The Catacomb of St Christina at Bolsena

Following up on Thursday’s post about the church of St Christina at Bolsena, here are Nicola’s pictures of the catacomb next door to it, which was used for Christian burials in the fourth and fifth centuries. Like most catacombs, it has been largely stripped of the decorations and inscriptions that would have filled it in antiquity, and many of the remaining marble plaques are broken. As we saw on Thursday, the relics of St Christina are now in the main church; they were formerly kept in this sarcophagus with an effigy of her, which is set up in this grotto. Below it is the 4th century sarcophagus in which she was originally buried. 

The majority of catacomb burials are slots in the walls of the corridors called “loculi – little places”, which were sealed with plaster, brick or plaques of marble. Marble was, of course, much the most expensive of these materials, but broken scraps of it could easily be obtained from the places where it was worked, much as one now acquires wood scraps from a lumber-yard. Inscriptions could be carved into the marble or plaster, or painted on the bricks, although this last procedure was rare. 

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An Early Medieval Biblical Narrative - The Story of Susanna Carved in a Crystal

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent is the day on which the Roman Rite traditionally reads the longest epistle of the year, the story of Susanna. (Daniel 13; I have given the history of this passage’s liturgical use elsewhere.) One of the most interesting artistic representations of this story is a carved piece of rock-crystal, made for King Lothair II, a great-grandson of Charlemagne, and ruler of a large part of the latter’s divided Empire. An important part of his history, and that of the Church in the mid-9th century, involves his attempts to rid himself of his sterile wife, Teutberga, and replace her with his long-time mistress. He was granted an annulment by a complaisant synod of bishops, but Pope Nicholas I overturned their decision, and declared his original marriage valid; an important witness to the sanctity of marriage in an age where all too many of the clergy were at the beck and call of the spirit of their age. Partly under political pressure from his uncles, the rulers of the rest of the Carolingian Empire, and partly under threat of excommunication by the Pope, Lothair was (temporarily) reconciled with his wife in the year 865. The British medieval scholar Valerie Flint believed that the carved crystal represents a vindication of Teutberga, whom Lothair had accused of sexual immorality, (specifically, incest with her brother), just as Susanna was accused of adultery, and proven innocent by the Prophet Daniel. (click image to enlarge)

The Lothair Crystal, also known as the Susanna Crystal, ca. 865 A.D., now in the British Museum in London. The 15th century bronze frame may have been added to turn it into a morse, the large clasp that closes a cope at the front. The crystal was cracked when the monastery where it had been kept for centuries was sacked during the French Revolution, and it was thrown into the Meuse River. The holes in the frame formerly held jewels. 

The story as depicted here starts on the upper left and runs clockwise; the latticed enclosure is the garden where the two elders have accosted Susanna as she bathes. To the right of the lattice (in the upper part of the crack), two servants turn to Susanna’s aid as she cries out for help. In the middle of the right side, the two elders stand before Joachim’s house, demanding that Susanna be brought forward for judgment; immediately below, they accuse her by placing their hands over her head, while the bystanders express their astonishment. Beneath that, an official with a staff in his hands leads Susanna off to execution, but is stopped by the Prophet Daniel. On the lower left side, Daniel reproves the first elder, and above that, convicts the second of lying. The two elders are then stoned to death. In the central medallion, Susanna stands before the judgment seat of Daniel, her arms stretched out in a gesture of thanksgiving, with two other men (one perhaps her husband) on the left.

The art historian John Beckwith correctly noted that “Susanna was regarded in early Christian times as a symbol of the persecuted Church … and there can be no doubt that an early Christian model was at hand when the crystal was carved.” (Early Medieval Art, p 68). In point of fact, the elders accusing Susanna by placing their hands on her head, and Susanna giving thanks for her delivery with arms outstretched, are both portrayed in exactly the same way in the Catacombs of Priscilla, in an image dated to the early decades of the 3rd century.

The so-called Greek Chapel (really a funerary chamber) within the Catacombs of Priscilla, ca. 225 A.D. On the right side, the elders lusting after Susanna, pointing at her mid-riff. One the left side, (further from the camera) the elders accuse Susanna by placing their hands on her head; on the right, Susanna and Daniel (not seen here) give thanks for her deliverance.

A drawing made in 1880 of the fresco seen above on the left side of the Greek Chapel, in which the accusation of Susanna, and Susanna giving thanks for her deliverance are represented much as they are on the Lothair crystal over 600 years later. 

A Virtual Visit to the Catacombs (And a Lot of Bad Reportage About It)

Rome Reports has the following story about a conference held yesterday at the Catacomb of Priscilla to announce the inauguration of a new museum display at the catacomb, and also the addition of its galleries to the Street View feature of Google Maps.

I would hazard to point out that there is a slight error at the beginning of this piece, which opens with the words, “For years, these Roman catacombs were closed off... ”. It is true that many of the Roman Catacombs have been inaccessible to the public for a long time, and are likely to remain so. This particular catacomb, on the other hand, has been open to the public for decades, along with four others, those of Saints Callixtus, Domitilla, Sebastian and Agnes.

The inaccessibility of the Catacombs has a lot to do with the fact that some of them are enormous places where people might easily get lost. Priscilla, which is small by comparison, had about 50,000 burials; the nearby Cemeterium Majus had 750,000. One of the original explorers of the catacombs in the 19th century, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, nearly died after being lost for three days in complete darkness, three stories underground in the Catacomb of Callixtus. Many of them would require major interventions to bring them up to modern safety standards; for example, parts of the Majus are also now under water. The Pontifical Commission for Christian Archeology does hold special openings of the closed catacombs from time to time, and also makes them available to scholars. I have personally been present for an extraordinary opening of one of the catacombs on behalf of a writer for the magazine “Archeology”.

Part of the reserve about simply throwing open the doors of the catacombs is perhaps also due to the overwhelming volume of nonsense written about them. And indeed, the inauguration mentioned above was accompanied by some extremely silly articles, e.g. one from AP and another from Reuters, giving credibility to the fantasy that some of the pictures in them are of women priests. At the moment, a Google search for “Catacombs of Priscilla” leads to more such silliness at the always-reliable Daily Mail and MSN, among others. The first picture in question is this one, of a deceased woman praying with her hands extended.

The Reuters reporter writes that it “shows a woman whose arms are outstretched like those of a priest saying Mass.” He does not mention that this gesture of thanksgiving was used by everyone in the early Church, not just the priests. He bases his mistake in part on an error of the Italian version of the catacomb’s website, which calls the woman’s garment “liturgical”. The picture was made in the later part of the 3rd century, when there were no such things as liturgical garments. This portrait of the deceased woman shows her on the left getting married, and on the right, sitting on a birthing-chair, just after she has given birth to a child.

The second image is described as a group of women celebrating Mass together.

When this image was first uncovered in 1893, by the removal of a crust of dirt and calcium deposits, a disciple of de Rossi, Msgr. Joseph Wilpert, described it as an image of the “fractio panis - the breaking of the bread” during the Mass. This interpretation is given in a special article dedicated to the image in the original Catholic Encyclopedia. Real scholars are nowadays quite convinced that the depiction of an actual Mass this early in Christian art (3rd century) is simply unimaginable, and that it is actually shows a funeral banquet taking place in the very space where it is painted. Due to Wilpert’s original interpretation, and the two Greek inscriptions at the back of the space, it was originally called, and is still referred to as, “the Greek Chapel.” In point of fact, it is not a chapel, but a burial chamber. And by the way, only the veiled figure third from the right is a woman. I have seen a watercolor of this image made by Wilpert just after it was first uncovered; it has faded a great deal since then, but it was formerly very much clearer that the “womanpriest” on the far left had a rather full beard.