Biblical Archaeology Review - January-February 2018

CLASSICAL CORNER

20 January/February 2018

A Subterranean

Surprise in the

Roman Catacombs

Sarah K. Yeomans

In 2002, a burst pipe caused a
sinkhole to form in the basement of the
Istituto Sacra Famiglia, a convent and
school located along Rome’s Via Casilina.
The sisters were no doubt surprised
when the sinkhole revealed not only
faulty plumbing in need of repair, but also
chambers in which several hundred buri-
als were discovered. These burials, which
are believed to date to the end of the sec-
ond century C.E. or the beginning of the
third, were of individuals whose bodies
had been carefully but hastily wrapped
and deposited at the same time, indicating
some sort of mass fatality event. Over the
next several years of investigations car-
ried out by the Pontificia Commissione di
Archeologia Sacra (Pontifical Commission
for Sacred Archaeology), almost 345 indi-
viduals were examined and analyzed from
an estimated total of more than 1,300.
Such a discovery is in and of itself
remarkable and tantalizingly mysteri-
ous: What catastrophic event led to the
death of more than 1,300 people—mostly
young adults, including women—in such
a short period of time? But perhaps just
as puzzling was another question: What
were these evidently non-Christian buri-
als doing in the middle of one of Rome’s
most important Christian catacombs?^1
These chambers underneath the con-
vent’s ruined basement were indeed
firmly ensconced in the catacombs of
Saints Peter and Marcellinus, a complex
comprising approximately 2.8 miles of
galleries on three levels, in which 20,000–
25,000 early Christians are buried.
Knowledge of the catacomb itself has
always existed, even after it fell out of use
as an active burial site (along with most
of Rome’s other catacombs) around the

beginning of the fifth century. However,

such places were then venerated and vis-

ited by early pilgrims, as the catacombs

were believed to be the resting places of

many of Christianity’s early saints and

martyrs. According to tradition, Saints

Peter and Marcellinus were martyred

during the reign of Diocletian and were

subsequently interred in their epony-

mous catacomb at the beginning of the

fourth century, by which point the cata-

combs are believed to have already been

in use by the Christian community for

several decades. More recently, the cata-

combs were explored and mapped by the

famous archaeologist Giovanni Battista

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