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| Monumental Christianity; or, The art and symbolism of the primitive church. CHAPTER II - 2 |
Page 3 of 5 Since the publication of Father Marchi's unfinished work, and the magnificent volumes of the two De Rossi brothers, together with Peret's ; and since the long labours and immense researches of Boldetti, Agincourt, and others, the Christian archaeology of the Catacombs has assumed its proper importance as a science, no longer to be ignored or treated with indifference in the contest of Christianity with atheism and infidelity, heresy and schism. Dean Milman remarks that " one result is triumphantly obtained from these inquiries: that the Catacombs, properly so called, are originally and exclusively — except the Jewish — Christian. Unhappily, on the first discovery of the Catacombs, certain Protestant writers — one of consid- erable name — took it into their heads to raise the most idle controversy which ever wasted Christian ink, or tried, we will hardly say Christian, temper. This narrow Protestant jealousy betrayed not only a strange perversity, but a most lamentable misconception of the true grounds of the reformed religion, and a surprising ignor- ance of Christian history."" And Charles Maitland affirms that the Catacombs form " A vast necropolis, rich in the bones of saints and martyrs ; a stupendous testimony to the truth of Christian history, and, consequently, to that of Chris- tianity itself ; a faithful record of the trials of a persecuted Church." * And this more full testimony is appended to his other work, entitled, The Apostles' School of Prophetic Interpretation, in a book notice of the Church of the Catacombs:" Around Rome the soil of the Campagna is pierced in every direction by winding galleries ' Antiquities, pp. 1232-3. Bohn*s ed. London, 1856. * Essays reprinted from the " Quarterly Review," pp. 470-500. London, 1870. * Id. p. 2, 2nd Ed. London, 1847. 36 Monumental Christianity. of almost endless extent. Here, in those various persecutions of heathen Rome which preceded the establishment of Christianity, the primitive Church found shelter, held its services, buried its dead, and was miraculously preserved in its purity and strength. When, with the revival of learning in the sixteenth century, these galleries were opened and explored, one of the most affecting spectacles ever witnessed was presented to the world. The Christian faith, which then overspread the earth in the fullness of its power, was beheld in these subterranean works in its infancy. Here were the inscriptions which told of the faith and practice of the early Church ; here the tombs of the martyrs who had attested their belief with their blood ; here pictured representations of the rites they celebrated ; here the caves in which the humble and the great, the poorest labourers and the proudest nobles, lived together to escape the ruthless massacre that raged without, surrounded by the rude sepulchres of their brethren who ' slept in peace.* Here was a gigantic monument to the truth of Christianity, no less affecting to the heart than convinc- ing to the mind ; proving with what rapidity the doctrines of Christianity had spread ; the persecutions and sufferings to which its professors had cheerfully sub- mitted by reason of the hope that was in them ; and the identity of the primitive Church, in all its belief and practice, with the Scripture Record." — {Britannia,) When we call to mind the fact that Bosio, who first explored the Catacombs, spent thirty-three years in the research, from the loth of December,, A. D. 1593, until his death, without living to see his great work published ; that Boldetti spent thirty years more in collecting materials for his Osservazioni^ &c.. and that Agin- court spent the greater part of fifty years in the Catacombs, and left his unfinished work to be published by his friends, and put all this immense labour and research over against the occasional brief visit or winter's sojourn of modern tourists at Rome, we can readily see that the whole weight of authority is with those who have made the subject a life-long study. De Rossi is to be classed with these other great archaeologists ; and all other writers on the Catacombs defer to them, whether they be English, French, or German. These three or four works by Bosio, Bol- detti, Agincourt, and De Rossi, together with Aringhi's Latin translation and en- largement of Bosio, are about all that are really needed for a full account of the monuments of the Catacombs. And what do they tell us? Simply these two things, viz.: first, that all the Catacombs at Rome have the one design and purpose of burial, not cremation, which the Christians abhorred as Pagan ; and, second, that with one single excep- tion, all are Christian, as the paintings, symbols, carvings, and inscriptions testify. Sandpits and old quarries they are not, as any good map or plan of them will show. Constructed along the elevated and dry grounds of the Appian, Latin, Salarian, Structure of the Catacombs. 37 Nomentanian, Ardeatinian, Tiburtine, and Ostian ways; not in the hard rock from which building-stone was obtained, u ^., the tufa litoide^ which would have been at an immense cost ; not in the soft beds of friable rock used for cement, u ^., the tufa friable^ ox pozzolana^ which was altogether too loose for arching or any lasting work ; but exactly in that third and only kind of rock, intermediate between the other two in hardness, neither fit for cement, or for building-stone, but easily dug and durable, the tough volcanic mud, hardened into consistency by long ages, known as the tufa granulate, do we find the most of the cemeteries. With the exception of three of the Christian cemeteries which are excavated in soil composed of gravel and marine shells, we find all the rest dug in this very tufa granulate^ fit for noth- ing else than burial. The sandpits are nothing else than sandpits, with broad, low, irregular passage-ways for carts ; whereas the passage-ways of the cemeteries are high, narrow, and regular, and always end at the hard rock in which none of them exist. It is there that quarj-y-pits are found from which old Rome was built, the Coliseum, &c. When a gallery was full of graves, it was often filled with material dug from a new one, or the sandpits were filled with it, when near enough. A special order of minor clergy and servants of the Church called Fossores, dug these galleries and graves, and attended to the burial of the dead. And besides all this, when we find all the subject-matter of painting, sculpture, syn)bol, and inscription in these cemeteries, Christian and only Christian, set indeed in a framework of Pagan art, or adaptation of Pagan ideas that were pure, and good, and suggestive, then we must conclude that none but Christians constructed them. It is nothing else than the Christian faith that is here written as with an iron pen in the rock forever, just as the great Moral Law of Sinai was written on two tables of stone for everlasting perpetuity. The books of Scripture might per- ish, or be destroyed or interpolated ; but here nothing of the kind was possible. Here was the hole of the pit from which the Church of after ages was digged ; and here is the origin of all modern Christian civilization. More than this. There was a deep design in the very structure and adornment of these Catacombs, not merely as places of burial, but as suggestive of the peace and joy of Paradise itself. Lord Lindsay says : " Admitting all that has been said, and truly said, and rightly insisted upon, respecting the adoption of Pagan rites and ceremonies into Christianity, it is equally true that our ancestors touched noth- ing that they did not Christianize ; they consecrated this visible world into a tem- ple to God, of which the heavens were the dome, the mountains the altars, the forests the pillared aisles, the breath of spring the incense, and the running streams the music — ^while in every tree they sheltered under, in every flower they looked down upon and loved, they recognized a virtue or a spell, a token of Christ's love for 3^^ Monumental Chrisftianity. man, or a memorial of His martyrs* sufferings. God was emphatically in all their thoughts, and from such, whatever might be their errors, God could not be far dis- tant.*' * Pagans must not be repelled from the newly-born Faith by anything repul- sive, gloomy and forbidding. It must rather be suggested and commended to them by what was already familiar to them in symbol and myth, which did not conflict with unity of idea or purity and innocence. The Greek language would commend that Faith, for it was in part their vernacular, or the language of polite life and philosophy; why not Greek art and the innocent usages and symbols of the Pagan religion ? And so we find, at any rate, as Lord Lindsay expresses it, that ** tombs were the first altars, and mausoleums the first churches of Christendom. The mortal remains of ordinary people were deposited in niches scooped out of the walls of the long winding passages, the streets or thoroughfares of the subterranean city, and secured by flat slabs of marble, between the chinks of which the white skeletons may frequently to this day be seen glittering in undisturbed repose. But to the confessors and martyrs, the heroes and heroines of the faith — to bishops, and in general, to those of higher mark and renown — more distinguished resting- places were allotted. A space broader and more regular than the usual passages, and ending in a blank wall, was in such cases selected or excavated ; recesses, sur- mounted by semi-circular concha, or shells, were hollowed out at the extremity and in the two sides of the square ; within these recesses were placed sarcophagi, their sides covered with the symbols and devices of Christianity ; the roof was scooped into the resemblance of a dome or cupola — this was usually painted, as well as the shells of the recesses, and the whole, thus completed, formed a chamber bearing some faint resemblance to the Greek cross, and well-suited, by its comparative space, for the congregation of the faithful and the services of religion, the sar- cophagus at the upper end of the cell serving as a communion-table or altar.*** Here the Christian Agapcs, or love-feasts, so popular for several centuries, and so alluring to the poor, were celebrated ; and though but a transformation of the Pagan funeral feasts in honor of the manes of departed kindred, yet they were the more glorious feasts and memorials of the communion of Saints — of Saints on earth with Saints in Paradise. Pictures of vines, and birds, and sheep, and genii ; pictures of the seasons, and of Orpheus, and of the Good Shepherd as the young and blooming Apollo ; pictures of Noah, and Abraham, and Jonah, and Elijah ; pictures of Christ and of the Orantes; symbols of various kinds ; the absence of all pain- ful and distressing subjects ; whatever was cheerful, and inspiring, and hopeful in Christianity ; the very dome-like structure of the cubicula^ or chambers, and the * Christian Art, vol. I., Symbols, p. xxvii, • Id. pp 6 and 7. Structure of the Catacombs. 39 circular shape of the arcosolia, or recesses, and all adorned with cheerful and pleas- ing paintings — surely there was deep design and wisdom in all this, to make these retreats and resting-places symbolical of the heavenly world as God's dwelling- place, and that of His blessed saints and martyrs. Indeed, it was the remarkable and characteristic feature of all early Christian Art and Symbolism, both in the paintings of the Catacombs, and the mosaics of the first Churches, that there should be nothing gloomy or distressing. The very cross is adorned with flowers, or sur- rounded by wreaths and palm-branches. The late Dean Milman, who gives due prominence to this subject in his History of Christianity ^ cites the following passage from a modern writer, who has studied the monuments of the Catacombs with profound attention, viz. : " The Catacombs destined for the sepulture of the primi- tive Christians, for a long time peopled with martyrs, ornamented during times of persecution, and under the dominion of melancholy thoughts and painful duties, nevertheless everywhere represent in all the historic parts of these paintings only what is noble and exalted, and in that which constitutes the purely decorative part, only pleasing and graceful subjects, the images of the Good Shepherd, representa- tions of the vintage, of the Agapa, with pastoral scenes ; the symbols are fruits, flowers, palms, crowns, Iambs, doves, peacocks, chickens, animals, ships ; in a word, nothing but what excites emotions of joy, innocence, and charity. Entirely occupied with the celestial recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness ; and, far from associating with rhis image that of the tortures or privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in enlivening it with smiling colors, or presented it under agreeable symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine-leaves ; for it is thus that the asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance ; all breathes softness, benevolence, charity." ' The early epitaphs are brief and simple, and all breathe a serene spirit of hope and resignation that permits no vio- lent or passionate expression ; the word dolens is the strongest utterance of sorrow, and even this is of rare occurrence.'* Dr. Burgon cites an epitaph in which the word infelix occurs, and speaks of it as altogether unusual, or rather all but un- known on ancient Christian gravestones.* Theje are no ghastly crucifixes ; no dances of death ; no fiery mouths of hell ; no black devils spitting the damned for an eternal roast ; no frightful judgment- • History of Christianity, III. p. 402. N. Y. 1866. • C. Hemans* Ancient Christianity, &c., p. 46. » Letters from Home, pp. 199 and 211. London, i86a. 40 Monumental Christianity. scenes like Orcagna's or Michael Angelo's to mock and burlesque the blessed faith in an all-merciful and good God, such as the gloomy asceticism of the Middle Ages produced according to Egyptian patterns, and Buddhist horrors, and Etruscan black devils ; such Pagan scare-crows as these were not necessary to excite religious fear and fervor in the hearts of the primitive Christians ; to them Christ and His works of mercy and love were all-sufficient. In the earliest monuments there is no scene of the Crucifixion. The nearest approach to it is Christ's trial before Pilate. After the peace of the Church was secured, and persecution had ceased, then occa- sional acts of heroic suffering in martyrdom were painted on the walls of chapels and churches, to remind the faithful at what cost of blood the faith was established ; but nothing of the kind was done during the actual pressure of persecution, be- cause its horrors were as much as could be borne, and something cheerful and invigorating was needed to sustain the Christian man or woman, who might be called at any moment to lay down life for the faith. Gregory, of Nyssa, describes the heroic acts of St. Theodorus as painted on the walls of a church dedicated to that saint ; and Prudentius speaks of the martyrdom of St. Hippolytus as painted on the sacred tombs, or as dragged to death by wild horses over the rocky coast of Ostia. He says of the painting : " Exemplar sceleris paries habet inlitus, in quo Multicolor fucus digerit omne nefas. Picta super tumnlum species liquidis viget ninbris, Effigians tracti membra craenta viri. " ^ " The painted wall, with many a tint that glows. Reveals the horror of the impious deed : And o'er his tomb proclaims the martyr's throes. An image of the mangled limbs that bleed." But this picture has never been discovered, although the statue of St. Hip- polytus has. Mr. Lecky makes this remark about early Christian art: "At first all Christian art was sepulchral art. The places that were decorated were the Cata- combs ; the Chapels were all surrounded by the dead ; the altar upon which the sacred mysteries were celebrated, was the tomb of a martyr. According to mediae- val, or even to modern ideas, we should have imagined that an art growing up under such circumstances would have assumed a singularly sombre and severe tone, and this expectation would be greatly heightened if we remembered the vio- lence of the persecution. The very altar-tomb around which, the Christian painter scattered his ornaments with most profusion was often associated with the memory ' Pbristephanon, H. XI. See also and cd. of Ruinart's Acta Prim, Mart, pp. x6S-7a Structure of the Catacombs. 41 of sufferings of the most horrible and varied character, and at the same time with displays of heroic constancy that might well have invited the talents of the artist. Passions, too, were roused to the highest point, and it would seem but natural that the great and terrible scenes of Christian vengeance should be depicted. Yet noth- ing of this kind appears in the Catacombs. With two doubtful exceptions, one at least being of the very latest period of art, there are no representations of martyr- doms. M. Raoul-Rochette thinks there is but one, viz., that of the Virgin Salome, which is of a very late period of decadence.' Daniel unharmed amid the lions, the unaccomplished sacrifice of Isaac, the three children unscathed amid the flames, or St. Peter led to prison, are the only images that reveal the horrible persecution that was raging. There was no disposition to perpetuate forms of suffering, no ebullition of bitterness or complaint, no thirsting for vengeance. Neither the Crucifixion, nor any of the scenes of the Passion, was ever represented ; nor was the day of judgment, nor were the sufferings of the lost. The wreaths of flowers in which paganism delighted, and even some of the most joyous images of the pagan mythology, were still retained, and were mingled with all the most beautiful emblems of Christian hopes, and with representations of many of the miracles of mercy. The next point which especially strikes us in the art of the Catacombs, is the great love of symbolism it evinced. There are, it is true, a few isolated pic- tures of Christ and of the Virgin, most of them of a late period ; but by far the greater number of representations were obviously symbolical, and were designed exclusively as a means of instruction. Of these symbols many were taken without hesitation from paganism, as the Peacock, emblem of immortality, and the best representative of the fabled Phoenix; and Orpheus, symbolizing the attractive power of Christianity.'* ' |