COMMUNITY – IN LIFE AND DEATH
Why the Christians would excavate the catacombs

On visiting one of the Roman catacombs, visitors are deeply impressed by the gigantic proportions of these underground cemeteries of the early Christians. Maybe the interested visitor might wonder why the Christians of that period felt like taking up such a hard and wearisome work, digging out in the tufa kilometres of long networks of underground galleries, with hundreds of thousands of tombs, at times very high, on the walls, in arcosolium or cubiculum shapes, and all of that on several laid-upon levels. But just a glance at the debris excavated and taken away to the surface is enough to realize at once that they didn’t mean to hide their dead ones’ tombs or to make a hiding place for themselves either.
Moreover their cemeteries – as well as the pagans’ ones – were protected by an ancient law that considered them “sacred places”, where the authorities usually wouldn’t enter. Then, why did the Christians of that time continue such a peculiar enterprise?

The origin of the catacombs is founded on their faith in Jesus Christ, which makes living and dead Christians a true community that believes and lives the faith in everyday life. In addition there were burial practical problems.
In the ancient Rome of the emperors’ time, the pagan worship didn’t affect much the individual’s moral behaviour and the virtues were considered according to what could be useful to the sake of the empire. After their death it was supposed that another life continued, where the dead souls existed as shadows, the “good” along with the “bad”. That is why it didn’t matter, either in the private or public life, which was the worshipped divinity among the many others, provided the emperor too received his cult as a god. But the Christian faith was in one God and his exclusive worship affected the personal and social behaviour. Jesus had revealed that God is Father, which makes the believers feel as God’s children and brothers and sisters among themselves. “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.” That’s what John writes in his first letter (1 John 3.1).To stress this relationship Saint Paul, in some of his letters, made use of the example of the limbs forming one body of which Christ is the head (cf. Col. 1, 18). In a mysterious but real way in such a community Christ is present: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18.20). In that way the Church, either at a local or universal level, is not a mere association made of people who have similar views and interests, but it is a true family, it is the Mystical Body of Christ.
To the Christians all that was not without practical consequences. In fact the Acts of the Apostles tell us about a true communion of their goods: “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. …There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, and the proceeds of the sale were distributed to each according to need.” (Acts 3, 32-35). We infer this sharing by the wait for the incumbent coming of Jesus in the first Christian communities; for us today it is really exemplary and impressive their sense of responsibility towards the poor and the needy, their Christian realism over sufferings and troubles and trying in an active and effective way to put them right. The care of the poor wasn’t a duty reserved to a proper charity organization.
The concern for the widows, the orphans, the families of the ones who were suffering in jail because of their faith, the abandoned new-born, the visit to the sick, all this was the commitment of the community and of each member. It was the practice of charity, expression of solidarity, which was often made concrete in a material support, above all from the wealthy members of the community.
Not only the living but the dead as well were considered part of the Mystical Body of Christ, so they believed that the tie of the communion wasn’t broken with their death. To the Christians, in fact, death didn’t mean the end of everything along with the personal existence, but only a crossing, a passage to a new life, a doorway to an unexplainable but safe form of life which includes the body as well, after the final judgement.
Therefore they rejected the use of cremation and they wanted to bury their dear ones, after the example of the Lord, who was buried and rose from the dead. That is why the pagans who adhered to the worship of the state idols spoke of “necropolis” i.e. “city of the dead”, while the Christians considered their cemeteries as a dormitory (coemeterium), a place of rest where one slept until the resurrection; in this way they stressed their faith in the resurrection and they generally used their tombs only once.
In this way the mutual responsability didn’t finish with the death: the charitable solidarity of the Christians was also for their dear departed; even to the poorest the community pledged a burial place and a dignified tomb. This great respect towards the dead considered as brethren in the faith was new indeed in the ancient Rome, where people were used to throwing into large common pits or even into the sewer abandoned new-born babies, dead or even still alive, executed rascals, homeless-dead strangers or good-for-nothing slaves. The mourning for the death of the beloved relatives or dead friends, as well as the gratitude for the time spent together, drove the Christians to visit their tombs unceasingly. The pagans too did the same; but the Christians, because of their faith, were deeply sure that they would meet each other again once more and forever. Knowing well that they were children of the one true God and brothers and sisters in this union of faith, they were convinced that, as their dear ones sleep, they also will sleep in this place of rest until the resurrection day. In burying the dead they were also careless about reputation, position, wealth or poverty and everybody was included in their prayer for their peace.
At the beginning the Christians, not having separate cemeteries yet, buried their dear ones in the pagans’ necropolis. Those who belonged to a wealthy or noble family were at times buried in their master’s property or private cemetery, always out of the city walls. Not to be forgotten that the Christian community, which was very poor, was not rich enough to buy its own cemeteries. So the saint apostles Peter and Paul, along with hundreds of Christians of every age and social stand, victims of the first bloody persecution under the emperor Nero in the years 64 and 68, were buried in the tombs of the necropolis, respectively of the Vatican (Saint Peter) and of the Ostiense way (Saint Paul). A change occurred only in the second century, when better-off Christian families put at the disposal of the community their private cemeteries or they gave them to the community. And the Christian habit of visiting the dead and praying at their tombs was common practice since the beginning of Christianity.
But this habit, proved quite soon to be problematic because of the opposition of the Roman authorities to that religion. Under Claudius, emperor from 41 to 54, the Roman senate in an official decree declared the Christians as rebels and instigators and that their faith was foulness. It’s characteristic, maybe, in order to know the public opinion relative to the Christian faith, to see the graffiti of the crucified ass, found at the Palatino in the National Museum.
So it happened that the Christians, on visiting their dead and praying at their tombs, were disturbed and offended by the mob or they found their tombs soiled and violated. The desire for a reserved burial place reserved to the community grew, also due to the increasing number of the believers – despite the persecutions! The need for new burials grew as well: a more and more urgent problem that needed a solution.
Such a solution came up towards 150 AD when the noble family of the Cecili gave his private cemetery on the Appian Way to the Christian community. Afterwards other noble families became Christians and put at disposal their cemeteries also for the burial of the those Christians who didn’t belong to their household; that is why in several catacombs there are, still today, the so-called “pagan nucleuses”, just to point out that at the beginning only few members of those families adhered to Christianity.
The owners of the land had the right also to excavate underground, provided the borders of the property were respected. Moreover in Rome the mining industry was known for centuries and then also the solutions to technical problems, such as statics, ventilation, tools and logistics. The adaptability of the volcanic tufa to underground burials was already known at the time of the Etruscans, and also the rich noble families of Rome had burial chambers excavated under their mausoleums, - the so-called hypogea to hold the urns of the less important relatives or praiseworthy freed slaves.
So the catacombs are still today an impressive expression of sharing a community spirit. The first Christians felt that the power of this communion came from the faith in the resurrection. These catacombs are a monument to the faith of the Christian community, who lived their faith in a concrete way, not only in words: they are a community monument- in life and death - .