The Catacombs of Rome, and Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity

It is highly probable that the first Roman Catacombs were excavated by the Jews.[31] Many Hebrew captives graced the triumph of Pompey after his Syrian conquests, B. C. 62. The...

The “Circlo Biblico,” or Biblical Cycle, of the Catacombs, as De Rossi has called it, partakes of the same symbolical character as their other art-creations. It has, for the mos...

We gain from the testimony of the Catacombs most important information as to the organization of the church during the early Christian centuries. We see on every side records of...

Primitive Christianity was eminently congenial to religious symbolism. Born in the East, and in the bosom of Judaism, which had long been familiar with this universal oriental l...

The inscriptions of the Catacombs give us many interesting indications of the social position, domestic relations, and general character of the primitive Christians, as well as...

Before leaving this division of our subject we will take a rapid survey of the more remarkable of that vast system of Christian cemeteries that engirdles the city of Rome. It wi...

“What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the primitive ages of the church,” remarks the learned and eloquent Dean Stanley,[693] “can be compared with that afford...

From the period of the Edict of Milan, A. D. 313, a new era opens in the history of the Catacombs. Christianity, emerging from those gloomy recesses where she had so long hidden...

Ever since the re-discovery and exploration of the Catacombs in the sixteenth century they have been a vast treasury from which, as from an inexhaustible mine, have been derived...

“Among the cultivated grounds not far from the city of Rome,” says the Christian poet Prudentius, “lies a deep crypt, with dark recesses. A descending path, with winding steps,...

The conditions under which Christian art was cultivated in the early centuries were eminently unfavourable to its highest development. It was not, like pagan art, the æsthetic e...

Few places in Rome are more attractive to the student of Christian archæology than the Lapidarian Gallery in the palace of the Vatican. In this long corridor[666] are preserved...

It would seem that the rediscovery of the Catacombs was providentially reserved to a period especially adapted for their profitable study. In the fullness of time, when the grea...

[727] Quando isthinc excessum fuerit, nullus jam locus poenitentiæ est, nullus satisfactionis effectus.--Cypr. _ad Demet._, § 16; cf. Greg. Naz., _de Rebus suis_, and Hieron. in...