with which the story of Felicitas and her seven sons is received. Naturally there is considerable reluctance in acknowledging in any way the truth of a story in which the favourite hero of historians and philosophers, the noble Emperor Marcus, plays so sorry a part, and in which the brave constancy and noble endurance of a group of those Christians he so much disliked and tried to despise, is so conspicuously displayed.
But this is one of the many instances, a witness no one can gainsay, of the catacombs to the main truth of a story hitherto largely discredited. The tombs of the heroic mother and her brave sons have been identified. We recapitulate.
In the Catacomb of S. Felicitas the body of the mother was interred and subsequently removed to the basilica built over the cemetery in question. In the ancient Catacomb of Prætextatus, Januarius' (the eldest of Felicitas' sons) tomb has been found; nay more—from the numerous prayers and allusions in the graffiti around it, it is evident that the tomb in question was deeply reverenced by generations of pilgrim visitors. In the famous Priscilla Catacomb two out of the seven have been found—Felix and Philip. We know, too, that in the Jordani Cemetery, Martialis, Vitalis, and Alexander lie buried. In the Catacomb of Maximus, a cemetery on the Via Salaria which has not been identified, Silanus, the seventh of the faithful band, was laid. The body of Silanus, the youngest, apparently was carried away, but subsequently restored, and laid in the same catacomb with his mother.
After the Peace of the Church a little basilica was erected over the Cemetery of S. Felicitas, and Pope Damasus wrote in her honour one of his Epistles. At the end of the eighth century Pope Leo III translated the remains of the mother and her son Silanus to the Church of S. Suzanna.[1] There they are still resting.
After the translation of its precious relics, the cemetery
- ↑ The Church of S. Suzanna has a striking history. It was rebuilt by Maderno for Sixtus V, on the site of an ancient church or oratory erected by Pope Caius, A.D. 283, in the house of his brother, who suffered martyrdom with his daughter, Suzanna, because she refused to break her vow of perpetual virginity by a marriage with the adopted son of the Emperor Diocletian. The bodies of these two martyrs still rest beneath the high altar.
