The catacombs are the ancient underground cemeteries, used by the Christian and the Jewish communities, above all at Rome. The Christian catacombs, which are the most numerous, began in the second century and the excavating continued until the first half of the fifth.

In the beginning they were only burial places. Here the Christians gathered to celebrate their funeral rites, the anniversaries of the martyrs and of the dead.

During the persecutions, in exceptional cases, the catacombs were used as places of momentary refuge for the celebration of the Eucharist. They were not used as secret hiding places of the early Christians. This is only a fiction taken from novels or movies.

After the persecutions, especially in the time of pope Saint Damasus (366 - 384) they became real shrines of the martyrs, centres of devotion and of pilgrimage for Christians from every part of the empire.

In those days in Rome too there existed cemeteries in the open, but the Christians, for several reasons, preferred underground cemeteries. First of all, the Christians rejected the pagan custom of cremation; they preferred burial, just as Christ was buried, because they felt they had to respect the bodies that one day would rise from the dead.

This genuine belief of the Christians created a problem of space, which exerted a great influence upon the development of the catacombs. The areas owned by the Christians above ground were very limited in extent. Had they used only open-air cemeteries, since they as a rule did not reuse the tombs, the space available for burial would have quickly been exhausted. The catacombs came as the solution of the problem; and it proved to be economical, safe and practical. In fact it was cheaper to dig underground corridors and galleries than to buy large pieces of land in the open. As the early Christians were predominantly poor, this way of burying the dead was decisive.

But there were other reasons too for choosing the underground digging. The Christians felt a lively community sense: they wished to be together even in the "sleep of death". Furthermore such out-of-the-way areas, especially during the persecutions, were very apt for reserved community meetings and for the free displaying of the Christian symbols.

In compliance with the Roman law, which forbade the burial of the dead within the city walls, all catacombs are located outside the city, along the great consular roads, generally in the immediate suburban area of that age.

The catacombs are made up of underground tunnels in the form of a labyrinth. They can reach the total number of many miles In the tufaceous walls of this intricate system of galleries were cut out rows of rectangular niches, called "loculi",

 of various dimensions, which could contain only one body, but not infrequently the remains of more than one person. The burials of the early Christians were extremely poor and simple. The corpses, in imitation of Christ, were wrapped in a sheet or shroud and placed in the loculi without any kind of coffin.The loculi were closed with a slab of marble or, in most cases, by tiles fixed by mortar. On the tombstone the name of the deceased was sometimes engraved, along with a Christian symbol or a wish that the person might find peace in heaven. Oil lamps and small vases containing perfumes would often be placed beside the tombs.

The structure of the tombs, arranged in rows superimposed one upon another at different levels, gave one the idea of a vast dormitory, called cemetery, a term coming from Greek and meaning "resting place". In this way the Christians wanted to affirm their faith in the resurrection of the bodies.

There were, besides the loculi, other types of tombs down in the catacombs: the arcosolium, the sarcophagus, the forma, the cubiculum and the crypt.

The arcosolium,

 a tomb typical of the third and of the fourth century, is a much larger niche with an arch above it. The marble-tomb covering was placed horizontally. They usually served as the burial chamber for entire families.

The sarcophagus 

is a stone- or marble-coffin, usually adorned with sculptured reliefs or inscriptions.

The forma is a tomb dug into the floor of a crypt, of a cubiculum or of a gallery. They were very numerous near the martyrs' tombs.

The cubicula

 (meaning "bedrooms") were small rooms, truly family tombs, with a capacity of several loculi. The use of a family tomb was not a privilege reserved to the rich. The cubicles and the arcosoliums were frequently decorated with frescoes portraying biblical scenes and reproducing the themes of Baptism, Eucharist and Resurrection symbolized by the cycle of Jona.

The Crypt (this is a picture of the Crypt of the Popes)

is a bigger room. Under Pope Damasus, many of the martyrs' tombs were converted into crypts, that is into small underground churches embellished with paintings, mosaics or other decorations.

The catacombs were the exclusive work of a specialized guild of workers called "fossores" ("gravediggers").They dug gallery after gallery by the faint light of their lamps and used baskets or bags to carry the earth away, also through the lucemaria ("sky-lights") opened in the vault of a crypt or of a cubicle or along the galleries. The lucemaria were ample shafts which reached the surface. When the work of excavation was finished, they remained opened as a vent for air and light, as a means of ventilation and lighting.

The ancient Christians did not use the term "catacomb". This is a word of Greek origin, meaning "near the hollow". The Romans applied it to a locality on the Appian Way, where there were caves for the removal of tuff blocks. Nearby were dug the catacombs of Saint Sebastian. In the ninth century the term was extended to all cemeteries, with the specific sense of underground cemetery.

There are more than sixty catacombs in Rome, with hundreds of miles of galleries and tens of thousands of tombs. Catacombs are found also at Chiusi, Bolsena, Naples, in eastem Sicily and in North Africa too.

The system of underground digging was not the invention of the Christians, nor was it caused by the persecutions. The catacombs were simply Christian collective burial grounds, dug out in the depths of the earth.

The Christians adopted a preexisting technique of excavation and developed it on an immense scale into a vast and multi-levelled network of galleries. This was the solution to the problems of burial of a large community with an ever increasing number of members. The speedy and enormous development of some catacombs was also due to the cult of the martyrs buried there. Many Christians insisted on having a tomb as close as possible to the venerated graves of the martyrs, in order to secure their intercession.

The catacombs are visited today by thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, because of their importance. The catacombs with their precious patrimony of paintings, inscriptions, sculptures, etc., are considered the authentic archives of the primitive Church, which document her usages and customs, her rites and beliefs and the Christian doctrine, as it was understood, taught and practised in that time.

Despite the fact that the catacombs are, after all, only cemeteries, they speak to the mind and heart of the visitors in a silent and understandable language. In the catacombs everything speaks of life more than death. Every gallery they pass through, every symbol or painting they see, every inscription they read, brings the past to life and gives a message of faith..

What is the historical importance of the Crypt of the Popes?

The pioneer archeologist unearthed the crypt, and the fragments which had remained buried within for centuries, proved to be an astounding discovery. The marble tomb slabs belonging to six popes were discovered. The epitaphs of three popes however were missing. All were popes of the third century!

In chronological order, their names were:

St. Pontianus (230-235) - banished by the Emperor Alexander Severus to forced labor in the Sardinian mines, where he died from ill treatment. Pope Fabian had his remains brought back to Rome and laid within the crypt.

St. Antherus (235-236) - his 43 day pontificate was spent in prison where he died.

St. Fabian (236-250) - the large part of his pontificate was during a period of little persecution. He was decapitated when the persecutions of the Emperor Decius began.

St. Lucius (253-254) - his short pontificate was during a period of violent persecutions.

St. Stephen (254-257) [epigraph not found] - he was pope during the violent persecution of the Emperors Valerian and Gallienus.

St. Sixtus II (257-258) - beheaded along with his deacons by soldiers of the Emperor Valerian.

St. Dionysius (259-268) [epigraph not found]

St. Felix (269-274) [epigraph not found] was martyred under the Emperor Aurelian.

St. Eutichian (275-283)

The Popes have always served as bishop of Rome, following in the steps of Rome's first bishop, St. Peter. In the marble tomb slab of Pope Fabian we see his name written in greek: FABIANOS followed by the first three letters of the greek word for bishop, EPI, (episcopos). Lastly we note the letters MR, the abbreviation used to signify martyr.

In the fourth century, Pope Damasus dedicated the crypt as a chapel commemorating the holy martyrs that were buried there. In the large central inscription, dating back to the 4th century, Pope Damasus, poetically offers us a description:

know that here lies united an army of saints
these venerable tombs contain their bodies ...
here the followers of Peter, here lie the friends of Sixtus,
here young men and boys, the elderly with their offspring
here too, I, Damasus, confess, would like to be buried,
were it not for the fear of profaning the ashes of these holy martyrs

The Crypt was venerated because it contained the early martyrs of the faith. Pope Fabian for example, suffered martyrdom in the year 250 during the persecutions of the emperor Decius. The marble slab above that of Pope Damasus sealed the tomb of Pope Sixtus II, who was decapitated, along with his four deacons, by the soldiers of the emperor Valerian.

The persecutions of the christians, which began under the emperor Nero around the year 64 AD, occurred at intervals until the year 313, when they were ended by the emperor Constantine, who promulgated the Edict of Milan. From that point onwards, the tombs of the martyrs became places of great veneration, visited by countless pilgrims and the christian faithful of Rome.

The crypt, like most of the other catacombs, underwent serious pillaging and destruction, because of the barbarian invasions of Rome. Tribes like the Goths and Longobards opened tombs in serach of precious objects.

Following the invasions, the bodies of many martyrs were moved into the churches of Rome for safekeeping. When the emperor Constantine ended the persecutions and recognized christianity as a religion, basilicas and churches began to be built throughout the city of Rome. In the process of removing many of the martyrs from their tombs in the catacombs to be transferred into the basilicas and churches, many frescoes and mosaics were destroyed and countless marble slabs were shattered.

These historical events signaled the definite abandonement of the catacombs. Although their memory did not vanish completely during the Middle Ages, many of the catacombs were forgotten. Whereas the churches and basilicas built above certain catacombs insured their memory, for example the Basilica of St. Lawrence or that of St. Peter, others had no monument above ground to mark them.

With the social upheaval of the barbarian invasions, it was a task in itself to safeguard the churches, basilicas, and other monuments throughout Rome. The catacombs were located outside the city, because Roman law prohibited burial within the old city walls. Thus, many of the entrances and skylight shafts of these catacombs, were filled with dirt by farmers who tilled the fields outside the city walls, not knowing what lay below ground but concerned about safely working the land and not falling in with his the oxen.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, catacombs began to be rediscovered, most of the time by sheer accident. With the birth of the science of archeology in the eighteenth century, the catacombs began to be discovered with scientific critera.