EPITAPHS AND INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN THE CATACOMBS
In this section we will give at some length what these (same) catacombs tell us of the thoughts of the early Christian congregations on some of the more important problems dealing with death and with the life beyond the grave, and incidentally with the early Christian view on the question of the communion of saints.
The scanty remains of the literature of this early period, as we have already hinted, valuable though they are, partake rather of the nature of scholars’ researches and conclusions. What we find painted and graved on the million graves of this vast subterranean God’s Acre tells us in simple popular language exactly what the Christian folk, who lived and worked and suffered in the two centuries which followed the martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, thought and felt on these momentous points.
The graves in this silent city, perhaps numbering some three, four, or even five millions, belong to all ages, to every rank and order. There are crypts containing the remains of members of the Imperial family, of men and women of senatorial and of the most exalted rank among the proud patrician houses. There are graves of merchants and traders, of the very rich, of the very poor; there are innumerable graves of freedmen, of the vast class too of the sad-eyed slave.
Here, too, are not a few tombs of men and women who gave up all, even dear life, for the Name’s sake, and who, because they professed unswerving faith in the divine Son of God, through pain and agony passed to their rest in the Paradise of God.
Some of the ruined graves were once strikingly adorned; very many of them being made of costly marbles and beautifully decorated, while around these sepulchral memorials of the great and wealthy are found numberless graves roughly though lovingly fashioned.
Of the epitaphs and inscriptions carved and painted on these graves, some are exquisitely worked, evidently by professional artists. Many more, however, were rudely and hurriedly painted or scratched on the plaster or stone tablet which closed in the shelf in the wall in which the dead was laid.
The inscriptions are for the most part in Latin, but in the first and in much of the second century the words are often in Greek. In some instances the two languages are curiously mingled, the epitaph beginning in one tongue and ending in another: occasionally the Latin words are written in Greek characters.
Various corrupt ways of spelling are not unusual, the ordinary rules of grammar are not unfrequently broken. Indeed, as is observable in some of the Latin poetry of the early Christian centuries where the rules of classical prosody are ignored, so here in the prose used by the children of the people a similar disregard of language and spelling is observable. It was the beginning of the popular patois which eventually crystallized into modern Italian.
There is a curious and interesting difference between the epitaphs of the catacombs written when Christianity was a proscribed religion, when those who embraced it were liable to more or less bitter persecution, and the epitaphs of the latter years of the fourth as of the following centuries. Men wrote in those first three Christian centuries in the dark and lonely corridors and chambers where their loved dead were laid, not for any human eye to read, save their own when they visited that sacred God’s Acre,—just a name—or an emblem of their dearest hopes, a little picture of the Good Shepherd and His sheep, a word or two of sure hope and joyous confidence in the eternal future—and nothing more. Very short, very simple, very touching are these early Christian epitaphs. The great and noble set out no pompous statement of the rank and position of their dead: we read little of the piety and goodness of the many saintly ones whose remains rested in those long silent corridors.
But in the cemeteries (mostly above ground) of the last years of the fourth and in the following centuries, when the Church enjoyed peace, and when a different spirit brooded over the works and days of Christians, we begin to meet with those foolish tasteless phrases which as time went on became more and more in fashion, telling of the dead one’s rank and position, of the goodness and holiness and devotion of the deceased.
Dean Stanley quotes an epitaph in the cloisters of his loved Abbey of Westminster, which he says reminded him of the catacomb inscriptions in a way which none other of the pompous and elaborate epitaphs in that noble English home of the great dead had done. It is of a little girl, and runs thus:
“Jane Lister · deare childe.”
The first and most prominent feature in the life of the Christians of the first three centuries which the inscriptions of the catacombs make clear to us was their intense conviction of the reality of the future life.
The epitaphs speak of the dead as though they were still living. They talk to the dead. They felt that there was a communion still existing with them—between them and the survivors—a communion carried on under new conditions, and finding its consolation in incessant mutual prayer.
They were assured that the soul of the departed was united with the saints—that it was with God, and in the enjoyment of peace, happiness, rest; so often the little epitaph breathes a humble and loving prayer that they, the survivors, might soon be admitted to a participation in these blessings. Sometimes the survivors invoked the help of the prayers of the departed, since they knew that the soul of the departed lived in God and with God; they thought that the prayers of a soul in the presence of God would be a help—must be a help—to those whose time of trial was not yet ended.
Dr. Northcote well summarizes all this: “In a word, they realized most intensely that all the faithful, whether in the body or out of the body, were still living members of one mystical body, the body of Christ; that they formed one great family, knit together in the closest bonds of love; and that this love, stronger than death, had its proper work and happiness in prayer—prayer of the survivors for those who had gone before, prayer of the blessed for those who were left behind.” (Epitaphs of the Catacombs, chap. v.)
This deeply rooted belief in the life beyond the grave; this intense conviction that the division between this life and the life beyond the grave does not sever the claim of affection and love, never interrupt—no, not for an hour—the interchange of loving offices.
We will quote a very few of the older epitaphs painted or graved upon the marble or stone tablet or on the thick plaster-work which closed in the shelf in which the dead were deposited.
On some of these tablets we read simply the name of the dead; on others the name is accompanied with a Christian emblem, such as an anchor, the mystic fish, the ἰχθύς—each letter of which refers closely to the Saviour: (ι) Jesus, (χ) Christ, (θ) God, (ύ) the Son, (ς) the Saviour; the palm branch, the token of the victory over death; the dove, symbol of a Christian soul, occasionally of the Holy Ghost; this dove or bird was a favourite emblem of the soul, the idea being that the soul resembled a bird of passage dwelling for a season here and then flying away beyond the seas to a brighter, serener home. Very often we come upon the figure of the Good Shepherd, sometimes with a lamb in His arms.
De Rossi tells us how he had studied over fifteen thousand of these epitaphs, and that every year about five hundred more were deciphered. We will copy a very few of these:
“To dear Cyriacus—sweetest son—Mayest thou live in the Holy Spirit.”
“Matronata—who lived a year and 32 days—Pray for thy parents.”
“Bolosa—may God refresh thee—In Christ.”
“Sweet Faustina—mayest thou live in God.”
“Peace to thy soul, Oxycholis.”
“Agape, thou shalt live for ever.”
“Filumena—thy spirit is in peace.”
“Baccis, sweet soul in the peace of the Lord, a virgin—Her father to his sweetest daughter.”
“Victorina is in Peace and in Christ.”
“Amerinus to his dearest wife Rufina; may God refresh thy spirit.”
“His parents made this for their good and sweetest son Felix.... May Christ receive thee in peace.”
“Porcella sleeps here in peace.”
“Severa; mayest thou live in God.”
“Farewell, my dear one, in peace with the Holy souls; Farewell in Christ.”
Never a word of sorrow on these graves of the dead—never a word of repining—never a regret that they have been taken away. Only just a few words telling of their sure hope for their dear ones, and a prayer to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit to keep them in their loving guardianship.
SEPULCHRAL INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE ROMAN CATACOMBS
We must dwell a little on the question of the testimony which these epitaphs of the first age of Christianity bear on the practice of the living asking for the help of those who had passed within the veil. There is no doubt but that at a later period and all through the Middle Ages this was the practice, and it has led to results which true theologians generally deplore. The question here is—How far was this the practice of the Church of the first days?
Now there is no doubt whatever but that the mediæval Church from very early times taught that the prayers of great saints possessed a peculiar efficacy, and in the uneducated mind this shaded into something like a belief that these saints possessed some actual power of themselves to interfere in and to influence human affairs. We shall presently quote some of S. Augustine’s views here.
In the case, however, of the early Christians whose thoughts are reflected in their great City of the Dead, the case was very different. They believed so intensely in the continuance of life after death that they maintained their communion with the departed by an interchange of prayers.
S. Cyprian, a great theologian and a cautious teacher, believed that the blessed dead were anxious for those whom they had left behind. Now, granting that this was the common feeling of Christians in respect to their dear dead ones whom they believed were dwelling close to God and His Christ, we can well conceive how natural it was for them to ask them for their prayers—for were they not dwelling close to God and His Christ to Whom their prayers must be addressed? Thus in the Church of the first two hundred and fifty years this communion, largely made up of the constant interchange of prayer between the living and the dead, rested on this family and friendship bond, and on no other. The formal invocation of saint and martyr as of some specially powerful soul belongs to a later date. It was not the teaching, certainly not the general teaching, of the Church of the catacombs.
But even in the catacombs it appears that very soon the custom crept in of crowding round the grave of some famous martyr, as though some special virtue belonged to the spot where the saint’s remains had been deposited; and the little chamber where the hallowed remains of a hero or heroine of the faith lay, was soon filled with graves—graves excavated utterly without any regard to the paintings or decorations which adorned the chamber and its original tomb, paintings and decorations which were ruthlessly cut away to make room for new loculi where the dead might rest close to the remains of the saint or martyr.[140]
The point, however, which especially concerns us here is the testimony, repeated many thousand times, which the catacombs bear to the perfect confidence of the early Christians in the continuance of life beyond the grave. To the faithful dead—to the believers in Jesus Christ—there was no break caused by death, for them life went on as it had done aforetime; conscious life went on after death, only under different and happier conditions.
To appreciate the striking change in the conception of death—the most important event in the life of man on earth—it will be interesting to glance at the testimony supplied in the same period by pagan epitaphs. A very brief examination will suffice to show what an impassable gulf separated the Christian from the pagan conception.
What at once catches our attention in any study of pagan epitaphs is the complete want of any hope beyond the grave. All the elaborate pagan pictures of the future life popularized in Greek circles by the Homeric poems, and in Latin society by the exquisite verses of Vergil, when brought face to face with the stern reality of the tomb are simply blotted out—are treated as purely fables.
Death, in these pagan epitaphs, the true expressions of popular pagan belief in the first three centuries of the Christian era, is ever viewed as an enemy; is described as an everlasting sleep, and the grave is represented as the last eternal home.
It has been well said that this melancholy idea was conveyed in the quiet sadness of that one word “Vale,” or in the more impassioned repetition of it, “Vale, Vale dulcissima—semper in perpetuo vale.” Farewell, farewell, sweetest one—for ever farewell. Now and again a favourite pagan formula was summed up in two words—“fuisti; vale.”
Some of the pagan epitaphs are playfully sarcastic, as: “Ah, weary traveller, however far you may walk, you must come here at last.” Some even make a mock at death, bidding others enjoy themselves while they live. “Live for the present hour, drink and play, for you are sure of nothing, only what you eat and drink is really yours.” “Fortune makes many promises but keeps none of them; live then for the present hour, since nothing else is really yours.” Some epitaphs are bitter: “I lived as I like, but I don’t know why I died.” “Here it is, so it is, nothing else could be.”
Here an inscription on a young woman’s grave mourns her early death: “I lift up my hands against the God who took me away at the age of twenty, though I had done no harm.” A father thus grieves for the loss of his child: “The fates judged ill when they robbed me of you.” Father and mother often write themselves down as most wretched, most unhappy (“miserrimi-infelicissimi”). Sometimes they use these sad and cheerless terms of their dead children. Mothers now and again describe themselves as “left to tears and groans,” or as “condemned to perpetual darkness and daily sad lamentation.” Parents lament their dead child thus: “Our hope was in our boy; now all is ashes and mourning.” Frequently these mourn for their dead children as follows: “They have died without having deserved it.” Another parent bewails the child’s death in these terms: “Neither talent, nor amiability, nor loving winning ways, have been of any avail to prolong the child’s days; in spite of all this, he has become the foul prey of the cruel Pluto.”
On very many indeed of pagan tombs undoubtedly there is evidence of much love and deep affection for the departed, but there is no gleam of hope of reunion or of happiness in another life; indeed, as a rule, there is no other life hinted at. If any venture to look beyond the grave—which is rarely the case—all beyond the grave is dark and sad and melancholy.
The following words put into the mouth of a dead girl well voice this general feeling: “Here I lie, unhappy girl, in darkness.” “Traveller, curse me not as you pass,” moans another inscription, “for I am in darkness and cannot answer.”
The wonderful change in popular feeling as shown in the Christian epitaphs when contrasted with the pagan epitaphs of the same period is indeed startling! What we read in the Roman City of the Dead tells us something of the spirit which dwelt in these companies of believers in the Name. This something is sufficient to account for the new life led by so many, for the superhuman courage displayed by the army of martyrs and confessors, for the ultimate victory, some two hundred years later, of the religion of Jesus.
We who live in what is perhaps the evening of the world’s story—we mark the glowing words of the New Testament writings, the fervid exhortations and noble resolves of men like Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp—the saintly teachings of great theologians like Irenæus, Tertullian, and Cyprian.
And as we read, we feel that these writers were evidently intensely persuaded of the truth of such sublime and soul-stirring assertions; we know, too, that these writers and teachers lived the beautiful life they taught,—that they died, many of them, with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts.
But what of the People—the common folk, the ordinary everyday citizen; the slave and the little trader of the thousand cities of the Empire, the soldier of Rome, and the patrician of Rome—what did they think of all this?—these new strange words, these sunlit hopes, these glorious golden promises of the great teachers of Christianity?
The catacombs give us the answer. In quite late years, slowly, painfully, the antiquary and the scholar have opened out the secrets of the long-hidden City of the Dead which lies all round immemorial Rome, and, thanks to their labours, from words and pictures graven and painted on a million graves, comes to us, across the many centuries, the answer with no uncertain voice.
Yes, the People—the slave and the trader, the soldier and the noble—believed the words of the New Testament writings, and accepted the teaching of the early Christian teachers, and believing, struggled to lead the life the Master loved. None for a moment would dare to doubt the mighty power of this strange weird testimony of a million tombs; it is indeed a voice from a thousand graves.
Then, too, what may be termed the terminology, that is the words and expressions used in these vast cemeteries for all that is connected with death and burial, teaches the same truth—that for a believer in the Name, all the gloom and dread and horror usually associated with death are absent in these short epitaphs.
The catacomb inscriptions and pictures, besides their overwhelming testimony to the belief of the early Christians in the continuance of life after death, in the immortality of the soul, a testimony expressed in a countless number of ways, bear their witness to some of the more important dogmas of the Christian faith.
The extreme brevity of the inscriptions and the necessarily small space allotted to the pictures and emblems graven and painted on the sepulchral slabs, for the most part very small, of course preclude anything like any complete enunciation even of the principal Articles of the Christian faith: still what we find on these slabs tells us with no uncertain voice in whom these early congregations believed, and to whom these fervent prayers were addressed. Each of the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity are named in many of these epitaphs.
We find many instances of the formula of the ancient creeds, “In God and in Christ.” This distinct enumeration of the two first Persons of the Blessed Trinity bears witness to the Catholic faith of the composers of the epitaphs.
Nor is the Third Person of the Trinity absent from these epitaphs. We read on some for instance: “In the Holy Spirit of God”; “Mayest thou live in the Holy Spirit.” Even the mention of all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity has been found engraved on these sepulchral tablets.
What, however, is most striking in these early records of the belief of the Christian congregation is the testimony they bear—a testimony repeated an innumerable number of times—to the primitive belief in the supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ. We find again and again such formulas as “In the name of Christ”; “In God the Lord Christ”; “In God Christ”; “The great God Christ” (“Deo Magno Christo”). In the earliest epitaphs the most common symbol is the fish, painted, carved, or written at the beginning or end of the epitaph, not as part of the sentence, but as a complete formula in itself. Now this was a declaration of faith in “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”; the letters which form the Greek word Ichthus, as we have explained, being the initials[141] of the words of this formula.
There is no doubt that from the earliest times the fish was an acknowledged symbol of our Lord. It became at once a sacred “tessera” or sign—quite unintelligible to the pagan and official world, but to the believer a most precious symbol, containing with striking brevity and yet with striking clearness, a complete précis, so to speak, of the creed, a profession of facts as far as related to the Saviour.
The catacombs are full of Christ. It was to Him that the Christians of the age of persecution ever turned: it was on Him they rested—in gladness and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; in the days of danger—and these were sadly numerous in the first two centuries and a half—and in the hour of death. It was from His words they drew their strength. In the consciousness of His ever-presence in their midst, they suffered gladly for His sake. With His name on their lips they died fearlessly, joyfully passing into the Valley of the veiled Shadow. On the tablet of marble or plaster which closed up the narrow shelf in the catacomb corridor where their poor remains were reverently, lovingly laid, the dear name of Jesus was often painted or carved.
The catacombs are full of Christ. We have spoken several times of the paintings on the walls and ceilings of the corridors and chambers. There is great variety of these, the Old and New Testament supplying the majority of subjects. But by far the favourite subject of representation—certainly the leading type of Christian art in the first days—was the figure of the “Good Shepherd.” It does not only appear in the City of the Dead. It was often graved upon chalices used in the holy Eucharist. It was traced in gold upon glass, it was moulded upon lamps, it was carved upon rings. But it is to the catacombs that we must go to find it in its most varied and pathetic forms—now painted in fresco upon the walls of the corridors and chambers where the dead lie so thickly; now roughly, now more carefully carved on countless tablets; now sculptured upon the more costly sarcophagi.
Sometimes the Shepherd is represented with one sheep, at times with several; some listening to His voice—some turning listlessly away. We come upon it in a thousand places on the tombs themselves—in the little chapels or oratories leading out of the corridors where the more distinguished among the dead sleep. It is the favourite symbol of the Christian life and faith.
This constantly recurring figure of the Good Shepherd with His sheep in the catacombs throws much light on this deeply interesting and at the same time important question—What were the thoughts of that early Church in Rome respecting Christ and His teaching?
We must remember they lived very near the times when the greatest figure in history lived on earth, and talked with men. We shall do well to bear in mind that the first generation of these Roman Christians were taught by Peter and by Paul, and that through most of the second century men lived whose fathers must have seen and listened to these great servants of the Divine Master, certainly to their immediate disciples.
The form in which they loved best to think of this Almighty Saviour was as “the great Shepherd of the sheep”—the Shepherd of the First Epistle of S. Peter—the Shepherd of S. Luke and of S. John.[142]
A great and eloquent writer[143] in one of his most suggestive works does not hesitate to speak of what he terms the popular religion of the first Christians as the religion of “the Good Shepherd.” He says they looked on that figure and it conveyed to them all they wanted. And then he adds sorrowfully that “as ages passed on ‘the image of the Good Shepherd’ faded away from the mind of the Christian world, and other emblems of the Christian faith took the place of the once dearly loved figure.”
“Instead of the good and gracious Pastor, there came the omnipotent Judge, or the Crucified Sufferer, or the Infant in His mother’s arms, or the Master in His parting Supper.”
All these later presentments of the Divine Saviour emphatically are beautiful and true, but they are not what the first Christians especially dwelt on. These loved to think of Him first and chiefest as “the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep.”
Among the many pictured figures of the “Good Shepherd” in the catacomb sepulchral galleries, the Shepherd is occasionally represented with a kid or a goat in place of a sheep in His loving arms: “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold, one shepherd.” The catacomb theology, as expounded by the catacomb teachers, went beyond even these gracious words, when it represented the creature on the shoulders of the Master, as not a lamb but a kid—not a sheep but a goat. These Christians of the first day were persuaded that their Master’s mission on earth was “not to repel but to include, not to condemn but to save; they believed in His tender compassion and boundless charity.”[144]
This sweet and loving view provoked the indignant remonstrance of the stern Tertullian (circa A.D. 200). On this harsh protest of the great African Father Tertullian, Matthew Arnold founds one of his most touching poems:
“He saves the sheep—the goats He doth not save:
So spake the fierce Tertullian.
But she sighed:
The infant Church, of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave,
And then she smil’d, and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused, but heart inspired true,
She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew,
And on His shoulder not a lamb but kid.”
AN APPENDIX TO THE EPITAPHS, ETC., OF THE CATACOMBS
The wish to be buried in the immediate vicinity of a saint or confessor, though perhaps especially marked in the subterranean cemeteries of Rome, was not peculiar to the Christians of the very early centuries. Many other instances could be quoted, from the days of the old prophet of Bethel who wished his bones to lie beside the bones of the man of God who came out of Judah (1 Kings xiii. 31) down to King John, who is said to have requested that he might be interred at Worcester directly between the bodies of SS. Oswald and Wulfstan.
S. Augustine’s De curâ pro mortuis gerendâ is a peculiarly interesting treatise. The great bishop discusses at some length this question, and his words throw considerable sidelight upon the growing practice of the invocation of saints.
The treatise, written about A.D. 421, was a reply to a question addressed to him by S. Paulinus of Nola, a very saintly and devoted man, but at the same time, in common with not a few holy men of his time, superstitious and often sadly mistaken in his exaggerated devotion to the noble army of martyrs who had played so well the part of pioneers in the recent days of bitter persecution.
S. Paulinus had been asked by a certain widow to allow her son to be buried in the church of the martyr S. Felix at Nola. He said he had granted her prayer, believing that this longing desire of faithful souls that their dear ones should be laid close to the remains of a saint was based not merely on an illusion but on some real need of the soul. But S. Paulinus evidently was uncertain here, so he asks the great teacher Augustine—Did it really help one who was dead to be buried near a saint?
S. Augustine’s reply on the whole was cautious: he remarked that if a man had lived righteously, to be buried close to a saint could not possibly be of any use to his soul; again, if his life had been evil, it would be equally useless.
Everything connected with the burial of the dead, Augustine concluded, has really more connexion with the survivors than with the dead. He explains this connexion thus: “When we think of the spot where our dear one lies, and that spot is in the immediate neighbourhood of the grave of a saint, we think at once of the saint in question, and we ask for his or her prayers for our dear dead one.” But if such prayers be not asked for, Augustine sees no advantage in such a neighbourhood. (Adjuvat defuncti spiritum, non mortui corporis locus, sed ex loci memoria vivus affectus.)
The famous North African theologian then proceeds to discuss the question: “How do martyrs help men?” He says: that they do help them is certain; then, are these saints, through the virtue of the power they possess, present in many places, or are they always dwelling in the home allotted to them—far away from mortal dwellings, but at the same time praying for those who ask for their intercession? And he adds that, God hearing their prayers, through the ministry of angels, grants at His good pleasure to those who have sought the prayers of the saints, the consolations these saints ask for them.
This seems to be the substance of S. Augustine’s reply to S. Paulinus of Nola, but he carefully guards his words by adding: “All this,” namely, the extent of the power of saints who are dead, “is too lofty a question