AN APPENDIX TO THE EPITAPHS, ETC., OF THE CATACOMBS
The wish to be buried in the immediate vicinity of a saint or confessor, though perhaps especially marked in the subterranean cemeteries of Rome, was not peculiar to the Christians of the very early centuries. Many other instances could be quoted, from the days of the old prophet of Bethel who wished his bones to lie beside the bones of the man of God who came out of Judah (1 Kings xiii. 31) down to King John, who is said to have requested that he might be interred at Worcester directed between the bodies of SS. Oswald and Wulfstan.
S. Augustine's De curâ pro mortuis gerendâ is a peculiarly interesting treatise. The great bishop discusses at some length this question, and his words throw considerable sidelight upon the growing practice of the invocation of saints.
The treatise, written about A.D. 421, was a reply to a question addressed to him by S. Paulinus of Nola, a very saintly and devoted man, but at the same time, in common with not a few holy men of his time, superstitious and often sadly mistaken in his exaggerated devotion to the noble army of martyrs who had played so well the part of pioneers in the recent days of bitter persecution.
S. Paulinus had been asked by a certain widow to allow her son to be buried in the church of the martyr S. Felix at Nola. He said he had granted her prayer, believing that this longing desire of faithful souls that their dear ones should be laid close to the remains of a saint was based not merely on an illusion but on some real need of the soul. But S. Paulinus evidently was uncertain here, so he asks the great teacher Augustine—Did it really help one who was dead to be buried near a saint?
S. Augustine's reply on the whole was cautious: he remarked that if a man had lived righteously, to be buried close to a saint
