RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Cemeteries
since many of them were made in the shape of rings, bracelets, or pendants for the neck (see Amulet).
Where the grave-diggers of the catacombs, or
the stone-cutters who made sarcophagi, designed
the space for the corpse, as was often the case, so
that its head was higher than its feet, there was
no need for any support for the head. But in
other cases such supports were placed in the tomb,
the most primitive sort being of one or more stones.
In Upper Egypt rich leather cushions stuffed with
tow have been found, so sumptuously
2. Dispo- decorated as to deserve the name of
sitiou of works of art. Vessels of clay served
the Corpse, the same purpose in North Africa.
Sometimes supports were provided
for the whole body — in North Africa a layer of
beton, here and elsewhere simple arrangements
of flat bricks, in Catania perforated brick supports
on low feet, like benches. On sanitary grounds
the grave was often lined with unslacked lime,
which was also sprinkled over the corpse. Traces
of this custom have been found in the Roman
catacombs and elsewhere, as in North Africa.
The dead were also laid in some places on a bed
of laurel leaves.
While the Christians of the primitive age usually contemned the use of perfumed oils and waters, they used such things for the dead in considerable quantities. The dead were anointed before they were dressed for burial, and then sprinkled with perfumes or regularly embalmed with spices, though this latter practise seems to have been comparatively rare in Rome. Anything like mummifying was still more uncommon, outside of Egypt. Usually cloths wet with perfumes were laid upon the body, especially the face, and vessels of the most diverse shapes filled with perfumery were set near it. It is practically certain that some of the vessels known as Ampullce (q.v.) contained these perfumes, and others wine. As 3. Gifts to food and drink were set out for the the Dead, martyrs and other saints at the commemorative feasts, it is safe to say that this took place also at burials. There is also the often-discussed possibility that such vessels contained the elements of the Eucharist, or at least the consecrated wine, in connection with the practise condemned at the Third Council of Carthage and often later, of making the dead partakers in the communion.
Another class is formed by the large number of domestic utensils of every sort which have been found in the graves. These comprise vessels of all kinds, mostly of clay but sometimes of glass or more costly materials, knives, forks, spoons, writing-tablets, styluses, ink-stands, hammers, nails, spinning-wheels, chisels, and tools of many different kinds. Other objects of daily use pertain less to mere utility than to tuxury and adornment. A varied collection of articles such as served the women of those days for the toilet have been discovered in and near the tombs of the catacombs, made of metal, mosaic, ivory, glass, enamel, and mother-of-pearl. The grave being conceived, in a certain sense, as the house or chamber of the
departed, there is nothing surprising in the discovery that parents, for example, placed near the bodies of the children they had lost even the trifles which had been dear to them in life— dolls, small figures of men and animals, small lamps, spoons, etc., savings-banks, and ivory letters of the kind used in the schools. Even things relating to the amusements of grown-up people — boards for games, dice, and the like — are occasionally found. Pieces of money are of frequent occurrence. Since there is evidence that the old pagan custom of providing the dead with money to pay Charon for the ferriage persisted among Christians in Greece and elsewhere, there is no doubt that at least some of these coins were placed there from that point of view.
d. The Exterior: After the burial was finished, it was a common practise to fix in the still wet mortar with which the loculi and arcosolia of the subterranean cemeteries were closed small vessels, usually of glass, sometimes shells, for the same purpose as the vessels inside the grave. A repeated
renewal of these is evidenced by the
1'iVfS" tonlD °f one Peregrina (d. 452) in the
se s or Qatacomb 0f gan Giovanni at Syra-
Ijights and . , , , ,
Incense. cuse; several glasses must have been
broken and replaced, and there was also a clay censer still containing coals and some grains of incense. The lamps similarly affixed to the outside of the graves were intended to be lighted at the funeral and on memorial days. Semicircular niches were made in the adjacent walls to hold them. From the reign of Constantine the lamps burning at the graves of the martyrs were kept up with special reverence; the oil from them was credited with miraculous power, and pilgrims often took a small quantity of it home with them.
Many of the objects mentioned above (a, § 3) are found embedded in the mortar outside the graves, sometimes as gifts, but in other cases undoubtedly as means of identification among the
thousands of graves in the large cata- 2. Marks combs, the majority of which had no ofldenti- inscriptions, possibly owing to the fication. poverty of the survivors. Some of
these substitutes for the regular incised blocks of marble or other stone are letters, numbers, etc., embedded or scratched in or above the place where the tomb is closed; others are small objects of great variety, rings, buttons, glasses, bits of mosaic, animals' teeth, shells, coins, stones of fruit and leaves of plants, fixed in the mortar before it dried.
In their use of sepulchral inscriptions the early Christians merely continued the tradition of still older civilizations. Outside of the family vaults, on or over the door of which the name of the occupants or owners appeared, the inscriptions were placed on or at least near the graves. The most
peculiar exception to the general 3. Inscrip- usage is formed by those which have tions and the inscriptions inside the graves, Paintings, where they can not have been visible
to passers-by. Karl Schmidt dis- '■ covered a number of inscribed gravestones in the necropolis of Antinoe in Egypt which seemed to have been laid originally well down in the graves,
Cemeteries Census