The earliest Christian catacombs known maybe assigned to the 2d century. The largest number belong to the 3d and the early part of the 4th. The custom of subterranean interment gradually died out, and entirely ceased with the sack of Rome by Alaric, 410 a.d. “The end of the catacomb graves,” writes Mommsen (Cont. Rev., May 1871), “is intimately connected with the end of the powerful city itself. . . . Poverty took the place of wealth, . . . the traditions of the Christian tomb-architects sank into utter insignificance, and the expanse of the wasted Campagna now offered room enough to bury the few bodies, without having to descend as once far down below the surface of the earth.” The earliest account of the Catacombs, that of St Jerome narrating his visits to them when a schoolboy at Rome, about 354 a.d. shows that interment in them was even then rare if it had not been altogether discontinued; and the poet Prudentius’s description of the tomb of the Christian martyr Hippolytus, and the cemetery in which it stood, leads us to the same conclusion. With the latter part of the 4th century a new epoch in the history of the Catacombs arose,—that of religious reverence. In the time of Pope Damasus, 366-384 a.d., the Catacombs had begun to be regarded with special devotion, and had become the resort of large bands of pilgrims, for whose guidance catalogues of the chief burial-places and the holy men buried in them were drawn up. Some of these lists are still extant. Pope Damasus himself displayed great zeal in adapting the Catacombs to their new purpose, restoring the works of art on the walls, and renewing the epitaphs over the graves of the martyrs. In this latter work he employed an engraver named Furius Philocalus, the exquisite beauty of whose characters enables the smallest fragment of his work to be recognized at a glance. This, in Dean Milman’s happy words, “irreverent reverence, which converted the Catacombs from hidden and secret chambers, where piety might steal down to show its respect or affection for the dead, to, as it were, a great religious spectacle, the scene of devout pilgrimage to thousands” (Milman, Essays, p. 489), gave rise to extensive alterations in their construction and decoration, which has much lessened their value as authentic memorials of the religious art of the 2d and 3d centuries. Subsequent popes manifested equal ardour, with the same damaging results, in the repair and adornment of the Catacombs, and many of the paintings which cover their walls, which have been too unquestioningly assigned to the period of their original construction, are really the work of these later times. The Catacombs shared in the devastation of Rome by the Goths under Vitiges, in the 6th century and by the Lombards at a later period; and partly through the spoliation of these barbarian invaders, partly through the neglect of those who should have been their guardians, they sank into such a state of decay and pollution that, as the only means of preserving the holy remains they enshrined from further desecration, Pope Paul I., in the latter part of the 8th century, and Pope Paschal, at the commencement of the 9 th, commenced the work of the translation of the relics, which was vigorously carried on by successive pontiffs until the crypts were almost entirely despoiled of their dead. The relics having been removed, the visits of pilgrims naturally ceased, and by degrees the very existence of those wonderful subterranean cemeteries was forgotten. Six centuries elapsed before the accidental discovery of a sepulchral chamber, by some labourers digging for pozzolana earth (May 31, 1578), revealed to the amazed inhabitants of Rome “the existence,” to quote a contemporary record, “of other cities concealed beneath their own suburbs.” Baronius, the ecclesiastical historian, was one of the first to visit the new discovery, and his “Annals” in more than one place evidence his just appreciation of its importance. The true “Columbus of this subterranean world,” as he has been aptly designated, was the indefatigable Bosio, who devoted his life to the personal investigation of the Catacombs, the results of which were given to the world in 1632 in a huge folio, entitled Roma Sotterraηea, profusely illustrated with rude but faithful plans and engravings. This was republished in a Latin translation with considerable alterations and omissions by Aringhi in 1651; and a century after its first appearance, the plates were reproduced by Bottari in 1737, and illustrated with great care and learning. Some additional discoveries were described by Boldetti in his Osservazioni, published in 1720; but, writing in the interests of the Roman Church with an apologetic not a scientific object, truth was made to bend to polemics, and little addition to our knowledge of the Catacombs is to be gained from his otherwise important work. The French historian of art, Seroux d’Agincourt, 1825, by his copious illustrations, greatly facilitated the study of the architecture of the Catacombs and the works of art contained in them, The works of Raoul Rochette display a comprehensive knowledge of the whole subject, extensive reading, and a thorough acquaintance with early Christian art so far as it could be gathered from books, but he was not an original investigator. The great pioneer in the path of independent research, which, with the intelligent use of documentary and historical evidence, has led in our own day to so vast an increase in our acquaintance with the Roman Catacombs, was the late Padre Marchi of the Society of Jesus. His work, Monumenti delle arti Christiane Primitive, so disastrously interrupted by the political vicissitudes of the times, is the first in which the strange misconception, received with unquestioning faith by earlier writers, that the Catacombs were exhausted sand-pits adapted by the Christians to the purpose of interment, was dispelled, and the true history of their formation demonstrated. Marchi’s line of investigation was followed by the Commendatore De’ Rossi, and his brother Michele, the former of whom was Marchi’s fellow-labourer during the latter part of his explorations; and it is to them that we owe the most exhaustive scientific examination of the whole subject, in its geological, architectural, ritual, epigraphic, and artistic aspects, in the two volumes of Roma Solterranea, published in 1864 and 1867, as well as in the articles periodically published in the Bullettino di Árcheologia Christiana. A very convenient abridgment of De’ Rossi’s work has been produced in English under the same title by Dr Northcote, President of Oscott, and the Rev. W. R. Brownlow. The Catacombs of Rome are the most extensive with which we are acquainted, and, as might be expected in the centre of the Christian world, are in many respects the most remarkable. No others have been so thoroughly examined and illustrated. These may, therefore, be most appropriately selected for description as typical examples.

Our description of the Roman Catacombs cannot be more appropriately introduced than by St Jerome’s account of his visits to them in his youth, already referred to, which, after the lapse of above fifteen centuries, presents a most accurate picture of these wonderful subterranean labyrinths. “When I was a boy,” he writes, “receiving my education in Rome, I and my schoolfellows used, on Sundays, to make the circuit of the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs. Many a time did we go down into the Catacombs. These are excavated deep in the earth, and contain, on either hand as you enter, the‘bodies of the dead buried in the wall. It is all so dark there that the language of the prophet (Ps. lv. 15) seems to be fulfilled, i Let them go down quick into hell.’ Only occasionally is light let in to mitigate the horror of the gloom, and then not so much through a window as through a hole. You take each step with caution, as, surrounded by deep night, you recall the words of Virgil—

“Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.”

In complete agreement with Jerome’s vivid picture the visitor to the Roman Catacombs finds himself in a vast labyrinth of narrow galleries, usually from 3 to 4 feet in width, interspersed with small chambers, excavated at successive levels, in the strata of volcanic rock subjacent to the city and its environs, constructed originally for the interment of the Christian dead. The galleries are not the way of access to the cemeteries, but are themselves the cemeteries, the dead being buried in long low horizontal recesses, excavated in the vertical walls of the passages, rising tier above tier like the berths in a ship, from a few inches above the floor to the springing of the arched ceiling, to the number of five, six, or even sometimes twelve ranges. These galleries are not arranged on any definite plan, but, as will be seen from the woodcut (fig. 1), they intersect one another at different angles, producing an intricate net work which it is almost impossible to reduce to any system. They generally run in straight lines, and as a rule preserve the same level. The different stories of galleries lie one below the other (fig. 2) to the number of four or five (in one part of the cemetery of St Callistus they reach seven stories), and communicate with one another by stairs cut out of the living rock. Light and air are introduced by means of vertical shafts (luminarid) running up to the outer air, and often serving for several stories. The drawing (fig. 3) from Northcote gives a very correct idea of these galleries, with the tiers of graves pierced in the walls. The doorways which are seen interrupting the lines of graves are those of the family sepulchral chambers, or cubicula, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter.

The graves, or loculi, as they are commonly designated, were, in the Christian cemeteries, with only a few exceptions (Padre Marchi produces some from the cemetery of St Cyτiaca, Monum. Primitiv., tav. xiv. xliii. xliv.), parallel with the length of the gallery. In the pagan cemeteries, on the other hand, the sepulchral recess as a rule entered the rock like an oven at right angles to the corridor, the body being introduced endways. The plan adopted by the Christians saved labour, economized space, and consulted reverence in the deposition of the corpse. These loculi were usually constructed for a single body only. Some, however, were formed to contain two, three, or four, or even more corpses. Such recesses were known respectively as bisomi, trisomi, quadrisomi, <fcc., terms which often appear in the sepulchral inscriptions. After the introduction of the body the loculi were closed with the greatest care, either with slabs of marble the whole length of the aperture, or with huge tiles, three being generally employed, cemented together with great exactness, so as to prevent the escape of the products of decomposition (fig. 4). Where any epitaph was set up—an immense number are destitute of any inscription at all—it is always painted or engraved on these slabs or tiles. In the earlier interments the epitaph is simply daubed on the slab in red or black paint. In later examples it is incised in the marbles, the letters being rendered clearer by being coloured with vermilion. The enclosing slab very often bears one or more Christian symbols, such as the dove, the anchor, the olive-branch, or the monogram of Christ (figs. 5, 6). The palm branch, which is also of frequent occurrence, has been solemnly decided by “the Congregation of Relics” to be an indisputable mark of the last resting place of a martyr. But the decision of this infallible authority has been proved fallacious by the stern logic of facts,—the emblem being found in connection with epitaphs of persons dying natural deaths, or those prepared by persons in their lifetime, as well as in those of little children, and even of pagans. Another frequent concomitant of these Catacomb interments, a small glass vessel containing traces of the sediment of a red fluid, embedded in the cement of the loculus, pronounced as confidently by the same authority to indicate a martyr’s grave (fig. 7), has also shown the unwisdom of pronouncing dogmatically without sufficient evidence. The red matter proves to be the remains of wine, not of blood; and the conclusion of the ablest archaeologists of the Church of Rome itself is that the vessels were placed where they are found, after the Eucharistic celebration or agape on the day of the funeral or its anniversary, and contained remains of the consecrated elements as a kind of religious charm. Instances of the pious theft, not alto gether unknown in modern churches, which combines economy with becoming respect to the dead, appear in the Catacombs. Not a few of the slabs, it is discovered, have done double duty, bearing a pagan inscription on one side, and a Christian one on the other. These are known as opisthographs. The bodies were interred wrapt in hnen cloths, or swathed in bands, and were frequently preserved by embalming. In the case of poorer interments the destruction of the body was, on the contrary, often accelerated by the use of quicklime.

Interment in the wall-recess or loculus, though infinitely the most common, was not the only mode employed in the Catacombs. Other forms of very frequent recurrence are the table-tomb and arched tomb, or areosοlιum. From the annexed woodcuts it will be seen that these only differ in the form of the surmounting recess. In each case the arched tomb was formed by an oblong chest, either hollowed out of the rock, or built of masonry, and closed with a horizontal slab. But in the table-tomb (fig. 8) the recess above, essential for the introduction of the corpse, is square, while in the arcosolium (fig. 9), a form of later date, it is semicircular. Sarcophagi are also found in the Catacombs, but are of rare occurrence. They chiefly occur in the earlier cemeteries, and the costliness of their construction confined their use to the wealthiest classes,— e.g., in the cemetery of St Domitilla, herself a member of the imperial house. Another unfrequent mode of interment was in graves like those of modern times, dug in the floor of the galleries (Marchi, u.s^, tav, xxi xxvi.). Table-tombs and arcosolia are by no means rare in the corridors of the Catacombs, but they belong more generally to the cubicula, or family vaults, of which we now proceed to speak.

These cubicula are small apartments, seldom more than 12 feet square, usually rectangular, though sometimes circular or polygonal, opening out of the main corridors. They are not unfrequently ranged regularly along the sides of the galleries, the doors of entrance, as may be seen in a previous illustration (fig. 3), following one another in as orderly succession as the bedchamber doors in the passage of a modern house. The roof is sometimes flat, but is more usually coved, and sometimes rises into a cupola. Both the roof and the walls are almost universally coated with stucco and covered with fresco paintings,—in the earlier works merely decorative, in the later always symbolical or historical. Each side of the cubiculum, except that of the entrance, usually contains a recessed tomb, either a table-tomb or arcosolium. That facing the entrance was the place of greatest honour, where in many instances the remains of a martyr were deposited, whose tomb, according to primitive usage, served as an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist. This was sometimes, as in the Papal crypt of St Callistus (fig. 10), protected from irreverence by latticework ltransennce) of marble. The cubiculum was originally designed for the reception of a very limited number of dead. But the natural desire to be buried near one’s relatives caused new tombs to be cut in the walls, above and around and behind the original tombs, the walls being thus completely honey-combed with loculi, sometimes as many as seventy, utterly regardless of the paintings originally depicted on the walls. Another motive for multiplying the number of graves operated when the cubiculum contained the remains of any noted saint or martyr. The desire of the old prophet of Bethel that his bones should be laid beside the bones of the man of God that came from Judah, is only the expression of an instinctive though unreasoning feeling, connecting greater personal safety with a resting-place close to the blessed dead, which awoke very early and acted very powerfully in the Christian Church. The Christian antiquary has cause continually to lament the destruction of works of art due to this craving. One of the most perfect examples of early Christian pictorial decoration, the so-called “Dispute with the Doctors,” in the Catacomb of Callistus, the “antique style of beauty” of which is noticed by Kugler, has thus suffered irreparable mutilation, the whole of the lower part of the picture having been destroyed by the excavation of a fresh grave-recess (Bottari, vol. ii. tav. 15). The plates of De’ Rossi, Perret, and, indeed, all illustrations of the Catacombs, exhibit frequent examples of the same destructive superstition. The woodcuts (figs. 11 and 12), taken from De’ Rossi’s great work, representing two of the cubicula in the cemetery of St Callistus, show the general arrangement of the loculi and the character of the frescos which ornament the walls and roof. These paintings, it will be seen, are simply decorative, of the same style as the wall-paintings of the baths, and those of Pompeii.

Each cubiculum was usually the burying-place of some one family, all the members of which were interred in it, just as in the chantry-chapels connected with mediaeval churches. In them was celebrated the funeral-feast on the day of burial and on its anniversary, as well as the Eucharist, which was the invariable accompaniment of funerals in the primitive church (Bingham, Orig. Ecd., bk. xxiii. c. ιii. 12). The funeral banquet descended to the

Christian Church from pagan times, and was too often profaned by heathen licence. St Augustine, in several passages, inveighs against those who thus by “gluttony and insobriety buried themselves over the buried,” and “made themselves drunk in the chapels of the martyrs, placing their excesses to the score of religious reverence for the dead” (August., De Mor. Feel. Cathol., c. 34; Contr. Faust., lib. xx. c. 21; Confess., lib. vi. c. 2). Some curious frescos representing these funeral feasts, found in the cubicula which were the scene of them, are reproduced by Bosio (pp. 355, 391) and others. A romantic air has been thrown over these burial chapels by the notion that they were the places of worship used by the Christians in times of persecution. This to a certain extent is doubtless true. Mr J. H. Parker, who has done more by his laborious and self-sacrificing investigations than any one living, not excepting De’ Rossi himself, for the elucidation of the true history and archaeology of the Catacombs, writes: “That during the time of persecution the bishops performed the divine offices in the Catacombs is not only recorded, but many of the chapels fitted up for that purpose remain, esnecially one in the chapel of St Priscilla, where the altar or stone coffin of a martyr remains, with a small platform behind it for the priest or bishop to stand and officiate over it according to the practice of the early church” (Archoeology of Borne; The Catacombs, § 3, p. 25). Mommsen also speaks of them unhesitatingly as “places of devotion for the community,” adding, “this union of devotion with the interment, the development of the grave into the cemetery, of the cemetery...