within the family called for religious rites, these practices led to the development of
a Christian type of funeral and a corresponding commemoration of the dead. These
include funerary prayers and from a certain point in time also celebration of the
Eucharist. In general the Christian approach to funerals was not markedly different;
it only omitted what was considered to be unacceptable. For the long procession
from the city to the cemetery – Roman law only allowed burials outside the city
walls – the Christians dispensed with the pompa funebrisand wreaths, so that their
funerals were criticized for their plainness (Min. Fel. 12.6, 38.3 – 4). This did not
preclude carrying martyrs before the city “in great triumph,” as is confirmed by Cyprian
for Carthage (Acta proconsularia Cypriani5).
Christians wore mourning dress and held a funeral feast. Otherwise funerary prayers
and Mass gave a Christian character to the cultic elements of commemorative celebra-
tions, which traditionally consisted of prayers, sacrifices, and processions. The annual
commemoration was celebrated no longer on the person’s birthday but at the date
of death or burial (dies depositionis) – noted on epitaphs with the abbreviation DP
or DEP. This practice is in accordance with general trends connected to funerary
banquets (Carletti 2004), but is also linked to external necessities. In most cases it
was the family who remembered the birthdays of its dead. Therefore the memory
of the birthdays of those Christians whose faith had severed the connection to their
family could be lost when they died. In such cases in particular the community arranged
their funeral, and the “day of commemoration” (dies natalis) of those who had passed
away could only be celebrated at the day of their death or burial (Martyrium Polycarpi
18.3; cf. Ignatius, Ad Romanos6.1).
During the first two centuries Christian burials are sometimes found in pagan ceme-
teries above ground. Since the turn of the second to the third centuries, exclusively
Christian communal cemeteries were established underground at a time of rapid
expansion of the Christian community. These were financed by the Roman bishop
(Catacomb of Callixtus) or by affluent Christians (Catacomb of Priscilla, Domitilla,
Praetextatus, Calepodius, and Novatian). Underground burials were not invented by
Christians, but so far the Romans had only known relatively small family hypogeain
which Christians belonging to that particular family could also be buried. Christians,
however, also developed intensively used communal cemeteries which could be
expanded. During the third century, burials there still took place in a uniform man-
ner, in succession, dispensing with monumental self-representation and expressing
their feeling of religious communality and of solidarity beyond family boundaries, a
feeling rooted specifically in the hope of resurrection from the dead. The general
trend toward interring the body and thus – to limit space and costs – toward burial
in subterranean facilities was received positively by Christians, apparently for social
(leveling of class boundaries) and religious reasons (belief in the resurrection), and
further developed in the aforesaid manner.
It has been conjectured that the bishops of Rome led the Eucharistic services and
commemorations for the dead during the time of persecution, in order to assemble
the whole community around themselves on different days and in different places.
This would constitute the origins of the later stational liturgy in which the popes
assembled the city’s congregation in different churches (stationes) (Baldovin 1987:
The Romanness of Roman Christianity 409