William Robert Brownlow, Ormonde Maddock Dalton and Edmund Venables

“ CATACOMB, a subterranean excavation for the interment of the dead or burial-vault. In this sense the word “catacomb” has gained universal acceptance, and has found a place in most modern languages. The original term, catacumbae, however, had no connexion with sepulture, but was simply the name of a particular locality in the environs of Rome. ”

“ The galleries are not the way of access to the cemeteries, but are themselves the cemeteries, the dead being buried in long low horizontal recesses, excavated in the vertical walls of the passages, rising tier above tier like the berths in a ship, from a few inches above the floor to the springing of the arched ceiling, to the number of five, six or even sometimes twelve ranges. ”

“ Both the roof and the walls are almost universally coated with stucco and covered with fresco paintings—in the earlier works merely decorative, in the later always symbolical or historical. Each side of the cubiculum, except that of the entrance, usually contains a recessed tomb, either a table-tomb or an arcosolium. That facing the entrance was the place of greatest honour, where in many instances the remains of a martyr were deposited, whose tomb, according to primitive usage, served as an altar for the celebration of the eucharist. ”

“ The construction of the tombs commonly keeps up the same analogy between the cities of the living and those of the dead. Their plan is for the most part that of a house, with a door of entrance and passage leading into a central chamber or atrium, with others of smaller size opening from it, each having a stone-hewn bench or triclinium on three of its sides, on which the dead, frequently a pair of corpses side by side, were laid as if at a banquet. ”

“ The most common are the history of Jonah as a type of the Resurrection, the Fall, Noah receiving the dove with the olive branch, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Moses taking off his shoes, David with the sling, Daniel in the lions’ den, and the Three Children in the fiery furnace. The mode of representation is always conventional, the treatment of the subject no less than its choice being dictated by an authority to which the artist was compelled to bow. ”

“ Poverty took the place of wealth, . . . the traditions of the Christian tomb-architects sank into utter insignificance, and the expanse of the wasted Campagna now offered room enough to bury the few bodies, without having to descend as once far down below the surface of the earth.” The earliest account of the catacombs, that of St Jerome narrating his visits to them when a schoolboy at Rome, about A.D. 354, shows that interment in them was even then rare if it had not been altogether discontinued ”

“ That such vast excavations should have been made without attracting attention, and that such an immense number of corpses could have been carried to burial in perfect secrecy is utterly impossible. Nor was there any reason why secrecy should have been desired. The decent burial of the dead was a matter especially provided for by the Roman laws. No particular mode was prescribed. Interment was just as legal as cremation, and had, in fact, been universally practised by the Romans until the later days of the republic. [4] The bodies of the Scipios and Nasos were buried in still existing catacombs ”

“ According to modern physicians it is impossible to live many days in the caves of pozzolana in which many of the catacombs are excavated.” Equally exaggerated are the statements as to the linear and lateral extent of the catacombs, and their intercommunication with one another. Without resorting to this exaggeration, Mommsen can speak with perfect truth of the “enormous space occupied by the burial vaults of Christian Rome, not surpassed even by the cloacae or sewers of Republican Rome,” but the data are too vague to warrant any attempt to define their dimensions. ”

“ The modifications required to strengthen the crumbling walls to support the roof and to facilitate the excavation of loculi, involved so much labour that, as a rule, after a few attempts, the idea of utilizing an old quarry for burial purposes was abandoned.
Another equally erroneous idea was that these vast burial-places of the early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their pagan neighbours, and were constructed not only without the permission of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance. Nothing can be farther from the truth. ”

“ But the natural desire to be buried near one’s relatives caused new tombs to be cut in the walls, above and around and behind the original tombs, the walls being thus completely honeycombed with loculi, sometimes as many as seventy, utterly regardless of the paintings originally depicted on the walls. Another motive for multiplying the number of graves operated when the cubiculum contained the remains of any noted saint or martyr. The Christian antiquary has cause continually to lament the destruction of works of art due to this craving. ”

“ The granular tufa is useless for either purpose, containing too much earth to be employed in making mortar, and being far too soft to be used as stone for building. Yet it is in this stratum, and in this alone, that the catacombs are constructed; their engineers avoiding with equal care the solid stone of the tufa litoide and the friable pozzolana, and selecting the stratum of medium hardness, which enabled them to form the vertical walls of their galleries, and to excavate the loculi and cubicula without severe labour and also without fear of their falling in. ”

“ In 1902, in that part of the Via Ardeatina which passes between the cemeteries of Calixtus and Domitilla, was discovered a crypt with frescoes and the sanctuary of a martyr: it is thought that this, rather than a neighbouring crypt brought to light in 1897, may prove to be the sepulchral crypt of SS. Marcus and Marcellianus. In a cubiculum leading out of a gallery in the vicinity there was also discovered an interesting impression in plaster of an inscription of the mother of Pope Damasus, beginning:
hic damasi mater posvit lavren [tia membra] . ”

“ These galleries are not arranged on any definite plan, but, as will be seen from the plan (fig. 1) , they intersect one another at different angles, producing an intricate network which it is almost impossible to reduce to any system. They generally run in straight lines, and as a rule preserve the same level. The different storeys of galleries lie one below the other (fig. 2) to the number of four or five (in one part of the cemetery of St Calixtus they reach seven storeys) , and communicate with one another by stairs cut out of the living rock. ”

“ The rock-hewn tombs of Etruria scarcely come under the category of catacombs, in the usual sense, being rather independent family burial-places, grouped together in a necropolis. They are, however, far too remarkable to be altogether passed over. These sepulchres are usually hollowed out of the face of low cliffs on the Rock-tombs of Etruria.side of a hill. They often rise tier above tier, and are sometimes all on the same level “facing each other as in streets, and branching off laterally into smaller lanes or alleys” ”

“ Of this nature is the very remarkable cemetery at Poggio Gaiella, near Chiusi, the ancient Clusium, of a portion of the principal storey of which the woodcut (fig. 25) is a plan. The most remarkable of these sepulchral chambers is a large circular hall about 25 ft. in diameter, supported by a huge cylindrical pillar hewn from the rock. Opening out of this and the other chambers, and connecting them together, are a series of low winding passages or cuniculi, just large enough for a man to creep through on all fours. ”

“ The graves, or loculi, as they are commonly designated, were, in the Christian cemeteries, with only a few exceptions (Padre Marchi produces some from the cemetery of St Ciriaca, Monum. primitiv. tav. xiv. xliii. xliv.) , parallel with the length of the gallery. In the pagan cemeteries, on the other hand, the sepulchral recess as a rule entered the rock like an oven at right angles to the corridor, the body being introduced endways. The plan adopted by the Christians saved labour, economized space, and consulted reverence in the deposition of the corpse. ”

“ The red matter proves to be the remains of wine, not of blood; and the conclusion of the ablest archaeologists is that the vessels were placed where they are found, after the eucharistic celebration or agape on the day of the funeral or its anniversary, and contained remains of the consecrated elements as a kind of religious charm. ”

“ The question of his Christianity seems settled by the discovery of the sepulchre of these Christian Acilii. From this crypt a staircase led up to the basilica in which Pope Silvester was buried, and the whole plan of which was laid bare by De Rossi. The tomb of St Silvester could be identified, and that of Pope Siricius “at his feet,” as the pilgrim noted (Bullett., 1890, pp. 106-119) . ”

“ Subterranean cemeteries of the general character of those described are very frequent in all southern and eastern countries. A vast necropolis in the environs of Saida, the ancient Sidon, is described in Renan’s Mission en Phénicie, and figured in Thobois’s plates. It consists of a series of apartments approached Sidon.by staircases, the sides pierced with sepulchral recesses running lengthwise into the rock. ”

“ In the upright walls of these galleries loculi were cut as needed to receive the dead. When these first four galleries were full others were mined on the same level at right angles to them, thus gradually converting the whole area into a net-work of corridors. If a family vault was required, or a burial chapel for a martyr or person of distinction, a small square room was excavated by the side of the gallery and communicating with it. ”

“ Light and air are introduced by means of vertical shafts (luminaria) running up to the outer air, and often serving for several storeys. The drawing (fig. 3) from Northcote gives a very correct idea of these galleries, with the tiers of graves pierced in the walls. The doorways which are seen interrupting the lines of graves are those of the family sepulchral chambers, or cubicula, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter. ”

“ They chiefly occur in the earlier cemeteries, and the costliness of their construction confined their use to the wealthiest classes—e.g. in the cemetery of St Domitilla, herself a member of the imperial house. Another unfrequent mode of interment was in graves like those of modern times, dug in the floor of the galleries (Marchi, u.s., tav. xxi. xxvi.) . Table-tombs and arcosolia are by no means rare in the corridors of the catacombs, but they belong more generally to the cubicula, or family vaults, of which we now proceed to speak. ”

“ The ceilings have the representation of beams and rafters cut in the rock. In some instances arm-chairs, carved out of the living rock, stand between the doors of the chambers, and the walls above are decorated with the semblance of suspended shields. The walls are often covered with paintings in a very simple archaic style, in red and black. ”

“ But that they can have been so used to any large extent is rendered impossible by their limited dimensions, as none of them could hold more than fifty or sixty persons. In some of the catacombs, however, there are larger halls and connected suites of chapels which may possibly have been constructed for the purpose of congregational worship during the dark periods when the public exercise of the Christian religion was made penal. The most remarkable of these is in the cemetery of Sant’ Agnese (see plan, fig. 13) . ”

“ This extension of the term to Christian burial-vaults generally dates from the 9th century, and obtained gradual currency through the Christian world. The original designation of these places of sepulture is crypta or coemeterium.
The largest number of Christian catacombs belong to the 3rd and the early part of the 4th centuries. The custom of subterranean interment gradually died out, and entirely ceased with the sack of Rome by Alaric, A.D. 410. “The end of the catacomb graves,” writes Mommsen (Cont. Rev., May 1871) , “is intimately connected with the end of the powerful city itself. ”