RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Cemeteries
in the first half of the fifth century. Constantinople also had its official grave-diggers, though here they were not reckoned among the clergy. As a class established by Constantine and added to by Anastasius, they attended to burials without charge, but received immunity from taxation and other privileges, so that their position was a desirable one, and coveted even by well-to-do tradesmen. It is learned from Ambrose (M PL, xvii. 745) that in the church of Milan the whole charge of burials was in the hands of the clergy, but he gives no details.
Earlier and fuller information is extant in regard to the officials who had the administration of the cemeteries. With the development from private vaults to burial-grounds for the whole local church, this naturally came within the bishop's sphere of influence. He would of course deputize some of his clergy to assist him, and in Rome from the third century the names of such clerics 3. Admin- appear as administrators of the comistrative mon burying-ground; the first who Officials. can be positively identified was in deacon's orders. The Liber pontificalis, in its account of Pope Dionysius (259-268), implies that each of the titular or parish churches of Rome had one cemetery specially assigned to it, and that the priest of each church had the oversight of the corresponding cemetery. At the beginning of the fourth century, the growth of the local church required an enlargement of the number, and a redistribution was made (again according to the Lifter pontificalis) by Pope Marcellus (308-309). Assistants of the parish priest in this matter were those called from the end of the fifth century propositi, who had charge of the more important cemeteries, and the mansionarii, who had charge of the less important burial-places. The propositi of the catacomb of St. Calixtus, which was not classed with the others, and of St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and St. Laurence's, were subject not to parish priests but directly to the pope.
5. Acquisition, Use, and Protection of Graves: In Christian antiquity graves were acquired and prepared as in pre-Christian times, either by purchase or gift, and in the lifetime of the destined occupant or at death. People provided their relatives, friends, and servants with graves by their wills or by deed of gift. The only innovation is that which has been already remarked, that local churches provided burial-places for the poor out of the common funds. Both single graves and family vaults were frequently purchased, and the 1. Pur- records of the transaction sometimes chase of 0CCUPV more space than the funeral Graves, inscription proper, giving the names of buyer, seller, and witnesses, the price and location of the grave. In some of the Roman inscriptions, probably relating only to particular churches, the permission of the pope is mentioned. In cases where the purchase-price is mentioned, though it may have included the cost of construction, it seems in some instances to be excessive, and the fossores are likely to have driven a good bargain, especially for places near the tombs °f the martyrs, for which there was an increasing
demand. Gregory the Great set his face against the selling of graves, but after his death the system seems to have revived. Though the question can not be positively decided, it seems that in Christian antiquity the practise of providing a burialplace during life was more common in the East than in the West, and during the period after Constantine than that before.
A passage in Tertullian (De anima, li.) and the decrees of certain councils against the crowding of bodies on top of one another or close together has led many archeologists to believe that in the primitive Church each Christian had a grave to himself. But this view is untenable, as is shown especially by the excavations of Paolo Orsi in the cemeteries of Sicily, where he frequently found more than one body in a grave, and in one case as many as eighteen. Even in Rome, where more respect
Same Grave WaS Pald t0 the dead' the inscriPtions
TJsed for not seldom snow that an old grave
Several was u?ed aSain for fresh interments,
Bodies. tne original tablet being reversed and
made to bear the name of the new
tenant. The practise seems to have originated
and to have been carried on with the least scruple
in the East, where as early as the third century
measures had to be taken against the violators of
graves, not merely those who opened them for the
purpose of interring more corpses, but some even
who did not shrink from robbing them.
The custom of putting an inscription on a tomb to guard it from profanation is very old, and on the other hand was common in the Middle Ages. The Christian inscriptions of this kind warn those who read them most frequently and expressly against the use of the grave for burial by unauthorized persons; but the writings of fourth-century Fathers and the edicts of Christian emperors in the same period show that this was not the only danger feared. Gregory Nazianzen has left more than eighty epigrams directed against grave-robbers, and John Chrysostom was obliged to scourge this abuse again and again in
3. Violation of
_ his sermons. A startling fact is that
Graves. *he Christian inscriptions affixed to graves as a protection seem to be addressed mainly to Christians, if one may judge from their appeals to God and the last judgment. In all the principal sections of the ancient Church numerous inscriptions are found which threaten violators of tombs either with secular or with divine penalties, or with both; but they are nowhere so numerous as in Phrygia and the adjoining provinces of Asia Minor. This frequency may be explained partly by the open and comparatively unprotected nature of the cemeteries there, although such inscriptions are found also in the Roman and Sicilian catacombs; but it is probably due more largely to the pre-Christian tradition in Asia Minor, where pagan inscriptions of the kind were very numerous — while in Rome, on the other hand, they are equally rare among pagans and Christians. Secular rulers imposed heavy penalties upon violators of graves; they were excluded from profiting by the usual Easter indulgences, and their wives were allowed to get a divorce from them.
Cemeteries