Early Christian inscriptions

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Kalends of July of the year when the senator Flavius Probus the younger was consul (June 23, 525).[1]
She lived with her husband (for) seven years and six months. (She was) most friendly, loyal in everything, good and prudent.

Early Christian inscriptions are the

sepulchral
inscriptions, epigraphic records, and inscriptions concerning private life.

General characteristics

Materials

The materials on which early Christian inscriptions were written were the same as those used for other inscriptions in antiquity. For sepulchral inscriptions and epigraphic records, the substance commonly employed was stone of different kinds, native or imported. The use of metal was less common. When the inscription is properly cut into the stone, it is called a titulus or marble; if merely scratched on the stone, the Italian word graffito is used; a painted inscription is called dipinto, and a mosaic inscription—such as those found largely in North Africa, Spain, and the East—are called opus musivum. It was a common practice in the Greco-Roman world to make use of slabs already inscribed, that is, to take the reverse of a slab already used for an inscription for the inscribing of a Christian one; such a slab is called an opisthograph.

The form of the Christian inscriptions does not differ from that of the non-Christian inscriptions that were contemporary with them, except when sepulchral in character, and then only in the case of the

catacombs. The forms of stone sepulchral inscriptions differ in the Greek East and Latin West. The most common form in the East was the upright "stele" (Greek: στήλη, a block or slab of stone), frequently ornamented with a fillet or a projecting curved moulding; in the West a slab for the closing of the grave was often used. Thus the majority of the graves (loculi) in the catacombs were closed with thin, rectangular slabs of terracotta or marble; the graves called arcosolia were covered with heavy, flat slabs, while on the sarcophagi
a panel (tabula) or a disk (discus) was frequently reserved on the front wall for an inscription.

Artistic value

The majority of the early Christian inscriptions, viewed from a technical and

uncial writing, the cursive
characters being more or less confined to graffito inscriptions.

Language

This funerary stele from the 3rd century is among the earliest Christian inscriptions; the abbreviation D.M. at the top refers to the Di Manes, the traditional spirits of the dead

Latin inscriptions are the most numerous. In the East, Greek was commonly employed, interesting dialects being occasionally found, as in the Christian inscriptions from Nubia in southern Egypt that were deciphered in the 19th century. Special mention should also be made of the Coptic inscriptions. The text is very often shortened by means of signs and abbreviations. At any early date, Christian abbreviations were found side by side with those traditionally used in connection with the religions of the Roman Empire. One of the most common was D.M. for Diis Manibus, "to the protecting Deities of the Lower World." The phrase presumably lost its original religious meaning and became a conventional formula as used by the early Christians. Most of the time, dates of Christian inscriptions must be judged from context, but when dates are given, they appear in Roman consular notation, that is, by naming the two consuls who held office that year. The method of chronological computation varied in different countries. The present Dionysian chronology does not appear in the early Christian inscriptions.

Sepulchral inscriptions

Christian inscription on a deacon's tombstone from present-day Austria, dated to the year 533 by the use of consular notation

The earliest of these

Roman empire
had its own distinct expressions, contractions, and acclamations.

Large use was made of

palm (victory), and the representation of the soul in the other world as a female figure with arms extended in prayer (orans
).

Beginning with the 4th century, after the Church gained

saints
.

A perfect example of this kind of epitaph is that of the Egyptian monk

Schenute; it is taken verbally from an ancient Greek liturgy. It begins with the doxology, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen
", and continues:

May the God of the spirit and of all flesh, Who has overcome death and trodden Hades under foot, and has graciously bestowed life on the world, permit this soul of Father Schenute to attain to rest in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the place of light and of refreshment, where affliction, pain, and grief are no more. O gracious God, the lover of men, forgive him all the errors which he has committed by word, act, or thought. There is indeed no earthly pilgrim who has not sinned, for Thou alone, O God, art free from every sin.

The epitaph repeats the doxology at the close, and adds the petition of the scribe: "O Savior, give peace also to the scribe." When the secure position of the Church assured greater freedom of expression, the non-religious part of the sepulchral inscriptions was also enlarged. In Western Europe and in the East it was not unusual to note, both in the catacombs and in the cemeteries above ground, the purchase or gift of the grave and its dimensions. Traditional minatory formulae against desecration of the grave or its illegal use as a place of further burial also came into Christian use.

Historical and theological inscriptions

Many of the early Christian sepulchral inscriptions provide information concerning the original development of the

virgins consecrated to God, nuns, abbesses, holy widows, one of the last-named being the mother of Pope Damasus I, the restorer of the catacombs. Epitaphs of martyrs and tituli mentioning the martyrs are not found as frequently as one would expect, especially in the Roman catacombs. It may be that during periods of persecution
, Christians had to give secret burial to the remains of their martyrs.

Another valuable repertory of

Leo XIII, and is preserved in the Vatican Museums
(ex Lateranense collection).

Early Christian inscriptions also provide evidence for the Catholic doctrine of the

Apostolic See in Rome. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of these evidences, for they are always entirely incidental elements of the sepulchral inscriptions, all of which were pre-eminently eschatological in their purpose[citation needed
].

Poetical and official inscriptions

Pope Damasus I

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

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

.

Damasus also placed a

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

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.

Graffiti

Although

Mareotis.[3]
The graffiti, in turn, help to illustrate the literary sources of the life of the early Christians.

See also

Bibliography

  • de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores (Rome, 1861)
  • Le Blant, Manuel d'épigraphie chrétienne (Paris, 1869)
  • Ritter, De compositione titulorum christianorum sepulcralium (Berlin, 1877)
  • M'Caul, Christian Epitaphs of the First Six Centuries (London, 1869)
  • James Spencer Northcote and William R. Brownlow, Epitaphs of the Catacombs (London, 1879)
  • Kaufmann, Handbuch der christlichen Archäologie, pt. III, Epigraphische Denkmäler (Paderborn, 1905)
  • Systus, Notiones archæologiæ Christian, vol. III, pt. I, Epigraphia (Rome, 1909).
  • Aste Antonio, Gli epigrammi di papa Damaso I. Traduzione e commento, Libellula edizioni, collana Università (Tricase, Lecce 2014).

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the

Carl Maria Kaufmann
.

Notes

  1. ^ "deposit.ddb.de". Archived from the original on 2011-08-20. Retrieved 2010-08-05.
  2. ^ Although the period of Early Christianity is most often dated up to the early 4th century — that is, before the era of Christian hegemony in the Roman Empire — the term "early Christian" can also be applied through the 6th or 7th century.
  3. ^ Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archæology (1907), pp. 25, 51, 112.

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