1 LIBRARY OF THE Theological Seminary, PRINCETON, N. J. Ca DG 807.4 .M34 1846 Maitland, Charles, 1815- Shi 1866. The church in the catacombs Bo •HA S y' - THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. London : Printed by A Sfottiswoouk, New- Street^ Square. THE CHUECH IN THE CATACOMBS: A DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH OF ROME, ILLUSTRATED BY ITS Sbcpulcfjral Remains. 1 ii-ys^' CHARLES MAtTLAND, M.D. See p, 173, LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1846. TO THE REV. EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY, D.D. HEAD MASTER OF ETON COLLEGE, AS A SMALL TOKEN OF RESPECT AND ESTEEM, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED THE AUTHOR. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/churchincatacombOOmait_0 CONTENTS. Page Introduction ------ 1 The Origin of the Catacombs - - - ^ 16 The Catacombs as a Christian Cemetery - 36 The Martyrs of the Catacombs 80 The Symbols used in the Catacombs - - 156 The Offices and Customs of the Ancient Church - 185 The Origin of Christian Art - 239 Conclusion ------ 298 DIRECTION TO THE BINDER. Place the Triumph of Titus opposite p. THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS, CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. The subterranean galleries which penetrate the soil surrounding the city of Rome, after having for four centuries served as a refuge and a sanctuary to the ancient Church, were nearly lost sight of during the disorder occasioned by barbarian inva- sions. As the knowledge of their windings could be preserved only by constant use, the principal entrances alone remained accessible ; and even these were gradually neglected and blocked up by rub- bish, with the exception of two or three, which were still resorted to, and decorated afresh from time to time. In the sixteenth century, the whole range of catacombs was re-opened, and the entire contents, which had remained absolutely untouched during more than a thousand years, were restored to the world at a time when the recent revival of letters enabled the learned to profit by the disco- B 2 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. very. From that time to the present, Romanist writers have been suffered to claim identity in dis- cipline and doctrine with the church that occupied the catacombs ; while an attempt has scarcely been made to show from these remains the more striking resemblance existing between our Reformed Church and that of primitive Rome. It is difficult now to realise the impression which must have been made upon the first explorers of this subterranean city. A vast necropolis, rich in the bones of saints and martyrs ; a stupendous testimony to the truth of Christian history, and, consequently, to that of Christianity itself ; a faith- ful record of the trials of a persecuted Church ; — such were the objects presented to their vieAV ; and so great was the enthusiasm with which they de- voted themselves to the research, that two of the earliest writers on the Catacombs of Rome, Bosio and Boldetti, occupied thirty years each in col- lecting materials for their respective works, which in both instances remained to be edited by their survivors. We must now have recourse to the museums of Rome, and the works of antiquarians, in order to understand the arrangement of the Catacombs at the time of their use as cemeteries. From the removal of every thing portable to a place of greater security and more easy access, as well as from the difficulty of personally examining these dangerous galleries, beyond the mere entrance left open to general inspection, we are no longer able to share INTRODUCTION. 3 the feelings of those who beheld the cemeteries and chapels of a past age, completely furnished with their proper contents. St. Jerome has left us a lively picture of their state during the early part of his lifetime, that is, about the middle of the fourth century. " When I was at Rome," says the monk of Palestine, u still a youth, and employed in literary pursuits, I was accustomed, in company with others of my own age, and actuated by the same feelings, to visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs ; and often to go down into the crypts dug in the heart of the earth, where the walls on either side are lined with the dead; and so intense is the darkness, that we almost realise the words of the prophet, 'They go down alive into hell' (or Hades), and here and there a scanty aperture, ill deserving the name of window, admits scarcely light enough to mitigate the gloom which reigns below : and as we advance through the shades with cautious steps, we are forcibly reminded of the words of Virgil, ' Horror on all sides ; even the silence terrifies the mind.' "* The history of the catacombs, since their recovery from the oblivion in which they had remained dur- ing the dark ages, consists principally in a succes- sion of controversies, provoked by the indiscrimi- nate veneration paid to every object found in them. During the reign of Sixtus the Fifth, who * Hieronymus in Ezechiel, c. xl. b 2 4 THE CHUKCH IN THE CATACOMBS. ascended the pontifical throne in 1585, some dis- cussions having occurred respecting relics, the at- tention of antiquarians was strongly directed to the subject, and a diligent examination of the catacombs, then recently discovered, was undertaken. Fore- most in this investigation was Bosio, whose post- humous works were edited by Severano, in the year 1632, under the title of Roma Sotterranea, includ- ing an original chapter by the editor. The same work translated into Latin, and still further en- larged, was republished by Arringhi. A number of epitaphs were published byFabretti, who was invested with the office of Curator of the Catacombs, and eighteen years afterwards another folio issued from the hands of his successor, Boldetti, in titled " Osservazioni sopra i cimiterii dei Santi Martiri." This work abounds in theological and antiquarian information, while the next that ap- peared, the " Sculture e Pitture" of Bottari, was de- voted more especially to the Christian arts. The subject now became exhausted, not from the com- pleteness of the knowledge obtained, but from the condition of the catacombs themselves, which by that time had been robbed of their contents to adorn the museums of the learned. But another line of research, not less interesting, was still prosecuted with continued success. The extensive stores of information relating to early church history, were now brought to bear upon the surviving monuments of ancient times : and an in- creased knowledge of pagan manners allowed a finer INTRODUCTION. 5 distinction to be drawn between what was purely Christian, and what was merely adopted from Gen- tilism : the result has become apparent, in the dis- appearance of the angry controversial spirit which marked the discussions of the two last centuries. The Roman antiquarians, better informed in the history of their city, and less alarmed by bold at- tempts to deprive their martyrs and saints of the honours to which they had been thought entitled, no longer felt a pious horror at those who would have "taken away their gods:" while Protestant travellers, perhaps softened by the concessions of their adversaries, began in a more catholic spirit to honour the ground consecrated by the death or burial of those who had died for the common faith : so that the subject of debate is now not so much the Christianity or Heathenism of monuments and customs, as the age to which they belonged. Cau- tion is still requisite, in order to steer a safe course between the superstitious credulity of the Romanist, who would see a saint or a martyr in every skele- ton, and consecrate every cemetery by a miracle ; and the scepticism of another school, who, under the mask of candid inquiry, would reject all evi- dence short of absolute demonstration, in favour of the sufferings and acts of the primitive believers. The principal controversy concerning the Chris- tian cemeteries arose from the zeal of two travel- lers, Burnet and Misson, who wished to prove that there was no real distinction between the burial- places of Pagans and Christians at the time referred B 3 6 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. to. The arguments of Burnet are ingenious, but founded upon data so incorrect and imperfect that they are entirely without weight. He reasons, that the Christians, never averaging above forty- five thousand at one time in Rome, were quite in- adequate to the execution of such works : that they would have been observed and molested by their enemies: and that the catacombs themselves would have been insupportable as a residence, from the putrefying bodies contained in them. That the Pagans buried as well as burned their dead : that the Christian cemeteries contain no dates older than the fourth and fifth centuries : in short, that a few monks, finding the trade in relics growing profitable, forged some tens of thousands of marble inscriptions, placed them in Pagan cemeteries be- low ground, and being driven away by persecu- tion, were forced to abandon these fictitious monu- ments, which remained undiscovered till after the dark ages * Happily, a remarkable agreement on this point prevails among all modern writers ; and while it is stedfastly maintained by them that the Christian cemeteries are free from all admixture of Pagan bodies, it is allowed that the excavation of the catacombs was not begun by the Christians, but that they appropriated to their own use the sub- terranean galleries, originally dug to provide the materials for building Rome. The complete occu- * Letters from Switzerland, Italy, &c. INTRODUCTION. 7 pation of them by Christian sepulchres, the absence of Pagan monuments, and the entire concurrence of all the contemporary writers on the subject, speak so decisively in favour of their exclusively Christian character, that it is difficult to imagine how any further evidence could be adduced con- cerning a question never agitated till the seven- teenth century. The testimony of Prudentius, a writer of the fourth century, is of great weight : he alludes to the catacombs continually, without seeming to conceive the possibility of their having been denied by a single Pagan corpse. The chief sources of information regarding the catacombs, lie in the various collections of inscrip- tions in and near Rome. A few interesting Chris- tian epitaphs are to be found on the walls of the Capitoline Museum, in the entrance to the cata- combs of St. Sebastian, and in some private houses and villas. But all these collections are insignifi- cant, when compared with the treasures of the Va- tican, of which a short description must be given, as frequent reference will be made to them through- out this volume. First, there is the Christian Mu- seum properly so called, containing a number of sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, inscriptions, and medals, most of them published in the works of Roman antiquarians. Through the kindness of a friend, the author was allowed to copy some of the epi- taphs lately added. Besides this, at the entrance to the Vatican Museum is a long corridor, the sides of which are completely lined with inscriptions B 4 8 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. plastered into the wall. On the right hand are arranged the epitaphs of Pagans, votive tablets, dedications of altars, fragments of edicts and pub- lic documents, collected from the neighbourhood of the city ; and opposite to them, classed under the heads of Greek, Latin, and Consular monuments, appear the inscriptions of the ancient Christians. These have been collected indiscriminately from the catacombs round Rome, and have hitherto re- mained unpublished.* To this gallery, from the circumstance of its containing little more than sepulchral stones, the name of Lapidarian, or delle Lapidi) has been given. The inscriptions, amount- ing to more than three thousand, were arranged in their present order by Gaetano Marini. Notwithstanding the indifference manifested by * In the year 1841, the writer applied for permission "to copy some of the inscriptions contained in the Lapidarian Gal- lery," and a licence " to make some memoranda in drawing in that part of the Museum" was granted. About that time, a misunderstanding is reported to have arisen between the Jesuits and the officers of the Vatican; in consequence of which the former were refused permission to copy the inscriptions in question for their forthcoming work on the Christian Arts. An application was also made by them to the Custode of the Gallery, in order to prevent the use of its contents by a Protestant. On the last day of the month for which the author's licence was available, he was officially informed that his permission did not extend to the inscriptions, but only to a few blocks of sculpture scattered up and down the Gallery. This communication was accompa- nied by a demand that the copies already made should be given up, which was refused ; and with the understanding that no more inscriptions should be copied, and that they should not be published in Home, the matter was allowed to drop. INTRODUCTION. 0 the hundreds of visitors who daily traverse this corridor, there needs but a little attention to invest its walls with a degree of interest scarcely to be exceeded by any other remains of past ages. " I have spent," says Raoul Rochette, " many entire days in this sanctuary of antiquity, where the sacred and profane stand facing each other, 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. ***** And were it only the treasure of impressions which we receive from this immense collection of Christian epitaphs, taken from the graves of the catacombs, and now attached to the walls of the Vatican, this alone would be an inex- haustible fund of recollections and enjoyment for a whole life." * The Consular Monuments, principally comprised in a compartment at the further end of the corridor, are those containing the names of the consuls who governed during the years in which they were erected. Their value as chronological data is ob- vious ; and their authenticity is the more to be relied upon, from their rude execution and imper- fect orthography, often leaving us in doubt as to the very names of the consuls intended to be ex- pressed. It would appear that the better class of Christians, especially those of the third and fourth centuries, were more in the habit of adding dates * Tableau des Catacombes, p. x. 10 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. to their epitaphs, than those of lower condition, or an earlier period. On the walls thus loaded with inscriptions be- longing to professors of the rival religions, we may trace a contrast between the state of Pagan and that of Christian society in the ancient metropolis. The funereal lamentation, expressed in neatly engraved hexameters, the tersely worded senti- ments of stoicism, and the proud titles of Eoman citizenship, attest the security and resources of the old religion. Further on, the whole heaven of Pa- ganism is glorified by innumerable altars, where the epithets, unconquered, greatest, and best, are lavished upon the worthless shadows that peopled Olympus. Here and there are traces of complicated political orders ; tablets containing the names of individuals composing a legion or cohort; legal documents relating to property, and whatever belongs to a state, such as the Roman empire in its best times is known to have been. The first glance at the opposite wall is enough to show, that, as St. Paul himself expressed it, " not many mighty, not many noble," were numbered among those whose epitaphs are there displayed : some few indeed are scarcely to be distinguished from those of the Pagans opposite, but the greater part betray by their execution, haste and ignorance. An inco- herent sentence, or a straggling mis-spelt scrawl, such as o c • l \Haao A// c INTRODUCTION. 11 " The place of Philemon," inscribed upon a rough slab destined to close a niche in caverns where day- light could never penetrate, tells of a persecuted, or at least, oppressed community. There is also a simplicity in many of these slight records not without its charm ; as in the annexed, BIRGIMVS PARVM STETIT AP. N. " Virginius remained but a short time with us." The slabs of stone used for closing Christian graves average from one to three feet in length. In this they differ remarkably from the sepulchral tablets of the Pagans, who, being accustomed to burn their dead, required a much smaller covering for the cinerary urn. The letters on Christian monuments are from half an inch to four inches in height, and coloured in the incision with a pigment resembling Venetian red. Whether this pigment originally belonged to all the letters, is uncertain : many are now found without it. The custom of cutting in the stone is alluded to by Prudentius in his hymn in honour of the eighteen Martyrs of Saragossa; in which he calls upon his fellow Christians to wash with pious tears, the furrows in the marble tablets erected to them. " Nos pio fletu, date, perluamus Marmorum sulcos — " The orthography of these epitaphs is generally faulty, the letters irregular, and the sense not 12 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. always obvious. These characteristics the author has been anxious to preserve, and has therefore spared no pains in executing copies in exact fac- simile, though much reduced in size. Another difference between the inscriptions be- longing to the Pagans and Christians of the early centuries, is too remarkable to be passed by unno- ticed. While the heathen name consisted of several essential parts, all of which were necessary to distinguish its owner, the Christians in general confined themselves to that which they had received in baptism. Thus the names of Felix, Sevus, Philemon, and Agape, are found on tombs, unac companied by any of the other designations which belonged to those individuals as members of a Roman family. Occasionally we meet with two, and perhaps even three names on their monuments, as Aurelia Agapetilla, Largia Agape ; but these are not common. The first believers, when not forced, by the multiplicity of persons christened alike, to add a further distinction, appear to have regarded their Christian name as the only one worthy of preservation on their sepulchres. The merely classical student, unless in search of the vernacular language of ancient Koine, will find little in these inscriptions to repay the trouble of perusing them. A few obsolete and barbarous expressions, the gradual origin of the cursive cha- racter, and the uncertain pronunciation of some consonants, indicated by the varied modes of writing the same word, are not the most interesting points INTRODUCTION. 13 of investigation suggested by these monuments. Better purposes are served by their examination, inasmuch as they express the feelings of a body of Christians, whose leaders alone are known to us in history. The Fathers of the Church live in their voluminous works ; the lower orders are only repre- sented by these simple records, from which, with scarcely an exception, sorrow and complaint are banished ; the boast of suffering, or an appeal to the revengeful passions, is nowhere to be found. One expresses faith, another hope, a third charity. The genius of primitive Christianity, " To believe, to love, and to suffer," has never been better illus- trated. These "sermons in stones" are addressed to the heart, and not to the head — to the feelings rather than to the taste ; and possess additional value from being the work of the purest and most influential portion of the " catholic and apostolic Church" then in existence. The student of Christian archaeology must never lose sight of the distinction between the actual relics of a persecuted Church and the subsequent labours of a superstitious age. When Christianity, on the cessation of its troubles, emerged from those recesses, and walked boldly on the soil beneath which it had been glad to seek concealment, the humble cradle of its infancy became a principal object of venera- tion, almost of worship. To decorate the chapels, adorn by monuments the labyrinths of sepulchres, and pay an excessive regard to all that belonged to martyrs and martyrdom, was the constant labour 14 THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS. of succeeding centuries. Hence arises a chronolo- gical confusion, which calls for caution in deciding upon the value of any inference that may be drawn from these sources, respecting points of doctrine. Yet it may not be amiss to premise generally, that in the inscriptions contained in the Lapidarian Gallery, selected and arranged under Papal super- intendance, there are no prayers for the dead (unless the forms, " May you live," " May God refresh you," be so construed) ; no addresses to the Virgin Mary, nor to the Apostles or earlier Saints ; and, with the exception of u eternal sleep," " eternal home," &c, no expressions contrary to the plain sense of Scripture.* And if the bones of the mar- tyrs were more honoured, and the privilege of being interred near them more valued, than the simplicity of our religion would warrant, there is, in this outbreak of enthusiastic feeling towards the heroic defenders of the faith, no precedent for the adoration paid to them by a corrupt age. Perhaps it may safely be asserted, that the ancient Church appears in the Lapidarian Gallery in a somewhat more favourable light than in the writings of the fathers and historians. It may be that the sepulchral tablet is more congenial to the display of pious feeling than the controversial epistle, or even the much-needed episcopal rebuke. Besides the gentle and amiable spirit every where breathed, the distinctive character of these remains is essentially * There is in this collection one epitaph containing the phrase Ora pro nobis, " pray for us." INTRODUCTION. 15 Christian : the name of Christ is repeated in an endless variety of forms, and the actions of His life are figured in every degree of rudeness of execution. The second Person of the Trinity is neither viewed in the Jewish light of a temporal Messiah, nor degraded to the Socinian estimate of a mere exam- ple, but is invested with all the honours of a Ke- deemer. On this subject there is no reserve, no heathenish suppression of the distinguishing feature of our religion : on stones innumerable appears the Good Shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the reco- vered sheep, by which many an illiterate believer expressed his sense of personal salvation. One, according to his epitaph, " sleeps in Christ ; " ano- ther is buried with a prayer that " she may live in the Lord Jesus." But most of all, the cross in its simplest form is employed to testify the faith of the deceased : and whatever ignorance may have prevailed regarding the letter of Holy Writ, or the more mysterious doctrines contained in it, there seems to have been no want of apprehension of that sacrifice, "whereby alone we obtain remission of our sins, and are made partakers of the kingdom of Heaven." 16 CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF THE CATACOMBS. The great increase which took place in the extent and magnificence of ancient Rome, during the latter times of the republic, led to the formation of quarries in the immediate neighbourhood, from which were obtained the materials necessary for building. In this respect, the city of the Caesars resembles many others, of which it is sufficient to name Paris, Naples, Syracuse, and Alexandria, all more or less surrounded or undermined by long tortuous excavations. Their size and shape differ according to the firmness of the substratum : those of Naples being large and lofty ; while those round Rome, from the crumbling nature of the soil, are narrow and low. Several of these cata- combs, as they are called, are represented in the work of D'Agincourt*, where it is easy to trace a connection between the solidity of the ground and the regularity of the galleries. The materials quarried in the Campagna of Rome consisted of tufa and puzzolana, a volcanic sandy rock, which from its texture was well adapted to the excava- tion of long galleries. It is affirmed by D'Agin- * Histoire de l'Art, vol. iv. pi. ix. THE ORIGIN OF THE CATACOMBS. 17 court, that they follow the direction of the veins of puzzolana ; but on this point it is difficult to decide. These subterranean works first attracted general notice during the time of Augustus, when their extent rendered them dangerous. They then ob- tained celebrity as the scene of a domestic tragedy referred to by Cicero in his oration for Cluentius. The riches of Asinius, a young Roman citizen, had excited the avarice of Oppianicus, who employed an accomplice to personate Asinius, and to execute a will in his name. The pretended Asinius having bequeathed the property to Oppianicus, and ob- tained the signatures of some strangers, the true Asinius was inveigled to the gardens of the Esqui- line, and precipitated into one of the sandpits (in arenarias quasdam extra Portam Esquilinam). It was in similar caverns that Nero was afterwards advised to conceal himself, when terrified by the sentence of an enraged senate : on which occasion he made answer to his freedman Phaon, that he would not go under ground while living. The cir- cumstance is related by Suetonius. The sand obtained from the Esquiline pits was much used for making cement : it was recommended for this purpose by Vitruvius as preferable to all other. The custom of digging sand from these crypts or galleries being established, the whole subsoil on one side of Rome was in course of time perforated by a network of excavations, spreading ultimately c 18 THE ORIGIN OF to a distance of fifteen miles. But while this was taking place, the original quarries, exhausted of their stores, were appropriated to other uses. We must bear in mind that at this time, that is, about the close of the republic, the Romans were accus- tomed to burn their dead, excepting a few families of distinction, who preferred burying them, and the lowest orders of the people, who were not able to procure the honours of a funeral pile. Certain classes of persons, as those who had made away with themselves, or perished by the hand of the law, were forbidden to receive the rites of crema- tion. The prohibition was also extended to such as had been struck by lightning : a circumstance seized upon by Tertullian, as illustrative of the Christian's salvation from hell : " He who has been touched by heavenly fire is safe from being con- sumed by any other flame." For these persons the pits left by the sand dig- gers on the Esquiline hill afforded a convenient burial place ; and their bodies were thrown in to putrefy, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of that part of Rome. The puticulce, puticuli, or culince, as these pits were called, took their name either from their resemblance to a well, in Latin puteus, or from the verb putesco, to putrefy. Both derivations are supported by Festus, a grammarian of the sixth century : whereas Varro, who lived nearer the time, having served as a lieutenant under Pompey, mentions only the verb, and limits the designation puticulce to the pits without the THE CATACOMBS. 19 Esquiline gate. Culince is said to be a further di- minutive of puticulincZi a supposition which per- fectly accords with the idiom of modern Italian. The Esquiline hill, infested by banditti, and ren- dered almost impassable by the pestilential atmo- sphere generated in the common receptacles for the dead, was suffered to remain in that loathsome condition until it was reclaimed by Maecenas, and converted into gardens. This fact, of great im- portance to our history, is alluded to by Horace, who compliments his patron upon the benefit thus, conferred on the public. The scarecrow deity set up in the garden is represented as congratulating himself upon the change : " A reed stuck upon the top of my head keeps off the .troublesome birds, and prevents them from settling in the newly made gardens. Before, the cast-out bodies of slaves were brought here by their fellow-servants, to be deposited in ill-made coffins, in narrow cells. This place was a common sepulchre for the dregs of the people ; for the buffoon Pantolabus, and the spend- thrift Nomentanus Now, it is possible to live on the wholesome Esquiline, and bask on its sunny banks : where lately the ground covered with whitening bones was enough to produce me- lancholy."* The scholiast commenting upon this passage remarks, " Here were formerly brought the bodies (cadavera) of plebeians or of slaves, for there were then public sepulchres existing there." f * Horatii Serm. i. 8. •f Acron ad Horatium in loco. c 2 20 THE ORIGIN OF From these quotations it appears that the place of burial was common, that is, not appropriated to a family or tribe, the only community of sepulture known to the Romans in general ; and also that the unburnt bodies, not their ashes, were thrown into those receptacles. According to Raoul Ro~ chette*, who has paid particular attention to this subject, there were in other parts of Rome similar places reserved for the common burial of the lower orders. The term puticulce, however, according to Varro, seems to have been confined to the caves outside the Esquiline gate. (See also Facciolati, sub voce Puticuli.) When it is asserted by some that the pits in the garden of Maecenas are no other than a part of the catacombs occupied by the Christians in common with the Pagans, the statement is made in defiance of all probability. The death of Maecenas preceded the introduction of Christianity into Rome, so that none but heathen could have been buried on the ground enclosed by him: and no signs of Christian occupation occur anywhere near the spot. It needs but the most cursory examination of the Christian catacombs, as well as of the Pagan sepulchres, to prove that both classes of Romans carefully pre- served a separation between their respective dead. Cyprian accuses Martialis of burying his sons in profane sepulchres, and thus exposing them to the contact of heathen bodies.f * Tableau des Cataeonibes, p. 28. t Ep. 67. THE CATACOMBS. 2L Besides the persons forced by poverty or by law to bury their dead unburnt, the higher ranks gra- dually adopted the same custom. We are told by historians that the Cornelia family, followed by a few others, introduced the practice, and the tomb of the Scipios (a branch of that family) confirms their report. This mausoleum is contained in an excavated gallery, in a vineyard on the Appian way, within the gate of St. Sebastian. Over the entrance is inscribed Sepulchra Scipionum, and on sarcophagi formerly found within, but now de- posited in the Vatican Museum, are the names of individuals belonging to that house. In the Columbarium, or common tomb of the freedmen of Livia, according to Gori, sarcophagi for unburnt bodies are found together with urns containing ashes. The same is seen in the tomb of the Aruntii, described by Piranesi. (Raoul Rochette.) In confirmation of the simultaneous existence of both customs may be cited the following hea- then inscription, in which the expression, the entire body, not only shows it to have been unburnt, but proves this instance to be an exception to the general practice. DM. L . JVLI . EPIGONI. VIXIT . ANNIS . XXVI . M . V . D . XII. CORPVS . INTEGRVM CONDITVM L . JVLIVS . GrAMVS PATER . FILIO . PHSIMO c 3 22 THE 0MG1N OF To the Divine Manes. Here is preserved the entire body of Lucius Julius Epigonus. L. J. Gamus dedicates this to His most dutiful Son. The Christians of the second and third cen- turies, though still employing the heathen appella- tion arenarim, had other means of designating the Catacombs. Cyprian calls them cemeteries ; besides which, the term new crypts (cryptaa novae) was applied to subsequent additions made by Christian hands. From various reasons, the caves near the present Basilica of St. Sebastian are considered by anti- quarians as having been the first occupied by the Christians. To these in particular were applied the expressions ad arenas, cryptoe arenaria?, and cryptce, to which the Christians added the Greek form ad catacumbas. The term Catacombs, there- fore, signified originally the pits about that part of the Appian way ; and we find the phrases in cate- cumpas, of the seventh century, and juxta catacum- bas of the thirteenth, limited to a space extending from the church of St. Sebastian to the circus of Romulus, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella. * Anas- tasius, in the Liber Pontificalis, must have used the words n cemeterio catacumbarum to designate this particular spot, as some manuscripts read in ceme- * See RoestelPs learned article in the Chevalier Bunsen's Roms Beschreibung, vol. i. p. 374. THE CATACOMBS. 2a terio Callisti. Lastly, the phrase, locus qui dicitur catacumbas is used by Gregory, in the thirtieth epistle of the fourth book, as indicating a spot two miles distant from Rome, that is, the Sebastian catacombs. To sum up the history of the word, which though of Greek form claims no early origin, it is nowhere found in inscriptions belonging to the ancient cemeteries, nor does it occur in his- tory before the time of Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, from which to the thirteenth, it generally signified a part of the country near Rome. Still later it was applied, in a limited sense, to a chapel underneath the Basilica of St. Sebastian, as observed by Raoul Rochette ; and in our own times it has become a generic term for all subterranean passages of a certain length and tortuosity, whether they lie beneath the pyra- mids of the desert, or undermine the site of a modern metropolis. In the great work of D'Agincourt, " The History of Art, drawn from its Monuments," is the descrip- tion of a subterranean labyrinth in France, which strongly resembles the Roman catacombs. The in- habitants of Quesnel, driven from their homes by an invasion of the Normans, sought refuge in the quarries from which the materials of their houses had been extracted. Finding the caves narrow and incommodious, they enlarged them to the width and height of ten or twelve feet, and vaulted them above like an oven. Here they concealed them- selves, their furniture, and their cattle ; and even c 4 24 THE ORIGIN OF at the present time these retreats serve for the meetings of the young people of the district, who work together there during the winter evenings. It being proved by historical evidence that the catacombs were originally dug by the Pagans as sand-pits and quarries, it remains to be shown in what manner the Christians became connected with them. The arenarii or sand-diggers were persons of the lowest grade, and from the nature of their occupation probably formed a distinct class. There is reason to suppose that Christianity spread very early among them, for in time of persecution, the converts employed in the subterranean passages not only took refuge there themselves, but also put the whole Church in possession of these otherwise inaccessible retreats. When we reflect upon the trials which awaited the Church, and the combined powers of earth and hell which menaced its earliest years, it is impossible not to recognise the fostering care of a heavenly Hand, in thus providing a cradle for the infant community. Perhaps to the protec- tion afforded by the Catacombs, as an impregnable fortress from which persecution always failed to dislodge it, the Church in Rome owed much of the rapidity of its triumph; and to the preservation of its earliest sanctuaries, its ancient superiority in discipline and manners. The customs of the first ages, stamped indelibly on the walls of the Cata- combs, must have contributed to check the spirit of innovation soon observable throughout Christen- dom : the elements of a pure faith were written THE CATACOMBS. 25 " with an iron pen, in the rock, for ever;" and if the Church of after-times had looked back to her subterranean home, " to the hole of the pit whence she was digged," she would there have sought in vain for traces of forced celibacy, the invocation of saints, and the representation of Deity in painting or sculpture. Whatever dates may be attributed to other remains, this fact is certain, that the Lapi- darian Gallery, arranged by the hands of the mo- dern Romanists, contains no support whatever for the dogmas of the Council of Trent. Resting upon this distinction, virtually drawn by themselves, be- tween what belongs to a pure age, and what to the times of innovation, we may safely refer to the latter a number of inscriptions of doubtful date, preserved in the vaults of St. Peter's, which contain prayers to the Virgin Mary, and other peculiarities of Romanist theology. The history of Christendom as well as that of Art supplies the means of fixing the age of many such monuments : for instance, the time of Vigilantius, when some bishops, moved by his ar- guments, refused to ordain unmarried deacons, can- not be confounded with an age in which the celi- bacy of the clergy became compulsory: nor can we easily mistake for the work of a century that knew only the sign of the cross in its simplest form of two straight lines, the wretched representation of the Passion, in a crucifix the size of life, smeared with the imitation of blood, and surmounted by a crown of actual thorns. Yet it must be confessed that the gradual and unequal progress of declension 26 THE OKI GIN OF occasionally leaves us in difficulties : for in the very case referred to, the bishops who, by their support of matrimony among the clergy, drew down upon themselves the indignation of Jerome, were not altogether in unison with the spirit of their time : they were, as Milman and Middleton express it, premature protestants. It is such instances of resist- ance to an innovating age, that seem to prolong the era of simplicity in the Church : as in the natural world we sometimes cherish the belief that sum- mer is still amongst us, because " latest roses lin- ger," regardless of the too faithful index of an autumnal sky. It appears from a number of testimonies, not perhaps of any great value individually, though of some weight when combined, that the early con- fessors were at times sentenced to work in the sand-pits. This species of punishment is referred to in many Acts of the Martyrs, and especially in those of Marcellus, where we are told that the Emperor Maximian " condemned all the Roman soldiers who were Christians to hard labour ; and in various places set them to work, some to dig stones, others sand." He also ordered Ciriacus and Sisinnus to be strictly guarded, condemning them to dig sand, and to carry it on their shoulders. Marius and his companions were sentenced to the same employment. There is also a tradition in Rome that the baths of Diocletian were built from the materials procured by the Christians. That the Catacombs were throughout well known to THE CATACOMBS. 27 them is evident ; for every part was completely taken possession of by them, and furnished with tombs or chapels : paintings and inscriptions be- longing to our religion are to be seen every where ; and for three hundred years the entire Christian population of Rome found sepulture in those recesses. The fact that the Catacombs were employed as a refuge from persecution rests upon good evidence, notwithstanding objections that have been made, founded upon the narrowness of the passages, the difficulty of supporting life, and the risk of dis- covery incurred by seeking concealment in an asylum so well known to their enemies. These objections scarcely apply to a temporary residence below ground in times of danger ; and it is not pretended that the Catacombs were inhabited under other circumstances. In the excavations at Ques- nel, not only persons, but cattle, contrived to sup- port existence : added to which we have, as will be seen presently, the direct testimony of several writers. Had the intricacies of the Catacombs been well known to the heathen authorities, or the entrances limited in number to tw T o or three, they would doubtless have afforded an insecure asylum. But the entrances were numberless, scat- tered over the Campagna for miles ; and the laby- rinth below so occupied by the Christians, and so blocked up in various places by them, that pursuit must have been a]most useless. The Acts of the Martyrs relate some attempts made to overwhelm 28 THE ORIGIN OF the galleries with mounds of earth, in order to destroy those who were concealed within : but setting aside these legends, we are credibly in- formed that not only did the Christians take refuge there, but that they were also occasionally over- taken by their pursuers. The Catacombs have be- come illustrious by the actual martyrdom of some noble witnesses to the truth. Xystus, Bishop of Rome, together with Quartus, one of his clergy, suffered below ground in the time of Cyprian. Stephen the First, another Bishop of Rome, was traced by heathen soldiers to his subterranean chapel: on the conclusion of divine service, he was thrust back into his episcopal chair, and be- headed. The letters of Christians then living refer to such scenes with a simplicity that dispels all idea of exaggeration ; while their expectation of sharing the same fate affords a vivid picture of those dreadful times. An authentic history of Stephen during his long residence in the Catacombs, would be surpassed in interest by few narratives in the ecclesiastical archives. A few incidents have been handed down to us.* From time to time he was consulted by his clergy, who resorted to him for advice and exhortation. On one occasion, a layman named Hippolytus, himself a refugee, sought the Bishop's cell to receive instruction regarding a circumstance that preyed upon his mind. Paulina, his heathen * This story, with several others, will be found in Rock's Heirurgia. THE CATACOMBS. 29 sister, together with her husband Adrian, were in the habit of sending provisions by their two children to Hippolytus and his companions. The unconverted state of these relations, by whom his bodily life was supported, weighed heavily upon him, and by the advice of Stephen a plan was laid for detaining the children, so that the parents were forced to seek them in the cavern. Every argument was used by Stephen and Hippolytus to induce their benefactors to embrace the faith, and though for the time ineffectual, the desired end was at length accomplished. Tradition adds that they all suffered martyrdom, and were buried in the Catacombs. In the time of Diocletian, the Christian Caius is said to have lived eight years in the Catacombs, and to have terminated this long period of confession by undergoing martyrdom. Even as late as the year 352, Liberius, Bishop of Kome, took up his abode in the cemetery of St. Agnes during the Arian persecution. The discovery of wells and springs in various parts of the corridors assists us in understanding how life could be supported in those dismal re- gions : although there is no evidence to prove that the wells were sunk for that purpose. One of them has been named the Font of St. Peter, and however apocryphal may be the tradition which refers it to apostolic times, the fact of its having been long used for baptism is not to be disputed. Some of the wells are supposed to have been dug with the intention of draining parts of the Catacombs. 30 THE ORIGIN OF St. Chrysostom, who lived not long after the days of persecution, alludes to the concealment of a lady of rank below ground. In an indignant remonstrance against the festivities held over the graves of martyrs in his dissipated city, he com- pares with the luxurious revels into which the Agapae had degenerated, the actual condition of those whose sufferings were celebrated in so un- befitting a manner. " What connection," he asks, " is there between your feasts, and the hardships of a lady unaccustomed to privation, trembling in a vault, apprehensive of the capture of her maid, upon whom she depends for her daily food ?" These circumstances prove sufficiently the gene- ral habit of taking refuge in the cemeteries on any sudden emergency ; and it is not difficult to un- derstand how the concealment became practicable. On the outbreak of a persecution, the elders of the Church, heads of families, and others particularly obnoxious to the Pagans, would be the first to suf- fer ; perhaps the only individuals whose death or exile was intended by the imperial officers. Aware of their danger, and probably well versed in the signs of impending persecution, they might easily betake themselves to the Catacombs, where they could be supported by those whose obscure condi- tion left them at liberty. The importance of the Catacombs as a retreat was not unknown to the heathen : every effort was made at the beginning of a persecution to prevent the Christians from escaping by a subterranean THE CATACOMBS. 31 flight : and several edicts begin with a prohibition against entering the cemeteries. A r alerian and Gallienus decreed death as the punishment of diso- bedience ; a sentence which was carried into exe- cution in the case of Cyprian. (Procons. Acts.) The limitation applied to a residence in the Ca- tacombs must be extended in nearly an equal degree to the custom of worshipping in them. It is a well-known fact, that before the time of Con- stantine there were in Rome many rooms or halls employed for divine worship, though perhaps no edifices built expressly for that purpose. Besides this, the extreme smallness of the catacomb chapels, and their distance from the usual dwellings of the Christians, oppose serious objections to the suppo- sition that they served for regular meetings. Yet nothing is better attested in history than the fact that, throughout the fourth century, the Church met there for the celebration of the eucharist, for prayer at the graves of the martyrs, and for the love feasts or Agapae. Prudentius* affirms that he had often prayed before the tomb of Hippolytus, and describes at length the subterranean sepul- chre of that saint. After narrating the care of the Church shown in gathering the mangled remains of the martyr, he proceeds to a minute description of the catacomb in which they were deposited: — " Among the cultivated grounds, not far outside the walls, lies a deep cavern with dark * Peristephanon, hymn iv. 32 THE OKIGIN OF recesses. A descending path, with winding steps, leads through the dim turnings ; and the daylight entering by the mouth of the cavern, somewhat illumines the first part of the way. But the darkness grows deeper as we advance, till we meet with openings cut in the roof of the passages, ad- mitting light from above .... there have I often prayed prostrate, sick with the corruptions of soul and body, and obtained relief." The discovery of chapels, altars, episcopal chairs, and fonts, indi- cates the existence of a subterranean worship at some time or other : but it is difficult to prove that all the religious ceremonies were performed in the Catacombs at a very early period. The follow- ing inscription, which was found over one of the graves in the cemetery of Callistus, shows that prayers were offered below ground. The monu- ment is probably of somewhat later date than the death of the martyr to whose memory it is raised ; but being affixed to his actual tomb, bears strong marks of authenticity. The author of this volume has ventured to render the concluding letters, IV. X. TEM. by " in Christianis temporibus." ALEXANDER MORTVVS NON EST SED VIVIT SVPER ASTRA ET CORPVS IN HOC TVMVLO QVIESCIT VITAM EXPLEVIT SVB ANTONINO IMP° QVIVBI MVLTVM BENE FITII ANTEVENIRE PRAEVIDERET PRO GRATIA ODIVM REDDIDIT tj GENVA ENIM FLECTENS VERO DEO SA- )S CRIFICATVRVS AD SVPPLICIA DVCITVRO /1\ TEMPORA INFAVSTA QVIBVS INTER SA- THE CATACOMBS. CRA ET VOTA NE IN CAVERNIS QVIDEM SALVARI POSSIMVS QVID MISERIVS VITA SED QVID MISERIVS IN MORTE CVM AB AMICIS ET PARENTIBVS SE- PELIRI NEQVEANT TANDEM IN COELO CORVSCANT PARVM VIXIT QVI VIXIT IV. X. TEM . In Christ. Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests in this tomb. He lived under the Emperor Antonine, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from his services, returned evil for good. For, while on his knees, and about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to execution. O, sad times ! in which sacred rites and prayers, even in caverns, afford no protection to us. What can be more wretched than such a life ? and what than such a death ? when they could not be buried by their friends and relations — at length they sparkle in heaven. He has scarcely lived, who has lived in Christian times. From these words it is to be inferred, that Alex- ander was praying in the catacombs when discovered by the emissaries of Antonine. This event belongs to the fifth persecution, which began in the year 161. The second Antonine is here intended, the first emperor of that name having been friendly to the Christians. A number of circumstances in this inscription are worthy of notice — the beginning, in which the first two words (Alexander mortuus), after leading us to expect a lamentation, break out into an as- surance of glory and immortality — the description of the temporal insecurity in which the believers D 34 THE ORIGIN OF of that time lived — the difficulty of procuring Christian burial for the martyrs — the certainty of their heavenly reward — and, lastly, the con- cluding sentence forcibly recalling the words of St. Paul, " as dying, yet behold we live;" and again, " I die daily." It must be confessed that the epitaph does not directly affirm that Alexander was put to death on account of his religion, but would imply that the private hatred of the em- peror found in it a pretext for his destruction. The edicts of Roman emperors often noticed the cemeteries as a place of worship : among them may be specified that of Maximin, issued on the renewal of the Diocletian persecution, forbidding any meet- ing of the Christians in the catacombs. The same prohibition is mentioned in the Proconsular Acts, where iEmilianus, a prefect of Egypt during the persecution under V alerian, is represented as say- ing to the Christians, " I see you are an ungrateful people, and have no proper sense of the goodness of the emperors : I shall therefore banish you from Alexandria, and send you to Lybia. Moreover, it shall be no longer lawful for you or for others to hold assemblies, nor to enter the cemeteries, as they are called." Tertullian relates that on one occasion, under the government of Hilario, the Pagans raised an outcry against the cemeteries of the Christians, and demanded that they should be destroyed.* This * Ep. ad Scapulara, cap. 5. THE CATACOMBS. 35 suggestion was never carried into effect : indeed at the close of the Valerian persecution, Gallienus gave formal permission to the bishops to return to the catacombs.* After this general description of the catacombs, from their origin as sand-pits dug by the heathen, to the time of their employment as an asylum and a cemetery by the Christians, it is proposed to ex- amine them in detail, and to set before the reader the customs, sufferings, and works of those by whom they were occupied. * Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. lib. vii. cap. 13. ^ OR 'TURoS^\S 36 CHAPTER III. THE CATACOMBS AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. The annexed inscription (copied in facsimile from the Lapidarian Gallery) is brought forward prin- cipally to prove the ancient use of the term cemetery as applied to the catacombs : SWBMM &lso FT C/TS IB MOM (/KMPTAWOB\» With the help of a few grammatical corrections, it reads thus : " Sabini bisomum ; se vivo fecit sibi in cemeterio Balbinae, in crypta nova and may be translated, " The bisomum of Sabinus. He made it for himself during his lifetime, in the cemetery of Balbina in the new crypt."* Besides the older galleries dug for the purpose of extracting sand and puzzolana, the Christians * St. Balbina was a virgin of some celebrity : she was buried on the Via Ardeatina, and the catacomb was named after her. Aringhi, p. 479. THE CATACOMBS AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 37 continued to excavate fresh passages for their own convenience. These additions, distinguished by their superior height and regularity, were called new crypts. The earth taken out of them was generally thrown into old branches of the galleries, some of them filled with graves ; a circumstance which has given rise to many conjectures. Boldetti, having found part of a catacomb blocked up with earth at its entrance, but empty further back, and lined with the graves of martyrs, supposed that the Christians had taken this means of preserving their most valued relics during the Diocletian persecu- tion. Roestell thinks this improbable, because they would not have willingly cut on° their own access to the graves of the martyrs. May not the fugitives have cast up these mounds as obstacles to the pur- suit of their enemies ? since, by blocking up the principal passages, and leaving open only those known to themselves, they might render teh gal* leries beyond quite inaccessible to their perse- cutors. The ramifications of the catacombs may be classed in two divisions : those originally dug for the purpose of procuring sand, known by their irregularity, as well as by their smaller dimensions ; and the additions made by the Christians, when want of space obliged them either to dig fresh galleries, or to square and enlarge some of those already existing. These new crypts, mentioned in several inscriptions, are supposed to belong to the more peaceful times of Christianity, when the cus= D 3 38 THE CATACOMBS torn of burying in the catacombs had become so completely established, that even after it was no longer a necessary precaution, subterranean sepul- ture was preferred.- Vicinity to the tombs of saints and martyrs, so highly valued in that age, was an inducement to the continuance of the practice, and is often alluded to in inscriptions. The follow- ing was found in the cemetery of St. Cyriaca : IN CRVPTA NOBA RETRO SAN CTVS EMERVMSE VIVAS BALER RA ET SABINA MERUM LOC VBISONIA BAPRONE ET A BIATORE. Read : — In crypta nova retro sanctos emerunt se vivis Valeria et Sabina. Emerunt locum bisomum ab Aprone et a Viatore.* Translate : — In the new crypt, behind the saints, Valeria and Sabina bought (it) for themselves while living. They bought a bisomum from Apro and Viator. The two inscriptions just quoted agree in several particulars : the barbarism of the Latinity, and the want of all attempt at grammatical construction in the sentences, indicate either a time of extreme cor- ruption of the vernacular language, or ignorance among the Christian artists. The word bisomum also occurs in both ; a term compounded of Greek and Latin, signifying a place for two bodies : the words trisomum and quadrisomum, applied to graves * In the work of Raoul Rochette the rendering merum locum bisomum is given for emerunt locum bisomum. From the occurrence of the word emerum for emerunt just before, the author is inclined to adopt the reading given above ; the more so from not having found the word merum in any other inscription. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 39 capable of containing three or four bodies, are of less frequent occurrence. The latter is found in the annexed inscription, copied from the Lap. Gall. SVLATV NICOMACI FLABIANI LOCV MARMARARI QVADRISOMVM. Read — Consulatu Nicomaci Flaviani locum marmorario quadrisomum. We may safely attribute this fragment to the year 272, in which Nicomacus and Falsonius (or Falconius) were consuls. "In cemeterio Balbinae" — in the sleeping-place of Balbina. In this short phrase are implied two important circumstances, entirely at variance with the customs and feeling of Pagan Rome. First, we learn from it the existence of common cemeteries, which we find to have contained persons of every class, as well as families connected with each other only by their profession of Christianity. The heathen Romans, as we know, had sepulchres appropriated either to a single body, or to all the members of one tribe, — witness the tomb of the Scipios, the tomb of the Nasones, and many others. Within the last two or three years there has been discovered at Rome, a columbarium of great beauty, capable of containing three hundred cinerary urns. The niches for these, disposed round the walls and central sup- ports, give the whole chamber the appearance of a dove-cote, whence its name of columbarium. It was intended for the dependents of a particular house, with whose remains it is nearly filled. The " common sepulchre" of the dregs of the people is spoken of by Horace with contempt ; and D 4 40 THE CATACOMBS if we look back through the history of the world, we find every where the disposition to build tombs for the exclusive use of individual families. The mummy-pits of Egypt, as the author has learnt from personal inspection, are constructed upon this principle. " He was buried with his fathers" is a common conclusion to the history of a Jewish pa- triarch. It was reserved for Christianity first to deposit side by side the bodies of persons uncon- nected with each other, — an arrangement which prevails throughout the whole of Christendom, from the catacombs of ancient Rome, to the mo- dern churchyards of our own country. It is imagined by Roestell, that the grave of a martyr was generally a nucleus, round which others clustered, in order that their occupants might share the benefit of the prayers offered up before it. But, in considering this to be the origin of common cemeteries, that learned writer supposes sentiments unknown so early as the end of the first century. It is easier to conceive that the religion which was to unite mankind into one brotherhood, which ac- tually occasioned a community of goods among its earliest converts, and which held forth the hope of a common resurrection, would suggest the idea of continuing the relationship between members of the church after their death. As far as the writer has had an opportunity of examining the cata- combs, there appears no trace of any accumulation of tombs around those of the martyrs* : the graves * The Catacomb Chapels, containing martyrs' bones beneath the altar, are of later date. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 41 are distributed irregularly along the passages, and here and there one is marked with the supposed symbols of martyrdom. The title of martyr does not occur on a tombstone (to the best of the au- thor's knowledge) before the persecution of Dio- cletian : nor is it found in the Lapidarian Gallery. This assertion is not meant to extend to a few vo- tive tablets erected in after times to the memory of earlier believers. From the words in the last inscription, retro sanctos, " behind the saints," as well as from those in the next, " in the place of the blessed," it would appear that proximity to the graves of distinguished Christians was thought worthy of being recorded in an epitaph : — EN6AAE IIAYAEINA KEITAIMAKAPI2N ENIX£2P£1 HNKHAEYSE IIAKATA EHN9PEQTEIPAN TAYKEPHN_ AITANENXPO. This inscription, copied from a beautiful sarco- phagus of the fourth or fifth century, may be read : — " Here lies Paulina in the place of the blessed ; — Pacata, to whom she was nurse, buried her, an amiable and holy person — In Christ." The second circumstance of note connected with the phrase " in cemeterio Balbinas," is the use of the term cemetery, derived from the Greek, XoimTYipiov, and signifying a sleeping-place. In this auspicious word, now for the first time applied 42 THE CATACOMBS to the tomb, there is manifest a sense of hope and immortality, the result of a new religion. A star had risen on the borders of the grave, dispelling the horror of darkness which had hitherto reigned there : the prospect beyond was now cleared up, and so dazzling was the view of an eternal city " sculptured in the sky," that numbers were found eager to rush through the gate of martyrdom, for the hope of entering its starry portals. St. Paul speaks of the Christian as one not in- tended to sorrow as others who had no hope : how literally their sorrow was described by him, may be judged from the following Pagan inscription, copied from the right hand wall of the Lapidarian Gallery : — C. IVLIVS. MAXIMVS ANN. II. M. V. ATROX O FORTVNA TRYCI QVAE FVNERE GAVDES QVID MIHI TAM SVBITO MAXIMVS ERIPITVR QVI MODO IVCVNDUS GREMIO SVPERESSE SO- LEBAT HIC LAPIS IN TVMVLO NUNC IACET ECCE MATER. Caius Julius Maxinius (aged) 2 years and 5 months. O, relentless Fortune, who deliglitest in cruel death, Why is Maxinius so early snatched from me ? He, who lately used to lie, beloved, on my bosom. This stone now marks his tomb — behold his mother. But the Christian, not content with calling his burial-ground a sleeping-place, pushes the notion of a slumber to its full extent. We find the term in a Latin dress, as — DORMITIO ELPIDIS " The sleeping-place, or dormitory, of Elpis." (Fabretti, lib. 8.) AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 43 Elsewhere it is said that — VICTORINA DORMIT. " Victorina sleeps." (Boldetti.) ZOTICVS HIC AD DORMIENDVM. " Zoticus laid here to sleep." (Boldetti.) Of another we read — CfHtyVDORfT " Gemella sleeps in peace. (Lapidarian Gallery.) And, lastly, we find the certainty of a resurrection and other sentiments equally befitting a Christian, expressed in the following, (copied literatim from the Lapidarian Gallery). PAX HIC MIHI SEMPER DOLOR ERIT IN AEVO ET TVVM BENERABILEM BVLTVM LICEAT VIDERE SO— ORE CONIVNX ALBANAQVE MIHI SEMPER CASTA PVDICA RELICTVM ME TVO GREMIO QVEROR QVOD MIHI SANCTVM TE DEDERAT DIVINITVS AVTOR RELICTIS TVIS IACES IN PACE SOPORE MERITA RESVRGIS y TEMPORALIS TIBI DATA REQVETIO QVE VIXIT ANNIS XLV MENV- DIES XIII DEPOSITA IN PACE FECIT PLACVS y MAR [TVS PEACE. This grief will always weigh upon me : may it be granted me to behold in sleep your revered countenance, My wile Albana, always chaste and modest, I grieve, deprived of your support 44 THE CATACOMBS for our Divine Author gave you to me as a sacred (boon). You, well-deserving one, having left your (relations), lie in peace — in sleep — you will arise — a temporary rest is granted you. She lived forty-five years, five months, and thirteen days : buried in peace. Placus, her husband, made this. Nor was the hope of the Christians confined to their own bosoms. They published it abroad to all the world, in a manner which, while it provoked the scorn and malice of many, proved also a power- ful inducement to others to join their community. The dismal annihilation of the soul taught by the Pagans, or the uncertain Elysium, which, though received by the uneducated, was looked upon as mere matter of superstition by the learned, had in it something so utterly unsuited to the wants and longings of mankind, that the spectacle of a Chris- tian, thoroughly assured of a future state, so blessed and so certain as to have power to draw him irresistibly towards it through the extremest tortures, must have awakened in the heart of many a wishing, doubting Pagan, a feeling in favour of Christianity not easily suppressed. But, with the more infuriated persecutors, the view of a trium- phant exit only served to stir up a desperate desire to deprive the martyr of his last expectation ; and connecting the interment of the body with the pro- spect of its being restored to life, they thought by preventing the one, to cut off all hope of the other. In the well-known epistle of the churches of Lyons and Vienne, descriptive of their sufferings during the persecution of Antonine in the second century, AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 45 this last effort of malice on the part of their enemies is noticed. " The bodies of the martyrs having been contu- meliously treated and exposed for six days, were burnt and reduced to ashes, and scattered by the wicked into the Rhone, that not the least particle of them might appear on the earth any more. And they did these things, as if they could prevail against God, and prevent a resurrection : and that they might, as they expressed it, destroy the hope of a future life, — 4 on which relying they in- troduce a new and strange religion, despise the most excruciating tortures, and die with joy. Xow let us see if they will rise again, and if their God can help them and deliver them out of our hands.' " The custom of burying the dead was brought to Rome from the East, where the Jewish converts had inherited it. Prudentius states, that the prospect of a resurrection was the motive of the honours and attentions paid to the departed. " There will soon come a time when genial warmth shall revisit these bones, and the soul will resume its former tabernacle, animated with living blood. The inert corpses, long since corrupted in the tomb, shall be borne through the 1 thin air in company with the souls. For this reason is such care be- stowed upon the sepulchre : such honour paid to the motionless limbs — such luxury displayed in funerals. We spread the linen cloth of spotless white — myrrh and frankincense embalm the body. * ' Volucres rapientur in auras." Cathemerinon. Hymn, x. 46 THE CATACOMBS What do these excavated rocks signify ? What these fair monuments ? What, but that the object in- trusted to them is sleeping, and not dead, * * * * * * But now death itself is blessed, since through its pangs a path is thrown open to the just, a way from sorrow to the stars. * * * We will adorn the hidden bones with violets and many a bough ; and on the epitaph and the cold stones we will sprinkle liquid odours." The ceremonies performed on these occasions are alluded to by authors of the time Paulinus of Nola says of the surviving friends, " Let them care- fully sprinkle the tomb of the martyr with spike- nard, and bring medicated ointments to the holy grave." The " Acts" represent the Prefect Maximus as saying to Tarachus, " You fancy, wickedest of men, that those women of yours (mulierculae) will obtain your body after your death, in order to pre- serve it with spices and ointments ? But I will find some way of exterminating your very dust."* Bol- detti relates that an odour of spices was perceived on opening some of the graves. Tertullian, in an- swer to the objection made by the political econo- mists of his day, that the new religion was unfa- vourable to commerce, exclaims, " Is not incense brought from a distance? If Arabia should com- plain, tell the Sabeans that more of their merchan- dise, and that of a more expensive quality, is em- ployed in burying Christians than in fumigating the gods." f * Ruinart. Acta Tarachi, Probi, &c. f Apologcticus, cap. 42. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 47 It is time to set before the reader the appearance and construction of the cemeteries from which these monuments have been taken. In the greater num- ber of galleries the height is about eight or ten feet, and the width from four to six : in the annexed drawing the author has attempted to express their usual appearance. INTERIOR OF A CATACOMB. 48 THE CATACOMBS The graves are cut in the walls, either in a strag- gling line, or in tiers, represented by d'Agincourt as occasionally amounting to six in height. The large grave at the bottom of the drawing is a biso- mum, cut downwards as well as inwards in the tufa. Further back is seen a branch of the gallery walled off to prevent accidents, which still occa- sionally happen to those who penetrate much be- yond the entrance. The daylight finding its way into the mouth of the cavern, as described by Pru- dentius, serves to render visible the rifled sepulchres. There is seen in the more distant part of the gal- lery a small square hole, in which was originally deposited a cup. Antiquarians have not succeeded in explaining the fact, that most of the graves near the entrance of the catacombs are so small as scarcely to allow room for the body of a child. The want of soli- dity in the material prevented the excavators, or fossors, as they were termed, from completing the graves before they were required, since the falling in of the soil would have destroyed their form : it is therefore possible that these small cells may have been the commencement of large graves thus be- gun, and from various causes left unfinished. Bol- detti found some branches of the catacombs with the intended sepulchres merely sketched upon the walls. The galleries often run in stories two or three deep, communicating with each other by flights of AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 49 steps. The plan of such a catacomb is here copied from d'Agincourt, vol. iv. pi. ix. At the top is seen the entrance, partly formed like a shaft, and partly like an oblique gallery with steps : on reaching a certain depth, this passage takes a horizontal direction, giving off a lateral branch. Below it are seen the sections of two cor- ridors running towards the spectator; and still lower, communicating with each other by a stair- case partly seen en face, are two others parallel with the uppermost one. All these appear completely filled with graves, to the number of five and even six tiers. The steps leading downwards are men- tioned by Prudentius in a passage already quoted ; and both he and Jerome describe the numerous perpendicular shafts by which the subterranean E 50 THE CATACOMBS ways were lighted. Many of these communications with the upper air are of a date more recent than the times of persecution, and would have been fatal to the safety of the refugees. D'Agincourt gives a sketch of one of the later perforations communi- cating with a chapel below ground : chapels so lighted were called cubicula clara. Boldetti sup- poses the pits in question to have been sunk for the extraction of sand : but Rcestell, adducing the fact that they are found in Christian additions, thinks them to have been made with a view to the admis- sion of light.* At the present time, many such holes are found in the Campagna near Rome, prov- ing dangerous to the incautious rider. D'Agincourt availed himself of them on several occasions to enter the Catacombs. Some of those inspected by the writer, seem to have been produced by the fall- ing in of the ground through the roof of a gallery too nearly approaching the surface. On the other hand, it is probable that some of the air-holes, called in the Acts of the Martyrs luminaria cryptce, were in existence during the persecutions. In the Acts of Marcellinus and Peter, quoted by Raoul Rochette, it is said, " Candida, a saint and a virgin, having been thrown down the precipice, (that is, the light- hole of the crypt,) was overwhelmed with stones." The corresponding passage in Baronius is somewhat different, nor does it contain the word luminare. * Bunsen's Rome, vol. i. p. 365. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 51 In the subjoined view, copied from Boldetti, are seen two graves ; one still closed by three slabs of terra cotta, cemented to the rock by plaster ; and the other partially opened, so as to display the skeleton lying within. It must not be supposed that in all cases the slabs were of terra cotta, or that their usual number was three ; pieces of mar- ble, of the most irregular figure, were often em- ployed. The palm branch is scratched upon the plaster with a sharp instrument. The number of graves contained in the Catacombs is very great. In order to form a general estimate of them, we must remember that from the year 98 A. d. to some time after the year 400, (of both which periods consular dates have been found in E 2 52 THE CATACOMBS the cemeteries,) the whole Christian population of Rome was interred there. As this time includes nearly a century after the establishment of Chris- tianity under Constantine, the numbers latterly must have been very considerable. A city peopled by more than a million of inhabitants, so far chris- tianised as to give rise to a general complaint that the altars and temples of the gods were deserted, must have required cemeteries of no ordinary dimen- sions.* The number of Christians in the time of Decius has been estimated by historians at between forty and fifty thousand. Added to this, a horror of disturbing the graves already occupied, would effectually prevent the custom, common in our own country, of employing the same ground for fresh interments after the lapse of a few years. This feeling of the sanctity of tombs was inherited from the heathen, and was often expressed in their epitaphs. An instance is subjoined, in an inscrip- tion, evidently Pagan from the connection between the infernal regions and happiness. It was found inside the Aurelian gate : — C. TULIUS. C. L. BARNAEUS OLLA- EJUS- SI- QUI OU VIOLARIT- AD INFEROS- NON RECIPIATUR. C. Tullius Barnaeus. If any one violate his urn, let him not be received into the infernal regions (that is, Elysium). * The general absence of Heathen cemeteries greatly facili- tates the distinction between the Christian and Pagan remains. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 53 There is perhaps no trace of this feeling visible in the Christian collection of the Lapidarian gallery, though a superstitious awe on the subject is be- trayed in some inscriptions found elsewhere ; as in the following, of uncertain date, copied from Aringhi. The mention of Judas proves its Christian origin : — MALE • PEREAT ■ INSEPVLTVS IACEAT • NON • RESVRGAT CVM • IVDA ■ PARTEM ■ HABEAT SI • QVIS • SEPVLCHRVM ■ HVNC VIOLAVERIT. If any one violate this sepulchre, let him periih miserably, lie unburied, and not arise, but have his lot with Judas. The style of this epitaph fixes its date as much later than the times of Pagan persecution. The words hunc sepulchriun, taken in conjunction with the well-expressed lines that complete the sen- tence, seem to refer us to the epoch when Latin showed strong marks of Italian construction : that is, from the eighth to the twelfth century, while the language was in suspense between the written Latin and the spoken Italian. As the same article is applied to neuter and masculine in the latter tongue, the blunder of hunc sepulchrum would be natural to one in the habit of using the expression questo sepolcro. The form of this imprecation somewhat resembles that of cursing with " bell, book, and candle," by the Romish Church. " In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of our blessed Lady the most holy Mary, also by virtue of the angels and e 3 54 THE CATACOMBS archangels, we separate M. and N. from the bosom of our holy Mother the Church ; and condemn them with the anathema of everlasting cursing. * * * Let them be buried with the burial of an ass, and be as dung upon the face of the earth. And as these lights thrown from our hands, are this day extinguished, so may their light be extinguished everlastingly, unless they repent."* * An anathema was frequently inscribed on the title-page of books in the middle ages, when the fashion of employing curses in defence of property came into fashion. Three instances of the practice, given in Maitland's "Dark Ages," belong to the ninth and eleventh centuries : one of them resembles the above in containing an allusion to Judas : — " If any one remove from the monastery this book, with the intention of not restoring it, let him receive the portion of everlasting condemnation, with Judas the traitor, Annas, and Caiaphas." Truly, as Mr. Maitland has observed, " it was enough to frighten the possessor of a book, however honestly he might have come by it." The author lately found, in a copy of Erasmus's Latin Testament, the following milder threat : — " Quis rapit hunc pravo furto seu fraude libellum, Non mortalis homo, sed Deus ultor erit." Several doggrel imitations of these lines are occasionally found in books almost of our own times. The fragment of an ancient epitaph, quoted by Mabillon from Fabretti, betrays rather superstitious horror of an in- terference with the resurrection, than a mere absence of Chris- tian sentiment : — * * * GRAVIT AD XPM * * * SEPVLCRVM VIOLARE * ET SIT ALIEN VS A REGNO DEI. The sense is, " * * * has gone to dwell with Christ. If any one dare to violate this grave, let him * * * and be far from the kingdom of God." AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 55 Although the tombs once made arid occupied were left untouched by after generations, the mul- titude of bodies thrown into one sepulchre in times of danger must have lessened the number of sepa- rate graves. Prudentius, in his hymn on the Mar- tyrdom of Hippolitus, thus describes the appearance of the cemeteries in his own time: — "We see in the city of Romulus innumerable remains of saints: you ask, Valerian, what epitaphs are engraved upon the tombs, and what are the names of those buried; a question difficult for me to answer. So great a host of the just did the impious rage of the hea- then sweep away, when Trojan Rome would have her country's gods worshipped. Many sepulchres marked with letters display the name of the mar- tyr, or else some anagram. There are also dumb stones closing silent tombs, which only tell the number buried within. So that we know how many bodies lie in the heap, though we read no names belonging to them. I remember being told that sixty were buried under one mound, whose names Christ alone preserves, as being those of his peculiar friends." Tombs of this sort are mentioned by antiquarians, under the name of Polyandria : they are mostly found in the cemetery of Marcellinus, and appear to be an imitation of the old puticuli of the Pagans. They furnished to some travellers an argument against the Christian character of the Catacombs; but the testimony of Prudentius, living in the fourth century, effectually silences such reasoning. E 4 5f> THE CATACOMBS An inscription usually supposed to belong to a Polyandridrium, is the following : — MARCELLA ET CHRISTI MARTYRES CCCCCL. Marcella and five hundred and fifty martyrs of Christ. The apparent impossibility of collecting such an "army of martyrs" into one grave, makes it pro- bable either that the epitaph is a votive tablet, raised to the victims of a persecution collectively, or that it is a general summary of the contents of a cemetery, expressed in round numbers. Rcestell is inclined to consider such epitaphs as commemorative of the martyrs of a past age.* He gives another inscription found in the cemetery of S. Lucina : — N • XXX • SYRRA • ET SENEC ■ COSS : which has furnished matter of debate to the learned. It was first supposed that this fragment was part of a numerical arrangement of the graves ; but as Visconti showed that no such system existed, it was obviously absurd to imagine one grave num- bered alone. But Visconti endeavoured to prove that it referred to the remains of thirty martyrs who suffered during the consulate of Syrra and Senecio. The same view is taken by Roestell and Raoul Rochette. The author is inclined to adopt a much more simple method of explaining the * Bunsen's Rome, vol. i. p. 372. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 57 N.XXX ; and would read the remaining words as the fragment of QVI VIXIT ANN. XXX SYRRA ET SENEC ■ COSS. — who lived thirty years. In the consulate of Syrra and Senecio ; that is, a.d. 102, the first year in which they governed. This form of inscription is quite common, and may be seen in the following : — AVRELIA DVLCISSIMA FILIA QUAE DE SAECVLO RECESSIT VIXIT ANN ■ XV • M ■ IIII • SEVERO ET QUINTIN COSS ■ Aurelia, our sweetest daughter, who departed from the world, Severus and Quintinus being consuls. She lived fifteen years and four months, (a. d. 235.) The consular epitaphs are our principal means of fixing the dates of graves and cemeteries. That belonging to a. d. 102 is the earliest that we pos- sess, with the exception of one found by Boldetti, in St. Lucina's cemetery, of the year 98. D. M. P. LIBERIO VICXIT ANI N. II. MENSES N. III. DIES N. VIII. R. ANICIO FAUSTO ET VIRIO GALLO COSS. Publius Liberio lived two years, three months, and eight days. Anicius Faustus and Virius Gallus being consuls. After these two comes one of a.d. 111. (Bol- detti.) SERVILIA • • ANNORVM • XIII PIS • ET BOL • COSS ■ Servilia, aged thirteen. Died in the consulate of Piso and Bolanus. 58 THE CATACOMBS Subsequently to this time the consular epitaphs become more common. The following consulates have been copied, with- out selection, from the Christian inscriptions con- tained in the Vatican Library and Lapidarian Gallery : they show the usual dates of the consular epitaphs. Caisarius and Atticus - - - a. d. 397 Victor and Valentinianus - 369 CL Julianus Aug. and Sallustius - - 363 Marcellinus and Probinus - - - 341 Datianus and Cerealis - - - - 358 Valentinianus and Valens Aug. III. - - 370 In the above inscription to Liberio, the letters D. M. have usually been rendered Deo Maximo, because found in a Christian cemetery. It is but fair to add, that they are also the universal con- traction for the first words of a Pagan epitaph, Diis manibus — to the Divine manes — or souls of the dead. The subject is not free from perplexity; and an argument has been drawn from these let- ters, against the assertion that no heathen graves are contained in the catacombs. But many in- scriptions beginning with D. M. are undoubtedly Christian; and, besides the probability of these letters being here put for Deo Maximo, it is pos- sible that the ignorance of the sculptor led him to continue the old heathen formula, neither under- standing its meaning, nor reflecting upon its un- suitableness to a Christian grave. A most decisive AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 59 specimen of this sort of inscription is found in a wall of the Vatican Library. D A\ f S VITAU S PoSlTh D)h£S/[$ATV KlAvC 0 Sacred to Christ, the Supreme God. Vitalis, buried on Saturday, Kalends of August. She lived with her husband ten years and thirty days. In Christ, the First and the Last. Aged twenty -five years and three months. There is, however, a Christian epitaph quoted by Koestell, which runs as follows : Diis manibus Principio filio dulcissimo suo posuit, Quae vixit ann. vj. dies xx. In pace. On this he remarks, "It is very possible that the words Diis manibus are attributable to careless imitation of heathen customs in the fifth or sixth century : or that the inscription, originally Pagan, was afterwards affixed to a Christian grave, with the alteration of the numbers and of the proper name." * The employment of old Pagan tombstones was common after the time of Constantine : but the usual custom in such, cases was to reverse the mar- ble, and to engrave the Christian epitaph upon the opposite side. According to antiquarians, many * Raoul Rochette thinks the last suggestion of very little value : the Christian sculptor should have erased the objec- tionable letters with the rest. — Mem. de FAcad. de Belles- Lettres, torn. xiii. 60 THE CATACOMBS stones have been discovered with unequivocal marks of Paganism on one side, and of Christianity on the other : but of this there is now no opportunity left us of judging, as every catacomb tablet has been carefully plastered upon some wall or pillar. It is not to be expected that persons so unedu- cated as many whose monuments have come down to us, should have always avoided heathen usages, in the practice of which they had grown up. Be- sides the D. M., such expressions as the following are occasionally found : — DOMVS ETERNALIS AVRCHSI ET AVRILAR ITATIS CONPARIM EES FECIMVS NOBIS. An eternal home, &c. (Lap. Gall.) It is uncer- tain whether the two mutilated names belong to the reigning consuls, or to the two persons who made the tomb. The form of expression is some- what varied in the next, which is copied from a wall of the Vatican Library. IN PA AVRELIO FELICI QYI BIXIT CUM COIVCE ■ ANNOSX-VIII DULCIS • IN COIVGIO; BONE MEMORIE BIXIT • ANNOS • L • V • RAPTVS ETERNE DOMVS ■ XII KAL . IENV ARIAS, £5 In peace. To Aurelius Felix, who lived with his wife eighteen years in sweetest wedlock. Of good memory. He lived fifty-five years. Snatched home eternally on the twelfth kalends of January. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 61 These inscriptions do not imply any want of be- lief in the resurrection on the part of those who erected them. The word home is so used in Eccle- siastes — " Man goeth to his long home :" and both Job and David employ similar expressions — "I shall go the way whence I shall not return and, " Before I go hence, and be no more." The phrase " aeterna quies " is found in heathen inscriptions. The leaf often seen on gravestones is employed by way of punctuation, or merely as an ornament. It has been mistaken for the symbol of an afflicted heart, pierced with an arrow : but it is simply bor- rowed from the Pagans, who used it in the place of a comma. Other terms are applied to the grave ; as SEVI LOCV The place of Sevus. DEPOSSIO CAMPANI ■ X FLAYIO STELICONE VIRO INC [Depossio, for Depositio Ainsworth's Contractions.] The burial place of Campanus. Flavius Stelico being Consul, i. e. either in the year 400 or 405. (Lap. Gall.) THfODVy ETPftplfc TESEfWR The sepulchre of Theodulus and Projecte. (Lap. Gall.) 62 THE CATACOMBS B • M CVBICVLVM • AVRELIAE • MARTIN AE CASTISSI- MAEADQYE • PUDI CISSIMAE FEMINAE QUE FECIT ■ IN COIVGIO ANN. xxm D XIIII BENE MERENTI ■ QVE VIXIT • ANN • XL • M • XI ■ D • Xm • DEPOSITIO EIS DIE • ni • NONAS • OCT • NEPOTIANO • ET FACVNDO CONSS • IN PACE [For B. M. read Bene Merenti — To the well deserving.] The chamber of Aurelia Martina, my wife, most chaste and modest, who lived in wedlock twenty- three years and fourteen days. To the well-deserving one, who lived forty years, eleven months, and thirteen days. Her burial was on the third nones of October. Nepotianus and Facundus being consuls (i. e. a. d. 336). In peace. (Lap. Gall.) This inscription nearly approaches the usual Pagan form. Occasionally, the proper name alone was ex- pressed ; as ACAPE The next drawing, displaying a tomb closed by a single slab, is copied from d'Agincourt. Dust is seen lying on the lower wall of the cell, It reminds resembling the shadow of a skeleton AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 63 us of the words of Horace, " We are but dust and a shadow." It has excited surprise among some, that a per- secuted sect should have had the facilities of burial which the Christians seem to have enjoyed, and have succeeded in obtaining the bodies of their martyrs, in order to honour them with a decent funeral. These facts are accounted for, by the great attention paid by the early Christians to the subject of interment. Among others, Praxedes, a virgin, together with her sister Pudentiana, during the Antonine persecution, spent their patrimony in burying martyrs and relieving poor Christians. Surviving friends generally waited for the body of a martyr, thereby exposing themselves to great danger : and it does not appear to have been a very early suggestion of Pagan malice, that the victims of persecution should be deprived of funeral rites. It is said, perhaps upon no good authority, that the body of St. Hiero was offered to the Christians, after martyrdom, for its weight in gold. Not being able to collect so great a sum, they purchased the head on the same terms. * The Jews, as in the case of our Lord, of Stephen, and of Paul, when stoned, left the body to the disposal of friends. At times, when the patient endurance of the sufferer had exasperated his per- secutors, the body was refused in revenge for the * This story, as well as that of Praxedes, is related by Aringhi ; Roma Subterranea, p. 67 — 79. 64: THE CATACOMBS defeat they had sustained. Prudentius, in de- scribing the martyrdom of St. Vincent, represents the judge as hearing of his peaceful death with a degree of disappointed malice, which he (the poet) can scarcely find words to describe.* " You would suppose, that the dragon was raging disarmed, with his teeth broken, — ' he has gone off triumphant/ he exclaims, ' and as a rebel carried away the palm. But it still remains to inflict the last punishment upon him ; to give his body to the beasts, his car- case to be devoured by dogs. I will extirpate his very bones, lest the rites of sepulture should be paid to them : lest the congregation should honour him, and raise to him a martyr's epitaph.' " Not only the importance attached to burial, but also the feeling of reverence for the dead, soon became excessive. Sepulchres and remains, even in the fourth century formed an object of veneration, and were almost considered a means of grace. " It is scarcely known," observes Prudentius, about the year 400, " how full Rome is of buried saints : how richly the metropolitan soil abounds in holy se- pulchres. But we," he adds with a solemnity almost puerile, " we, who are not so blessed, and cannot behold around us the traces of blood, never- theless, look up from afar unto heaven." Happy * Peristephanon, Hymn II. " At Christiani nominis Hostem coquebant inrita Fellis venena, et lividum Cor efferata exusserant." AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 65 had it been for all Christendom, to want these most questionable blessings, could the absence of them have given to their thoughts and prayers a more heavenward tendency. During the unusually long period of tranquillity which occurred between the sixth and seventh per- secutions, Callistus, bishop of Rome about the year 220, greatly enlarged and improved the Catacombs since named after St. Sebastian, from which circum- stance they were at that time called the Cemetery of Callistus. The entrance to them is through the Basilica of St. Sebastian on the Appian way, about two miles beyond the gate of the city. Notwith- standing the little credence usually given to the story of Sebastian, there seems no good reason for doubting that part of it which relates to the man- ner of his death. It is important in such cases to distinguish between legends of antiquity, and the artistical version of a story, embellished by the fervid imagination of the later middle ages. Painters have vied with one another in representing the youthful martyr in a state of seraphic abstraction : in the half-draped figure pierced with arrows, the closing eyes already fixed on heavenly glories, and the face lighted up with unearthly smiles, or darkening with the shadow of death, a Guido and a Caracci found a subject favorable to the display of their genius. From the habit of adding to the picture angels with crowns and palms, and of introducing some glaring anachronism, as the presence of the Virgin Mary, or John the Baptist, Ave are often led to consider F 66 THE CATACOMBS the whole as a fable : yet, on inspecting the Cata- combs, the existence of Sebastian is found to rest on good evidence. A small cell has been preserved as the chapel built over the grave of the martyr ; and above this have been accumulated all the honours which could be paid to a saint and a hero. Perpendicularly over the grave stands the high altar of the Basilica, with a marble representation of the dead saint, of the size of life. Below ground is a beautiful bust by Bernini ; and the fine church over the entrance, as well as the Catacomb itself, perpetuate the name of Sebastian. According to the Acts of his martyrdom, this young ofiicer was shot to death by arrows, but was miracu- lously restored to life and health. Not content with the glory of one martyrdom, he presented himself to the authorities, and, after a second ex- ecution, his body was concealed in a sewer, and hung upon a hook that it might not escape again. He contrived, however, to reveal the secret to a woman by a dream, in consequence of which he was buried in the Catacomb now called after him*. The internal management of the cemeteries now demands our attention. " The first order among the clergy," says Jerome, " is that of the Fossors, who, after the manner of * From lying in a sewer, this favorite saint lias been pro- moted by painters to the place formerly occupied by the Bacchus and Adonis, the Ganymede and Endymion of Pagan art. In like manner the Magdalen has supplanted the Venus, while St. Cecilia has taken a place among the Muses. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 67 holy Tobit, are employed in burying the dead." Besides the epitaphs proper to fossors, there are many other inscriptions which allude to them as having sold the tomb to the deceased or his friends. Their importance, as well as the nature of the duties entrusted to them, will be more obvious, when we have compared the funeral regulations of the Pagans with those of the Christians. Let us take as an illustration of the former, this inscription (copied from a MS. collection in Rome). c& D (t> M cj) Q Cj) MEDIOVS (J) AVG $ LIB ASOLO SIBI (J> FECIT <$> HOC CEPOTAFIV QVI NTA VITALIS FILIA MEA POSSIDEBIT SINE CONTRO 0 VERSIA <£> To the Divine Manes. Quintus Mediolus, freed-man of Augustus, made this cepotaph for himself alone. Quinta Vitalis, my daughter, shall possess it without controversy. The word cepotaph is derived from the Greek x7j7roTa^/ov, a tomb in a garden. As the cinerary urns occupied but little space, and were productive of no inconvenience to the neighbourhood, the ashes of the dead were generally deposited in the garden or court-yard of the house, in a small chamber built for that purpose. The columbaria now existing in Rome show this custom on a larger scale. The father of a family, by building such a sepulchre, and raising an inscription to insure the future pos- F 2 68 THE CATACOMBS session of it, provided a place of interment for his descendants. A few forms of inscription were re- cognised as regular bequests of this sort of property: among them are; " et posteris suis " — "hseredes hoc monumentum sequitur " — " liberis libertabus- que suis " — as well as their initials e. p. s. — h. h. m.s. — 1.1. q. s., and others. But with the Chris- tians, who required larger space and a more secluded situation for the decomposition of an entire body, a different system was necessarily adopted. The Catacombs were placed under the management of a number of fossors, probably sand-diggers by trade, who, besides excavating graves and render- ing the galleries more convenient, served also as guides. Their power of disposing of the graves is well exemplified in the following Christian in- scription, which the author copied literatim from a small collection in the walls of the Capitol. EMPTVM LOCUM A BARTEMISTVM VISOMVM HOC EST ET PRETIVM DATVM A FOSSORI HILARO ID EST PRESENTIA SEVERI FOSS ET LAVRENT A place bought by Bartemistus, that is to say, a bisonium ; and the price was paid to the fossor Hilarus, the sum of fourteen hundred folles (amounting to 11. 2s. 7d.), in the presence of the fossors, Severus and Lawrence. The folis, or follis, here specified, is a small Ro- AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 69 man coin, of which mention is seldom made in history. Hotman * professes himself unable to decide upon its value, and merely states that it was a very thin lamina of metal, probably the lowest coin used. By Facciolati f it is defined as synony- mous with the quadrans or teruntius ; of which, according to Ainsworth, forty make a denarius, value sevenpence three farthings of our money. The numerals attached are not correctly written : the first of them is evidently meant either for the two ovals oo put for 1000, or the elongated X of the same signification. Between these two the sculptor seems to have hesitated, and the reader may indulge in the same uncertainty, without af- fecting the value of the figure. After 1000, the number of hundreds naturally follows : and the sign used most nearly corresponds to the \3, a variety of G, the abbreviation for 400. J From this to the transition is easy, and the identity of the two is the more probable from there being no other known sign at all similar. To estimate better the value of such a sum as U. 2s. Id. in those times, we may compare with this epitaph one contained in Wordsworth's Pom- peian Inscriptions, in which the sum of H.S.LXV., sixty-five sesterces, or nine shillings and sixpence, is offered for the recovery of a lost wine vessel. The thirty pieces of silver received by Judas for his treachery amounted to 3/. 10s. Sd. * De re nummaria Populi Romani. f Appendix to Lexicon. J Facciolati. f 3 70 THE CATACOMBS The author has not met with any other inscrip- tion recording the price of a tomb : what makes this epitaph of Bartemistus the more valuable on the score of authenticity, is the circumstance that though the transaction is clearly stated, the sum is expressed in a very unusual manner, the follis be- ing a Latin version of the Greek $oXXs«s*, probably introduced in the time of the later Caesars. The use of the preposition a before the dative case in the two preceding epitaphs is remarkable : it seems to mark an approximation to the Italian language, of which it is an established element. IOVINVS • SIBICOM PARAVIT • ABICTORI NO • BISOMV • LOCVET EXVPERV COLLEGAIPSI Jovinus bought himself a bisomum from Victorinus and Exu- perus his colleague. In Christ. (Lap. Gall.) To the two inscriptions last quoted the term epitaph can scarcely be applied ; they are rather legal conveyances of a portion of the cemetery. Some inscriptions appear to have been executed in part at the time of the purchase, and concluded after the burial of the occupant of the tomb. There is one of this character in the Lapidarian Gallery. HIC REQIECET SAMSO IN BISO MVM ET VCTORV SE VIVA VXOREIVS Here rests Samso in a bisomum, and Victoria his wife, she being alive. * Hotman. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 71 We may infer from this some such family his- tory as the following: — Samso, the husband of Victoria, not having provided himself with a tomb, was left to the care of his widow for burial. She then purchased a bisomum, and having interred her husband, set up a stone to record that there rested Samso ; adding in a bisomum, thus reserving a place for herself. After her death the inscription was completed ; the insertion of the words herself being alive, showing that as a respectable woman she had, during her lifetime, provided for her burial. In the annexed, a Roman Christian is exhibited as selecting the site of his future sepulchre. x Read — Martyrius vixit annos plus minus xci. D'Tl / D [/^\ elexitdomumvivus,in pace. (Lap. Gallery.) U I A L I / V V \J \JJ V lived ninety-one years, more or less. He chose a home during his life-time. In Xqi LLE XITD ONVMJl VS I NPACE — • The substitution of the numeral G for V is so common, that the age of Martyrius is uncertain. From his having lived to choose a tomb, the num- ber of years is more probably ninety- one than six- teen : the monogram has been reversed, through the inattention of the stone-cutter. The name Martyrius has no connection with martyrdom, it being merely a proper name, as well as that of Martyria: f 4 72 THE CATACOMBS MARTYRIA IN PACE Martyria in peace. (Lap. Gall.) There existed formerly on the walls of the Cata- combs many paintings, representing persons dressed in the manner of the lowest class of Romans, em- ployed in excavating an overhanging rock, with a lamp suspended from the summit. One of these paintings, copied in the Roma Sotteranea, has the words Fossor Trofimus added. The one here given was found by Boldetti, in the cemetery of Callistus. The inscription signifies — " Diogenes the Fossor, buried in peace on the eighth kalends of October." AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 73 On either side is seen a dove with an olive branch, a common emblem of Christian peace. The pick- axe and lamp together plainly designate the sub- terranean excavator: the spike by which the lat- ter is suspended from the rock, the cutting instru- ments and compasses used for marking out the graves, and the chapel lined with tombs, among which the fossor stands, mark as distinctly the whole routine of his occupation, as the cross figured on his dress, his Christian profession. The paint- ing is on a retiring part of the wall, and beneath it is a hollow oblong pit, which seems to be the mouth of a grave. From the instruments figured in this valuable painting, as well as from the testimony of authors, we conclude that the fossors were also employed to excavate and adorn parts of the Catacombs. A great portion of their work must have been con- nected with the chapels, which were very nume- rous, and afterwards became more elaborate in their details. The rude attempt of a contemporary artist to represent the occupation of a poor Chris- tian, employed in burying in secret the deceased members of a community, to which no place on the face of the earth was granted for their long home, suggests some serious reflections on the change which Christendom has since undergone. Could we imagine the humble Diogenes, whom we see engaged in his melancholy task, to look out from the entrance to the crypt, and behold, in their pre- sent splendour, the domes and palaces of Christian 74 THE CATACOMBS Rome ; could he see the cross which he could only wear in secret on his coarse woollen tunic, glitter- ing from every pinnacle of the eternal city ; how would he hail the arrival of a promised millennium — what triumphs of religion would he not augur from the enjoyment of privileges denied to his own generation ! What then would be his feelings when made acquainted with the present state of Italy; or with the tragic histories of Piedmont, Constance, and the Inquisition ? Besides the cemetery of Callistus, those of SS. Agnes, Lawrence, Saturninus and Thraso, Marcel- linus and Peter, and several others, have obtained great celebrity. There is also a cemetery below the present Basilica of St. Peter, on the Vatican hill ; but it has been so overloaded with the pro- ductions of after ages, that little trace of the earlier centuries is left. Most of those works were depo- sited there when the present church of St. Peter's was erected. In addition to the Christian cemeteries, there is another that seems to have been appropriated to the Hebrews ; but whether as Jews or as Christian converts, is doubtful. It was discovered by Bosio, on the Via Portuense : he could find in it no signs of Christianity, and but one inscription, the word SYNArar " Synagogue;" together with a lamp (of which a copy is annexed), having upon it a figure of the golden candlestick brought from Jerusalem by Titus. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETEKY. 75 Munter* has found two other figures of the same candlestick; and Bosiof says that they were commonly em- ployed by the Jews, and occasionally by Chris- tians : he quotes the observation of Jose- phus, that the figure re- presented heaven, the seven lamps standing for the sun and six planets. Lamps of terra cotta are found abundantly in the Catacombs ; they are generally marked with the cross, with the likenesses of Peter and Paul, or with some other Christian symbol. There is another of these golden candlesticks figured in Buonarotti, with the addi- tion of this mark, which probably repre- sents a horn for pouring in oil. Lastly, in a MS. collection lent to the author by a young Italian who had compiled it from the Jesuits' College in Kome, there is an inscription, of which the annexed is a fac-simile. EN9AAE KEI TAI fcAYCTINA Here lies Faustina. In peace. * Sinnbilder der alten Christen. f Roma Sotteranea. 76 THE CATACOMBS This curious epitaph, written "in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin," probably belonged to a Christian Jewess. The horn for oil is seen beside the golden candle- stick. On the supposition of the woman having been a Hebrew, we must consider the Latin Faustina to be her Christian name : the palm branch added, is also a Christian symbol of victory and a well- spent life. According to Aringhi, the Jews of Rome generally wrote in Greek. The Hebrew word added to the inscription cannot be inter- preted without making some slight alteration in the form of the letters. The circular one seems intended for mem ; and the first, by the addition of a small central line, would become schin. In reading the entire word as Dl 1 ?^ Shalom , or Peace, we are supported by the custom of the early Chris- tians, who were continually in the habit of adding to their epitaphs in pace : witness the annexed fragment from the Lapidarian Gallery. NPACE f In peace and in Christ. The Greek version of this expression (si/ s//?^) is also common, as in this : EYTPOIIOC EN IPHNH. Eutropus in peace. These figures of the golden candlestick are taken from the Triumph of Titus, on the arch of that emperor. The accompanying engraving of this sculpture is from a drawing made on the spot by the author. The work, originally an alto-relievo, by the destruction of the detached parts has be- AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETEKY. 77 come a bas-relief. It represents the spolia opima taken from Jerusalem, on the way to the Capitol, to be deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capito- linus. The golden candlestick, jubilee trumpets, table of shew-bread, and two small vessels rest- ing upon it, are accompanied by twenty-one figures, and three standards. All the persons re- presented are Romans ; the fifth (reckoning from the left) wears the toga ; and the twelfth, seven- teenth, and twenty-first, the only bearers whose heads remain, are crowned with laurel. Of the standards, the central one has the remains of an eagle surmounting it, and the same emblem appears in the ornaments on each side of the design. As the golden vessels of the first temple were cut in pieces by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings, xxiv. 13.), the spoils of the second temple were but copies from the first, aided by the description given in the book of Exodus. The vessel of manna, Aaron's rod, the tables of stone, and the ark of the cove- nant, could not be replaced ; and do not therefore appear in the Roman triumph. Whether the pe- destal belonged to the candlestick is doubtful : its containing representations of animals is not an objection to its being Jewish ; for, although such figures were in general forbidden, yet we find (1 Kings, vii. 29.) that " lions, oxen, and cheru- bims" were used as ornaments to the bases of the sea: they are, therefore, not out of place on the base of the candlestick. 78 THE CATACOMBS The cross bar visible in the table of shew-bread is not alluded to in Exodus, and was probably- added to support the silver trumpets during the triumph. The lower " border of an handbreadth" which was covered with gold, and supported the rings, is much mutilated ; fortunately, enough re- mains to show, by comparison with the breadth of the hand below, the accuracy of the dimensions adopted in the work. The close resemblance between the description of the sacred utensils, and their appearance on the triumphal arch, is a testimony to the truth of Scripture of considerable weight : especially as the evidence is handed down to us by the enemies of the Jewish religion, and perpetuated by the very means intended to cast a lasting reproach upon it. During the middle ages, the arch of Titus was generally termed the arch of the candelabra, which we may suppose to have formed a principal orna- ment in the triumph, on its way to the Capitol, the Mount Zion of Paganism : Upon the sacred steps from far Seen sparkling like a trembling star ; And casting back the golden ray From every polish'd flower and gem, Bright, as when once in happier day It burnt in high Jerusalem. Besides the inscriptions written in Greek, we find some consisting of Latin words in Greek cha- racters; as ANNOYC TPiriNTA IN IIAKE Annos triginta, in pace. AS A CHRISTIAN CEMETERY. 79 The substitution of k for c soft is curious : the next is probably intended as an imitation of the same sound. VIDAUO INTACHE ^ Vidalio, in the peace of Christ. If the doctrines of Christianity are but sparingly expressed in these epitaphs, they are at least free from the Anacreontic language that characterises many Pagan tablets, a curious specimen of which is given by Gruter : V • A ■ N • LVII D • M TI • CLAVDI • SECVNDI HIC • SECVM • HABET • OMNIA BALNEA • VINVM • VENVS CORRVMPVNT • CORPORA • NOSTRA • SED . VITAM FACIVNT B • V • V • KARO CONTVBERNALI FEC- MEROPE CAES ET SIBI ET SVIS P-E- To the Divine Manes of Titus Claudius Secundus, who lived 57 years. Here he enjoys every thing. Baths, wine, and love ruin our constitutions, but — they make life what it is. Farewell : farewell. To her dear companion, Merope Csesarea has erected this. For themselves and their descendants. 80 CHAPTER IV. THE MARTYRS OF THE CATACOMBS. " Vos quoque, corporibus caesis et sanguine fuso, Occisum et vivum testati Martyres Agnum." Paulinus of Nola, Poem. xxiv. 215. " The noble army of martyrs praise thee: the holy church throughout all the world doth ac- knowledge thee." In accordance with the spirit of these words, the Church has ever shown a dis- position to distinguish in a peculiar manner those who have shed their blood in defence of the faith. The honour paid to them in different times and places has varied, according to the genius of the age, and the amount of enthusiasm inherent in national character ; but while truth is valued among- men, it is impossible that they should be lightly esteemed, who, facing torments and death with resolution, purchased, not for themselves, but for others, the blessings of religious freedom. Not- withstanding the calumnies of enemies, and the in- ventions of mistaken friends, between which his- torical truth has materially suffered, it is certain that these soldiers of God have from time to time achieved the most glorious and permanent tri- umphs : in the great assaults made upon heathen- THE MARTYRS OF THE CATACOMBS. 81 ism or superstition, they have led the attack as the forlorn hope, and fallen victorious ; " Strange conquest, where the conqueror must die, And he is slain that wins the victory ; " but in this they only shared the fate of their Master, a fate which might naturally be expected to await all His followers. What gratitude do we not owe to those who fought such fearful battles, to leave us in unhoped-for liberty and ease. The merits of the martyrs can be appreciated by all mankind. The natural love of life, and the in- stinctive shrinking from pain belonging to our species, stamp a plain and intelligible value upon their tried valour. The consentient voice of the whole Church, registered in the canons of an oecu- menical council, may be consigned to comparative oblivion : the arguments employed, or the ground of controversy itself, may be beyond the under- standing of nine-tenths of the world ; but torture and death speak a language universally understood. Accordingly we find the martyrs distinguished by posterity in a manner that casts into the shade the honours awarded to the heroes of secular history. What has been done for Leonidas or Camillus, for Regulus or for Julius Caesar, in comparison with the monuments erected to St. Peter ? Standing beside the high altar of his Basilica in Rome, we find it hard to believe that the stupendous object of our admiration is the mausoleum of a fisherman. Of the magnificent inscriptions raised to the great G 82 THE MARTYRS OF and the fortunate of this world, the proudest must yield in pride to that which encircles the dome of St. Peter's. A conqueror of the habitable globe once wept at having reached the limits of his sway : for, vast as was his ambition, it conceived of no such trophy as the golden letters that stud the horizon of that sky-suspended vault, consigning the keys of heaven to one who ruled, at least by his successors, the empire of earth.* But honours of a more substantial nature, and more after the desires of their own hearts, have been awarded to the martyrs : the approving testi- mony of God, and the profound esteem of all good men : their blood has been considered as the seed of the Church ; and the value of truth has been often estimated by the sufferings of those who have defended it. Some confusion has arisen from the ancient practice of applying the term martyrs to those, who, though imprisoned or even tortured, were not called upon to give up their lives for the faith. To these properly belongs the appellation of con- fessors. The sufferers of Lyons and Yienne re- fused to be called martyrs during their lifetime, " even though they had been tortured not once, nor twice, but often ; and had been taken from * " Thou art Peter; and on this rock will I build my church : and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." The length of the inscription is 440 feet : its elevation above the ground 200 : and the height of the letters composing it is six feet. THE CATACOMBS. 83 the wild beasts, and committed again to prison; although they had the marks of fire and the scars of stripes and wounds all over their bodies." The epistle from which this account is taken, adds, that they restricted the appellation to " Christ the faith- ful and true witness" (or martyr), and to such as had sealed their testimony with their blood. " We," said they, " are mean and humble con- fessors." The modesty of the Gallic martyrs in the second century is the more to be commended, as an opposite feeling was afterwards visible in some of those who were imprisoned for their reli- gion : perhaps we may attribute this weakness to the immoderate honours paid to them.* It is a question not easy of solution, what first induced the Romans to persecute so violently the Christian sect. The attributing to their agency the conflagration of Rome, was obviously a mere pretext for punishing them : the accusation was not generally believed at the time, and the extreme severity of their tortures produced a strong feeling in their favour. When we review the small por- tion of the history of the Church contained in the New Testament, from the time when Pilate washed his hands of our Saviour's blood, to the rescue of St. Paul from the Jews by the chief captain Lysias, we find in almost every instance in which the Christians came in contact with the Romans, that the latter appeared as their just, though often luke- * Such confessors as had shed blood in their tortures were called floridi and rubri (florid, and red, confessors). Gr 2 84 THE MARTYRS OF warm, protectors. The Roman deputy Gallio seems to have been actuated by secret favour towards the Christians ; for when St. Paul was brought before him by the Jews, Gallio refused to listen to their accusations, and cleared the court of the tumultuous informers. In revenge for the in- terference of the Hebrews, the Greeks, many of whom had been converted by the Apostle's preach- ing, took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him publicly before the tribunal ; meet- ing with no opposition from Gallio, who, not con- tent with protecting a Christian, connived at the ill-usage of a Jew.* When Festus left Paul bound, it was to do the Jews a pleasure : when Paul appealed to Caesar, it was to escape their malignity. It was a Roman who thought it unreasonable to send a Christian prisoner without a crime imputed to him : a Ro- man, who, appreciating the eloquence and truth of the Apostle, trembled before his preaching. It may, therefore, excite our surprise to find this equitable policy exchanged for the spirit of exter- mination which afterwards appeared among the Heathen : nor can we accuse the genius of Chris- tianity of any change for the worse, which could render it an object of reasonable aversion to its enemies. A probable cause of this hatred is found * The motives of Gallio are not quite obvious : perhaps the punishment inflicted on Sosthenes was usual in the case of an accusation j udged to be frivolous and vexatious : or the Jews may have been unpopular at Corinth. THE CATACOMBS. 85 by Milman, in the behaviour of the Christians dur- ing the burning of Rome, as their expectation of Christ's coming might lead them to rejoice in the flaming scenes which appeared to be its precursors. But, allowing all possible weight to this supposition, it does not explain the subsequent ill-treatment of the Church, after the repeated injunctions to the contrary contained in the Imperial rescripts. What seems to have excited the anger of the Ro- man authorities was the proselytising disposition of the new sect, and their aggressions upon the Pagan religion. The principles of toleration which induced the Romans to allow the free use of hereditary rites and creeds to the nations which they conquered, were not applicable to persons who had apostatised from the polytheism in which they were born. To quit this with disgust, and to turn round upon its supporters with vehement indignation, was to com- mit an offence very different from that of the Jew, who, continuing in quiet adherence to the religion of his fathers, in no way disturbed the tranquillity of the empire. A distinction must be made between the penalties legally inflicted on the Christians, and the irregular outbreaks of popular violence by which they suf- fered ; as well as between the general tenor of the laws regarding them, and the particular edicts au- thorising persecutions. It would appear that Pliny, when promoted to the governorship of Bithynia, could find no laws or precedents concerning the G 3 86 THE MARTYRS OF treatment of the Christians* ; so that tip to the year 106 a.d., no edicts against them were in force : from which we may infer that the laws of Domitian and Nero had been repealed, a good office which history ascribes to the humane Nerva. The edicts generally required a fair and open accusation of the supposed Christian, which would subject the informer, if successful, to disgrace among his fellow citizens, and if unsuccessful, to the severe penal- ties provided for such cases. On this point history is clear : and we possess decisive proofs of the just intentions of some emperors. " If the people of your province (writes Adrian to Minucius Funda- nus) think that they can accuse the Christians in a court of law, let them do so according to law ; but let there be no place for clamours and tumults. It is your part to take cognizance of the affair ; and if the Christians appear to have done any thing illegal, punish that, and suit the penalty to the offence. And, by Hercules, if any one descends to accusation for mere calumny, let him also feel the full weight of your displeasure." Historians, as might naturally be expected, have in general expatiated upon the times of trouble to the Church, and passed over lightly those of tran- quillity. "With the name of Diocletian, we associate the recollection of the most fearful scenes: the barbarities of the Thebaid, the horrors of the Peri- stephanon ; yet for nineteen years of his reign, * Pliny's Epistles, Book x. 97. THE CATACOMBS. 87 from A. d. 284 to 303, the peace of the Church was unbroken ; and so much was discipline relaxed in consequence, that Eusebius laments its state, and considers the persecution that followed as necessary to restore purity, and a spirit of self-denial. Nor did all the heathen emperors manifest a positive aversion to Christianity: the Pagan historian, Lam- pridius, has preserved a remarkable example of moderation in Alexander Sever us : " When the Christians," he relates, " had taken possession of a certain place, which had till then been open to the public, and the Popinarii (or tavern keepers) laid claim to it, the Emperor decreed that it was better that God should be worshipped there in any man- ner, than that it should be given up to such occu- pants.* Another instance may be given. Aurelian, when consulted by the oriental bishops concerning the deposition of Paul of Samosata, referred the cause to the Italian clergy, and finally permitted the execution of their sentence against the dissolute prelate of Antioch. (Eusebius.) The actual extent and severity of the Pagan per* secutions, a point much debated among writers, is best ascertained by examining the testimony of authors not professing to treat specially of martyrs, such as Pagan historians, the fathers, and, after the time of Constantine, ecclesiastical historians. It is worthy of remark, that in all the inspired records of martyrdom, the mode of execution is described as * In vita Alexandri Severi. cap. 49. g 4 88 THE MARTYRS OF that usually employed at the time : the scourge and cross were a common punishment with the Romans ; and the stoning of Stephen was an act of supposed obedience to the law of Moses. In this circum- stance, as we shall presently see, they contrast strongly with some of the later histories, which represent magistrates, otherwise humane, as invent- ing every refinement of cruelty expressly for the torture of the Christians. Pagan writers, while they generally pass over with contempt the Christian sect, have not omitted to notice the dreadful calamities which they suffered under Nero. According to Tacitus, a vast multi- tude were sacrificed in that first persecution ; and both Juvenal and Martial refer to the particular mode of destroying them adopted by the sanguinary Emperor. Succeeding writers allude to the perse- cutions that followed ; and their observations, col- lected and compared, furnished materials for a controversy on the number of martyrs, warmly agitated in the last two centuries. Up to that time, all parties had agreed in receiving the Romanist martyrologies as genuine : the first who ventured to oppose the established opinion being the learned Henry Dodwell, author of a treatise intitled, " On the Paucity of Martyrs." He argues that Origen acknowledged very few martyrs before his own time ; that is, the middle of the third century, and long before the Diocletian persecution : that few of the emperors persecuted the Church : that their rescripts prevented as much as possible, both the THE CATACOMBS. 89 popular tumults and the injustice of the provincial governors : that some emperors were friends and protectors of the Christians, and that others, though not friendly, were far from being violently opposed to them. He does not omit to notice the saying of St. Ambrose, " I know that many of the Gentiles are accustomed to boast, that they have brought back the axe bloodless from their provincial ad- ministration." "It is also," continues Dodwell, " scarcely credible, that princes and their officers, who, though persecutors, were in other respects good men, should have been so inhuman, so athirst for the blood of the innocent, as some fable-mongers have represented." * The treatment of the martyrs appears to have depended in great measure upon the individual character of their judges. In the case of Cyprian, suitable respect was paid to his rank, and a direct act of disobedience proved, before the capital sen- tence was reluctantly pronounced. In the matter of those accused under Trajan, the imperial edict contained the inconsistency of directing Pliny to put to death the Christians brought to him, but in no case to seek for them ; whereas in the massacres under Diocletian, no attempt was made to justify their punishment by convicting them of crime. The injustice and cruelty of some persecutors, as well as the character of the proceedings insti- tuted by them, are vividly described in the Apology of Tertullian. But after making allowance for the * De Paucitate Martyr um. 90 THE MARTYRS OF declamatory style of that author, it is obvious, that notwithstanding the unfair methods of convic- tion resorted to by the Pagans, there existed among them some sense of justice towards the Christians, to which the appeal of the African Father was di- rected. The followers of Jesus, he complains, were not placed upon the same footing as other criminals, with regard to the means of defending themselves. They were not permitted to answer for themselves, a privilege allowed to every other class of offenders. Nor was their crime properly investigated, but their name alone, when confessed, was reckoned sufficient ground of condemnation. " In other cases," he continues, " you expect full evidence and proof of the details, you must be put in possession of the time and place, the accomplices and manner of the deed. With us, no such forms are observed: whereas you should examine your prisoner as to the num- ber of infants of which he has partaken*, the (Edipodean banquets in which he has joined : what cooks, what dogs were present. In the case of a murderer, you torture him to make him confess; we, on the other hand, are tortured to force us to deny our crime, that is, our name. A man says, 4 I am a Christian;' still he is tortured: if he is punished for confessing the truth, how would you treat him had he told you a falsehood ? Again, you are reluctant to believe a common criminal when he denies his offence, yet you believe us instantly * Tertullian here alludes to the usual charge brought against the Christians. THE CATACOMBS. 91 when we deny ours. You suppose a Christian to be a man guilty of every description of crime, yet on his denying, or abandoning the name, you for- give him freely. This is not law. Is it then a mere contention about a name ? It would seem so, since you judge us for none of the vices imputed to us." The apologist, having thus dexterously exposed the injustice of the Pagans, proceeds to draw, from their customary way of speaking, an argument in favour of the moral character of the Christians. 44 4 A good man that Caius Seius,' says one, 4 though a Christian ' — 4 1 wonder so wise a man as Lucius has joined them,' says another : but no one thinks of saying, 4 so good, so wise, because a Christian,' or, 4 a Christian, because so good and wise.' Again, another is thus spoken of : 4 That woman, once so wanton, so agreeable, (quam lasciva, quam festiva) ' or 4 that youth, so seductive, so gallant — but now they have become Christians : ' meaning to say, now they have reformed. But why should reformation of character under that name offend you ? 44 Who, I would ask, first began to punish us ? Nero. Nothing but what was excellent was ever condemned by him : Domitian, too, his fit successor. These you yourselves condemn, and are accustomed to make good the injuries which they inflicted. But no Adrian or Vespasian, no Pius or Verus, has issued edicts against us. 44 You think us traitors for refusing to sacrifice to Caesar, yet in devotion to him we far exceed you. 92 THE MARTYRS OF For him we supplicate the true, the living, the eternal God. With hands extended because pure, with heads uncovered because not ashamed, with- out a prompter because from the heart, we ask long life and every other blessing for him : such things I can ask only where I know they can be obtained. We do not offer, like you, a pennyworth of incense, a few tears of the Arabian tree, two drops of wine, or the blood of some superannuated bullock awaiting its death * : and withal so foul a conscience, that I wonder the priests do not rather inspect the entrails of the offerers than those of the victims. Then, while we stand praying before our God, let the ungulse tear us, the crosses bear our weight ; let the flames envelope us, the sword divide our throats, the beasts spring upon us; the very posture of a praying Christian is a preparation for every kind of punishment. f Do this, loyal judges, torture the person that prays to God for the Em- peror; this will be a crime, when truth and piety are illegal. " You take it for granted that the Christians are the cause of all the evils that befal the nation. If the Tiber overflows, or the Nile does not ; if drought * This statement sadly dispels the charm of the heathen ceremonial. The libations and sacrifices of the ancients might be supposed, from the account of classic authors, to have been costly, if not magnificent. The victims, by law, should have been unblemished, and never yoked to the plough. ■f The apologist refers to the custom of praying standing, with hands outstretched in the form of a cross. Criminals were often bound in the same position before undergoing punishment. THE CATACOMBS. or earthquakes, famine or pestilence befal us, then we hear immediately, 4 The Christians to the lion.' But, I pray you, did no misfortunes occur to the city before the time of Tiberius ? What god was worshipped among you when Hannibal measured by the bushel the rings taken at Cannae ? or when the Senonian Gauls filled the Capitol ? " What testimony do you not bear us in this, that you rather condemn a Christian ad lenonem than ad leonem ; you suppose that we fear sin more than death. Crucify, torture, condemn us: this harvest is our increase : our seed is the blood of Christians." In such indignant and scornful terms does the champion of Christianity defend his cause, not fear- ing to attack the religion of the state. Yet we find him escaping with impunity, as well as most of his contemporaries : indeed it has been often remarked, that many of the bishops, exposed as their situation was, held ofiice during the reign of several successive emperors. The deacon Pontius declares that Cyprian was the first African bishop who had obtained the crown of martyrdom. In his epistle to the governor Scapula, Tertullian quotes instances in which the Pagans had protected the Christians : he specifies Cincius, Severus, Can- didus, and Asper, who had favoured their escape ; Puclens, who had refused to try one of them with- out an accuser ; and Severus, father of Antonine, who " understanding that certain illustrious men and women were of that sect, not only dismissed 94 THE MARTYRS OF them unhurt, but bore honourable testimony to them, and restored them safely to their friends in the face of a raging populace." The writings of Tertullian were composed about the year 200, when the space of time over which the Pagan persecutions extended was only half elapsed : it is possible that at that period the Roman government, less corrupt and enfeebled than after- wards, maintained the principles of justice against the mob, with more firmness than towards the time of the Diocletian persecution : certainly, that last desperate attempt to eradicate Christianity was the most vigorous, perhaps in exact proportion to the prevailing terrors of the Heathen regarding its final triumph. It is not difficult for us to enter into the feelings of the Pagans, so far as to imagine the apprehen- sions with which they must have looked forward to the ultimate issue of the conflict. At the close of the second century, the members of the new sect were less formidable from their numbers and station, than from their irresistible valour. Carry- ing in their hand the life they valued so cheaply, the martyrs lavishly exchanged it for the treasures of eternal glory; but besides this, in itself an abundant recompence, they bought over the hearts of men. With such a price, they seduced the world into imitation of their virtues : the same violence that took heaven by force (to apply an expression after the manner of that time), prevailed over earth, and vanquished hell. Nothing could THE CATACOMBS. 95 have been devised better adapted to display the beauties of the new faith, than submitting its pro- fessors to martyrdom : not proof against the gene- rous enthusiasm of his victim, the executioner often caught the flame : gazed upon the danger- ous spectacle of the power of true religion, till his heart burnt within him : and, fairly overwhelmed by the triumph of faith and hope, hastened to un- dergo the death which his hands had inflicted on another. It was perhaps the frequent experience of this which led many of the Pagan oflicers to avoid the capital punishment of the Christians, and to employ the more efficacious method of bribes and entreaties. There was, moreover, a spirit of combination among the Christians, an earnest energy, and a desire to extend their Master's kingdom at any risk to themselves, that must have suggested gloomy forebodings to the more thoughtful worshippers of Jupiter. There was, undoubtedly, a falling-off in the devotion of the Pagans, independent of the injuries inflicted on their religion by Christianity ; a deistical philosophy was gradually taking the place of polytheism ; yet the vigour of the perse- cutions shows that the new doctrine was by no means looked upon with indifference, nor did the world tamely allow itself to be surprised into Christianity. Because a rationalist emperor placed together in his palace, the statues of Orpheus, Abraham, Christ, and Apollonius, and because a few of the more learned heathen delighted in the 96 THE MARTYRS OF same eclectic worship ; we are not to infer with Gibbon, that indifference gave the death-blow to Paganism, and that Christianity only stepped in to enjoy the triumph. For one martyr to the unity of God among the Pagans, — for one Socrates, how many might be numbered among the followers of Jesus : to those who bled in the cause, let us ascribe the honours of the victory. It is related of one of the Antonines, by Euna- pius, that he was in the habit of declaring publicly, that before long all the temples would be converted into sepulchres. From the well-known connection between cemeteries and places of worship among the Christians, it is clear that the imperial states- man foresaw the future ascendency of our religion. The number of lapsed persons existing in the Church during the later persecutions, while it marks a declension from primitive constancy, also shows the severity of the trial to which they had been sub- jected. In these times we can scarcely realise the miserable condition of those, who having apostatised under persecution, were waiting to be restored to the church. Such a person was forced to do penance under the open sky for years, or even for life : with some sects, as with the Novatians, no sufferings could expiate the insult to the Church, and no sacrifice remained in heaven to wash away the boundless guilt. By the more lenient of his fellow Christians, he was regarded as a moral suicide ; a wretched shadow of himself, who survived his own decease, and existed but to perform the funeral solemnities Tin: CATACOMBS. 97 for his defunct soul. " If you had lost a friend," asks Cyprian of such a one, " a friend who was dear to you, you would lament the sad misfortune ; you have now lost your soul, and are to all spiritual purpose dead. * *• * * You went to the altar, yourself the victim, — yourself the sacrifice : there did you offer up your salvation, your hope, your faith ; consuming them in those fatal fires." So hard was the lot of the repentant lapsed, that even in a temporal point of view, it would have been better for them to have ended their lives by glorious death, than to endure the years of shame and misery which awaited them : how great then must have been the horrors which could outweigh both that disgrace and the prospect of eternal ruin ! Professed martyrologists have obtained their ma- terials almost exclusively from the separate treatises entitled Acts of the Martyrs ; a series of compo- sitions generally extravagant in style, and of doubt- ful authenticity. Some of them are translated in the first volume of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, as well as in Fleury's Ecclesiastical History : but the best collection of them is that of Ruinart, contained in one folio volume.* Of these histories, a few, such as those of Cyprian, Ignatius, and Polycarp, are told in a simple and dignified manner; an obser- vation scarcely applicable in any degree to the rest. On examining such a narrative as the Acts of * Acta sincera et selecta Sanctorum Martyrum. H 98 THE MARTYRS OF Tarachus and Probus, one of those published by Ruinart, we cannot fail to be struck by its highly unnatural and improbable character. A condensed enumeration of tortures, varied only by the repar- tees of the sufferer, may for a few lines excite our horror; but when continued through many pages, imagination refuses to grant such powers of endurance to frail humanity. A difficulty meets us at the outset : these " Acts " are given as an official report of the trials, entered in the Roman records, and privately obtained for the Christians by Sabastus, an archer on duty at the time. Yet their style betrays a Christian author, for they contain abundance of speeches attributed to the martyrs, related in Christian language. Indeed, the chief point of the narrative is made to lie in these speeches, generally highly figurative, and the mistakes of the Pagans arising from a too literal interpretation of them. Happily for the reader, his attention is continually diverted from the mutilation of the martyrs, to their successful wit-combats with their judge. " Rub him with salt," exclaims the go- vernor; " Salt me more, that I may be incor- ruptible," replies Tarachus. When taunted by Maximus with his blindness, he returns the re- proach, and boasts of superior inward vision. He professes to be armed from head to foot, clothed in divine panoply : Maximus, who only sees his naked body one undistinguishable wound, is necessarily puzzled by the assertion, and has recourse to fresh barbarities to maintain his credit. Lastly, Maximus THE CATACOMBS. 99 dismisses him, promising to think over some fresh tortures for their next meeting.* In such narratives, the language put into the mouths of the martyrs is not always to be justified on Christian principles. Nor should the degree of provocation received by them be admitted as an excuse, for they are represented as perfectly un- unmoved, capable of arguing with precision, and annoying their tormentors with well-directed sar- casm. Unsuitably enough occurs the following passage in the Acts of Boniface. " The holy martyr said to him, 6 Be dumb, wretch ; and open not thy mouth against my Lord Jesus Christ. 0 serpent of darkest mind, ancient of evil days, a curse upon thee." In the second hymn of the Peri- stephanon, St. Vincent is made to remind Datianus of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrha, and to assure him of the certainty of his obtaining the same sulphureous portion in the lowest hell : — " Vides favillas indices Gomorreorum criminum ; Sodomita nec latet cinis, Testis perennis funeris. Exemplar hoc, Serpens, tuum est, Fuligo quern mox sulphuris Bitumen et mixtum pice Imo implicabunt Tartaro." * These acts of Tarachus contain strong marks of forgery. The martyrs are declared to have suffered in the first consulate of Diocletian, that is, in the year 284 : whereas the Diocletian persecution did not begin till 303, after an interval of fifty years' peace. The prefect is also made to quote the " Acts of Pilate," which are known to have been invented by Maximin, certainly not earlier than 303. (Eusebius, Hist. Eccles.) h 2 100 THE MARTYRS OF In these ill-concocted tales, every principle of probability is violated ; between them and the au- thentic records of martyrdom there exists not the slightest analogy. Are we to suppose that God, who gave the martyrs grace to suffer gloriously in His cause, should have left them to disgrace that cause by a vain bravado, or abusive retorts ? And if the appearance of insensibility to pain is to be considered a test, these stoical confessors must be allowed infinitely to exceed St. Paul in fortitude : compared with his plea of citizenship, adduced to escape torture, their eager demand for more hor- rible inflictions must indicate vastly higher attain- ments in faith and piety. The physical effects of the tortures are never taken into account in the later " Acts :" there is no collapse or prostration of strength, no swooning from profuse bloodshed. We must either suppose that a miraculous agency had throughout averted the usual effects of muti- lation, or that the entire narrative is grossly exag- gerated. Generally speaking, the only sufferer is the judge : he it is who rolls his eyes in frenzy, and gnashes his teeth with vexation* ; while the martyr finds vinegar mild, and salt without pun- gency ; mistakes mustard for honey, and claps his blood-stained hands as the ungula rends his limbs. * " His persecutor saucius Pallet, rubescit, aestuat Insana torquens lumina Spumasque frendens egerit." Peristephanon, Hymn 2. THE CATACOMBS. 101 If we cannot allow as a genuine offspring of Christianity the spirit that attributed fierce words and a proud stoicism to the martyrs, still less can we admit to the same honour the mad rage for martyrdom that is said to have possessed some of the younger believers. In the year 372 the Coun- cil of Elvira found it necessary to refuse the ho- nours of martyrdom to those who were killed in breaking idols, on the ground that such a proceed- ing was neither commanded in the Bible, nor sanc- tioned by Apostolic example. In narrating the story of Eulalia, Prudentius highly approves of her bold and insulting bearing towards the Pagan authorities. That young lady, according to the poet, had from the cradle given promise of a fierce and unsociable disposition, calculated to distinguish her in the religious world then existing. On the outbreak of persecution, she was removed to the country by her heathen parents, and even shut up to prevent any collision with the authorities. On a dark and silent night she escaped from her home, and, guided by angelic torch-bearers, made her way into the city. Early in the morning she pre- sents herself at the tribunal and vehemently abuses the emperor and his gods. She earnestly requests that her bodily frame may be torn to pieces, as a thing useless in itself, and unworthy the trouble of preserving. Provoked by her language, the prsetor orders the lie tors to bind her ; but, before inflicting punishment, he sets before her the miseries which she draws upon herself and her parents, the pro- H 3 102 THE MARTYRS OF spects of happiness which her- home offers, and the speedy marriage which awaits her. A grain of in- cense cast upon the coals is to be the sign of her recantation. To this she vouchsafes no verbal answer ; but spits in the face of the praetor, throws down the images, and kicks over the thurible. The two executioners immediately perform their office by tearing with the ungula her sides and bosom. In the gashes inflicted by the instrument, her ex- cited imagination traces the letters of her Master's name ; and her voice, unshaken by sob or sigh, joyfully proclaims His triumph.* Torches are afterwards placed under her face ; and this gives her an opportunity of ending her life by inhaling the flames of her burning hair. The earliest and principal metrical writer upon martyrdom is Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a na- tive of Saragossa; a lawyer, and afterwards con- sul. He flourished in the middle and end of the fourth century: his work on the subject is intitled Peristephanon, or " Concerning the crowns :" being a collection of fourteen hymns in honour of dif- ferent martyrs. Of these, the hymn to Komanus, being the most finished, may be taken as a sample. * " Nec mora, carnefices gemini Juncea pectora dilacerant ; Et latus ungula virgineum Pulsat utrimque, et ad ossa secat, Eulalia numerante notas. Scriberis ecce ! milii Domine ; Quam juvat hos apices legere." Peristephanon, Hymn 9, THE CATACOMBS. 103 The history of the sufferings of Romanus, a mar- tyr of a. d. 303, in the Diocletian persecution, is a poem of 1140 lines. The speeches of the hero, though grandiloquent, and often out of place, con- tain much that is striking ; and constitute a some- what powerful apology for Christianity. After the execution of the sentence — Tundatur, inquit, tergum, crebris ictibus Plumboque cervix verberata extuberet ; the martyr, nothing overwhelmed by the hailstorm of the leaden scourges (pulsatus ilia grandine), but retaining both sense and speech, addresses Ascle- piades in an oration of 270 lines, enumerating all the crimes attributed to the heathen deities. The judge, who had suffered him to proceed so far with- out interruption, roused at length by the oft-re- peated question, " Would you have me worship such a god ? " attempts a reply : he argues that Rome had obtained her present glory under the patronage of Jupiter Stator ; and that it would be ungrateful to leave the worship of the eternal gods who presided over the building of the city, for a novelty, just called into existence ; and after a thousand consulates had rolled away, to embrace this new Christian dogma. The flesh is now cut from the bones of Romanus, while he carries on a comparison between the pains he endures, and those attendant upon sickness. " The ungulse tearing the sides," he observes, " give no pang so sharp as those of pleurisy : the red-hot plates are less scorching than the heat of fever ; nor are my H 4 104 THE MARTYRS OF SAvelled and tortured limbs more painful than those of persons suffering from gout." His constancy is next put to the proof by fearful mutilations, after which he delivers an harangue on the cross and the plan of redemption; then adducing the command not to cast pearls before swine, he professes his intention of remaining silent for the future. He adds, however, that if the judge will fix upon any child of seven years old or under, he will pledge himself to follow whatever that infant may declare to be the truth. Acting upon this suggestion, the president seizes an infant in the crowd, and after obtaining from it a confession of Christianity, orders it to be scourged. In this scene, the severity of the punishment, its effect upon the bystanders, the weeping execu- tioners, but, most of all, the inhuman conduct of the mother of the child, in reproving it for begging of her a cup of water, and referring it to a long list of Scripture martyrs by way of consolation, have afforded Prudentius abundant scope for the horrible descriptions in which he delights : — " Vix hsec profatus, pusionem prsecipit Sublime tollant, et manu pulsent nates ; Mox et remota veste virgis verberent, Teneruinque ductis ictibus tergum secent, Plus unde lactis, quani cruoris defluat. Impacta quotiens corpus attigerat salix, Tenui rubebant sanguine uda vimina Quern plaga flerat roscidis livoribus. * # * * At sola mater hisce lamentis caret, Soli sereno frons renidet gaudio." THE CATACOMBS. 105 The child, though exhausted by loss of blood, re- vives and smiles ; and during its decapitation, which soon follows, the mother is employed in singing the versicle, " Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."* -The torturing of Romanus now proceeds with redoubled vigour, and after several miracles, only serving to provoke Asclepiades, and prolong the sufferings of the mar- tyr, he is despatched by strangling. The writers who flourished soon after the time of Constantine vied with one another in elabo- rating highly-coloured descriptions of the horrors of martyrdom . Prudentius being the first of those who wrote in metre, we cannot always say, in poetry, brought out the whole subject with fresh embellishments, and was greatly admired by his contemporaries and successors. " The torments which Prudentius admirably describes," remarks Ruinart, in reference to the sufferings of Rom anus. His merits as a poet we shall have occasion to dis- cuss afterwards ; at present we are only concerned with the question of his historical fidelity. The hymn just quoted is sufficient to shake our belief in him as a martyrologist : without reckoning the miracles, the whole story is a string of improbabi- lities : the martyr is represented as betraying an * The poet has found a worthy commentator in Fabricius, who has the following note : " The mother is tempted by the complaining of her child, but persists in her exalted resolution. * * * She refuses a little water to his thirst, and directs him to Christ as a fountain." Foxe takes the same view of her conduct. 106 THE MARTYRS OF infant to certain destruction : the mother displays a want of feeling scarcely credible, and altogether odious : and the infant itself, though lately weaned, exhibits the understanding and resolution of ma- ture age. The profusion of useless miracles answers no end, and is supported by no evidence : indeed, the existence of miraculous adjuncts to martyrdom must be generally doubtful, from the difficulty of obtaining dispassionate testimony regarding them. It is not from a highly excited crowd of spectators earnestly watching for some supernatural interpo- sition, and ready to magnify any event that ap- peared strange or unusual: it is not from such, still less from those who have only listened to their descriptions, that satisfactory proof of miraculous occurrences can be obtained. There are, moreover, strong objections in the nature of these miracles : that God should deliver His servants from their enemies, or support them miraculously under tor- ments, is perfectly in accordance with the tenor of the inspired records : but reason is staggered by the futility of the many prodigies described in connection with the later martyrdoms. Romanus having had his face completely cut to pieces, and being still enabled to speak distinctly, derives no relief from the supernatural aid: he is next deli- vered to another executioner, who cuts out his tongue. After the second mutilation, the martyr, silenced perforce, having no voice to send heaven- ward, no words with which to proclaim his Master's triumph, draws from his inmost heart a long sigh, THE CATACOMBS. 107 and supplicating with a groan, breaks forth : " Who speaks of Christ, never yet wanted a tongue : nor ask by what organ words are formed, when the Giver of words is the subject of speech." Yet no conversion of the bystanders ensues ; nor does any effect follow the miracles, excepting that of exaspe- rating the judge. The same want of result is ob- servable in most of the prodigies related by Pru- dentius. Perhaps we shall not be wrong in ascribing the character of these stories, and even their existence, to the excited state of feeling which prevailed when they were written. Their general tendency is to make us believe that the martyrs suffered no pain, and had therefore little merit in facing the tor- ments prepared for them : while they exhibit the victim and his executioner as two combatants (" hinc martyr, illinc carnifex," as Prudentius has it) : the one backed by miracles, and supported by insensibility to pain ; the other armed with the most fearful implements that human or diabolical cruelty could invent. In this novel species of sin- gle combat, in which high words were not wanting on either side, the Pagan was invariably worsted. For in his own dissolving powers the martyr saw the pledge of victory ; and the failure of pain to shake his constancy was a deep disgrace to his foe. Unfettered by the " nec Deus intersit" of the pro- fane, the poet liberally introduced the agents of heavenly or hellish power : if there was no group of Oceanides to console the Christian Prometheus, 108 THE MARTYRS OF there was a chorus of angels to sing around him ; to scatter flowers on his couch, and to fill the air with odours. The invisible Coryphoeus invites him to heaven, and promises an eternal crown : — " Arise, illustrious martyr, secure of thy reward : arise, and join our company. — 0 warrior most in- vincible, braver than the bravest, thy tortures, cruel as they are, fear thee their conqueror."* Early in the history of persecution, we find Cel- sus reproaching the Christians with the example of the heathen Anaxarchus, who, being pounded in a mortar, exclaimed, " Pound the shell of Anax- archus, himself you touch not." "What," he asks, " did your Deity say in his sufferings comparable to this?"f Not to be outdone by a Pagan, mar- tyrologists took care to record the fact, that Chris- tians also could maintain composure under the greatest tortures : in course of time their hyper- bolical language rather represented the martyrs as devoid of feeling than resolute in enduring pain. In what might be a Christianised version of the speech of Anaxarchus, Prudentius makes his hero explain the principle of his fortitude : — " Tear as you will, this mangled frame, Prone to mortality ; But think not, man of blood, to tame Or take revenge on me. You overlook, in thus supposing, The nobler self that dwells within ; Throughout these cruel scenes reposing, Where nought that injures enters in. * Peristephanon, Hymn 2. f Origen in Celsum. THE CATACOMBS. 109 This, which you labour to destroy With so much madness, so much rage, Is but a vessel form'd of clay, Brittle, and hasting to decay. Let nobler foes your arms employ ; Subdue the indomitable soul ; Which, when fierce whirlwinds rend the sky, Looks on in calm security. And only bows to God's control." * In reply to the taunt of Celsus, concerning the superior fortitude of Epictetus and Anaxarchus, Origen remarks that a pious submission to the will of God, or even a prayer, such as, "If it be pos- sible, let this cup pass from me," is more truly magnanimous than the affectation of insensibility, so lauded in the Pagan sufferers. When the early Christian writers are charged with exaggeration, and even invention of facts, it must be remembered that the forgery of documents in support of their creed was not altogether un- known among them. The Sibylline interpolations * " Err as cruente, si me am Te rere pcenam sumere, Quum membra morti obnoxia Dilancinata interficis. Est alter, est intrinsecus, Violare quern nullus potest, Liber, quietus, integer, Exsors dolorum tristium. Hoc, quod laboras perdere Tantis furoris viribus, Vas est solutum ac fictile, Quocumque frangendum modo." The entire passage is imitated from Cyprian's tract to De- metrian, cap. 8. " Another will suffer in me," said the humble Felicitas, 180 years earlier. 110 THE MARTYRS OF are too notorious to leave any doubt on the sub- ject. A specimen of those productions, and of the manner of employing them, occurs in the works of Lactantius. After describing the miracle of feed- ing five thousand, he exclaims, " What can be said or done more astonishing ? But it was long ago predicted by the Sibyl, whose verses run thus : — ~Elv aproig lifia ttevte Kai lyQvEaai coioimi', 'Aj'^pwv )(iAiac)a£ ev t-pVH*? irevre KopiauEi, Kai ra TVEpiaaEvovra \a€u)v fxera KXarrfxara Travra, Aoj^EKCt 7r\-t]piO(TEl KOty'lVOVQ EIQ eXtTI^U 7To\\u)V. * " With five loaves, together with two fishes, He will satisfy five thousand men in the desert : Then gathering up the fragments which remain, He will fill twelve baskets for the assurance of many." From having quoted these fictitious works of the Sibyl in proof of their religion, the Christians early obtained the name of Sibyllists. " You have daringly," said Celsus, " inserted many abusive passages among her verses." Origen complains that Celsus did not specify the interpolations, nor produce old copies of the original writings. It is to be feared that Celsus might have easily supported his charge. The name of Orpheus had also been borrowed: his writings, evidently fictitious, were circulated in the Church. The first converts long retained a prepossession in favour of Orpheus, whom they considered to be a type of our Lord, by the sweetness of his preaching drawing all men after him. * De Jesu Vita et Miraculis. THE CATACOMBS. Ill In the 63d canon of the Quinisextan council, held a.d. 706, it was ordained, " That whereas certain false stories of martyrdom have been circu- lated by the enemies of truth, calculated to bring the martyrs into discredit, and drive the hearers of such things into infidelity : we decree that they be not read in the churches, but be committed to the flames." We are left in uncertainty as to the real character of the pseudo-martyrologies referred to by the canon : that they were read in churches, leads to the supposition that they were the produc- tion of Christian writers, who, by their unlimited indulgence in the license of the times, had alarmed even a council of the eighth century. Yet the severe expressions of the Quinisextan divines, " falso conficta3, * * * ut martyres Dei ignominia afficerent," seem to be pointed against intentional traducers. In the council held at Carthage, a.d. 401, it was ordered that all false martyr churches, and unau- thenticated relics, should be destroyed : that none should be enrolled as martyrs without sufficient proof : and that all altars consecrated upon the authority of dreams, and on other superstitious grounds, should be disavowed. The necessity for having some relic of a martyr as a palladium to a church, was not felt generally till the fifth century: the follies to which it led, and the frauds resorted to in order to convince the people of the sanctity of particular bones and dust, are aimed at in this canon. 112 THE MARTYRS OF A work making considerable pretensions to learn- ing and accuracy, is the small quarto of Gallonius, entitled " De Cruciatibus Martyrum," with plates. The ignorance of this writer concerning the power of human nature to support mutilation*, is even surpassed by his credulous eagerness to enumerate the accumulated horrors invented by the monkish historians, who, in their dismal seclusion, allowed full license to a morbid imagination. For Gallonius to state simply that the martyrs were suspended in various painful attitudes, would be insufficient for his purpose : sixteen varieties of hanging have been specified by him ; and, to the dismay of the reader, the whole sixteen appear in engravings. The same principle of amplification runs throughout the work : lest we should think lightly of the pains of being burnt alive, if conveyed by mere verbal description, not less than nineteen modifications of this torture are figured and explained in the mar- gin. All that lies between a slight historical men- tion of the details of martyrdom and the drawings of Gallonius, is mere invention. We are told by ancient writers, that the plumbatce were scourges loaded with lead ; and, beyond that, we know no- thing of them : also, that the scorpion was a knot- ted stick, as opposed to the virgce Iceves : when, * One of the sufferers lias a row of large nails driven into his back : another is sitting up, alive, with the four limbs ampu- tated and left to bleed. One plate represents a Christian whose liver is torn out : the opposite page adds in explanation that the Gentiles used to devour it ; a statement which accounts for the fire and frying-pan in the foreground. THE CATACOMBS. 113 therefore, we are shown an engraving, fixing the size and shape of these instruments, we are im- posed upon by the invention of the artist. To justify these engravings, there should be in exist- ence authentic relics of the objects, or descriptions by contemporary writers : but no such relics or descriptions can be found.* The collection of prints employed by Gallonius is also inserted in some other works, successive additions having been made from time to time. For instance, the supposed claw of an ungula, found in a cemetery, is published with due honour by its discoverer : another author, who has not seen the original, and is nevertheless better in- formed regarding it, adds to it a handle : a third puts it in its complete form into the hands of a ferocious executioner, and buries the points in the side of a Christian. A favourite subject with niartyrologists, and one not passed over by Gallonius, is the treatment to which the Christian virgins were exposed in the persecutions. Between the desire to magnify the * Stories regarding martyrdom never lose by repetition. In the massacre of the Huguenots, it is often stated that 60,000 persons perished in Paris : whereas Bonanni declares offici- ally, that 60,000 persons were employed in the slaughter, and that they destroyed 4000 of their enemies. (Numismata Romana, opposite the engraving of the medal.) Again, Ruinart says, that Domitius collected seven books of edicts remain- ing in force against the Christians: — Lactantius, from whom he professes to quote, mentions the edicts of the persecutors as contained in the seventh book of the laws collected by Domi- tius. (Institutiones, lib. 5. cap. 2). I 114 THE MAHTYRS OF indignities offered to them, and at the same time to exhibit them as coming off with undiminished honour, these writers are sorely perplexed. The usual custom is to introduce a miracle, by which the " spouses of Christ" are rescued from impend- ing fate, which on some very rare occasions is ad- mitted to have befallen them. Some of the latest histories of martyrdom are worked up into a com- plete romance, consisting of the adventures and escapes of the virgins from the perils to which they were exposed. The story of Theodora is a curious specimen of these narratives, and has the advantage of being free from miraculous adjuncts. This virgin mar- tyr, when informed that she must either sacrifice to the gods, or be publicly disgraced, answered — that " the will alone is what God regards." When at length condemned by the reluctant governor, she was led into the place of confinement, where she offered up a prayer for deliverance. The people standing round in a crowd, a Christian named Didymus, disguised as a heathen soldier, entered the cell ; he quieted her apprehensions by declaring that he had come to save her ; proposed to exchange dresses, and to let her pass out instead of him. Theodora adopted the suggestion, and escaped in safety, leaving her generous friend with- in. The next who entered discovered the change of the prisoner ; but, unable to explain the mystery, attributed it to a miracle. The circumstance was soon reported to the governor, and Didymus sen- THE CATACOMBS. 115 tenced to execution. But Theodora, hearing of his apprehension, ran to the place of punishment, and hastened to dispute with him the crown of martyr- dom. " I will not be guilty of your death," she exclaimed ; " I consented that you should preserve my honour, but not my life. If you deprive me of the crown of martyrdom, you will have deceived me." The noble contention ended in the execution of both the Christians. Several tales of this kind are to be found in the Ecclesiastical History of Nicephorus : perhaps the least improbable is the following: — A young lady of extraordinary beauty received the sentence de- scribed as common in the Diocletian persecution. To the first person who gained access to her, she represented herself as an enchantress, skilled in the knowledge of poisons and their antidotes : on con- dition of receiving no insult from him, she proposed to render him invulnerable to steel, by a prepara- tion which she had discovered. " But you will of course," she added, " wish to see its efficacy proved before concluding the agreement." Immediately producing an ointment, she applied it to her neck, directing the youth to draw his sword, and use his utmost endeavours to inflict a wound. Whether deceived by her manner, or altogether unacquainted with the martyr-spirit of the time, he obeyed : nor was his knowledge of the true Christian character advanced, when he saw with horror the head of his victim rolling at his feet.* * For another of these relations, rather curious and impro- i 2 116 THE MARTYKS OF There is a certain intensity in stories of this kind, where every action appears in a strange light, allowing a wide range for the production of unna- tural effect: vices here take the place of virtues, falsehood and suicide supplant truth and trust in God. This last virtue, the true foundation of martyr-glory, being omitted, the rest appear at variance : the harmony, deprived of its base, be- comes inverted and discordant. The learned and ingenious Lupi, an author much esteemed by Roman antiquarians, published, about the year 1753, a series of dissertations on subjects connected with the early Christians. The chapter on " Innocentius, Boy and Martyr," is a choice specimen of martyrological invention : it is headed by an engraving of the image of the saint, gaudily dressed, and laid upon an altar. " Possessing," says Lupi, " neither the acts of his martyrdom nor his epitaph, we cannot easily decide upon the man- ner of his death. An examination of his bones makes it probable that he died under the plunTbatse. It is thus argued, because one of the shoulder- blades of the glorious little Saint (Santino) was found broken, as if by the force of the leaden blows : besides which, several of the vertebra? and ribs are broken, as if by violence. The bone called by ana- bable, see also Fleury, Hist. Eccles., livre 8. chap. 36. The seven martyrs were septuagenarians. Stories of this description all belong to the last persecution : the secret is easily ex- plained : " Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi," — and like those unsung heroes, the virgin martyrs of earlier times had no poet. THE CATACOMBS. 117 tomists sacrum is also crumbled and separated from its great ischiatic processes." The bones of this martyr, not yet seven years old, must have lain in the grave upwards of four- teen centuries, supposing him to have suffered in the last persecution. It cannot but surprise us to find the skeleton of a child, imperfectly ossified, and buried in a damp rocky cell, preserving any vestige of its original form*; nor is the ignorance of the discoverer less astonishing, in arguing from a slight decay which it had undergone, violence inflicted during life. Had the sacrum been still attached to the ischiatic processes, and had its spongy structure preserved its shape, the grave antiquarian might, with greater justice, have boasted the miraculous preservation of the relics. The reader may re- member a drawing in the third chapter of this work, representing a little dust as the sole residue of a full-grown skeleton : there is, therefore, nothing remarkable in the fact, that the shoulder-blade and ribs of Innocentius have fallen into pieces. The sex of a skeleton of that age must always be doubt- ful : we are, therefore, unable to ascertain a single circumstance regarding this supposed martyr, — whether boy or girl, what his name, and whether or not he died a violent death, — all is matter of * " On opening the graves of children at a period of six or seven years, the bodies have been found decomposed, not even the bones remaining ; whilst the bodies of adults were but little affected." (Chad wick, Supplementary Report on Interment, 1843, p. 128.) i 3 118 THE MARTYRS 01 conjecture. Lupi seems to have felt the weakness of his cause, if we may judge from his having recourse to miraculous evidence : a lady who was moribund from loss of blood after the extraction of a tooth, was immediately recovered by a small portion of the ashes of the saint. She supped with her family on the evening of the same day. From these apocryphal histories of saints and martyrs, we turn with pleasure to such writings as the Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, or the narrative of the Lyons persecutions ; which bear the test of any fair criticism, and reflect immortal honour on the courage of the sufferers. Of these works few remain ; perhaps, few were written : for in sea- sons of severe trial, opportunities of composing a history would seldom be afforded. Yet in some instances, time has preserved records, which, though not professedly descriptive of persecution, do, never- theless, present us with a faithful picture of the events connected with it; which take us behind the scenes, and exhibit to our peaceful times, not the heroism of a race of spiritual demigods, but the trembling faith of weak mortals like ourselves, now fainting, now triumphing, and still oftener evad- ing the trial from which flesh and blood have always shrunk. The correspondence of Cyprian, including the let- ters addressed to him by the Roman clergy, contains the materials for a minute history of the Decian persecution at Carthage. In this collection of au- thentic documents, there is seen a mixture of weak- THE CATACOMBS. 119 ness with the courage of the martyrs, that may indeed diminish the unmingled lustre of their exploits, while the nature of their sufferings, better brought home to our feelings, excites in us increased sym- pathy. In almost the only piece of martyr-autobio- graphy contained in it, we read — "I confessed the name of God with fear among the more timid *; " and throughout the narrative we shall find little resemblance to the unnatural stories of Roman us and Eulalia. Early In the year 250, the Decian persecution broke out in Rome, and on the news arriving at Carthage, the people rose in a body, and demanded by name Cyprian, bishop of that city, to be thrown to the lions. On the repetition of the cry, Cyprian, with the concurrence of his clergy, retired to a place of safety, whence he continued by letter to superintend the affairs of his church, the emolu- ments of his office being lodged by him in the hands of Rogatianus, for the relief of the poor during his absence. His first care was to regulate the public services, so as to expose the believers as little as possible to popular rage. His advice was, that the clergy who administered the communion to confessors in prison f , should be constantly changed, and that no crowd should attend on the * Lucian's answer to Celerinus. Cyprian's Epist. xxii. f The practice of administering the communion to confessors almost every day of their imprisonment, was intended to strengthen their faith and courage against the time of their final suffering, which was unknown to them until they were called out to execution. i 4 120 THE MAKTYRS OF occasion, for fear of attracting notice. In this parti- cular, he acted for others on the same principles of prudence and moderation which dictated his own flight. When the news of Cyprian's retirement reached Rome, that is, immediately after the martyrdom of Fabian, bishop of that city, the Roman clergy took upon themselves, during the vacancy of their see, to write an anonymous letter of advice to the clergy of Carthage, whom they affected to consider deserted, and much needing their brotherly counsel. In this letter they made some very plain allusions to the conduct of " the blessed Pope Cyprian," as they style him, such as a reference to Peter following our Lord afar off; introducing the passage, " He that is an hireling and not the shepherd, seeth the wolf coming and fleeth." In this they enclosed another epistle, somewhat of the same character, to be forwarded to Cyprian. So far from deferring to their opinion, the Bishop of Carthage sent back their letter, requesting to be informed whether it was genuine.* Of this answer they took no notice, though they continued on friendly terms with their correspondent. The proconsul's arrival at Carthage, in the month of April greatly increased the fury of the perse- cution. The inferior local magistrates had no power of life and death, but only of imprisonment ; the power of torturing was also limited to the * The absence of signatures and address, probably omitted through fear of interception, gave a fair pretext for the doubt. THE CATACOMBS. 121 proconsul. The first company of confessors called before the tribunal acquitted themselves gloriously ; some of them, covered with wounds, were remanded till the following day ; others, exhausted with loss of blood, breathed their last, and obtained at once the long-desired crown. " To-morrow," ex- claimed Mappalicus from the rack, " to-morrow you shall see a struggle." He was as good as his word, for the next day he resisted to death, before a host of witnesses. Fortunata and twelve others were starved to death, and some were long confined in dungeons filled with smoke or heated air. The proconsul at length quitted Carthage, leav- ing in prison a number of confessors, several of whom died there, and were admitted to the honours of martyrdom. Many also remained in banishment, and of these a few returned before their time, for which they were reproved by Cyprian, as they were now liable to be brought before the courts, not as Christians, but as criminals. Others gave occasion for scandal, in a manner deeply lamented by their bishop, and so cast upon the manners of the primitive Church a reproach not yet forgotten by the infidel. All this time the number of the lapsed had been increasing, and now amounted to thousands. This immense body fixed upon the remaining confessors as their intercessors with the Church ; and if the office was undertaken with less humility than was becoming, the case, it must be allowed, was one of difficulty. It seemed not un- suitable, that they who had fought successfully, far 122 THE MARTYRS OF from priding themselves upon their advantage, should be foremost in promoting the restoration of their weaker brethren. The Church scarcely knew how to refuse the petition of her much-honoured martyrs; and God himself, it was argued, God who hears the prayer of faith, could not turn a deaf ear to that of his faithful witnesses. On the other hand, it was felt to be in the last degree dangerous to speak peace where God had not spoken it ; and to admit to the cup of the Lord him who had just before drunk that of demons. What security, it was urged, have we for the con- stancy of our members, if their denial of faith is to be lightly passed over ? who will find it worth his while to resist the torture, if his backsliding brother is to be presently restored, and put upon the same footing as he who has endured ? Nor let it be said, that peace with God and peace with the Church were matters altogether distinct, and improperly connected in the discussions of that time. It was the business of the Church to comprise among her restored members those, and those only, whom God reckoned among the true penitents ; and an error on either side of this narrow line was duly feared. By too great severity the lapsed might be hardened in his denial, or be driven to despair: while between his crime and his restoration, stood, as a flaming sword, the awful declaration, " He that denieth me before men shall be denied also before my Father which is in heaven." It was therefore judged advisable to sentence the apostate to a THE CATACOMBS. 123 course of penance, unless in danger of death, when a clinical or death-bed reconciliation was per- mitted. But the lapsed, impatient of their disgrace, bethought themselves of a shorter road to restor- ation. They beset the prisons, and begged tickets recommending their admission to the sacrament in the name of the confessors. To such an extent was this spiritual mendicity carried, that Cyprian complains that thousands of tickets were daily distributed ; but in this estimate some allowance must be made for the manner of speaking customary with the Fathers. And now began the struggle between clerical authority and the new power suddenly brought into existence. Some of the confessors abstained altogether from using the irregular privilege con- ferred upon them by popular acclamation, while others abused it to a dangerous extent. Saturninus, after his torture, declined giving any recommenda- tory letters, while Mappalicus interceded for his mother and sister alone. Aurelius, who could not write, employed Lucian to issue tickets in his name ; and Paulus, not content with making Lu- cian his secretary, added a commission to distribute letters "in the name of the martyr Paulus" after his execution. This power suited well the wishes of Lucian, who was not backward in dispensing his favours. Celerinus, a Roman confessor, soon applied to him for tickets in behalf of Xumeria and Candida, women who had acknowledged the heathen divinities in order to escape torture. The guilt of 124 THE MARTYRS OF Candida was somewhat extenuated, as she had, by bribing the officer, bought off the necessity for sacrificing ; so that on arriving at Tria Fata in the Forum, she was suffered to return without going up to the Capitol. Lucian, who was now on the eighth day of suffering the penalty of slow starva- tion, with the prospect of living but a few days longer, took upon himself, in the name of Paulus and seventeen other martyrs, to salute Numeria and Candida, thereby declaring that they were restored to the Church. He next despatched a letter to Cyprian, informing him that the confessors had thought fit to grant peace to all whose conduct since their lapse had been inoffensive: they also cautioned Cyprian against refusing their request, on peril of their displeasure. The disapprobation of Cyprian was strongly ex- pressed: " It is not martyrs that make the gospel," he exclaimed, " but the gospel that makes martyrs."* While the confessors took upon themselves to pro- claim peace indiscriminately, they threw upon Cy- prian all the odium of refusing it to individuals ; and by their loose manner of wording the letters they left a wide opening for the return of doubtful persons. " Let such a one with his friends be admitted to communion," was an unreasonable demand upon the leniency of the Church. The lapsed were re- minded by Cyprian, that there was still a direct way to restoration, by confessing Christ before a heathen * The confessors, by declaring peace to those whose apostasy was so recent, were in effect making a new gospel. THE CATACOMBS. 125 tribunal. Some adopted this nobler course: a woman named Bona, when dragged to sacrifice a second time, refused ; her hands were held by her husband, while she involuntarily performed the act, crying out incessantly, " It is you, not I, that do it." She was banished, together with four others who had also previously lapsed ; all these were admitted to communion. The case of the rest was deferred till Cyprian should be able to consult with his colleagues. The lapsed, still clamorous for admission, con- tinued to trouble Cyprian ; but he received unex- pected support from some of the confessors, who saw with regret the irregular proceedings of their brethren. Moyses and Maximus, Mcostratus and Rufinus, with others, addressed a letter to their bishop, thanking him for his exhortations, and attributing to him part of their success in their arduous conflict. At the same time they begged of him, by all that was noble in the confession of Christ, and fearful in the state of those who should deny Him, not to break down the hedge between the faithful and the apostate, or to allow room for the supposition that the difference between them was a slight one. But the lapsed, now grown outrageous, began to prescribe terms as if with the authority of the Church. Cyprian, surprised, inquired how they came to constitute the Church, seeing that God had declared himself to be " not the God of the dead, but of the living." Besides refusing their request, he confirmed the excommunication 126 THE MARTYRS 01 of Gaius, presbyter of Didda, who had persisted in communicating with them. On the decline of persecution, some of the sur- viving sufferers received ordination as readers and deacons. Aurelius, a youth, was made reader, though he deserved higher honours, having been banished, and afterwards tortured. Celerinus, who had passed nineteen days with his feet most pain- fully distended, was also made a reader. Numi- dicus, an older believer, was made presbyter, in consideration of his peculiar circumstances. He had exhorted many to endure martyrdom, and had sustained their courage at the last : he had seen his wife burnt to death by his side, and was him- self half roasted by the flames, covered with stones, and left for dead. His daughter, who sought his body with the intention of burying it, found life not quite extinct, and, by the use of proper means, succeeded in restoring animation. In the prospect of such a presbyter Cyprian exulted, and looked forward to the time when Numidicus should be made a bishop. It was but natural, he thought, that all these should be promoted from the rack to the desk ; that, having confessed Christ in tor- ture, they should now declare His words in the church. It is pleasing to find that they were especially noted for their modesty and humility ; qualities which forbid the supposition that any but the purest motives sustained them in their sufferings. Among the monuments relating to martyrdom, THE CATACOMBS. 127 the inscriptions raised to individual martyrs first claim attention. Lannus, the Martyr of Christ, rests here. He suffered under Diocletian. (The sepulchre is) also for his successors. (Boldetti.) This fac-simile represents one of the very few epitaphs actually inscribed on the grave of a mar- tyr, specifying him to be such. Its chief value lies in the letters E. P. S., showing that the tomb had been legally appropriated to Lannus and his family after him — et posteris suis. There is another in Aringhi, apparently au- thentic. PEIMITIVS IN PACE QVI POST MVLTAS ANGVSTIAS FORTISSIMVS MARTYR ET VIXIT ANNOS P.M. XXXVIII CONIVG . SVO PERDVLCISSIMO BENEMERENTI FECIT Primitius in peace : a most valiant martyr after many tor- ments. Aged 38. His wife raised this to her dearest well- deserving husband. 128 THE MARTYRS OF The honorary tablets raised to martyrs in subse- quent times never contain any reference to the family of the deceased. As a specimen of them, may be taken the next. TEMPORE ADRIANI IMPER ATORI S MA- RIYS ADOLESCENS DVX MILITVM QVI UJ SATIS VIXIT DVM VITAM PRO CHO . "TV UJ CVM SANGUINE CONSUNSIT IN PACE J>(^ (A TANDEM QVIEVIT BENEMERENTES /1\ V CVM LACRIMIS ET METY POSVERVNT ' I. D. YI. In Christ. In the time of the Emperor Adrian, Marius, a young military officer, who had lived long enough, when, with his blood he gave up his life for Christ. At length he rested in peace. The well-deserving set up this with tears and in fear. On the 6th Ides of December. The concluding sentence shows this monument to have been erected during a time of actual perse- cution. The reader will perceive the difference of style in the two epitaphs. The following was discovered by Aringhi in the cemetery of St. Agnes. The translation is borrowed from Bokletti, the author having found himself un- able to decipher it. ens yutfwvc K v KS\-ws nvyv \atvc npcjc|>Hc^ cv%\ (JamhVha-t^ta Read — Hie Gordianus Galliae nuncius, jugulatus pro fide, cum familia tota ; quiescunt in pace ; Theophila ancilla fecit. THE CATACOMBS. 129 Translate — Here lies Gordianus, deputy of Gaul: who was murdered, with all his family, for the faith : they rest in peace; Theophila, his handmaid, set up this. A monument of more doubtful description is a cup, on the outside of which are engraved the fol- lowing lines : — NON VNDA LETALIS EST AVSA CONSTANTI FERRE QVAM LICVIT FERRO CORONA. The deadly draught dared not present to Constans that crown which the steel was permitted to offer. In this cup, according to Aringhi, was presented to Constans a poisonous draught, which proved harmless: he was in consequence beheaded. The useless character of the miracle throws doubt upon the supernatural version of this story. A most authentic and valuable testimony to the sweeping nature of the last persecution is contained in the two inscriptions erected on its termination by Diocletian and Galerius. According to Gruter, they were found on beautiful columns at Clunia, in Spain. DIOCLETIAN . CAES . AVG . GALERIO . IN . ORI ENTE . ADOPT . SVPERS TITIONE . CHRIST. VBIQ . DELETA . ET . CVL TV . DEOR . PROPAGATO DIOCLETIANVS IOVIVS ET MAXIMIAN : HERCVLEVS C^ES : AVGG : K 130 THE MARTYRS OF AMPLIFICATO PER ORIENTEM ET OCCIDENTEM IMP : ROM : ET NOMINE : CHRISTIANORVM DELETO QVI REMP : EVER TEBANT. The first of these celebrates the universal ex- tinction of the Christian superstition in the East, and the propagation of polytheism under Diocle- tian and Galerius. The second extols Diocletian and Maximian for having extended the Roman empire, and extinguished the name of the Chris- tians, who were overturning the republic. We have here a monument raised by Paganism over the grave of its vanquished foe. But in this " the people imagined a vain thing:" so far from being deceased, Christianity was on the eve of its final and permanent triumph, and the stone guarded a sepulchre empty as the urn which Electra washed with her tears. Neither in Spain nor elsewhere can be pointed out the burial-place of Christianity : " it is not ; for the living hath no tomb." The final establishment of our religion was effected almost without a struggle: the edicts of Constantine were received with acquiescence, and the nation appears to have been more than half christianised before Paganism was rejected by the state. A powerful reaction followed the last per- secution, greatly increased by the divine judg- ments inflicted on some of its principal abettors: these were so remarkable as to give occasion to a THE CATACOMBS. 131 special work of Lactantius, in titled, " The Deaths of the Persecutors." The return of the exiled confessors was triumphant, and the Pagans them- selves acknowledged the interference of God in be- half of His worshippers. It has been assumed by antiquarians as a matter of certainty, that the ancient Christians employed symbols to distinguish the tombs of their martyrs. History being profoundly silent on this point, abundant room has been left for the exercise of imagination, in deciding what symbols would have been proper, and likely to be so used. Antiqua- rians have fixed upon several, which can only be disproved by direct evidence ; and this is furnished in many cases by the dates of interment, and in others by the name or condition of the person deceased. The history of the " Symbols of Martyrdom" is con- sequently little more than a description of super- stitions reluctantly abandoned from time to time : from being almost numberless, they have been re- duced to one — a cup of blood beside the grave. To give the reader an idea of the signs formerly considered decisive of saintship and of martyrdom, it will be necessary to quote a few instances from the antiquarians of the three last centuries. The learned Benedictine, Mabillon, while en- gaged in turning over the papers in the Barberini library, met with some correspondence relative to a pseudo-saint supposed to have been discovered in Spain. Some well-meaning persons had there met with an ancient stone, inscribed with the let- K 2 132 THE MAKTYRS OF ters " S. VIAR." and concluded it to be the epi- taph of a Saint Viar. Nothing daunted by the singularity of the name, or the total want of evi- dence in support of his sanctity, they boldly esta- blished his worship. But the zeal of his admirers, though it had conferred the honours of saintship, was unable to secure his immortality ; for, on their application to Urbanus for indulgences, the Roman antiquarians required some proof of his existence. The stone was therefore forwarded to Rome, where it was immediately seen to be the fragment of an inscription to a PrasfectuS* VIARum, or Curator of the Ways.* We are apt to pity the condition of those who wasted their prayers and praises on the imaginary Viar, but in what respect were they worse off than the supplicants at the altars even of St. Peter and St. Paul ? A remarkable instance of carelessness in the ma- nufacture of saints is mentioned by Mabillon, as having occurred at Tolosa very shortly before he wrote. An inscription was found in the Roman Catacombs, running thus: — DM JVLIA . EVODIA . FILIA . FECIT CASTAE .MATRI . ET . BENEMERENTI QVAE • VIXIT • ANNIS < LXX Upon the strength of this epitaph, raised by Julia Euodia to her chaste and well-deserving * In a work of Gaetano Marini (Inscrizioni dei Palazzi Albani), is an inscription containing the abbreviation CVR • VIAR. (p. 3.) Ainsworth also gives this as the common contraction for Curator Viarum. Gruter has several times CVRATOR ■ DE • SACRA ■ VIA. THE CATACOMBS. 133 mother, containing no signs of Christianity, but rather the reverse, the bones found in that grave were esteemed holy, and were attributed to St. Julia Euodia, instead of her " chaste mother." * From the number of Pagan tombstones applied to Christian purposes in the later times of the empe- rors, we require some specific evidence to assure us of the Christian origin of any tablet found in the catacombs. The romance of the eleven thousand virgins is said to owe its existence to the inscription, VKSVLA • ET • XI • MM • W ' which was read, " Ursula and eleven thousand virgins;" instead of " eleven virgin martyrs." f The history of St. Veronica exceeds all other legends of pseudo-saints in the pertinacity with which it has been supported by the Roman Church, in opposition to the learned of her own commu- nion, and in the entire absence of traditional evi- dence. Its origin and progress have been brought to light by the researches of Romanist antiqua- rians. About the darkest time of the middle ages arose the custom of painting the countenance of our Saviour upon pieces of cloth : the accuracy of the supposed likeness, or icon as it was called, was at- tested by inscribing beneath it the words "Vera icon," gradually corrupted into Veronica. Many * Museum Italicum t. i. p. 225. | Middleton's Letter from Rome. k Z 134 THE MARTYRS OF writers mention these veronica?; as observed by Mabillon, who has cited passages from Romanus, Petrus Casinensis, and Augustinus Patricius. Ma- billon also mentions the petition of a certain Cis- tercian abbess, dated 1249, to Jacobus de Trecis, the Pope's chaplain, that he would send her a copy of the picture contained in St. Peter's. He com- plied with her request, and begged her to receive the copy as " a holy Veronica, Christ's true image or likeness."* The next stage in the growth of the legend (for it does not seem to be of older date,) was the discovery that the original Veronica was an actual impression of our Saviour's features, miraculously taken at some time or other : according to Mabillon, during the Agony in the garden ; to Ducange, on the way to Calvary ; and by another class of persons, as noticed by Baronius, supposed to have been left upon the head-dress in the sepulchre, f But the story still wanted some- thing, and Veronica was at length found to be the name of a holy woman who followed our Lord to Calvary; and who, while piously wiping the Re* deemer's brow with a cloth, received as a reward the miraculous impression of His countenance. Of this woman, whom Baronius calls Berenice, there is a colossal statue in St. Peter's at Rome ; and what is worse, her image occupies a prominent place in the hearts of an ignorant people. * Iter Italicum, p. 88. | Ducange, Glossary, sub voce Veronica ; Baronii Annales Eccles. THE CATACOMBS. 135 The authorities, so far from discountenancing the fiction, have offered a premium upon its belief: John XXII. who assumed the tiara in 1316, issued a prayer, " by repeating which devoutly, looking meanwhile upon the face of Christ, an indulgence of 10,000 days may be obtained." In this hymn the most ignorant version of the story is main- tained by the " infallible" poet. " Salve, sancta facies Mei redemptoris, In qua nitet species Divini splendoris. Inipressa panniculo Nivei candoris, Dataque Veronicae Signum ob amoris. Salve, decus seculi Speculum sanctorum, Quod videre cupiunt Spiritus ccelorum. Nos ab omni macula Purga vitiorum, Atque nos consortio Junge beatorum," &c* The handkerchief of St. Veronica is publicly worshipped in Rome on stated occasions, and the ceremony is performed with the utmost splendour : perhaps there is no part of the Romish ritual more calculated to strike the imagination. The prostrate multitude, the dome of St. Peter's dimly lighted * This prayer is copied from an illuminated MS. in St. George's Library, Windsor. The end of the preface must not be omitted : " At si quis earn (orationem) ignoraverit, dicat v. pr. nr. inspiciendo Veronicam." Does this mean that five re- petitions of the Lord's prayer would do as well as one of Pope John's ? k 4 136 THE MARTYRS OF by the torches in the nave, and the shadowy bal- dacchino, hanging to all appearance in mid-air, form a spectacle not easily forgotten. The implements marked upon the gravestones, or inclosed in the tombs of ancient Christians, have furnished much matter of discussion to antiqua- rians, and not less encouragement to the super- stitious hunters after martyrs' remains. The no- tion that they were the instruments by which the deceased had suffered martyrdom, is urged by Aringhi * with considerable learning. The J ews, he observes, buried criminals together with the cross on which they had suffered : and, according to some Rabbis, persons who had been stoned or beheaded were buried along with the swords or stones employed in their execution. The cross was found entire beside our Saviour's sepulchre f ; * Roma Subterranea, p. 685. t The transaction called the "Invention of the Cross," in our calendar, will have little weight with most English readers. From the general tenor of the Homily against Peril of Idolatry, there is no reason for supposing that the Church of England intended to support this legend, any more than that of the " Conception of the Virgin Mary," which, together with the " Name of Jesus," and " O Sapientia," still appear in the ca- lendar. The circumstance most unfavourable to our belief in the miraculous preservation of the cross, is the existence of " pious frauds," such as the Sibylline interpolations, and certain most suspicious " inventions " in the time of Ambrose. The dis- covery of the true cross was firmly believed in at the time : Paulinus immediately forwarded to his brother a splinter of the wood, as a fragment of that cross, " on account of which, with a trembling world, a fugitive sun, and the uprising of the dead from their shivered monuments, nature was shaken to her centre." Judging from the mere particle preserved in THE CATACOMBS. 137 and some unguke have been discovered in the mar- tyrs' graves. Babylas, having died in chains, was buried with them. Symeon Stylites, according to a legend, was interred along with his iron bed, and the chains of St. Peter were found beside his corpse. These doubtful traditions may be opposed by the fact, that we have no historical evidence that it was the custom of the Church to bury instruments of torture or of death with the martyrs. The habit of designing the emblems of a trade or profession upon the tombstone, was, on the contrary, extremely common, as will be seen in the chapter treating of symbols : and to inclose in the tomb itself objects of the toilette, children's playthings, &c, was a hea- then custom, universally adopted by the Christians. The supposed fragment of an ungula, or hooked forceps, here represented, was found in the Cata- combs in the time of Paul III. : according to report it was of iron, and had the remains of wooden handles : it is figured in most works on the Catacombs. St. Peter's at Rome, it would seem that little of the much- vaunted treasure is now in existence. 138 THE MART YES OF It was customary among the Romans to tear the sides of malefactors with the ungula ; the Christians complained that in their own case, the judges ordered them to be torn on other parts of the person. But Tertullian fancifully contrasts the laceration of a Christian's sides with the cutting and hewing inflicted on the whole surface of the idols. In the " Peristephanon" of Prudentius, the in- strument is named in almost every page. Wounds inflicted by the ungula were called " bisulca," or con- sisting of two furrows. Another instrument of the same kind is given by Aringhi. The Vatican museum contains several pretended specimens of the torturing weapons : they are too new-looking to have deceived even the Roman antiquarians. With this may be compared a hook engraved upon a Pagan tombstone, and published by Gruter. (p. 810.) . Q . NAVICVLARIS VICTORINVS VAL . SEVERAE CONIVG. SAN. It cannot be pretended that the instrument of execution was displayed upon the gravestone of a Pagan, as there was no credit in having suffered as an ordinary malefactor. The point is so turned THE CATACOMBS. 139 inwards, as to make this instrument useless for cutting. The third and last of the so-called instruments of torture was discovered in the cemetery of Cale- podius ; the annexed sketch is copied from Boldetti. It has been considered a comb for tearing the flesh of the martyrs. Another comb, of a shape intermediate between this and one of the woolcombs belonging to the laniarii, is figured in Aringhi : this however is only a symbol cut upon the gravestone. Without discussing at present the precise character of the implements found in graves, it is clear that these objects, if merely an imitation of the instru- ments of torture, are of no value as actual relics of the martyrs : and if it is pretended that they were really employed in the execution of those with whose bodies they were interred, we may answer, that it is incredible that the Christians should have obtained from the Pagan authorities their instru- ments of punishment, in order to add to the honours of the martyr's funeral. THE MARTYRS OF The testimony of M. Raoul Rochette on this subject is valuable; in the epitaph of Benerus, a new saint transported from Rome to Perugia in 1803, is the figure of a forceps accompanied by the words, — D • M • S • BENERVS • VIXIT • ANNOS XXIII • MESES VII • On this he observes, " In the absence of any certain signs of Christianity, this instrument may be con- sidered as belonging to his profession. Benerus, therefore, might have been a poor blacksmith, Chris- tian if you will, or Pagan, which supposition accords better with the character of his epitaph, excepting for the vessel of blood found in his grave, which is considered an indubitable sign of Christian sanctity. 99 * The real name is probably Venerius. The picture of Diogenes, already explained, and that of Eutropus which follows, contain a number of implements relating to the occupation of the deceased. The hatchet in the workshop of Eutropus resembles one found in a grave by D'Agincourt, strengthening the supposition that the latter was only a symbol of trade. The honours of a martyr have been generally conferred upon Eutropus, from the cup in his hand, and the praying posture in which he is represented ; but neither evidence is satisfactory. The process * Memoires de l'Academie des Belles Lettres et descriptions, torn. xiii. This memoir must place M. R. Rochette in the highest rank of modern antiquarians. THE CATACOMBS. 141 of drilling a hole in the sarcophagus, is well ex- pressed in the rude drawing ; the instruments, supports, masks of lions, and strigiles upon the sarcophagus, are given with some accuracy. Translate — The holy worshipper of God, Eutropus, in peace. His son made this. He died on the 10th Kalends of Sep- tember. (Fabretti). The assertion that a figure praying was intended as a symbol of martyrdom, appears to rest upon no good foundation. It is with regret that the author is forced to object to so many suppositions con- nected with the saints and heroes of the Catacombs : the assertion that "a martyr is only known by prayer " * on the sepulchral tablets, is what every Christian would be ready to believe, and hope to be true. But the absence of all evidence leads us to reject the praying figure as a sign of martyrdom, and to refer it to the class of symbols expressive of some Christian sentiment. Moreover, these figures often occur on handsome marble sarcophagi of the fourth * R. Rochette, Academie des Belles Lettres et dTnscriptions, torn. xiii. p. 169. 142 THE MARTYRS OF and fifth centuries, in which case they cannot be considered as indicative of martyrdom. The custom of depositing small vessels with the bodies of the dead, was common among Pagans as well as Christians. Vessels of terra-cotta, glass, alabaster, and ivory, found in Christian tombs, have generally been considered as receptacles for blood : while those belonging to Pagans, though exactly similar, have been termed lacrymatories. Two important questions here present themselves: — 1st. Were these vessels used by the Christians to con- tain blood? And 2dly, Were they exclusively affixed to martyrs' graves. Several of these " ampolle di sangue " are marked with the first letters of the word Sanguis, or Sanc- tus. Two are here copied from Boldetti. The inscriptions are usually read, Sanguis, and Sanguis Saturnini. — The blood of Saturninus. They would equally bear the construction Sanctus, and Sanctus Saturninus. THE CATACOMBS. 143 The chemical examination of the contents of these vases, as conducted by Leibnitz, and published by Fabretti, proved favourable to the presence of blood, or at least of organic matter. Yet the experiments instituted are far from being satisfac- tory to the modern practical chemist, though they serve to refute the assertion, that the red matter contained in the vessels was merely a mineral im- pregnation from the surrounding soil. One or two pagan vessels mentioned by R. Rochette are said to have exhibited marks of blood. The arguments adduced from history , to es- tablish the use of cups of blood to mark the grave of a martyr, are not more conclusive. The Christians were certainly in the habit of collecting carefully the blood shed in martyrdom, in order to preserve it as a memorial of the constancy of their deceased friend ; but no mention is made of their burying it separately. Prudentius describes the Christians of Saguntum as anxious to obtain the blood of Vincent, who, being released from his tortures in order to 144 THE MARTYRS OF recover strength, died of his wounds. " One covers with kisses the double furrows of the ungula ; another is glad to wipe the purple stream from his body : many dip a cloth in the dripping blood, that they may keep it at home, as a sacred palladium for their posterity." The same care was employed to collect the blood of Hippolytus, who had been dragged to pieces by a wild horse. Before the execution of Theodora, her friends covered the floor with their garments, that none of her blood might fall to the ground. Lysimachus is represented as saying to his officers, " Gather up all his limbs which are cut off, and carefully scrape up the blood, lest any remain." It is generally said that the blood of Cyprian was preserved by the faithful, though the circumstance is not mentioned by his biographer Pontius. All these stories are much coloured by their narrator. The lines on the death of Quirinus do not furnish any evidence concerning the use generally made of the blood, though often quoted for that purpose. The bishop was sentenced to be drowned ; and Prudentius, lamenting his fate, takes comfort from the reflection that he was equally a martyr, though without bloodshed. Nil refert, vitreo aequore, An de flumine sanguinis Tinguat passio Martyrem : JEque gloria provenit, Fluctu quolibet uvida. The deep cold waters close o'er one ; Another sheds a crimson river : THE CATACOMBS. 145 No matter ; either stream returns A life to the Eternal Giver : Each tinges with a glorious dye The martyr's robe of victory. In these verses there is obviously no allusion to the custom of burying the blood. The " Congregation of Relics," held in 1668, has laid down rules for the prevention of mistakes on the subject. " The holy Congregation," it decreed, "having carefully examined the matter, decides that the palm and vessel tinged with blood are to be considered most certain signs of martyrdom: the investigation of other symbols is deferred for the present." The palm branch by itself is now almost universally abandoned; and the vessel of blood, though still generally received on the Con- tinent as an emblem of martyrdom, is already attacked in various quarters, as being of uncertain meaning. The bondage to authority under which Romanist writers lie, has made them timid in ex- pressing their sentiments on this point : they rather suggest than affirm ; and it is difficult to gather from their writings the real opinion of the learned authors. It may also be objected, that there is no mention of the custom in any contemporary writing. Through- out the " Acts of the Martyrs," and in the Poems of Prudentius, so explicit in every thing belonging to burial and the Catacombs, there is no allusion to any symbols of martyrdom. The expression, "a martyr's epitaph," occurs once in the " Periste- phanon," and " the name of a martyr, or else some L 146 THE MARTYRS OF anagram" is mentioned as found on many of the tombs.* The blood collected at the time of execution seems to have been preserved as a relic, not to have been buried : and the great number of cups dis- covered, passing by imperceptible gradations into drinking vessels, with inscriptions and figures, of a date posterior to that of the persecutions, leaves room to doubt their having been employed with any one uniform intention. It is suggested by Roestell, and Raoul Rochette seems much disposed to agree with him, that the vessels in question were intended as sacramental cups, inscribed with the word blood, a figurative expression for wine, the dry lees of which have passed for blood in the analysis. In support of this conjecture, he adduces the custom, at one time known in the Church, though always condemned by authority, of administering the sacrament to the dead. 11 Let no one," says the Quinisextan Council, " offer the Eucharist to the dead : for it is written, ' Take and eat.' Xow the dead can neither take nor eat." But this heterodox custom, prevalent in the seventh century, will scarcely account for the more ancient cups and vases : an easier explanation might be found in the Agape held over the grave of a newly buried person ; or in the wish to express the deceased to have been a communicant. The author is inclined to dissent from the general opinions of antiquarians, and to give a different account of the vases, and the names which they * Peristephanon. Hymn iv. THE CATACOMBS. 147 bear. A number of vessels found in the Catacombs are inscribed with the name of St. Agnes ; a glass has also been discovered with the letters, — VITO IVAS IN NOMINE LAVRETI Victoria, may you live. In the name of Laurence. Now Saturninus, Agnes, and Laurence have all given their names to cemeteries ; and either for this reason, or to claim protection from them as tutelary saints, their names have been inscribed on these vessels. As those martyrs suffered in the last persecution, the vessels so inscribed must be con- sidered as of still later date : a circumstance almost fatal to their supposed connection with martyrs' remains. Between the heathen lacrymatory and the so-called martyr-vase there exists no well- defined difference ; and not knowing the exact intention of the vessel in either case, beyond the probability that it was a depository for aromatic gums, we may suppose the Christians to have bor- rowed it from the Pagans, with such modification of its use as time and circumstance suggested. A number of vessels have on them expressions belonging to festive joy. The usual one — PIE ZESE (for £Vcuc), " Drink and live," seems to refer to the sacramental cup. A fragment of one is here figured * ; it is evidently of a date later than the time of persecution. * From Buonarotti. Vetri antichi. L 2 148 THE MARTYRS OF Between the heads of the persons represented is seen a cylindrical vase, exactly similar to that in the hand of Eutropos : an additional reason for not viewing the cup as invariably connected with martyrdom. The annexed engraving represents a vessel of the lacrymatory form (copied from Buonarotti), having inscribed upon it — VINCENTI PIE ZESE — Vincent, drink and live. Three conquering horses, equi^ vin- centes, are seen upon the lower part of the fragment. They are common symbols of a course well finished : and probably in this instance contain an allusion to the name of Vincent. The inscription round the lower part is AE - GIS OIKOYMENE ZEP, reversed. The cup, so often enclosed in the tomb, or cemented to the rock out- side, is sometimes merely drawn upon the gravestone, as in the ac- companying fac-simile. (Lap. Gall.) THE CATACOMBS. 149 Read — Brenzeino patri benemerenti. To Brenzeinus, my well- deserving father. The unusual name reminds us of that of the Ita- lian painter Bronzino, probably derived from it. The cups drawn upon this stone may be explained in the same way as the vessels found in the graves. The expedient of representing in this manner ob- jects which the poverty of friends prevented them from depositing beside the corpse, is one to which continued recourse was had by the early Christians. This observation may be verified in its most ex- tended sense: whatever is found enclosed in graves is also seen figured on tombstones. In the epitaph of Yernaclus Carpitanus, the cup is of another shape. (Lap. Gall.) vernaCIVS CAHPITAMVS L 3 150 THE MARTYRS OF The following has found its way into Boldetti's great work, where the figure upon the stone is interpreted as a furnace used in the martyrdom of Victorina. It is here copied, not from his engraving, but from the Lapidarian Collection, in which it is preserved. BICTORI FACE NA IN trmt Victorina in pace et in Christo. The inscription to Horia, contained in some an- tiquarian works, exhibits an altar burning : — k I BENEMCPCNTI IN PACE VIT XX MCSIS VI DIAE C XVIII FELIX FCCIT HORIAE QVAE ANNOS. This must be read from below upwards : Felix made this to Horia, who lived 20 years, 6 months, and 18 days. To the well-deserving, in peace. Neither this nor the preceding epitaph can be proved to belong to martyrs. Thus it appears that the supposed symbols of martyrdom lie under most serious objections. Ex- cepting in a very few cases, where the deceased is expressly described as a martyr, that circumstance seems to have been left unrecorded in the cemetery. THE CATACOMBS. 151 Raoul Rochette betrays the same opinion in the following striking passage : — " The bones of the martyrs are the sole remains of those heroes of the faith, even in their sepulchres : cups and fragments of glass, instruments of their profession, or symbols of their faith, are the only monuments left of their life or of their death. To look at the Catacombs alone, it might be supposed that persecution had there no victims, since Christianity has made no allusion to suffering." u Perhaps I may be allowed to add," he continues, " that a series of paintings, like those of St. Stefano in Rotondo (a church in Rome), filled with all the scenes of barbarity which the rage of executioners could devise, or the con- stancy of martyrs support, honours less the faith which inspires such images, or which resisted such trials, than the paintings of the Catacombs, gene- rally so pure, so peaceful in their object and inten- tion, where it seems that the Gospel ought to have met with no enemies, appearing so gentle, so ready to forgive."* The work from which these lines are quoted is interdicted in Rome. The origin of martyr-worship dates from a period but little subsequent to the Diocletian persecu- tion. Traces of an undue estimate of martyr- merit are to be found earlier, but the pressure of actual persecution seems to have imposed a check upon its progress. The full-grown superstition was reached by natural and too easy steps. The martyr * Tableau des Catacombes, p. 194. l 4 152 THE MART YES OF first appears as a being of superior sanctity ; as one who has conferred an obligation upon his Master, and is entitled to the worth of it in favour of others : his intercession with the Church in behalf of the ex- communicated is confounded with mediation be- tween God and man : and when at last he is described as ascending to heaven, charged with petitions to be presented before the throne, and followed thither by fresh prayers and praises, — a little more, and the historian might be celebrating the Protomartyr Himself again incarnate — again challenging the exclamation, " Who is this that forgiveth sins also?" The prayers addressed to martyrs even as- sumed the form of those used in divine worship. Of such a character is the prayer of Prudentius to Vincent, in the form of a litany : — Per te, per ilium carcerem, Honoris augmentum tui, Per vincla, flammas, ungulas, Per carceralem stipitem : Per fragmen illud testeum, Quo parta crevit gloria ; Et quera trementes posteri Exosculamur lectulum, Miserere nostrarum precum. By thyself, renowned in story, By that prison, scene of glory, By those chains and fires : By the stake, the harrowing prong ; By each flint whose edge inspires Higher raptures to my song : By that couch of bitterness Which with trembling lips we press, Pitying, aid our prayer. THE CATACOMBS. 153 The power at first given to martyrs was limited to the relaxation of ecclesiastical penance. As early as the year 200, Tertullian complained of the abuses prevalent on this subject : " As soon as any one is confined by an easy imprison- ment, straightway he is surrounded by criminals of every description ; he is beset with the prayers and tears of the impure; nor do any bribe their way to his cell more than they whom the churches have lost." " Some fly to the mines, and return communi- cants : whereas they need a second martyrdom to expiate the crimes committed since their first. For who on earth and alive, what martyr-denizen of the globe, is free from sin ? Imagine his head already under the impending sword: grant that his body is now attached to the cross : allow that the lion is actually loosed, or the fire lighted: suppose him already bound to the wheel, even in the very security and possession of martyrdom : who can suffer him, a mere man, to grant what is the prerogative of God alone? — God, who has con- demned such an assumption beyond excuse, inas- much as the Apostles, martyrs themselves, never pretended to it. 7 ' * Cyprian, writing in 251, allows the possible effi- cacy of martyr intercession : " We are as willing as any can be to make all fit allowances to the merits of the martyrs, and to their interest in our righteous * De Pudicitia, cap. 22. 1*54 THE MARTYRS OF Judge ; but not till the day of judgment f till which time the answer to martyrs' prayers was deferred. Rev. vi. 9 — 11. At the same time he would have no man presume upon it, " lest the unhappy offender should add to his other misfortune the curse de- nounced by God against such as trust in man. Our Lord alone is to be the object of his prayer, He alone is to be pacified by the penitent's humilia- tion." * The martyr's surrender of his body to the exe- cutioner was viewed as an act of faith, excepting in the case of heretics, in whom the existence of a true faith was denied by the orthodox. The be- liever as it were entered into a fresh covenant, giving up his life for Christ, and claiming eternal life with Him. " Martyrdom," observes Tertullian, " is a baptism : 4 I have a baptism to be baptized with.' " So Cyprian, in the preface to his exhorta- tion to martyrdom : " There is this difference be- tween the baptism by water and that by blood, that the one entitles us to the immediate remission of our sins, the other to the immediate reward of our virtues. It is a baptism after which no sin can be committed." Thus martyrdom came to be considered a sacrament, and one of certain efficacy, seeing that no subsequent fall could annul its power. " Be thou faithful unto death," was ever- more whispered in the ear of the confessor, " and I will give thee a crown of life." Was the promise * De Lapsis, c. 11. THE CATACOMBS. 155 claimed too absolutely , and without sufficient re- gard to the motives which led to martyrdom ? Or was too exclusive an importance attached to the declaration, that, u With the mouth confession is made unto salvation?" In an age so beset with terrors, was it presumptuous to take as the motto of the confessor, " He that loseth his life for my sake, the same shall find it ? " Be this as it may, primitive martyrdom appears to have contributed largely to the conversion of the world: for the rapid extension of Christianity almost ceased within a few years after the last persecution. 156 CHAPTER V. THE SYMBOLS USED IN THE CATACOMBS. The sudden falling off in Roman art during its transition from Pagan to Christian hands, is partly to be accounted for by the inferior station in society occupied by the early converts. It cannot be said that Christianity suffered the arts to de- cline merely from want of patronage, for all the talent available was dedicated to her service, as soon as she was enabled to assert her dominion. But, up to that time, the assistance which she sought from art was of a character altogether un- favourable to the display of its power. In the works executed by Christians before the fourth century, truth of representation was a matter of indifference. A cross, however rudely expressed, perfectly symbolised their faith: the most elabo- rate bas-relief of the figure, crowned and jewelled, told no more. This levelling all distinction between degrees of skill, proved fatal to the knowledge of proportion and design. The symbolic meaning, since it claimed exclusive consideration, superseded all necessity of pleasing the eye, and even of satis- fying the judgment : the escape of Jonah from the whale did not the less comfortably typify the SYMBOLS USED IN THE CATACOMBS. 157 resurrection of the dead, because the fish was chimera-like, the ship a mere boat, and the sea a rivulet : nor was faith stumbled by the anachron- ism of Noah receiving the dove, in the back- ground of the scene. The peculiarities of this style of art, if so digni- fied a name may be given to it, will claim notice in another place ; at present we have to do with the tendency to reduce to a hieroglyphic form the representation of the elements of our religion. By hieroglyphic is here intended the appropriation of some one figure to the expression of a particular idea: thus the raising of Lazarus was used as a symbol of the resurrection ; and the dove, as an emblem of peace with God. It was not to the taste and imagination that works of this description were addressed ; the only qualification necessary for their comprehension was faith, which supplied the life and beauty wanting to the misshapen forms. In these, till understood, there was nothing attractive ; but when interpreted, and viewed by the believing eye, they told of a rest from trouble, compared to which, " the golden 158 THE SYMBOLS USED slumber on a bed of heaped Elysian flowers" was but an unquiet dream. So entirely had the fine arts been appropriated to the use of polytheism, that it was only under the severest restrictions that they could be admit- ted to the service of the Church. With the mono- gamist Tertullian, to paint was a crime to be classed with second marriages: he says of Hermogenes, " He paints unlawfully, he marries repeatedly : the law of God, when in favour of his passions, he ap- proves ; when against his art, he despises : doubly a liar, with pencil and with pen : utterly profligate in theory and practice." Most narrowly watched of all, sculpture had to surrender many of its cha- racteristics, before it could pass for an auxiliary to Christianity : how effectually its fair proportions were disguised, may be seen by comparing with the bas-reliefs of the Vatican Library the marble treasures of the adjoining museums. Perhaps the cause which most powerfully con- tributed to the adoption of Christian symbols, was the ignorance of reading and writing then preva- lent. Books, and even inscriptions, were for the learned : unlettered survivors were in no way con- soled by the epitaph of the deceased, or enlightened by the figures expressing his age and the day of his death. In some instances the most absurd mis- takes of the stone-cutter have passed unaltered. The annexed inscription, copied from the Lapi- darian Gallery, is entirely reversed : and the hus- band of Elia seems to have had no friend to point out IN THE CATACOMBS. 159 to him the error, and put him upon obtaining a more intelligible record of his wife. n|ATIX)VWTN]>NIVA!B '2INpWVDIfOTMT3 M3IOVHHATIXIV3VP This epitaph becomes legible when viewed in a mirror, and then exhibits only the N reversed. The stone-cutter has probably endeavoured to take off upon the marble the impression of a written in- scription. It signifies, " Elia Yincentia, who lived — years and 2 months. She lived with Virginius a year and a day." Even when the stone-cutter has performed his part unexceptionably, the orthography of some epi- taphs is so faulty as almost to frustrate their inten- tion. Since the invention of printing, spelling has become comparatively fixed, even to the lowest class of writers ; and we can imagine no modern inscription so miserably conceived as the annexed : IIBER QVI VIXI QVAI QYO PARE IVA ANOIVE I ANORV M PLVI MINVI XXX I PACE. Read — Liber, qui vixit cum compare sua annum I. Annorum plus minus xxx. in pace. For such persons, another method of representa- tion was necessary ; and the symbols, though they imperfectly supplied the deficiency, were the only substitutes known. This view is forced upon us 160 THE SYMBOLS USED by the existence of phonetic signs : such as the ass on the tomb of Onager, and the lion on that of Leo : an idea so strange, and to our taste so bor- dering upon caricature, that it can only be ex- plained by the necessity for some characteristic mark of the deceased, intelligible to his unlettered relations. When those employed in seeking the grave of their departed friend saw the lion, the pig, the ship, or the cask, by pronouncing the name of the object, they expressed that of the oc- cupant of the tomb. Mabillon mentions finding the fragment of an Egyptian idol beside a cata- comb grave, apparently set there by way of a dis- tinctive sign. Fabretti, who accompanied him, main- tained that it was no mark of idolatry, as its strong resemblance to the mummy of Lazarus would sufficiently warrant the use made of it.* The symbols employed in the Catacombs, ex- clusive of those supposed to belong to martyrdom, are of three kinds : the larger proportion of them refer to the profession of Christianity, its doctrines, and its graces : a second class, of a purely secular description, only indicate the trade of the deceased : and the remainder represent proper names. Of the first class, the cross, as the most generally met with, claims our earliest consideration. It would be difficult to find a more complete revolution of feeling among mankind, than that which has taken place concerning the instrument of crucifixion : once the object of horror and a * Mabillon, Museum Italicum, vol i. p. 137. IN THE CATACOMBS. 161 symbol of disgrace, it is now the blessed emblem of our faith ; the sign of admission, by baptism, to all the benefits of Christian fellowship. " No effort of the imagination," says Milman*, " can dissipate the illusion of dignity which has gathered round it : it has been so long dissevered from all its coarse and humiliating associations, that it can- not be cast back and desecrated into its state of opprobrium and contempt." How soon it began to be used as a symbol of Christianity, it is difficult to say : the gradual change to a crucifix is much * Bampton Lectures, p. 279. M 162 THE SYMBOLS USED more easily traced. But in undergoing this change, the original intention of the symbol was entirely lost : from being a token of joy, an object worthy of being crowned with flowers, a sign in which to conquer, — it became a thing of tears and agony, — a stock-subject with the artist anxious to display his power of representing anguish. The above sketch, taken from a bas-relief in the Vatican library, shows the feeling connected with the Cross by the early Church. The fragment of that emblem is surmounted by a garland of flowers enclosing the monogram of our Saviour's name: and upon it sits the dove, symbol of the peace with God purchased by the Redeemer's death. Such representations were common about the fourth and fifth centuries. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who wrote inscriptions for the different parts of his basilica, placed beneath the crowned cross the words, " Bear .the cross, you who wish to receive the crown." Elsewhere he says, in allusion to the same — " The labour and reward of the saints justly go together ; The arduous cross, and the crown, its noble recompence." The symbol of our religion was fancifully traced by the Fathers throughout the universe : the four points of the compass, a man swimming, a ship sailing : the " height, breadth, length, and depth" of the Apostle, all expressed, or were expressed by, the cross. A bird flying up to heaven expanded its wings into the mystic figure. The cross ex- plained every thing : if Moses routed the Ama- IN THE CATACOMBS. 163 lekites, it was by means of the outstretched arms which resembled the sign of redemption. " Et manibus tensis hostilia castra fugavit, Unus homo, crucis in formam pia brachia fingens." * In this idea Gregory was preceded by Prudentius, who observes, in his Cathemerinon — " Sublimis Amalech premit Crucis quod instar tunc fuit." " He on high overcomes Amalech, because of his resemblance to a cross." The same posture in prayer was general among the Christians, and is mentioned by Tertullian. The very material of the cross did not escape application by Cyprian — " Their bodies certainly should not shrink at a club, who have all their hopes depending upon wood." The change from cross to crucifix, in ancient monuments, is gradual : first occurs the simple cross ; afterwards, a lamb appears at the foot of it. In a third stage there is " Christ, clothed, on the cross, with hands uplifted in prayer, but not nailed to it ; in the fourth, Christ fastened to the cross with four nails, still living, and with open eyes. He was not represented as dead till the tenth or eleventh century." f Of the first form of the cross, common even in ornamental works, we have already seen a speci- men: the second is mentioned by Paulinus, who * Gregory of Nazienzen. j Milman, History of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 515. M 2 164 THE SYMBOLS USED wrote about the year 400. " Beneath the ensan- guined cross stands Christ in the form of a snow- white Lamb : as an innocent victim is the lamb con- signed to unmerited death."* The custom, still prevalent in Italy, of painting crosses in situations where they were likely to be exposed to indignity, was forbidden by the Quinisextan Council, held a.d. 706. " Since we offer adoration to the cross, in thought, word, and intention, we order that those representations of it which some persons have placed on the ground, and in pavements, be entirely effaced ; lest, by the tread of passers-by, the trophy of our victory be dishonoured." The custom of adding a cross or crucifix to the Trisagion scandalised some persons in the fifth cen- tury. The heathen, it was said, would believe from it, that God had been crucified. A few heterodox Christians found in it a pretext for the opinion, that the second person of the Trinity was divided into two. The sculptor was accused of making a Qua- ternity, by introducing a suffering Son in addition to the Three Persons of the Trisagion. The corre- spondence relative to the Council of Chalcedon displays in a remarkable manner the jealousy with which the doctrine of the Church on these points was guarded : it also shows that heathen still ex- isted throughout the Roman empire. From another canon of the Quinisextan Council, we learn at what time the change from the lamb to the victim in human form was generally adopted : * Paulini Nolan. Epistolae. IN THE CATACOMBS. 165 " We ordain that the representation in human form of Christ our God, who takes away the sin of the world, be henceforward set up, and painted, in the place of the ancient lamb." * Thus it is that we find the spirit of Christianity regularly undergoing that transformation which in the middle ages reduced it to the condition of a dismal creed : the cheerful conceptions of the early Church, itself nursed in scenes of horrible realities, were too simple and refined for after times. The Byzantine paint- ings, contained in the cabinets of the Vatican library, forcibly display the taste of the dark ages. In that small museum, deserving of much more attention than it receives, may be traced the harsh tone of feeling that would ever connect religion with terror and disgust. The subjects of those paintings are nearly always distressing : the Divine Infant, with a heavy contracted countenance, destitute of youth- ful expression, excites no sympathy for the helpless oiFspring of the Virgin : and the " man of sorrows," a more usual object of representation, covered with triangular splashes of blood, with a face indicative of hopeless anguish, intense in expression, and not deficient in execution, illustrates less the Redeemer's life than a dark page in the history of Christendom. To this school of art, which comes down almost to the tenth or eleventh century, the western world added sculpture, forbidden by the iconoclast zeal of the East : but both divisions of Christendom underwent the same fate : the sky of sacred art * Canon 82. m 3 166 THE SYMBOLS USED darkened, as the Saviour's countenance, its proper sun, shed a more disastrous light over its scenes of woe ; till the last glimmering of Divine majesty suffered total eclipse from the exclusive display of agonised humanity. The monogram of our Saviour's name, rudely expressed in the annexed fac-simile, (Lap. Gall.) is composed of % and p, the first letters of Xpia-rog. We preserve a vestige of this figure by writing Xmas, and Xtian, which can only be explained by supposing the first letter to stand for the Greek X, chi. The above inscription is to be read — Tasaris, in Christ the First and the Last. The alpha and omega, reversed in this epitaph, refer to the well-known passage in the Apocalypse : their continual use proves the general reception of that book as a part of the inspired canon. The a and co are mentioned by Tertullian, as well as by Prudentius. From the ignorance of the sculptor, the entire symbol was sometimes inverted, as in the next. The circle is supposed to imply the eternity of Christ . IN THE CATACOMBS. 167 H Dvs, / A change was afterwards made by the decussation (as it is technically termed) of the X : by which the figure of a cross was produced. Having once arrived at this happy coincidence, the monogram remained stationary. Its simple outline, thus chi- selled on a grave-stone, * or accompanied by the misplaced letters * or even converted into Psr, as if for Psristos, * * Lap. Gall. m 4 168 THE SYMBOLS USED D • M N SORICIO. To our great God. Eliasa to Soricius, in Christ. was in course of time ornamented with jewels; and the monogramma gemmatum took its place as a work of art among Christian bas-reliefs of the fourth cen- tury. The best specimen contained in the Lapida- rian Gallery is here given : the jewels are only in marble, but they represent the real gems often lavished upon the ancient cross. IN THE CATACOMBS. 169 It has been said, that the monogram was not invented before the time of Constantine, and that it was first seen by him in his miraculous vision. An epitaph, such as the subjoined, discovered by Bosio, may well be assigned to that time, when the motto " In hoc vinces " might have become common : IN HOC VINCES SINFONIA ET FILHS V • AN • XLVni M • V • d mi In this thou shalt conquer — In Christ. Sinfonia, also for her sons — She lived forty-eight years, five months, and four days. The next is contained in Oderici : IN ^ VICTRIX which probably signified, Victrix (a woman's name), victorious in Christ. But the epitaphs of Alexander and Marius, martyrs under Adrian and Antonine, also exhibit the monogram : and though they do not appear to have been executed at the time, they contain strong marks of belonging to a period of violent persecu- tion. The author does not possess any more deci- sive means of disproving the assertion made by Gaetano Marini, that the earliest monogram belongs to the year 331, that is, six years after the Council of Nice. The annexed is from Boldetti, and represents a stamp of about an inch and a half in diameter, impressed upon the plaster of a grave : the P (r) of the monogram also serves as a p in the words spes Dei. 170 THE SYMBOLS USED It is to be read — My hope is in God Christ. The only resemblance to the monogram used by the heathen, was the ceraunium >^ or symbol of lightning. The Egyptian cross appears to be an abbreviation of the Kilometer. SIGNV CELIX • ET CEREALIS ■ PATRI • BENEM • QVI • VIXIT • ANNIS ■ LXXXV ■ M • VIII • D • V DORMIT IN PACEM. Translate — The mark of Christ. Celix and Cerealis to their well-deserving father, &c. There is no authority for the statement that the monogram was a symbol of martyrdom, and signi- fied " for Christ." In many incriptions, we read in 5 as in IN ASELVS D Aselus sleeps (or, is buried,) in Christ. According to Prudentius, the name of Christ " written in jewelled gold marked the purple Laba- rum, and sparkled from the helmets" of the army of Constantine; but this is probably a poetical fiction.* The fish was a symbol expressive of the name of Christ ; and remarkable as affording a combination of every thing desirable in a tessera, or mystic sign. * Liber I. contra Symmachum. IN THE CATACOMBS. 171 The Greek for fish, contains the initials of Itja-oog Xp * EKOIMH9H TOPrONIC IIACIfclAOC KAI OYAENI EX0POC In Christ. On the 5th Kalends of November, slept Gorgonius, friend of all, and enemy to none. o 2 196 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS Among Christian women of the third and fourth centuries, widows and virgins formed separate bo- dies, subject to different laws. These appellations, however, were only applied to persons who had voluntarily fixed upon celibacy or widowhood ; and not to such as had left themselves at liberty to change their condition when opportunity offered. A few of their epitaphs still remain : FVRIA HELPIS VIRGO DEVOTA Furia Elpis, a consecrated virgin. Of the travelling virgins, such as the one whose epitaph is here copied, (Lap. Gall.) we know nothing : AESTONIA VIRGO PEREGRI NA QVE VIXIT ANIS XL • I • ET • DS • VIII • nn • KAL • MAR • DECESSIT DE CORPORE In Christ. Aestonia, a travelling virgin, who lived forty-one years and eight days. She departed from the body on the 4th Kalends of March. The term peregrinus was applied to such persons as were received by distant churches while journey- ing. This mode of admitting them to communion did not amount to an absolute recognition of their orthodoxy, and consequently could not be abused by heretics. The title " handmaid of God," used by Tertullian in opposition to " handmaid of the devil," seems to be applied to a consecrated virgin in the instance here adduced, the epitaph of Aurelia : OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 197 AVRELIA AGAPETILLA ANCILLA DEI QVAE DORMIT IN PACE VIXIT ANN XXI • M • III • DIIII • PATER FECIT Aurelia Agapetilla, the handmaid of God : who sleeps in peace. She lived twenty-one years, three months, and four days. Her father set up this. The age of twenty-one is beyond the usual period of marrying among Roman women : and it is clear that Aurelia was not married, by the fact being unrecorded, as well as by her burial being left to her father. Widows who had devoted the rest of their days to the service of God were often designated by a particular title. The following is cemented into the wall of the Vatican library : OC - TA - VI - AE - MA ■ TRO - NAE - VI - D V - AE - DE - 1. To Octavia, a matron, widow of God. Consecrated women were afterwards called mi- nistry. The Council of Chalcedon forbad any to be made such under the age of forty : the learned Fathers give their reasoning on the subject ; it will be found, by the curious reader, in Harduin. The monuments described in the present chapter, selected from the mass of remains either published or exhibited in the Vatican, illustrate two subjects : the existence of a regular clergy, filling a variety of offices, of all ages, married and single ; and the introduction of an aristocracy of female virtue, professing to rise above the jprofanum vulgus of married life. In itself, there is perhaps nothing more calculated to raise our estimation of the o 3 198 THE OFFICES AXD CUSTOMS early Church, than the fact, that thousands of per- sons, of both sexes, were found ready to devote themselves to the service of God in singleness of life and voluntary poverty. Too earnest in seeking the kingdom of heaven, to allow the comforts of domestic life to impede their progress, they seem to stand by themselves, a mighty monument of fervent piety : something to be looked up to ; to be honoured : more easily admired than imitated. These persons were boasted of, by the Church, as her jewels, her necklace, her peculiar treasure : Cernis sacratas virgines, Miraris intactas anus Primique post damnum tliori Ignis secundi nescias. Hoc est monile Ecclesiae ! His ilia gemmis comitur ! Dotata sic Christo placet ! Sic ornat altum verticem.* The Church compared her tens of thousands of virgins with the half-dozen vestals, the only pa- rallel which Paganism could display. f But, unfor- tunately, the great patrons of this system, the Fathers themselves, reluctantly display it in another light. On this subject it is difficult to hold any middle opinion : we may look to the brighter side alone, and admire ; but if we once question the reality of the holiness professed, and inquire into the practical working of the institution, ' 1 to be once in doubt, is — once to be resolved." Open Cyprian, * Prudentius, Peristephanon. Hymn 3. f Prud. cont. Symmachum, lib. 2. OF THE ANCIENT CIIUKCH. 199 Jerome, or Basil, and the halo fades from the brow of ecclesiastical celibacy : like the soil of a decayed sepulchre, it bears some fair flowers, but not enough to conceal the loathsome remains that nourish their unnatural bloom. Very few epitaphs of persons devoted to celibacy are to be found in the Lapidarian Gallery ; appa- rently because the monastic spirit made slower pro- gress in Rome than elsewhere. It is certain that Egypt took the lead in this particular, and Carthage was not very far behind it. Whatever purity of intention belonged to the earliest votaries of monasticism, it is to be feared that the end proposed by the monks and nuns of the Nicene age was to purchase, by its means, the highest rewards that Heaven could bestow. To be saved by the blood of Christ, was humbling, when salvation could be bought by a species of self-sacri- fice. A new passport to eternal glory, and one which conferred upon its possessor great earthly honour, was the premium upon a single life. In examining into the merits of this system, we must distinguish between the forced celibacy of the clergy, and the voluntary self-dedication of lay persons to the service of God. The one is almost forbidden by St. Paul (let the bishop be the hus- band of one wife) ; the other receives from him a certain degree of encouragement : " There is this difference between a wife and a virgin ; the unmar- ried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy, both in body and in spirit ; but o 4 200 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." As long, then, as the time and means redeemed from secular matters were suitably employed in the service of the Lord, the pious devotee came under the sanction of the apostolic declaration. From a very early period, women, rather than men, availed themselves of the leisure so obtained, and for some time sup- ported their profession without scandal or incon- venience to the Church. Whether the honour paid to them induced others, not possessing the requisite devotion, to join their number, or whether the system was in itself only adapted to the apos- tolic age, the institution of celibacy degenerated, in a short time, beyond all hope of recovery. The first serious blow to its character was given by the nuns of Carthage, in the third century : their man- ners disgraced the community, and reflected dis- credit upon the whole African Church. To reform this anomalous and disorderly body was the difficult task of Cyprian, who spared neither threats nor entreaties to bring them to a sense of their short comings. With the loftiness of their calling, ex- aggerated, it must be confessed, by the application of some irrelevant passages of Scripture, he con- trasts their inordinate love of paint and jewellery, habit of frequenting the public baths, and general anxiety to render attractive to the world their per- sons, which they had devoted to Heaven : " You presumptuously dye your hair, and with an ill omen to your future condition, you labour to make OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 201 it flame-coloured. * * * * If you will lay a bait for catching others, — if you put in their way occa- sions of sin, — however sober your professions are, your mind is polluted, and you cannot be accounted guiltless." * Already was the profession of celibacy beginning to be ranked among the cardinal virtues of Chris- tianity ; in the next age it took precedence of them : Ave hear little more of the motive, "that she may please the Lord," the only argument from Scripture in its favour : and if the condition of those who vowed a single life be taken as a test of the merits of the system, it will go very hard with its sup- porters. It must be either a positive command, or some prodigious spiritual advantage, that can justify the encouragement of vowed celibacy in the face of its mischievous consequences. Let us hear what dangerous language was employed regarding it in the fourth century : " It were endless," says Jerome, " to expound the parable of the ten virgins, five wise, and five foolish : this only will I say, that whereas, on the one hand, virginity alone, without other good works, will not save ; so all good works, without virginity, purity, continence, and chastity, are imperfect." " What others will hereafter be in heaven, that the virgins have begun to be upon earth. * * * * For an exposure of greater enormities enacted by the nuns, may be consulted the Epistle to Pomponius. The obser- vations of Cyprian resemble those of Othello, act iv. sc. 1. f Jerome, Adv. Jovinianum, lib. i. cap. 25. 202 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS Peter was an apostle, J ohn an apostle ; one married, the other single : but Peter was only an apostle ; John, an apostle, evangelist, and prophet. * * * For this reason John, the single, expounds what the married could not : 1 In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.' For this reason Christ consigned to John's charge the Virgin mother (a Domino virgine, mater virgo virgini discipulo commendatur). For this cause (quia virgo permansit) was he more beloved of the Lord, and reclined upon his bosom." With such views to influence the laity, it cannot surprise us to find this royal road to heaven crowded with pilgrims, who found their account partly in the honour paid to them in this world, and partly, as they fondly hoped, in the privileges ensured to them in the next. Perhaps no tenet mixed up with Christianity has more tended to obscure the doctrines of the Cross than that of celibacy : the gospel, if preached to the poor, the profligate, and the married, scarcely finds its way into the patristic addresses to more exalted pro- fessors of sanctity. These had passed the broad line between the sinner and the saint, and inherited while living the honours of their predecessors, the martyrs and confessors of a former age. That illus- trious body, extinct with the spirit of persecution necessary to its continuance, left a blank in the Church of the fourth century, only to be filled by some new order of spiritual knighthood. Celibacy, promoted to the post of honour just vacated, supplied OF THE ANCIENT CHUECH. 203 the desideratum : and despite the strange difference between the two methods of self-sacrifice, their glory was equal, and the rank conferred by both, in a re- markable degree identical. Of this fact a proof is found in the successive explanations of the parable of the sower, which was pushed beyond the meaning attached to it by our Saviour, and made to register degrees of virtue upon an artificial scale. The hundred-bearing seed, no longer merely represent- ing the obedient hearer of the word, personified the fervid aspirant to martyrdom or celibacy, whose zeal had reached the boiling-point in pursuit of heavenly honour. The sixty-fold produce was that of the less ardent ; the thirty-fold included the temperate, perhaps the lukewarm, professor. While persecution lasted, martyrdom occupied the highest place on the scale : " The first increase is a hun- dred-fold," says Cyprian, writing to the nuns of Carthage, " and this truly belongs to martyrs ; but the next, which is sixty-fold, to you."* After the the time of Diocletian, some alteration was neces- sary, in order to preserve the highest order of sanctity in the Church : the bold invention of Jerome supplied the want. " The thirty-fold," he decided, " refers to marriage: the sixty-fold, to widowhood ; but the hundred- fold expresses the crown of virginity." f * The accumulated fruitfulness of virgin-mart jrs thus ex- ceeded the gospel maximum : " In them the hundred-fold is added to the fruit of sixty-fold." — Cyp. Ep. 76. This seems a proof of the incorrectness of that interpretation. "f Ad Ageruchiam. 204 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS But we are not yet entitled to disallow the merits of ecclesiastical celibacy, having hitherto only ex- amined one side of it. We have, indeed, seen Scrip- ture misapplied on its behalf, the doctrine of the Atonement obscured, and the Church scandalised by the ruin of some unworthy aspirants to its honours ; but we have not yet glanced at the many who profited by it : in the state of those whom it raised to the highest pinnacle of the temple, we must look for a set-off to these inconveniences. It is true, some may argue, mischief was done to in- dividuals : there was much meaning in Jerome's caution — " It were better to have walked in lowly paths — to have submitted to marriage, than, at- tempting a higher ascent, to fall into the depths of hell."* But if the introduction of a new and more exalted mode of holiness has proved fatal to some, whose faith was unequal to the trial, what blame shall their failure cast upon the inventor? — "It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." Let us, however, scrutinise a little the character of those favoured ones, at the shrine of whose per- fection the souls and bodies of their fellow Christians were offered : then shall we judge better how far their gain was worth the sacrifice. Of all the Fathers none can be found more madly devoted to celibacy than Jerome : "I love to praise marriage," he exclaims, in one of his mildest moments, * Ad Eustochium. OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 205 " because it supplies us with virgins ; of those thorns we gather roses." He was the director, if we may use the title by anticipation, of the most distinguished devotees of his time. It will there- fore be doing no injustice to the system, if we take as tolerably accurate his description of its votaries. Let us hear him, in the confidence of friendship, setting forth their characters : " Their weak point is the love of praise : there are extremely few free from this. * * * Some of them, women, go about disfigured, that they may appear to fast : when they see any one approaching, they begin to sigh and look down ; then they cover the face, leaving only a peep-hole for one eye : their clothes indeed are ragged, their girdle is of sackcloth, their hands and feet are dirty." Still, in spite of these promising appearances, their re- ligion is but skin-deep, " for within, where man sees not, they are surfeited with food." " As for the men," he cautions Eustochium, " when you see any with hair like women, beards like goats, a black cloak, and feet exposed to the cold, — avoid them : all these things are marks of the devil. Of that description were Antimus and Sophronius, who entered noble houses, and there deceived silly women laden with sins, &c." * * * "Others there are, who have entered orders with the view of enjoying, more at their ease, female society. Their only care is dress, perfume, and the neat appearance of their feet : their hair, curled with an ; ron, waves as they walk ; for fear of contracting 206 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS mud, they step on tiptoe : if you saw them, you would take them for bridegrooms, rather than priests." " But there is one," pursues Jerome, warming with his subject, " there is one, a master of his art, whom I must sketch, for fear you should say I deal in general satire only. He rises early, and hastens to his work ; visits people scarcely awake, and in- trudes himself almost into their chambers. If he sees a cushion, a handsome table-cover, or other piece of furniture, he approves it ; is struck by it, handles it, and laments that he does not possess such a thing himself; and so rather extorts than fairly obtains it, for the women all fear to offend the great man (veredarius) of the city." But what impression does this enthusiastic monk convey of his best specimens of the class ? His letters to some of those women remain : there is but one difficulty in the way of their being generally read, that no person will venture to print in English such a mass of indecency, until perhaps some at- tempt to introduce vows of celibacy among us shall provoke their publication. They remain a fearful mo- nument of the social effects of the system. Amidst elaborate, and far from spiritual, interpretations of Solomon's Song, — amidst fulsome eulogies of the nuns, and dissertations upon their peculiar rela- tionship to the Bridegroom, — the religion and the Christ of the New Testament seem missing: the Lord of life is departed ; the grave-clothes alone remain to show the place where He lay. OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 207 Single women, under the title of subintrodiietcc, were for a long time suffered to live in the houses of unmarried priests. The councils very early inter- fered with this custom, and generally limited the permission to a daughter, aunt, or sister. The daughter was omitted in course of time, as celibacy previous to ordination became binding. " I observe with grief of heart," says Cyprian, " that this un- lawful and dangerous intercourse has corrupted the purity of numbers."* So Jerome: "Whence arose the pest of the Agapetse ? " f — a name given to them in conformity with the expression of St. Paul, Ylspa-ig 73 ayaw^Tr^ i the beloved Persis." The rules laid down for the observance of those who professed celibacy, were extremely strict : " I desire," says Jerome to Pusticus, "that you will not live in your mother's house, chiefly, lest when she offers you delicate food, you should grieve her by refusal; or by receiving it, should add oil to the flame. * * * * Let your hands and eyes be never without a book. Learn the Psalter word for word. Pray incessantly. * * * * Under- take some labour, that the devil may always find you occupied." J " When you visit your mother, see that she in- troduce you to no other women, whose countenance might impress your heart, and leave a secret wound. Especially beware of her handmaids : their humble condition leaves them and you less protected." * Ad Pomponium, cap. 1. f Ad Eustochium, cap. 5. J Ad Rusticum Monachum, cap. 5. 208 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS His directions to Eustochium are of the same description : " Seldom appear in public, but suppli- cate the Martyrs in your own chamber. You will always find an excuse for going out, if you allow any excuses whatever. * * * Let sleep sur- prise you, book in hand ; and let the sacred page support your nodding head." In the Apostolic age, marriage appears to have been reckoned rather a qualification for the minis- try than otherwise. The being able to govern well a family, was looked upon as a pledge that the candidate for orders was not deficient in those domestic and social virtues that befit a bishop and a priest. " A bishop." enjoins St. Paul, " must be blameless, the husband of one wife. * # * Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife." The practice of after times gradually changed. The Council of Neocesarea, a.d. 314, ordained that a presbyter marrying after ordination should be de- posed : he was also forbidden to marry a second time, though his having a wife was not an objection to his entering the ministry. The Council of Nice, held in 325, was not far from imposing celibacy on the clergy. Paphnutius, an old Egyptian bishop, resisted the proposed decree, and delivered the first ecumenical council from the stigma of having enforced this innovation. The Council of Elvira forbad all orders of the priesthood to marry : at the same time it allowed the clergy to maintain in their houses a sister, or dedicated virgin daugh- ter : whether daughter of the Church, or of the priest himself, is not clear. OE THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 209 The decrees of councils, and the opinions of the Fathers, on this point, would fill a volume : it will be sufficient to quote the Quinisextan canons, a.d. 706, to show how slowly forced celibacy invaded Christendom : "If any presbyter or deacon put away his wife, under pretence of piety, let him be excommunicated : if he persevere, be deposed." This canon refers to a detestable custom of aban- doning wives and families on taking orders. The original Agape, or love-feast, was a truly Catholic element of ancient Christianity. Begun in the purest spirit, it shared the fate of some other ordinances, till in the fifth century it became a scandal to all Christendom. It is first mentioned by St. Jude, in the passage, " These are spots in your agapge," sv raig ayawaig upcou, translated in our version, " feasts of charity." The feast, as held in the Catacombs, is represented in a picture found in a subterranean chapel, in the cemetery of Mar- cellinus and Peter. 210 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS In this painting the three guests are seen seated, and a page supplies them with food from the small round table in front, containing a lamb and a cup. The two matrons who preside, personifying Peace and Love, have their names written above their heads, according to the Etruscan practice. The inscriptions should be read : Irene — Da calda(m aquam) ; and, Agape — Misce mi (vinum cum aqua). "Peace, Give hot water; Love, Mix me wine." The custom of mixing water with wine was almost universal among the ancients: some- times the water was iced, sometimes warm, and occasionally of the natural temperature : " Caldam poscis aquam, sed nondum frigida venit." You ask for hot water, but the cold has not yet come," says Martial : and again, " Frigida non desit, non deerit calda petenti." " Here let there be cold water, the hot will come when called for." The table containing provisions was named ci- billa, from cibus, food. In a city rich as imperial Rome in historical associations, where the very stones are piled in chronological succession, among triumphal arches and trophies, among the ruins of temples and pa- laces, can the miserable painting of a subterranean cell offer any thing worthy the attention of the tra- veller? Let us try. In a dismal cavern, only accessible to the well- provided explorer, among tombs and vaulted cham- bers, where every thing bears marks of high anti- OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 211 quity, is found a rudely-designed picture, attributed by the most skilful connoisseurs to the third or fourth century ; and this on excellent grounds : its style marks the decline of art soon after the time of the Antonines : its subject is connected with a religion not brought to Rome before the reign of Nero, and which did not employ painting till the third century. The ceremony it represents was almost universally discontinued in the fifth, and the pictorial details closely correspond with the descriptions left by the poets of the Augustan age. The design, so carefully finished in its parts, and every where abounding in information, is generally wrong in perspective, and destitute of taste : in short, nothing is wanting to prove its authenticity to any one conversant with ancient art of an inferior class. These facts are established by the picture : that in the third or fourth century, certain persons, either from choice or from necessity, selected caves in the neighbourhood of Rome, and devoted much attention to embellishing them. One of the sub- jects there painted was a solemn feast, at which Peace and Love were supposed to preside. This is so often repeated in sculptures and paintings, that the ceremony must have been common, and some time established. Who are these peaceful refugees, apparently too gentle for the iron times of Decius and Diocletian ? To what system of philosophy belong those magic words, Irene and Agape, altogether strange to heathenism, and indi- cating by their Greek form an Eastern origin ? But p 2 212 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS one answer can be given to these questions. The most malignant sceptic must confess that the ancient Church in Rome, pacific and defenceless as it here appears, did conquer the proud array of Pagan and Imperial power : and the Christian, forced to admit a Divine interposition in behalf of his religion, be- holds therein a testimony from Heaven to its truth. Yet more, that religion, here seen through the vista of fifteen centuries, presents the same unworldly aspect as in the sacred writings: a joyful serenity, worth all the jarrings of Chalcedon, or the proud seraphism of the Thebaid. The feast, at first held as a part of regular re- ligious worship, was in course of time reserved for marriages and deaths. At length the anniversaries of martyrdom became the chief occasion of its cele- bration. These days were called natalitia, or birth- days, because the saints were then born to heaven from the world. As long as persecution was likely to befall the Church, there was policy in commemo- rating annually the triumphs of her heroes. To meet by lamplight over the grave of a departed friend, and there to animate each other's faith by mutual exhortations ; to partake together of the funereal meal before the tablet which covered his bones ; in all this the faithful of that age found a constant stimulus to fortitude and zeal. But the natalitia, celebrated after the conversion of Con- stantine, tended to secularise religious worship in a lamentable degree : the festival was thrown open in the hope of obtaining converts; and many of the OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 213 Pagan poor, after having been fed at the expense of the Church, became suddenly convinced of the truth of Christianity. The Agape was also further desecrated by a less justifiable measure — an attempt to replace the Pagan festivals by corresponding Christian solemnities. Augustine gives this account of the matter : "When peace was made, the crowd of Gentiles who were anxious to embrace Christianity, were deterred by this, that whereas they had been accustomed to pass the holidays in drunkenness and feasting before their idols, they could not easily consent to forego these most pernicious, yet ancient pleasures. It seemed good then to our leaders to favour this part of their weakness, and for those festivals which they relinquish, to substitute others, in honour of the holy martyrs, which they might celebrate with similar luxury, though not with the same impiety." * To form a just idea of a ceremony so changed in character from age to age, we should consult the writers of each period in succession. St. Paul and St. Jude have spoken for the nature of the Agape in the first century ; let us hear Tertullian while still orthodox, describing it in the second : "Its object," he says, "is evident from its name, which signifies brotherly love. In these feasts, therefore, we testify our love towards our poorer brethren, by relieving their wants. We commence the entertain- ment by offering up a prayer to God ; and after * Epist. xxix. P 3 214 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS eating and drinking in moderation, we wash our hands, and lights being introduced, each individual is invited to address God in a Psalm, either taken from the Scriptures, or the produce of his own meditations. The feast concludes, as it began, with prayer." Yet the same Tertullian, when prejudiced by Mon- tanism, found another side to the question : " Your love boils — in the kettle; your faith glows — in the kitchen ; your hope is placed — in the dish." He also adds some more serious charges. # It is strange that he who had once so nobly defended the purity of the Agape against heathen calumnies, (see his Apology,) should turn round upon it so bitterly. Perhaps his accusations were, at the time, unfounded ; but in the middle of the fourth century, they would have fallen short of the truth. The Council of Elvira prudently forbad women to pass the night in cemeteries. j* At Antioch, dances were held round the tomb of the martyr J : this was an acknowledged abuse, and seems to have been confined to that dissipated city. The Pagans, with some show of justice, asserted that these feasts were instituted to appease the manes of the dead. But, by this time, Rome had discontinued a cus- tom so grossly perverted. The Fathers did their best to suppress the abuses, if not the feast itself. We have already heard Chrysostom reproving the * De Jejun. Ad Psychicos, c. 17. f Placuit prohiberi, ne feminas in cemeteriis pervigilent, eo quod soepe sub obtentu orationis, scelera latenter committant. | Basil, appendix, sermon 19. OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 215 Constantinopolitans, by reminding them of the perils of a persecuted church. Augustine did not spare the Africans : " The martyrs," he exclaims, " hear your bottles, the martyrs hear your frying- pans, the martyrs hear your drunken revels." The Council of Laodicea condemned it altogether, Can. 28. Yet the custom lingered till the year 706, when the Quinisextan divines suppressed it entirely. " It is unlawful," they decreed, " to hold Agapae, that is to say, feasts of charity, in the Lord's house, or in a church : also to eat within the building, and to place couches." So popular did religious feasts become with the lower orders, that all bounds were transgressed in multiplying them: " These revels, and this drunken- ness, are now thought so allowable," says Augustine, " as to be celebrated in honour of the blessed mar- tyrs, not only on festivals, but every day." * Such irregularities deeply grieved the pious and amiable Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who painted Scripture subjects over the whole of his church, in order to edify the ignorant people who came together for the Agape of St. Felix. They greatly needed some interference of the authorities, for their bishop laments that these festivities were carried on through the entire night. " How I wish," be continues, " that their joys would assume a more sober cha- racter ; that they would not mix their cups on holy ground. Yet I think we must not be too severe upon the pleasures of their little feasts ; for error * Epistle 64. p 4 216 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS creeps into unlearned minds ; and their simplicity, unconscious of the great fault they commit, verges on piety, supposing that the Saints are gratified by the wine poured on their tombs." * With the Agapae held over the grave of a martyr, we must not confound the sacramental mysteries celebrated in the same place, which afterwards degenerated into masses for the dead. A passage often quoted from Anastasius, represents Felix, bishop of Kome, in 270, as ordering mass to be celebrated at the memorise or tombs of the martyrs. Prudentius thus describes the connection between the high altar and the martyr's grave : — " Ilia sacramenti donatrix mensa — eadem que Custos fida sui martyris apposita : Servat ad aeterni spem judicis ossa sepulchro, Pascit item Sanctis Tibricolas dapibus." The same slab gives the sacrament, and faithfully guards the martyr's remains : it preserves his bones in the sepulchre in hope of the eternal judge, and feeds the Tibricolas with sacred meat. Great is the sanctity of the place, and near at hand the altar for those who pray, f In another passage, the custom of raising an altar over the bones is noticed: " But now that the enemy is subdued, and peace restored to the righteous, the altar furnishes a well-merited rest- ing-place to the blessed bones. For, placed beneath the sanctuary, and hidden within the altar, they exhale around an odour of celestial gifts." J And again — " Sic venerarier ossa libet Ossibus altar et impositum." § * 9th Hymn to Felix. f Peristephanon. Hymn 4. | Hymn. 2. 513. § Hymn 9. OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 217 So we may at once revere the bones, and the altar placed over them. The Council of Gangra, a. d. 325, vehemently supported the custom of martyr masses : "If any one, puffed up by pride, should abhor the congre- gations held at the confessions of the martyrs, and execrate the ministrations, together with the con- fessions, let him be accursed." * The style of this anathema implies some strong opposition already made to the custom. The number of causes contributing to make the Agape such as it was at different times, is remark- able. Beginning at first as an apostolic feast, perhaps held in imitation of our Saviour's last meal with his disciples (at least that part of it distinct from the sacramental institution), it was afterwards interwoven with the silicernium, feast of Hecate, or ccena novemdialis of the ancients, a funereal feast held nine days after a death. f Then the attempt to convert the Pagan poor by feeding them, and the substitution of martyr festivals for heathen solem- nities, further lowered the character of the cere- mony : at last we find it degraded to a mere revel ; an opportunity for the commission of crime, mixed up with night-watchings, torchlight, and wine ; for- bidden by the Church, and entirely effaced from the ritual of Christendom. * Version of Dionysius Exiguus. Canon 20. f See on this subject Adams' Roman Antiquities, p. 485. In the silicernium, part of the food was laid upon the tomb, that the dead might seem to partake of it. 218 THE OFFICES AND CUSTOMS Whether the Agape generally preceded or fol- lowed the Lord's Supper, it is difficult to decide. It is gathered from passages in Tertullian and others, that the holy sacrament was received fast- ing ; a practice at variance with the original insti- tution, in which the bread and wine were conse- crated by our Saviour towards the end of, or after, supper. Of the origin of the appellation, missa or mass, Ducange gives a very clear account. The catechu- mens and unbelievers of ancient times, who were permitted to hear the Gospel and the Sermon which followed it, were dismissed from the Church before the celebration of the Communion. This sending out, or missio, as it was correctly designated, was announced in the words, Ite, missa est — Depart, it is the dismissal. The change of missio into missa is in accordance with expressions of Cyprian and Tertullian, who used remissa for remissio. The form of address was often changed : Si quis Catechumenus est, receclat : Omnes Catechumeni recedant foras *, &c. ITp osxSsts and a7roXvs! a. kintosh's Miscellaneous Works 19 Michelet'8 The People - 21 Midler's Mythology - - - 22 Necker De Saussuie's Progressive Education - - - - - 23 PerryonGermanTJniversitvEducation24 Peter Plvmlev's Letters - - 24 Pycroft 's Course of Eng. Reading 25 San.lbv On Mesmerism - - - 26 San. lord's Church, School, & Parish 26 Sc a« aid's Narrative of his Shipwreck27 Smith's (Rev. Sydney) Works - 28 Southey'a Common place Book - 28 Taylor's Statesman - - - 30 Walker's Chess Studies - 31 Welsford on the English Language 32 Wigan (Dr.) On Duality of the Mind 32 Willoughby's (Lady) Diary - - 32 Zumpt's Latin Grammar - - 32 Natural History. 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