The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858

It would extremely relieve—Your ever affectionate Mary.

P.S. (1).
Here is your letter arrived this moment, just as I wanted.
So you have seen him,—indeed,—and guessed,—how dreadfully clever!
What did he really say? and what was your answer exactly?
Charming!—but wait for a moment, I have not read through the letter.

P.S. (2).
Ah, my dearest Miss Roper, do just as you fancy about it.
If you think it sincerer to tell him I know of it, do so.
Though I should most extremely dislike it, I know I could manage.
It is the simplest thing, but surely wholly uncalled for.
Do as you please; you know I trust implicitly to you.
Say whatever is right and needful for ending the matter.
Only don't tell Mr. Claude, what I will tell you as a secret,
That I should like very well to show him myself I forget it.

P.S. (3).
I am to say that the wedding is finally settled for Tuesday.
Ah, my dear Miss Roper, you surely, surely can manage
Not to let it appear that I know of that odious matter.
It would be pleasanter far for myself to treat it exactly
As if it had not occurred; and I do not think he would like it.
I must remember to add, that as soon as the wedding is over
We shall be off, I believe, in a hurry, and travel to Milan,
There to meet friends of Papa's, I am told, at the Croce di Malta;
Then I cannot say whither, but not at present to England.

XIII.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE

Yes, on Montorio's height for a last farewell of the city,—
So it appears; though then I was quite uncertain about it.
So, however, it was. And now to explain the proceeding.
I was to go, as I told you, I think, with the people to Florence.
Only the day before, the foolish family Vernon
Made some uneasy remarks, as we walked to our lodging together,
As to intentions, forsooth, and so forth. I was astounded,
Horrified quite; and obtaining just then, as it chanced, an offer
(No common favor) of seeing the great Ludovisi collection,
Why, I made this a pretence, and wrote that they must excuse me.
How could I go? Great Heaven! to conduct a permitted flirtation
Under those vulgar eyes, the observed of such observers!
Well, but I now, by a series of fine diplomatic inquiries,
Find from a sort of relation, a good and sensible woman,
Who is remaining at Rome with a brother too ill for removal,
That it was wholly unsanctioned, unknown,—not, I think, by Georgina:
She, however, ere this,—and that is the best of the story,—
She and the Vernon, thank Heaven, are wedded and gone—honey-mooning.
So—on Montorio's height for a last farewell of the city.
Tibur I have not seen, nor the lakes that of old I had dreamt of;
Tibur I shall not see, nor Anio's waters, nor deep en-
Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace;
Tibur I shall not see;—but something better I shall see.
Twice I have tried before, and failed in getting the horses;
Twice I have tried and failed: this time it shall not be a failure.

* * * * *

Therefore farewell, ye hills, and ye, ye envineyarded ruins!
Therefore farewell, ye walls, palaces, pillars, and domes!
Therefore farewell, far seen, ye peaks of the mythic Albano,
Seen from Montorio's height, Tibur and Aesula's hills!
Ah, could we once, ere we go, could we stand, while, to ocean
descending,
Sinks o'er the yellow dark plain slowly the yellow broad sun,
Stand, from the forest emerging at sunset, at once in the champaign,
Open, but studded with trees, chestnuts umbrageous and old,
E'en in those fair open fields that incurve to thy beautiful hollow,
Nemi, imbedded in wood, Nemi, inurned in the hill!—
Therefore farewell, ye plains, and ye hills, and the City Eternal!
Therefore farewell! We depart, but to behold you again!

[To be continued.]

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.

[Continued.]

Vix fama nota est, abditis
Quam plena sancti Roma sit;
Quam dives urbanum solum
Sacris sepulchris floreat.

                               PRUDENTIUS.
Mille victoriose chiare palme.

                               PETRARCH.

II

The results of the investigations in the catacombs during the last three or four years have well rewarded the zeal of their explorers. Since the great work of the French government was published, in 1851-55, very curious and important discoveries have been made, and many new minor facts brought to light. The interest in the investigations has become more general, and no visit to Rome is now complete without a visit to one at least of the catacombs. Strangely enough, however, the Romans themselves, for the most part, feel less concern in these new revelations of their underground city than the strangers who come from year to year to make their pilgrimages to Rome. It is an old complaint, that the Romans care little for their city. "Who are there to-day," says Petrarch, in one of his letters, "more ignorant of Roman things than the Roman citizens? And nowhere is Rome less known than in Rome itself." It is, however, to the Cavaliere de Rossi, himself a Roman, that the most important of these discoveries are due,—the result of his marvellous learning and sagacity, and of his hard-working and unwearied energy. The discovery of the ancient entrance to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, and of the chapel within, where St. Cecilia was originally buried, is a piece of the very romance of Archaeology. The whole history of St. Cecilia, the glorious Virgin Martyr and the Saint of Music, as connected with the catacombs, is, indeed, one of the most curious to be found in the annals of the Church. Legend and fact are strangely mingled in it, and over it hangs a perplexing mist of doubt, but not so dense as wholly to conceal all certainty. It is a story of suffering, of piety, of enthusiasm, of superstition, and of science;—it connects itself in many points with the progress of corruption in the Church, and it has been a favorite subject for Art in all ages. The story is at last finished. Begun sixteen hundred years ago, it has just reached its last chapter. In order to understand it, we must go back almost to its introduction.

According to the legend of the Roman Church, as preserved in the "Acts of St. Cecilia," this young and beautiful saint was martyred in the year of our Lord 230.[3 - The Acts of St. Cecilia are generally regarded by the best Roman Catholic authorities as apochryphal. They bear internal evidence of their want of correctness, and, in the condition in which they have come down to us, the date of their compilation cannot be set before the beginning of the fifth century. At the very outset two facts stand in open opposition to their statements. The martyrdom of St. Cecilia is placed in the reign of Alexander Severus, whose mildness of disposition and whose liberality towards the Christians are well authenticated. Again, the prefect who condemns her to death, Turchius Almachius, bears a name unknown to the profane historians of Rome. Many statements of not less difficulty to reconcile with fact occur in the course of the Acts. But, although their authority in particulars be thus destroyed, we see no reason for questioning the reality of the chief events upon which they are founded. The date of the martyrdom of St. Cecilia may be wrong, the reports of her conversations may be as fictitious as the speeches ascribed by grave historians to their heroes, the stories of her miracles may have only that small basis of reality which is to be found in the effects of superstition and excited imagination,—but the essential truth of the martyrdom of a young, beautiful, and rich Roman girl, of her suffering and her serene faith, and of the veneration and honor in which her memory was held by those who had known her, may be accepted without reserve. At least, it is certain, that as early as the beginning of the fourth century the name of St. Cecilia was reverenced in Rome, and that from that time she has been one of the chief saints of the Roman calendar.] She had devoted herself to perpetual virginity, but her parents had insisted upon marrying her to a youthful and noble Roman, named Valerian. On the night of her marriage, she succeeded in so far prevailing upon her husband as to induce him to visit the pope, Urban, who was lying concealed from his persecutors in the catacombs which were called after and still bear the name of his predecessor, Callixtus,[4 - The Catacombs of St. Callixtus are among the most important of the underground cemeteries. They were begun before the time of Callixtus, but were greatly enlarged under his pontificate [A.D. 219-223]. Saint though he be, the character of Callixtus, if we may judge by the testimony of another saint, Hippolytus, stood greatly in need of purification. His story is an amusing illustration of the state of the Roman episcopacy in those times. He had been a slave of a rich Christian, Carpophorus. His master set him up as a money-dealer in the Piscina Publica, a much frequented quarter of the city. The Christian brethren (and widows also are mentioned by Hippolytus) placed their moneys in his hands for safe-keeping, his credit as the slave of Carpophorus being good. He appropriated these deposits, ran away to sea, was pursued, threw himself into the water, was rescued, brought back to Rome, and condemned to hard labor. Carpophorus bailed him out of the workhouse,—but he was a bad fellow, got into a riot in a Jewish synagogue, and was sent to work in the Sardinian mines. By cheating he got a ticket of leave and returned to Rome. After some years, he was placed in charge of the cemetery by the bishop or pope, Zephyrinus, and at his death, some time later, by skilful intrigues he succeeded in obtaining the bishopric itself. The cemetery is now called that of Saint Callixtus,—and in the saint the swindler is forgotten.] on the Appian Way, about two miles from the present walls of the city. The young man was converted to the Christian faith. The next day witnessed the conversion of his brother, Tiburtius. Their lives soon gave evidence of the change in their religion; they were brought before the prefect, and, refusing to sacrifice to the heathen gods, were condemned to death. Maximus, an officer of the prefect, was converted by the young men on the way to execution. They suffered death with constancy, and Maximus soon underwent the same fate. Nor was Cecilia long spared. The prefect ordered that she should be put to death in her own house, by being stifled in the caldarium, or hot-air chamber of her baths. The order was obeyed, and Cecilia entered the place of death; but a heavenly air and cooling dews filled the chamber, and the fire built up around it produced no effect. For a whole day and night the flames were kept up, but the Saint was unharmed. Then Almachius sent an order that she should be beheaded. The executioner struck her neck three times with his sword, and left her bleeding, but not dead, upon the pavement of the bathroom. For three days she lived, attended by faithful friends, whose hearts were cheered by her courageous constancy; "for she did not cease to comfort those whom she had nurtured in the faith of the Lord, and divided among them everything which she had." To Pope Urban, who visited her as she lay dying, she left in charge the poor whom she had cared for, and her house, that it might be consecrated as a church. With this her life ended.[5 - The passage in the Acts of St. Cecilia which led to her being esteemed the patroness of music is perhaps the following, which occurs in the description of the wedding ceremonies: "Cantantibus organis, Caecilia in corde suo soli Domino decantabat, dicens: 'Fiat cor meum et corpus meum immaculatum, ut non confundar.'"] Her wasted body was reverently lifted, its position undisturbed, and laid in the attitude and clothing of life within a coffin of cypress-wood. The linen cloths with which the blood of the Martyr had been soaked up were placed at her feet, with that care that no precious drop should be lost,—a care, of which many evidences are afforded in the catacombs. In the night, the coffin was carried out of the city secretly to the Cemetery of Callixtus, and there deposited by Urban in a grave near to a chamber destined for the graves of the popes themselves. Here the "Acts of St. Cecilia" close, and, leaving her pure body to repose for centuries in its tomb hollowed out of the rock, we trace the history of the catacombs during those centuries in other sources and by other ways.

The consequences of the conversion of Constantine exhibited themselves not more in the internal character and spirit of the Church than in its outward forms and arrangements. The period of worldly prosperity succeeded speedily to a period of severest suffering, and many who had been exposed to the persecution of Diocletian now rejoiced in the imperial favor shown to their religion. Such contrasts in life are not favorable to the growth of the finer spiritual qualities; and the sunshine of state and court is not that which is needed for quickening faith or developing simplicity and purity of heart. Churches above ground could now be frequented without risk, and were the means by which the wealth and the piety of Christians were to be displayed. The newly imperialized religion must have its imperial temples, and the little dark chapels of the catacombs were exchanged for the vast and ornamental spaces of the new basilicas. It was no longer needful that the dead should be laid in the secret paths of the rock, and the luxury of magnificent Christian tombs began to rival that of the sepulchres of the earlier Romans. The body of St. Peter, which had long, according to popular tradition, rested in the catacombs of the Vatican, was now transferred to the great basilica which Constantine, despoiling for the purpose the tomb of Hadrian of its marbles, erected over the entrance to the underground cemetery. So, too, the Basilica of St. Paul, on the way to Ostia, was built over his old grave; and the Catacombs of St. Agnes were marked by a beautiful church in honor of the Saint, built in part beneath the soil, that its pavement might be on a level with the upper story of the catacombs and the faithful might enter them from the church.

The older catacombs, whose narrow graves had been filled during the last quarter of the third century with the bodies of many new martyrs, were now less used for the purposes of burial, and more for those of worship. New chapels were hollowed out in their walls; new paintings adorned the brown rock; the bodies of martyrs were often removed from their original graves to new and more elaborate tombs; the entrances to the cemeteries were no longer concealed, but new and ampler ones were made; new stairways, lined with marble, led down to the streets beneath; luminaria, or passages for light and air, were opened from the surface of the ground to the most frequented places; and at almost every entrance a church or an oratory of more or less size was built, for the shelter of those who might assemble to go down into the catacombs, and for the performance of the sacred services upon ground hallowed by so many sacred memories. The worship of the saints began to take form, at first, in simple, natural, and pious ways, in the fourth century; and as it grew stronger and stronger with the continually increasing predominance of the material element in the Roman Church, so the catacombs, the burial-places of the saints, were more and more visited by those who desired the protection or the intercession of their occupants. St. Jerome, who was born about this time in Rome, [A.D. 331,] has a curious passage concerning his own experiences in the catacombs. He says: "When I was a boy at Rome, being instructed in liberal studies, I was accustomed, with others of the same age and disposition, to go on Sundays to the tombs of the apostles and martyrs, and often to go into the crypts, which, being dug out in the depths of the earth, have for walls, on either side of those who enter, the bodies of the buried; and they are so dark, that the saying of the prophet seems almost fulfilled, The living descend into hell." But as the chapels and sacred tombs in the catacombs became thus more and more resorted to as places for worship, the number of burials within them was continually growing less,—and the change in the spirit of the religion was marked by the change of character in the paintings and inscriptions on their walls. By the middle of the fifth century the extension of the catacombs had ceased, and nearly about the same time the assemblies in them fell off. The desolation of the Campagna had already begun; Rome had sunk rapidly; and the churches and burial-places within the walls afforded all the space that was needed for the assemblies of the living or the dead.

When the Goths descended upon Italy, ravaging the country as they passed over it, and sat down before Rome, not content with stripping the land, they forced their way into the catacombs, searching for treasure, and seeking also, it seems likely, for the bodies of the martyrs, whom their imperfect creed did not prevent them from honoring. After they retired, in the short breathing-space that was given to the unhappy city, various popes undertook to do something to restore the catacombs,[6 - An inscription set up by Vigilius, pope from A.D. 538 to 555, and preserved by Gruter, contains the following lines:—"Dum peritura Getae posuissent castra sub urbe,Moverunt sanctis bella nefunda prius,Istaque sacrilego verterunt corde sepulchraMartyribus quondam rite sacrata piis.Diruta Vigilius nam mox haec Papa gemiscens,Hostibus expulsis, omne novavit opus."]—and one of them, John III., [A.D. 560-574,] ordered that service should be performed at certain underground shrines, and that candles and all else needful for this purpose should be furnished from the Basilica of St. John Lateran. Just at the close of the sixth century, Gregory the Great [590-604] again appointed stations in the catacombs at which service should be held on special days in the course of the year, and a curious illustration of the veneration in which the relics of the saints were then held is afforded by a gift which he sent to Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards. At this time the Lombards were laying all Italy waste. Their Arian zeal ranged them in religious hate against the Roman Church,—but Theodelinda was an orthodox believer, and through her Gregory hoped to secure the conversion of her husband and his subjects. It was to her that he addressed his famous Dialogues, filled with the most marvellous stories of holy men and the strangest notions of religion. Wishing to satisfy her pious desires, and to make her a very precious gift, he sent to her many phials of oil taken from the lamps that were kept burning at the shrines of the martyrs in the catacombs. It was the custom of those who visited these shrines to dip handkerchiefs, or other bits of cloth, in the reservoirs of oil, to which a sacred virtue was supposed to be imparted by the neighborhood of the saints; and even now may often be seen the places where the lamps were kept lighted.[7 - The phials sent by Gregory to Queen Theodelinda were accompanied by a list of the shrines from which they were taken; among them was that of St. Cecilia. The document closes with the words, "Quae olea sca temporibus Domini Gregorii Papae adduxit Johannes indignus et peccator Dominae Theodelindae reginae de Roma." The oils are still preserved in the treasury of the cathedral at Monza,—and the list accompanying them has afforded some important facts to the students of the early martyrology of Rome. A similar belief in the efficacy of oils burned in lamps before noted images, or at noted shrines, still prevails in the Papal City. In a little pamphlet lying before us, entitled Historic Notices of Maria SSma del Parto, venerated in St. Augustine's Church in Rome, published in 1853, is the following passage: "Many who visited Mary dipped their fingers in the lamps to cross themselves with the holy oil, by the droppings from which the base of the statue was so dirtied, that hanging-lamps were substituted in the place of those that stood around. But that the people might not be deprived of the trust which they reposed in the holy oil, bits of cotton dipped in it were wrapped up in paper, and there was a constant demand for them among the devout." This passage refers to late years, and the custom still exists. Superstition flourishes at Rome now not less than it did thirteen hundred years ago; and superstitious practices have a wonderful vitality in the close air of Romanism.]