"Instead of the acres of inscriptions which cover the tombs of Egypt,"
says Dean Stanley, "not a single letter has been found in any ancient sepulchre of Palestine."
When the Israelites escaped from the iron furnace of Egypt, they carried with them so intense an abhorrence of all that savoured of Misraim that they put away from them polytheism and repudiated idolatry; they swept away as well the doctrine of life after death, such as dominated the Egyptian mind, that they might focus all their desires on this present life.
"Let me bury my dead out of my sight," expressed the feeling of the Israelite before and after the Exodus.
The patriarchs had no conception of the resurrection of the body. The idea was unknown to them. Their faith did not even embrace a belief in the immortality of the soul. A pa.s.sage in Job (xix. 25-27) has been adduced to prove the contrary, but it does so only because it is a mistranslation, and was manipulated by the translators according to their own preconceptions. Even the word rendered Redeemer has no such signification, it means "the Avenger of Blood." It was probably through contact with other nations that had a wider hope, that slowly and haltingly the conception of a prolonged existence after death made its way among the Jews.
Christianity invested the body with a sacredness undreamt of under the Old Covenant, and gave a.s.surance, not of a continued existence after death alone, but of a resuscitation of the body. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The Jews entertained a strong aversion towards incineration, because the latter was a pagan usage, and they gloried in their singularity. In Rome they had their catacombs hewn out of the rock, and the Christians followed their example.
A short time before the Christian era, Judea had been made tributary to Rome by the victories of Pompey, and many thousands of Jews were transferred to Rome, where a particular district was a.s.signed to them on the right bank of the Tiber. We know how tenaciously Jews clung to their religion and to their traditional practices, and they sought to lay their departed members in rocky sepulchres, such as those of their distant country. And, in fact, outside the Porta Portese, the gate nearest to their quarter of the town, a Jewish catacomb exists, discovered in 1602, excavated in Monte Verde, that contains the tombs of the Hebrews. From this all emblems exclusively Christian are absent.
There are representations of the Ark of the Covenant, of the seven- branched candlestick. The lamps also were impressed with the same symbols; and in a fragment of a Greek inscription is traced the word "Synagogue."
The catacombs of the Christians resembled those of the Jews in every other particular.
Three different kinds of stone compose the basis of the Roman Campagna; the _tufa litoide_, as hard and durable as granite, used extensively for building purposes; the _tufa granolare_, which is consistent enough to retain the form given to it by excavators, but it is useless as building material, and lastly the _Pozzuolana_, largely employed in the making of Roman cement. Neither the _arenaria_ or sand quarries, nor those for the building stone were ever employed for excavation to make catacombs, whereas the _granular tufa_ has been so largely excavated for this purpose that if the galleries were continued in one line, it has been reckoned that they would stretch the entire length of the Italian peninsula.
They form a labyrinth of pa.s.sages and cross-pa.s.sages, and are moreover in several stages called _piani_. But they do not extend far from the Eternal City, not beyond the third milestone. The galleries have a breadth of from two to four feet, and their height is governed by the nature of the rock in which they are hewn. The walls on both sides are lined with graves dug out of the rock, in a horizontal position, one above the other, like bunks in a cabin. In each of these reposed one or more bodies. Here and there the sequence is broken by a cross-pa.s.sage that leads to a small chamber, and in these chambers the sides, like those of the galleries, are perforated with graves. All these graves were originally closed by slabs of marble or tiles. This is about the only distinction between the graves of the rich and those of the poor, of the slave from his master. Those who desired to set some mark on the resting-place of a relative, to distinguish it from those around, either had the name engraved upon the slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of a trowel in the mortar by which the slab was secured, or else a bit of ornamented gla.s.s or a ring or coin was impressed in the mortar while it was still wet.
The martyrs in many cases were accorded a more elaborate grave. They were laid in a sarcophagus in an _arcossolium_, and on the covering slab the Holy Mysteries were celebrated on the anniversary of their martyrdom. But sometimes a wealthy family had its own chamber, _cubiculum_, reserved for its members.
The puticoli, of which mention has already been made as ash and refuse pits, were of a totally different description. They were funnel-shaped shafts sunk in the rocks, the narrow orifice being on the level of the ground. Into this were precipitated the carcases of slaves and of the poor. Indeed, they are still in use at Naples, when a cart with a lantern may be followed till it reaches the place of interment, where a hole gapes. The corpse that is enveloped in a shroud only, is shot down into the hole, without its winding sheet, that is reserved for further use.
But to return to the catacombs. There are not only over thirteen in the neighbourhood of Rome, but they are found also at Otricoli, Soriano, Spoleto, Vindena, Chiusi, Lucca, Castellamare, Prata by Avellino, Aquila, Puzzuoli, Baiae, Nola, Canesa, Tropea, Manfredonia, Venisa--this last perhaps Jewish. There are five sets of them at Naples. Others in Malta. In Spain at Ancona, Siviglia, and Elvira. In France is the hypogee opening out of the early church of S. Victor at Ma.r.s.eilles. In Germany is one at Treves. In Hungary at Funfkirchen. One in the Greek island of Melos, at Alexandria also, and at Cyrene. One at Salamis in Cyprus. The catacombs of Syracuse are like those of Rome, of vast extent. They have lofty vaults very superior to the narrow gangways of the cemeteries of Rome. A broad gallery runs athwart the whole labyrinth, and from this branch out innumerable pa.s.sages. One large circular hall is lighted from above. Along the sides are niches that served as sepulchres. Paintings as at Rome decorate the walls and vaults, all of an early Christian character, representing men and women in the att.i.tude of prayer, the peac.o.c.k, and the sacred monogram.
Numerous inscriptions from the tombs are collected in the museum of Syracuse.
The catacombs of Paris are not of ancient date as catacombs. They were originally, like those of Syracuse, quarries for the construction of the _calcaire grossier_ for building the city, down to the seventeenth century. They extend under the communes of Vauregard, Montrouge, and Gentilly on the left bank of the Seine, and it is said that a tenth part of Paris is thus undermined. In 1774, and again in 1777, accidents occurred through the giving way of the crowns of the caverns, bringing down with them the houses built above. In the Boulevard Neuf a building near the Barriere d"Enfer suddenly sank into a hole 80 feet deep, and this drew public attention to the danger.
Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI the princ.i.p.al burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the Innocents. Originally situated beyond the walls of the town, it had in due course been so surrounded by the growing metropolis as to render it impossible to continue its use as a cemetery, and in 1784 the practice of burying therein was discontinued, the acc.u.mulated bones of Parisians were removed thence with great precaution, on account of the insalubrity of the operation, and they were deposited in the old quarries, and the catacombs were solemnly consecrated for their reception by the Archbishop of Paris on 7th April 1787. A public market-place was then established on the site of the former cemetery.
To protect the town from settling down into this necropolis, vast sums were expended in substructures, so as to remove all danger of future collapse.
Gradually many other cemeteries that had been encroached upon, or surrounded, were required to yield up their dead, so that it was estimated that the catacomb contained the remains of three million persons. The bodies of some victims of the Revolution were placed here as well.
For many years the bones remained as they were thrown down on their removal, in heaps, but after 1812 they were gradually arranged in a fantastic manner, and turned into an exhibition for the curious. Sixty- three staircases lead from the different parts of the town into the catacombs, and are used by workmen and agents appointed to take care of the necropolis. Twice in the year tours of inspection are made by the surveyors, but visitors are no longer allowed access to the catacomb.
There have occurred cases of men having been lost in the intricate labyrinth.
The crypts in which were laid the bodies of saints gave occasion to kings, princes, and great men employing like mausoleums.
The poor and mean might lie in the earth, but men of consequence must have vaults in which the members of their families might be laid. What hideous profanation of sepulchres would have been spared had the kings of France been laid in the earth! They elected to repose in the crypt of the splendid minster of S. Denis. When the Revolution broke out, the Convention resolved that the tombs should be destroyed in accordance with the motion of Barrere, 31st July 1793, "La main puissante de la Republique doit effacer impitoyablement ces epitaphes superbes, et demolir ces mausolees qui rappeleraient des rois l"effrayant souvenir;"
and "of the coffins of our old tyrants let us make bullets to hurl at our enemies." The decree for the destruction was sacrilegiously executed; the coffins were opened--Henri II. and his queen in their robes, Henri IV. in a perfect state of preservation, Louis XIV. still recognisable. The body of Turenne, with the fatal bullet visible in it, was preserved as a peep-show. The rest were thrown into "fosses communes" dug in the neighbourhood. By a singular coincidence, the work of desecration was begun on 12th October 1793, the anniversary of the day on which, one hundred years before, Louis XIV. had caused the demolition of the tombs of the German Emperors at Spires. Not only so, but the agent employed by the Convention was Hentz, a namesake of the superintendent of the work of destruction carried out at Spires.
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges--Louis XI.
escaped. He had been buried in a crypt at Clery, and had been forgotten. In 1889 the abbe Saget, cure of Clery, opened the vault and found the body intact. Louis XI. had this sepulchre made for himself during his lifetime. Now the visitor can take in his hand the head, and muse over it on the treachery, cunning, and cruelty that once lodged in that little brain-pan. Scott may have been incorrect in his history in "Quentin Durward," but he was accurate in his characterisation of the king.
The instinct of immortality is implanted in the human breast. The reverential care with which primeval man treated his dead, showed a confusion of ideas between soul and body. His senses told him, and told men in the historic period, that the body dissolved to dust, yet as a temple of the spirit it was treated with respect. The soul to the Egyptians was in some manner always related to the body. The "ka" must have something to which to return, if not to the mummy, then to its model.
The dead in the first ages were given the caves in which they had lived, but they began to press out the living, to monopolise all caves, and afterwards artificial dwellings were reared to receive them, stone structures, dolmens, that were heaped over with earth, to make them resemble their former subterranean habitations. Sometimes these structural caves consist of a series of chambers connected by a pa.s.sage, the so-called _allees couvertes_ of France, but of which we have fine examples in Scotland and Ireland.
Where huge slabs of granite, limestone, or sandstone were not available, the living scooped out underground cemeteries, closely resembling their own underground dwellings.
In the Pet.i.t Morin are many of these that have been explored and described by the Baron de Baye. I have already spoken of the habitable caves there found. But there were sepulchral chambers excavated in the chalk as well. These differ from the others in that the entrances are blocked by a large slab, and in some instances have sculptured figures in them of the G.o.ddess of Death, or of a stone hammer.
The Nors.e.m.e.n buried their sea-kings in the ships in which they had sailed on their piratical expeditions. King Ring, when he slew Harold Hilditon, buried him in his chariot and with his horses. In Gaulish tombs such chariots have been found. The Scandinavians seem to have had but a confused idea of what death was; the dead were but in a condition of suspended animation. Hervor went to the isle of Samsey where, under a huge cairn, lay her father Angantyr and his eleven brothers who had fallen in single combat. Angantyr had been buried along with his sword Tyrfing.
When she reached the grave mound she sang:--
"Wake thou up, Angantyr!
Wakens thee Hervor Thy only daughter.
Give from the grave mound Freely thy good sword.
"Wake thou up Hervard!
Wake thou, Hjorvard!
Hrani, Angantyr!
Shake off your slumbers Under the tree-roots."
From his grave Angantyr replies:--
"Hervor, my daughter, Wherefore disturb me?
Full of temerity Madly thou seekest Dead men to waken."
But she persists. She will have the sword. Whereupon the cairn gapes, and she sees fire therein, and from out of the mound and flame the sword is hurled forth and falls at her feet. [Footnote: "Hervarar Saga," Copenh. 1785.]
Grettir the Strong broke into the tomb of Karr the Old, an ancient Viking, to obtain his sword, and had to wrestle with the dead man before he could wrench it from him. [Footnote: "Grettir Saga," Copenh.
1859, chap. xviii.] I will quote another case of cairn-breaking that exhibits the same conception of suspended life in the grave, and that in Christian times. I shall slightly condense the story. "Gest started breaking into the mound in the day. At evening, with the help of the priest, he had got down to make a hole in the vault, but next morning it was all closed up again." To obviate this the priest watched all night by the cairn furnished with holy water. Next morning when Gest returned, the mound was as he had left it, and the two continued their operations. Gest was let down into the cavity, and the priest and other men held the rope. It was fifty fathoms down to the floor. Gest had a candle in his hand, and he now lighted it and looked about him. He saw a big ship with five hundred men in it, and they were all preparing to start up, but as the light of the (consecrated) candle fell on them none stirred, but they stared blankly and snorted. Gest smote at them to cut off their heads, but it was as though his sword pa.s.sed through water. He cleared the dragon-ship of all its valuables and sent them up by the rope. Then he searched for Raknar (the Seaking whose tomb it was). He found a descent still further underground, and there he discovered Raknar seated on a throne. He was frightful to look upon, and the vault was both cold and stinking. A cauldron was under his feet full of treasure, and he had a torque about his neck, very resplendent, and a gold ring on his arm. He was in breastplate and helmet, and had a sword in his hand. Gest went up to Raknar and saluted him courteously in a song, and Raknar bowed in acknowledgment. Gest said to him: "I cannot commend your appearance at present though I can praise your achievements. I have come a long way in quest of you, and I am not going away unrewarded for my trouble. Give me some of what you have, and I will sing your renown far and wide." Raknar bowed his head to him, and allowed him to remove his helmet and breastplate. But when Gest attempted to deprive him of his sword, Raknar sprang up and attacked Gest. He found him neither old nor stiff. And now the consecrated candle went out. Raknar became so strong that Gest could hardly bear up against him; and all the men in the ship now rose up.
Then Gest invoked his father Bard who appeared, but availed naught, then he called upon Him who had created heaven and earth, and vowed to accept the faith which King Olaf was preaching. Thereupon Olaf appeared in a blaze of light, and Raknar collapsed, with all his men. His power was gone from him. Whereupon Gest cut off his head and laid it at his thigh. At the apparition of King Olaf all the dead men who had stood up reseated themselves on their benches. After that Gest removed all the treasures out of the tomb. [Footnote: "Barta Saga," Copenh. 1860, chap. xx.] The cairn of the outlaw Gunnar was seen open occasionally.
"Sharphedin and Hogni were out of doors one evening by Gunnar"s cairn on the south side. The moon and stars were shining clear and bright, but every now and then the clouds drove over them. Then all at once they thought they saw the cairn standing open, and lo! Gunnar had turned himself in the grave-mound and was looking at the moon. They thought they saw four lights burning within, and none of them threw a shadow. They saw Gunnar, that he was merry, and wore a right joyful face. He sang a song, and that so loud it might have been heard though they had been further off." The song of the dead man is given, and then it is added: "After that the cairn was shut up again." [Footnote: "Nials Saga," chap. lxxix., trans, by Dasent, Edin. 1861, chap. lxxvii.]
Helgi Hundingsbane was visited in his grave-mound by his wife Sigrun, who spent a night there with him. He informed her that all her tears fell on and moistened him. "Here Helgi have I prepared for thee in thy mound a peaceful bed. On thy breast, chieftain, I will repose as I was wont in thy lifetime." To which the dead Helgi replies: "Nothing is to be regarded as unexpected, since thou, living, a king"s daughter, sleepest in a grave-mound, in the arms of a corpse." Next morning Sigrun departs. [Footnote: "Helgi Kv. Hundingsbana," ii. 45-47.]
Saxo Grammaticus tells us a grimly tale. Asmund and Asvid, brothers in arms, had vowed not to be separated in death. It fell out that Asvid died, and was buried along with his horse and dog in a cairn. And Asmund, because of his oath of friendship, had courage to be buried with him, food being put in for him to eat. Now just at this time, Eric (King of Sweden) happened to pa.s.s nigh the barrow of Asvid, and the Swedes thinking it might contain treasure, broke into it with mattocks, and saw disclosed a cave deeper than they had antic.i.p.ated. To explore this, a youth, chosen by lot, was let down in a basket. But Asmund, when he saw the boy descend, cast him out, and got into it himself.
Then he gave the signal to draw up. Those above drew in the basket, thinking by the weight that it contained much treasure. But when they saw the unknown figure of a man emerge, scared by his strange appearance, and thinking that the dead had come to life again, they flung down the rope and fled. For Asmund looked ghastly, covered with the corruption of the charnel-house. He tried to recall them, and a.s.sured them that they were needlessly alarmed. And when Eric saw him, he marvelled at the aspect of his b.l.o.o.d.y face, the blood flowing freely and spurting out. Then Asmund told his story. He had been buried with his friend Asvid, but Asvid came to life again every night, and being ravenously hungry, fell on and devoured his horse. That eaten, he had treated his dog in the same manner, and having consumed that he turned on his friend, and with his sharp nails tore his cheek and ripped off one of his ears. Asmund, who had no ambition to be eaten, made a desperate resistance, and finally succeeded in driving a stake through the body of the vampire. Out of delicacy due to old friendship, Asmund did not have recourse to the usual means of quelling the posthumous vivacity and vitality of a corpse, which was to cut off the head and make the dead man sit on it. [Footnote: "Saxo Gramm.," V., chap, clxii- iii.]
The notion of suspended animation after death by no means expired with paganism. When Severus, Bishop of Ravenna, was about to die, he went in full pontificals to the tomb of his wife and daughter, had the stone removed, and bade the dead ones make room for him between them, and they obeyed. When S. Meven died, and his faithful friend Austell followed him shortly after, the dead body moved on one side in the sarcophagus to accommodate his companion. When an irreverent man struck the coffin of S. Cadoc with a staff, the incensed Saint "roared like a bull." In the Life of S. Germa.n.u.s of Auxerre is a curious episode. A pagan named Mamertinus being overtaken by night and a storm, took refuge in a solitary building in which was a sarcophagus. He put his knapsack under his head on the upper slab of the tomb, and lying down there went to sleep. At midnight he was roused by a young man at the door of the cell, who called out, "Corcodemus, Corcodemus, levite of Christ, arise!" whereupon a voice answered from the tomb, "What do you want?" The youth replied, "Bishop Perigrinus and Bishop Amator want you at the church, where they are holding vigil." "I can"t go," replied the dead man, "I have a visitor here and I must show him hospitality."
After an interval the young man returned with two others and again summoned Corcodemus, who now got out of his grave and said to one of those who was at the door, "I will go with you, but you must abide here and protect my visitor, for there is a b.i.t.c.h with her young, to the number of seven, ready to tear him to pieces."
So late as 1680 a book appeared, _De Miraculis Mortuorum_, by L.
C. F. Garmann, published at Leipzig, opposing opinions not merely of the ignorant but of the learned as to a kind of prolongation of physical life in the dead--their issuing from the graves to suck the blood of the living, their continuing their wonted avocations underground, as a shoemaker being heard cobbling in his coffin, of infants shedding their milk teeth and growing second teeth, of gnawing their grave clothes, and many other horrible superst.i.tions--showing how persistent the belief was that the dead did continue to live in their sepulchres. [Footnote: The confusion between the ghost and the corpse is exemplified in "Hamlet."
"Tell Why thy canoniz"d bones, hea.r.s.ed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn"d, Hath op"d his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again."
Act I. sc. 5.]
The idea that by symbolic burial a man became regenerate, that he put off the old condition and entered into another that was new, by pa.s.sing through the earth or a hole in the rocks, was very general, and it has continued to the present day in the modified form of enabling a sufferer by this means to leave behind his infirmities and pa.s.s into a condition of robust health, or of one charged with a crime clearing himself by this ordeal.
The pa.s.sing of a child through the earth was forbidden by the Canons of Edgar (A.D. 969). [Footnote: Thorpe, "Ancient Laws and Inst.i.tutes,"
Lond. 1840.] Women who had crying children dug a hole in the earth and thrust the child through, drawing it out at a further hole. Men were forbidden also to pa.s.s cattle through a hollow tree or _per terram foratam transire_. In France weak children were pa.s.sed through a hollow stone of S. Tesse. In the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole in the rock through which young women crept to establish their innocence when charged with incontinence. In Iceland a long turf was cut attached to the soil at both ends, and such as would pa.s.s out of a condition of hostility into one of brotherhood crawled through the gap. At Ilefeld, in the Harz, is a holed stone called the Nadelohr. Any one coming to settle in the Harz for the first time is required to creep twice through the perforation. In a good many places in Germany a similar process is gone through to cure lumbago. Indra, the G.o.d of Thunder among the Hindoos, drew a sick man thrice through a hole, and thereby gave him health and new birth. The many Helfensteins that are found in Germany were in like manner stones of Help, by traversing which the old man was put off and the new man put on. [Footnote: Sepp, _Altbayerischer Sagenschatz_, Munich, 1876, p. 87 _et seq_.]