Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
wrought-out quarries nor gravel pits (Arenariæ), but were set in order from the first as cemeteries. A few Arenariæ may indeed have been used as catacombs, but then the sides with the burial niches consist of regularly built walls. The Roman Catacombs in the tufa stone form labyrinthine, twisting, steep galleries only 3 or 4 feet broad, with rectangular corners caused by countless intersections. Their perpendicular sides varied greatly in height and in them the burial niches, Loculi, were hewn out one above the other, and on the reception of the body were built up or hermetically sealed with a stone slab bearing an inscription and a Christian symbol. The wealthy laid their dead in costly marble sarcophagi or stone coffins ornamented with bas-reliefs. The walls too and the low-arched roofs were adorned with symbols and pictures of scripture scenes. From the principal passages many side paths branched off to so-called burial chambers, Cubicula, which were furnished with shafts opening up to the surface and affording air and light, Luminaria. In many of these chambers, sometimes even in the passages, instead of simple Loculi we meet with the so-called Arcosolium as the more usual form; one or more coffin-shaped grooves hewn out in the rocky wall are covered with an altar-shaped marble plate, and over this plate, Mensa, is a semicircular niche hewn out spreading over it in its whole extent. These chambers are often held in reverence as “catacomb churches,” but they are so small in size that they could only accommodate a very limited number, such as might gather perhaps at the commemoration of a martyr or the members of a single family. And even where two or three such chambers adjoin one another, connected together by doors and having a common lighting shaft, accommodating at furthest about twenty people, they could not be regarded as meeting-places for public congregations properly so called.—Where the deposit of tufa stone was sufficiently large, there were several stories (Piani), as many as four or five connected by stairs, laid out one above the other in galleries and chambers. According to de Rossi’s103 moderate calculation there have been opened altogether up to this time so many passages in the catacombs that if they were put in a line they would form a street of 120 geographical miles. Their oldest inscriptions or epitaphs date from the first years of the second century. After the destruction of Rome by the hordes of Alaric in A.D. 410, the custom of burying in them almost entirely ceased. Thereafter they were used only as places of pilgrimage and spots where martyr’s relics were worshipped. From this time the most of the so-called Graffiti, i.e. scribblings of visitors on the walls, consisting of pious wishes and prayers, had their origin. The marauding expedition of the Longobard Aistulf into Roman territory in A.D. 756, in which even the catacombs were stripped of their treasures, led Pope Paul I. to transfer the relics of all notable martyrs to their Roman churches and cloisters. Then pilgrimages to the catacombs ceased, their entrances got blocked up, and the few which in later times were still accessible, were only sought out by a few novelty hunting strangers. Thus the whole affair was nigh forgotten until in A.D. 1578 a new and lively interest was awakened by the chance opening up again of one of those closed passages. Ant. Bosio from A.D. 1593 till his death in A.D. 1629, often at the risk of his life, devoted all his time and energies to their exploration. But great as his discoveries were, they have been completely outdone by the researches of the Roman nobleman, Giov. Battista de Rossi, who, working unweariedly at his task since A.D. 1849 till the present time, is recognised as the great master of the subject, although even his investigations are often too much dominated by Roman Catholic prejudices and by undue regard for traditional views.104
§ 38.2. The Antiquities of the Catacombs.—The custom widely spread in ancient times and originating in piety or superstition of placing in the tombs the utensils that had been used by the deceased during life was continued, as the contents of many burial niches show among the early Christians. Children’s toys were placed beside them in the grave, and the clothes, jewels, ornaments, amulets, etc., of grown up people. Quite a special interest attaches to the so-called Blood Vases, Phiolæ rubricatæ, which have been found in or near many of these niches, i.e. crystal, rarely earthenware, vessels with Christian symbols figured on a red ground. The Congregation of rites and relics in A.D. 1668, asserted that they were blood-vessels, in which the blood of the martyrs had been preserved and stood alongside of their bones; and the existence of such jars, as well as every pictorial representation of the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9), was supposed to afford an indubitable proof that the niches in question contained the bones of martyrs. But the Reformed theologian Basnage shows that this assumption is quite untenable, and he has explained the red ground from the dregs of the red sacramental wine which may have been placed in the burial niches as a protection against demoniacal intrusion. Even many good Roman Catholic archæologists, Mabillon, Papebroch, Tillemont, Muratori, etc., contest or express doubts as to the decree of the Congregation. At the instigation probably of the Belgian Jesuit Vict. de Buck, Pius IX. in A.D. 1863 confirmed and renewed the old decree, and among others, Xav. Kraus has appeared as its defender. But a great multitude of unquestionable facts contradict the official decree of the church; e.g. the total absence of any support to this view in tradition, the silence of such inscriptions as relate to the martyrs, above all the immense number of these jars, their being found frequently alongside the bones of children of seven years old, the remarkable frequency of them in the times of Constantine and his successors which were free from persecution, the absence of the red dregs in many jars, etc. Since dregs of wine, owing to their having the vegetable property of combinableness could scarcely be discernible down to the present day, it has recently been suggested that the red colour may have been produced by a mineral-chemical process as oxide of iron.
§ 38.3. Pictorial Art and the Catacombs.—Many of the earliest Christians may have inherited a certain dislike of the pictorial arts from Judaism, and may have been confirmed therein by their abhorrence of the frivolous and godless abuse of art in heathenism. But this aversion which in a Tertullian grew from a Montanistic rigorism into a fanatical hatred of art, is never met with as a constituent characteristic of Christianity. Much rather the great abundance of paintings on the walls of the Roman and Neapolitan catacombs, of which many, and these not the meanest, belong to the 2nd century, some indeed perhaps to the last decades of the 1st century, serves to show how general and lively was the artistic sense among the earliest Christians at least in the larger and wealthier communities. Yet from its circumstances the Christian church in its appreciation of art was almost necessarily limited on two sides; for, on the one hand, no paintings were tolerated in the churches, and on the other hand, even in private houses and catacombs they were restricted almost exclusively to symbolico-allegorical or typical representations. The 36th Canon of the Council of Elvira in A.D. 306 is a witness for the first statement when it says: Placuit picturas in ecclesia non esse debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur. The plain words of the Canon forbid any other interpretation than this: From the churches, as places where public worship is regularly held, all pictorial representations must be banished, in order to make certain that in and under them there might not creep in those images, forbidden in the decalogue, of Him who is the object of worship and adoration. The Council thus assumed practically the same standpoint as the Reformed church in the 16th century did in opposition to the practice of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. It cannot, however, be maintained that the Canon of this rigorous Council (§ 45, 2) found general acceptance and enforcement outside of Spain—Proof of the second limitation is as convincingly afforded by what we find in the catacombs. On the positive side, it has its roots in the fondness which prevailed during these times for the mystical and allegorical interpretation of scripture; and on the negative side, in the endeavour, partly in respect for the prohibition of images contained in the decalogue, partly, and perhaps mainly, in the interests of the so-called Disciplina arcani, fostered under pressure of persecution, to represent everything that pertained to the mysteries of the Christian faith as a matter which only Christians have a right fully to understand. From the prominence given to the point last referred to it may be explained how amid the revolution that took place under Constantine the age of Symbolism and Allegory in the history of Christian art also passed away, and henceforth painters applied themselves pre-eminently to realistic historical representations.
§ 38.4. The pictorial and artistic representations of the pre-Constantine age may be divided into the six following groups:—
1 Significant Symbols.—To these belong especially the cross,105 though, for fear of the reproaches of Jews and heathens (§ 23, 2), not yet in its