Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/567

 CEMETERY

505

CEMETERY

upon one small property probably led to the early development of a system of narrow galleries tunnelled through the tufa, with horizontal niches (Joculi) scooped out in the walls on both sides. At the same time it would be a mistake to suppose that Christians throughout the Roman Empire were compelled to I to great secrecy regarding their interments. On the contrary, the well-understood principle of law that a burial place was a. loins rcli<)iopus and conse- quently inviolable seems at normal times to have guaranteed to the Christians a large measure of immunity from interference. The jurisdiction which the pagan College of Pontiffs possessed over all places of sepulture no doubt caused difficulties, especially at those epochs when active persecution broke out, but the general tendency of the Roman magistrates was to be tolerant in religious matters. Moreover it is probable that for many years after the Gospel was first preached in Rome the Christians were looked upon merely as a particular sect of Jews, and the Jews, as we may learn from Horace and other pre- Christian writers, had long held a recognized and assured position which excited no alarm.

Hence from Apostolic times down to the persecu- tion of Domitian, the faithful were interred upon private burial allotments, situated like the pagan tombs along the border of the great roads and of course ovitside the walls of the city. Moreover, as Lanciani says, "these early tombs whether above or below ground, display a sense of perfect security and an absence of all fear or solicitude" (Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 309). The vestibule and crypt of the Flavians, members of Domitian's own family, afford a conspicuous example of this. The ground, bordering on the Via Ardeatina, belonged to Flavia Domitilla, the niece of Domitian. Here a catacomb was excavated, a portion of which seems to have been set aside for the interment of the family. The en- trance can plainly be seen from the road, and the vesti- bule and adjoining chambers still remain in which, according to Roman custom, anniversary feasts took place in honour of the dead. In this case the 6 would have been the agapce, or love feasts of the ( Ihristians, probably preceded or followed by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; but the custom of honouring the third, ninth (afterwards seventh), thirtieth, and anniversary day of the decease seems to have been borrowed from the religious observances of Greece and Rome and to date from the earliest times. In contrast to these original private tombs the portion of the catacomb excavated for the use of the Christian community at large consisted of a vast network of galleries dug at more than one level. For a while. like many other underground Christian cemeteries, this catacomb seems to have been known by t he name of the donor, Domitilla, but later it was called after the holy martyrs Nereus and Achilleus, who were subse- quently buried there. Further, toward- the close of the fourth century a basilica in honour of these two martyr- was erected upon the spot. Their tomb was near the entrance and consequently it was not dis- turbed, but the ground was dug away and the church built immediately over the tomb, much below tin level of the surrounding soil. On the other hand, through devotion to these saints interments multi- plied and numerous fresh galleries for the purpose were excavated in the immediate vicinity of the church. All this is typical of what took place in many other instances. The early burial places, which were certainly in private ownership and confined to isolated plots of ground (area), seem in the third cen- tury to have often become property held by the Christian community in common, Other adjoining allotments being bought up and the whole area honeycombed with galleries at many different levels. We learn from the "Philosophumena" that Pope Zephyrinus appointed Callistus (c. 198) superintend-

ent of the cemeteries. So again we have distinct record of the restoration of the cemeteries to the Christians in 259 after the Valerian persecution. (Euseb., Hist. Eccles., VII, \iii.) According to De Rossi the freedom which the Church at normal times enjoyed in their possession was due to the fact that the Christians banded themselves together to form a collegium fv.ru raticium, or Initial society, such associa- tions, of which the members paid a certain annual contribution, Vicing expressly recognized by law. (See Roma Sotterranea, I, nil sq.) For this view- there is very good evidence, and though objections have been raised by such authorities as Monseigneur Duchesne and Victor Schultze, the theory has by no means been abandoned by later scholars. (See Du- chesne, Histoire ancienne de l'eglise, I, 384; Maruichi, Elements d'archeologie, I, 117-124.)

When martyrs were thus buried, crowds of their fellow-Christians desired to be buried near them; moreover, some sort of open space forming a small chamber or chapel was generally opened out where Mass could be celebrated upon or beside the tomb. Still, this was only an occasional use. The cata- combs, owing to difficulties of light and ventilation, were not ordinarily used as places of Christian wor- ship except at times of fierce persecution. After Constantine's edict of toleration (312), when peace was restored to the Church, basilicas were .sometimes built over portions of the catacombs, especially over the known burial place of some favourite martyrs. At the same time, during tlte fourth century the eager- ness to be interred in these subterranean galleries gradually waned, though the zeal of Pope Damasus in honouring the tombs of the martyrs seems to have re- vived the fashion for a few years at a later date. After 410, when Rome was sacked by Alaric, no more burials took place in the Roman catacombs, but the earlier spread of Christianity is well illustrated by the excavations made. Any accurate estimate is of course impossible, but Michael de Rossi calculated that in the zone of territory lying within three miles of the walls, more than five hundred miles of subter- ranean galleries had been tunnelled and that the number of Christians buried therein must have ex- ceeded 1 ,700,000. The use of open-air cemeteries in place of catacombs had probably begun in Rome before Constantine. Many have been identified in modern times (De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, vol. III. bk. Ill), though it is not always easy to determine exactly the period at which they started. In other parts of the world it is quite certain that innumerable open- air Christian cemeteries were in existence long before the close of the period of persecutions. We may cite as characteristic the discoveries of Dr. W. M. Ramsay in Phrygia, where many Christian graves clearly be- long to the second century, as also those of Northern Africa, of which we hear already in Tertullian. and in particular those of Salona in Dalmatia (second to sixth century; sec Leclercq, Manuel d'archeologie, I,

327-329). this last is particularly interesting be- cause the surviving remains illustrate o i learly the extreme antiquity of the practice of interring the dead in the near neighbourhood of the oratories in which the Christians assembled to otter the Holy Sacrifice. It is probably to this custom that we may trace the origin of the lateral chapels which have be- come so notable a feature ol ail our greater churches. No doubt the tendency to surround the church with graves was long kept in check by the Roman law- forbidding the .lead to he interred within the walls .if

cities; but this law at an early date began to be disre- garded and after the pontificate of John III (560 575 it would seem that burials at Rome generally took place within the walls.

As a rule the Christians, though their cemeteries were separate, accommodated themselves in things permissible to the burial usages of the peoples among