Early Christian Inscriptions - Poetical and Official Inscriptions

Poetical and Official Inscriptions

The purely literary side of these monuments is not insignificant. Many inscriptions have the character of public documents; others are in verse, either taken from well-known poets, or at times the work of the person erecting the memorial. Fragments of classical poetry, especially quotations from Virgil, are occasionally found. The most famous composer of poetical epitaphs in Christian antiquity was Pope Damasus I (366–384), mentioned above. He repaired the neglected tombs of the martyrs and the graves of distinguished persons who had lived before the Constantinian epoch, and adorned these burial places with metrical epitaphs in a peculiarly beautiful lettering. Nearly all the larger cemeteries of Rome owe to this pope large stone tablets of this character, several of which have been preserved in their original form or in fragments. Besides verses on his mother Laurentia and his sister Irene, he wrote an autobiographical poem addressed to Christ:

"Thou Who stillest the waves of the deep, Whose power giveth life to the seed slumbering in the earth, who didst awaken Lazarus from the dead and give back the brother on the third day to the sister Martha; Thou wilt, so I believe, awake Damasus from death."

Eulogies in honor of the Roman martyrs form the most important division of the Damasine inscriptions. They are written in hexameters, a few in pentameters. The best known celebrate the temporary burial of the two chief Apostles in the Platonia under the basilica of St. Sebastian on the Via Appia, the martyrs Hyacinth and Protus in the Via Salaria Antiqua, Pope Marcellus in the Via Salaria Nova, Saint Agnes in the Via Nomentana, also Saints Laurence, Hippolytus, Gorgonius, Marcellinus and Peter, Eusebius, Tarsicius, Cornelius, Eutychius, Nereus and Achilleus, Felix and Adauctus.

Damasus also placed a metrical inscription in the baptistery of the Vatican, and set up others in connexion with various restorations, for instance an inscription on a stairway of the cemetery of Saint Hermes. Altogether there have been preserved as the work of Damasus more than one hundred epigrammata, some of them originals and others written copies. More than one half are probably correctly ascribed to him, even though after his death Damasine inscriptions continued to be set up in the beautiful lettering invented by Damasus or rather by his calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus. Some of the inscriptions, which imitate the lettering of Filocalus, make special and laudatory mention of the pope who had done so much for the catacombs. Among these are the inscriptions of Pope Vigilius (537-55), a restorer animated by the spirit of Damasus. Some of his inscriptions are preserved in the Lateran Museum. These inscriptions as a rule are public and official in character. Other inscriptions served as official records of the erection of Christian edifices such as churches and baptisteries. Ancient Roman examples of this kind include the inscribed tablet dedicated by Boniface I at the beginning of the 5th century to St. Felicitas, to whom the pope ascribed the settlement of the schism of Eulalius, and the inscription (still visible) of Pope Sixtus III in the Lateran baptistery. The Roman custom was soon copied in all parts of the empire. At Thebessa in Northern Africa there were found fragments of a metrical inscription once set up over a door, and in almost exact verbal agreement with the text of an inscription in a Roman church. Both the basilica of Nola and the church at Primuliacum in Gaul bore the same distich:

Pax tibi sit quicunque Dei penetralia Christi,

pectore pacifico candidus ingrederis.

("Peace be to thee whoever enterest with pure and gentle heart into the sanctuary of Christ God.")

In such inscriptions the church building is generally referred to as domus Dei ("the house of God") or domus orationis ("the house of prayer"). The customary Greek term Kyriou ("of the Lord") was found in the basilica of the Holy Baths, one of the basilicas of the ancient Egyptian town of Menas. In Northern Africa, especially, passages from the psalms frequently occur in Christian inscriptions. The preference in the East was for inscriptions executed in mosaic; such inscriptions were also frequent in Rome, where, it is well known, the art of mosaic reached very high perfection in Christian edifices. An excellent and well-known example is the still extant original inscription of the 5th century on the wall of the interior of the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine over the entrance to the nave. This monumental record in mosaic contains seven lines in hexameters. On each side of the inscription is a mosaic figure: one is the Ecclesia ex gentibus ("Church of the Nations"), the other the Ecclesia ex circumcisione ("Church of the Circumcision"). The text refers to the pontificate of Celestine I, during which period an Illyrian priest named Peter founded the church.

Other parts of the early Christian churches such as roofs and walls were also occasionally decorated with inscriptions. It was also customary to decorate with inscriptions the lengthy cycles of frescoes depicted on the walls of churches. Fine examples of such inscriptions are preserved in the Dittochaeon of Prudentius, in the Ambrosian tituli, and in the writings of Paulinus of Nola.

Many dedicatory inscriptions belong to the eighth and ninth centuries, especially in Rome, where in the eighth century numerous bodies of saints were transferred from the catacombs to the churches of the city.