THEIR HISTORY FROM A.D. 310 TO A.D. 850.
The persecution of Diocletian ended in 306, but it was not until 311
that the Catacombs were restored to their natural owners and protectors,
the Bishops of Rome. In that year the Pope Melchiades sent, by the
hands of some of his deacons, letters from the Emperor Maxentius to
the Prefect of the city, that he might recover legal possession of all
“the ecclesiastical places” of which the Christians had been plundered;
and amongst these places, the cemeteries were the most precious. About
this time, if not earlier, other cemeteries also were made, more easily
and at less cost, above ground instead of below; and during the next
hundred years both places of burial were in use. If we may take the dated
inscriptions as a guide in estimating the relative proportions in which
they were used, we should say that burial in the Catacombs remained
in the greatest favour until the latter half of the century. From the
year 364 to the end, the balance is considerably on the other side;
only one-third of the burials appear to have been in the subterranean
cemeteries, and two-thirds above ground. Then from the year 400 to 410,
burial in the Catacombs became more and more rare, until in that year it
ceased altogether.
The portions of the Catacombs that were excavated during the fourth
century vary considerably in character. In some parts, everything is
on an exceptional scale of grandeur; the chambers are not only double,
one on either side of the gallery, but even treble and quadruple, and
of magnificent proportions. In other parts, on the contrary, there is
nothing but a number of miserable galleries, executed with great economy,
and destitute of all ornament; evidently they were required to meet the
increasing wants of a large Christian population. It is during this
same period that we meet with inscriptions recording contracts for the
purchase of graves, and many more which, without entering into details,
merely declare that the deceased had provided during his lifetime a place
of burial for himself alone, or for himself and his wife, and perhaps
some other relatives also. These have very rarely been found in the more
ancient parts of the Catacombs. Indeed, such purchases would have proved
a fruitful source of embarrassment in the days of persecution, when the
_fossors_ often used galleries whose walls had been already filled with
graves as a convenient place in which to deposit the soil removed from
the new galleries they were excavating, and sometimes even buried corpses
in the pathways which they had thus filled. But this could not have been
done if it had been necessary to reserve particular spots as the private
property of persons hereafter to be buried there.
In the earliest of the inscriptions which record the purchase of graves,
the _fossors_ appear as the vendors; indeed, towards the end of the
fourth century, it would almost seem as though the whole administration
of the Catacombs had fallen into their hands. Each _fossor_ now worked
either independently, or with a partner if he preferred it; at least,
the purchase is generally stated to have been made from one _fossor_,
occasionally from two; and if the names of others of the same class are
added, it is only to say that they assisted as witnesses of the contract.
Once we even find the family of a _fossor_ selling the graves which
their father had excavated. In several of the inscriptions the price is
named, as well as the names of the contracting parties; and some authors
have attempted to estimate from these examples the ordinary cost of a
grave in the Catacombs. Their calculations, however, cannot be accepted,
for several reasons. First, the recorded prices are, in every instance,
out of all proportion with the labour really expended on the grave; and
secondly, they vary immensely, yet not according to any fixed principle.
It seems safer, therefore, to conclude, with De Rossi, that the price was
in each case proportionate to the means and good-will of the purchaser,
that so provision might be made for the gratuitous burial of the poor out
of the superabundant payments of the wealthy.
Another and a more important change than any which has yet been mentioned
came over the Catacombs during the fourth century. It has been already
mentioned that the devotion of the faithful naturally led them to look
on the tombs of the martyrs with feelings of the most tender and pious
affection; they desired, therefore, to manifest their love by some
outward tokens—to exchange the primitive simplicity of their humble
graves for something more suitable to their own altered condition. From
the first moment, then, that it was possible, even in the very age of
Constantine, grand basilicas were built over the tombs of the more
celebrated saints, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Agnes, St. Sebastian, and
others. In all these instances, they aimed at enclosing the tomb they
desired to honour within the precincts of the church; indeed, this was,
of course, the central point of devotion in the new building. But it
was impossible to dig the foundations and build the walls of such vast
edifices without a great destruction of subterranean graves and galleries
throughout the whole neighbourhood. Probably there were always some who
regretted this necessity, and who would have preferred to see these
venerable monuments of primitive Christianity left in their original
form. Certainly at the end of some fifty or sixty years, about the year
370, there sat in the chair of Peter one who seems to have entertained
these feelings, and who devoted himself therefore with singular zeal and
prudence to the work of their preservation.
Pope Damasus (for it is he of whom we are speaking) sought diligently
for all the tombs of historical note that had been hidden in days
of persecution and not yet recovered. He had no means, indeed, nor
apparently any desire, to crown them with basilicas of royal grandeur
such as Constantine had built; but he did what he could, and what he
thought necessary, both for the avoidance of scandal and danger among
the innumerable pilgrims who now flocked from all parts of the world
to visit the tombs of the martyrs, and also to preserve their memory
to future generations. First, therefore, he made new staircases and
additional shafts to the upper world to admit more light and air; he
blocked up certain passages, so as to check indiscriminate rambles in
the subterranean labyrinth, and to guide the pilgrims perforce to those
particular shrines where they wished to pay their homage. He strengthened
the friable tufa walls of some of the galleries which needed support
by means of arches of brick and stone work. He enlarged some of the
chambers, and ornamented many more; sometimes encasing their walls from
top to bottom with marble; sometimes—“not content with Parian marble,”
as Prudentius says—even using much solid silver for the ornamentation
of very special shrines. Finally, he composed short sets of verses in
honour of some of the heroes he desired to honour—verses in which he
either relates some interesting circumstance of their history which would
otherwise have been lost, or records the repairs or ornaments which had
been his own work. These inscriptions have been of the utmost service
in fixing the geography of the cemeteries, and so in reconstructing
their history. They are all exquisitely engraved on marble, and set up
at the spots to which they severally belong; engraved, too, invariably
by the same hand, the hand of an accomplished artist, Furius Dionysius
Filocalus, who devoted himself to this work out of special love, as it
would seem, to the Pontiff whom he so ably served.
The devotion of Pope Damasus to the Catacombs was as intelligent as it
was ardent. He longed, as he himself tells us, to be buried in them,
in a chamber where many of his martyred predecessors and other saints
already lay; but he respected too much the integrity of their tombs, and
prepared his place of burial therefore elsewhere. He built a place for
the purpose aboveground, in which himself, his mother, and sister, were
all buried. It would have been a happy thing for Christian archæology
if others had been equally scrupulous; but numerous epitaphs tell us
of men and women who had secured for themselves by purchase the right
of a grave “behind the saints” (_retro sanctos_) or “near” (_ad_) such
and such a saint, _i.e._, near his tomb; and many a subterranean chapel
still testifies, by the destruction of its original decorations, to the
frequent gratification of this natural desire. It is not improbable that
Pope Damasus forbade its indulgence to others, as he certainly denied it
to himself. Anyhow, there was a rapid decline in the number of those who
were buried in any part of the Catacombs during the latter part of his
Pontificate.
Then came the fatal year 410, the year in which Rome was taken by
Alaric,—the year in which, as St. Jerome says, “the most beautiful light
of the world was put out: the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to
sum up all in one word, in the destruction of one city the whole world
perished.” In this year, the use of the Catacombs as Christian cemeteries
came to an end, and it was never again resumed. Here and there, at rare
intervals, a few exceptions may be found, even down to the middle of
the fifth century; but, speaking generally, it may be said that they
now ceased to be places of burial, and were only henceforth places of
pilgrimage.
In 557, much mischief was done in them by the Goths, attracted, perhaps,
by some report of the Parian marble and solid silver of which Prudentius
had written with such enthusiasm. The mischief was repaired in part by
the generosity of the people, in part by the care of the Popes. Pope
Vigilius (A.D. 550) restored some of the monumental inscriptions of
Pope Damasus which had been broken. It must be acknowledged that his
restorations were not very successful; but this was not through any fault
of his. Those were days of continual alarm and violence, and literature
and the fine arts do not flourish in such an atmosphere. The artists,
therefore, whom Vigilius had at his command were not worthy successors
of Filocalus; they were both ignorant and unskilful. Sometimes they
do not seem to have known the Latin words they had to reproduce, and,
when they knew them, often they could not spell them. They committed
many offences against the laws both of prosody and of orthography.
Nevertheless, we owe the Pope a debt of gratitude for having done what
he could, for he has preserved to us some valuable records which would
otherwise have perished.
During the next two hundred years matters did not mend. We read of many
ordinances by the Popes designed for the protection of the cemeteries and
for the celebration of mass in them. But by and by, when the Lombards
attacked Rome in 756, the work of ruin made fresh and rapid strides,
and, in fact, was soon completed. These men were Arians, and they broke
in and carried off some bodies of the saints to take them home to their
own churches in the North of Italy; so that, immediately afterwards,
Pope Paul I., finding himself quite unable effectually to protect so
many cemeteries situated all round the city and so far from its walls,
determined to bring the bodies of the martyrs for safer custody into
churches within the city. This work of translation, as it was called,
though not continued by either of his immediate successors, was resumed
by Pope Paschal I. in 817, and carried on by others, the latest instance
on record belonging to the days of Leo IV. (A.D. 848). All these Popes
assign as the cause for the translation the state of ruin to which the
cemeteries were now reduced, and the horrible profanation to which they
were continually exposed, parts of them being even used by farmers of the
Campagna for the stabling of their sheep and oxen. From this time the
real living history of the Catacombs was at an end. As in the beginning
of the fifth century they had ceased to be used as places of burial, so
in the first half of the ninth they ceased to be frequented for purposes
of devotion. Henceforward there was nothing to keep them in the minds and
hearts of men. They were neglected and then forgotten.
A few exceptions must be made to these remarks. To some cemeteries
religious congregations of men or women had been attached from a very
early date. These houses were established for the singing of the Divine
praises day and night, in continuation of the primitive practice, when
clergy and laity used to keep watch and sing psalms and hymns at the
martyrs’ tombs. As long as this was done, the adjoining cemeteries
remained at least partially accessible, and were preserved from utter
oblivion. This is why we read of occasional visits to the Catacombs
of St. Agnes, St. Cyriaca, St. Sebastian, and one or two others, even
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Numerous inscriptions, which
the making of the modern _Campo Santo_ in Rome has lately brought to
light, demonstrate that there was a convent of nuns near San Lorenzo
_fuori le mura_, as early as the fourth century. There had been another
at the Basilica of St. Agnes since the days of Constantine; and Pope
Sixtus III. established a congregation of men at the Basilica of St.
Sebastian on the Via Appia. This last has an interesting connection with
our subject; for the cemetery at St. Sebastian’s, which had been the
temporary resting-place of the bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul, was
known as the Cemetery _ad Catacumbas_. How it came to be so called, or
what is the meaning of the name, scholars are not agreed; neither would
the settlement of the question add much to our knowledge of the Catacombs
themselves, any more than if we could discover why another cemetery was
called “The Cemetery at The Two Laurels” (_ad duas lauros_), and another,
“The Cemetery at Cucumber Hill” (_ad divum cucumeris_). An accidental
importance, however, attaches to the name of this particular cemetery,
because it is now given also to all the other subterranean cemeteries of
Rome, and even to the cemeteries of Naples, of Paris and Malta, of Sicily
and Egypt, some of which have hardly any characteristics in common with
them.