Burial in the catacombs went on until the invasion of the Goths in 408. At that time these cemeteries, lying outside the walls, were largely pillaged by these invaders in search of treasure. After the invasions were over it was felt that the relics of the martyrs ought no longer to be left exposed to such dangers, and the process of translation to safer spots within the city, which would have been thought sacrilegious a hundred years before, began in earnest. Very soon there were none, or, at any rate, very few of the martyrs left in their original resting-places. No one cared any longer to be buried in these deserted and melancholy spots, and so by degrees the memory of the catacombs died away; the entrances became shut up and inaccessible; and the knowledge even of the localities in which they were situated was entirely lost. The process of their recovery began again at the period of the Renaissance, and has been carried much further in our own day. Only one remained always accessible, that at S. Sebastiano, preserved by the veneration for the spot where the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul had found a temporary resting-place. This cemetery, originally the only one known as ad catacumbas, then came to give its name to all the rest. It is only in our own days, and by the labours of De Rossi and his pupils, that the great wealth of evidence, a small portion of which has been cited in these chapters, has become generally available. Even now the good work is by no means completed. As the monuments of the past are once more brought to light, there may be many a fresh surprise in store for us, and many a revelation as yet undreamt of may bring into greater clearness the constant and practical faith of the early Church on this subject of the Communion of Saints. CHAPTER VII. Portraits and Representations. THE monuments of the earliest Christian art include among them a number of representations of our Lord and of the Saints, concerning which it is of the greatest interest to ask the question whether any of them can be regarded as authentic, or whether all alike must be considered to be merely the pious imaginations of Christians of the period. Is there, in other words, any real and true tradition to tell us how our Lord, His blessed mother, and His Apostles appeared in the eyes of men while they were upon earth; or have we nothing better to go upon than the attempts of Christian artists of all ages to depict them as it seemed to them to be most fitting-attempts which in the course of ages have crystallized into the conventional features which are so familiar to us at the present time? There is, of course, no insuperable antecedent improbability in authentic contemporary portraits having been handed down. Portrait-painting in the time of Augustus and his immediate successors at Rome was practised very extensively and with very considerable skill. Marble busts especially of this period have come down to us in great numbers; and from them we can judge of the ability of the Roman artists to catch a likeness and to fix it in imperishable stone. The features of every emperor and of almost every great man of the early imperial period are as well known to us to-day as are those of the kings and statesmen of the eighteenth century. The paintings of the same period have almost all perished through the lapse of time, though formerly they must have existed in very great numbers. Only a few still survive, for the most part preserved by the climate and the sands of Upper Egypt. But these few are more than sufficient to show us how flourishing and widespread an art portrait-painting was in the imperial age, and at the same time to prove that its exercise was by no means limited to the capital itself. If portraits were being painted constantly and in great numbers in Upper Egypt, there is no reason why some few at least who were competent to produce a satisfactory likeness should not have been found in Jerusalem at the same period. Nor, again, is there any theological reason why such portraits should not exist. The Mosaic prohibition against images and likenesses produced for the purpose of worship, was, as Christians saw clearly from a very early time, repealed by the very fact of the Incarnation, and no religious prejudice was felt against representations of our Lord or of the Saints. This is proved both by the writings of the anti-Nicene Fathers, and by the large numbers of such representations which do in fact exist. The Judaistic reaction which gave birth in later times to the Iconoclastic controversies was foreign to the minds of the Christians of the earliest centuries. The Blessed Trinity. So far, indeed, were these from regarding it as unlawful to make a representation for religious purposes of our Lord or of the Saints, that they did not even shrink from representing the Uncreated. There is, for instance, in the Lateran Museum of Christian |