II
De Rossi tells us how he had studied over fifteen thousand of these epitaphs, and that every year about five hundred more were deciphered. We will copy a very few of these:
“To dear Cyriacus—sweetest son—Mayest thou live in the Holy Spirit.”
“Matronata—who lived a year and 32 days—Pray for thy parents.”
“Bolosa—may God refresh thee—In Christ.”
“Sweet Faustina—mayest thou live in God.”
“Peace to thy soul, Oxycholis.”
“Agape, thou shalt live for ever.”
“Filumena—thy spirit is in peace.”
“Baccis, sweet soul in the peace of the Lord, a virgin—Her father to his sweetest daughter.”
“Victorina is in Peace and in Christ.”
“Amerinus to his dearest wife Rufina; may God refresh thy spirit.”
“His parents made this for their good and sweetest son Felix.... May Christ receive thee in peace.”
“Porcella sleeps here in peace.”
“Severa; mayest thou live in God.”
“Farewell, my dear one, in peace with the Holy souls; Farewell in Christ.”
Never a word of sorrow on these graves of the dead—never a word of repining—never a regret that they have been taken away. Only just a few words telling of their sure hope for their dear ones, and a prayer to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit to keep them in their loving guardianship.
We must dwell a little on the question of the testimony which these epitaphs of the first age of Christianity bear on the practice of the living asking for the help of those who had passed within the veil. There is no doubt but that at a later period and all through the Middle Ages this was the practice, and it has led to results which true theologians generally deplore. The question here is—How far was this the practice of the Church of the first days?
Now there is no doubt whatever but that the mediæval Church from very early times taught that the prayers of great saints possessed a peculiar efficacy, and in the uneducated mind this shaded into something like a belief that these saints possessed some actual power of themselves to interfere in and to influence human affairs. We shall presently quote some of S. Augustine’s views here.
In the case, however, of the early Christians whose thoughts are reflected in their great City of the Dead, the case was very different. They believed so intensely in the continuance of life after death that they maintained their communion with the departed by an interchange of prayers.
S. Cyprian, a great theologian and a cautious teacher, believed that the blessed dead were anxious for those whom they had left behind. Now, granting that this was the common feeling of Christians in respect to their dear dead ones whom they believed were dwelling close to God and His Christ, we can well conceive how natural it was for them to ask them for their prayers—for were they not dwelling close to God and His Christ to Whom their prayers must be addressed? Thus in the Church of the first two hundred and fifty years this communion, largely made up of the constant interchange of prayer between the living and the dead, rested on this family and friendship bond, and on no other. The formal invocation of saint and martyr as of some specially powerful soul belongs to a later date. It was not the teaching, certainly not the general teaching, of the Church of the catacombs.
But even in the catacombs it appears that very soon the custom crept in of crowding round the grave of some famous martyr, as though some special virtue belonged to the spot where the saint’s remains had been deposited; and the little chamber where the hallowed remains of a hero or heroine of the faith lay, was soon filled with graves—graves excavated utterly without any regard to the paintings or decorations which adorned the chamber and its original tomb, paintings and decorations which were ruthlessly cut away to make room for new loculi where the dead might rest close to the remains of the saint or martyr.140
The point, however, which especially concerns us here is the testimony, repeated many thousand times, which the catacombs bear to the perfect confidence of the early Christians in the continuance of life beyond the grave. To the faithful dead—to the believers in Jesus Christ—there was no break caused by death, for them life went on as it had done aforetime; conscious life went on after death, only under different and happier conditions.
To appreciate the striking change in the conception of death—the most important event in the life of man on earth—it will be interesting to glance at the testimony supplied in the same period by pagan epitaphs. A very brief examination will suffice to show what an impassable gulf separated the Christian from the pagan conception.
What at once catches our attention in any study of pagan epitaphs is the complete want of any hope beyond the grave. All the elaborate pagan pictures of the future life popularized in Greek circles by the Homeric poems, and in Latin society by the exquisite verses of Vergil, when brought face to face with the stern reality of the tomb are simply blotted out—are treated as purely fables.
Death, in these pagan epitaphs, the true expressions of popular pagan belief in the first three centuries of the Christian era, is ever viewed as an enemy; is described as an everlasting sleep, and the grave is represented as the last eternal home.
It has been well said that this melancholy idea was conveyed in the quiet sadness of that one word “Vale,” or in the more impassioned repetition of it, “Vale, Vale dulcissima—semper in perpetuo vale.” Farewell, farewell, sweetest one—for ever farewell. Now and again a favourite pagan formula was summed up in two words—“fuisti; vale.”
Some of the pagan epitaphs are playfully sarcastic, as: “Ah, weary traveller, however far you may walk, you must come here at last.” Some even make a mock at death, bidding others enjoy themselves while they live. “Live for the present hour, drink and play, for you are sure of nothing, only what you eat and drink is really yours.” “Fortune makes many promises but keeps none of them; live then for the present hour, since nothing else is really yours.” Some epitaphs are bitter: “I lived as I like, but I don’t know why I died.” “Here it is, so it is, nothing else could be.”
Here an inscription on a young woman’s grave mourns her early death: “I lift up my hands against the God who took me away at the age of twenty, though I had done no harm.” A father thus grieves for the loss of his child: “The fates judged ill when they robbed me of you.” Father and mother often write themselves down as most wretched, most unhappy (“miserrimi-infelicissimi”). Sometimes they use these sad and cheerless terms of their dead children. Mothers now and again describe themselves as “left to tears and groans,” or as “condemned to perpetual darkness and daily sad lamentation.” Parents lament their dead child thus: “Our hope was in our boy; now all is ashes and mourning.” Frequently these mourn for their dead children as follows: “They have died without having deserved it.” Another parent bewails the child’s death in these terms: “Neither talent, nor amiability, nor loving winning ways, have been of any avail to prolong the child’s days; in spite of all this, he has become the foul prey of the cruel Pluto.”
On very many indeed of pagan tombs undoubtedly there is evidence of much love and deep affection for the departed, but there is no gleam of hope of reunion or of happiness in another life; indeed, as a rule, there is no other life hinted at. If any venture to look beyond the grave—which is rarely the case—all beyond the grave is dark and sad and melancholy.
The following words put into the mouth of a dead girl well voice this general feeling: “Here I lie, unhappy girl, in darkness.” “Traveller, curse me not as you pass,” moans another inscription, “for I am in darkness and cannot answer.”