as to contain
almost the whole cycle of early Christian symbolism. There were the
Good Shepherd and the Praying Soul, Noah and the ark, Daniel and the
lions, Moses striking the rock, the story of Jonah, the sacrifice of
Isaac, the three men in the fiery furnace, the resurrection of
Lazarus, etc. The bas-reliefs of the marble coffins represented
Christian love-feasts and pastoral scenes. The epitaphs contained
simply names, except one, which was raised by a girl "to her sweet
nurse Paulina, who dwells in Christ among the blessed." These pious
memorials of the primitive church led the learned visitors to
investigate their meaning and value, as well as the history and name
of those mysterious labyrinths. The origin of Christian archaeology,
therefore, really dates from May 1, 1578. Antonio Bosio, the Columbus
of subterranean Rome, was but three years old at that time, but he
seems to have developed his marvellous instinct on the strength of
what he saw in the Vigna Sanchez in his boyhood. The crypts, however,
had but a short life: the quarry-men damaged and robbed them to such
an extent that, when Bosio began his career in 1593, every trace of
them had disappeared. They have never been found since. We can only
point out to the lover of these studies the site of the Vigna Sanchez.
It is marked by a monumental gate, on the right side of the Via
Salaria, crowned by the well-known coat-of-arms of the della Rovere
family, to whom the property was sold towards the end of the sixteenth
century. The gate is a little more than a mile from the Porta Salaria.

From that time to the first quarter of the present century, we have to
tell the same long tale of destruction. And who were responsible for
this wholesale pillage? The very men--Aringhi, Boldetti, Marangoni,
Bottari--who devoted their lives, energies and talents to the study of
the catacombs, and to whom we are indebted for many standard works on
Christian archaeology. Such was the spirit of the age. Whether an
historical inscription came out of one cemetery or another did not
matter to them; the topographical importance of discoveries was not
appreciated. Written or engraved memorials were sought, not for the
sake of the history of the place to which they belonged, but to
ornament houses, museums, villas, churches and monasteries. In 1863,
de Rossi found a portion of the Cemetery of Callixtus, near the tombs
of the Popes, in incredible confusion and disorder: loculi ransacked