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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.

PARADISO, c. ix.

Full as the upper city is of great and precious memories, it possesses none greater and more precious than those which belong to the city under ground. Republican Rome had no braver heroes than Christian Rome. The ground and motives of action were changed, but the courage and devotion of earlier times did not surpass the courage and devotion of later days,--while a new spirit displayed itself in new and unexampled deeds, and a new and brighter glory shone from them over the world. But, unhappily, the stories of the early Christian centuries were taken possession of by a Church which has sought in them the means of enhancing her claims and increasing her power; mingling with them falsehoods and absurdities, cherishing the wildest and most unnatural traditions, inventing fictitious miracles, dogmatizing on false assertions, until reasonable and thoughtful religious men have turned away from the history of the first Christians in Rome with a sensation of disgust, and with despair at the apparently inextricable confusion of fact and fable concerning them.

But within a few years the period to which these stories belong has begun to be investigated with a new spirit, even at Rome itself, and in the bosom of the Roman Church. It was no unreasonable expectation, that, from a faithful and honest exploration of the catacombs, and examination of the inscriptions and works of art in them or derived from them, more light might be thrown upon the character, the faith, the feeling, and the life of the early Christians at Rome, than from any other source whatever. Results of unexpected interest have proved the justness of this expectation.

These results are chiefly due to the labors of two Romans, one a priest and the other a layman, the Padre Marchi, and the Cavaliere de Rossi, who have devoted themselves with the utmost zeal and with great ability to the task of exploration. The present Pope, stimulated by the efforts of these scholars, established some years since a Commission of Sacred Archeology for the express purpose of forwarding the investigations in the catacombs; and the French government, soon after its military occupation of Rome, likewise established a commission for the purpose of conducting independent investigations in the same field.

The Roman catacombs consist for the most part of a subterranean labyrinth of passages, cut through the soft volcanic rock of the Campagna, so narrow as rarely to admit of two persons walking abreast easily, but here and there on either side opening into chambers of varying size and form. The walls of the passages, through their whole extent, are lined with narrow excavations, one above another, large enough to admit of a body being placed in each; and where they remain in their original condition, these excavations are closed in front by tiles, or by a slab of marble cemented to the rock, and in most cases bearing an inscription. Nor is the labyrinth composed of passages upon a single level only; frequently there are several stories, connected with each other by sloping ways.

There is no single circumstance, in relation to the catacombs, of more striking and at first sight perplexing character than their vast extent. About twenty different catacombs are now known and are more or less open,--and a year is now hardly likely to pass without the discovery of a new one; for the original number of underground cemeteries, as ascertained from the early authorities, was nearly, if not quite, three times this number. It is but a very few years since the entrance to the famous catacomb of St. Callixtus, one of the most interesting of all, was found by the Cavaliere de Rossi; and it was only in the spring of 1855 that the buried church and catacomb of St. Alexander on the Nomentan Way were brought to light. Earthquakes, floods, and neglect have obliterated the openings of many of these ancient cemeteries,--and the hollow soil of the Campagna is full "of hidden graves, which men walk over without knowing where they are."

Each of the twelve great highways which ran from the gates of Rome was bordered on either side, at a short distance from the city wall, by the hidden Christian cemeteries. The only one of the catacombs of which even a partial survey has been made is that of St. Agnes, of a portion of which the Padre Marchi published a map in 1845. "It is calculated to contain about an eighth part of that cemetery. The greatest length of the portion thus measured is not more than seven hundred feet, and its greatest width about five hundred and fifty; nevertheless, if we measure all the streets that it contains, their united length scarcely falls short of two English miles. This would give fifteen or sixteen miles for all the streets in the cemetery of St. Agnes." Taking this as a fair average of the size of the catacombs, for some are larger and some smaller, we must assign to the streets of graves already known a total length of about three hundred miles, with a probability that the unknown ones are at least of equal length. This conclusion appears startling, when one thinks of the close arrangement of the lines of graves along the walls of these passages. The height of the passages varies greatly, and with it the number of graves, one above another; but the Padre Marchi, who is competent authority, estimates the average number at ten, that is, five on each side, for every seven feet,--which would give a population of the dead, for the three hundred miles, of not less than two millions and a quarter. No one who has visited the catacombs can believe, surprising as this number may seem, that the Padre Marchi's calculation is an extravagant one as to the number of graves in a given space. We have ourselves counted eleven graves, one over another, on each side of the passage, and there is no space lost between the head of one grave and the foot of another. Everywhere there is economy of space,--the economy of men working on a hard material, difficult to be removed, and laboring in a confined space, with the need of haste.

This question of the number of the dead in the catacombs opens the way to many other curious questions. The length of time that the catacombs were used as burial-places; the probability of others, beside Christians, being buried in them; the number of Christians at Rome during the first two centuries, in comparison with the total number of the inhabitants of the city; and how far the public profession of Christianity was attended with peril in ordinary times at Rome, previously to the conversion of Constantine, so as to require secret and hasty burial of the dead;--these are points demanding solution, but of which we will take up only those relating immediately to the catacombs.

There can, of course, be no certainty with regard to the period when the first Christian catacomb was begun at Rome,--but it was probably within a few years after the first preaching of the Gospel there. The Christians would naturally desire to separate themselves in burial from the heathen, and to avoid everything having the semblance of pagan rites. And what mode of sepulture so natural for them to adopt, in the new and affecting circumstances of their lives, as that which was already familiar to them in the account of the burial of their Lord? They knew that he had been "wrapped in linen, and laid in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and a stone had been rolled unto the door of the sepulchre." They would be buried as he was. Moreover, there was a general and ardent expectation among them of the second coming of the Saviour; they believed it to be near at hand; and they believed also that then the dead would be called from their graves, clothed once more in their bodies, and that as Lazarus rose from the tomb at the voice of his Master, so in that awful day when judgment should be passed upon the earth their dead would rise at the call of the same beloved voice.

But there were, in all probability, other more direct, though not more powerful reasons, which led them to the choice of this mode of burial. We read that the Saviour was buried--at least, the phrase appears applicable to the whole account of his entombment ... "as the manner of the Jews is to bury." The Jewish population at Rome in the early imperial times was very large. They clung, as Jews have clung wherever they have been scattered, to the memories and to the customs of their country,--and that they retained their ancient mode of sepulture was curiously ascertained by Bosio, the first explorer of the catacombs. In the year 1602, he discovered a catacomb on what is called Monte Verde,--the southern extremity of the Janiculum, outside the walls of Rome, near to the Porta Portese. This gate is in the Transtiberine district, and in this quarter of Rome the Jews dwelt. The catacomb resembled in its general form and arrangements those which were of Christian origin;--but here no Christian emblem was found. On the contrary, the only emblems and articles that Bosio describes as having been seen were plainly of Jewish origin. The seven-branched candlestick was painted on the wall; the word "Synagogue" was read on a portion of a broken inscription and the whole catacomb had an air of meanness and poverty which was appropriate to the condition of the mass of the Jews at Rome. It seemed to be beyond doubt that it was a Jewish cemetery. In the course of years, through the changes in the external condition and the cultivation of Monte Verde, the access to this catacomb has been lost. Padre Marchi made ineffectual efforts a few years since to find an entrance to it, and Bosio's account still remains the only one that exists concerning it. Supposing the Jews to have followed this mode of interment at Rome, it would have been a strong motive for its adoption by the early Christians. The first converts in Rome, as St. Paul's Epistle shows, were, in great part, from among the Jews. The Gentile and the Jewish Christians made one community, and the Gentiles adopted the manner of the Jews in placing their dead, "wrapped in linen cloths, in new tombs hewn out of the rock."

Believing, then, the catacombs to have been begun within a few years after the first preaching of Christianity in Rome, there is abundant evidence to prove that their construction was continued during the time when the Church was persecuted or simply tolerated, and that they were extended during a considerable time after Christianity became the established creed of the empire. Indeed, several catacombs now known were not begun until some time after Constantine's conversion. They continued to be used as burial-places certainly as late as the sixth century. This use seems to have been given up at the time of the frequent desolation of the land around the walls of Rome by the incursions of barbarians, and the custom gradually discontinued was never resumed. The catacombs then fell into neglect, were lost sight of, and their very existence was almost forgotten. But during the first five hundred years of our era they were the burial-places of a smaller or greater portion of the citizens of Rome,--and as not a single church of that time remains, they are, and contain in themselves, the most important monuments that exist of the Christian history of Rome for all that long period.

"Hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulcrum."

It is not to be supposed that the normal state of the Christian community in Rome, during the first three centuries, was that of suffering and alarm. A period of persecution was the exception to long courses of calm years. Undoubtedly, during most of the time, the faith was professed under restraint, and possibly with a sense of insecurity which rendered it attractive to ardent souls, and preserved something of its first sincerity. It must be remembered that the first Christian converts were mostly from among the poorer classes, and that, however we might have admired their virtues, we might yet have been offended by much that was coarse and unrefined in the external exhibitions of their religion. The same features which accompany the religious manifestations of the uncultivated in our own days, undoubtedly, with somewhat different aspect, presented themselves at Rome. The enthusiasms, the visions, the loud preaching and praying, the dull iteration and reiteration of inspired truth till all the inspiration is driven out, were all probably to be heard and witnessed in the early Christian days at Rome. Not all the converts were saints,--and none of them were such saints as the Catholic painters of the last three centuries have prostituted Art and debased Religion in producing. The real St. Cecilia stood in the beauty of holiness before the disciples at Rome far purer and lovelier than Raphael has painted her. Domenichino has outraged every feeling of devotion, every sense of truth, every sympathy for the true suffering of the women who were cruelly murdered for their faith, in his picture of the Martyrdom of St. Agnes. It is difficult to destroy the effect that has been produced upon one's own heart by these and innumerable other pictures of declining Art,--pictures honored by the Roman Church of to-day,--and to bring up before one's imagination, in vivid, natural, and probable outline, the life and form of the converts, saints, and martyrs of the first centuries. If we could banish all remembrance of all the churches and all the pictures contained in them, built and painted, since the fourteenth century, we might hope to gain some better view of the Christians who lived above the catacombs, and were buried in them. It is from the catacombs that we must seek all that is left to enable us to construct the image that we desire.

Few of the chapels that are to be seen now in the catacombs are in their original condition. As time went on, and Christianity became a corrupt and imperial religion, the simple truths which had sufficed for the first Christians were succeeded by doctrines less plain, but more adapted to touch cold and materialized imaginations, and to inflame dull hearts. The worship of saints began, and was promoted by the heads of the Church, who soon saw how it might be diverted to the purposes of personal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement. Consequently the martyrs were made into a hierarchy of saintly protectors of the strayed flock of Christ, and round their graves in the catacombs sprang up a harvest of tales, of visions, of miracles, and of superstitions. As the Church sank lower and lower, as the need of a heavenly advocate with God was more and more impressed upon the minds of the Christians of those days, the idea seems to have arisen that neighborhood of burial to the grave of some martyr might be an effectual way to secure the felicity of the soul. Consequently we find in these chapels that the later Christians, those perhaps of the fifth and sixth centuries, disregarding the original arrangements, and having lost all respect for the Art, and all reverence for the memorial pictures which made the walls precious, were often accustomed to cut out graves in the walls above and around the martyr's tomb, and as near as possible to it. The instances are numerous in which pictures of the highest interest have been thus ruthlessly defaced. No sacredness of subject could resist the force of the superstition; and we remember one instance where, in a picture of which the part that remains is of peculiar interest, the body of the Good Shepherd has been cut through for the grave of a child,--so that only the feet and a part of the head of the figure remain.

There is little reason for supposing, as has frequently been done, that the catacombs, even in times of persecution, afforded shelter to any large body of the faithful. Single, specially obnoxious, or timid individuals, undoubtedly, from time to time, took refuge in them, and may have remained within them for a considerable period. Such at least is the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat would have been in most instances insurmountable. The catacombs were always places for the few, not for the many; for the few who followed a body to the grave; for the few who dug the narrow, dark passages in which not many could work; for the few who came to supply the needs of some hunted and hidden friend; for the few who in better times assembled to join in the service commemorating the last supper of their Lord.

It is difficult, as we have said before, to clear away the obscuring fictions of the Roman Church from the entrance of the catacombs; but doing this so far as with our present knowledge may be done, we find ourselves entering upon paths that bring us into near connection and neighborhood with the first followers of the founders of our faith at Rome. The reality which is given to the lives of the Christians of the first centuries by acquaintance with the memorials that they have left of themselves here quickens our feeling for them into one almost of personal sympathy. "Your obedience is come abroad unto all men," wrote St. Paul to the first Christians of Rome. The record of that obedience is in the catacombs. And in the vast labyrinth of obscure galleries one beholds and enters into the spirit of the first followers of the Apostle to the Gentiles.

THE NEST.

MAY.

When oaken woods with buds are pink, And new-come birds each morning sing,-- When fickle May on Summer's brink Pauses, and knows not which to fling, Whether fresh bud and bloom again, Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,--

Then from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest,-- Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o'er the loud and dusty road The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy World drags by In the old way, because it must,-- The bride with trouble in her eye, The mourner following hated dust: Thy duty, winged flame of Spring, Is but to love and fly and sing.

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway Above the life by mortals led, Singing the merry months away, Master, not slave of daily bread, And, when the Autumn comes, to flee Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

PALINODE.--DECEMBER.

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood Stands roofless in the bitter air; In ruins on its floor is strewed The carven foliage quaint and rare, And homeless winds complain along The columned choir once thrilled with song.

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty while the north winds chase Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past, I love thee still for what thou wast.

Ah, when the Summer graces flee From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see Only bare trunk and disleaved bough, When springs of life that gleamed and gushed Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed,--

I'll think, that, like the birds of Spring, Our good goes not without repair, But only flies to soar and sing Far off in some diviner air, Where we shall find it in the calms Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.

EBEN JACKSON.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thine earthly task hast done.

The large tropical moon rose in full majesty over the Gulf of Mexico, that beneath it rolled a weltering surge of silver, which broke upon the level sand of the beach with a low, sullen roar, prophetic of storms to come. To-night a south wind was heavily blowing over Gulf and prairie, laden with salt odors of weed and grass, now and then crossed by a strain of such perfume as only tropic breezes know,--a breath of heavy, passionate sweetness from orange-groves and rose gardens, mixed with the miasmatic sighs of rank forests, and mile on mile of tangled cane-brake, where jewel-tinted snakes glitter and emit their own sickly-sweet odor, and the deep blue bells of luxuriant vines wave from their dusky censers steams of poisonous incense.

I endured the influence of all this as long as I dared, and then turned my pony's head from the beach, and, loitering through the city's hot streets, touched him into a gallop as the prairie opened before us, and followed the preternatural, colossal shadow of horse and man east by the moon across the dry dull grass and bitter yellow chamomile growth of the sand, till I stopped at the office door of the Hospital, when, consigning my horse to a servant, I commenced my nightly round of the wards.

There were but few patients just now, for the fever had not yet made its appearance, and until within a week the unwontedly clear and cool atmosphere had done the work of the physician. Most of the sick were doing well enough without me; some few needed and received attention; and these disposed of, I betook myself to the last bed in one of the long wards, quite apart from the others, which was occupied by a sailor, a man originally from New England, whose hard life and continual exposure to all climates and weathers had at length resulted in slow tubercular consumption.

It was one of the rare cases of this disease not supervening upon an original strumous diathesis, and, had it been properly cared for in the beginning, might have been cured. Now there was no hope; but the case being a peculiar and interesting one, I kept a faithful record of its symptoms and progress for publication. Besides, I liked the man; rugged and hardy by nature, it was curious to see what strange effects a long, wasting, and painful disease produced upon him. At first he could not be persuaded to be quiet; the muscular energies were still unaffected, and, with continual hemorrhage from the lungs, he could not understand that work or exercise could hurt him. But as the disease gained ground, its characteristic languor unstrung his force; the hard and sinewy limbs became attenuated and relaxed; his breath labored; a hectic fever burnt in his veins like light flame every afternoon, and subsided into chilly languor toward morning; profuse night-sweats increased the weakness; and as he grew feebler, offering of course less resistance to the febrile symptoms, they were exacerbated, till at times a slight delirium showed itself; and so, without haste or delay, he "made for port," as he said.

His name was Eben Jackson, and the homely appellation was no way belied by his aspect. He never could have been handsome, and now fifteen years of rough-and-tumble life had left their stains and scars on his weather-beaten visage, whose only notable features were the deep-set eyes retreating under shaggy brows, that looked one through and through with the keen glance of honest instinct; while a light tattooing of red and blue on either cheek-bone added an element of the grotesque to his homeliness. He was a natural and simple man, with whom conventionalities and the world's scale went for nothing,--without vanity as without guile.--But it is best to let him speak for himself. I found him that night very feverish, yet not wild at all.

"Hullo, Doctor!" said he, "I'm all afire! I've ben thinkin' about my old mother's humstead up to Simsbury, and the great big well to the back door; how I used to tilt that 'are sweep up, of a hot day, till the bucket went 'way down to the bottom and come up drippin' over,--such cold, clear water! I swear, I'd give all Madagascar for a drink on't!"

I called the nurse to bring me a small basket of oranges I had sent out in the morning, expressly for this patient, and squeezing the juice from one of them on a little bit of ice, I held it to his lips, and he drank eagerly.

"I dunno but 'tis, Doctor; I dunno but 'tis; but there a'n't nothin' goes to the spot like that Simsbury water. You ha'n't never v'yaged to them parts, have ye?"

"Bless you, yes, man! I was born and brought up in Hartford, just over the mountain, and I've been to Simsbury, fishing, many a time."

"You see, Doctor, I've had somethin' in the hold a good spell't I wanted to break bulk on, but I didn't know as I ever was goin' to see a shipmet agin; and now you've jined convoy jist in time, for Davy Jones's a'n't fur off. Are you calculatin' to go North afore long?"

Jackson began to fumble with weak and trembling hands about his throat, to undo his shirt-collar,--he would not let me help him,--and presently, flushed and panting from the effort, he drew out a length of delicate Panama chain fastened rudely together by a link of copper wire, and suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet. Jackson looked at it as I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness.

"Well," said he, "I've carried that 'are gimcrack nigh twenty long year round my old scrag, and when I'm sunk I want you to take it off, Doctor. Keep it safe till you go to Connecticut, and then some day take a tack over to Simsbury. Don't ye go through the Gap, but go 'long out on the turnpike over the mountain, and down t'other side to Avon, and so nor'ard till jist arter you git into Simsbury town you see an old red house 'longside o' the mountain, with a big ellum-tree afore the door, and a stone well to the side on't. Go 'long in and ask for Hetty Buel, and give her that 'are thing, and tell her where you got it, and that I ha'n't never forgot to wish her well allus, though I couldn't write to her."

There was Eben Jackson's romance! It piqued my curiosity. The poor fellow was wakeful and restless,--I knew he would not sleep, if I left him,--and I encouraged him to go on talking.

"I will, Jackson, I promise you. But wouldn't it be better for you to tell me something about where you have been all these long years? Your friends will like to know."

His eye brightened; he was like all the rest of us, pleased with any interest taken in him and his; he turned over on his pillow, and I lifted him into a half-sitting position.

"That's ship-shape, Doctor! I don't know but what I had oughter spin a yarn for you; I'm kinder on a watch to-night; and Hetty won't never know what I did do, if I don't send home the log 'long 'i' the cargo.

"Well, you see I was born in them parts, down to Canton, where father belonged; but mother was a Simsbury woman, and afore I was long-togged, father he moved onter the old humstead up to Simsbury, when gran'ther Peck died. Our farm was right 'longside o' Miss Buel's; you'll see't when you go there; but there a'n't nobody there now. Mother died afore I come away, and lies safe to the leeward o' Simsbury meetin'-house. Father he got a stroke a spell back, and he couldn't farm it; so he sold out and went West, to Parmely Larkum's, my sister's, to live. But I guess the house is there, and that old well.--How etarnal hot it's growin'! Doctor, give me a drink!

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