III
The wonderful change in popular feeling as shown in the Christian epitaphs when contrasted with the pagan epitaphs of the same period is indeed startling! What we read in the Roman City of the Dead tells us something of the spirit which dwelt in these companies of believers in the Name. This something is sufficient to account for the new life led by so many, for the superhuman courage displayed by the army of martyrs and confessors, for the ultimate victory, some two hundred years later, of the religion of Jesus.
We who live in what is perhaps the evening of the world’s story—we mark the glowing words of the New Testament writings, the fervid exhortations and noble resolves of men like Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp—the saintly teachings of great theologians like Irenæus, Tertullian, and Cyprian.
And as we read, we feel that these writers were evidently intensely persuaded of the truth of such sublime and soul-stirring assertions; we know, too, that these writers and teachers lived the beautiful life they taught,—that they died, many of them, with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts.
But what of the People—the common folk, the ordinary everyday citizen; the slave and the little trader of the thousand cities of the Empire, the soldier of Rome, and the patrician of Rome—what did they think of all this?—these new strange words, these sunlit hopes, these glorious golden promises of the great teachers of Christianity?
The catacombs give us the answer. In quite late years, slowly, painfully, the antiquary and the scholar have opened out the secrets of the long-hidden City of the Dead which lies all round immemorial Rome, and, thanks to their labours, from words and pictures graven and painted on a million graves, comes to us, across the many centuries, the answer with no uncertain voice.
Yes, the People—the slave and the trader, the soldier and the noble—believed the words of the New Testament writings, and accepted the teaching of the early Christian teachers, and believing, struggled to lead the life the Master loved. None for a moment would dare to doubt the mighty power of this strange weird testimony of a million tombs; it is indeed a voice from a thousand graves.
Then, too, what may be termed the terminology, that is the words and expressions used in these vast cemeteries for all that is connected with death and burial, teaches the same truth—that for a believer in the Name, all the gloom and dread and horror usually associated with death are absent in these short epitaphs.
The catacomb inscriptions and pictures, besides their overwhelming testimony to the belief of the early Christians in the continuance of life after death, in the immortality of the soul, a testimony expressed in a countless number of ways, bear their witness to some of the more important dogmas of the Christian faith.
The extreme brevity of the inscriptions and the necessarily small space allotted to the pictures and emblems graven and painted on the sepulchral slabs, for the most part very small, of course preclude anything like any complete enunciation even of the principal Articles of the Christian faith: still what we find on these slabs tells us with no uncertain voice in whom these early congregations believed, and to whom these fervent prayers were addressed. Each of the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity are named in many of these epitaphs.
We find many instances of the formula of the ancient creeds, “In God and in Christ.” This distinct enumeration of the two first Persons of the Blessed Trinity bears witness to the Catholic faith of the composers of the epitaphs.
Nor is the Third Person of the Trinity absent from these epitaphs. We read on some for instance: “In the Holy Spirit of God”; “Mayest thou live in the Holy Spirit.” Even the mention of all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity has been found engraved on these sepulchral tablets.
What, however, is most striking in these early records of the belief of the Christian congregation is the testimony they bear—a testimony repeated an innumerable number of times—to the primitive belief in the supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ. We find again and again such formulas as “In the name of Christ”; “In God the Lord Christ”; “In God Christ”; “The great God Christ” (“Deo Magno Christo”). In the earliest epitaphs the most common symbol is the fish, painted, carved, or written at the beginning or end of the epitaph, not as part of the sentence, but as a complete formula in itself. Now this was a declaration of faith in “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”; the letters which form the Greek word Ichthus, as we have explained, being the initials141 of the words of this formula.
There is no doubt that from the earliest times the fish was an acknowledged symbol of our Lord. It became at once a sacred “tessera” or sign—quite unintelligible to the pagan and official world, but to the believer a most precious symbol, containing with striking brevity and yet with striking clearness, a complete précis, so to speak, of the creed, a profession of facts as far as related to the Saviour.
The catacombs are full of Christ. It was to Him that the Christians of the age of persecution ever turned: it was on Him they rested—in gladness and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; in the days of danger—and these were sadly numerous in the first two centuries and a half—and in the hour of death. It was from His words they drew their strength. In the consciousness of His ever-presence in their midst, they suffered gladly for His sake. With His name on their lips they died fearlessly, joyfully passing into the Valley of the veiled Shadow. On the tablet of marble or plaster which closed up the narrow shelf in the catacomb corridor where their poor remains were reverently, lovingly laid, the dear name of Jesus was often painted or carved.
The catacombs are full of Christ. We have spoken several times of the paintings on the walls and ceilings of the corridors and chambers. There is great variety of these, the Old and New Testament supplying the majority of subjects. But by far the favourite subject of representation—certainly the leading type of Christian art in the first days—was the figure of the “Good Shepherd.” It does not only appear in the City of the Dead. It was often graved upon chalices used in the holy Eucharist. It was traced in gold upon glass, it was moulded upon lamps, it was carved upon rings. But it is to the catacombs that we must go to find it in its most varied and pathetic forms—now painted in fresco upon the walls of the corridors and chambers where the dead lie so thickly; now roughly, now more carefully carved on countless tablets; now sculptured upon the more costly sarcophagi.
Sometimes the Shepherd is represented with one sheep, at times with several; some listening to His voice—some turning listlessly away. We come upon it in a thousand places on the tombs themselves—in the little chapels or oratories leading out of the corridors where the more distinguished among the dead sleep. It is the favourite symbol of the Christian life and faith.
This constantly recurring figure of the Good Shepherd with His sheep in the catacombs throws much light on this deeply interesting and at the same time important question—What were the thoughts of that early Church in Rome respecting Christ and His teaching?
We must remember they lived very near the times when the greatest figure in history lived on earth, and talked with men. We shall do well to bear in mind that the first generation of these Roman Christians were taught by Peter and by Paul, and that through most of the second century men lived whose fathers must have seen and listened to these great servants of the Divine Master, certainly to their immediate disciples.
The form in which they loved best to think of this Almighty Saviour was as “the great Shepherd of the sheep”—the Shepherd of the First Epistle of S. Peter—the Shepherd of S. Luke and of S. John.142
A great and eloquent writer143 in one of his most suggestive works does not hesitate to speak of what he terms the popular religion of the first Christians as the religion of “the Good Shepherd.” He says they looked on that figure and it conveyed to them all they wanted. And then he adds sorrowfully that “as ages passed on ’the image of the Good Shepherd’ faded away from the mind of the Christian world, and other emblems of the Christian faith took the place of the once dearly loved figure.”
“Instead of the good and gracious Pastor, there came the omnipotent Judge, or the Crucified Sufferer, or the Infant in His mother’s arms, or the Master in His parting Supper.”
All these later presentments of the Divine Saviour emphatically are beautiful and true, but they are not what the first Christians especially dwelt on. These loved to think of Him first and chiefest as “the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep.”
Among the many pictured figures of the “Good Shepherd” in the catacomb sepulchral galleries, the Shepherd is occasionally represented with a kid or a goat in place of a sheep in His loving arms: “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold, one shepherd.” The catacomb theology, as expounded by the catacomb teachers, went beyond even these gracious words, when it represented the creature on the shoulders of the Master, as not a lamb but a kid—not a sheep but a goat. These Christians of the first day were persuaded that their Master’s mission on earth was “not to repel but to include, not to condemn but to save; they believed in His tender compassion and boundless charity.”144
This sweet and loving view provoked the indignant remonstrance of the stern Tertullian (circa A.D. 200). On this harsh protest of the great African Father Tertullian, Matthew Arnold founds one of his most touching poems:
“He saves the sheep—the goats He doth not save:
So spake the fierce Tertullian.
But she sighed:
The infant Church, of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave,
And then she smil’d, and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused, but heart inspired true,
She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew,
And on His shoulder not a lamb but kid.”