Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/576

 CEMETERY

514

CEMETERY

presence at Rome and their religious authority. It was also, according to De Rossi, the burial-place of Sts. Marcus and Marcellianus. and the family sepulchre of St. Damasus, whose mother (Laurentia) and sister (Irene) were buried there, likewise himself. The .site was discovered by Wilpert in 1902.

V. Via Appia. — 14. Cemetery of St. Callistus, one of the oldest underground burial-places of the Roman Christians. As a public Christian cemetery it dates from the beginning of the third century. The original nucleus from which it developed was the famous crypt of Lucina, a private Christian burial-place from the end of the first century, very probably the family sepulchre of the Csecilii and other closely related Roman families. From there grew, during the third century, the vast system of galleries and cubicula that then took and has since kept the name of Cceme- terium Callisti; early in the third century it was known as The Cemetery (t6 Koifirir^piov) par excel- lence, and owed its new name, not to the burial there of Pope Callistus (for he was buried in the cemetery of Calepodius), but to his zeal in developing and per- fecting the original area?, or private Roman sepul- chral plots, that in his time had come to be the first landed property ever possessed by the Catholic Church. The chief interest of this cemetery lies in the so-called Papal Crypt, in whose large loculi were buried the popes from St. Zephyrinus (d. 218) to St. Eutychianus (d. 283). Of the fourteen epitaphs it once contained there remain but five, more or less fragmentary: Anterus, Fabian, Lucius, Eutychianus, Urban? (Marucchi, II, 138-144). In the fourth cen- tury Pope St. Damasus ornamented richly this ven- erable chapel, and put up there two epitaphs in honour of the numerous martyrs buried in St. Callis- tus, among them several of his predecessors. One of these epitaphs was found in situ, but broken in minute fragments. Its restoration by De Rossi is a masterly specimen of his ingenious epigraphic erudition; the closing lines are now celebrated:

Hie fateor Damasus volui mea condere membra Sed cineres timui sanctos vexare piorum (I, Damasus, wished to be buried here, but I feared to offend the sacred remains of these pious ones). For a view of the (near-by) countless graffiti or pious scratchings of medieval pilgrims (names, ejaculations) see Marucchi, "Elements d'archeol. chret.", II, 140- 41. Popes St. Marcellinus and St. Marcellus (d. 304; d. 309) were buried in the cemetery of Priscilla (see be- low); on the other hand Popes St. Eusebius (d. 309) and St. Melchiades (d. 314) were buried in the cem- etery of Callistus, but elsewhere (see below). The neighbouring very ancient crypt of St. Cecilia offers an interesting Byzantine (sixth-century) fresco of the saint, and in the niche whence her body was trans- ferred (817) to the church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, a recent copy of Stefano Maderna's famous statue of the saint as she was found when her tomb was opened in 1599. In the same cemetery, and close by, sepa- rated only by a short gallery, is a series of six chambers known as the "Sacramental Chapels" because of the valuable frescoes that exhibit the belief of the early Roman Christians in the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, and arc at the same time precious jewels of early Christian art. Pope St. Eusebius, assaid, was buried in this cemetery, in the gallery called after him the crypt of St. Eusebius, andin which oncereposed quite close to him another martyr pope, St. Cains id. 296). In the sepulchral chapel of the former may still be seen the epitaph put up by Damasus, and from which monument alone we learn of an unhappy schism

that then devastated the Roman Church. (In cither side are sculptured perpendicularly the words: "Furius Dionysius Philocalus, Damasis pappse cul-

tor atque amator". i.e. the name of the pope's famous

calligrapher, also his friend and admirer. At some distance lies the crypt of Lucina, in which was once

buried Pope St. Cornelius. Lucina is identified bj De Rossi with the famous Pomponia Gnecina of Taci- tus (Annates, XIII, 32); the crypt, therefore, is oi Apostolic origin, an opinion confirmed by the classical character of its symbolic frescoes and the simplicity of its epitaphs; its Eucharistic frescoes are very an- cient and quite important from a doctrinal standpoint. The body of St. Cornelius, martyred at Centumeellae (Civitavecchia) was brought hither and long remained an object of pious veneration, until in the ninth cen- tury it was transferred to Santa Maria in Trastevere. His epitaph (the only Latin papal epitaph of the third century) is still in place: "Cornelius Martyr Ep [iscopus]", i. e. Cornelius, martyr and bishop. 15. Cemetery of St. Sebastian. This cemetery, from two to three miles out of Rome, was known through the Middle Ages as Ccemeterium ad Catacumbas, whence the term catacomb, a word seemingly of uncer- tain origin (Northcote and Brownlow, I, 262-63). The chief importance of this cemetery now lies in the fact that here were deposited (258) for a time the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul, taken respectively from their Vatican and Ostian repositories under somewhat obscure circumstances; they were restored in 260. The chapel in which they were thus tempo- rarily placed (see Liber Pontif., ed. Duchesne, Introd., I, civ-cvii, and i, 212) beneath the church of St. Sebastian, is still accessible. Close by arose in time the cemetery known as " ad Catacumbas " or " in Cata- cumbas", a local indication that was eventually ex- tended to all similar Christian cemeteries. St. Philip Neri loved to visit the crypts of St. Sebastian; an in- scription in one of them recalls his veneration of these holy places. From the fourth century on, an over- ground cemetery was formed around the Basilica Apostolorum that was then built and which included the Platonia or aforesaid mortuary chapel of the Apos- tles. The rich mausolea of this cemetery added to the dignity of the underground burial-place that was, like the others of its kind, no longer used for burials after 410. The body of St. Sebastian, buried there "apud vestigia apostolorum'', is still in the church, but in a modern chapel. It was only after the eighth century that the original fourth-century name of Basilica Apostolorum gave way to that of St. Sebas- tian. 16. Cemetery of Proetertatus, dates from the second century, when the body of St. Januarius. eldest son of St. Felicitas, was buried there (c. 162) The chapel of that saint exhibits a fine Dama- san epitaph and elegant symbolical frescoes repre- senting the seasons, with birds, genii, etc. Among the famous martyrs buried in tins cemetery were Felicissimus and Agapitus, deacons of Pope Sixt us 1 1 and colleagues of St. Laurence, put to death under Valerian in 2.58, also St. Urbanus, a bishop and con- fessor mentioned in the Acts of St. Cecilia. Certain portions of this cemetery, hitherto inaccessible by reason of the proprietor's unwillingness, are said to offer traces of great antiquity, and perhaps contain historic chapels or tombs of much importance.

VI. Via Latina.— The cemeteries on this road, like those on the Aurelian Way, have never been regu- larly explored, and their galleries are at present quite choked or dilapidated. Marucchi (II, 229) distin- guishes three groups of ancient Christian monuments that appear in the afore-mentioned "Itineraria"; the church of Sts. Gordian and Epimachus; the basilica of Tertullinus. and the church "I St. Eugenia with the cemetery of Apronianus, also a la rue basilica dedicated by St .' Leo 1 to St. Stephen Protomartyr, discovered in is;>7. in the heart of an ancient Roman

villa, near the remarkable pagan tombs of the \alerii

and Pancratii.

VII. Via Labicana, outside the Porta Maggiore. — 17. Cemetery of St. Caxtuliis. a martyr under Diocle- tian, and according to the Acts of St. Sebastian the husband of Irene, the pious matron to whose house