THE CATACOMBS OF ROME:

EPITOMIZED FROM THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

THE Roman Catacombs consist, for the most part, of a subterranean labyrinth of passages, cut through the soft volcanic rock of the Campagna, so narrow as rarely to admit of two persons walking abreast easily, but here and there, on either side, opening into chambers of varying size and form. The walls of the passages, through their whole extent, are lined with narrow excavations, one above another, large enough to admit of a body being placed in each; and when they remain in their original condition, these excavations are closed in front by tiles, or by a slab of marble cemented to the rock, and in most cases bearing an inscription. Frequently there are several stories connected with each other by sloping ways.

There is no single circumstance, in relation to the catacombs, of more striking character than their vast extent. About twenty different catacombs are now known, and are more or less open, and a year is now hardly likely to pass without the discovery of a new one; for the original number of underground cemeteries, as ascertained from the early authorities, was nearly, if not quite, three times this number. It is but a very few years since the entrance to the famous catacomb of St. Callixtus, one of the most interesting of all, was found by the Cavaliere de Rossi; and it was only in the Spring of 1855, that the buried church and catacomb of St. Alexander, on the Nomentan Way, were brought to light. Earthquakes, floods, and neglect, have obliterated the openings of many of their ancient cemeteries—and the

hollow soil of the Campagna is full "of hidden graves, which men walk over without knowing where they are."

Each of the twelve great highways which ran from the gates of Rome was bordered on either side, at a short distance from the city wall, by the hidden Christian cemeteries. The only one of the catacombs, of which even a partial survey has been made, is that of St. Agnes, of a portion of which the Padre Marchi published a map in 1845. “It is calculated to contain about an eighth part of that cemetery. The greatest length of the portion thus measured is not more than seven hundred feet, and its greatest width about five hundred and fifty; nevertheless, if we measure all the streets that it contains, their united length scarcely falls short of two English miles. This would give fifteen or sixteen miles for all the streets in the cemetery of St. Agnes." Mr. Northcote, from whose work the preceding paragraph is taken, estimates the total length of the catacombs at nine hundred miles.

Taking the above account as a fair average of the size of the catacombs, for some are larger and some smaller, we must assign to the streets of graves already known a total length of about three hundred miles, with a probability that the unknown ones are at least of equal length. This conclusion appears startling when one thinks of the close arrangement of the lines of graves along the

walls of these passages. The height of the passages varies greatly, and with it the number of graves one above another; but the Padre Marchi, who is competent authority, estimates the average number at ten; that is, five on each side, for every seven feet, — which would give a population of the dead, for the three hundred miles, of not less than two millions and a quarter. No one who has visited the catacombs can believe, surprising as this

number may seem, that the Padre Marchi's calculation is an extravagant one as to the number of graves in a given space. The writer of this has counted eleven graves, one over another, on each side of the passage, and there is no space lost between the head of one grave and the foot of another. Everywhere there is economy of space, the economy of men working on a hard material, difficult to be removed, and laboring in a confined space, with the need of haste.

The question of the number of the dead in the catacombs opens the way to many other curious questions. The length of time that the catacombs were used as burial places; the probability of others, beside Christians being buried in them; the number of Christians at Rome during the first two centuries, in comparison with the total number of the inhabitants of the city; and how far the public profession of Christianity was attended with peril in ordinary times at Rome, previously to the conversion of Constantine, so as to require secret and hasty burial of the dead;- these are points demanding solution; but at present those only will be taken up that relate immediately to the catacombs.

There can be no certainty with regard to the period when the first Christian catacomb was begun at Rome, but it was probably within a few years after the first preaching of the Gospel there. The Christians would naturally desire to separate themselves in burial from the heathen, and to avoid everything having the semblance of Pagan rites. And what mode of sepulture so natural for them to adopt in the new and affecting circumstances of their lives, as that which was already familiar to them, in the account of the burial of their Lord? They knew that he had been "wrapped in linen, and laid in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and a stone had

been rolled unto the door of the sepulchre." would be buried as he was.

They

Moreover, there was a gen

eral and ardent expectation among them of the second coming of the Saviour; they believed it to be near at hand; and they believed also that then the dead would be called from their graves, clothed once more in their bodies, and that as Lazarus rose from the tomb, at the voice of his Master, so in that awful day when judgment should be passed upon the earth, their dead would rise at the call of the same beloved voice.

But there were, in all probability, other more direct, though not more powerful reasons, which led them to the choice of this mode of burial. We read that the Saviour was buried," as the manner of the Jews is to bury." The first converts in Rome, as St. Paul's Epistle shows, were in great part among the Jews. The Gentile and Jewish Christians made one community, and the Gentiles adopted the manners of the Jews in placing their dead, "wrapped in linen cloth, in new tombs hewn out of the rock."

Believing, then, the catacombs to have been begun within a few years after the first preaching of Christianity in Rome, there is abundant evidence to prove that their construction was continued during the time when the Church was persecuted, or simply tolerated, and that they were extended during a considerable time after Christianity became the established creed of the Empire. Indeed several catacombs, now known, were not begun. until some time after Constantine's conversion. They continued to be used as burial places certainly as late as the sixth century. This use seems to have been given up at the time of the frequent desolation of the land around the walls of Rome by the incursions of barbarians, and the custom, gradually discontinued, was never resumed. The catacombs then fell into neglect, were lost.

sight of, and their very existence was almost forgotten. But during the first five hundred years of our era, they were the burial places of a smaller or greater portion of the citizens of Rome, and as not a single church of that time remains, they are, and contain in themselves, the most important monuments that exist of the Christian history of Rome for all that long period. - Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I. p. 513.

HEART BURIAL.

FROM CHRONICLES OF THE TOMBS."

THE custom of burying the heart separately from the rest of the body prevailed in the sixteenth century, in the case of death at a distance from home. The body was deposited in a grave in the place where the person died, and the heart was sent home to the friends of the deceased. Thus, in 1569, Sir Robert Peckham, dying at Rome, his body was buried at St. Gregory in that city, and his heart at Durham Church in England.

Mr. Steele, an early writer, relates the following incident in connection with the burial. "As I came accidentally into the church, Sept. 25, 1711, a vault at the east end of the north isle being opened, into which I went, and found a small box of lead fashioned like a heart, but flat, being scarce two inches in thickness, with the lead sawdered, but the under part corroded; the heart of Sir Robert Peckham discovered itself, wrapped within several cloths, and still smelling strong of the embalmment." On the lid was his inscription.

At Wedmore is a monument "Sacred to the memory of Captain Thomas Hodges, of the County of Somerset,