From the period of the rediscovery of the catacombs in the 16th century till
late in the nineteenth century a gigantic fallacy prevailed, repeated by writer after writer, identifying the Christian
burial places with disused sand pits. It was accepted as an unquestionable fact by every one who undertook to describe the catacombs, that the Christians of Rome, finding in the labyrinthine mazes of the exhausted
arenariae, which abounded in the environs of the city, whence the sand used in building had been extracted, a suitable place for the interment of
their martyred brethren, where also the sacred rites accompanying the interment might be celebrated without fear of interruption, took possession of them and used them as cemeteries.
It only needed a comparison of the theory with the visible facts to refute it at once, but nearly three centuries elapsed before the independence of the arenariae and the catacombs was established. The discovery of this independence is due to
Marchi. Starting with the firmest belief in the old traditional view, his own researches by degrees opened his eyes to the truth, that the catacombs were exclusively the work of the Christians, and were constructed for the interment of the dead. It is true that a catacomb is often connected with the earlier
sand quarry, and starts from it as a commencement, but the two are excavated in different strata, suitable to their respective purposes, and their plan and construction are so completely unlike as to render any confusion between them impossible.
Another equally erroneous idea was that these vast
places of the early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their pagan
neighbors and were constructed not only without the permission of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
That such vast excavations should have been made without attracting attention, and that such an immense number of corpses could have been carried to burial in perfect secrecy is utterly impossible. Nor was there any reason, why secrecy should have been desired. The decent burial of the dead was a matter especially provided for by the Roman laws. No particular mode was prescribed. Interment was just as legal as
cremation and there was absolutely nothing, to quote the words of Northcote,
"...either in their social or religious position to interfere with their freedom of action. The law left them entire liberty, . . . and the faithful did but use their liberty
in the way that suited them best, burying their dead according to a fashion to which many of them had been long accustomed, and which enabled them at the same time to follow in death the example of him who was also their model in life.”
Interment in
rock hewn tombs as the manner of the Jews had been practiced in Rome by the Jewish settlers for a considerable period anterior to
the rise of the Christian Church. A Jewish catacomb now
lost was discovered and described by Bosio and others are still accessible. They are to be distinguished from. Christian catacombs only by the character of their decorations, the
absence of Christian symbols and the language of their inscriptions. There
would therefore be nothing extraordinary in the fact that a
community always identified in the popular heathen mind with the Jewish
faith should adopt the mode of interment belonging to that religion. Nor have we the slightest trace of any official interference with Christian burials, such as would render secrecy necessary or desirable. Their funerals were as much under the protection of the law, which not only invested the tomb itself with a sacred character, but included in its protection the area in which it stood, and the cella memoriae or chapel connected with it, as those of their heathen
fellow citizens, while the same shield would be thrown over the
burial clubs.
We may then completely dismiss the notion of there being any studied secrecy in
connection with the early Christian cemeteries.
Catacombs
of 3rd and 4th Centuries
The largest number of Christian catacombs belong to the 3rd and the early part of the 4th centuries. The custom of subterranean interment gradually died
out and entirely ceased with the sack of Rome by Alaric in AD 410.
The end of the catacomb graves is intimately connected with the end of the powerful city itself.
Poverty took the place of wealth, and the traditions of the Christian
tomb architects sank into utter insignificance; the, expanse of the wasted Campagna now offered room enough to bury the few
bodies without having to descend as
once far down below the surface of the earth.
The earliest account of the catacombs, that of St Jerome narrating his visits to them when a schoolboy at Rome, about AD. 354, shows that interment in them was even then rare if it had not been altogether discontinued; and the poet Prudentius’ description of the tomb of the Christian martyr
Hippolytus, and the cemetery in which it stood, leads us to the same
conclusion. With the latter part of the 4th century a new epoch in the history of the catacombs arose,
that of religious reverence.
In the time of Pope
Damasus, A.D. 366 - 384, the catacombs had begun to be regarded with special devotion, and had become the resort of large bands of pilgrims, for whose guidance catalogues of the chief
burial places and the holy men buried in them were drawn up. Pope Damasus himself displayed great zeal in adapting
the catacombs to their new purpose, restoring the works of art on the walls, and renewing the epitaphs over the graves of the martyrs. In this latter work he employed an engraver named Furius
Philocalus, the exquisite beauty of whose characters enables the smallest fragment of his work to be recognized at a glance. This gave rise to extensive alterations in their construction and decoration, which has much lessened their value as authentic memorials of the religious art of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Subsequent popes manifested equal
ardour, with the same damaging results, in the repair and adornment of the catacombs, and many of the paintings covering their walls, which have been assigned to the period of their original construction, are really the work of these later times.
The Rediscovery of the Catacombs
The catacombs shared in the devastation of Rome by the Goths under Vitiges in the 6th century and by the Lombards at a later period; and partly through the spoliation of these barbarian invaders, partly through the neglect of those who should have been their guardians, they sank into such a state of decay and pollution that, as the only means of preserving the holy remains they enshrined from further
desecration. Pope Paul I in the latter part of the 8th century, and Pope Paschal, at the beginning of the 9th,
entered upon the work of the translation of the relics, which was vigorously carried on by successive pontiffs until the crypts were almost entirely despoiled of their dead. The relics having been
removed the visits of pilgrims naturally ceased and by degrees the very existence of those wonderful subterranean cemeteries was forgotten.
Six centuries elapsed before the accidental discovery of a sepulchral chamber by some
laborers digging for pozzolana earth (May 31, 1578) revealed to the amazed inhabitants of Rome,
"the existence” to quote a contemporary record, “of other cities concealed beneath their own suburbs.”
Baronius the ecclesiastical historia was one of the first to visit the new
discovery and his Annals in more than one place evidence his just appreciation of its importance. 
The true "Columbus of this subterranean world,” as he has been aptly designated, was the indefatigable Antonio Bosio (d.
1629) who devoted his life to the personal investigation of the
catacombs, the results of which were given to the world in 1632 in a huge
folio entitled Roma sotterranea, profusely illustrated with rude but faithful plans and engravings. This was republished in a Latin translation with considerable alterations and omissions by Paolo Aringhi
in 1651; and a century after its first appearance the plates were reproduced by Giovanni Bottari in
1737 and illustrated with great care and learning. Some additional discoveries were described by Marc Antonio Boldetti in his
Osservazioni published in 1720; but writing in the interests of the Roman Church with an apologetic, not a scientific object, truth was made to bend to polemics, and little addition to our knowledge of the catacombs is to be gained from his otherwise important work.
The French historian of art, Seroux d’Agincourt,
in 1825 by his copious illustrations greatly facilitated the study of the architecture of the catacombs and the works of art contained in them. The works of Raoul Rochette display a comprehensive knowledge of the whole subject, extensive reading, and a thorough acquaintance with early Christian art so far as it could be gathered from books, but he was not an original investigator. The great pioneer in the path of independent
research which with the intelligent use of documentary and historical
evidence has led to so vast an increase in our acquaintance with the Roman
Catacombs was Padre Marchi of the Society of Jesus. His work Monumenti delle arti christiane
primitive, is the first in which the strange misconception, received, with unquestioning faith by earlier writers, that the catacombs were exhausted
sand pits adapted by the Christians to the purpose of interment, was dispelled, and the true history of their formation demonstrated. Marchi’s line of investigation was followed by the Commendatore De Rossi, and his
brother Michele, the former of whom was Marchi’s fellow laborer during the latter part of his explorations; and it is to them that we owe the most exhaustive scientific examination of the whole subject.