VI The Via Latina
The ancient Via Latina branches off from the Via Appia near the Baths of Caracalla. It is soon, however, lost among the vineyards, but reappears and leads eventually to the Alban Hills.
The Pilgrim Itineraries mention three cemeteries here. They give a certain number of names of martyrs buried in these catacombs—none, however, apparently well known. They also allude to “many martyrs” interred in these catacombs.
The names of the three catacombs in question are (1) Apronienus—perhaps the name of the original donor; (2) SS. Gordianus and Epimachus; and (3) S. Tertullinus. These cemeteries have never been carefully examined, and even the site of the third has not yet been identified.
The Via Labicana
Leads from the Porta Maggiore, the ancient Porta Prænestina, to Palestrina. The Itineraries tell us of two cemeteries on this road, that of S. Castulus and that of SS. Peter and Marcellinus. The Catacomb of S. Castulus has only been very partially examined. It is in a ruinous condition, and is not at present accessible. S. Castulus suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian.
The Catacomb of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, sometimes called “ad duas lauros,” from the original name of the district, is in the immediate neighbourhood of the famous Torre Pignatara, the tomb of S. Helena, this appellation being derived from the pignatte or earthen pots used in the building. The magnificent porphyry sarcophagus now in the Vatican was removed from this tomb. SS. Peter and Marcellinus, from whom this once celebrated catacomb is named, suffered in the persecution of Diocletian. S. Peter was in orders as an exorcist. S. Marcellinus was a priest. Pope Damasus, in his inscription originally placed on their crypt, tells us he learned the particulars of their martyrdom from the executioner employed by the State. This cemetery has lately been partially explored. The bodies of the two saints who gave their names to the catacomb were carried away, and are now in Seligenstadt, near Mayence. The saints termed “the Quatuor Coronati” were in the first instance buried here, but their remains were subsequently translated by Pope Leo IV to the church on the Cœlian. This cemetery is of considerable extent.
The Itineraries enumerate the names of several martyrs once evidently well known. They also speak of many other martyrs buried here, using such expressions as “innumerabilis martyrum multitudo sepulta jacent”—“alii (Martyres) innumerabiles,” etc.
The Via Tiburtina
The Via Tiburtina leads to Tivoli. It quits Rome by the Porta S. Lorenzo, which stands on the site of the ancient Porta Tiburtina. On this road are two large cemeteries, that of S. Cyriaca and that of S. Hippolytus. S. Cyriaca was a Christian widow. The importance, however, of this catacomb is mainly derived from its possessing the tomb of S. Laurence. S. Laurence suffered martyrdom A.D. 258, three days after the death of Pope Sixtus II, to whom he was attached as deacon. A very general tradition relates that Laurence suffered on a gridiron. An extraordinary popularity is attached to his memory. Marucchi, one of the latest scholars who has written on the catacombs, does not hesitate to say that the veneration paid to him was almost equal that accorded to the apostles. There is scarcely a city in Western Christendom which does not possess a church bearing his honoured name. In Rome itself there are six of these.
Over the crypt containing the tomb of S. Laurence, Constantine the Great built a little oratory or memoria, which soon became too small for the crowds of pilgrims. A second church was erected by Pope Sixtus III, A.D. 432, by the side of Constantine’s Memoria which was ever known as “Basilica ad Corpus.” The second church was termed the “Basilica Major.” Three of the fifth century Popes of Rome were buried in the “Basilica ad Corpus.” In the thirteenth century the two churches were made into one by Honorius III, A.D. 1218.
The Itineraries mention several well-known martyrs buried in the cemetery which was excavated round the martyr’s sacred tomb, notably SS. Justus, Cyriaca, Simferosa, etc., “cum multis martyribus.” The catacomb in comparatively modern times has been ruthlessly damaged by the works in connection with a very large modern cemetery. Only since A.D. 1894 has more care been taken in the preservation of the precious remains of this once important catacomb.
Cemetery of S. Hippolytus.—On the same great road, the Via Tiburtina which stretches across the now desolate Campagna to Tivoli, on the northern side of the road almost opposite the Cemetery of S. Cyriaca on which stands the Basilica of S. Laurentius just described, is the Catacomb of S. Hippolytus. It is only comparatively recently that this cemetery has been really explored, and much still remains to be excavated here. A small basilica underground was discovered, with the historic crypt in which the once famous martyr was buried. The corridors around have been sadly ravaged again and again by barbarian invaders in the fifth and following centuries, and the whole catacomb is in ruin, and has been only in part investigated. It is evidently of considerable extent. Proximity to the tomb of the great scholar martyr was evidently a privilege eagerly sought by many from the middle years of the third century onward. The numbers of Pilgrim “Graffiti” or inscriptions more or less roughly carved and painted in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary, tell us that the spot where the remains of Hippolytus lay, was long the object of reverent pilgrimage after the Peace of the Church all through the fourth and following centuries. The Itineraries mention many martyrs buried here, among whom S. Genesius is perhaps the best known; he was a celebrated actor; once a mocker at the religion of which eventually he became the brave confessor; he died for his faith.
But the glory of this now ruined cemetery was the tomb of S. Hippolytus. He has been well described by Bishop Lightfoot in his long and exhaustive Memoir (Apostolic Fathers, Part 1. vol. ii.).
“The position and influence of Hippolytus were unique among the Roman Christians of his age. He linked together the learning and the traditions of the East, the original home of Christianity, with the practical energy of the West, the scene of his own life labours. He was by far the most learned man in the Western Church.... Though he lived till within a few years of the middle of the third century, he could trace his pedigree back by only three steps, literary as well as ministerial, to the life and teaching of the Saviour Himself, Irenæus, of whom he was the pupil, Polycarp, and S. John. This was his direct ancestry. No wonder if these facts secured to him exceptional honour in his own generation.”
The position he occupied in the Christian world has been much disputed. He is usually described as Bishop of Portus, the harbour of Rome, and modern scholarship has come to the conclusion that he exercised a general superintendence with the rank of a bishop over the various congregations of foreigners, traders and others, on the Italian sea-board, with Portus as his headquarters.
A very dignified and striking statue, alas much mutilated, has been found amid the ruins over the Cemetery of Hippolytus. On the back and sides of the chair on which the figure of the scholar-bishop is sitting, is engraved a generally received list of his works. There is no doubt as to the genuineness of the statue in question, which dates from about the year 222. It ranks as the oldest Christian statue which has come to light; indeed, it stands alone as an example of very early Christian sculpture, and was probably erected in an interval of the Church’s peace in the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus, and is a striking proof of the unique position which the writer and scholar held in the Christian community.
There is no doubt he was done to death—what, however, was the peculiar form of his martyrdom is uncertain. We know he was exiled to Sardinia, where he suffered, and his remains were brought back to Rome with the remains of Pontianus, somewhile Bishop of Rome, who also suffered martyrdom at the same time in Sardinia; Pontianus being laid in the papal crypt in the Cemetery of Callistus, and Hippolytus in the catacomb which bears his name on the Via Tiburtina, about the year 237.
Pope Damasus, the great restorer of the sanctuaries of Rome, enlarged and beautified the crypt where the honoured remains were deposited, in the latter years of the fourth century, and a few years later Prudentius the Christian poet in his collection of hymns entitled Peristephanôn—the Crowns of the Martyrs—devotes a long poem to the shrine and memory of Hippolytus.
In the opening years of the fourth century, when Honorius, Theodosius’ son, was reigning over the Western Empire, it is evident that the fame and reputation of Hippolytus, scholar and martyr, were among the popular histories of Christendom, and his tomb one of the chief objects of pilgrimage.
The lines of Prudentius, written in the closing years of the fourth century, are quoted as giving a picture of a famous catacomb as it appeared to a scholar and poet in the days of Theodosius and Honorius. They also give some idea of the estimation and reverential regard with which the martyrs and confessors of the first age of Christianity were held in the century which immediately followed the Peace of the Church:
“Hard by the City walls—amid the orchards—there is a Crypt.... Into its secret cells there is a steep path with winding stairs.... As you advance, the darkness as of night grows more dense.... At intervals, however, there are contrived openings cut in the roof above, which bring the bright rays of the sun into the crypt. Although the recesses twisting this way and that form narrow chambers, with galleries in deep gloom, yet some light finds its way through the pierced vaulting down into the hollow recesses.... And thus throughout the subterranean crypt it is possible still to revel in the brightness of the absent sun.
“To such secret recesses was the body of Hippolytus borne, quite near to the spot where now stands the altar dedicated to God.
“That same altar-slab provides the sacrament, and is the trusty guardian of its martyr’s bones, which it guards there in the waiting for the Eternal Life, while it feeds the dwellers by the River Tiber with holy food.
“Marvellous is the sanctity of the place. The altar is close by for those who pray, and it assists the hopes of such by mercifully giving what they require. Here, too, have I when sick with ills of soul and body, often knelt in prayer and found help.... Early in the morning men come to salute (Hippolytus); all the youth of the place worship here; they come—they go—until the setting of the sun. Love of religion gathers into one vast crowd both Latins and strangers.”—Translated from Prudentius, “Peristephanôn,” Passion of S. Hippolytus.
The close proximity of the Cemetery and Basilica of S. Laurence (above described) as years passed on was fatal to the memory of S. Hippolytus. From very early times S. Laurence, the deacon of Sixtus II, received extraordinary honour. He suffered, as we have stated, in the persecution of Decius, circa A.D. 258, and occupies the place of S. Stephen in the Church of the West. It was of this famous and popular saint that Augustine wrote: “Quam non potest abscondi Roma, tam non potest abscondi Laurentii corona.” In the prayer of the oldest Roman sacramentary we read, “De beati solemnitate Laurentii, peculiaris præ ceteris Roma lætatur.” “No marvel,” writes Bishop Lightfoot, “that the aureole which encircled the heads of other neighbouring saints and martyrs, even of the famous Hippolytus himself, should have faded in the light of his unique splendour.”
As years rolled on, the neighbouring Basilica of S. Laurence grew larger and grander. The Basilica of S. Hippolytus built over his cemetery faded away, comparatively uncared for; the great scholar was forgotten in the fame which gathered round the neighbouring popular saint. Paul I, A.D. 756–67, removed the sacred relique of the saint scholar to the well-known City Church of S. Silvester in Capite.
The Cemetery and Basilica of Hippolytus after the remains of the saint had been translated were quickly forgotten, and the very site was in time confused with that of the Cemetery and stately Church of S. Laurence on the other side of the Via Tiburtina. It was only in 1881 that De Rossi discovered the ancient cemetery and the ruined subterranean basilica above briefly described,—the basilica and catacomb visited by Prudentius in the last years of the fourth century, and so vividly painted by him in his hymn in the Peristephanôn.
Outside Rome there are traces of the fame of the great scholar, but not many. There is a ruined church in Portus bearing his name; its tower, still noticeable, is a conspicuous landmark in the desolate Campagna. Arles possesses a church dedicated to Hippolytus. A strange story connects his remains with the once famous royal Abbey of S. Denis close to Paris. His body, or at least portions of his body, are also traditionally enshrined in churches at Brescia and Cologne. The Roman Churches of S. Laurence and the “Quatuor Coronati” also claim to possess reliques of S. Hippolytus.
But these few scattered and doubtful reliques are well-nigh all that remains of Hippolytus, and while many of his writings are still with us, bearing witness to his industry and scholarship, his name and life-work are virtually forgotten by men; and in ecclesiastical annals only a dim, blurred memory of the career of one of the greatest scholars and writers of the first two Christian centuries lives in the pages of that eventful story.
Of the two saints whose basilicas and cemeteries were so close together on that Campagna Road just outside Rome, the one, S. Laurence, men have crowned with an aureole of surpassing glory; the other, S. Hippolytus, whose title to honour was really far superior to that of his companion in the tombs of the Via Tiburtina, men have chosen to forget.
The Via Nomentana
The Via Nomentana leaves Rome on the north through the modern Porta Pia; in ancient times the Porta Nomentana, and in the Middle Ages the Porta S. Agnesi. On this road the Itineraries tell us of three cemeteries: that of S. Nicomedes, of S. Agnes, and the cemetery generally termed “Cœmeterium majus. De Rossi calls this last the Ostrian Cemetery; some call it after the famous martyred foster-sister of Agnes, S. Emerentiana, who was buried there.”
(1) Cemetery of S. Nicomedes.—This is only a small catacomb, but it possesses a high interest on account of its age. It dates evidently from the first century. Tradition tells us that Nicomedes was a presbyter who lived in the days of Domitian. He suffered martyrdom for his faith’s sake, and his body was thrown into the Tiber. A disciple of his, one Justus, recovered his master’s body and buried it “in horto juxta muros.” The garden in question, hard by the city walls, was the site of the present little catacomb.
The masonry work here is of a very early date, and the various Greek inscriptions on the loculi also bear witness to its great antiquity; Marucchi alludes to a reservoir of water in the principal gallery, and believes that the presence of water prevented the cemetery from being further extended.
(2) The Cemetery of S. Agnes is on the Via Nomentana, about a mile from the Porta Pia. S. Agnes has been from very early times a singularly loved figure among the heroines of the days of persecution. Jerome well voices this popular estimate “omnium gentium litteris atque linguis.... vita laudata est.” Her story is well known; how she refused to become the bride of the Proconsul’s son, alleging that she was already the bride of Christ. After some terrible experiences she was condemned to be burned as a Christian, but the fire was too tardy or insufficient, so the executioner stabbed her in the throat. The name “Agnes” is simply a Christian appellation which she assumed signifying her purity and chastity. The name of her family is unknown; it is, however, certain that she belonged to a wealthy, probably to a noble House. She was interred in a cemetery, the property of her parents “in prædiolo suo.”
Her martyrdom took place in the course of the persecution of the Emperor Valerian, circa A.D. 253–7. Portions of the catacomb which bears her name are of a yet older date than S. Agnes. Among other signs of great antiquity are the Greek inscriptions on various loculi. The cemetery, which has been explored with some care, consists of three stories, of different dates. It was, however, after the burying of the young martyr that the catacomb was developed and assumed considerable proportions, as many of the Christian congregation of Rome were desirous of depositing their loved dead in the immediate neighbourhood of the tomb of Agnes. The Emperor Constantine in the fourth century built the basilica known as S. Agnes over the tomb. There is an inscription on a small marble tablet at Naples, originally brought from Rome, which Armellini considers was originally on the loculus containing the body of the saint. The inscription is as follows:
Agne · Sanc
Tissima
The basilica has been several times restored, but preserves with fair accuracy the original disposition of the Church of Constantine.
When it was first built in the fourth century, as we find in other similar instances, considerable destruction and havoc were wrought in the galleries of the catacomb. The fourth-century builders often mercilessly cut away and destroyed galleries, cubicula, loculi, when they arranged for the foundations and lower stories of the church large or small which arose over the tomb of the special saint and martyr. We would instance as conspicuous examples of this strange disregard of the older burying-places, the Basilicas of S. Domitilla, of S. Laurence, of S. Sylvester; the last-named is built over the Cemetery of S. Priscilla.
The body of S. Agnes was never translated from its original home. In the year 1605, in the pontificate of Paul V, her remains, together with those of her foster-sister the martyr S. Emerentiana, were placed in a silver sarcophagus or urn. This was seen in the year 1901–2, when some work beneath the altar was being carried out.
(3) The Cœmeterium majus in the immediate neighbourhood of the Catacomb of S. Agnes. De Rossi names it the “Ostrian” Cemetery, and connects it with the memories of S. Peter, as being the place where the apostle used to baptize. Marucchi, however, in the light of recent discoveries in the Catacomb of Priscilla on the adjacent Via Salaria, unhesitatingly believes that the site of S. Peter’s work and preaching must be sought for in the last-named cemetery. A brief résumé of Marucchi’s arguments, which are most weighty, will be given when the Cemetery of Priscilla is described.
The glory of this cemetery (Cœmeterium majus), as the memory of S. Peter seems really to belong to the Catacomb of S. Priscilla, is that here was the original tomb of S. Emerentiana, who for her devotion to her foster-sister Agnes suffered martyrdom very shortly after the death of Agnes. The site of the tomb has been ascertained, but the remains of Emerentiana now rest in the silver urn which contains the body of S. Agnes in her basilica beneath the altar.
The appellation “Cœmeterium majus” dates certainly from the fifth century. One of the more striking features of this catacomb is a little basilica not of later construction but belonging to the original work. It is simply excavated in the tufa stone, and is divided into two parts by the passage running through the cemetery. It is a perfect subterranean church, containing separate divisions for men and women. The presbytery and the position of the altar are clearly defined; the very chair for the bishop or presiding presbyter is in its place, as is the pillar on which the sacred oil burned in front of some hallowed sanctuary. We wonder what was the special purpose for which this little church, in the middle of the cemetery, was designed?
The Itineraries mention that various martyrs, whose life-stories are generally unknown to us, were buried here.