Catacombs of Rome

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Crazy V Wilson. It's time for some
catacombs talk. Yeah, listen. This is a little bit of

(00:22):
wish fulfillment for me because I have not been to
the catacombs in Rome, but I sure want to. It
just has not ever happened when I've been there. Now
it's a good excuse to go back. It's on my
list for any future visits. But the story of the
Roman Catacombs is one that's always been really interesting to
me because it is so very different from the story

(00:42):
we've told on the show before about the catacombs of Paris.
Romes are much older, they were created for very different reasons.
So we're going to talk about them today. I want
to give you a heads up if you are a
person that knows about them and loves them. We're not
getting into the art. There's a lot of cool art
in the Roman Catacombs that could be its own whole

(01:02):
party train, and I would love for it to be.
But today we're really talking about like more of the
mechanics of how these came to be, why they came
to be, et cetera. We're going to talk about the
circumstances that led to their creation, their rediscovery after centuries
of abandonment, and their status today. A description of the

(01:24):
Roman Catacombs, published in eighteen fifty seven opens this way quote.
The Roman Catacombs may be briefly described as labyrinths of
subterranean galleries, crossing one another in every direction, and here
and there opening into chambers more or less lofty and spacious,
the whole hewn with the most exacting regularity out of

(01:45):
the living rock, whose entire walls present a series of
narrow shelves, one above the other, evidently excavated for the
purpose of receiving the bodies of the dead, and afterward
closed with facings of tile or marble, on which there
were often inscribed the names of the persons buried within.

(02:05):
So from that passage already some key differences between the
catacombs of Rome and those of Paris, which we've talked
about on the show. Before we reared that episode, I
think in October of twenty twenty three, the Parisian Catacombs
were a solution to a public health crisis that was
caused by the city's cemeteries being woefully overfilled was causing

(02:30):
a number of problems. So the dead were moved into
limestone quarries under the outskirts of the city, turning those
quarries into catacombs. This happened in the eighteenth century, but
Rome was creating catacombs well before that, all the way
back to the first century.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, that writing that.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Tracy just mentioned is uh, it's from the nineteenth century,
and it's like during a time when people were getting
really excited about the Roman catacombs. Again, the person that
wrote that would end up working with one of the
people that we are going to talk about late in
the episode. So the catacombs are believed to have been
created in the first or second century as a way

(03:11):
for people to bury their dead according to a custom
that was not allowed within the city of Rome. Rome
at this time was pagan. The standard practice was to
cremate the dead. We'll talk a little bit about shifting
trends in how the dead were treated, but cremation was
not a practice that was part of Jewish and Christian traditions.

(03:35):
Burial of the dead in the city of Rome was
forbidden by law at the time we'll talk more about
that law. This is the very simple version to kind
of get us into the intro. But to really look
at the context of the Catacombs, we have to talk
a little bit about Jewish and Christian religion in Rome
and how people who identified as Jewish or Christian were

(03:56):
treated and how they lived alongside other Romans. So the
early centuries of Rome's Jewish population, which of course that
goes back to before the development of Christianity, those early
centuries are complicated. They feature cycles of conflict and relative peace.
There are accounts of Jewish people living in Rome as

(04:17):
far back as the second century BCE. Rome expelled its
Jewish population on several occasions, including in one thirty nine
BCE amid accusations that they were attempting to convert Romans,
then again in nineteen CE for an assortment of accusations
ranging from fraud to disorderly conduct, and then in the

(04:39):
year forty nine when Claudius banished the Jewish population. That
last one is described in the works of Suetonius as
Claudius expelling them quote as the Jews were making constant
disturbances at the instigation of Christus whether or not Christus
was Gaesus Christ does a matter that biblical scholars continue

(05:03):
to examine, and that's way outside the scope of this episode.
But after each of these expulsions, there was always a
reversal of the policy, and often that was quite soon
after it had been issued. During the reigns of Julius
Caesar and Augustus, so in the time from the middle
of the first century BCE to the early first century CE,

(05:24):
there was legislation put in place that protected the practice
of the Jewish religion. So this was a period of
just constantly shifting sands of at least somewhat acceptance and
expulsion for Rome's Jewish population. Another text that gives us
insight into the Jewish population of Rome in the first

(05:44):
century is the account of Josephus, who was born in
Jerusalem in thirty six or thirty seven CE and wrote
autobiographical accounts of his life, which include the story of
the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation of Judea in the
year sixty six. That revolt is often referred to as
the Great Revolt and also the First Jewish Roman War,

(06:06):
and Josephus was a general in the revolt.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
This is also a.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Massive historical moment with a lot of context that were
not diving into here. But the germane aspect is that
though there were early victories for the Jewish side, eventually
they were defeated. Josephus describes the Romans destroying the Temple
in Jerusalem in the year seventy and that this war
displaced many Jews, including a large number that were captured

(06:30):
and enslaved. So the important thing to note here is
that at that point there were both free and enslaved
Jewish people living in Rome. Christianity began in Judea in
the first century and then quickly spread throughout the Roman Empire,
reaching Rome by the middle of the first century, although
in small numbers, and it was viewed with deep suspicion

(06:54):
by the existing Roman population, which remained polytheistic at time.
Rome's Jewish residents had gained kind of a grudging tolerance
by the Romans because the Jewish religion was considered to
be ancient, but Christianity was really an upstart, and its
followers were considered to be very aggressive in their desire

(07:15):
to convert other people, which Rome's eye is a big problem.
The Great Fire of Rome which started on July eighteenth
of the year sixty nine and lasted for six days,
was blamed on Christians. By the end of the first century,
it was a crime to be Christian in Rome, and
that crime was punishable by death. Over the following centuries, Christians,

(07:37):
as the Jews before them, faced this roller coaster of
persecution and kind of a fragile acceptance in the city.
Coming up, we're going to circle back to how all
of this resulted in Catacomb's being created to bury the dead.
But first we are going to take a quick sponsor break.

(08:03):
Both Jewish and Christian practices regarding burials specified that the
body was to be kept intact, but as we mentioned,
this was in conflict with Roman law, at least in
terms of anything that could be done within the city.
That law was part of what were known as the
Twelve Tables. These are regarded as the beginning of Rome's
legal system, and the Twelve Tables were composed by a

(08:26):
commission of ten men in four fifty one and four
fifty BCE. Once they were ratified, they were engraved onto
twelve bronze tables and displayed in the forum. Those bronzes
are unfortunately lost to time, and we don't have all
of the text of the Twelve Tables today. What we
have our fragments that were found in written references to them,

(08:50):
so instances where they were quoted while someone was often
discussing something else. What we know of the laws regarding
burials include the edict that states quote a dead person
shall not be buried or burned in the city. Additionally,
there are some other rules about limiting the degree of
public mourning, not having more than one funeral for a

(09:11):
given person, not wasting resources by burying gold, spices, incense, etc.
With remains, and where funeral pyres and burning mounds could
be erected in relation to other buildings. So for religions
that called for the burial of an intact body, this
meant that that burial was going to have to happen
outside the city, which is how the catacombs came to be.

(09:36):
Jewish residents of the city are believed to have been
the first to use catacombs to lay their dead to rest.
An important aspect of Rome's catacombs is how important they
are to Jewish history. According to Leonard Victor Rutger's writing
and Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies in
nineteen eighty nine quote. The Jewish catacombs of Ancient Rome

(09:57):
form the largest coherent body of archaeological material from late
Antiquity pertaining to Jewish life outside Israel. Though there had
been written information about the Jewish community of ancient Rome,
the catacombs offer a unique opportunity to compare physical evidence
with those accounts to gain a clearer picture of that

(10:18):
community and its rituals. One thing that Rutger's points out
in this writing is that there's no way to know
if there were any quote Jewish Christians i e. Jews
that accepted Jesus Christ as the Son of God and
raised from the dead and at the same time continued
to observe mosaic law buried in the Jewish catacombs. Identifying

(10:41):
which catacombs had been used for Jewish burial was done
based on the funerary inscriptions on the tombs there, which
had Greek and Latin writing, in combination with the identification
of Jewish motifs in the surrounding wall art and sometimes
small motifs that were carved into those stones that close
the catacombs. Those catacombs were also identified by just the

(11:02):
lack of Christian or Pagan symbology within them. But this
also gives an incomplete picture because there are catacomb sites
in the area around Rome that are unreachable or that
have been destroyed or have carved in, so the written
record and the archaeological record don't entirely match up. The
written record establishes a Jewish community in Rome as early

(11:24):
as the first century BCE, or perhaps even earlier, so
it has long been assumed that the Jewish catacombs were
in use sometimes shortly thereafter, but the archaeological record only
has evidence of them that begins in the early third century.
The Rutger's paper analyzes things like brickwork, painting styles, bricks, stamps,

(11:46):
et cetera to be able to conclude with confidence that
Jewish catacombs weren't actively used for sure in the third
to fifth centuries, but that the beginning and end of
their use cannot be conclusively identified on the time line.
He also makes the case that the practice of burial
being adopted instead of cremation was probably taking place simultaneously

(12:08):
among the Jewish population, Christians, and even some Pagans. We
do know that Christians also adopted the use of catacombs.
This started, according to the Vatican, under the direction of
Pope Zafarin, who was pope from one ninety nine to
two seventeen. He wanted to have an underground cemetery prepared

(12:28):
so that pontiffs could be laid to rest there.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
The process of.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Burials there was a lot like what we described in
the opening passage that we read earlier. So bodies were
wrapped in cloth and then put into the hollowed out
shelves of rock, and then a stone was placed in
the front of that hollow to close it, with the
name of the person interred there, and often a symbol
of the Christian religion. Also, to be clear, there were

(12:52):
still tombs for the dead created for Rome's pagan population,
both for cremated and non cremated bodies. Cremation had become
the most popular method of handling corpses in the fifth
century BCE, but there were still people practicing full body
burials throughout the time periods that were talking about. They

(13:13):
still had to be interred outside the city, but families
of wealth and even a lot of the middle class
had private mausoleums built on land outside the walls of Rome.
That land was extremely expensive, so there were also shared
burial spaces that families with less money could buy into
to inter their dead, both intact and cremated, without having

(13:35):
to own land and build a private mausoleum. Jewish and
Christian communities, though needed to bury all of their dead
because of their religious beliefs, there was no option to
switch to cremation to try to mitigate overcrowding and lack
of land resources in a growing metropolis. Mausoleums were simply

(13:56):
not realistic, which is why large shared underground spaces were create,
And this was also not a new idea in the region.
The Etruscan civilization, which flourished from the eighth to the
third century BCE, had elaborate underground facilities. There are no
Etruscan underground burial sites in or immediately adjacent to Rome,

(14:18):
at least not that anybody has found.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
But two of these, the Bandit.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Tacha Necropolis and Cervettori and Mantarazzi Necropolis in Tarquinia, are
both less than an hour's drive away today.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
One thing that I found while looking at a lot
of scholarship about this is that there are even some
papers and some examinations that kind of make the leap
to thinking that possibly the Jewish population made use of
existing catacombs that had been Etruscan in origin, but we

(14:55):
don't really have a good way to know that, at
least not yet. Jewish and Christian bear as well as
some pagan ones, continued in the catacombs exclusively into the
early fourth century. At the beginning of the fourth century,
in the year three oh three, Emperor Diocletian initiated an
intense persecution of Christians. This is always described as the

(15:18):
worst persecution of all of them in Rome and resulted
in the torture and deaths of a lot of people.
This went on for eight years, during which, despite that danger,
the numbers of Christians in the city continued to rise. Finally,
in three eleven, Emperor Galerius, who had ascended to the
role of emperor in three oh five and who was

(15:40):
by the way deeply against Christianity, surprisingly issued an edict
of tolerance that was the Edict of Certica to end
that long persecution. By the time Galerius was emperor, he
was one of two under a system established by Diocletian
in two ninety three known as the tetrarchy. The the
Roman Empire was jointly ruled by two emperors, one to

(16:04):
manage the East and one to manage the West, and
each of them had their own designated successors who worked
under them. This was intended to create stability for the empire,
but unsurprisingly there were often problems. The time of Constantine
the First, who ruled the west starting in July of
three oh six, and Licinius, who became an emperor in

(16:26):
November three oh eight, was one in which there was
a lot of conflict between the two emperors. So much
conflict there are just reams and reams of papers written
about this conflict. But one thing that they did agree
on was the Edict of Milan in three thirteen. This
was an alliance in which they agreed to grant freedom

(16:46):
of religion to everyone, but they specifically called out Christians.
A translation of the first section of this edict reads quote,
when I Constantine Augustus as well as I Licinius Augustus,
had fortunately met near Mediolanum, Milan, and we're considering everything
that pertained to the public welfare and security. We thought that,

(17:07):
among other things which we saw would be for the
good of many. Those regulations pertaining to the reverence of
the divinity ought certainly to be made first, so that
we might grant to the Christians and to all others
full authority to observe that religion which each preferred, whence
any divinity whatsoever in the seat of the heavens may

(17:28):
be propitious and kindly disposed to us and all who
are placed under our rule. And thus, by this wholesome
council and most upright provision, we thought to arrange that
no one whatsoever should be denied the opportunity to give
his heart to the observance of the Christian religion, or
of that religion which he should think best for himself,

(17:48):
so that the Supreme Deity to whose worship we freely
yield our hearts, may show in all things his usual
favor and benevolence. Therefore, your worship should know that it
has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever which were
in the rescripts formerly given to you officially concerning the Christians,
And now any one of these who wishes to observe

(18:11):
the Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without
any disturbance or molestation. We thought it fit to commend
these things most fully to your care, that you may
know that we have given to those Christians free and
unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this
has been granted to them by us, your worship, will

(18:32):
know that we have also conceded to other religions the
right of open and free observance of their worship, for
the sake of the peace of our times, that each
one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases.
This regulation is made that we may not seem to
detract aught from any dignity or any religion. I kind
of love that there's a little bit of a bet

(18:54):
hedge in there of like whatever God is the one,
be cool or cool with whoever you, whoever follows you.
This edict also called for the return of all goods
and wealth that had been seized to be given back
to the Christians. So from that point on, Christians were
able to establish churches and cemeteries, meaning they could conduct

(19:16):
their burial rituals in the city proper. But even though
burial was allowed in the city and a large number
of churches were built and included cemeteries or even places
within the buildings for the dead. The catacombs did not
instantly fall out of use. They were actively part of
Christian burials for more than one hundred more years, even

(19:37):
after Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman
Empire by Emperor Theodosius with the Edict of Thessalonica in
three point eighty. Over the next several centuries, as burials
in the catacombs became less frequent, a different activity was
on the rise in them, and that was looting. There
were also religious services performed there on occasion, but looting

(20:00):
became a real problem. Reading different accounts of the Catacomb's history,
a lot of different groups have been blamed for that looting.
Mostly it was holy relics that were being taken from
burial sites. In reality, it was probably a lot of
different people over time. There's no one perpetrator. It's sometimes
said to have started with Christians removing relics since they

(20:22):
no longer had to literally keep their sacred items underground,
and other accounts point fingers at the various groups who
have invaded Rome since the fourth century, including the Visigoths,
the Vandals, the Byzantines, and the Lombards. This eventually led
the Vaticans to initiate a move of the relics from
the catacombs to churches around the city where they could

(20:44):
be carefully watched and safeguarded. With the removal of the relics,
the church also removed the reason that people had still
been visiting the catacombs, and over time they were more
or less abandoned and forgotten. Additionally, while they were out
the city's original walls, as the city grew and expanded
past those old boundaries, new neighborhoods were built on top

(21:08):
of the catacolums, and people just sort of lost track
of where they were until they were rediscovered by a
man named Antonio Bosio. And we'll talk about him after
we hear from the sponsors that keeps stuff you missed
in history class going. Antonio Bosio was born in fifteen

(21:33):
seventy five or fifteen seventy six in Malta. He is
recorded by historian Bartolomeo dal Pozzo as having been the
child of Baligionotto, a knight of the Order of Saint John,
who had taken a vow of chastity that would have
made his existence a little bit problematic, and that was
compounded by the fact that his mother was either a

(21:55):
servant or an enslaved woman. The way it's written in
the old record, it's unclear what they mean when they
refer to her. When Antonio was twelve, he was adopted
and he was raised by his uncle, Jacomo Bosio, who
lived in Rome, and over time any mentions of Antonio's

(22:16):
parentage seemed to have been left out of his life story,
so his uncle Jacomo became essentially his parent. Antonio Bosio
was apparently a bit wild in his youth, but as
he matured he became a serious scholar. He got a
law degree and practiced for several years, but he was
also a history buff and was specifically fascinated with early

(22:38):
Christian history, so he started exploring any places that held
traces of the religion's earliest days, and that led him
to the underground cemeteries of the city. He explored them
in a very meticulous and careful manner, cataloging as much
as he could about everything that he saw there. He
started working on a book detailing the catacombs that he

(23:01):
had explored, but he died on September sixth, sixteen twenty
nine before it was ready to go to print.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
It was basically complete, but it needed editing.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Bozio willed everything that he had to the Order of Malta,
and the grand Master of the Order at the time,
Antoine de Paul, was convinced that the manuscript should go
to press. Roma Sotrana Underground Rome was published in the
sixteen thirties and it is often cited with creating the
bedrock methodology and ideology of modern archaeology. His interpretations of

(23:34):
what he had seen and explored were incorrect in some instances.
He thought the catacombs had been hiding places where Christians
hold up during times of persecution, was not what they
were used for, but he captivated readers with his descriptions
of these underground cities. He had also commissioned artists to
create imagery of many of the things he had described

(23:55):
to be included in the book, and he had studied
early Christianity and was able to historical contextualize a lot
of the areas that he explored. This writing was also
a boon to the Catholic Church and the decades after
Martin Luther's kickoff of the Protestant Reformation in fifteen seventeen,
support for the papacy had fallen off very steeply, but

(24:16):
Bozzio's writings about martyrs laid to rest in subterranean Roman
cities sparked a new interest in Catholicism and in religious
relics that might also be there. Some of these, including
skeletons of martyrs, many of them clad in armor, became
important symbols of the Catholic Church's fight against the Protestants.

(24:38):
A lot of these, so called corfy santi or catacomb saints,
were sent to Catholic churches around Europe to try to
bolster interest in and devotion to the Church. I know
he said earlier that the relics were taken out of
the catacombs by the church, but they did not purge everything,
because at that point some catacombs were completely lost. If

(25:00):
you're wondering how he even found these or knew about them,
in truth, Antonio Bosio was not the first person to
have come upon the catacombs after they had been abandoned.
According to another book, which is also titled Romo Sotarana,
which was published in eighteen sixty nine based on the
work of Giovanni Battista d Rossi, laborers digging in a

(25:21):
vineyard had found a subterranean cemetery at the end of
fifteen seventy eight, when Antonio Bosio was just a toddler.
The discovery quote at once attracted universal attention, and persons
of all classes flocked to see it. More than a
century before that, a vineyard on the other side of
the city had yielded a similar discovery. But apparently the

(25:44):
scholars of the day, according to this book quote, never
have felt sufficient interest to excite them, to investigate their history,
or to publish anything at all about them. Derosi is
the next person who represented another huge step forward in
terms of our understanding of the Roman Catacombs. While public
fascination with the catacombs had been sparked with the publication

(26:07):
of Bosio's work, that interest kind of faded off outside
of religious and academic circles. It took a couple more
centuries for another dedicated archaeologist to expand that work. Giovanni
Battista de Rossi was born in Rome on February twenty third,
eighteen twenty two. His father was military officer Camilla Luigi

(26:28):
de Rossi, and his mother was Marianna Marqueza Brutti. Giovanni
was raised Catholic and went to a Jesuit school before
moving on to study law at Sapienza University of Rome.
But from the time he was a child, do Rosi,
like Bosio, had been fascinated with antiquity. He actually read
Bosio's book for the first time when he was eleven.

(26:50):
He had gotten it as a birthday gift from his father,
and when he was still a teenager, he managed to
convince a priest to go into the catacombs with him.
This was apparently considered to be somewhat dangerous because they
had not really been maintained, and that priest, Jesuit father
Joseppe Marki, became a long term collaborator with Derosi. After

(27:11):
completing school, Derosie got a job at the Vatican Library
as a scriptor. That was a job that encompassed a
lot of library tasks, including cataloging, and he worked there
as his primary job for the rest of his life.
But in his off hours he followed his passion for
Christian archaeology, something that made good use of his occupation
since he had access to a wealth of rare and

(27:33):
important manuscripts. Derosi became incredibly knowledgeable about the Catacombs as
well as other important Christian religious sites, and he was
able to develop a network of associates who shared his passion.
He traveled around Europe as well as throughout Italy in
his quest to learn all that he could about religious antiquities,

(27:53):
and through his friends he often received rare materials from
around the world to study. His repute earned him a
great deal of admiration in the Vatican, and he is
said to have been very well liked by Pope's Pious
the ninth and Leo the thirteenth, and he explored the
Catacombs at great length, including discovering the Catacombs of Callixtus,

(28:15):
that's the catacomb that was created by Pope Zephyrenius to
be a resting place for pontiffs. He often went on
his expeditions in underground Rome with his brother Michel Stefano
by his side. Michelle was a scholar in his own right,
but his work focused on natural science. He wrote papers
that analyzed the Catacombs from the point of view of

(28:36):
a geologist, examining the earth that was excavated to create them. Derosi,
like Bosio, sought to contextualize Christian archaeological finds by studying
the literature of the times they came from. But unlike Bosio,
he had access to almost anything he could have wished
for in studying that context. Remember he's sitting in the

(28:58):
Vatican library all day every day. He wrote a lot
about the early history of the religion, how its hierarchy developed,
how theological writing had developed and evolved over time, and
an array of other topics.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
The book that we quoted.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
From earlier was an English translation which fellow academics from
his circle compiled from his work with his permission. While
he was still alive, at the age of seventy, he
had a stroke and he never fully recovered from it.
He died on September twentieth, eighteen ninety four, at Castel Gandolfo,
which is a town south of Rome, in an apartment

(29:34):
that was provided to him by Pope Leo the thirteenth
in the papal palace there. Outside of his writing, because
of de Rosie's good standing with the Vatican, he was
able to catalyze the creation of a new division within
the Catholic Church that would carry on his work. When
Pius the ninth was on the Holy See. Derosi made
the case to the Pope that it would be in

(29:56):
the best interest of the Vatican to ensure that important
archaeolie logical finds could be studied and protected, and in
eighteen fifty two the Commission for Sacred Archaeology was formed.
It still operates today and it's in charge of the
maintenance and preservation of the Christian Catacombs of Rome, and
it keeps an eye on quote cemeteries and ancient Christian

(30:17):
buildings of Rome and its suburbs, for the systematic and
scientific excavation and exploration of the same cemeteries, and for
the preservation and upkeep of what was found or brought
to light again by the excavations. But even as de
Rosi's work on the Catacombs was becoming more widely known,
it seemed like the way the information was disseminated in

(30:38):
circles outside of religious scholarship could be a little odd,
and it was often romanticized. In the first half of
eighteen eighty eight, the London periodical The Architect, a weekly
illustrated journal of art, civil engineering, and building, ran a
write up describing a recent lecture given by a professor
Stokes of Dublin. I could not figure out more information

(31:00):
on who Professor Stokes was. The Stokes that I could
find that was around the same time was in a
different field and a little too late, so I never
identified him. But according to the architect, regarding the Roman catacombs,
Stokes had discussed quote, his own idea before he studied
the subject was that the city of Rome was built

(31:22):
over them, that the catacombs had furnished the building material
for the city thus erected, and that their early Christians,
having discovered those excavations under their houses, made secret entrances
into them, so that when any danger threatened them, or
when they desired to worship in secret, they just retired
into those vast and gloomy recesses. That was obviously wrong,

(31:44):
but Stokes's lecture went on to say that quote. The
catacombs of Rome, however, were of a quite different character,
and he shared how he had discovered they were created
outside of the city and in some cases in the
hills surrounding the city. Stokes had learned that they were
not places of worship as Christians had those before the

(32:04):
catacombs were created, although there were sometimes services held there
as we've mentioned this whole write up is kind of quaint,
and it seems a little bit behind the times, sharing
things that had been known for quite a while as
though they were sort of mind blowing and utterly new.
Thirty years before that lecture, in eighteen fifty eight, The
Atlantic ran an article simply titled the Catacombs of Rome,

(32:28):
which opened with Roma Saturnia, the underground Rome of the Dead,
the buried city of graves. Sacred is the dust of
its narrow streets. Blessed were those who, having died for
their faith, were laid to rest in its chambers. Full
as the upper city is of great and precious memories,
it possesses none greater and more precious than those which

(32:52):
belonged to the city underground. Republican Rome had no greater
heroes than Christian Rome. This article name checks de Rossi
and Marchie and the creation of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology,
and it's also very much a combination of Romantic fascination
and pro Christian ideology, and has some jumps in logic

(33:12):
that convey inaccurate information, such as this explanation for the
catacomb's creation quote. The Christians would naturally desire to separate
themselves in burial from the heathen and to avoid everything
having the semblance of pagan rites yick. Even though they
have learned about the works of people who have studied

(33:33):
and explained them, they just make up this thing of
like Christians thought burying their dead next to pagans was icky,
and it's like, well, that's not really why these happened,
but okay. Today there are five catacombs that are currently
open to the public. The Catacombs of San Sebastiano is
named for a soldier who converted to Christianity and became

(33:53):
a martyr. This particular catacomb stretches about twelve kilometers it's
roughly seven and a half miles, so it's enormous, but
it's not nearly as big.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
As some others.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
This is one of the most popular catacombs with tourists,
though it's really been set up to be easily accessible.
Many Christian martyrs are buried in the catacombs of San Calisto,
that's even larger than San Sebastiano, at a massive twenty
kilometers or twelve point four miles. It is where sixteen
popes are laid to rest. Which makes it another popular

(34:25):
place for visitors. The next catacomb is perhaps more important
for its artwork that it contains, rather than the people
lead to rest there. The catacombs of Priscilla are filled
with frescoes, including one that is believed to contain the
first representation of the Virgin Mary. The catacombs of Domatila
run for seventeen kilometers that include an underground basilica, and

(34:49):
the catacombs of Santa Agnesa are named for the martyr
Saint Agnes who is buried there. This one has no
art of significance, but contains a number of significant engravings.
Of the six Jewish catacombs that are known to have
existed in the area around Rome, there could be more.
That's how many we noah For sure. Only two of

(35:11):
them remain though, Villa Randanani and Villa Torlonia. In addition
to the ones we've named here, there are more than
fifty additional known catacombs that are not open to visitors.
We don't really know the extent of the Roman catacombs,
and this is in part because of issues we've mentioned
earlier in the episode regarding things like Caven's. There was

(35:33):
a quote I found while I was researching this, which
was by a scholar named Estelle Shoat Bruttmann, who started
this entire field of archaeological research, particularly into some of
the Jewish catacombs. But in her writings she had included
this one thing that felt almost relieving as I was
researching this, because like you're putting together a puzzle where

(35:56):
we don't have all the pieces, and the pieces we
do have I don't always match up exactly right. But
I read this and felt better.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
It's said, not all.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
The pieces of evidence for Christian and Jewish burials in
this setting can fit into a seamless hole. So she,
like other scholars, has been grappling with these problems for
a long time. But that is our brief overview of
my wish list place to go, which is.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
The catecopes over Do you also have some listener mail?

Speaker 1 (36:27):
I do. It is about a different place that I
have been. This is from our listener, Aaron, who writes, Hello,
Tracy and Holly. My son just wrapped up his ap
dual enrollment humanities class at a Virginia Governor's School for
GT students. As a part of this class, students had
to conduct authentic, original research about a non Western culture

(36:48):
to which they do not belong. They spent the entire
school year delving deep into their chosen research topic, reviewing
existing literature, scholarly articles, primary sources, etc. I wish we
had done something like this when I was in high school.
After writing their final paper, they presented their findings to
the entire school. My ears perked up when I heard

(37:08):
your episode on Emperor Meiji and the Meiji Shrine because
my son's research was about the role of Shinto religious
practices in the political transition at the end of the
Tokugawa Shogunate. I'm the editor in chief for most of
his school papers, so I had the pleasure of reading
this incredibly in depth academic paper, despite having a master's
degree in education with very little background knowledge about this

(37:31):
part of Japanese history. Myself, I was feeling more than
a little lost. At least I could help him edit
for grammar and clarity. I was thrilled to listen to
your episode to get a broader picture and more historical
context for this topic, which put my son's research into
perspective for me. I played a portion of the episode
for him, and when we got to the part in
which you explained Kami, my son exclaimed that sounded like

(37:54):
they nearly quoted my paper. I couldn't help but agree,
as that is exactly why I played that part of
the podcast for him. Thank you for the years of
highest quality infotainment. I have a PhD in SYMHC. And
you have kept me company through household chores, long drives,
and many many hours of sewing, both for pleasure and
my second job. Attached is a bit of pet tax

(38:15):
our pedigree Bengal cat raven Paw, who like her Raven
Claw namesake, is incredibly clever. She knows many tricks including sit, come,
give hugs, and give kisses, and she uses the pet
talking buttons to request to play with her various toys.
She's also super talkative, meowing in conversational turns with you,
to the point that our family accidentally mews at each

(38:36):
other because we are so used to mewing with the cat.
My eleven year old has inadvertently mewed at me as
a greeting more times than I can count. Thank you
again for all you do Erin. I love all of this.
I'm so glad that that offered up like a supplement
to the work that you had been reading of your
sons and kind of you know, helped add a bit
of context. I also love this meowing thing because my

(38:59):
husband and I will spen entire days where I think
all we do is reality because we too have had
miaowi kiddies.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
We sing songs in meow. Meow is just a greeting
at our house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
I have two cats that whoever owned them before I
owned them taught them kisses. Yeah, they probably tried to
teach Marva, but she just flipped them the bird because
she didn't do what you want her to do.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
She does what Marva wants to do. But it's pretty
good when you go.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Kisses and they put their little face on yours is
and sweeteness. So your kiddy is absolutely gorgeous and probably
smarter than the rest of us put together. So beautiful.
Oh that little face too much, too much in the
best way. Thank you so much for writing to us
and sharing that story and I it just delighted me

(39:47):
to no end. And now I'm going to think about
your cat for probably more than is reasonable. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
read all the show notes on mistinhistory dot com. Each
episode has our list of research items that we use,

(40:08):
so if you want to reference any of those, there
they are. You can also subscribe to the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuffy mist in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(40:31):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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