The Catacombs of Domitilla

The story of Christianity is awe-inspiring.  This is true whether you are a believer or not.  Within 50 years of the physical death of Christ, 12 believers had directly and indirectly converted thousands to the new faith.  Within 300 years, they had converted an empire.

This tour begins at the walls of Rome within sight of St. John Lateran where we get our ride to the countryside of Rome.  Making our way outside the walls, the city changes to country quickly.  The Roman countryside is quite beautiful.  The hills begin to roll and the gated villas extend to farms of vegetables, rose hips, or barley.  The air cleaner and the sound clearer.

Flavia Domitilla was the granddaughter of the emperor Vespasian.  As daughter of Domitilla "the Younger", Flavia was also the niece of the emperors Titus and Domitian.  These catacombs were founded on her property in about the year 120 A.D.  Flavia and her husband, Flavius Clemens, were likely converts to Christianity, and according to Seutonius, emperor Domitian had Flavius killed and banished Flavia to the island of Pandateria.  Among Domitian's assassins in the year 96 was Domitilla's steward and by the 4th century her prison was a popular site of pilgrimage.  Saint Flavia Domitilla is celebrated in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches (though unclear if the saint in the Catholic tradition is this same Flavia, granddaughter of Vespasian).  The Talmud also claims both Flavia and Flavius as defenders of the Jews.  

Our tour thus finds us in the countryside at what appears to be a farm with a low-rise one-story church at the front of the property.  Our tour guide is the taller, Italian, and basketball-loving version of Bradley Cooper.  This will be interesting.

We enter the church building into a gift shop then follow a stone-carved staircase down 15 metres into a 4th century church. The temperature is blessedly cool, 16 degrees versus the 39 degrees upstairs. This space contains the remains of a beautiful humble sanctuary dedicated to Nereo and Achilleo, Roman soldiers who defied the orders of their superiors to kill Christians. Martyred in 304, Nereo and Achilleo are the most venerated figures in this complex. This church is lit from the light of the windows which sit just above ground level, what was visible above-ground. With a ceiling about 18 metres high, this is a beautiful space. The church was damaged in the earthquake of 897, never to be repaired again. Our exploration begins from this space.

We will explore the catacombs in the reverse order to which they are dug. From a passageway to the side of the apse we descend a further 8 metres or so, arriving at our next level. (In all, these catacombs are 30 metres deep in some places). With no light except that of our guide's flashlight, we walk on. The catacombs are composed of tufa, a form of limestone that is porous and water from Rome's famously water-rich subterrain sweats from the walls and ceilings of these passageways. The initial excavators who re-explored these catacombs in the 16th and subsequent centuries carved their way down here one step at a time, working with candles and pickaxes. They carved their names and the year into the walls as they went, lest someone come looking for them after they lost their way to the exit in the dark.

The passages are very small.  No larger than to allow people to way single-file, the ceiling varies in height from 1.5 to 2.5 metres.  The air cooler again.  The floor is a walnut brown soil, as are the floors of many shelves.  Unlike the pagan Romans who could burn their dead, Christians buried the bodies of their loved ones.  Like the pagans, they buried their dead as families and visited them for many years after burial.  The shelves are called "loculae" (latin for "place").  The loculae held the bodies, usually just large enough for one body.  Four to five feet long for adults, three or less for children.  Occasionally a sarcophagus might be used.  (The word sarcophagus, comes from the Greek, literally "body eater").  Ledges offer places to rest an oil lamp for visitors.  The most striking tombs contained paintings on the walls and niches for worship.  From these, we glimpse the ideas of early Christians.  Pastoral scenes, shepherds.  In one is the earliest known depiction of the Last Supper.

Marks of the axes which created these tunnels and loculae are still visible on the rock.  17 kilometers with galleries laid out on four levels   They include more than 26,000 tombs where more than 150,000 were buried and many still hold human remains.  Some have mini worship ledges carved into the wall, sometimes adorned with painting.  How often did people make their way down here to remember their loved ones?  How often did they pass others in the process?

As we continue, in one corridor the spaces get larger, chapel-like in their dimensions and location on either sides of a pathway.  The artwork of the spaces changes to those of vines and cherubs.  Some have what resemble vaults to their entranceways.  This is now the pagan portion of the tunnel - one corridor remaining, the portion initially dug for burials by the pagan Romans. The tunnels themselves converted to Christianity along with the population of Rome.

Finally, we exit this last corridor into a larger space.  Here are the remains of an open air covered patio, complete with wine store room, a drinking fountain and well, and larger pagan votive room to celebrate and remember the pagan Roman dead.  This patio was a gathering place of celebration for the pagan Romans.  In that time, it sat at ground level, right at the entrance to the first subterranean corridor of small chapels.  A beautiful place for an afternoon feast for the family.

Though Rome had a population of over one million people in the third century, war and insecurity saw it decline to 60,000 by 900 C.E..  The church and catacombs here were abandoned by the dwindling population of Rome after the earthquake in 897.  A 770 year legacy of the earliest Christian koinonia remains.

(Note:  photographs are not allowed in the catacombs.  All photos below-ground are reproduced from the Domitilla website:  https://www.catacombedomitilla.it/)

By Shawn Bausch