[90] “Hanc dextram ad te Jupiter, tendo, quae nullius unquam sanguinam fudit,” is the form of prayer given by Claudian. Euseb., v, 5.

[91] A. D. 180-193.

[92] See chap. ii, book iii.

[93] Strom., lib. ii, A. D. 193.

[94] Apol., 37. Sicut sub Hilariano præside, cum de areis sepulturarum nostrarum adclamâssent, areæ non sint.—Ad Scap., c. iii. A. D. 203.

No more pathetic episode is contained in the whole range of the Martyrology than that of the youthful mother, Perpetua, who suffered at Carthage under Severus. Few can read unmoved the acts of her martyrdom, which bear the stamp of authenticity in their perfectly natural and unexaggerated tone, and the absence of miracle. Young—she was only twenty-two—beautiful, of noble family, and dearly loved, her heathen father entreated her to pity his gray hairs, her mother’s tears, her helpless babe. But her faith proved triumphant over even the yearnings of natural affection; and, wan and faint from recent childbirth pangs, she was led, with Felicitas, her companion, into the crowded amphitheatre, and exposed to the cruel horns of infuriate beasts. Amid the agonies of death, more conscious of her wounded modesty than of her pain, with a gesture of dignity she drew her disheveled robe about her person. She seemed rapt in ecstasy till by a merciful stroke of the gladiator she was released from her suffering, and exchanged the dust and blood of the arena, and the shouts of the ribald mob, for the songs of the redeemed, and the beatific vision of the Lord she loved.

[95] Cædit et humanas hostias.—Lamprid., Heliogabalus.

[96] A. D. 222.

[97] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., vi, 21.

[98] The site, according to tradition, of St. Maria in Trastevere.

[99] A. D. 250-253. Execrabile animal Decius, qui vexaret ecclesiam.—Lactan., de Mort. Persec., c. 3, 4. He would rather tolerate, he said, a rival for his throne, than a bishop in Rome. Cypr., Ep. 53.

[100] Called respectively Sacrificati, Thurificati, and Libellatici, of whom the first were esteemed the most guilty. The indignant rhetoric of Cyprian expresses his holy horror at this vile apostasy: “They made haste to give their souls the mortal wound.... That altar where he was about to die—was it not his funeral pile? Should he not have fled, as from his coffin or his grave, from that devil’s altar, when he saw it smoke and fume with stinking smell?... Thou thyself wast the sacrificial victim. Thou didst sacrifice thy salvation, and burn thy faith and hope in these abominable fires”—Nonne ara illa, quo moriturus accessit, rogus illi fuit? Nonne diaboli altare quod fœtore tætro fumare et redolere conspexerat, velut funus et bustum vitæ suæ horrere ac fugere debebat?... Ipse ad aram hostia, victima ipse venisti. Immolâsti illic salutem tuam, spem tuam, fidem tuam, funestis illis ignibus concremâsti.—De Lapsis, p. 124.

[101] Dionysius of Alexandria, in Euseb., vi, 41.

[102] A. D. 254-259.

[103] Ἐκκλησία, Euseb., vii, 10.

[104] Milman, Hist. of Christianity, Am. ed., Book II., chap. vii.

[105] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., vii, 10.

[106] Ut episcopi et presbyteri et diacones incontinenter animadvertantur, ... capite quoque mulctentur.—Cypr., ep. 72, ad Successum.

[107] Οὐδαμῶς ἔξέσται ὑμῖν ἢ συνόδους ποιεῖσθαι ἢ εἰς τὰ καλούμενα κοιμητήρια εἰσιέναι—Dionys., in Euseb., vii, 11. Jussum est, ut nulla conciliabula faciant, neque cœmeteria ingrediantur.—Pontius, Passio Cypriani.

[108] In Africa, Cyprian, the intrepid bishop of Carthage, after a stormy episcopate, obtained the crown of martyrdom. On receiving the sentence condemning him to death, he exclaimed, “God be thanked!” and went as joyous to his fate as to a marriage feast.—Pontius, Passio Cypr.

[109] “Vitam solitariam agebat in cryptis.” Of St. Urban it is similarly said, “Solebat in sacrorum martyrum monumenta.”—Acts of Cecilia.

[110] Baronius: Ann., tom. iii, p. 76. Among his companions in death was Hippolytus, a Roman convert, of whom a beautiful legend is recorded. His pagan relatives, entrusted with the secret of his retreat, supplied his wants by means of their children, a boy and girl of ten and thirteen years. He one day detained the children in the hope that their parents would seek them, and thus have the opportunity of religious instruction from the good bishop. His plan succeeded, and eventually they with their children were baptized and suffered martyrdom together! Baron., Ann., iii, 69. Even though unauthentic, this story is a type, doubtless, of many incidents which occurred in the strange social relations of the church in the Catacombs.

[111] Xistum in cimiterio animadversum sciatis ... et cum eo diaconos quatuor.—Cypr., Epis., lxxx, ad Successum.

[112] Another martyr whose Acts, although disfigured with some grotesque and exaggerated circumstances, contain elements of great beauty, was Lawrence, a deacon of the bishop Sixtus. Esteeming it no sacrilege, but rather the highest consecration of the property of the church, he distributed it in alms among the suffering Christians. Being commanded to surrender to the emperor the confiscated ecclesiastical treasure, he presented to the commissioner a number of aged and impotent poor, saying, “These are the treasures of the church.” After incredible tortures, which form the subject of many a picture of Roman Catholic art, he is said to have been roasted to death over a slow fire. Ambros., Officin., i, 41.

[113] A. D. 259.

[114] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 13.

[115] Ib., viii, 23.

[116] A. D. 275.

[117] Probus et vere probus situs est. Obiit A. D. 283.

[118] Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, asserts that under Numerian, the brother and contemporary of Carinus, Chrysanthus and Daria suffered martyrdom in a Catacomb on the Via Salaria. A number of the faithful being observed to visit their tombs, the emperor ordered the entrance to be built up and covered with a heap of sand and stones, that they might be buried alive in common martyrdom. When their remains were discovered by Damasus, in the fourth century, he refrained from removing them, and simply made an opening from an adjacent gallery, that pilgrims to the early shrines of the faith might behold, without disturbing it, this “Christian Pompeii.” Gregory asserts that these interesting relics were still to be seen in his day—the skeletons of men, women, and children lying on the floor, and even the silver vessels (urcei argentei) which they used.

[119] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 1.

[120] Ibid.

[121] De Mort. Persec., c. xxiii.

[122] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 1.

[123] Caius ... fugiens persecutionem Diocletiani in cryptis habitando, martyrio coronatur.—Lib. Pontif.; cf. Euseb., Hist. Eccles., vii, 32.

[124] Ἐκ τῶν ἐν στρατείαις ἀδελφῶν καταρχομένου τοῦ διωγμοῦ.—Hist. Eccles., viii, 1.

[125] Vita Const., ii, 54.

[126] The following inscription, found in Spain, and given by Gruter, seems designed as the funeral monument of dead and buried Christianity. But though apparently destroyed, like its divine Author, instinct with immortality it rose triumphant over all its foes.

DIOCLETIAN · CAES · AUG · GALERIO · IN ORIENTE · ADOPT · SVPERSTITIONE CHRIST · VBIQ · DELETA ET CVLTV DEOR · PROPAGATO.

“To Diocletian, Cæsar Augustus, having adopted Galerius in the East, the Christian superstition being every-where destroyed, and the worship of the gods extended.”

[127] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 2. The effects of the persecution were felt even in Britain. (Gildas, de Excid. Britan., in Bingham, viii, 1.) Alban was the first British martyr at a somewhat earlier date.

[128] “The dungeons destined for murderers,” says Eusebius, “were filled with bishops, presbyters, deacons, readers, and exorcists, so that there was no room left for those condemned for crime.”—Hist. Eccles.

[129] Nec unquam sine cruore humano cœnabat.—Lactan., de Mort. Persec.

[130] Date of Edict, April 30, A. D. 311. Euseb., Hist. Eccles., ix, 1.

[131] Eusebius gives the edict, taken from a brazen tablet at Tyre, in which the Emperor speaks of “the votaries of an execrable vanity, like a funeral pile long disregarded and smothered, again rising in mighty flames and rekindling the extinguished brands.” Hist. Eccles., ix, 9.

[132] The courtly panegyrist of Constantine gratefully speaks of him as a “light and deliverer arising in the dense and impenetrable darkness of a gloomy night.” Euseb., Hist. Eccles., x, 8.

[133] Eusebius compares the victory of the Milvian Bridge to that of Moses and the Israelites over Pharaoh and his hosts. Hist. Eccles. ix, 9.

[134] Daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem quam quisque voluisset—“We give to the Christians, and to all, the free choice to follow whatever mode of worship they may wish.”—Decree of Milan, preserved in Lactantius, de Mort. Persec., and in Euseb., Hist. Eccles., x, 5.

[135] In the violent deaths or loathsome diseases of many of their persecutors the Christians recognized the retributive judgments of the Almighty, which were considered so remarkable as to occasion the special treatise de Mortibus Persecutorum, attributed to the pen of Lactantius. Nero died ignominiously by his own hand. Domitian was assassinated. During the reign of Aurelius war, famine, and pestilence wasted the land. Decius perished miserably in a marsh, and his body became the prey of the prowling jackal and unclean buzzard. Valerian, captured by the Persians, after having served as a footstool to his haughty foe, is said to have been flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw. Aurelian was slain by the hand of a trusted servant, and Carinus by the dagger of a husband whom he had irreparably wronged. Diocletian, having languished for years the prey of painful maladies, which even affected his reason, it is said committed suicide. Galerius, like those rivals in bloodshed and persecution, Herod and Philip II., became an object of loathing and abhorrence, being “eaten of worms” while yet alive. Maximian fell by the hand of the public executioner; and Maxentius, in the hour of defeat, was smothered in the ooze of the Tiber beneath the walls of his capital. Severus opened his own veins and bled to death. The first Maximin was murdered; the second, a fugitive and an exile, committed suicide by poison, and, according to Eusebius, was so consumed by internal torments that “his body became the tomb of his soul.” Licinius, the last of the persecutors, was slain by his ferocious soldiery, and his name, by a decree of the Senate, forever branded with infamy. Thus with indignities and tortures, often surpassing those they inflicted on their Christian subjects, perished the enemies of the church of God, as if pursued by a divine retribution no less inexorable than the avenging Nemesis of the pagan mythology. See Lactantius, de Mort. Persec., passim; Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 17; ix, 9, 10; Tertul., Ad. Scap., c. 3.

[136] The church of St. Marcello, in the Corso, commemorates the scene of his indignities. There is reason to believe that each church or titulus within the city had its own cemetery without the walls, over which the presbyter of the title had jurisdiction. Marcellinus, as bishop, had charge of the ecclesiastical Cemetery of Callixtus, as appears from a contemporary inscription.

[137] Gruter, Inscrip., p. 1172, No. 3.

[138] Rom. Sott., p. 172.

[139] There is a pleasing tradition recorded of Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, to the effect that, having fled, on account of the persecution, to the caverns of Mount Soracte, the Emperor Constantine sent for him to receive religious instruction. Seeing the soldiers approach, as he thought to lead him to martyrdom, Sylvester exclaimed, “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation,” but was in a few days installed as bishop of Rome in the imperial palace of the Lateran. Soracte, once sacred to Apollo and the Muses, but now to Christ and the saints, is known, in commemoration of this event, as Monte San Silvestro.

[140] Gruter, p. 1171, No. 8.

[141] Their names and piety are commemorated by two churches in Rome. Eusebius also records with approbation the story of the Christian matron Sophronia, wife of the Prefect of Rome, who committed suicide to escape the polluting embraces of the tyrant Maxentius. Hist. Eccles., viii, 14.

[142] Bullettino, January, 1869.

[143] The following satirical remarks of De Brosses, a Romanist writer, concerning the supply of relics from the Catacomb of St. Agnes, will indicate how unauthentic are these objects of veneration: “Vous pourriez voir ici la capitale des Catacombes de toute la chrétienté. Les martyrs, les confesseurs, et les vierges, y fourmillent de tous côtés. Quand on se fait besoin de quelques reliques en pays étranger, le Pape n’a qu’à descendre ici et crier, Qui de vous autres veut aller être saint en Pologne? Alors s’il se trouve quelque mort de bonne volonté il se lève et s’en va.”

[144] From the Catacomb of St. Agnes. The ancient Martyrology records the conversion of a Roman nobleman of this name in the time of Julian, together with that of his wife and fifty-three members of his household, and his subsequent martyrdom and burial in the Catacombs. It is probable that Theophila had learned in Gaul to write Latin, though only in those singular Greek characters which, as Julius Cæsar informs us, were used in that country, and that, after the death of the whole family, she employed some equally unlettered stone-mason to engrave this remarkable inscription.

[145] De Rossi gives several dated inscriptions of the reign of Diocletian, (Nos. 16 to 28,) thus absolutely identifying the age of those portions of the Catacombs.

[146] In Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun” there is a fantastic legend of “The Spectre of the Catacombs,” the ghost of an apostate betrayer of the Christians, which still haunts the scene of its hateful perfidy.

[147] See plan of this arenarium and stairway in chap. v, fig. 26.

[148] In A. D. 359 Liberius, bishop of Rome, lay hid for a year in the Catacomb of St. Agnes, till the death of the Arian Constantius; and in A. D. 418 Boniface I. in the Catacomb of St. Felicitas, during the usurpation of the antipope Eulalius.

[149] The similar excavations of Quesnel, in France, were long inhabited by both human beings and cattle.

[150] Latebrosa et lucifugax natio.—Minuc. Felix.

[151] Compare the following spirited lines of Bernis:

“La terre avait gémi sous le fer des tyrans;

Elle cachait encore des martyrs expirans,

Qui dans les noirs détours des grottes reculées

Dérobaient aux bourreaux leurs têtes mutilées.”

Poëme de la Religion Vengée, chap. viii.

[152] See especially Dodwell’s learned but unsatisfactory Essay, De Paucitate Martyrum, and Gibbon’s laboured extenuation of the severity of the persecutors.

[153] Ingens multitudo.—Ann., xv.

[154] Jam desolata templa.—Epis., 97, lib. x.

[155] Exuberante copia virtutis et fidei numerari non possunt martyres Christi.—Lib. de Exhort. Martyr., c. xi.

[156] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 9.

[157] Ibid., viii, 11.

[158] Universum populum cum ipso pariter conventiculo concremavit. Lactan., Instit. Divin., v, 11: Gregatim amburebantur.—Ibid.

[159] Page 78.

[160]

Sexaginta illic defossas mole sub una
 Reliquias memini me didicisse hominum.—Peristeph., xi.

[161] The story of the martyrdom of ten thousand Christians on Mount Ararat, under Trajan, and of the massacre of the Thundering Legion, consisting of six thousand Christians, by Maximian, are fictions of later date. In the Church of St. Gerion at Cologne are many reputed relics, chiefly heads, of these last. The legendary tendency to exaggeration in numbers seems irresistible. In commemorating the slaughter of the Innocents the Greek Church canonized fourteen thousand martyrs. Another notion, derived from Rev. xiv, 3, swelled the number to a hundred and forty-four thousand. The absurd story of the eleven thousand martyrs of Cologne is probably founded on a mistaken rendering of the inscription VRSVLA · ET · XI · MM · VV, interpreted, Ursula and eleven thousand virgins, instead of eleven virgin martyrs.—Maitland, p. 163. A Romish legend, of course exaggerated, says seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in the Coliseum.

[162] In Rock’s Hierurgia, a Romanist work, is an account of a Catacomb at Nipi, near Rome, in which are said to be thirty-eight martyr tombs, the epitaph of one of whom plainly asserts his death by decapitation: MARTYRIO CORONATVS CAPITE TRVNCATVS IACET—“Crowned with martyrdom, having been beheaded ... lies here.”

The beautiful terseness of the following would seem to indicate their genuineness: “Paulus was put to death in tortures, in order that he might live in eternal bliss.”

“Clementia, tortured, dead, sleeps; will rise.”

From the following, found on a cup attached to a tomb, it would seem that the martyr was first compelled to drink poison, which proving ineffectual, he was dispatched by the sword: “The deadly draught dared not present to Constans the crown, which the steel was permitted to offer.”

[163] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii, 9.

[164] Ibid., viii, 12.

[165] Called ungulæ, from their resemblance to the claws of a beast of prey.

[166] See examples of the above named tortures in Eusebius’s Hist. Eccles., v, 2; vi, 41; viii, 14; The Martyrs of Palestine, viii; and Lactantius, passim.

On the 22d of April, 1823, says Cardinal Wiseman, a grave in the Catacombs was opened, and, beside the white and polished bones of a youth of eighteen, whose epitaph it bore, was found the skeleton of a boy of twelve or thirteen, charred and blackened chiefly about the upper part. This was probably the remains of a youthful martyr hastily interred in another’s grave, to come to light after the lapse of fifteen centuries.

Prudentius describes the martyr Hippolytus as torn limb from limb:

Cernere erat ruptis compagibus ordine nullo,
Membra per incertos sparsa jacere situs.

[167] Lib. Pontif., c. iv. These notaries were called by the Greeks ὀξυγράφοι or ταχυγράφοι, that is, short-hand writers. Eusebius says they reported the extemporaneous discourses of Origen. Hist. Eccles., vi, 36.

[168] Hic fecit sex vel septem subdiaconos, qui septem notariis imminerent ut gesta martyrum fideliter colligerent.—Lib. Pontif.

[169] The Peristephanon—“Concerning the [martyrs’] crowns.”

[170] In the thirteenth century many of the stories were collected in the Legenda Aurea by Jacques de Voragine, an archbishop of Genoa. After the discovery of printing the press teemed with this legendary literature, Flowers of the Saints, Acts of the Martyrs, etc., embellished with numerous engravings, representing with horrible minuteness the Dantean tortures on which the monkish mind loved to expatiate.

[171] Assatum est: versa et manduca.

[172]

—Latus ungula virgineum
Pulsat utrimque, et ad ossa secat,
Eulalia numerante notas.
Scriberis ecce! mihi Domine;
Quàm juvat hos apices legere.—Peristeph., Hymn ix.

[173] See martyrdom of Polycarp, Euseb., Hist. Eccles., iv. 15.

[174]

At sola mater hisce lamentis caret,
Soli sereno frons renidet gaudio.—Prudent., Peristeph.

[175]

His persecutor saucius
Pallet, rubescit, æstuat,
Insana torquens lumina.
Spumasque frendens egerit.—Ibid., Hymn ii.

[176]

Bitumen et mixtum pice
Imo implicabunt Tartaro.—Ibid.

[177] Hence called legends, a word which has in consequence come to signify the incredible or fictitious. Upon a mere verbal mistake was founded the account by the mediæval writers of a most formidable weapon called the catomus, which name gave rise to the verbs catomare and catomizare, to express its use. It was at length discovered that catomus was but the Latin form of the Greek adverbial phrase κατ’ ὤμων, signifying, “upon the shoulders.” (Maitland, p. 167.)

[178] Hist. Eccles., v, 1.

[179] Multique avidius tum martyria gloriosis mortibus quærebant quam nunc episcopatus pravis ambitionibus appetunt.—Sulpio. Sever., Hist., lib. ii.

[180] Apol., c. 30.

[181] Gregory Nazianzen. Orat. de Laud. Basil. See also the striking language of Ignatius. (Euseb., Hist. Eccles., iii, 36.)

[182] Chrys. Hom. 74, de Martyr.

[183] Kip, p. 88—from Maitland, p. 146. Sometimes the ardour for martyrdom rose into a passion, or indeed an epidemic. Eusebius says, (Hist. Eccles., viii, 6,) that in Nicomedia “Men and women with a certain divine and inexpressible alacrity rushed into the fire.”

[184]

Inscripta Christo pagina immortalis est,
Excepit adstans angelus coram Deo.
Et quæ locutus martyr, et quæ pertulit:
Nec verbum solùm disserentis condidit,
Omnis notata est sanguinis dimensio,
Quæ vis doloris, quive segmenti modus:
Guttam cruoris ille nullam perdidit.—Peristeph.

[185] The pagans called the martyrs βιαθάνατοι, or self-murderers.

[186] Tertul., Apol., c. 50.

[187] As early as the middle of the second century Justin Martyr says, “There is not a nation, Greek or Barbarian, or of any other name, even of those that wander in tribes or live in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgiving are not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe in the name of the crucified Jesus.” The decree of Maximin states that almost all men had abandoned the worship of the gods and joined the Christian sect: Σχεδὸν ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους, καταλειφθείσης τῆς τῶν θεῶν θρησκείας, τῷ ἔθνει τῶν Χριστιανῶν συμμεμιχότας. Euseb., Hist. Eccles., ix, 9. Lucianus of Antioch says that before the last persecution the greater part of the world, including whole cities, had yielded allegiance to the truth—Pars pæne mundi jam major huic veritati adstipulatur; urbes integrae; etc.—Trans. of Euseb. by Rufinus.

[188] Even the sanguine imagination of Tertullian cannot conceive the possibility of this event. “Sed et Cæsares credidissent super Christo,” he exclaims, “si aut Cæsares non essent seculo necessario, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Cæsares.”—Apol., c. 21.

[189] Οἷά τις ἡλίου βολή.—Euseb., Hist. Eccles., ii, 3.

[190] Ibid., ix, 1; x, 9.

[191] Ibid., x, 4. Literally, “They are no more because they never were.” In his eloquent oration on the renovation of the cathedral of Tyre Eusebius applies, with remarkable elegance and propriety, the promises of Scripture concerning the restoration of the exiled Jews from Babylon and the final establishment of the church of God (Psa. lxxx; xcviii; Isa. lii; liv) to the condition of Christianity in his day. The above citations are given almost in his very words.

[192] A few years after the death of Constantine the Emperor Julian found at this celebrated shrine of Apollo, on the festival of the god, instead of the hecatombs of oxen and the crowds of worshippers which he expected, only a single goose, and a pale and solitary priest in the decayed and deserted temple.—Gibbon, ii, 448, Am. ed.

[193] See a thoughtful essay on this topic in Froude’s Short Studies on Great Subjects, First Series.

[194] The church itself experienced many corruptions before the date of Constantine. Among the recent converts from paganism a crop of heresies sprang up. “When the sacred choir of the Apostles,” says Hegesippus, (apud Euseb., iii, 32,) “had passed away, then the combinations of impious error arose by the fraud and delusion of false teachers.” The schisms of Marcian and Novatian, Valentine and Montanus, early rent the Christian community. The exclusive ecclesiasticism of Cyprian, the episcopal assumptions of Victor, and the secular ambition and rapacity of Paul of Samosata, were portents of the spirit which afterward bore such bitter fruit. That pride and luxury had begun to invade the simplicity of primitive times, which, when the church basked in the sunshine of imperial favour, so completely withered its spiritual power.

The influence of Constantine seems to have been fraught with more of evil than of good to the new religion that he espoused. He appears to have adopted the Christian name from expediency rather than from conviction, and, stained with the kindred blood of wife and son and nephew, ill deserves the title of Saint, bestowed in fulsome adulation by a venal church. Even the priests of the false gods, aghast with horror at his crimes, exclaimed, “There is no expiation for deeds like these.” He used both pagans and Christians, both orthodox and heretics, as instruments for his political purposes. His object seems to have been rather to raise and strengthen a hierarchy of ecclesiastical supporters than to assist the cause of truth; and he imposed on the organization of the Greek and Latin churches that monarchical and secular character which they have ever since retained.[195]

The transfer of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus left Christianity to develop itself at Rome less trammelled by imperial influence; and, perhaps, in a less corrupt form than in the East. After the edict of toleration, the places of worship which had been closed or destroyed during the persecution were opened, or rebuilt with a magnificence rivalling that of the ancient temples. But the Catacombs still continued invested with a deep and pathetic interest, as the cradle of the faith, the refuge of the church during the storm of calamity, and the sepulchre of the saints and martyrs. Hence numerous basilicas or oratories were erected over or near the entrances of the ancient cemeteries in honour of the holy dead.

On the full recognition of Christianity the necessity for subterranean sepulture ceased; hence it fell gradually into disuse, and was superseded by burial in or near the now numerous basilicas. Even the Roman bishops were no longer interred in the so-called Papal Crypt, but in churches above ground; and this example was soon generally followed. “The inscriptions with consular dates,” says Dr. Northcote, “probably furnish us with a sufficiently accurate guide to the relative proportions of the two modes of burial. From A. D. 338 to A. D. 360 two out of three burials appear to have taken place in the subterranean portion of the cemeteries, while from A. D. 364 to A. D. 369 the proportions are equal. During the next two years hardly any notices of burials above ground appear, but after that subterranean crypts fell rapidly into disuse.”[196]

It is a remarkable circumstance, here indicated, that in the years A. D. 370 and 371 a sudden and general return to subterranean sepulture took place. This change has been very satisfactorily explained by the contemporary history of the Catacombs. Great injury had already been inflicted on these ancient sepulchres by the practice which had become prevalent of erecting basilicas, more or less sumptuous, over the tombs of the illustrious martyrs of the age of persecution.[197] As the ecclesiastical authorities shrank from disturbing their remains it became the custom to excavate the ground down to the level of their graves. As these were often in the lower levels of the Catacombs, hundreds of graves were sometimes destroyed in these excavations and constructions.[198] Damasus, bishop of Rome from A. D. 358 to A. D. 384, who was indefatigable in his efforts to protect and, where possible, to restore the Catacombs, endeavoured to prevent this wholesale destruction of these sacred crypts. He explored many of the galleries, which, to preserve inviolate the martyrs’ graves, had been blocked up with earth and stones during the period of persecution. He cleared out[199] and enlarged the passages leading to the more distinguished tombs, and constructed ample flights of stairs for the accommodation of the numerous pilgrims to these sacred shrines. He lined many of the chambers with marble slabs, constructed shafts for the admission of light and air, and supported the crumbling walls and galleries, where necessary, with piers and arches of solid masonry. He also composed numerous metrical inscriptions in honour of the martyrs, which were engraved on marble in a singularly elegant character. There are few of the Catacombs in which traces of his restorations or adornments are not to be found.

The piety or superstition of the wealthy converts to Christianity led them to enlarge the subterranean chapels and martyr-tombs, and to decorate them with costly marbles, frescoes, mosaics, stucco ornaments, and vaulted roofs. The contemporary tombs and monuments were also on a scale of magnificence before unknown; and the inscriptions assumed a florid and inflated character far different from the simplicity of the primitive ages. The architecture and paintings also indicate, with the increase of wealth and luxury, the decline and fatal eclipse of art.

To the period of Damasus belongs the description, by Prudentius, of the shrine of Hippolytus, part of which has been already quoted.[200] “That little chapel,” he continues, “which contains the cast-off garments of his soul, is bright with solid silver. Wealthy hands have put up glistening tablets, smooth and bright as a concave mirror; and, not content with overlaying the entrance with Parian marble, they have lavished large sums of money on the ornamentation of the work.” It was during the period of the labours of Damasus that the revived interest in the Catacombs was so strikingly manifested by the sudden return to the subterranean mode of burial, and that many of the tombs and chapels received their most elaborate adornment.[201]

The perversion of a natural instinct, beautiful and praiseworthy in itself, became the root of much evil in after times. Our hearts are irresistibly drawn toward the place where lie the remains of the dear departed in the last long sleep of death. Although we know that only the slumbering dust is there, we love to meditate above their graves, and seem there to hold closer communion with their spirits than elsewhere. Especially would the early Christians be drawn to the tombs of their fathers in the faith, many of whom were also their fathers in the flesh, whose saintly patience or glorious martyrdom had hallowed their memory for evermore. They would naturally be led to adorn and beautify their sepulchres, and in pious devotion to meditate and pray beside their honoured remains. This innocent, and even laudable, practice gradually, and perhaps inevitably, led to abuses. The admiration of the martyr’s faith and patience and heroic spirit gradually intensified into superstitious veneration for his body, blood, bones, ashes, clothes, staff, or any personal relic. Judaism regarded the touching of aught connected with the dead as involving a ceremonial pollution; but Christian ideas invested even the crumbling dust of the martyrs with especial sanctity.

The first clear evidence that we have of this feeling is in the case of Ignatius, who suffered under Trajan, A. D. 107. Perhaps from a fear that superstitious reverence might be paid to his remains, he prayed that the wild beasts might become his sepulchre, so that nothing of him might be left.[202] His desire was only partly fulfilled, for “the larger and harder bones remained, which were carried to Antioch and kept as an inestimable treasure left to the Church by the grace which was in the martyr.”[203] Eusebius speaks of the charred remains of Polycarp as “more precious than the richest jewels, and more tried than gold.”[204] The martyrs blood was esteemed a talisman of especial power. A sponge saturated therewith was sometimes worn as a sacred relic, and it may be as a supernatural amulet, by their friends or relatives. Prudentius describes the spectators of the martyrdom of St. Vincent as dipping their clothes in his blood, that they might keep it as a sort of palladium for successive generations:

Crowds haste the linen vest to stain
With gore distilled from martyr’s vein,
And thus a holy safeguard place
At home, to shield the future race.[205]

In the account of the death of Hippolytus, he describes the gathering of his mangled limbs with a minuteness too revolting for the poetry even of martyrology.[206] With a refinement of cruelty, the persecutors of Gaul cast the remains of the martyrs of Vienne to the dogs, and guarded their lifeless bodies for days, in order to deprive the Christians of the melancholy satisfaction of paying the last sad rites of burial to any fragments that remained.[207]

The primitive Christians justly discriminated between the reverence due to the martyrs and the adoration to be rendered only to the Supreme Being. “We worship Christ as the Son of God,” says the church of Smyrna, “but the martyrs we deservedly love as the disciples and imitators of Our Lord.”[208] “We do not build temples to our martyrs as gods,” says Augustine, “but only memorials of them as dead men whose spirits live with God; nor do we erect altars or sacrifice to our martyrs, but to the only God, both theirs and ours.”[209] But the enthusiastic feelings of the people at length failed to make this proper distinction, and many even of the theological writers of the day, not foreseeing the disastrous consequences to which the practice would lead, were carried away with the popular current.

One form which this veneration took was that of festivals in honour of the martyrs. “By a noble metaphor,” says Milman,[210] “the day of their death was considered that of their birth to immortality.”[211] The church of Smyrna celebrated the anniversary of their martyred bishop’s passion “with joy and gladness as his natal day.”[212] Tertullian asserts that the practice has the authority of apostolic tradition.[213] These festivals were at first kept with religious solemnity, accompanied by the celebration of the eucharist, often in the rock-hewn chambers of the Catacombs, where a thin tile separated the dead in Christ from the devout worshippers who commemorated the passion of their common Lord. During the ages of persecution this was a rite of deep and touching significance. Frequently his partaking of that feast was the recipient’s own consecration to the martyr’s death. But after the peace of the church it often degenerated into a scene of excess and vulgar revelry, more like the pagan banquets for the dead than a Christian solemnity. Indeed, they were avowedly employed in ignoble appeal to the baser appetites, as counter-attractions to the pagan feasts, to induce the poor to attend the festivals of the church.[214] This degradation of an originally praiseworthy practice, and the intensifying and abject superstition to which it led, provoked the taunts of the heathen and the censure of the more devout and thoughtful Christians. The philosophic Julian recoiled from the adoration of relics as from pollution. Another pagan writer contrasts the veneration of obscure martyrs’ names, hateful to the gods and to men,[215] with the refined and poetic cultus of Minerva and Jupiter.[216] Vigilantius, the Spanish presbyter, strongly condemns the “ashes worshippers and idolaters;” while, on the other hand, Jerome magnifies the sanctity of these relics, “around which,” he says, “the souls of the martyrs are constantly hovering to hear the prayers of the supplicant.” After in vain trying to restrain their abuses and excesses, the ecclesiastical authorities were at length compelled to suppress these festivals.

The reverence paid to the relics of the martyrs had two remarkable and contrary effects. Having led in the first place to the adornment of their sepulchres, it ultimately caused their destruction and spoliation. In consequence of this feeling it became an object of ambition to share the resting-place of those who had been so holy in life and so glorious in death. Hence new graves were often excavated in the back of the arcosolia, cutting through the beautiful frescoes with which they were adorned, and mutilating or destroying the paintings.[217] The cubicula were also defaced, their symmetry injured, and their construction endangered by similar imprudent excavations.

Numerous inscriptions inform us that many persons secured this privilege during their lives, as the following examples: IN CRYPTA NOBA RETRO SANCTOS EMERVM SE VIVAS BALERA ET SABINA (sic)—“In the new crypt behind the saints: Valeria and Sabina bought it for themselves while living.” ΕΝΘΑΔΕ ΠΑΥΛΕΙΝΑ ΚΕΙΤΑΙ ΜΑΚΑΡΩ ΕΝ ΧΩΡΩ—“Here lies Paulina in the place of the blessed.” Another inscription of the period of Damasus tells of one who was buried “within the thresholds of the saints, a thing which many desire and few obtain.”[218] Sometimes the name of the saint or martyr is mentioned, as in one which records the purchase of a grave, “at the tomb of Hippolytus, above the arcosolium,”[219] and another at that of Cornelius.[220] So also the tomb of Cecilia was separated from that of one of the primitive bishops by scarcely an inch of rock. Great injury was thus done to the Catacombs by the indiscreet devotion of those who observed this practice. Many pilgrims to the graves of the martyrs, deriving, they thought, a spiritual benefit from proximity to their sacred dust, took up their abode in little cells beside their graves while alive, and shared their sepulchres in death. In answer to the inquiry of his friend Paulinus of Nola, whether it was a profit to the soul that the body should be buried near the shrine of some saint,[221] Augustine wrote a special treatise[222] in justification of the practice; although how the martyrs help men, he confesses, is a question beyond his understanding. We have already seen the very strong opinion entertained on this subject by Jerome, the contemporary of Augustine. More in accordance with reason and scripture is the sentiment contained in the epitaph of the archdeacon Sabinus, lately found at San Lorenzo: