![]() ![]() Pius bought the land, and De Rossi began a dig at what he discovered was the ancient St. De Rossi appealed to Pope Pius IX to purchase this vineyard as well as the vineyard adjoining it so he could begin an excavation. From a seventh-century guide to the catacombs, De Rossi knew that after his martyrdom in 253, Pope St. In a cellar he found a broken marble tablet that bore an incomplete inscription: NELIUS. One day in 1849, De Rossi was examining a vineyard on the Appian Way. Soon he was tramping around the outskirts of Rome, looking for signs of long-forgotten subterranean cemeteries. None of these men were trained archaeologists (the science did not exist at the time), but their work was a start.įor almost 300 years, exploration of the catacombs was haphazard, until a young Italian named Giovanni Battista De Rossi (1822-1894) accepted a post in the Vatican Library, where he took special interest in cataloguing early Christian inscriptions. The three rediscovered the catacombs of St. The discovery inspired three amateurs, a Spanish Dominican priest, Alfonso Chacon, a Flemish layman, Philip de Winghe, and a French layman, Ioanne L’Heureux, to search for other catacombs and to make a preliminary study of these ancient Christian burial places. The discovery of a catacomb filled with sacred art delighted Catholic apologists and discomfited their Protestant opponents. Protestants liked to portray themselves as the true heirs of the ancient Christians, while dismissing Catholics as interlopers who introduced all manner of pagan corruptions into the Christian Church, among these the veneration of images, which Protestants regarded as idolatry. It also ramped up one of the greatest points of contention between Catholics and Protestants: the veneration of sacred images. The discovery caused a sensation in Rome. Exploration of the catacomb revealed sarcophagi, inscriptions, and paintings of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Suddenly they broke into a long-forgotten catacomb that ran beneath the vineyard. That day, workers on the Via Salaria Nuova were digging up volcanic stone known as pozzolana. We can pinpoint the day when interest in the catacombs was reawakened - May 31, 1578. Gradually, the locations of the catacombs were forgotten. Gradually, the remains of the martyrs were from the catacombs and enshrined in churches. But over time, cave-ins made it dangerous to visit the catacombs, and earthquakes often sealed up the entrances. On the anniversary of martyr’s death, they met at the saint’s tomb for Mass, which is the origin of our feast days. The Christians of Rome buried their dead - martyrs and non-martyrs alike - in the catacombs, and visited the tombs just as we visit the graves of our family and friends. And Cecilia is revered as the patron saint of music and musicians because, the legend says, on her wedding day, when the hired musicians sang bawdy songs, she sang a song to Christ in her heart.Īfter her martyrdom, Cecilia was buried in a catacomb outside the walls of Rome just off the Appian Way. Cecilia in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood is one of the loveliest in the city, and stands over the remains of her palace (you can go down into the crypt to see the saint’s home). Her name occurs in the centuries-old Roman Canon of the Mass, also known as the First Eucharistic Prayer. ![]() Cecilia, for centuries one of the most beloved martyrs. ![]()
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