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The Collegium Funeraticium of the Innocentii
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
In A.D. 258 Valerian, for one reason or another, issued his second edict against the Christians; the victims envisaged included Caesariani. How numerous a body these Christian Caesariani were is difficult to assess for this period (as indeed, for other periods). One looks hopefully—but not very profitably—through martyr Acta for illustrative examples. One might also have recourse to archaeology as another possible source of information; and here inscriptions first published in 1923 have sometimes been enlisted for illustration.
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- Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1967
References
1 For details of this persecution consult Healy, P.J., The Valerian Persecution (London, 1905),Google Scholar esp. chs. v-viii, and see the commentary of Moreau, J., Lactance, De la mort des persécuteurs (Sources Chrétiennes 39), vol. 2 (Paris, 1954), pp. 217 ff.Google Scholar
2 Cyprian, Ep. 80.1.2 (CSEL, ed. Hartel, pp. 839 f.): ‘Caesariani autem quicumque vel prius confessi fuerant vel nunc confessi fuerint confiscentur et vincti in Caesarianas possessiones descripti mittantur.’
3 Controversial are the cubicularii (?) Calocerus and Parthenius; for discussion of their rich (and variable) Acta tradition, see de Gaiffier, B., ‘Palatins et eunuques dans quelques documents hagiographiques,’ Anal. Boll. 70 (1957), 17 ff. at 30 f.,Google ScholarDACL 13.2 (1938), 2244–50 (H. Leclercq). For other possibilities see Cadoux, C.J., The Early Church and the World (Edinburgh, 1925, repr. 1955), pp. 557 f.Google Scholar
4 Mancini, G., ‘Scavi sotto la Basilica di S. Sebastiano sull’ Appia antica,’ Motiz. deg. Scavi 20 (1923), 65 ff.,Google Scholar with figs. 21-23 = Diehl, E., Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres (ILCV), 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1961), 3995 A, B, C.Google Scholar
5 Inferred from the lack of flaking in the plaster by Leclercq, H. in DACL 14.1 (1939)Google Scholar s.v. Pierre (saint), 886, followed by Tolotti, F., Memorie degli Apostoli in Catacumbas (Vatican City, 1953), p. 173.Google Scholar
6 For the Greek letter tau (T) as a symbol of the Cross the locus classicus is Ep. Barn. 9.8.
7 Especially for the question of dating the Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas; for a survey article on that question see Chadwick, H., ‘St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome: The Problem of the Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas’, JTS 8 (1957), 31 ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and for a complete critical bibliography, de Marco, A.A., The Tomb of St. Peter (Leiden, 1964), Part Two, pp. 70–143 (‘San Sebastiano and the Tomb of the Apostles’).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 H. Chadwick, op. cit., 33, n. 1, quoted with approval by Frend, W.H.C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965), p. 436, n. 197;Google Scholar cf. Styger, P., Die römischen Katakomben (Berlin, 1933), p. 334,Google Scholar ‘Da die Mitglieder das Kaiserliche Gentilicium trugen, mussen sie wohl zum Hofe gehört haben’, Carcopino, op. cit. in n. 12, 313, 347, 348 n. 73.
9 So Townsend, P.W., ‘The revolution of A.D. 238’, Yale Class. Stud, 14 (1955), 49 ff. at 87, and cf. their inclusion in ILCV.Google Scholar
10 Many hypotheses are available—the graffito is that of a Christian operarius, or of a Christian visitor or relative of one of the dead, or it marks the tomb of a Christian in a mixed burialground (for, despite injunctions against mixed burials by Church authorities, e.g. Cyp. Ep. 67.6.2 cf. Tert. De idol. 14.5, such burials clearly did occur: see H. Chadwick, op. cit., 45). For these hypotheses cf. DACL, loc. cit. in n. 5.
11 The name occurs in other (non-Christian) sepulchral inscriptions CIL ix 2641, v 5869 (= ILS 6730).
12 For the thesis of crypto-Christianity, Cecchelli, C., Monumenti Cristiano-Eretici di Roma (Rome, 1944), pp. 186 ff.,Google ScholarCarcopino, J., De Pythagore aux Apôtres (Paris, 1956), pp. 346 ff., 358 ff.:Google Scholar against, see Ferrua, A., ‘Questioni di epigrafia eretica romana,’ Riv. di arch. Crist. 22 (1945), 201 ff.,Google Scholar cf. P. Styger, op. cit., p. 339.
13 The usual practice on manumission was to adopt at least the gentilicium of the imperial familia, i.e. Julius, Claudius, Flavius etc. These gentilicia might, on occasion, be used as personal names by the third century. For a careful analysis, see Weaver, P.R.C., ‘The Status Nomenclature of the Imperial Freedmen’, CQ,8 (1963), 272 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 See the valuable collection of evidence in Weaver, P.R.C. , ‘Cognomina Ingenua: a Note,’ CQ.14 (1964), 311 ff. at 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 For bibliography on collegia funeraticia, see Berger, A., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia, 1953), p. 396; note the regulations in CIL xiv 2112, and the evidence on their organization in ILS 7889–91.Google Scholar
16 Gf. n. 11 above.
17 Cf. CIL xiv 3323 ( = ILS 8090) which has ‘et hoc peto aego Syncratius’ and ends with ‘Syncratiorum’. The man’s real name was Aurelius Vitalius. Some speak of the ‘Innocentiores’ (e.g. A. Ferrua, op. cit., 201) but I know of no burial-club name indubitably in the comparative; both CIL v 5869 and ix 2641 imply ‘Innocentius’. In CIL v 5869 the opening words ‘Innocenti cum Encratio vivas’ refer to Statorius Marsianus and his wife Cissonia.
18 For a useful collection and discussion of these signa, see Wuilleumier, H., ‘Étude historique sur l‘emploi et la signification des signa’, Mémoires présentés par divers savants à l‘ Académie de l’ Institut de France, 13.2 (1933), 559–696.Google Scholar
19 For a discussion see de Rossi, G.B., ‘I collegii funeraticii famigliari e privati e le loro denominazioni,’ Comment. Phil, in hon. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1877), pp. 705 ff.Google Scholar Examples are ‘Eutychiorum’ (CIL vi 10274), ‘(A)thanasiorum’ (ILS 7945), ‘Eusebiorum’ (CIL vi 3497, 8513, 10273), ‘Eugeniorum’ (CIL vi 10272), ‘Innocii’ (CIL viii 4253), ‘Sminthius’ (agnomen of Caedius Atilius Crescens, ILS 7364) etc.
20 For Alexander, IG 3 698, 1128, 1133,Google Scholar for Romulus, CIL 6 180,Google ScholarILS 7365.
21 Chronology is dubious and variant explanations are possible for some of these examples.
22 Cf. the incipit of Ep. 66 of Cyprian: ‘Cyprianus qui et Thascius Florentio cui et Puppiano fratri S.’
23 If on entry, the inscriptions, as is not always appreciated, may be dated quite some time after A.D. 238, the year which saw the Gordians and Pupienus and Balbinus emperors. Contrast, for example, Marichal, R., ‘La date des graffiti de la basilique de Saint-Sébastien à Rome’, La Nouvelle Clio 5 (1958), 119:Google Scholar ‘la Triclia a été construite sur une ère cimetériale dont les derniéres tombes datent de 238–244.’
24 It is the explanation assumed without argument by Toynbee, J. and Ward Perkins, J., The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956), pp. 175, 178.Google Scholar
25 I have been unable to find any supporting parallel in inscriptions of collegia funeraticia for another possible—and indeed prima facie the most obvious—hypothesis, viz. that we have here merely the record of dedications made to the Emperors of A.D. 238 by the confraternity of the Innocentii. This hypothesis, curiously, has found few supporters; Stuart Jones, H., ‘The Memoria Apostolorum on the Via Appia’, JTS 28 (1926–7), 30 ff. at 35,Google Scholar is an isolated advocate. Its virtue is that one need no longer posit the oddly continued use or choice, by the Innocentii, of the names of embarrassingly short-lived principes; it entails (against the general, and by itself natural, assumption) that these inscriptions do not record the names of inhabitants of loculi in Mancini’s Tomb Y. Its vice is that it must dismiss as merely coincidental the archaeological fact that, in the loculus by the graffito ‘D(u)obus Gordianis’, were found together two skeletons (J. Carcopino, op. cit., 312).