CEMETERY
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CEMETERY
dividual catacombs will follow the order of the great
Roman roads along which were usually located the
Christian cemeteries:
Sources of the History of the Catacombs. — There is but the faintest hope that any new documents will ever turn up to illustrate the pre-Constantinian period of the ancient cemeteries of Rome. Their place is taken necessarily by late martyrologies, calendars. Acts of the martyrs, writings of popes, historico-liturgical books of the Roman Church, and by old topographies and itineraries come down to us from the Carlovingian epoch. Among the old martyrologies ! he most famous is that known as the Martyrology of St . Jerome (Marly rologium Hieronymia- num). Its present (ninth-century) form is that essen- tially of Auxerre in France, where it underwent consid- erable remodelling in the sixth century. But it is older than the sixth century, and is surely an Italian compilation of the fifth century, out of rare and reliable documents furnished by the churches of Rome, Africa, Palestine, Egypt, and the Orient. Xo martyrology contains so many names and in- dications of saints and martyrs of a very early period, and it is of especial value for the study of the catacombs, because it very frequently gives the roads and the cemeteries where they were buried and venerated in the fifth century, while the cemeteries were yet intact. By dint of transcription, however, and through the neglect or ignorance of copyists, the text has become in many places hopelessly corrupt, and the restitution of its dates and local and personal indications has been one of the hardest crosses of ancient and modern ecclesiastical archaeologists. Besides its very ancient notices of the cemeteries, this martyrology is of great value as embodying a cata- logue of martyrs and basilicas of Rome that surely goes back to the early part of the fifth century, and perhaps a third-century catalogue of the Roman pontiffs. Several other martyrologies of the eighth and ninth centuries contain valuable references to the martyrs and the cemeteries, especially that known as the Little Roman (Parvum Romanian) Martyrol- ogy, and which served as a basis for the well-known compilation of Ado. Next in importance comes an ancient Roman Calendar, published between the years 334 and 356, written out and illustrated by a certain Furius Dionysius Philocalus. This calendar contains a list of the popes, known formerly as the "Bucherian Catalogue", from the name of its first editor, and the Liberian, from the pope (Liberius, 352-56) with whom it ends. The whole book is now usually known as the "t'hronographer of a. d. 354". Besides this ancient papal catalogue, the book con- tains an otlicial calendar, civil and astronomical, lunar cycles, and a Paschal table calculated to 412, a list of the prefects of Rome from 253 to 354 (the
only continuous known), a chronicle of Roman
history, the "Natalitia Csesarum", and other useful contents, which have caused it to be styled "the oldest Christian Almanac". It contains numerous traies of having been drawn up for the use of the Roman Church, and hence the value of two of its documents for the cemeteries. They are, respectively, a list of the entombments of Roman bishops from Lucius to Sylvester 1 253 335), with the place of their burial, and a />■ pa itia Marbrrum, or list of the more solemn fixed fca>t^ i>f the Roman Church, with in- dications of several famous martyrs and their ceme- The importance of all this for the original topography of the catacombs is too clear to need comment. We will only add that closer examina- tion of the ecclesiastical documents of the "Chronog- rapher of 351 " lea-. laded that they date
from the third century and represent the location of the cemeteries at that time and the martyrs whose cult was then most popular.
In the latter half of the fourth century Pope St.
Damasus (366-84) did much to beautify the ancient
Roman cemeteries and to decorate the tombs of the
most illustrious martyrs. As he possessed a fine
poetic talent, he composed many elegant inscriptions,
which were engraved on large marble slabs by his
"friend and admirer", Furius Dionysius Philocalus,
already known to us as the calligrapher of the pre-
ceding document. The lettering used by this re-
markable man was very ornamental, and as its exact
like is not found before or after, it has been styled
the hieratic writing of the catacombs. In time these
inscriptions were copied by strangers and inserted
in various anthologies and in travellers' scrapbooks
or portfolios. Many of the original stones perished
from various causes, but were piously renewed
in situ during the sixth century. To these Damasan
inscriptions De Rossi owed much, since any fragment
of them in a cemetery indicates an "historic crypt",
and their copies in the manuscripts are links for the
construction of the chain of history that connects
each great cemetery with the modern investigator.
To the above jontes, or sources of information and control, must be added the historic-liturgical litera- ture of the Roman Church from the fourth to the eighth centuries — the period in which the bodies of the most celebrated martyrs began to be removed en masse from the catacombs, through fear of the marauding Lombards. Such are the Liber Ponti- ficalis in its several recensions, the Acts of the mar- tyrs, chiefly the Roman ones, the calendars of the Roman Church constructed out of the missals or sacramentaries, the antiphonaries, capitularies of the Gospels, and the like, in which not infrequently there are hints and directions concerning the cemeteries and the martyrs of renown who were yet buried there. Finally, there has been extracted almost endless in- formation from the old Roman topographies of travellers and the itineraries of pilgrims. Of the former we possess yet two curious remnants, entitled "Notitiae regionum Urbis Ronue " and "Curiosum Urbis Roma> , also a list of oils collected at the shrines of the Roman martyrs by Abbot Johannes for Queen Theodolinda, and known as the Papyrus of Monza. An Old Syriac text of the sixth century and a note of the innumerce cellula martyrum consecrate in the almanac of Polemius Silvius (499) complete the list of strictly topographical authorities. Certain itine- raries of pilgrims from the seventh to the ninth cen- tury are not less useful as indicating the names and sites of the cemeteries, whether above or below ground, and what bodies were yet entombed therein, as well as the distance between t ho cemeteries and their position relative to the great monuments of the city.
After the middle of the ninth century the historic crypts had been emptied, and the bodies brought to Roman churches. Naturally, the written references to the catacombs ceased with the visitors, and a stray chapter in the "Mirabilia Urbis Romae" or an odd indication in the " Libri Indulgentiarum" kept alive the memory of those holy places which once attracted a world of pilgrims. It is not easy to explain how one of the best of the old itineraries, referable to the sevent h century, should have fallen into the hands of William of Mahnesbury, and been by him copied into his account of the visit of the crusaders to Rome under Urban II (1099). Neither is it easy to explain why the old itineraries of Einsiedeln, Wurzburg, and Salzburg make no mention of the tombs of such cele- brated Roman martyrs as .St. Clement the consul, St. Justin the philosopher, Apollonius the Roman senator, Moses a famous priest of the time of St. Cornelius, and many other celebrities of the early Roman Church, who were, in all likelihood, buried in some of the many Roman cemeteries. What the old pilgrims saw they related honestly and faithfully; more they compiled from guides now lost. They
