History of the Catacombs of the Lucina Crypt of the Callistus Cemetery

At this point, pious individuals established and endowed catacombs where their entire family might be buried in a fellowship of common hope and expectation, and this privilege was widened, here and there, to include servants of the family and those who had no relationship beyond that of being 'brethren in the faith'. From that beginning two tendencies proceeded.

The dominant one was enlargement and ecclesiastical control as catacombs fell, by gift or purchase, under the direct authority of the Church. A succession of vigorous popes emerged eager to encourage popular reverence for martyrs and to draw both the ritual and the art which centred around the martyr-tomb into serving the interests of orthodoxy. But, side by side with the communal cemeteries, a certain number of private burial-places continued in use, sometimes by persons who had no scruple about combining a version of Christianity with ideas and art- forms proper to other religions.

The way in which catacombs developed may be illustrated by the examples of St Callistus on the Via Appia and St Priscilla in the northern quarter of Rome. Both have been carefully studied and, while points of detail are obscure and likely to remain so, the main outlines seem now to be established. The S. Callisto area divides naturally into two parts, the Crypts of Lucina and the Cemetery of Callistus itself. The Lucina catacomb began with two small burial-grounds, each consisting of a gallery reached by a staircase from ground level.

Dating cannot be exact, but to judge from the style of both inscriptions and paintings it seems that gallery A was excavated about 210 ad and enlarged a dozen years later by the construction of a second stairway and another gallery terminating in a double cubiculum, or funeral vault. Close by, the second burial-ground was hollowed out in the period 225-30 ad. It consisted of two short galleries set at right angles, with a crypt of substantial size leading off one of them. Into this crypt the body of Pope Cornelius was transferred in 255 ad, an event which led to the transformation of two little burial-grounds into one catacomb of considerable size. The two sets of galleries were connected by a passage driven through the intervening soil, the level of gallery В was lowered and extensions made to it, while another staircase was driven downwards in order that further burials might take place in galleries constructed at a lower level.

The Crypt of Lucina and the adjoining Catacomb of Callistus run beneath an ancient cemetery where burials took place, often in rather magnificent tombs, as early as the fourth century вс. Pagan burials continued until the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century ad—that is, after the construction of the Crypt of Lucina. Neither pagan hostility on the one hand nor Christian scruple on the other had refused to accept the combination of old-fashioned, pagan practice above ground with Christian ritual below. The cemetery remained in divided ownership until, when the Church became dominant in the reign of Constantine, the Christian community found itself able to take over an area hallowed by the presence of martyr- sanctuaries and to erect churches and ancillary buildings there.

Before this, however, the cemetery, or 'resting-place', seems to have been largely under Christian control if the rather obscure notices may be relied on which imply that Pope Zephyrinus (198-217 ad) entrusted its supervision to the priest Callistus, who became the next pope. Whatever may have been happening above ground, the Cemetery' of Callistus became the regular burial-place of the popes from the time when the body of Pontianus, who died in exile, and his successor Anteros were interred there in the year 236. Their epitaphs, along with those of succeeding popes, remain as evidence.