Part 2 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: A PROCESSION IN THE CATACOMB OF CALLISTUS
The nucleus of the great catacomb on the Via Appia was formed by the crypts of Lucina and the _hypogaeum_ of the family of the _Caecilii_, both pagan and Christian members of which had their burial places on the Appian Way. S. Cecilia was buried here. See pages 42, 45, 46, 29.]
The catacombs lie for the most part within a three mile radius of the wall of Aurelian. They number forty-five, and it is calculated that the pa.s.sages, galleries, and chambers of which they consist cover several hundred miles, forming a vast underground city--”subterranean Rome.” For the first 300 years, until ”the Peace of the Church,” this was the ordinary place of burial, certain catacombs being affiliated, from the third century, to the ecclesiastical regions in the city.
Even after the ”Peace” Christians were sometimes buried here, until the fifth century, after which the catacombs were visited as places of pilgrimage for another 400 years.
From the ninth century they fell into complete neglect; no one visited these sanctuaries of the sufferings, these monuments of the human affections and religious beliefs of the first Christians. Visitors heard that Rome was built upon terrible underground chasms, filled with snakes, some part of which was every now and then revealed to the terrified inhabitants. No one penetrated till the fifteenth century--the first pioneer belongs to the sixteenth--and it was not till the second half of the nineteenth that a new world was laid bare to the student by the excavations of De Rossi, who rediscovered the great cemetery of Callistus, containing the now famous ”papal crypt,”
and whose labours have resulted in restoring to us nearly twenty catacombs.
The terrible underground chasms filled with snakes were found to be galleries of tombs, crypts of all sizes, lighted by shafts, some with seats for catechists, some adapted as miniature basilicas, decorated with frescoes recording biblical scenes, New Testament parables and symbolical representations of New Testament events--(in which the ”apocrypha” is not distinguished from the ”canon,” and the history of Susanna and the Elders sustained the faith and comforted the courage of Christians by the side of the scene of Moses striking the rock or Christ feeding His disciples); eloquent with inscriptions in the epigraphy of the first four centuries, recorded in moments of simple human emotion, intended only for the dead and those who survived them sorrowing; and lastly, covered with _graffiti_, with prayers, names, acclamations, scratched on the walls of galleries leading to some favourite crypt by pilgrim visitors in later centuries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FLAVIAN BASILICA ON THE PALATINE
See pages 31, 35, 45, and fly-leaf, page 252.]
In this hidden and quiet place of the dead there is recorded a revolution parallel to a volcanic upheaval of nature. Here we have a permanent record of the meeting of cla.s.sical Rome with Judaea and Christianity; here the graceful art of Pompeii meets the imagery of the Hebrew bible; here the Flavii met the Jews of the Dispersion; here as in a t.i.tanic workshop, Rome, taking its religion from the Jew, moulded the faith which the Chosen People had discarded into the greatest religious organisation on earth--Catholic Christianity.
The two arch-cemeteries are those of Callistus on the Via Appia and Priscilla on the Salaria. They are arch-cemeteries because their origin and the part they played in the early years of Roman Christianity gave them a pre-eminent importance, and having been bestowed upon the Church by their owners they became the official catacombs of the Christian community. Each bears in its bosom the record of the first Roman converts; each is rich in frescoes and inscriptions; each bears testimony to the fact that from the beginning the Roman Christians counted among them many of patrician and senatorial rank; we meet with the names of the _Aurelii_, _Caecilii_, _Maximi Caecilii_, of _Praetextatus Caecilia.n.u.s_ and _Pomponius Grecinus_, and of _Cornelius_, the first bishop to belong to a Roman _gens_, in the catacomb of Callistus; and with those of the _Prisci_, _Ulpii_, and _Acilii Glabriones_ in that of Priscilla. Priscilla, with her son the Senator Pudens, is the reputed hostess of Peter on his visit to Rome, and in the catacomb which bears her name there occurs repeatedly the Apostle's name--unknown in cla.s.sical nomenclature--both in its Greek and Latin forms, _Petros_, _Petrus_. It is a region of this catacomb which preserves the tradition of the _Fons sancti Petri_, ”the well or font of S. Peter,” ”the cemetery where Peter baptized” or ”where Peter first sat,” still unconsciously recorded in the Roman feast of ”the Chair of S. Peter” on January 18. Here too was buried the philosopher Justin, martyred under Aurelius in A.D. 165, who lived in the house of Pudens, and here, when Justin was describing the rite itself in his Apology to the emperors, was frescoed the earliest representation of the solemn moment of the breaking of bread at the Eucharist. The mystical number of the guests, seven, the fish on the table, archaic symbol of Christ, the ”seven baskets full” in allusion to the miracle of the loaves, and the fact that the _agape_ was already dissociated from the Eucharist in the time of Justin, mark this out as a typical example of that symbolical treatment of real events which is characteristic of early Christian art. The celebrant stands at one corner of the crescent-shaped table breaking the bread; five men and women sit at the table, the only other standing figure being that of a woman wearing the Jewish married woman's bonnet, filling, apparently, the office of _vidua_ or woman-elder. The catacomb of Callistus--an agglomeration of separate _hypogaea_, which originated in the _crypts of Lucina_ and the cemetery of those _Caecilii_ who were among the earliest Roman families to embrace Christianity--is no less interesting.
The unique interest of these monuments lies in the fact that they are the incorruptible record of the sentiments, affections, and beliefs of the first Christians. In these frescoes and inscriptions no forgeries or interpolations could creep, no P1 and P2, no ”Elohist”
or ”Jahvist” could confuse the issues and mystify the interpretation.
The untouched story appeals to us in mute eloquence.
To what side does the testimony of the Roman catacombs lean? The critical method in history has destroyed the foundations of historical Protestantism: has it laid bare the foundations of historical Catholicism? The people who frequented the catacombs did not feel or think or believe like the men who reformed Christianity in the sixteenth century, but it is as true to say that they did not think or believe like the men of the Catholic reaction. The catacombs record a period when Christian life and Christian discipline still seemed more important than Christian dogma, when this last was not yet fixed, when it was still true that ”what can be prayed is the rule of what may be believed”--_lex orandi lex credendi_; and here in the place of the dead ”what could be prayed” became a veritable norm of what Christians were to formulate as precious dogma later.
In the first place then, the frescoes and inscriptions frequently bring before us the notions of rebirth by baptism, and of eternal life by partic.i.p.ation in Christ through the mystical commerce of the Eucharist--the Johannine conception; new birth and new life are the keynote ideas in this place of the dead. Sacraments, conceived as material channels conveying grace, already form an integral part of the Christian consciousness; but the a.s.sumption that ”the seven sacraments” are to be found in the catacombs shows as little knowledge of the history of the Church for the first twelve centuries as of the habits of belief of the Christians of the first, second, and third.
If there had ever been an age of the Church before controversy, we might say that the catacombs recorded it. But there never was such an age: what can be found here, however, are the spontaneous Judaic-Gentile beliefs of Christians who learnt their faith through terrible and comforting experiences almost as much as through the first apostolic preaching or the later ministrations of those visitors between Church and Church called in the New Testament ”apostles and prophets.” The religion of the catacombs was partly formed in the living; it is the faith, formulated, gauged, and tested by the faithful. Hence there is not only spontaneousness, but boldness, liberty of spirit, the absence of all fear of being misunderstood, misconstrued. They did not think as we do, and centuries were to elapse before the minimisers or the maximisers would torture what they said and did with meanings they would not bear.
Of these bold spontaneous doctrines none is more conspicuous than that of the intercourse between all the members of Christ, ”those who have gone before us with the sign of faith” and those ”who wait till their change comes, till this corruptible puts on incorruption.” A Christian called upon his dead to pray for him in the realms of light, he called upon G.o.d to give to his beloved a place of light and refreshment, he besought the confessors gone to their reward to pray for both them and him. So strong was this belief in a holy and indissoluble union between the members of the one Church and the one Body of Christ, that at every celebration of the liturgy the whole body of the faithful were understood to be present--either really or mystically; and thus the Commemoration of the Living in the ma.s.s speaks of those (present) who offer and those (absent) for whom they offer the sacrifice of praise, as all equally ”standing round about.” And as they offered and prayed for those who were with them in the same town, so they offered and prayed for those who were already with Christ--_in bono in Christo_. The three commemorations of the Roman Canon, the _Memento Domine ... omnium circ.u.mstantium_ of the living, the _Communicantes et memoriam venerantes_ of the martyrs, and the _Memento ... qui nos praecesserunt_ of the dead, may be thought of as liturgical features crystallised in the catacombs.
It is easy to see too how the funeral celebrations of the liturgy--given this initial idea of intercommunion and intercession among all Christians living and dead--extended the idea of eucharistic sacrifice. How easily the oblation of Christ--the Christian's one offering--became the means of intercessory prayer for all men and all occasions, and gave rise to the requiem ma.s.s, the ma.s.s for some special grace, the ma.s.s of thanksgiving, the ma.s.s in commemoration of a saint.
Bold treatment of sacred things belongs naturally to an age when the _sentiments_ of the faith, aspiration and hope, outrun dogma--before unfaithfulness in doctrine urged upon the early Church and its leaders the necessity for stricter definition, or unfaithfulness in life had made it easier to subst.i.tute a hard and fast creed for ”the weightier matters of the law.” The symbolism and inscriptions of the catacombs testify how freely such elements were at work there. Take as an instance the fresco representing Christ on a throne giving a book to Peter, with the legend, _Dominus legem dat_, ”the Lord gives the law.”
In other examples of this subject Peter is replaced by some simple but faithful disciple--”the Lord gives the law to Alexander--to Valerius.”
The allusion is to the ”tradition of the Gospel” in baptism; it is not hierarchical.
The catacombs influenced the Roman Church in another way. There are none but martyrs' names among the liturgic commemorations of the confessors of the faith (whom we now call ”saints”); and these names loudly proclaimed in the _Canon_--in the solemn portion--of the eucharistic services which were held at their graves, not only on the day of deposition but on many other stated days besides, were the nucleus of that long line of ”_canonised_” saints which figures in the modern calendar. When, after the ”Peace,” churches began to cover the city, the very grave of the confessor became the nucleus of the Christian edifice--that confession or sunk tomb which is the central point of the Roman basilica. And as the liturgy had been celebrated on the stone slab which closed the grave so when churches were built the altar was placed over the confessor's tomb: ”I saw under the altar the souls of those that had been slain for the word of G.o.d, and for the testimony which they held.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: LIBRARY OF THE HOUSE OF DOMITIAN ON THE PALATINE
Painted on a stormy day. The sombre scene of the ruined Library in the Palace of the Flavian Emperors suggests the ruin of cla.s.sical learning which followed on the introduction of Christianity. The mother of Domitian's two nephews, whom he had intended to designate as his heirs, was martyred as a Christian, and their cousin of the same name--Flavia Domitilla--founded the catacomb of the Flavian House.]
Thus subterranean Rome prepared, as in the hidden working of a mine, not only many affirmations of the faith which was to a.s.sert itself in the light and replace the religion of cla.s.sical Rome, but also the sanctuary of those great basilicas which were to spread over the surface of the city as soon as the Christians, in no real but nevertheless in a highly suggestive sense, ”came up from the catacombs.” The catacombs are the link between pagan Rome ”drunk with the blood of the saints” and the Christian Rome which arose in the imperial city from the ashes of her martyrs. The pagan city on the seven hills as truly sunk into the grave with the bodies of the Roman martyrs as Christian Rome eventually took possession of the same _urbs septicollis_ by carrying her dead into it.
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