118 
The Roman Catacombs. 
By We Oprine, #1... Fh Gs: 
(Read before the Society, March 9th, 1894.) 
[CONDENSED. | 
HE most important of the Catacombs is that now called 
S. Callixtus: it is situated on the Via Appia. We can 
descend by a succession of staircases to five different levels. 
This gives some idea of the vastness of the work done under- 
ground. 
There is no doubt but that at first the Christians were 
allowed to bury their dead as they liked, and they never 
would have been interfered with if they had confined their 
operations to burials only, but it was their use of the cata- 
combs as places for assembly and religious worship that led 
to their being suppressed. The first certain record is in the 
middle of the third century, when Valerian published a decree 
whereby he sought to close against the Christians even this 
subterranean retreat. He forbade them ‘either to hold 
assemblies or to enter those places which they call their 
cemeteries.” This order was, of course, disobeyed, and 
Pope Sixtus II with some of his deacons was surprised and 
martyred in the catacomb of Pretextatus. 
The persecution of Diocletian ended in 306, but it was not 
until 311 that the catacombs were restored to their natural 
owners—the Bishops of Rome. 
In that year Pope Melchiades sent letters from the Emperor 
Maxentius to the Prefect of the City that he might recover 
legal possession of all ‘ecclesiastical places” of which the 
Christians had been deprived, and amongst these places the 
cemeteries were the most precious. Cemeteries now began to 
be made above ground, and for the next 100 years both places 
