CHAPTER VI.THEIR INSCRIPTIONS.
What student of antiquity, or what merely intelligent observer of men and manners, is content to leave an old church or churchyard without first casting his eye over its monumental inscriptions? In like manner, we think our readers would justly complain if we bade them take leave of the Catacombs without saying a word about their epitaphs. And if the study of any considerable number of epitaphs anywhere is pretty sure to be rewarded by the discovery of something more or less interesting, how much more have we not a right to expect from the monuments of Roman Christianity during a period of three or four hundred years!
And truly, if all these monuments had been preserved and gathered together into one place, or, better still, had all been left in their original places, they would have formed an invaluable and inexhaustible library for the Christian archæologist. This, however, has not been their lot. Hundreds and thousands of them have been destroyed by thosewho have broken into the Catacombs from time to time during the last thousand years, and drawn from them materials for building. Others, again, and amongst them some of the most valuable, have been given to learned antiquarians or devout ecclesiastics, who coveted them for their own private possession, and carried them off to their own distant homes, without reflecting upon the grievous injury which they were thus inflicting upon those that should come after them. A much larger number have been most injudiciously placed, even by persons who knew their value, and were anxious for their preservation, in the pavements of Roman churches, where they have been either gradually effaced by the constant tread of worshippers, or thoughtlessly removed and lost sight of on occasion of some subsequent restoration of this portion of the church. A few have been more securely placed in the museums of the Capitol and of the Roman College, in the porticoes of some of the Roman churches, or in the cloisters of convents. Lastly, twelve or thirteen hundred were brought together, some eighty or ninety years ago, in the Library and Lapidarian Gallery at the Vatican—a number sufficiently great to enable us to appreciate their value, and to increase our regret that so many more should have been dispersed and lost.
It is to the sovereign Pontiffs that we are principally indebted for whatever fragments have been preserved from the general wreck. As early as themiddle of the fifteenth century, Pope Nicholas V. seems to have entertained the idea of collecting all the lapidarian monuments of early Christianity which had at that time been discovered; and both Eugenius IV., his immediate predecessor, and Calixtus III. who succeeded him, forbade, under heavy penalties, the alienation or destruction of anything belonging to this class of monuments. When Leo X., too, appointed Raphael to superintend the works at the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, he gave him a special charge that theres lapidariashould not be injured. In later times, these injunctions became more earnest and more frequent, in proportion to the increasing number and importance of the inscriptions that were brought to light. Still nothing practical appears to have been devised until the reign of Benedict XIV., who appointed the learned Francesco Bianchini to collect all the inscribed stones that could be found; and it was he who recommended the long narrow gallery leading to the Vatican Library and Museum as a convenient place for their preservation. Even then political and other difficulties interfered to prevent the execution of the design, so that it was not until the close of the last century that it was really carried out by Gaetano Marini, under the orders of Pope Pius VI. It is to be regretted that he took so little pains to make the most of such materials as he had. He merely inserted the monuments in the wall, without giving any indication of the places where they had been found, or makingany attempts to classify them, beyond separating the few which contain the names of the consuls from those which are without this chronological note. A small selection has since been made, in our own day, by De Rossi, in obedience to the orders of Pope Pius IX., and placed in a gallery of the Lateran Palace, adjoining the Christian Museum. The arrangement of these specimens (few as they are, comparatively speaking) makes it a valuable guide to those who would study this part of our subject to any profit.
The collections at the Vatican and the Lateran together do not exceed two thousand. Hundreds of others, recovered by more recent excavations, have not yet found a suitable home; many have been left in their original sites. Still it will always remain true that the number actually in existence is quite insignificant when compared with those which have been destroyed or lost. A large proportion, however, even of these have not altogether perished; they were copied, not always with accuracy, yet with praiseworthy diligence, by various scholars, even from the eighth and ninth centuries; and since the invention of printing, similar collections have been, of course, more frequent. We need not enter into any detailed account of these; we will say but a brief word even about De Rossi’s collection, for as yet he has only published the first volume, which contains all the Christian inscriptions of Rome during the first six centuries, whose date is indisputablyfixed by the names of the consuls having been appended to them.
Of these, only one belongs to the first century, two to the second, the third supplies twenty, and the fourth and fifth about five hundred each. Of this last century, of course, only those which belong to the first ten years can be claimed for the Catacombs, because, as we have already seen, they ceased after that period to be the common cemetery of the faithful. It appears, then, that all the dated inscriptions of gravestones found in the Catacombs up to the year 1864 do not amount to six hundred: whence some writers have argued that in the earliest ages Christians were not in the habit of inscribing epitaphs on their graves. This conclusion, however, is obviously illogical; for we have no right to assume that the proportion between dated and undated inscriptions remained uniform during the first four centuries. If there are only six hundred epitaphs bearing the names of consuls, there are more than twice as many thousands without those names; and we must seek, by independent processes of inquiry, to establish other chronological criteria, which, if not equally exact, may yet be shown to be generally trustworthy. And this is what De Rossi has done, with a zeal tempered by caution which is beyond all praise. It would be impossible to exaggerate, first, the slow and patient industry with which he has accumulated observations; then the care and assiduity with which he compares the innumerableexamples he has collected with one another, so as to ascertain their marks of resemblance and difference; and finally, the moderation with which he has drawn his conclusions. These vary in value, from mere conjecture to the highest degree of probability, or even of moral certainty. In a popular work like this, there is no room for discussion; we must confine ourselves to a statement of some of the best ascertained and most important facts, resting upon certain chronological canons, which a daily increasing experience warrants us in saying are now demonstrated with palpable and almost mathematical exactness.
First, then, De Rossi observes it as a notable fact, attested by the contents of all the Catacombs, that the most ancient inscriptions on Christian tombs differ from those of the Pagans “more by what they donotsay, than by what they do say.” The language of Christian epigraphy was not created in a day any more than Christian art was. There were urgent reasons for changing or omitting what the Pagans had been wont to use; but the Church did not at once provide anything else in its stead. Hence the very earliest Christian tombstones only recorded the bare name or names of the deceased, to which, in avery fewinstances, chiefly of ladies, one or two words, or the initials of words, were added, to denote the rank or title which belonged to them—e.g., C.F.,clarissima femina, or lady of senatorial rank. Generally speaking, however, there is an entire absence from these epitaphs of all those titles of rank and dignitywith which Pagan monuments are so commonly overloaded. And the same must be said of those titles also which belong to the other extremity of the social scale, such asservusandlibertus. One cannot study a dozen monuments of Pagan Rome without coming across some trace of this great social division of the ancient world into freemen and slaves. Yet in a number of Christian inscriptions in Rome, exceeding twelve or thirteen thousand, and all belonging to centuries during which slavery still flourished, scarcely ten have been found—and even two or three of these are doubtful—containing any allusion whatever to this fundamental division of ancient Roman society. It is not to be supposed that there was any legislation upon the subject; not even, perhaps, a hint from the clergy; it was simply the spontaneous effect of the religious doctrines of the new society, reflected in their epigraphy as in a faithful mirror. The children of the Primitive Church did not record on their monuments titles of earthly dignity, because they knew that with the God whom they served there was no respect of persons; neither did they care to mention the fact of their bondage, or of their deliverance from bondage, to some earthly master, because they thought only of that higher and more perfect liberty “wherewith Christ had set them free;” remembering that “he that was called, being a bondman, was yet a freeman of the Lord; and likewise he that was called, being free, was still the bondman of Christ.”
We repeat, then, that the most ancient inscriptions on Christian gravestones in Rome consisted merely of the name of the deceased; ordinarily hiscognomenonly, though in some of the very earliest date the name of thegenswas also added; not, we may be sure, from a motive of vanity, but merely for the purpose of identification. Large groups of inscriptions of this kind may still be seen in some of the oldest portions of subterranean Rome; traced in vermilion on the tiles, as in the Catacomb of Sta. Priscilla, or engraved in letters of most beautiful classical form, as in the Cœmeterium Ostrianum and the Cemetery of Pretextatus. The names are often of classical origin; nearly a hundred instances of Claudii, Flavii, Ulpii, Aurelii, and others of the same date, carrying us back to the period between Nero and the first of the Antonines. Very often there is added after the names, as on Pagan tombstones, such words asfilio dulcissimo,conjugi dulcissimo, or,incomparabili,dulcissimis parentibus, and nothing else. In fact, these epitaphs vary so little from the old classical type, that had they not been seen by Marini and other competent witnesses—some of them even by De Rossi himself—in their original position, and some of them been marked with the Christian symbol of the anchor, we might have hesitated whether they ought not rather to be classed among Pagan monuments; as it is, we are sure that they belonged to the earliest Christian period; that they are the gravestones of men who diedin the Apostolic, or immediately post-Apostolic age.
It was not to be expected, however, that Christian epitaphs should always remain so brief and bare a record. In the light of Christian doctrine, death had altogether changed its character; it was no longer an everlasting sleep, though here and there a Christian epitaph may still be found to call it so; it was no longer a final and perpetual separation from those who were left behind; it was recognised as the necessary gate of admission to a new and nobler life; and it was only likely, therefore, that some tokens of this change of feeling and belief should, sooner or later, find expression in the places where the dead were laid. Amid the almost innumerable monumental inscriptions of Pagan Rome that have been preserved to us, we seek in vain for any token of belief in a future life. Generally speaking, there is a total silence on the subject; but if the silence is broken, it is by faint traces of poetical imagery, not by the distinct utterances of a firm hope, much less of a clear and certain belief. The Christian epitaphs first broke this silence by the frequent use of a symbol, the anchor indicating hope, carved or rudely scratched beside the name upon the gravestone. Presently they added words also; words which were the natural outpourings of hearts which were full of Christian faith and love. On a few gravestones in those parts of the Catacomb of Sta. Priscilla already spoken of, we read the Apostolic salutation,Pax tecum,orPax tibi; on one in the Cœmeterium Ostrianum,Vivas in Deo, and these are the first germs, out of which Christian epigraphy grew.
The epitaphs on the gravestones of the latter half of the second and of the third centuries are only a development of the fundamental ideas contained in these ejaculations. They still keep silence as to the worldly rank, or the Christian virtues of the deceased; they do not even, for the most part, tell us anything as to his age, or his relationship to the survivor who sets up the stone; most commonly, not even the day of his death or burial. But they announce with confident assurance that his soul has been admitted to that happy lot reserved for the just who have left this world in peace, that he is united with the saints, that he is in God, and in the enjoyment of good things; or they breathe a humble and loving prayer that he may soon be admitted to a participation in these blessings. They ask for the departed soul peace, and light, and refreshment, and rest in God and in Christ. Sometimes, also, they invoke the help of his prayers (since he, they know, still lives in God) for the surviving relatives whose time of trial is not yet ended. In a word, they proceed upon the assumption that there is an incessant interchange of kindly offices between this world and the next, between the living and the dead; they represent all the faithful as living members of one Body, the Body of Christ; as forming one great family, knit together in the closest bonds of love; and this love finding its chief workand happiness in prayer, prayer of the survivors for those who have gone before, prayer of the blessed for those who are left behind. We subjoin a few examples of the class of epitaphs of which we speak; and to secure accuracy, we will only give those that we have ourselves copied from the originals, and which every visitor to Rome may, therefore, still see if he pleases. The figures which we have appended to some of these inscriptions denote the column and the number under which they will be found in the gallery at the Lateran; the lettersK.M.refer to the Kircherian Museum at the Roman College; and the last four may be seen where they were found, in the Catacomb of SS. Nereus and Achilles.
It would be easy to fill several pages with inscriptions of this kind; but enough has been produced to impress upon the reader a fair idea of their general character. They abound on the monuments of the second and third centuries; but after that date they fade out of use, and are succeeded by a new style of epigraphy, colder and more historical. Mention is now made of the exact age of the deceased, and of the length of his married life, not as to years only, but as to months, and sometimes even as to days and hours; of the day of his death also, more commonly of his burial, and, in a few instances, of both. Torecord the day of the burial (depositio) was creeping into use before the end of the third century; from the middle of the fourth, it became little short of universal; and in this century and the next, mention of the year also was frequently added. During this period, the phrasein pacebecame general, as a formula to be used by itself absolutely without any verb at all. In old Christian inscriptions in Africa, this phrase frequently occurs with the verbvixit; in which case the wordpaxis undoubtedly used in the same sense in which Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and other ecclesiastical writers employ it, as denoting peace with God to be obtained through communion with the Church; and in a community distracted by schisms and heresies, as the African Church was, such a record on the tomb of a Christian is intelligible and important. Not so in Rome; here the purport of the thousands of greetings of peace has reference to the peace of a joyful resurrection and a happy eternity, whether spoken of with confidence as already possessed, or only prayed for with glad expectation. The act of death had been expressed in earlier epitaphs under Christian phrases:—Translatus de sæculo;exivit de sæculo;arcessitus a Domino, orab angelis;natus in æternum; or, much more commonly,Deo reddidit spiritum; and this last phrase had come into such established use by the middle of the third century, that the single letter R was a recognised abbreviation of it. But, in the second half of that century, and still more frequently afterwardsdecessitwas used in its stead; and in the fifth century we find this again superseded byHic jacet,pausat,quiescit, orrequiescit.
Complimentary phrases as to the goodness, wisdom, innocence, and holiness of the deceased came into fashion about the age of Constantine, and in later times were repeated with such uniformity as to be quite wearisome; we see that they were simply formal and unmeaning; not unfrequently they were extravagant. Widows and widowers bear mutual testimony to one another’s gentleness and amiability of disposition, which enabled them to live together so many yearssemper concordes, sine ullâ querelâ, sine læsione animi. But this was, after all, only a return to the style of Pagan epigraphy, in which the very same phrases were frequently used. Children are commended for innocence and simplicity of spirit; sometimes also for wisdom and beauty! A child of five years old ismiræ bonitatis et totius innocentiæ. This belongs to the year 387. In the next century, we find, for the first time, the phrasecontra votum, which was also a return to the language of Pagan parents when burying their children. It cannot be said that there is anything absolutely unchristian in this phrase; at the same time, it does not savour of that hearty resignation to the will of God, or that cheerful assertion of His providence, to be found in other epitaphs; as, for instance, in more than a score of inscriptions recovered from the ancient cemetery in Ostia, in which this resignation is touchingly expressedby the statement that the deceased had ended his term of days “when God willed it.”
Of course, there still remains very much more that might be said, and which it would be interesting to say, about the thousands of inscriptions that have been found in the Catacombs; but we can only here attempt to indicate the main outlines of the subject, and enough has been said to satisfy our readers that Christian epigraphy followed the same laws of development as Christian art. At first it resembled the corresponding monuments of Paganism, excepting in those particulars in which Christian dogma and Christian feeling suggested a departure from that model. Still for a while that dogma and feeling found no distinct positive expression. Then it began to whisper, at first in hidden symbols, such as the dove, the anchor, and the fish; then, in the short but hearty apostolic salutation,Pax tecum,Pax tibi,Vivas in Deo, and the like. By and by these pious ejaculations, dictated by a spirit of affectionate piety towards the deceased, and a tender solicitude for his eternal welfare, became more frequent and less laconic; and so, step by step, a special style of Christian epigraphy grows up spontaneously (as it were) out of the joyful light of faith and hope of heaven. A certain type becomes fixed, varying indeed, as all things human never fail to vary, in some minor details, according to circumstances of time and place, or the peculiar tastes and fancies of this or that individual, yet sufficiently consistent toset a distinctive mark upon each particular period, whilst by its variations during successive ages it faithfully reflects (we may be sure) some corresponding change in the tone and temper of the ordinary Christian mind. Christian epigraphy was born as Christian art was, simultaneously with the introduction of Christianity itself into the metropolis of the ancient world; it acquired all its special characteristics, and perhaps attained its highest religious perfection, before the end of the third century, after which its beautiful and touching simplicity is somewhat marred and secularised by a gradual influx of some of those modes of thought and expression which prevailed in the world without.