The frescoes of the
Santa Priscilla catacombs in Rome call our knowledge of the past into
question and challenge the teachings of the Church. Amanda Ruggeri
investigates.
When archaeologists in Rome at the end of the 19th Century began to excavate the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla,
they hoped to find treasure: intricately carved monuments and vibrant
frescoes of the type found in other ancient, underground cemeteries.
Instead, they found devastation.
The marble sarcophagi they found
inside had been broken into hundreds of pieces, wrote Rodolfo Lanciani,
the scholar in charge of the dig. Lavish mosaics, a rare find in Rome’s
catacombs, had been pulled from the walls, “the marble incrustations
torn off, the altar dismantled, the bones dispersed.”
Some of the
plundering, it turned out, had been carried out two centuries earlier –
and on the Vatican’s orders. In the mid-17th Century, both Pope Innocent
X and Clement IX sent treasure-hunters deep into the catacombs’ depths.
Others may have destroyed the catacombs for a reason other than greed.
Some think that early explorers vandalised the cemeteries believing they
were cursed and had to be destroyed. Lanciani recounts that men
picnicking at the site spoke of “the ghosts who haunted the crypt below,
when suddenly the carriage which had brought them there, pushed by
invisible hands, began to roll down the slope of the hill.” It fell into
the river; oxen had to haul it out.
Few people think ghosts haunt
the cemetery today. But the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla remain, in
some ways, just as dangerous to traditional Church teachings. The
discoveries there have sparked controversy over the role of women in the
Church, and helped scholars re-evaluate the importance of the Virgin
Mary in early Christian history.
Located on the Via Salaria, an
ancient road leading north out of Rome, the Santa Priscilla catacombs
aren’t as well known to travellers as those on the Via Appia. But they
are among Rome’s most important. Thanks to the number of martyrs buried
here as well as its sheer size, the underground cemetery was an
important pilgrimage site throughout the Middle Ages.
Ladies' supper?
Today,
its main draw for scholars and curious visitors is the Cappella Greca,
or Greek Chapel. The space once held large, expensive marble sarcophagi,
now lost. It also is lavished with an extraordinary number of frescoes –
many that, unsually, feature women.
One fresco may depict women celebrating a
Eucharistic feast – although the figures may also be celebrating a
funeral banquet (Getty)
The most controversial is the fresco that depicts
a Eucharistic banquet. The fresco shows seven individuals along a
dining bench; the figure on the far left-hand side breaks bread. At the
time of the fresco’s discovery, the assumption was that "if that figure
is breaking bread, then he has to be male, because women wouldn't break
bread and be leading the Eucharist,” says Nicola Denzey Lewis, professor
of religious studies at Brown University and the author of The Bone
Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. Perhaps to aid that
interpretation, in the 19th Century, she says, someone rubbed off some
of the face’s pigment, making it look shadowed, as if it has a beard.
Yet thanks to the figures’ dress (one figure in the middle even wears a
veil, as a Roman woman would) and their delicate features, few academics
today, or even visitors, think the figures are male.
Some have
argued that the fresco shows women leading a Mass – in other words,
acting as priests – which would fly in the face of Catholic teachings.
But instead it might depict a funereal banquet – the kind of celebration
that both pagan and early Christian Romans would hold at the tomb of
the deceased. “It was not a Eucharist. It was never meant to be a
Eucharist. It was only called a Eucharist because the 19th-Century
Catholic clergyman who discovered it, when he saw a meal, that’s where
his mind went,” says Denzey. “I think it's a woman in charge,
absolutely. But I don't see evidence in that scene for women priests.”
A fresco that shows a female figure with
her hands outstretched has been put forward as evidence of women priests
in the early Church (Max Rossi/Reuters/Corbis)
Yet, say Denzey and other scholars, whether women
led Mass or not may be beside the point: the frescoes in Santa
Priscilla show that women played a larger role in the early Church than
is generally assumed. “I don’t think anyone can seriously question
whether there were women deacons until the 4th Century, at least,” says
Robin Jensen, professor of Christian art history at Vanderbilt
University.
Curioser and curioser
Mysterious
frescoes aside, Santa Priscilla is notable for another reason. The
traditional conception of Roman catacombs is that catacombs with
Christian tombs were purely Christian establishments, laid out by the
Church for this purpose. The implication? That the early Church was
highly organised and already had a clear hierarchy. But, points out
Barbara Borg, professor of classical archaeology at the University of
Exeter, “this model doesn’t work with the early catacombs.” The Santa
Priscilla catacomb was originally owned not by the Church, but
privately, by Rome’s illustrious Acilii Glabriones family. The family –
which may or may not have been Christian – owned the land for more than
250 years. They began burying the dead of their extended family here,
freedmen and slaves included, in a system of tunnels, which they added
to as necessary. Even if they were Christian, they probably weren’t just
burying Christians: families in the early centuries of the Common Era
were often of mixed religions, and the tombs here are organised around
family groupings, not ecclesiastical hierarchies.
One of the images in the catacombs could
be the first ever depiction of the Virgin Mary – or it could just show a
woman holding a baby (Wikipedia)
There is yet another piece of the Priscilla
puzzle that calls traditional modes of thought into question: the
supposed fresco of the Virgin Mary. Said to date to the 3rd Century, the
painting shows a veiled woman with a child in her arms. If it is of
Mary, it is the oldest image of Jesus’ mother in existence. But it is
also an odd one. The small fresco is oddly placed, tucked up on high, on
the ceiling. Aside from this one, the first recognised images of Mary
come from the 5th Century – after the Council of Ephesus in 431
officially recognised Mary as the mother of God.
But because of
how unusually early the fresco would be, some doubt whether it’s Mary at
all. “It might be the very first image of the Virgin Mary. It might be a
deceased woman with a baby,” says Jensen.
The Virgin Mary or
someone else? A Christian catacomb or a mixed one? Women as leaders, or
no? If the catacombs had not been so damaged, so much of their
archaeological context erased, we might have clearer answers. For now,
only the ghosts know for sure.
