travellers, left traces of their presence in the numerous graffiti which are written on the walls. Some of these are names of classical form, as Leo, Felix,
Maximus, Theophilus; others, written in less accessible places, are of later date and of foreign character, Spanish, British, or German, as Ildebrand, Ethelred, Lupo, Bonizo, Joannes. The names are frequently accompanied with the letters Pb., or Presb., the indication of the ecclesiastical grade of the writer.
Many of the loftiest dignitaries in church and state, popes and prelates, princes and nobles, kings and queens, and even some illustrious wearers of the imperial purple, continued to be brought, often from afar, throughout the period of the Middle Ages, to lie in death as near as possible to the hallowed dust of the early martyrs and confessors of the faith. Among them were some stained with blood, who hoped to expiate their crimes by their religious austerities, and to enter paradise through the intercession of the saints near whose remains their bones were laid. Several petty kings of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, some expelled by their subjects or rivals, others flying from the post of duty, muttered their prayers and counted their beads in the crypts of the Catacombs, and were buried in their vicinity. The following are a few of the more illustrious, taken from the list of the Abbé Gaume:[224] Popes Leo I., Gregory I., II., and III., Leo XI.; the Emperor Honorius and Mary his wife, Valentinian and Otho II.; Cedwalla, king of the West-Saxons; Conrad, king of the Mercians; Offa and Ina, Saxon kings, with Eldiburga, wife of the latter; the Empress Agnes, Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, and the Countess Matilda, who so enriched the papal see by her donations. These were buried, not in the Catacombs, but in the basilicas erected over
them, which were considered to share their sanctity. Thus, as St. Chrysostom remarks, referring to the tradition concerning the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, kings laid aside their crowns at the tombs of the fisherman and the tentmaker.[225]
During the latter part of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century the management of the Catacombs seems to have been no longer in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, but under the control of the fossors,[226] with whom the bargain for interment was made by the friends of the deceased. Numerous inscriptions occur in which this bargain is recorded, together with the names of the buyers and sellers, and sometimes those of the witnesses to the contract, and even the price that was paid, as in the following examples: COSTAT NOS EMISSE IANVARIVM ET BRITIAM LOCVM ANTE DOMNA EMERITA A FOSSORIBVS BVRDONE ET MICINMO ET MVSCO RATIONE AVRI SOLIDVM VN SEMES (sic)—“It is unquestionable that we, Januarius and Britia, bought a place in front of [the tomb of] Lady Emerita[227] from the fossors Burdo, Micinus, and Muscus, for the consideration of one solidus and a half of gold”—(about $7.) EMPTVM LOCVM A BARTIMISTVM VISOMVM HOC EST ET PRETIVM DATVM A FOSSORE HILARO ID EST FOLN ... PRESENTIA SEVERI FOSS. ET LAVRENT—“The place bought by Bartimistus, that is, a bisomus; and the price paid to the fossor Hilarus, 1400 folles, (about $5 65,) in the presence of the fossors Severus and Laurence.” The fossors also probably prepared and engraved the funeral slabs, as seems to be implied in the following:
LOCV MARMARORI (sic) QVODRISOMVM—“A quadruple tomb [bought] of the stonecutter.”[228]
In the following illustration from the Catacomb of Callixtus the fossor is seen standing in a cubiculum lined with graves, and surrounded by the implements of his labour. On his shoulder is the mattock with which he dug the friable tufa, and in his hand the lamp with the spike by which it was fastened to the rock while he worked. At his feet lie the compasses for marking out the loculi, and over his head we read the simple epitaph,
“Diogenes the fossor, buried in peace on the eighth before the calends of October.”