[521] This view is supported by Professor Mommsen, the Roman historian, who says (in "Contemporary Review," vol. xxvii. p. 168): "Associations of poor people who clubbed together for the burial of their members were not only tolerated but supported by the imperial government, which otherwise was very strict against associations. From this point of view, therefore, there was no legal impediment to the acquisition of these properties. Christian associations have from the very beginning paid great attention to their burials; it was considered the duty of the wealthier members to provide for the burial of the poor, and St. Ambrose still allowed churches to sell their communion plate, in order to enlarge the cemeteries of the faithful. The catacombs show what could be achieved by such means at Rome. Even if their fabulous dimensions are reduced to their right measure, they form an immense work, without beauty and ornament, despising in architecture and inscription not only pomp and empty phraseology, but even nicety and correctness, avoiding the splendor and grandeur as well as the tinsel and vanity of the life of the great town that was hurrying and throbbing above, the true commentary of the words of Christ-'My kingdom is not of this world.'
[522] Euseb. H. E. VII. 13: 1, ta ton kaloumenon koimeterion apolambanein epitrepon choria.
[523] Roller says (in Lichtenberger's Encycl. des Sc. Rel. II. 685)."Les juifs ensevelissaient dans le roc. A Rome ils ont creusé de grandes catacombes presque identique à celles des chrétiens. Ceux-ci ont été leurs imitateurs. Les Etrusques se servaient aussi de grottes; mais ils ne les reliaient point par des galeries illimitées." Dean Stanley (l.c. p. 274): "The Catacombs are the standing monuments of the Oriental and Jewish character, even of Western Christianity. The fact that they are the counterparts of the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine, and yet more closely of the Jewish cemeteries in the neighborhood of Rome, corresponds to the fact that the early Roman Church was not a Latin but an Eastern community, speaking Greek and following the usages of Syria. And again, the ease with which the Roman Christians had recourse to these cemeteries is an indication of the impartiality of the Roman law, which extended (as De Rossi has well pointed out) to this despised sect the same protection in regard to burial, even during the times of persecution, that was accorded to the highest in the land. They thus bear witness, to the unconscious fostering care of the Imperial Government over the infant church. They are thus monuments, not so much of the persecution as of the toleration which the Christians received at the hands of the Roman Empire."
[524] De Rossi (as quoted by Northcote and Brownlow I. 112): "Precisely in those cemeteries to which history or tradition assigns apostolic origin, I see, in the light of the most searching archaeological criticism, the cradle both of Christian subterranean sepulchres, of Christian art, and of Christian inscriptions; there I had memorials of persons who appear to belong to the times of the Flavii and of Trajan; and finally I discover precise dates of those times."
[525] Schultze (Die Katak., p. 73 and 83) maintains in opposition to Marchi, that the catacombs were nothing but burial place, and used only for the burial service, and that the little chapels (ecclesiolae) were either private sepulchral chambers or post-Constantinian structures.
[526] Com. in Ez. 40.
[527] He refers to such passages as Ps. 55:15; Num. 16:33.
[528] Aen. II. 755: "Horror on every side, and terrible even the silence." Or in German: "Grauen rings um mich her, und schreckvoll selber die Stille."
[529] Peristeph. XI. 153 sqq
[530] E. g. Bishop Burnet (who visited the catacombs in 1685): Letters from Italy and Switzerland in 1685 and 1686. He believed that the catacombs were the common burial places of the ancient heathen. G. S. Cyprian (1699), J. Basnage (1699), and Peter Zorn (1703), wrote on the subject in polemical interest against Rome.