DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71133#0283
CHAPTER IX.
TO S. SlSTO AND THE CATACOMBS OF Si. CaLLIXTUS ON
the Appian Way.
189.—TO THE CATACOMBS.
OUR present walk is to the Catacombs, to those wonderful
underground recesses, to which we were introduced by Cardinal
Wiseman, when we first read his fascinating story Fabiola.
Under his guidance we groped our way through the dark
labyrinthine passages till we reached some wider space or crypt
chapel, where we assisted at the assemblies of the faithful, or
we watched Diogenes, the excavator, at work with his two
sturdy sons, and listened to the old man’s conversation with
Pancratius about the martyrs he had known and whose tombs
he had prepared. Long before actually visiting Rome we had
formed a fairly correct idea what the Catacombs are like.1
What delightful impressions, what holy memories are recalled
by that one word “Catacombs”! In these subterranean
cemeteries the infant Church found shelter during the stormy
centuries of persecution, when the tyrants who swayed the
destinies of Rome resorted to every device of cruelty to stamp
out the Christian name. In these rude, narrow hiding-places
a new Rome was being formed, a community of Christian
heroes and saints trained in a novitiate of prayer, privation
and the Cross, while above ground the proud old city, godless
though filled with false deities, revelled in heathen licentious-
ness and was hastening to its doom. These dark caverns and
dens of the earth were the homes of the martyrs and of their
children, the homes of living martyrs and of departed ones ;
of those preparing for the conflict and of those resting after the
1 Catacombs. Originally the expression Ad Catacumbas applied
only to the church and cemetery of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way.
After the ninth century it began to be used of other Christian cemeteries.
The derivation seems to be from the Greek word Kata (i.e., ad, “ at ”)
and accumbo. So Katacumbce, or Kata-accubitoria would mean “at
the tombs,” literally “at the resting-places ” of the dead.
TO S. SlSTO AND THE CATACOMBS OF Si. CaLLIXTUS ON
the Appian Way.
189.—TO THE CATACOMBS.
OUR present walk is to the Catacombs, to those wonderful
underground recesses, to which we were introduced by Cardinal
Wiseman, when we first read his fascinating story Fabiola.
Under his guidance we groped our way through the dark
labyrinthine passages till we reached some wider space or crypt
chapel, where we assisted at the assemblies of the faithful, or
we watched Diogenes, the excavator, at work with his two
sturdy sons, and listened to the old man’s conversation with
Pancratius about the martyrs he had known and whose tombs
he had prepared. Long before actually visiting Rome we had
formed a fairly correct idea what the Catacombs are like.1
What delightful impressions, what holy memories are recalled
by that one word “Catacombs”! In these subterranean
cemeteries the infant Church found shelter during the stormy
centuries of persecution, when the tyrants who swayed the
destinies of Rome resorted to every device of cruelty to stamp
out the Christian name. In these rude, narrow hiding-places
a new Rome was being formed, a community of Christian
heroes and saints trained in a novitiate of prayer, privation
and the Cross, while above ground the proud old city, godless
though filled with false deities, revelled in heathen licentious-
ness and was hastening to its doom. These dark caverns and
dens of the earth were the homes of the martyrs and of their
children, the homes of living martyrs and of departed ones ;
of those preparing for the conflict and of those resting after the
1 Catacombs. Originally the expression Ad Catacumbas applied
only to the church and cemetery of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way.
After the ninth century it began to be used of other Christian cemeteries.
The derivation seems to be from the Greek word Kata (i.e., ad, “ at ”)
and accumbo. So Katacumbce, or Kata-accubitoria would mean “at
the tombs,” literally “at the resting-places ” of the dead.