The Catacombs

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The Catacombs

There are about fortyfive Catacombs around Rome, and the most frequently visited are those along the Appain Way; St. Calixtus, St. Sebastian and the Domitilla Catacombs. They are tended by different religious orders and the areas are under the jurisdiction of the Vatican State. There are Pagan, Jewish and, of course, the Christian Catacombs. The term Catacomb was originally applied only to those of St. Sebastian, The others were merely called cemeteries (from Greek koimeterion a sleeping chamber or burial place).

The majorty of the Catacombs are Christian because Christians liked to be buried in the same way as Christ: in a cave, wrapped in linen, and also because most of the classes and could not afford rich mausoleums. The underground galleries were dug because the surface area could not be exceeded, so they dug more deeply underneath. This explains the five or six levels of the Catacombs. The total estimated length of the galleries is about 500 miles, and about six million people were buried in a span of three hundred years and were known to everyone, but the Roman law was very clear and compassionate about graves. Burial places were considered sacred and nobody could touch or violate them, that is the reason why persecuted Christians would occasionally escape to those underground labyrinths.

Some tours will go to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, others to those of Domitilla or St. Sebastian.

Catacombs The Catacomb of St. Calixtus is one of the largest, and in the third century it became the official cementery of the Christian Church; several Popes were buried there. The inscriptions on their graves are very simple, and most of theam are written in Greek, which was the first official language of the Church. Saint Cecilia is buried in this Catacomb. She is the patron saint of musicians. According to tradition, she heard such heavenly sounds that to express them she invented the organ. The Saint was martyred with the heat of the steam bath in her patrician house in Trastevere, where the Church of St. Cecilia now stands. After many hours, without being harmed. she was finally beheaded, but her head could not be severed. In 1599 her coffin was opened and her body was found intact. The sculptor Stefano Maderno made the statue of the Saint exactly as he saw her. This is the replica you see in the crypt the original is in the Church at Trastevere.

Catacomb of St. Sebastian. In this Catacomb on the Appian Way, during the persecution of Emperor Valerianus, the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul were moved for safe keeping, so that the place became an object of cult and pilgrimage, confirmed by the graffiti written on the walls by the pilgrims; Peter and Paul pray for us, Peter and Paul remember us, etc. St. Sebastian is one of the saints of whom you are more frequently reminded, all through Europe, as all art collections have one or more pictures of the martyr, his beautiful young body stuck with arrows. He was a Gaut of Narbonne, an officer in Diocletian's army. The church of St. Sebastian was built over his grave, and there is also the original marble from the site of the Domine Quo Vadis, with the foot print of Christ.

Domitilla Catacomb. In this very large Catacomb, are fine paintings. You enter it from the basilica, built at the end of the IV century in honour of the Saints Nereus and Achilleus. The area of this Catacomb is called that of Ampliatus. In 1881 a tomb was discovered with the name Ampliati engraved in Roman lettering; he is possibly the same Ampliatus mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans Salute Ampliatus my beloved in The Lord. In each one of the Catacombs, the fathers provide excellent guides. You will certainly feel the atmosphere of utter faith and complete trust of the early Christians as witnessed by the innumerable inscriptions and paintings, all expressing Christian brotherhood and charity. Continuing further along the ancient Appian Way you pass the remainsof the Circus of Maxentius, the Emperor defeated by Constantine. He built a stadium for chariot races in the fourth century, A.D., near the mausoleum he built for his son, Romulus, who died at the age of nine. Then the most imposing of the graves which lined the historical road, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, daughter of the Roman General Quintus Metellus, called Creticus for he had conquered the island of Crete. Cecilia was married to one of the sons of Crassus, the wealthy Roman who paid Julius Caesar's debts and shared the triumph with him. The grave, built in the first century B.C. and so familiar a landmark of the Roman Campagna, was given by Pope Boniface VIII Caetani to his relatives, who made it into a donjon. They also had the bright idea of building a bridge across the road to exact a toll from travellers to and from Rome. A bit further along the road, parts of original paving, with large cobble stones are visible.

The historical picturesque promenade will remind you of the many descriptions of the Appian Way by Horace Walpole, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Browning and Lord Byron. Music lovers will recall the Pines of Rome by Respighi, the last part of the melody being inspired by the trees of the Appian Way. No visit to Rome would be complete without taking in the panoramic view of the city from high up on the Janiculum Hill, the hill which the Romans dedicated to Janus, the God with two faces. In the large open space on the highest point of the hill there stands the equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi by Gallori, and this stands at the centre of the busts of his soldiers, the Garibaldi ni, which are scattered all around the park, as a memorial to the defence of the Roman Republic during the Risorgimento, Italy's nineteenth century national resurgence.

From this piazza we can see the domes and roofs of Trastevere, the old quarter which spreads out at the foot of the hill. Trastevere (from Trans Tiberin, the other side of the Tiber) was the centre of Rome's oriental community in classical times and especially of the Jews. It has been inhabited without a break for more than two thousand years, and is considered to be the most Roman of all the districts of Rome.

Its inhabitants, known as the Trasteverini boast that they are the only authentic descendants of the true Roman stock. In the huddle of old houses, in the mediaeval churches and monasteries and in the buildings of the Renaissance, we can see the evidence of Trastevere's thousands of years of history, but the spirit of the Trasteverini themselves is felt most of all in the typical local haunts where one can still hear the characteristic slang used by Belli and Trilussa, and the natives of the area still keep up the traditional ways and folklore of the area, despite the sophistication which has crept in recent years because of the many colonies of foreigners who now live there.



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