After the long extracts from the letter relating the sufferings of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, Eusebius wrote as follows: "Such were the occurrences that befell the Churches of Christ under the above-mentioned Emperor (Marcus), from which it is easy to conjecture what was the probable course of things in the remaining provinces." Now we have already given a typical instance of the condition of things with the Christians at Rome at the beginning of Marcus' reign, circa A. D. 162, in the picture drawn from the Acts of the trial and martyrdom of S. Felicitas and her sons. We will dwell for a brief space on the position of Christians in the metropolis of the Roman world some seventeen years later, when the reign of Marcus, the noblest of the Pagan Emperors, was drawing to an end, circa A. D. 177-9.
Our picture here is based upon "The Acts of S. Cecilia," a document in its present form not older than the fifth century, containing many manifest inaccuracies. These "Acts" have generally been looked upon by critics as largely mythical and not belonging to serious history. Late investigations, however, and especially the discoveries of De Rossi in the cemetery of S. Callistus, in a strange way confirm in substance the accuracy of the recital in these "Acts," and we can now with some confidence restore the "Acts of S. Cecilia" to their primitive form. They give us a vivid picture of the condition of Christians of the higher ranks of Rome in the last years of Marcus.
The original story which formed the basis of the "Acts" was as follows: Cecilia, a girl of the highest rank, was married to a young patrician, Valerian, who, with his brother, Tiberius, through her influence became devoted Christians. The State policy at this period of persecution threw every obstacle in the way of separate interment for members of the Christian sect who had suffered martyrdom. It was the passionate wish of Christians, as we know from the evidence of the Catacombs, to preserve intact and separate from the heathen dead the remains of their loved friends; the bodies of martyrs for the Faith being peculiarly precious in their eyes.
The brothers Tiberius and Valerian seem to have been especially zealous in arranging for such interments. It was a well-known loving work of charity among the wealthier members of the Christian community to provide Sepulchers for their poorer brethren. Not a few of the more ancient crypts or catacombs were in the first instance excavated beneath the gardens of the villas of rich Christians. Busied in this pious work, they were denounced by informers, were arrested, and on their refusal to sacrifice to the gods were condemned and beheaded; and along with them an Imperial officer, Maximus, who was converted by the noble brothers.
Cecilia caused the three martyrs to be interred in a crypt belonging to her family in the cemetery or catacomb of Praetextatus on the Appian Way. Cecilia herself was next denounced and arrested, tried and condemned. The magistrate, out of consideration for her exalted rank, condemned her to die in her own house in the Trastevere district of the city. We have many instances under the Emperors of the punishment of death in the case of persons of fortune and of high birth being carried out in the houses of the condemned. These were, of course, mostly political offenders. The sentence was that she should be shut up in the caldarium, or room of the warm bath of the house, and that the pipes should be heated to such a degree as to cause suffocation.
But after the expiration of a day and night Cecilia was found still alive. It needs no special miracle to explain this, means of ventilation in the caldarium having been no doubt arranged by her friends. A lictor was then appointed to carry out the capital sentence by striking off her head.
This work seems to have been inefficiently performed, and for two days she survived the wounds inflicted by the executioner, and was even able to speak words of encouragement and consolation to her friends. To the bishop of the Roman community, Urban, she is said to have made a present of her house as a church. It has been a church ever since, and is now the well-known basilica of S. Cecilia. Placed in a coffin of cypress wood, in the attitude in which she expired, she was laid in one of the chambers of her own cemetery on the Appian Way.
As we have observed, there are various inaccuracies in the "Acts," due to the fifth century revision; but in the main the recital is evidently historical For instance, Urban, the Bishop of Rome, is stated to have buried the noble martyrs in a chamber near his own colleagues the bishops. This is only partly true. De Rossi has indeed found the grave of S. Cecilia in a sepulchral chamber only separated by a slender wall from the famous "Papal Crypt" where the bishops of Rome of the third century were buried. But Cecilia was laid there before the Popes of the third century, in the sepulchral area belonging to her noble house, which area was shortly afterwards made over to the Church, and many of the bishops of Rome were subsequently buried in it.
In the removal of a vast number of Christian remains from the catacombs to the Roman Churches, circa A. D. 822, Pope Paschal translated the body of S. Cecilia to her church in the Trastevere district which occupied the site of her house. In the tradition preserved, the martyr's body, wrapped in the original robe, embroidered with gold, and still lying in the same posture, was reverently placed with her cypress wood coffin in a white marble sarcophagus beneath the altar of the church. In the year 1599 Cardinal Sondrati, in the course of a restoration of the building, found two marble sarcophagi beneath the altar. In the presence of Cardinal Baronius, the well-known scholar, the expert Bosio, and others, an examination of the contents of these sarcophagi was made. In one of them the body of S. Cecilia was found, still in the same traditional attitude. The sculptor Maderna, who was one of the eyewitnesses when the sarcophagus was opened, has reproduced in marble the figure of Cecilia as he says he saw her lying there. The present altar now stands over the tomb, and the beautiful statue of Maderna is beneath it.
In the other sarcophagus the remains of three bodies were found by Cardinal Sondrati. Two of these had manifestly been beheaded, whilst the skull of the third was broken, and the abundant hair upon it had been evidently thickly matted with blood. It was as though the sufferer had been beaten to death by the leaden scourges, not infrequently used as instruments of capital punishment; tradition, preserved in the Liber Pontificalis, tells us that the three bodies of the martyrs, Valerian Cecilia's husband, Tiburtius his brother, and Maximus the Roman officer, had been translated from the Catacomb of S. Praetextatus to the church of S. Cecilia, by Pope Paschal.
The plain unvarnished account of the discovery of the first resting-place of S. Cecilia by De Rossi, Avho spent long years in his great work of investigating certain of the catacombs, is, of course, too long for insertion. We will give, however, a summary of it. Guided in his search by careful study of the ancient Pilgrims Itineraries, by notices in the Liber Pontificalis, and other documents, he came upon the original place of Sepulcher of the famous martyr. His description is most exhaustive. He has traced the signs still existing in that sacred crypt, of the veneration of pilgrims stretching over several centuries. All these pieces of evidence—De Rossi's discovery of the place of the original interment; the account of Pope Paschal's work in connection with the translation of S. Cecilia's body in the early years of the ninth century; the singular confirmation of the details of the work of Paschal by the re-discovery of the two sarcophagi, in the Basilica of Cecilia in the year 1599, by Cardinal Sondrati—have justified us in citing the "Acts of S. Cecilia," the chief features of which, accurate in all material points, are now fairly established.
From these "Acts" thus supported, we have drawn a picture of a group of martyrdoms to illustrate the condition of all events seem to suggest this. The recital of the finding of the body when Pope Paschal translated the remains in the ninth century has all the appearance of being a true narrative, and the accuracy of the story of the opening of the sarcophagus by Sondrati, eight centuries later, in the presence of such men as Baronius, Bosio, and Maderna, can scarcely be questioned.
The death of S. Cecilia and her friends closes, as far as any public records guide us, the tale of deaths for the Faith during the days of Marcus, in the Imperial City. There is little doubt that the examples we have given of these persecutions at the beginning and end of the reign only too faithfully represent the conditions under which Christians lived at Rome all through the reign of the noblest of the Pagan Emperors; the sword ever suspended above their heads, and frequently falling, now on representatives of the patrician order, like Felicitas and her sons, and Cecilia with her husband and his brother, now on the trader, the freedman and the slave, whose names are unwritten save in the Book of God's record of His own.
The number of martyrs at Rome in the various seasons of persecutions was very great. In a corner of the Papal Crypt, for instance, adjoining the burial chamber of Cecilia, there is, a pit of extraordinary depth, where a tradition, preserved in one of the ancient itineraries, speaks of 800 bodies of these martyrs being buried together. If this tradition be a true one, it refers probably to a fierce onslaught on the Christian community in the reign of Marcus; for the Papa. Crypt only a few years later became a burying place of extraordinary sanctity, mainly reserved for the bishops of Rome, and was not used any longer for ordinary interments.