Faith Underground
The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions
by Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti,
and Danilo Mazzoleni
Schnell & Steiner, 2006
(208 pages, $49.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Mike Aquilina
The Roman catacombs are a veritable city of the dead. More than sixty miles of labyrinthine corridors have been discovered so far, and archeologists are still finding more. Estimates of their population range into the millions. And they are our richest source of evidence of early Christian life.
A lavishly illustrated coffee-table volume, The Christian Catacombs of Rome allows us to walk those corridors with three of the world’s leading experts on the subject. All teach archeology at Roman universities and are members of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archeology.
From their intimate knowledge of thousands of inscriptions, artifacts, bone fragments, and artworks, the authors give us brief and brilliant glimpses of the ordinary lives of the early Christians, answering questions like: What kind of work did they do? Were they poor, rich, or middle-class? (See below.) How old were they when they married? (Women were 14–20, men 20–30.) What qualities did they value in their spouses and in their children? (No surprise here: fidelity, affability, concord, integrity.) How did they die? (Relatively few were martyrs.)
Underground Works
The catacombs were dug by a professional corps of tunnelers out of the soft volcanic rock at the outskirts of Rome. An army of artists and artisans followed soon after: brick masons, stone masons, plasterers, sculptors, mosaic and fresco artists, not to mention priests and mourners.
And much of this industry bustled during a time of intermittent persecution. Though the Christian catacombs represent the first massive public work of the Church, they were, so to speak, an underground economy.
The book divides neatly into three sections. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai sketches the catacombs’ origin and development, giving readers a concise but complete introduction to the subject. He covers not only the history of their construction, but also the history of their excavation—which, given the crude methods of past centuries, was sometimes their destruction.
In the second section, Fabrizio Bisconti examines the artistic decoration of the catacombs and its interpretation (a field given to much controversy). In the final section, Danilo Mazzoleni highlights the 40,000 inscriptions that embellish the tombs, inscriptions that range from graffiti scratched in plaster to poems chiseled in marble.
All three sections are packed with useful and fascinating details. Mazzoleni, for example, uses the epitaphs to show us what the early Christians did for a living. They were “bricklayers, cleaners, dyers, seamstresses, shoemakers and cobblers . . . doctors and veterinarians, lawyers, notaries, stenographers, couriers, teachers, and clerks of grain administration.” Thus, we see the whole range of professions and social classes, and probably in close proportion to their distribution in Roman society.
Mike Aquilina is vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (www.salvationhistory.com) and a general editor of The Catholic Vision of Love catechetical series.
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