Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/223

Rh Eucharist, which was the invariable accompaniment of funerals in the primitive church (Bingham, Orig. Ecd., bk. xxiii. c. lii. 12). The funeral banquet descended to the FIG. 11. Cubicutum in Cemetery of St Callistus. From De Rossi. Christian Church from pagan times, and was too often profaned by heathen licence. St Augustine, in several passages, inveighs against those who thus by &quot;gluttony FIG. 12. Cubiculum in the Cemetery of St Callistus. From De Rossi. and insobriety buried themselves over the buried,&quot; and &quot; made themselves drunk in the chapels of the martyrs, placing their excesses to the score of religious reverence for the dead&quot; (August, De Mor. Eccl. Cathol., c. 34; Contr. Faust, lib. xx. c. 21 ; Confess., lib, vi. c. 2). Some curious frescos representing these funeral feasts, found in the cubicula which were the scene of them, are reproduced by Bosio (pp. 355, 391) and others. A romantic air has been thrown over these burial chapels by the notion that they were the places of worship used by the Christians in times of persecution. This to a certain extent is doubtless true. Mr J. H. Parker, who has done more by his labori ous and self-sacrificing investigations than any one living, not excepting De Rossi himself, for the elucidation of the true history and archaeology of the Catacombs, writes : &quot; That during the time of persecution the bishops per formed the divine offices in the Catacombs is not only recorded, but many of the chapels fitted up for that purpose remain, especially one in the chapel of St Priscilla, where 211 the altar or stone coffin of a martyr remains, with a small platform behind it for the priest or bishop to stand and officiate over it according to the practice of the early church &quot; (Archaeology of Rome; The Catacombs, 3, p. 25). Mommsen also speaks of them unhesitatingly as &quot; places of devotion for the community,&quot; adding, &quot;this union of devotion with the interment, the development of the grave into the cemetery, of the cemetery into the church, is essentially Christian, one might perhaps say is Chris tianity&quot; (u.s., p. 166). But that they can have been so used to any large extent is rendered impossible by the limited dimensions of these apartments, none of which 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 their religion was made penal. The most remarkable of these is in the cemetery of St Agnes (see annexed plan, fig. 13). It consists of five FIG. 13. Plan of a euppos Frc i, Catacombs of St A:me3. rectangular compartments, three on one side of the cor ridor and two on the other, connected by a passage in tersecting the gallery at right angles. Two of the five compartments are supposed to have been assigned to male, and two to female worshippers, the fifth, at the extremity of the whole, being reserved for the altar and its minis ters. In the centre of the end-wall stands a stone chair (fig. 14), considered to have been the Episcopal cathedra, with a bench for the clergy on each side. There is no trace of an altar, which may, Padre Marchi thinks, have been portable. The avails of the compartments are occupied by arched sepulchral recesses, above and below which are tiers of ordi nary graves or loculi. The arrange ments are certainly such as indi cate a congregational purpose, but the extreme narrowness of the suite, and still more of the passage which connects the two divisions, FIG. 14. Bishop s Chair. Catacomb of St Agues. must have rendered it difficult for any but a small number to take any intelligent part in the sendees at the same time. Although the idea of the use of the Catacombs for religious worship may have been pressed too far, there can be no doubt that the sacred rites of the church were celebrated within them. We have already spoken of the Eucharistic celebrations of which the culicula were the scene ; and still existing baptisteries prove that the other sacrament was also administered there. The most remarkable of these baptis teries is that in the Catacomb of St Pontianus (fig. 1 5). Ten steps lead down to a basin of sufficient depth for immersion, supplied by a spring. The wall at the back exhibits a fresco of a jewelled cross, beneath an arched recess, above which is a fresco of the Baptism of our Lord. Some of the subter-