The Sun.
London, England, 1812-08-15 00:00:00

THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS.

'ROM THE JOURNAL DE L'EMPIRE, MONDAY,

-MAY 20

In the course of ten or a dozen centuries, the
catacombs* of Paris mav, like those of ancient
Rome, give, rise, withont some record of 'their
formation, to a multiplicity of vague conjectures,
and elaborate disqui:iitions. -Tholigh the subject
does not at present excite much interest or.curio-
sity, yet I will -venture to solicit the attention of
my readers to an attempt at a •description.of the
Origin, progress; and present state of these me-
lancholy mansibu's;,With•U vtew-to-.supplying the
future historian and antiquary with facts, and
Sparing them the trouble of engaginOn wild spe-
culations and .endless disputes, . •

The .catacoMbS tsof Rome are long subterrane-
bus avenues, 'forined in all probability by the
,ex-
traction of the stoke and sand for the. construe-
tion of honsis and public. edifices. It is a well
,
_knownlhct; that in the times of persecution, those
excavations 'afforded an asyludo to' the primitive
Christihns. Vast collections of human boaes,fand.
the ruins. of tombs,- the production of much shill
and labour, halie been discovered in them.—Many
that had' escaped the ravages of time, Have been
abstracted, And many yet remain. The Church
of Ronk: had its reasons for inculcating a..-belief
that all the bones found in, those receitactei
'were' the retinues. of -Saints and Martyrs. Ilse
Protestants, ou the- contrary, ,affiria, t 161:
are the profane remains of gladiators and
mats, who died. an ignopiinious death ; and- sortie
authors an intermediatory theory. '
_7 - •
Tiw Protestants; in „affirming that the. ciita-
combs were actually used for the, sepulture of
those for Whonfthe community would not be at, the
expense of providing a faggot or a grave, such as
slaves, gladiators, and wretelm coatdemned;Whe-
tiler guilty or innocent, to 4ie by the liand'of an
executioner, or to be devohred by.airiid beasts;
admit at the same time, that .such was the state of
things, that numerous instances may have occur-
red of martyrs having been interred in.the.saine
burial places with criminals
.and the outcasts of
society, for the purpose of vilifying the Christian
character and profession, and bradiling the me-
mory of those who had constancy enough to suf-
fer martyrdom. Hence the veneration of the
Christians for places previonsly abhorred and exe=
crateda—the habit they acquired .of ret ring:
thither in the times •of'-relentless asersecutioh,--;-'
of celebrating in them-the holy mysteries of their
religion,—of burying the dead in them With more
orless pomp; as their confidence of security or
their 'apprehension of danger predominated ; and
hence also so- may reliques, which the Catholics
consider as canonical, and which the Protestants
deem apocryphal.
Our Catacombs, like those of the Romans, are
formed in the excavation of old .quarries; and
though they have not been used for the intended
purpose till within these few months, they have
remained nearly in their present state, upwards of
five and twenty years. Much inconvenience had
been, for • ages, experienced at Paris, perhaps
more than elsewhere, from the custom which had
prevailed, for time immemorial, of burying- the
dead in the midst of the town, and even.unde.r
the pavement of churshes. The complaints on
this. as .upon many other subjects, were urged
with redoubled force about the middle of the 18th
century. Certainly nothing could be riiore deep-
ly tinctured with barbarism—nothing is more in-
compatible with a good police than the existence
of such a practice ; but in justice to our prede-
cessors of the last- century, it must becadmitted
that they did not establish the custom ; they are
blaine-Worthy only inasmuch as they neglected,
• for a time, to set heartily about the abolition of
it, knowing, as they did-, that it had been intro-
duced, in some measure, by accident. Indeed all
the cemeteriesthat I have seen iu Paris, had been,
at their institution, purposely situated beyond the
limits of the town. This wise custom, borrOwed
from the most ancient of the Roman laws, was
so strictly observed in the early periods of the
monarchy, that St. Eloi directed the church 'of St.
Paul to be built on the right bank of the Seine,
in the quarter of the suburb which still bears his
name, to be used as a place of interment for the
religieuse4 of a monastery which that Saint had
founded within the city. The cemetery of the
Innocents, the common burial-place of the
Parisans, was. in like manner situated in the
country, at the period when Philip Augustus
caused it, to use a figurative expression, to come
into the town, the limits of which are greatly en-
larged, and in process of time, the rest of the
cemeteries in the vicinity became incorporated
with the city.
In order to check the evil, the Parliament of
Paris, in 1763, promulgated a law, very salutary
no doubt for the living, but, it must be acknow-
ledged, highly indecent, with reference to the
dead, 'This arret, which was not carried fully in-
to effect at the time, enjoined, however, the im-
mediate shutting .up of the cemetery of the Inno-
cents, the oldest of all, the most used for_intex-
ment, and against whom the greatest elamohr was
raised, and the strongest remontrances were de-
servedly made. This burial-place continued shut
up for many years. At length it was conceived
that there could be no
.impropriety in offering the
ground to sale, for a public market. But those
who made the proposition had
,forgot that ceme-
teries were-consecrated places, and that they could
not be sold forapriee; or converted into a profarie
use, without the special. permission of the eccle-
siastical authority. The Church required, as a pre-.
liminarf step, that the bones which time had not
wholly consumed should be taken up and deposited
irx ground which had undergone the ceremony of
* Anciently the word catacomb was only understood of the
tombs of S. Peter and St. Paul. -(Chambers.)
,
t The learned lexicearapher just quoted, gives the 4illow-
ing description of these excavations %--." Catacombs are sub-
terraneoug cavities for the burial of the dead, of which there
are a great number about three miles from Reme, suppos-
ed to be the caves and cells where the primitive Christains
hid and assembled themselves, and where they interred
the martyrs, which arc accordingly Nisited with. devotion."
'And Addison, in his Travels, 1 On the side of Naple-, „are
the catacombs, which must have been full of 'stench, if the
dead bodies that lay in them were left to rot. in open
'niches:"

OMAS WOOD, of No. 35: Maiden-lane, Xn vent-garden r- and
No. 112, Strand, where drivertisemeats, Orders for