sacrifice to the pagan gods, the brothers both received the crown of martyrdom.[307]
Cecilia herself was reserved for a more glorious testimony. By order of the Roman prefect she was shut up in the caldarium, or chamber of the bath, in her own palace, which was heated to the point of suffocation. After a whole day and a night she was found unharmed. No sweat stood upon her brow, no lassitude oppressed her limbs. A lictor was sent to strike off her head. Three times the axe fell upon her tender neck, but, as the law forbade the infliction of more than three strokes, she was left alive though bathed in blood. For three days she lingered, testifying of the grace of God and turning many to the faith; and then, giving her goods to the poor and her house for a church forever, she sweetly fell asleep. Her body was placed in a cypress coffin—very unusual in the Catacombs, it is doubtful if a single example was ever discovered—and buried in the cemetery of Callixtus, “near the chapel of the popes.”
But miracles ceased not with her death. In the translation of the martyrs from the Catacombs by Pascal I., in 817, the remains of Cecilia were overlooked. The saint appeared to the pope in a vision and revealed the place of her burial.[308] He sought the spot, and found her body as fresh and perfect as when laid in the tomb five centuries before! He placed it in a marble sarcophagus under the high altar of the church of St. Cecilia, which he rebuilt upon the site of her palace.
In the year 1599, or nearly eight centuries later, Cardinal
Sfondrati, while restoring the church, discovered this ancient sarcophagus. It was opened in the presence of trustworthy witnesses, and there, say the ecclesiastical records of the time, vested in golden tissue, with linen clothes steeped with blood at the feet, besides remnants of silken drapery, lay the incorrupt and virgin form of St. Cecilia in the very attitude in which she died.[309]
It is difficult to know what proportion of truth this legend contains; but, like many other of the Romish traditions, the large admixture of fiction invalidates the claims of the whole. Its sweet and tender mysticism, however, lifts it out of the region of fact into that of poetry, and almost disarms hostile criticism.[310] The excessive praise of virginity indicates a comparatively late origin. On the festival of St. Cecilia, the 22d of November, her tomb is adorned with flowers and illumined with lamps, and mass is celebrated in her subterranean chapel by a richly appareled priest—strange contrast to the primitive worship with which alone she was acquainted. In a sarcophagus discovered near her
tomb were found the remains, it is assumed, of her husband Valerian and his brother Tiburtius, who had manifestly been beheaded; and also those of the prefect Maximus, who was converted by their martyrdom and was himself beaten to death by plumbatæ. The skull of the latter was found broken, as if by such a weapon, and its abundant hair matted with blood!
Other definite areas of this Catacomb have been recognized and their outlines defined. Indeed, Father Marchi asserts that this is “the colossal region of Roma Sotterranea, all the rest being only small or middling provinces.”[311] About a hundred yards from the “Papal Crypt” is the tomb of another celebrated martyr and bishop, St. Eusebius; the graffiti on the walls, the stairway, and the decorations of which attest the reverence in which it was held. While digging here in 1856, De Rossi found the important epitaph of Eusebius before given.[312]
Intimately connected with this are also the adjacent cemeteries of St. Soteris, a virgin martyr of the same family from which Ambrose was descended; and that of St. Balbina, of vast extent, in several piani, and on a scale of unusual grandeur. These are as yet only partially explored, and promise the richest results to future examination. That of St. Balbina has many double, and even quadruple, cubicula, and the largest and most regular group of subterranean chambers that have yet been discovered, all lighted by one large hexagonal shaft. They were evidently excavated for worship, not for sepulture. This Catacomb was enlarged and beautified by Mark, bishop of Rome, in A. D. 330, who was buried in a basilica erected over these tombs.
These several areas were at first all distinct properties,