THE STORY OF THE CATACOMBS

New Zealand Tablet, 24 July 1913, Page 13

THE STORY OF THE CATACOMBS

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CITY • In connection with the Constantinian Centenary the Right Rev. Dr. Gunn, Bishop of Natchez, delivered a very interesting lecture, entitled ' Through the Catacombs to Constantine • and Ourselves/ in the course of which he dealt with the origin and history of the Catacombs. After dealing with the struggles and sufferings of the early. Christians, and the many persecutions to which they were subjected, Bishop Gunn went on to say:—lt may help to impress the picture of Christian life more firmly in our minds if I tell you something of that great Christian city, which commenced to exist when Nero was building his golden palace, and rebuilding the Rome he himself had burned. The new Christian city lay outside Rome. It had streets, palaces, churches, and houses full of inhabitants; the streets were narrow, the palaces and temples were graves its inhabitants were the dead. It had one thing peculiarly and exclusively its own: it lay entirely under ground. Not a vestige of it could be seen from above I refer to the first Christian city, to

The Roman Catacombs.

I would like to take you with me on a trip to visit one of these underground cities, and I will tell you the history of the Catacombs as we go along. We can visit only one It may surprise you to know that there are iorty of these grave cities around Rome. Don't ask me to show you everything, or to bring you everywhere. The galleries alone are longer than from Natchez to New York If we walk out to see the Catacomb of baint Cahxtus, we pass the famous Roman Forum ■ we see the rums of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins : we see the Arch of Titus, so religiously shunned by' the onn nnn *? themo ™ Coliseum, capable of holding 200,000 people. We pass under the Arch of Constantine, skirt along the Celian hill, where Pope Gregory saw the first English slaves that made him send an Augustine to convert England. We hurry out of the city, we see the spot where Peter and Paul parted on their way to martyrdom, pass the little Church Quo

Vadis.j then get a view of the famous Appian Way. If we are reminiscent, we can almost see the Roman legionaries carrying back to Rome the spoils of conquered worlds. We can see captive kings and princes in .chains, beside the triumphal,' chariots of their conquerors. ■ We may read pagan inscriptions by the way full of grief for the dead, but without a word of hope, or a dream of reunion. Here St. Paul passed as he came to Rome; here passed victorious generals, with their legions returning from foreign service. Emperors and courtiers; representatives of every form of heathenism; Greeks and '-■ Asiatics, captive ': Celts an" Britons entered:the Eternal City. ''■'■ Here Julius and his legionaries came after the conquest of Gaul and England. Here came the victorious soldiers of Titus and Vespasian, who had razed Jerusalem and its Temple to the dust. ; But you will interrupt me and say: There are no homes along this noble avenue—there are only tombs.' That is true, the Romans buried their dead, not in a cemetery as we do, but along the roads radiating from the city. The rich had a monopoly of the Appian Way, and for thirty miles from the city, we see nothing but tombs, tombs, tombs.

The First Catacombs

were on the estates of wealthy Christian families. These took a deed to the property as a cemetery, enclosed it by marked stones, warranted and willed it to a Christian, and so put it fully under the protection of Roman law. It was by law exempt from police inspection. By law it afforded rights of sanctuary to all. At the end of the century a law was passed which permitted the poorer classes to secure for themselves burial places by forming associations for that pupose. These burial clubs, whether pagan or Christian, had, or pretended to have, a certain religious character. Their members might hold meetings and possess property, provided the ostensible motive of the association was to provide burial for their members. They could meet in , the cemeteries, gather there for feast days, etc., and the law did not interfere with them. The Roman law itself was the screen behind which the Catacombs. were made possible. The right of forming burial clubs, the habit of visiting the tombs, of eating and drinking and feasting there in solemn memory of the departed all these facts and customs and principles, guaranteed by Roman law and practice as the privilege of every citizen, were of admirable convenience to the makers and frequenters of the Roman Catacombs. If a number of Christians were seen wending their way to this or to that cemetery, they would be to'pagan eyes only the members of a burial club, or the relations, friends, or dependents of some great family, going out to the appointed place to celebrate the birthday or anniversary of some deceased benefactor. The Christians did not burn their dead as the pagans did, but they could not be molested, since custom only, not law, prescribed its use. The pagans might, and did, grumble, but the tact and prudence of the Christians, . the external features used by both Christians and pagans alike, made a screen of such resemblance that

The Origin of the Catacombs

may be easily and readily explained. But let us now light a taper and take a look at the Catacombs from within. Perhaps our guide (because we can never go alone if we want to come back) may take us down a modern stairway, or through some accidental man-hole in the soil, and at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet we shall find ourselves in a dark, narrow gallery about three feet wide and seven or eight feet high, cut out of the living rock. Its walls are pierced with a number of horizontal shelves, one above the other, like the shelves in a book-case.' Our guide will tell us that each shelf once contained a dead body, and had been shut up by long tiles and slabs of marble inscribed with the name of the family, or some Christian emblem. We may even see to-day the bones and ashes of the dead. We may see the palm branch carved on the marble slab, or the vial showing where the bloodstained sponge was put. Our gallery may lead us to a family vault, or to. a chapel where two or three little chambers are made to open into one. The guides to the Catacombs know the history of nearly all the martyrs and con-

fessors buried there; but there is always to be found loving and special mention made by them Of a" ■

Confraternity of Guardsmen,

restorers, and diggers, called sextons or fossores. Guides always speak of them with loving mention, and deservedly so. By night these sextons dug underground; with tremendous exertion they built corridors on corridors, and in the walls graves upon graves. In the face of the greatest difficulties and dangers they rescued the bodies of the martyrs from the hands, of the executioners, or of the enraged people, bringing them into the safe keeping of these subterranean cemeteries. Then they washed and cleaned and embalmed the dead bodies, wrapped them in white linen and covered them with a marble slab. Whenever the sides of one corridor were filled with graves, a new corridor was excavated. The clay from the new gallery was packed into the old one. In that way we, by modern archaeological explorations, come to graves which have been untouched since the fossores walled them up and filled the galleries some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago. Our guide tells us of the construction of the chapel of the Catacombs, and first he tells us of its altar. The altar in the early Church was a slab of marble covering the remains of a martyr. When some noted Christian gave his life for the faith, when the fossores rescued the mangled remains, perhaps from the lions in the Coliseum, or the half-burned corpses in the gardens of Nero, they gathered up everything belonging to the dying here and carried all reverently and lovingly to the Catacombs. The body was placed within a ' loculus ' and an alcove formed above the remains, called an ' atcosolium.' Here, then, was an arched vault, or as it was called, 'a table tomb,' and here alone it was allowed to say Mass in the Catacombs. Strange to say, but it is not strange, no priest is permitted to say Mass anywhere in the world without a table tomb, or as we call it, an altar stone containing a relic of a martyr. We can imagine the feelings of the early priests saying Mass over the remains of their departed brothers.

The Primitive Church

consisted of two small chambers, separated by a corridor; in the one near the altar were the men, in the other, the women. The separating of the sexes was strictly enforced in the primitive Church. The guides again call our attention to the luminaria, or air and light holes, bored in the ceiling. We can understand the necessity of these when we remember that there are over two million graves in the Catacombs, and when we think of the many lamps and the crowds of people, we can understand the necessity of these air shafts. Frequently these air holes betrayed the Christians to the pagans, as in the case related by St. Gregory of Tours. Once the Prefect of the city waited until the chapels were filled with worshippers assisting at Mass, and poured down the ventilating shaft earth and stones, and buried the congregation alive., As the crude massacre was made during Mass, our late explorers found there the rough chalice, the remnants of the vestments that were used during the celebration itself. Following the peace declared by Constantine, the Catacombs became a place of pilgrimage; . immense crowds flocked there from the third to the sixth century. Many Popes, especially the great St. Damasus, in the fifth century, made extensive repairs. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Lombard invaders desecrated, plundered, and in part destroyed the Catacombs. This led to what is known as the period of translations, by which the relics of the Popes and the principal martyrs were removed for safety to the churches of Rome.

After 817 the Catacombs were abandoned and closed, and practically lost sight of until the sixteenth century. From 1632 to 1842 the Catacombs were travelled over in every direction by relic hunters and curio seekers, and especially by ignorant archaeologists, who did imspeakable harm by their reckless excavations, by their neglect to chronicle intelligently what they met; The Catacombs were in fact treated as a huge quarry: priceless inscriptions were taken away in cartloads, and

sawed into slabs to pave the Roman churches, or to adorn -the walls of private houses. The corridors : were' broken down and clogged up; the shafts for light and air were choked from" above with : refuse; rich materialtreasures disappeared without leaving any trace. 'The frescoes were detached from their original site and perished in the transit to the upper air. Nearly every indignity was offered to these holy places in which St. Damasus feared to repose even in death. The celebrated Jesuit, Father Marchi, did - much to stop the vandalism of the Catacombs, but Father Marchi's greatest work was the formation of the world's greatest archaeologist, '•■'":... .' ■'-'■"';''■■..:■

The Celebrated John Baptist De Rossi.

For fifty years De Rossi made the Catacombs his home. He excavated hundreds of miles of galleries; he gathered and preserved every inscription,, pagan and Christian. He sifted the very sand of the corridors for information; and to-day the Church is enriched with thousands of inscriptions, whole or, fragmentary, from the Catacombs, which I think, after the Books of Revelation, are amongst the most precious relics of the Church. I shall never forget ; the evenings we spent in the Catacombs with this grand old man. He spoke to us in a little room, where once lay the bodies of all the martyred Popes for three centuries. He told us of tie days of persecution, and pictured to us the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and failures of those days of faith. I have tried while bringing you through the Catacombs to tell you of

The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity. The sword of calumny and ridicule—all in turn and often together, tried to kill the mustard seed of Christianity, to extinguish the newly lit flambeau of the faith. In vain did paganism try to drown the Church in the blood of her children; in vain were armies sent to the four corners of the earth to exterminate the Christians; in vain did they chase the early believers from the surface of the earth, and compelled th'em to hide in the dark caverns of the Catacombs. All that could not prevent the blood of martyrs from becoming the seed of Christians. So rapid was the spread of Christianity that forty years after the death of St. Paul, one of the officers of the Emperor ■ Trajan, writing to his royal master, declared that the religion of the Christians had gained already the cities, the islands, and the rural districts. One century later Tertuilian exclaimed : We are but of yesterday, and already we fill your cities, your camps, your council halls, your palace, your senate and forum. We leave you dly your temples. If we were to withdraw from you, the Empire would be but a desert. Paganism saw Christianity grow, and recognising and fearing the consequences, came " r

The Persecution of Diocletian,

the last, the severest in its terms, and acts. In this it was like the dying throes of a monster, whose bitterness of spirit increases as his power wanes. In 303, just ten years before the Edict of Milan was issued, there-ap-peared a series of imperial edicts, the very terms of which indicate the despairing and yet determined effort to root out every vestige of the Christian *aith and Church. 'By these enactments all Christian assemblies were prohibited all churches . were to be demolished ; all copies of the Scriptures to be burned; all Christians who held rank of office to be degraded; all of whatever rank to lose their citizenship, and be liable like slaves to be tortured. Christian slaves were to lie incapable of receiving freedom. All bishops and clergy were to be thrown into prison and there compelled ,to sacrifice, and all Christians everywhere ordered publicly to worship the gods, under the usual penalty of torture and death ' (Innes, Church and State). In 311 a sudden and unexpected change of attitude to the Christians. Galerius, recognising that they could not be conquered nor exterminated, resolves to grant them toleration, and to put them on an equal footing with the Jews. In 312, Constantine, having conquered Maxenfc'us at the battle of the Milviah bridge, ascended the tl ~ohe as

Sole Emperor of ■ the West.

It was on the night before this famous battle that as he himself told the historian, Eusebius',he saw the /vision of a Cross with the motto"./•' In hoc signo vinces.' At the battle his soldiers carried the Labarum bearing the monogram and Cross of Christ. He attributed his victory to Christ and to Christianity. t ... You are too familiar with the history of this first Christian Emperorwho so justly deserves the title of great, for me to speak of him. He was a soldier of fearless courage, a general of extraordinary ability, and a statesman of the highest order. He was providentially called to bring the Church from the Cataombs to remove the fetters from the limbs of the Christians by granting them, not toleration merely, but for the first time in their existence, liberty and equality before the law.

In 313 Corifetantine and Lucullus, the Emperors of the East and West, the one a Christian and the other a pagan, met at Milan and issued the famous proclamation known as the Edict of Milan. By this edict was established the fullest toleration of all religions and freedom of worship, without hindrance from the State, and , without preference by the State of one religion before another. Its terms are most broad and explicit. It gives 'both to the Christians and all others free power of following whatever religion each man nay have preferred—the absolute power is to be denied to no one to give himself either to the worship of the Christian or to that religion which he thinks must be suited to himself—that each may have the free liberty of the worship which he prefers, for we desire that no religion may have its honor diminished by us. :