Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/222

Rh 210 CATACOMBS 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. Fio 8. Table-Tomb. These cubicula are small apartments, seldom more than 12 feet square, usually rectangular, though sometimes circular or polygonal, opening out of the main corridors. They are not unfrequently ranged regularly along the sides of the galleries, the doors of entrance, as may be seen in a previous illustration (fig. 3), following one another in as orderly succession as the bedchamber doors in the passage of a modern house. The roof is sometimes flat, but is more usually coved, and sometimes rises into a cupola. 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 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. This was sometimes, as in the Papal crypt of St Callistus (fig. 10), protected from irreverence by lattice work (transennce) of marble. The cubiculum was originally designed for the reception of a very limited number of dead. But the natural desire to be buried near one s rela- Fia. 9. Arcosoiia. From Bosio. tives caused new tombs to be cut in the walls, above and around and behind the original tombs, the walls being thus completely honey-combed with loculi, sometimes as uiany 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 desire of the old prophet of Bethel that his bones should be laid beside the bones of the man of God that came from Judah, is only the expression of an instinctive though unreasoning feeling, connecting greater FIG. 10. Restoration of the Papal Crypt, Cemetery of St Callistus. From I)e Rossi. personal safety with a resting-place close to the blessed dead, which awoke very early and acted very powerfully in the Christian Church. The Christian antiquary has cause continually to lament the destruction of works of art due to this craving. One of the most perfect examples of early Christian pictorial decoration, the so-called &quot; Dispute with the Doctors,&quot; in the Catacomb of Callistus, the &quot; antique style of beauty &quot; of which is noticed by Kugler, has thus suffered irreparable mutilation, the whole of the lower part of the^ncturs having been destroyed by the excavation of a fresh grave-recess (Bofctari, vol. ii. tav. 15). The plates of De Rossi, Ferret, and, indeed, all illustrations of the Catacombs, exhibit frequent examples of the same destructive superstition. The woodcuts (figs. 11 and 12), taken from De Rossi s great work, representing two of the cubicula in the cemetery of St Callistus, show the general arrangement of the loculi and the character of the frescos which ornament the walls and roof. These paintings, it will be seen, are simply decorative, of the same style as the wall-paintings of the baths, and those of Pompeii. Each cubiculum was usually the burying-place of some one family, all the members of which were interred in it, just as in the chantry-chapels connected with mediaeval churches. In them was celebrated the funeral-feast on the day of burial and on its anniversary, as well as the