After the translation in the ninth century, the original crypt, in common with so many of the catacomb sanctuaries, was deserted and allowed to go to ruin—utterly forgotten until De Rossi rediscovered it and reconstructed its wonderful history.
Writing in the earlier years of the twentieth century, Marucchi, the follower and pupil of De Rossi, in his latest work on the Catacombs, reviews and fully endorses the conclusions of his great master on the question of the tradition of S. Cecilia's tomb.
What we stated at the beginning of this little study is surely amply verified. S. Cecilia and her story no longer belong to mere vague and ancient tradition, but live in the pages of scientific history.
III
We will cite another example, and a yet more striking one, of the light thrown by the witness of the catacombs on important questions which have been gravely disputed, in connection with the history of the very early years of Christianity.
Ecclesiastical historians of the highest rank have gravely doubted the truth of the story of the martyrdom of S. Felicitas and her seven sons[1] in the days of the Emperor Marcus about the middle of the second century. The splendid constancy in the faith of the mother and of her hero sons, in the opinion of these grave and competent critics was a recital almost entirely copied from the record of the Maccabean mother and her seven brave sons, and so the Passion of S. Felicitas and her sons has been generally consigned to the shelf of early legendary Christian history; few historians would venture to quote as genuine this pathetic and inspiring chapter of the persecution of the Emperor Marcus. It is regarded as a piece of literature, devised in the sixth century or even later, and quite outside serious history.
But recent investigations in the great subterranean city of the Roman dead have completely changed this commonly held view, and the episode in question must now take its place among the acknowledged Christian records of the
- ↑ The eldest of the "seven" was the well-known S. Januarius.
