In the case, however, of the early Christians whose thoughts are reflected in their great City of the Dead, the case was very different. They believed so intensely in the continuance of life after death that they maintained their communion with the departed by an interchange of prayers.
S. Cyprian, a great theologian and a cautious teacher, believed that the blessed dead were anxious for those whom they had left behind. Now, granting that this was the common feeling of Christians in respect to their dear dead ones whom they believed were dwelling close to God and His Christ, we can well conceive how natural it was for them to ask them for their prayers—for were they not dwelling close to God and His Christ to Whom their prayers must be addressed? Thus in the Church of the first two hundred and fifty years this communion, largely made up of the constant interchange of prayer between the living and the dead, rested on this family and friendship bond, and on no other. The formal invocation of saint and martyr as of some specially powerful soul belongs to a later date. It was not the teaching, certainly not the general teaching, of the Church of the catacombs.
But even in the catacombs it appears that very soon the custom crept in of crowding round the grave of some famous martyr, as though some special virtue belonged to the spot where the saint's remains had been deposited; and the little chamber where the hallowed remains of a hero or heroine of the faith lay, was soon filled with graves—graves excavated utterly without any regard to the paintings or decorations which adorned the chamber and its original tomb, paintings and decorations which were ruthlessly cut away to make room for new loculi where the dead might rest close to the remains of the saint or martyr.[1]
The point, however, which especially concerns us here is the testimony, repeated many thousand times, which the
- ↑ S. Augustine in the first quarter of the fifth century, circa A.D. 421, in reply to a question addressed to him by S. Paulinus of Nola, discusses the question whether or not is it advantageous to be buried close to the grave of a saint? The little work of Augustine, however, broadens out into points connected with the doctrine of "Invocation of Saints." A résumé of some of S. Augustine's thoughts and arguments will be found in a short Appendix to this chapter.
