SUBTERRANEAN ROME. 



651 



made. Whereas Padre March! avoided such 

 places as bore evidence of having been tam- 

 pered with in later times, and was always on 

 the lookout for chambers and galleries in their 

 primitive condition as when first hewn out of 

 rock, De Rossi judged that where the crypts 

 had been changed into sanctuaries, luminaria 

 opened out for light and air, galleries widened, 

 and any other structural arrangements made 

 for the accommodation of numbers, then he 

 stood upon a site of the utmost value. Pope 

 Damasus, too, must not be overlooked for the 

 large share he has borne in handing down a 

 true history of the contents of the catacombs 

 in his custom of renewing old inscriptions, and 

 placing others to mark important sites. His 

 assistance, rendered 1,500 years ago, has been 

 invaluable. The beginning of the fifth century, 

 when Rome was sacked by the Goths, ended 

 the history of the catacombs as cemeteries ; 

 and for the next 400 years they were used only 

 as shrines and places of pilgrimage, except in 

 rare instances, when they have been chosen as 

 places of refuge, as when Boniface I. concealed 

 himself for a time in the cemetery of St. Feli- 

 citas. The popes during these centuries kept 

 the tombs of the martyrs beautified and re- 

 paired, as we may see from entries in the Liber 

 Pontificalis. Even after Totila had desolated 

 Rome these were restored, and the services 

 renewed, John III. ordering that oblations, 

 cruets, and candles, should be sent from the 

 Lateran Palace for the ceremonies every Sun- 

 day. But after the siege by the Lombards, 

 under Astolphus, when some of the graves 

 were broken open and the bodies carried off, 

 Paul I. resolved to remove " the bodies of the 

 martyrs, and confessors, and virgins of Christ " 

 into Rome, and place them in a church he built 

 to receive them, dedicated to Sts. Stephen and 

 Sylvester, on the site of the house in which 

 he was born and bred, and which he had then 

 inherited. On this occasion more than a hun- 

 dred saints were removed, and their names 

 duly chronicled in a list still extant. The suc- 

 ceeding popes endeavored, however, to rehabil- 

 itate the ancient cemeteries with their ancient 

 glories, but without much popular support; 

 for, in consequence of the crypts of the martyrs 

 being destroyed and abandoned, Paschal I. 

 translated 2,300 bodies in July, 817; and this 

 new feature in the history of early Christian 

 relics remained in great favor for some time, 

 the succeeding popes not only translating more, 

 but retranslating those already deposited in 

 Rome. Thus rifled, ruined, and abandoned, 

 the cemeteries that were not near monasteries 

 were one by one forgotten. In those that 

 were so fortunately situated, lamps were kept 

 burning as late as the eleventh and twelfth 

 centuries. A pilgrim of the eleventh century 

 noticed the cemetery of St. Valentine, on the 

 Via Flaminia, and another writer mentioned 

 it again in the twelfth century. In the four- 

 teenth century, a statistical account of Roman 

 churches mentions only three that were at- 



tached to cemeteries; and by the fifteenth 

 there was only one cemetery that was left 

 open and frequented by pilgrims, which was 

 that beneath the Church of St. Sebastian, 

 called, in old documents, Ccemeterium ad Cata- 

 cumbas. This title, applying only to the part 

 of the Campagna in which the church was 

 built, just as the circus built in the same neigh- 

 borhood by Maxentius was called the Circus 

 ad Catacumlus, has since been indiscriminately 

 given to all subterranean cemeteries over the 

 globe. Except as belonging to that of St. Se- 

 bastian, the term is not mentioned in old times, 

 the names in use being Jiypogaum, ccemeterium, 

 martyrium, or confessio. 



A set of terms, new. yet very old, has to be 

 mastered by those who would understand any 

 thing of these ancient burial-places. The little 

 chambers opening out of the narrow passages 

 are known as cubicula. An ordinary grave 

 that is, a flat oblong compartment large enough 

 to receive a body, hollowed in the sides of the 

 passages, generally in tiers one above another 

 is called a locus or loculus. "When a grave 

 was made large enough to contain two, three, 

 or four persons, it was called ~bisomum, triso- 

 mumj or quadrisomum, accordingly. There 

 are to be seen in many of the cubicula graves 

 of a more ornamental type. These consist of 

 a semicircular arch recessed in the wall, below 

 the straight base line of which is sunk the 

 space for the body ; they are called arcosolia, 

 solium being the term in use among the pagans 

 for their funeral-urns. Sometimes the recess 

 is found square-headed instead of semicircular : 

 when De Rossi, for the sake of distinction, calls 

 it sepolcro a mensa. Burial was called depositio, 

 and those who dug the graves, fossores, in old 

 writings. 



Prominence is given to the cemetery of St. 

 Calixtus. This, it will be remembered, is that 

 which De Rossi discovered on the Via Appia, 

 after having seen only a fragment of a marble 

 slab, bearing part of the letter R and the syl- 

 lables NELIUS MARTYR, in the cellar of a 

 vineyard, 1849. He induced Pope Pius IX. 

 to purchase this and the adjoining vineyard, 

 and in the course of subsequent excavations 

 found the other portion of this slab, with the 

 missing piece of the letter R and the letters 

 C O upon it, which showed him that the con- 

 jecture he formed, that the tomb of Cornelius, 

 pope and martyr in the middle of the third 

 century, was before him, was correct. This 

 tomb he knew from the old writings was close 

 to the cemetery of St. Calixtus, in which there 

 was a chapel more famous than most others, 

 as the bodies of the popes in the third and 

 fourth centuries were deposited in it, to which 

 adjoined another chapel in which St. Cecilia 

 was laid. The author of the earliest itinerary 

 we have mentioned, specially notices this 

 cemetery as containing " an innumerable mul- 

 titude of martyrs; first, Sixtus, pope and mar- 

 tyr ; Dionysius, pope and martyr ; Julian, pope 

 and martyr; Flavianus, martyr; St. Cecilia, 



