NIL IVVAT IMMO GRAVAT TVMVLIS HAERERE PIORVM
SANCTORVM MERITIS OPTIMA VITA PROPE EST
CORPORE NON OPVS EST ANIMA TENDAMVS AD ILLOS
QVAE BENE SALVA POTEST CORPORE ESSE SALVS.[223]

It nothing helps, but rather hinders, to stick close to the tombs of the saints; a good life is the best approach to their merits. Not with the body but with the soul must we draw nigh to them; when that is well saved it may prove the salvation of the body also.

Even Damasus, who, if any ought, might claim sepulture with the sainted dead, shrank from disturbing their remains, and was buried in a tomb above the Catacomb of Callixtus. Of the subterranean crypt he says:

HIC FATEOR DAMASVS VOLVI MEA CONDERE MEMBRA
SED TIMVI SANCTOS CINERES VEXARE PIORVM.

Here I, Damasus, confess I wished to lay my limbs, but I feared to vex the holy ashes of the saints.

The desire for communion with the holy dead continued throughout successive generations. Multitudes of pilgrims still visited the shrines of the martyrs, and, after the wont of travellers, left traces of their presence in the numerous graffiti which are written on the walls. Some of these are names of classical form, as Leo, Felix, Maximus, Theophilus; others, written in less accessible places, are of later date and of foreign character, Spanish, British, or German, as Ildebrand, Ethelred, Lupo, Bonizo, Joannes. The names are frequently accompanied with the letters Pb., or Presb., the indication of the ecclesiastical grade of the writer.

Many of the loftiest dignitaries in church and state, popes and prelates, princes and nobles, kings and queens, and even some illustrious wearers of the imperial purple, continued to be brought, often from afar, throughout the period of the Middle Ages, to lie in death as near as possible to the hallowed dust of the early martyrs and confessors of the faith. Among them were some stained with blood, who hoped to expiate their crimes by their religious austerities, and to enter paradise through the intercession of the saints near whose remains their bones were laid. Several petty kings of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, some expelled by their subjects or rivals, others flying from the post of duty, muttered their prayers and counted their beads in the crypts of the Catacombs, and were buried in their vicinity. The following are a few of the more illustrious, taken from the list of the Abbé Gaume:[224] Popes Leo I., Gregory I., II., and III., Leo XI.; the Emperor Honorius and Mary his wife, Valentinian and Otho II.; Cedwalla, king of the West-Saxons; Conrad, king of the Mercians; Offa and Ina, Saxon kings, with Eldiburga, wife of the latter; the Empress Agnes, Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, and the Countess Matilda, who so enriched the papal see by her donations. These were buried, not in the Catacombs, but in the basilicas erected over them, which were considered to share their sanctity. Thus, as St. Chrysostom remarks, referring to the tradition concerning the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, kings laid aside their crowns at the tombs of the fisherman and the tentmaker.[225]

During the latter part of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century the management of the Catacombs seems to have been no longer in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, but under the control of the fossors,[226] with whom the bargain for interment was made by the friends of the deceased. Numerous inscriptions occur in which this bargain is recorded, together with the names of the buyers and sellers, and sometimes those of the witnesses to the contract, and even the price that was paid, as in the following examples: COSTAT NOS EMISSE IANVARIVM ET BRITIAM LOCVM ANTE DOMNA EMERITA A FOSSORIBVS BVRDONE ET MICINMO ET MVSCO RATIONE AVRI SOLIDVM VN SEMES (sic)—“It is unquestionable that we, Januarius and Britia, bought a place in front of [the tomb of] Lady Emerita[227] from the fossors Burdo, Micinus, and Muscus, for the consideration of one solidus and a half of gold”—(about $7.) EMPTVM LOCVM A BARTIMISTVM VISOMVM HOC EST ET PRETIVM DATVM A FOSSORE HILARO ID EST FOLN ... PRESENTIA SEVERI FOSS. ET LAVRENT—“The place bought by Bartimistus, that is, a bisomus; and the price paid to the fossor Hilarus, 1400 folles, (about $5 65,) in the presence of the fossors Severus and Laurence.” The fossors also probably prepared and engraved the funeral slabs, as seems to be implied in the following: LOCV MARMARORI (sic) QVODRISOMVM—“A quadruple tomb [bought] of the stonecutter.”[228]

In the following illustration from the Catacomb of Callixtus the fossor is seen standing in a cubiculum lined with graves, and surrounded by the implements of his labour. On his shoulder is the mattock with which he dug the friable tufa, and in his hand the lamp with the spike by which it was fastened to the rock while he worked. At his feet lie the compasses for marking out the loculi, and over his head we read the simple epitaph, “Diogenes the fossor, buried in peace on the eighth before the calends of October.”

After a brief return to subterranean burial in the time of Damasus the practice fell rapidly into disuse, and after A. D. 410 scarcely a single certain example can be found. In that fatal year the blast of the Gothic trumpet, startling the ear of midnight[229] in the streets of Rome, proclaimed its capture by the hosts of the stern Alaric. Amid the social and civil commotions that accompanied the breaking up of the empire, there was neither time nor means to adorn the sepulchres of the saints, and the Catacombs fell into inevitable neglect and decay. Of this year not a single sepulchral inscription remains, a striking indication of the anarchy and confusion prevailing, when even the customary honours were not paid to the dead.

Like a mighty deluge sweeping away and overwhelming the art and civilization of the South, came the invasion of the barbarous hordes of the North; yet like a deluge fertilizing and enriching the soil, and leaving germs of future fruitfulness behind. Having conquered the world with its arms and corrupted it with its vices, the mighty fabric of the Roman empire lost internal strength and cohesion, and began to crumble to pieces. The secret causes of its dissolution had long been stealthily at work, and its fall at last was utter and complete. Thrice in the space of three years (A. D. 408, 409, 410) Rome was besieged by the hosts of Alaric, and, in vain purchasing respite by a costly ransom, she was at last given up as a prey to the bold, eager, and greedy savagery of the North. The pillage of the world, accumulated during a thousand years of conquest, left, however, little pretext for violating the resting-places of the dead. As the rude soldiery gloated with hungry eyes on the lavish gold and silver, the precious jewels and sumptuous vestments on every side, they recked little for mere works of art, and many a porphyry vase and priceless statue was wantonly shivered by barbarian battle-axe. Nevertheless, the conqueror respected the basilicas of the apostles and the sacred vessels of their shrines, declaring that he made not war upon the saints.[230]

But succeeding conquerors were less scrupulous or more rapacious. Five times in the course of the fifth century, and as often in the sixth, the Eternal City, “that was almighty named,” was besieged by her implacable foes. The churches were plundered of the massy plate and other treasures, and even the dim crypts of the Catacombs echoed the clanging tread of the armed soldiery as with sacrilegious hands they stripped the shrines of the saints of their costly adorning, and rifled the graves of the dead in search for hidden treasure.[231] Each successive invasion to which Rome was exposed renewed these scenes of desecration and robbery. The Huns, the Goths, the Lombards, and, later, the Normans and Saracens, were rivals in spoliation and destruction.

During the intervals of peace the Roman pontiffs endeavoured to restore the Catacombs and re-adorn the martyr shrines, which were still the objects of pious veneration. They were also used during the barbarian invasions, as during the pagan persecutions, as places of refuge. Boniface I., having been for some time concealed in the Catacomb of Felicitas, afterwards elaborately ornamented it. Symmachus and Vigilius were also especially diligent in their care for the Catacombs. The latter restored many of the Damasine epitaphs which had been destroyed.[232] We read also of popes of the sixth and two following centuries restoring the cemeteries and making provision for the celebration of the martyrs’ festivals at their subterranean shrines. The sculpture and frescoes of the period of course exhibited the depraved taste and debased execution of the times.

We have observed the practice in the fourth century of building churches over the martyrs’ tombs. The natural reverence for their remains soon passed into a superstitious veneration and belief in their miraculous efficacy. Even such acute minds as those of Origen, Chrysostom, and Ambrose seem infected with this superstition.[233] It soon became considered essential to the consecration of a church that it should be hallowed by some holy relics. These were placed not only on the altar, but in the sides of portals, to be kissed by the devout on entering.[234] The furnishing of these relics became a gainful trade. St. Augustine complains of certain vagabond monks who went about selling relics of the martyrs, if indeed martyrs they were.[235] In consequence of this practice a Theodosian law of the year A. D. 386 forbids the removal of any body that was buried, or the tearing asunder or sale of the remains of a martyr.[236] In consequence of the number of spurious relics, the fourth Council of Carthage, in A. D. 401, prohibited the use of any whose genuineness could not be authenticated.[237] Martin of Tours narrates how he discovered, by summoning the ghost of a so-called martyr, that the revered relics were only those of a common thief.[238] The Empress Constantina wrote to Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, for the head of St. Paul, in order to consecrate a new church. He replied that he could not divide the bodies of the saints, and declared that the danger of invading their tombs was sometimes even fatal.[239] But this pious reverence gave place to a more mercenary spirit, and the trade in relics became a traffic of infamy and disgrace. Not only were the bodies of the so-called martyrs torn asunder and their limbs sold to diverse and distant places, but with sacrilegious fraud the relics of favourite saints were multiplied till as many different cities claimed to have their only true and genuine heads, arms, or bodies, as contended for the honour of being the birth-place of Homer.[240]

These relics were endowed in popular apprehension with most miraculous powers. They emitted a delightful fragrance that ravished the senses. A fleshless skull declared the name and martyrdom of its owner. The bones of St. Lawrence moved in their grave to make room for those of another saint. The liquefaction of a martyr’s blood may still be witnessed by the faithful on the anniversary of St. Januarius at Naples.[241] If we may credit numerous traditions, these wonder-working human remains healed the sick,[242] raised the dead, and, more difficult still, converted heretics to the true faith. Nay, the mere contact with the brandea or handkerchief from the martyr’s tomb, the filings of his chains, or the oil from the lamp before his shrine, communicated spiritual as well as physical benefit. These sacred relics possessed a talismanic power to protect from evil. They were borne into battle to avert the hurtling death and to blunt the edge of the sword. They were affixed to towers as a safeguard against the thunderbolt.[243] They were inlaid in the crowns and regalia of kings,[244] and worn in rings and amulets as prophylactics against poison or disease, and they lent an awful sanctity to the oath taken upon the altar.[245]

The slender historical evidence on which idolatrous homage is paid to these relics is seen in the case of the so-called “Saint Theodosia of Amiens.” Her epitaph, found in a Catacomb near the Salarian Way, reads as follows:

The Congregation of Relics decided that Theudosia was both a saint and martyr, and a native of Amiens. Her remains were solemnly conveyed to that city, and on the 12th of October, 1833, they were received with the utmost magnificence by no less than twenty-eight mitred prelates and fifteen hundred other ecclesiastics, placed in a gorgeous shrine, and honoured as in ancient times they honoured a tutelar goddess. Cardinal Wiseman preached on the occasion, and compared the removal of her remains to her native place to that of the patriarch Joseph’s bones from Egypt to Canaan; and Bishop Salinis commended the homage of her relics “because the martyrs are, after Jesus Christ, also Christs to open heaven to mankind.”[246]

By this practice of the translation of relics Rome broke the chain of positive evidence, and destroyed the tender and pathetic associations connected with the remains of the sainted dead. The martyr’s tomb, in its original position and undisturbed, is an object of intensest interest; but removed to some distant church or abbey and redecorated with florid adornment or theatrical finery, his alleged relics provoke only skepticism or contempt. Indeed, so little attempt at probability is there in the names given to these relics that a Romanist writer, the Abbé Barbier de Montault, confesses that the greater part of the bodies found in the Catacombs wanting proper names have received, when they were exposed to public veneration, names at haphazard, which have only a vague or general signification, as Felix, Fortunatus, Victor.[247]

We return from this digression to the mediæval history of the Catacombs. The efforts of Stephen III., Adrian I., and Leo III., in the eighth and ninth centuries, to restore their ancient honour and magnificence, were unavailing. The tombs of the saints were continually being abandoned and destroyed. The translation of the sacred relics was renewed with increased energy. Pope Paschal I. was the most zealous agent in the prosecution of this work. An inscription in the church of St. Prassede, which he built for their reception, records the translation thither of 2,300 bodies in a single day, July 20, A. D. 817. Successive popes continued to remove cartloads of relics from the Catacombs in order to enhance the dignity or sanctity of the churches which they built or restored, and as an evidence of their own pious zeal. At this period, probably, the multitude of relics were borne to the Pantheon, since known as St. Maria ad Martyres—

Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods
From Jove to Jesus.[248]

These perpetual spoliations of the Christian cemeteries led to the rapid destruction of many of their galleries and chambers, and to their final abandonment like a worked-out mine—a mine, too, which had been the source of greater riches to the church than treasures of silver or gold. In the removal of the relics of the martyrs the principal motive for the protection or adornment of the Catacombs was taken away, and during the gathering darkness of the Middle Ages they speedily passed out of the knowledge of mankind. In a few of those in the immediate vicinity of some church or monastery a subterranean chapel was still kept open, and an occasional mass was celebrated on the presumed anniversary of the martyr whose name was associated, often erroneously, therewith; or some zealous and adventurous pilgrim might even penetrate their obscure recesses. But a blight had fallen on the once beautiful Campagna. Desolation, pestilence, and death brooded over the deserted plain. Through the natural dilapidations of time, and the spoliations of Saracens, Normans, and Greeks, who successively invaded Italy and wasted the country with fire and sword, the basilicas and oratories of the Byzantine period crumbled to decay or were destroyed, and the monasteries were deserted; their cowled and sandaled occupants, long the sole custodians of the Catacombs, taking refuge within the city walls. The rains of a thousand autumns and the frosts of as many winters caused the crumbling of the luminari, the falling in of the roofs, and ruin of the galleries. The knowledge of the past was lost in the gathering gloom of the dark ages, so that in an enumeration of the Roman Catacombs in the fourteenth century only three are mentioned, and these were connected with some church. In the fifteenth century but one, that of Sebastian, was known.

They are become like robbers’ caves,
So that only the good are denied entrance;
And among altars and saintly statues
Every cruel enterprise is planned.[249]

During the period of the “Babylonish Captivity,” when the Papal See was removed from the banks of the Tiber to those of the Rhone—from the protection of the fortress of St. Angelo to the castled heights of Avignon—the decay of every thing pertaining to the church in Italy was precipitated. The city of Rome, which depended for its prosperity entirely upon its ecclesiastical pomps and pageants, became impoverished and almost deserted. The Campagna changed to a wilderness, and the entrances to the Catacombs were choked with rubbish or overgrown with tangled thickets and gigantic weeds. Many of these entrances were also walled up by the civic authorities to prevent their becoming the resort of robbers, and for the safety of the inhabitants.

During the short and tumultuous career of that strange reformer, Colonna di Rienzi, (1347-1354,) some of the hidden crypts are mentioned as the scene of the plots and counterplots of that troublous time; and, like the sewers and Catacombs of Paris during the Revolution, and the cloacæ of Rome in time of proscription and civil war, they became places of refuge and concealment. On the eve of his massacre Rienzi was urged to seek safety in those ancient sanctuaries of the persecuted church, but he replied, as Nero is said to have done thirteen centuries before, that he would not bury himself alive.[250]

With the exception of these rare allusions there is little mention of the Catacombs in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, and they became in course of time virtually unknown. They were not, however, entirely unvisited. The cemetery of Sebastian was never quite forgotten, but was always open to pilgrims; and even in the darkest period there seem to have been some who, inspired by devotion or curiosity, penetrated the most accessible crypts, and left inscribed upon the walls the date of their visit. Thus, in one place we find a record of a bishop of Pisa and his companions who visited the Catacombs early in the fourteenth century. Another graffito, with the names of three persons and the date A. D. 1321, reads thus: “Gather together, O Christians, in these caverns, to read the holy books, to sing hymns in honour of the saints and martyrs who, having died in the Lord, lie buried here; to sing psalms for those who are now dying in the faith. There is light in this darkness. There is music in these tombs.”[251]

On one of the graves were found a small silver-gilt coronet, with the date A. D. 1340, and a palm leaf worked in silver. In another crypt are written six names—German, in Latinized form—with a cross after each, and beneath, the date A. D. 1397.[252] They were probably a company of German priests on a pilgrimage to the Eternal City and its sacred shrines. In two or three cubicula in the Catacomb of Callixtus are graffiti recording the visits of certain Franciscan friars in the fifteenth century. Brother Lawrence of Sicily, over date January 17, 1451, records that with twenty others he had come to visit the holy place.[253] In 1467 some Scottish pilgrims,[254] and two years after an abbot of St. Sebastian, with a large party,[255] left records of their visits to this Catacomb. The names of Pomponio Leto and other literati of the Roman Academy have also been found in several of the crypts. These men, however, although the avowed lovers of antiquity,[256] were enthusiastic only in the pursuit of heathen learning, and justly merited the reproach of being more pagan than Christian. With the exception of such infrequent and transient visits, it would appear that this priceless treasury of Christian archæology and legacy of the primitive church to the present age was completely forgotten till it was revealed to the eyes of a wondering world by the explorations of the sixteenth and following century.

[195] Zosimus. His profession of Christianity provoked the scorn of the apostate Julian.—Ibid.

Scott compares him to a prodigal who strips an aged parent of the ornaments of her youth in order to decorate a flaunting paramour. But New Rome shared the decline of the mother city, as a graft taken from an old tree partakes of the decay of the parent stem. As the ancient liberties died out, the gorgeous but degrading despotisms of the East usurped their place. The emperors assumed the style and titles of gods. The most unmanly adulation was at length lavished on the slave or herdsman elevated by capricious fortune to the throne of the world. At the time of the princess Anna Comnena this degradation seems to have reached its nadir. “Your Eternity” was the blasphemous epithet of the ephemeral puppet flaunting for a moment in the livery of infamy. “If I may speak and live,” whispered with bated breath the titled slave—Prospathaire, or Acolyte—who stood nearest the throne, shading his eyes with his hands, as if overpowered by the effulgence of the imperial countenance. The rude Latin Crusaders made short work of these lofty titles and this solemn etiquette.

[196] Roma Sotterranea, pp. 95, 96. During the lifetime of Constantine subterraneous sepultures seem to have been generally prevalent.

[197] These were called martyria or memoriæ. See Euseb., Vit. Const., iii, 48.

[198] The effects of this practice are apparent at S. Agnese fuori le Mura, erected over the tomb of the virgin martyr, and at San Lorenzo, where the galleries of the Catacomb of Cyriaca have been exposed and in part destroyed.

[199] In extending the Catacombs for the purpose of burial it was sometimes found easier to cut new galleries at a higher level, using the bed of earth in the old as the floor of the new. Sometimes the new galleries cut right through the loculi of the old.

[200] Chap. i, p. 11. To the same period belongs the description of the Catacombs by Jerome, quoted on page 36. Jerome at one time acted as secretary to Damasus.

[201] St. Ambrose, about this time, censures the constructing of costly sepulchres, as if they were to be the receptacle of the soul instead of the body.—Frustra struunt homines pretiosa sepulchra, quasi ea animæ, nec solius corporis, receptacula essent.—De Bono Mortis.

Basil urges men to prepare their funeral by works of piety while they live. “For what need have you,” he asks, “of a sumptuous monument, or a costly entombing?”—Hom. in Divites.

[202] Ignat., Ep. ad Rom., § iv. Euseb., Hist. Eccles., iii, 36.

[203] Acts of Martyrdom, § xii.

[204] Hist. Eccles., iv, 15.

[205]

Plerique vestem linteam
Stillante tingunt sanguine,
Tutamen ut sacrum suis
Domi reservent posteris.—Peristeph., v.

[206]

Hic humeros, truncasque manus et brachia, et ulnas,
 Et genua, et crurum fragmina nuda legit.—Ibid., iv.

[207] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., v, 1.

[208] Ibid., iv, 15.

[209] Nos martyribus nostris non templa sicut diis, sed memorias sicut hominibus mortuis, quorum apud Deum vivant spiritus, fabricamus; nec ibi erigimus altaria, in quibus sacrificemus martyribus, sed uni Deo et martyrum et nostro.—De. Civ. Dei, xxii, 10.

[210] Hist. of Christianity, book iv, c. 2.

[211] Hence called Natalitia, Γενέθλια.

[212] Euseb., Hist. Eccles., iv, 15.

[213] De Coron. Mil., c. ii.

[214] Diesque festos, post eos, quos relinquebant, alienos in honorem sanctorum martyrum vel non simili sacrilegio, quamvis simili luxu celebrantur.—Augustin., Epis. xxix. See also Boldetti, Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri dei SS. Martiri, p. 46.

[215] Diisque hominibusque odiosa nomina.—Aug., Epis., xvi.

[216] Ibid.

[217] See Figs. 12 and 76.

[218] “Intra limina sanctorum, quod multi cupiunt et rari accipiunt.”

[219] “At Ippolytu super arcosoliu,” (sic.)

[220] “Ad Santum Cornelium.” See also the epitaph on p. 132.

[221] “Apud sancti alicujus memoriam.”

[222] De Curâ pro Mortuis Gerendâ, written about A. D. 421.

[223] Bullettino, 1864, 33.

[224] Les Trois Romes, tom. iv, p. 39. Aringhi gives a similar list in his chapter, De imperatoribus ac regibus, qui apud Vaticanum sepulturæ traditi sunt.—Roma Subterranea, lib. ii, c. 9.

[225] Chrys., Quod Christus sit Deus. See legend, p. 186.

[226] From fodere, fossum, to dig.

[227] Saint Emerita suffered martyrdom during the Valerian persecution.

[228] Jerome strongly censures the making merchandise of the resting-places of the dead—Quì sepulchra venditant, et non coguntur ut accepiant pretium, sed a nolentibus etiam extorquent.—Quæst. Heb. in Gen. xxiii.

[229] “Nocte Moab capta est, nocte cecidit murus ejus!” exclaims Jerome.—Ad Principiam.

[230] Gibbon, iii, 283. Am. Ed.

[231] The following lines by Pope Vigilius, A. D. 537, describe this event:

Dum peritura Getæ posuissent castra sub urbem,

 Moverunt sanctis bella nefanda prius,

Totaque sacrilego verterunt corde sepulcra,

 Martyribus quondam rite sacrata piis.

“Whilst the Goths had placed their camp, soon to perish, before the city, they first waged unhallowed war against the saints, and with sacrilegious mind destroyed whole sepulchres once solemnly consecrated to the pious martyrs.”

During the fifth and sixth centuries cemeteries were opened within the walls in consequence of the peril of venturing beyond the gates.

[232]

DIRVTA VIGILIVS NAM POSTHAEC PAPA GEMISCENS

HOSTIBVS EXPVLSIS OMNE NOVAVIT OPVS.—Inscr. in Lateran.

“Pope Vigilius, afterwards lamenting the demolished monuments, renewed the entire work after the expulsion of the enemy.”

[233] These Fathers quoted such passages as 2 Kings xiii, 21; Eccles. xlviii, 13, 14; xlix, 10-15; Acts v, 15, and xix, 11, in proof of the efficacy of relics.

[234] Hence in the celebration of the mass the priest kisses the altar and invokes pardon “by the relics of the saints that are there.”—See Missal. Optatus tells of a lady who used to kiss the relics of he knew not what martyr, if martyr it were, before communion.—Ante spiritualem cibum et potum, os nescio cujus martyris, si tamen martyris, libare dicebatur.—Oper., lib. i.

[235] Membra martyrum, si tamen martyrum, venditant.—Aug., de Oper. Monach.

[236] Humatum corpus nemo ad alium locum transferat; nemo martyrem distrahat, nemo mercetur.—Cod. Theod., De Sepulchris Violatis, leg. 7.

[237] Omnino nulla memoria martyrum probabiliter acceptetur nisi aut ibi corpus, aut aliquæ certe reliquæ sint.—Conc. Carth., v, Can. 14.

[238] Sulpitii Severi, Vita Martini, cap. viii. Julian recoiled from relic worship as from the stench of dead men’s bones. He compared the churches to whited sepulchres full of rottenness and of all uncleanness.

[239] Greg. Max., Epis. iv.

[240] At the time of the Reformation the reputed fragments of the true cross, it is said, would have freighted a large ship. The relics of the saints were hawked about the country from house to house by pedlers who farmed their sale, paying a percentage to the church or abbey to which they belonged. D’Aubigné’s Hist. Ref., i., c. 3.

[241] On one occasion the blood refused to liquefy, on account, said the priests, of the malign influence of the French. The French general sent word that unless the miracle took place within an hour his cannon should blow the church about their ears. The blood liquefied immediately.

[242] The affidavit of its subject attests the miraculous cure, probably of hysteria or hypochondria, recently wrought by a relic from the Catacombs at the Hôtel Dieu in Montreal, Canada.

[243] A nail of the true cross, says Gregory of Tours, thrown into the Adriatic by Queen Radegunda, made it thenceforth one of the safest seas to navigate instead of one of the stormiest.—De Gloria Martyrum. Of another, Constantine made a bit for his horse.

[244] The Iron Crown of Lombardy the Roman Congregation of Relics has declared to be a sacred talisman, being made of a nail of the Crucifixion, although the first authentic mention of it occurs in the midnight of the dark ages, A. D. 888. From the time of Charles V. no sovereign ventured to wear this sacred crown till Napoleon, seeking to consecrate his usurped authority, with his own hand placed it on his head at Milan, A. D. 1805, with the vaunting words, “God hath given it me; let him take heed who touches it.”—Dieu me l’a donnée; gare à qui la touche. It was carried off from the cathedral of Monza by the Austrians in 1859.

[245] On marble tablets in the Church of St. Prassede, in Rome, is an enumeration of its precious treasures, among which are a tooth of St. Peter and one of St. Paul, part of the chemise of the Virgin Mary—de camisia beatæ Mariæ Virginis, part of Christ’s girdle—de cingulo D. N. Jesu Christi, part of Moses’ rod, some of the earth on which Christ prayed, also of the reed and sponge, three spines of the crown of thorns, part of the towel with which he washed his disciples’ feet, part of the swaddling clothes—pannis—in which he was wrapped at his nativity, and part of the seamless robe—de veste inconsutili. The whole of this robe was formerly exhibited at Trêves, where the deluded votaries of this Christian idolatry invoked its intercession in the formula, “Holy Coat, pray for us!” In the year 1854, in the official “Gazette of Vienna,” it was announced that the tooth of St. Peter, given by Pius IX. to the Emperor of Austria, would be for four days exposed to the sight and homage of the faithful. Before the Reformation these relics were still more puerile and absurd, and calculated to provoke a smile or sneer as the humourist or the cynic predominated in the observer. At the Church of All Saints at Wittemberg, says D’Aubigné, were shown a fragment of Noah’s ark, some soot from the furnace of the Three Hebrew Children, and nineteen thousand other relics. At Schaffhausen was exhibited the breath of St. Joseph that Nicodemus had received in his glove. At Wurtemberg might be seen a feather plucked from the wing of the archangel Michael. (Hist. Ref., i, c. 3.) Heywood, in his interlude of “The Four P’s,” one of whom was a Pardoner, among his “relykes,” enumerates “Of All-hallowes (that is, All-Saints) the blessed jaw-bone,” the great toe of the Trinity, and others in which is a still stranger mixture of absurdity and blasphemy. (See “Inquiry into the Origin of the Reformation,” by the present writer, in Evangel. Repos., London, Eng., Feb., 1865.) Augustine says the dung-heap on which Job sat was still visited in his day! In St. Peter’s at Rome is exhibited a coin said to be one of the thirty pieces of gold (?) for which Judas betrayed his Master. They were made, according to the legend, by Terah, Abraham’s father, who was a famous artificer under King Nimrod. They were the price of the field of Ephron, and also the coins with which Joseph was bought, and with which his brethren purchased corn in Egypt. Despite the anachronism, Moses is said to have given them as a dowry to the Queen of Sheba, who presented them to Solomon. Nebuchadnezzar, it is alleged, carried them away, and the Magi brought them back as an offering to Christ. Finally Mary cast them into the treasury of the Temple, whence the priests gave them to Judas for his perfidy. (See Bingham, xiv, 4, § 18.)

The stone upon which the sovereigns of England are crowned is, according to a venerable tradition, that which formed Jacob’s pillow at Bethel.

In the cathedral of Genoa is deposited the wonderful cup known in history as the Holy Grail, which in times of yore was the object of so many knightly quests, and more recently the subject of so many stately epics. It was a vessel composed of a single emerald originally, (so runs the legend,) the marvellous cup wherewith Joseph divined—the cup put into the mouth of Benjamin’s sack. It was also the mystical cup of wisdom of Solomon, and, at length, that out of which Christ partook of the Last Supper. Hence its name, San Greal, that is, sanguis realis, the real blood. Joseph of Arimathea brought it to Britain, but it mysteriously disappeared in consequence of the laxness of the times. How it came to Genoa does not clearly appear. From the time of Wolfram von Eschenbach, a minnesinger of the thirteenth century, down to Tennyson and Lowell, this has been a favourite subject of poetry. See an article on the legend, by the writer, in Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 5, 1870.

[246] As recently as the year 1870 the alleged relics of a newly discovered St. Aureliana, a virgin martyr of the third century, who is supposed to have been a member of the family of the Roman emperor Aurelian, were transferred, with many religious ceremonies, from the Catacombs to Cincinnati, in the United States. In the Roman Catholic cathedral at Buffalo, N. Y., is a slab from the Catacombs with the inscription, DP · PEREGRINVS XII KAL · MARTIAS Q · VIXIT · M · —“Peregrinus, buried the twelfth day before the calends of March, who lived ... months.” He was, therefore, an infant; yet he is claimed to be a martyr, and a wax figure of an adult man with gaping wounds exhibits the alleged mode of his death. At its feet is placed what is said to be a phial of the martyr’s blood. In the same church are also what is described as “a large piece of the true cross on which trickled the sacred blood of Christ,” and “particles of the bones of Saints Peter and Paul and of many other holy martyrs.”

Maitland quotes an account from Mabillon of the reverence paid to a certain St. Viar, founded on the discovery of a stone bearing the letters S · VIAR. This was, however, found to be a fragment of the inscription PRAEFECTVS · VIARVM—“Curator of the Ways.” There is absolutely no warrant whatever for such assumptions as these. There is not in the whole range of Christian epigraphy a single contemporary inscription of unquestioned genuineness which can lead to the identification of the remains, name, and date of a primitive martyr.

[247] Le plupart des corps saints trouvés dans les Catacombes manquant de noms propre, ont reçu lorsqu’on les a exposés à la vénération publique, des noms de circonstance, qui n’ont qu’une signification vague; comme Felix, Fortunatus, Victor.—Année Liturgique à Rome, p. 151.

[248] Childe Harold. Boniface IV. is said to have previously transferred twenty-eight cartloads of relics from the Catacombs to this place. He thus, as we read in barbaric verse on his epitaph in the crypt of St. Peter’s, purified the shrine of all the demons, and dedicated it to all the saints:

  “—Templa ...
Delubra cunctorum fuerant quæ demonorum (sic)
Hic expurgavit sanctis cunctisque dicavit.”

[249]

Quasi spelunca di ladron son fatti,
Tal ch’à buon solamente uscio si chiude;
E tra le altari, e tra statue ignude,
Ogni impressa crudel par che si tratti.

Canzone xi.

[250] This ancient use of the Catacombs has not been forgotten in modern times. That intrepid pontiff, Pius VII., rather than yield to the demands of the first Napoleon, threatened to retire to those gloomy recesses which had sheltered so many of the primitive bishops.

[251] MacFarlane, p. 36.

[252] Ibid., 49, 50.

[253] “Fuit hic ad visitandum sanctum locum istum.”

[254] “Quidem Scoti hic fuerunt.”

[255] “Cum magnâ cometivâ.”

[256] “Unanimes antiquitatis amatores.”

The rediscovery of this subterranean city took place in the year 1578. Some labourers digging pozzolana in a vineyard on the Salarian Way came suddenly upon an ancient cemetery,[257] with its paintings, inscriptions, sarcophagi, and graves. The event produced a profound sensation in Rome. The city was amazed, says Baronius, who himself examined and described the newly-discovered Catacomb, at finding beneath her suburbs long-concealed Christian colonies.[258] These ancient shrines became again favourite places of devotion. Here, among others, St. Charles Borromeo and St. Philip Neri spent whole nights in prayer.

The earliest systematic explorers of the Catacombs were Alfonso Ciacconio, a Spanish priest, and Philip de Winghe and Jean l’Heureux,[259] two Flemish laymen. The voluminous MSS. and drawings of the two former, however, were never published, and they lie buried in those vast cemeteries of literature, the libraries of Rome, Naples, Brussels, and Paris. The valuable MS. of l’Heureux, the result of twenty years’ labour, although ready for publication, and even licensed for printing, in 1605, remained unprinted for two centuries and a half, when it was given to the public by Padre Garrucci under the appropriate title of Hagioglypta.[260] Such a lengthened period between licensing and publication is probably unparalleled in literary history.

To Antonio Bosio, a native of Malta and an advocate by profession, belongs the honour of first unveiling to the astonished gaze of Europe the wonders of this vast city of the dead. He has well been called the Columbus of this subterranean world. Inspired and sustained by a lofty enthusiasm, he spent six and thirty years groping among those gloomy corridors, deciphering the half-effaced inscriptions, and making drawings of the remains of early Christian art. So habituated did he become to this troglodytic existence that the Cimmerian gloom of the Catacombs was more grateful to his eyes than the light of day, which dazzled and almost blinded him. His labours were prodigious, and often both severe and perilous. He had frequently to force a passage with his own hands through the accumulated rubbish of centuries, and was constantly in danger, in the zeal of exploration, of being lost in the windings of the galleries, from which danger he had some narrow escapes. In his great work he describes himself as rushing along with breathless haste, the desire with which he burned adding wings to his weary feet. Again he is creeping serpent-wise through the low and crumbling passages, consoling himself for the difficulty and discomfort by the thought that this lowly attitude befitted the humble and reverent spirit in which a place consecrated by such memories ought to be approached. But he was rewarded for all his toil by the discovery of “pictures bright with the colours of yesterday, and characters still sharp and angular from the primeval graving tool.”

The elder D’Israeli has cited Bosio as an illustrious example of the enthusiasm of genius. “Taking with him a hermit’s meal for the week,” he remarks, “this new Pliny often descended into the bowels of the earth by lamp-light, clearing away the sand and ruins till some tomb broke forth or some inscription became legible, tracing the mouldering sculpture and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive ages of Christianity amidst the local impressions, the historian of the Christian Catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which were hidden beneath the earth.”[261]

The literary industry of this pioneer explorer was immense. He carefully examined all the Latin, Greek, and Oriental Fathers; all the ecclesiastical records, canons, and decrees of councils; the lives of the saints, the acts of the martyrs—everything, in fact, which could illustrate the history of the Catacombs and of the early church. The result of these labours is seen in the bulky MS. volumes, of many thousand pages, written with his own hand, which are still extant in the Oratorian Library at Rome. He was not permitted to see the publication of his great work, in which was disclosed to the world the wonderful terra incognita lying so long hidden beneath the busy life of the Eternal City, but died while writing the last chapter. It was too valuable a contribution to Christian archæology, however, to remain unpublished, and it was given to the world, under the appropriate title of “Subterranean Rome,”[262] in the year 1632, or five years after its author’s death.

This book contains an admirable topographical account of each cemetery which he had explored, taking in order the great consular roads leading from the city. Bosio’s attempted identification of the cemeteries and principal tombs and shrines described in the ancient ecclesiastical records is not always sufficiently accurate. He is rather uncritical and confused in his arrangement, although honest and, in matters of personal observation, exact. His work is of great value as giving an account of many crypts and monuments, and copies of many paintings which have perished through the decay or vandalism of the last two hundred years, or whose position has been forgotten. Among these is the Jewish Cemetery before mentioned, of which no evidence is extant save Bosio’s description. His name, written in his own peculiarly bold style, is met with in many of the newly opened galleries of the Catacombs, showing that he had previously explored those parts since filled with earth.

In 1651 a Latin translation of Bosio’s great work[263] was published by Padre Aringhi, a learned Oratorian priest, who added numerous important discoveries of his own. This book has been largely consulted in the preparation of these pages, collated, of course, with more recent and more accurate explorers.

The Catacombs were now frequently visited by travellers, who have left a record of their impressions in their published works. Among these were two distinguished Englishmen, John Evelyn and Bishop Burnet. The sturdy Protestantism of the latter, rejecting the unwarranted inferences drawn by the Roman archæologists from this testimony of the primitive ages, was betrayed into an unjust skepticism as to the character of that testimony. He does not scruple to affirm that “those burying places that are graced with the pompous title of Catacombs are no other than the puticoli mentioned by Festus Pompeius, where the meanest sort of the Roman slaves were laid,” and that they did not come into the possession of the Christians till the fourth or fifth century.[264] A more careful or more candid examination of those early evidences of Christianity would have shown him the error of this statement, in which he has been followed by Misson, a French Protestant, and by some other writers.

In 1681 Bertoli published an interesting work on the sepulchral lamps of the Catacombs[265] with numerous illustrations; but a more valuable contribution to the literature of this subject was a collection of Christian epitaphs[266] by Raphael Fabretti, for many years custodian of these sacred crypts, who prevented the wholesale destruction of the inscriptions by their careless removal. The learned Benedictine, Mabillon, personally examined the evidences of the Catacombs, and wrote a treatise concerning the reverence of the unknown saints.[267] This led to the publication, under the patronage of Clement XI., of a theological and apologetic, rather than scientific, treatise on the cemeteries of the holy martyrs and early Christians of Rome,[268] by Marc Antonio Boldetti, the successor, for thirty years, of Fabretti, as custode of the Catacombs. But in his case, as in that of several other Roman archæologists, theological zeal was allied with antiquarian enthusiasm, and sometimes impaired or destroyed the value of his researches.