era, of course. Here, in these holes in the ground, the first Christians

sometimes burrowed to escape persecution. They crawled out at night to

get food, but remained under cover in the day time. The priest told us

that St. Sebastian lived under ground for some time while he was being

hunted; he went out one day, and the soldiery discovered and shot him to

death with arrows. Five or six of the early Popes--those who reigned

about sixteen hundred years ago--held their papal courts and advised with

their clergy in the bowels of the earth. During seventeen years--from

A.D. 235 to A.D. 252--the Popes did not appear above ground. Four were

raised to the great office during that period. Four years apiece, or

thereabouts. It is very suggestive of the unhealthiness of underground

graveyards as places of residence. One Pope afterward spent his entire

pontificate in the catacombs--eight years. Another was discovered in

them and murdered in the episcopal chair. There was no satisfaction in

being a Pope in those days. There were too many annoyances. There are

one hundred and sixty catacombs under Rome, each with its maze of narrow

passages crossing and recrossing each other and each passage walled to

the top with scooped graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes

the length of the passages of all the catacombs combined foot up nine

hundred miles, and their graves number seven millions. We did not go

through all the passages of all the catacombs. We were very anxious to

do it, and made the necessary arrangements, but our too limited time

obliged us to give up the idea. So we only groped through the dismal

labyrinth of St. Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the

various catacombs are small chapels rudely hewn in the stones, and here

the early Christians often held their religious services by dim, ghostly

336

The Innocents Abroad