Beneath and around Rome run galleries of Christian graves cut into the soft rock — hundreds of thousands of burials over the early centuries. Their painted walls carry the first vocabulary of Christian art: the Good Shepherd, Jonah, the raising of Lazarus, praying figures with lifted hands — images of rescue and resurrection rather than of death. Contrary to legend they were cemeteries, not persecution hideouts, and the earliest of them bury bishop and pauper alike without distinction. They are the largest material record of what the early Roman church believed about the dead.
- What it is
- Miles of rock-cut underground Christian cemeteries beneath Rome, carrying the earliest Christian funerary art
- Date of artifact
- from the late 2nd century AD
- Discovered
- outside the walls of Rome, Italy (explored from the 16th century; studied systematically from the 19th)
- Where it is now
- In situ; several open to visitors
- Related to
- The early Roman church's practice of burial and its hope of resurrection
- पवित्र शास्त्र
- 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 · 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14
What this find showsA substantial, organised Christian community in Rome from the late second century, burying its dead in hope of resurrection and creating the first Christian iconography.
What it does not proveThe art is devotional, not documentary; it shows what Christians hoped and depicted, not events history can verify.
Contested: The romantic idea that Christians hid or worshipped in the catacombs during persecutions is a later myth; they were burial places.
स्रोत व अधिक वाचन