What are the catacombs for? Collier's Encyclopedia. Examples of the use of the word catacombs in literature
CATACOMBS(Latin catacumba, Italian catacomba), underground tombs built by pagans, Jews, Christians and Saracens; the catacombs consisted of corridors and chambers (crypts) for burial. Christian catacombs are known in the vicinity of Rome, in Naples, on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily (Italy), in Alexandria (Egypt), in Malta, as well as in other areas of the Mediterranean - in Asia Minor and Asia Minor, in the Balkans. The most important are the catacombs discovered in Rome, outside the boundaries of the ancient city. The term "catacombs" (the origin of the word is unclear) was applied in ancient times to the lowland located less than 3 km south of Rome along the Appian Way between the Church of St. Sebastian and the Circus of Maxentius. Christian cemetery near this place from the 4th century. was called Coemeterium ad Catacumbas, and subsequently all tombs of this type began to be called catacombs.
There are currently more than 40 known catacombs in the vicinity of Rome, most of which have been rediscovered since the early 1800s, either by chance or based on ancient knowledge Itineraria, or Guides for the first pilgrims visiting the tombs of the martyrs. Some catacombs (for example, discovered in 1956 on Via Latina less than a kilometer from Porta Latina) are relatively small, others are quite extensive. So, the catacomb of Domitilla on Via Ardeatina is a real labyrinth of corridors 13 km long, which cross each other at different angles and at several levels. The length of the ambulacra, i.e. galleries in the Roman catacombs, according to modest estimates, ranges from 100 to 150 km, and possibly more than 500 km. In these galleries and the numerous cubicula connected to them, i.e. individual burial chambers, there are from 600 thousand to 800 thousand burials. All of them are carved into the porous volcanic tuff on which the Roman Campagna lies.
The simplest type of burial structure in the catacombs is the loculus, a rectangular niche carved perpendicular to the wall of the corridor or crypt. After the body was buried in one of these niches, the entrance to it was blocked with large tiles or marble slabs. To identify the buried person, an inscription was cut out or painted on the slabs covering the grave, or the grave was sealed with the imprint of a coin or some other small object on the fresh mortar holding the slabs together. Sometimes the body of the deceased was placed in a recess dug in the floor of a corridor or crypt. This type of grave is called forma. A more complex type of burial structure is the sepulcrum a mensa, or “dining tomb,” which is a rectangular niche carved into the wall. In the floor of such a niche, a recess was made, similar to a coffin. Sometimes there are tombs with an entrance in the form of an arch - arcosolium. The most expensive burials were in marble sarcophagi.
The walls of the catacombs, and especially the walls of the crypts, are covered with thousands of fresco images of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. They, as well as the countless inscriptions discovered here, provide valuable information about the beliefs and practices of Roman Christian communities in the first centuries of our era.
The earliest tombs, judging by the names preserved on them, were located in the private cemeteries of wealthy Roman families. Two of the oldest, dating from the first decades of the 2nd century, are the catacombs of Domitilla and Priscilla. The first catacomb arose, perhaps, due to the fact that Flavia Domitilla, the granddaughter of Emperor Vespasian who converted to Christianity, allocated a plot of land for a cemetery to her freedmen. The second was somehow connected with the wealthy Atsilian family, one of whose members, Atilius Glabrion, consul in 91 AD, was executed by Domitian, possibly for his adherence to Christianity. Over time, these private cemeteries were taken over by the Christian Church.
Contrary to popular belief, the Roman catacombs did not generally serve as a refuge for Christians during times of persecution, as they were too well known to the Roman authorities. The catacombs were not places of worship for Christians either. Families could visit the graves of their relatives on the anniversary of their death, but in the first centuries there were no facilities in the catacombs suitable for any significant gatherings.
The catacombs grew most rapidly in the 4th century, after Constantine the Great put an end to the persecution of Christians. Pope Damasus (366–384) did a lot to restore and decorate the tombs of the Roman martyrs, and these burial places became a favorite place of pilgrimage. After the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric in 410, and then by the Vandals in 455, the catacombs largely lost their purpose as a burial place. To put an end to their desecration and plunder by marauders, Paul I (757–767) and Paschal I (817–829) moved most of the remains from the catacombs to churches within the city boundaries. A revival of interest in the catacombs was observed throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, but it was only in the 19th century, after the pioneering work of Giuseppe Marchi and the great discoveries of his student Giovanni Battista de Rossi, that the scientific study of ancient Roman cemeteries began. This one of the most important branches of archeology, dealing with the study of early Christianity, continues to be developed by a number of scientists, in particular employees of the Institute of Christian Archeology under the Pontiff, established by Pope Pius XI in 1925.
- Catacombs (lat. catacumbae). Initially, catacombs were the name given to the underground burial galleries and tombs under the Church of St. Sebastian in Rome. The very origin of the word catacombs is controversial and has not been precisely established, but it is known that it was first used in connection with this burial place. In Russian, the word appears in the 18th century and comes from or from it. Katakombe, or from fr. catacombe, or from Italian. catacomba. The word came into all these three languages from Lat. catacumbae, the further etymology of the word is questionable, according to most scientists, the word comes into Latin from ancient Greek, a possible variant of the origin of the Latin word from the word: ancient Greek. κατα-κοιμάω - “put to bed; go to bed,” formed from ancient Greek. κατα- - prefix meaning: downward movement + ancient Greek. κοιμάω - “put to bed; to die" (Old Russian dormancy, Church Slavic ouspє́neї - “falling asleep, sleep; death, death” corresponds to Old Greek κοίμησις).
Currently, the word refers to any underground passages, labyrinths, tunnels, mainly in cities.
The most famous examples:
Early Christian catacombs:
Catacombs of Rome in Italy
Catacombs of San Giovanni (Syracuse, Italy)
Catacombs of Santa Lucia (Syracuse, Italy)
Catacombs of Paris in France
Klatovy catacombs in the Czech Republic
Catacombs of Saint Jannuarius, San Gaudioso, San Severo in Naples
Catacombs of Kom el Shokafa (or Kom el Saqqfa) in Alexandria, Egypt
Catacombs of Malta on the Mediterranean island of Malta
Catacombs of Sacramonte in Grenada, Spain
Catacombs of the Capuchins (Palermo), (Palermo, Italy)
Catacombs of Lima in Peru
Catacombs under St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna
Catacombs under Knockbeg College in Carlow, Ireland
Odessa catacombs
The Roman catacombs were found in 1578. They are underground passages, which sometimes end in rectangular rooms (cubicula). In some cases, such systems are arranged in tiers, one below the other. Along the walls of the passages there are burials of ordinary members of the community, in cubicles - of more noble ones.
Also, catacomb-like burial underground spaces were found in Anatolia, Türkiye; in Susa, North Africa; to Trier, Germany; Kyiv, Ukraine. The catacombs in Palermo, Sicily were used in the 1920s. Catacombs were popular in England in the 19th century and could be seen in many luxurious cemeteries of the time.
On the territory of Ukraine and Crimea, catacombs are also called a network of abandoned caves and tunnels (see also Pechersky Monastery). These catacombs were formed on the site of former quarries. The most famous are the Odessa catacombs, Adzhimushkay quarries and Nikolaev catacombs located in Crimea and on the Black Sea coast. In ancient times, catacombs were used to perform religious ceremonies and bury the dead. They were later used by partisans during the Great Patriotic War. The Adzhimushkai quarries accommodated about 10 thousand soldiers and refugees. Many of them died and were buried there. Now monuments and museums have been erected in that place (now this is the territory of the city of Kerch).
Catacombs from the Adyghe (Khat, Khet) kat (dig) komb (hole) - dig a hole.
CATACOMBS
CATACOMBS (Latin catacumba, Italian catacomba), underground tombs built by pagans, Jews, Christians and Saracens; they consisted of corridors and chambers (crypts) for burial. Christian catacombs are known in the vicinity of Rome, in Naples, on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily (Italy), in Alexandria (Egypt), in Malta, as well as in other areas of the Mediterranean - in Asia Minor and Asia Minor, in the Balkans. The most important are the catacombs discovered in Rome, outside the boundaries of the ancient city. The term "catacombs" (the origin of the word is unclear) was applied in ancient times to the lowland located less than 3 km south of Rome along the Appian Way between the Church of St. Sebastian and the Circus of Maxentius. Christian cemetery near this place from the 4th century. was called Coemeterium ad Catacumbas, and subsequently all tombs of this type began to be called catacombs. There are now more than 40 known catacombs in the area around Rome, most of which have been rediscovered since the early 1800s, either by chance or based on the ancient Itineraria, or Guidebooks for the first pilgrims who visited the tombs of martyrs. Some catacombs (such as the one discovered in 1956 on Via Latina, less than a kilometer from Porta Latina) are relatively small, others are quite extensive. Thus, the catacomb of Domitilla on Via Ardeatina is a real labyrinth of corridors 13 km long, which intersect each other at different angles and on several levels. The length of the ambulacra, i.e. galleries in the Roman catacombs, according to conservative estimates, range from 100 to 150 km, and possibly exceed 500 km. In these galleries and the numerous cubicula connected to them, i.e. individual burial chambers, there are from 600,000 to 800,000 burials. All of them are carved into the porous volcanic tuff on which Roman Campania lies. The simplest type of burial structure in the catacombs is the loculus, a rectangular niche carved perpendicular to the wall of the corridor or crypt. After the body was buried in one of these niches, the entrance to it was blocked with large tiles or marble slabs. To identify the buried person, an inscription was cut out or painted on the slabs covering the grave, or the grave was sealed with the imprint of a coin or some other small object on the fresh mortar holding the slabs together. Sometimes the body of the deceased was placed in a recess dug in the floor of a corridor or crypt. This type of grave is called forma. A more complex type of burial structure is the sepulcrum a mensa, or “dining tomb,” which is a rectangular niche carved into the wall. In the floor of such a niche, a recess was made, similar to a coffin. Sometimes there are tombs with an entrance in the form of an arch - arcosolium. The most expensive burials were in marble sarcophagi. The walls of the catacombs, and especially the walls of the crypts, are covered with thousands of fresco images of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. They, as well as the countless inscriptions discovered here, provide valuable information about the beliefs and practices of Roman Christian communities in the first centuries of our era. The earliest tombs, judging by the names preserved on them, were located in the private cemeteries of wealthy Roman families. Two of the oldest, dating from the first decades of the 2nd century, are the catacombs of Domitilla and Priscilla. The first catacomb arose, perhaps, due to the fact that Flavia Domitilla, the granddaughter of Emperor Vespasian who converted to Christianity, allocated a plot of land for a cemetery to her freedmen. The second was somehow connected with the wealthy Atsilian family, one of whose members, Atilius Glabrion, consul in 91 AD, was executed by Domitian, possibly for his adherence to Christianity. Over time, these private cemeteries were taken over by the Christian Church. Contrary to popular belief, the Roman catacombs did not generally serve as a refuge for Christians during times of persecution, as they were too well known to the Roman authorities. The catacombs were not places of worship for Christians either. Families could visit the graves of their relatives on the anniversary of their death, but in the first centuries there were no facilities in the catacombs suitable for any significant gatherings. The catacombs grew most rapidly in the 4th century, after Constantine the Great put an end to the persecution of Christians. Pope Damasus (366-384) did a lot to restore and decorate the tombs of the Roman martyrs, and these burial places became a favorite place of pilgrimage. After the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric in 410, and then by the Vandals in 455, the catacombs largely lost their purpose as a burial place. To put an end to their desecration and plunder by marauders, Paul I (757-767) and Paschal I (817-829) moved most of the remains from the catacombs to churches within the city boundaries. A revival of interest in the catacombs was observed throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, but it was only in the 19th century, after the pioneering work of Giuseppe Marchi and the great discoveries of his student Giovanni Battista de Rossi, that the scientific study of ancient Roman cemeteries began. This one of the most important branches of archeology, dealing with the study of early Christianity, continues to be developed by a number of scientists, in particular employees of the Institute of Christian Archeology under the Pontiff, established by Pope Pius XI in 1925.
The catacombs are underground burial chambers, which are usually connected by a network of tunnels. Historically, such structures were used to temporarily or permanently house the dead in coffins, funeral urns, and sarcophagi. Quite often, the catacombs were used for various religious rituals and ceremonies.
What are CATACOMBS - definition, meaning in simple words.
In simple words, the Catacombs are specially built or adapted for the necessary purposes natural caves (tunnels), which act as underground cemeteries. Typically, catacombs look like a network of tunnels connecting halls. In the halls themselves, as well as in the walls of the corridors, there are special niches where the remains of people are actually placed.
The practice of such burials goes back thousands of years, but the first man-made catacombs were allegedly built in the second century in Rome. Initially, their purpose was to temporarily store the bodies of Christian martyrs, but due to their practicality, they began to be used as active city cemeteries.
Why were people buried in catacombs?
If you remove the veil of religiosity, then the catacombs were an excellent and practical option for “getting rid of” the bodies of the dead. This issue was especially acute in large cities, where the price of land was too high to place a classic cemetery on it. In turn, the catacombs did not take up “useful” space, and their deep location made it possible to protect the city from contamination of the water supply.
Catacombs and religion.
Speaking about the connection between religion and catacombs, first of all it should be noted that similar burial practices in various variations exist in many cultures and religious movements. But it is with Christianity that the catacombs have a particularly close connection. As mentioned earlier, it was Christians who first began to build these structures for the temporary storage of the bodies of their saints and martyrs. Later, this practice of building catacombs gained some popularity, and they began to be built under Christian churches and temples. Now this trend is not particularly welcomed by the modern church and burials are usually carried out in a more classical form, namely, placing bodies in the ground or resorting to the services of .
Examples of catacombs.
The Catacombs of Rome are a huge number of interconnected and separate underground burial structures. Many of them have already been well explored and are even open to visitors. But scientists suggest that there are many more of them, and they still have to be discovered someday.
Paris catacombs.
Architectural Dictionary
Catacombs
underground burial rooms; The most famous are the catacombs of the first Christians outside the walls of Rome.
(Architecture: An Illustrated Guide, 2005)
(lat. catacumba) underground premises of natural or artificial origin, in Ancient Rome served the first Christians as a refuge during persecution, a place of worship and burial ( crypt). The most extensive and well explored are the Roman catacombs, which are branched labyrinths of narrow galleries (total length up to 900 km) and small halls. These chapel halls were usually richly decorated with paintings, which are monuments of late antique and partly early medieval art.
(Dictionary of architectural terms. Yusupov E.S., 1994)
Scythians. Byzantium. Black Sea region. Dictionary of historical terms and names
Catacombs
underground cemeteries in several tiers with stairs, corridors, niches in the walls, small rooms - Cuvicula. More than 70 catacombs are known in Rome with a total length of studied corridors of about 900 kilometers. They were built approximately from 150 to 400 AD. and buried in them from 500 to 700 thousand people, including Christians. During pre-revolutionary excavations in Chersonesos, catacombs often meant crypts carved into the rock.
Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms
Catacombs
♦ (ENG catacombs)
underground tunnels used as cemeteries, in which from the 2nd to the beginning of the 5th century. Early Christians gathered to worship. Most of the catacombs were located in Italy, particularly in Rome. They were a complex system of galleries, halls and corridors.
encyclopedic Dictionary
Catacombs
(Italian, singular catacomba), systems of underground rooms, usually of artificial origin. Often served in ancient times for worship and burials (in Rome, Kerch, Kyiv, etc.). Some catacombs (quarries) were used in revolutionary and partisan struggle (Odessa, Adzhimushkay).
Ozhegov's Dictionary
KATAK ABOUT MBI, omb, units a, s, and. Underground galleries, corridors [ original those in which Christians were saved from persecution in Ancient Rome].
| adj. catacomb, oh, oh. Catacomb Church.
Efremova's Dictionary
Catacombs
pl.
A system of underground premises of natural or artificial origin in
in the form of branched narrow galleries (originally a place where people escaped from
persecution of Christians in Ancient Rome).
Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron
Catacombs
(catacumbae) - underground passages and caves located in an irregular network and found in the vicinity of Rome, in Naples, in Syracuse, on the island of Malta and in other places. C. are especially extensive in Rome, where they pitted the ancient suburbs near all consular roads and where their entire length is such that if they were stretched out in one straight line, then the length of the entire Italian would be obtained. peninsula They served the first Christians as a burial place for their dead and were dug out on purpose for this purpose, or perhaps, as some scholars suggest, they were partly old, abandoned quarries for obtaining pottery clay (pozzolana), expanded and continued by the hands of Christians. Initially they were called cemeteria (coemeteria), hypogea (hypogea), area (areae), the name "K." was established for them only in the 9th century, although it appeared for the first time in the 4th century, in application to the cemetery of St. Sebastiana. Faith in the resurrection of the dead and in the life of the next century encouraged Christians not to burn, like the pagans, the works of their dead, but to place them in a common tomb for all religious brothers, where they could rest peacefully until the second coming of the Lord. Here, to the graves of their relatives, friends, saints and martyrs, believers gathered to celebrate the days of their memory, send common prayers to God and perform agapes (see). This appointment of K. required some decoration, in which the first rudiments of Christian art appeared. This gives the monuments, regardless of their ecclesiastical and archaeological significance, a high artistic and historical interest. Contrary to previously widespread opinion, these early Christian cemeteries were built underground not at all out of fear of persecution from the pagans, not out of a desire to hide from them the graves of the deceased and places of prayer meetings. This is proven by the fact that the entrances to K. were not hidden at first, but accessible to everyone and led to wide staircases. Having descended such a staircase, the enterer found himself in a corridor dug in blackish, granular tuff, and then entered a tangled labyrinth of other similar corridors (ambulacres), sometimes running straight, sometimes curving, crossing each other and sometimes so narrow that in two people can barely walk side by side (the greatest width of corridors in Roman history = 0.9 m). The ceiling of the corridors is flat or slightly vaulted. In their walls on both sides there are recesses the length of a man's height, but low, quadrangular in shape (loculi), located in 3, 4 and up to 7 tiers. The body of the deceased was placed in a similar niche without a coffin; its opening was walled up with large bricks or covered with a stone slab, which was pressed tightly to the wall. The name of the buried person was carved on the slab, with some kind of pious or gentle appeal and some or other symbolic signs of this person's belonging to the Christian community. Sometimes there are niches containing two corpses, which were laid in such a way that the legs of one were next to the head of the other (bisoma). Niches arranged for more than two dead bodies are very rare. In places in the walls there are doors leading to crypts (cryptae) - separate crypts that played the role of family tombs (cubicula). They often contain stone sarcophagi attached to the wall or placed in it under an arch with a flat back surface or looking like a small apse. Such tombs under the arch (arcosolia) were arranged in the very corridors very rarely, because they made it difficult to move along them. Instead of a sarcophagus, which was quite expensive and could not always be dragged into K., sometimes a tomb was pulled out right in the wall, overshadowed by an arch; it was covered from above with a marble slab (mensa), which served as an altar over the graves of saints and martyrs during the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Since, with the increase in the Christian community, a significant number of worshipers began to flock to such graves, it turned out to be necessary, in order to avoid crowding, to expand and raise some crypts, others to combine several into one, through which chapels were formed, more or less convenient for worship and gatherings of members of the community. K. were illuminated by small lamps attached to the walls, and sometimes, especially in crypts, by holes made in the ceiling and reaching the surface of the earth (lucernaria). Catacomb passages and caves go under the ground not in one, but in several floors (alea), interconnected by means of stairs. Their greatest depth is 25 m. The walls and vaults in the corridors had almost no decorations, except for inscriptions and emblematic images on the slabs that covered the graves; Only occasionally did one come across similar inscriptions and emblems somewhere, inscribed on the walls, and on the vaults there was simple coloring. But the walls and ceilings of the crypts, especially those that contained the tombs of bishops and martyrs and served for prayer meetings, presented a more attractive appearance: in the intervals between the loculi and arcosolia, picturesque images appeared, and the ceiling was covered with the latter in abundance. The above-mentioned sarcophagi, slabs, wall and ceiling paintings, together with small things found in K. at the graves, such as clay and metal lamps, glass memorial vessels, rings, etc. , constitute precious material for the study of the first manifestations of Christian art (see Ancient Christian art). When persecution of Christians by pagans arose, the followers of the new religion tried to protect K. from desecration and sought safety in them; obvious entrances to them were blocked, large staircases were destroyed, some of the passages were filled up. After Christianity was declared the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, cramped underground crypts were no longer sufficient for crowded prayer meetings, which therefore began to take place in spacious and luxurious basilicas. Likewise, K.'s cemeteries became insufficient for the burial of the deceased members of the expanding church, whose burial became more and more common in the open air, near churches. From the half of the 4th century. the establishment of new K. ceases, although the old ones continue to receive new dead and enjoy respect as the tombs of saints. The invasions of the barbarians, following one after another, caused greater and greater devastation to Rome, finally prompting Pope Paul I to open the tombs of famous martyrs and saints and transfer their relics to the main Roman churches. The successors of this Pope imitate his example. Deprived of their shrines, K. fall into complete oblivion. Only in the second half of the 17th century. Workers who were cultivating one of the vineyards on Via Salaria accidentally came across them. From this time on, the scientific research of C. begins. Its founder should be considered Antonio Bosio, who discovered up to 30 cemeteriums and described them in the famous work “Roma sotterranea,” which was published after his death. After Bosio did most of all to meet K. J.-B. de Rossi, to whom, among other merits in this regard, belongs the honor of the discovery and study of C. St. Calixta on Via Appia - the most important among all Roman cities and the richest in terms of antiquities found in them. The number of crypts in Rome and its environs apparently extended to 26, but of these only 12 or 13 are still available. They are called by the names of those saints who rested in their crypts: St. Calixta (or Callista), St. Agnes and others. The Neapolitan castles have been preserved in a less damaged state compared to the Roman ones. They bear the names of the churches built at their entrances: S. Gennaro de "poveri, S. Maria della sanita, S. Maria della vita. Syracuse Caves were, strictly speaking, not Christian, purposely built cemeteries, but natural, subsequently expanded caves , which even in the Greek and Roman eras were used by local residents to bury the dead; however, quite a lot of monuments were found in them, indicating that Christians were also buried here. The Parisian quarries, which are nothing more than ancient quarries, have nothing in common with the ancient quarries mentioned and others; but they are crowded with many human bones, originating from the abolished city cemeteries and from the graves that surrounded the churches destroyed at different times; The mortal remains of the victims of the French Revolution are also dumped here.
Literature, A. Bosio, "Roma sotterranea" (1632); V. L. Perret, "Les S. de Rome" (1851-55, 6 vols.); G. B. de Rossi, "Roma sotterranea" (1864-91, 4 vols.); J. Spencer-Northcote et W.-R. Brownlow, "Rome souterraine" (1877); Roller, "Les S. de Rome" (1881): Kraus, "Real Encyclop ädie der christlichen Altertü mer" (1882-86, 2 vols.); V. Schultze, "Die K., ihre Geschichte und ihre Monumente" (1882); A. von Friken, “Roman K. and monuments of primitive Christian art” (1872-85, 4 hours); V. Schultze, "Die K. von S. Gennaro de" poveri in Neapol" (1877); Scherillo, "Le S. napolitane" (1869), etc.
A. S-v.
