Gallipolis journal. [volume] (Gallipolis, Ohio) 1837-1919, 1853-05-12
CINCINNATI, January, 1851.
A Roman CenaeIery.

Grace Greenwood, in her graphic and
interesting letters from Rome to the
National Era, thus describes cemetery
under one of the churches in that clone
mother of dead empires" 1t has more
of the ghostly and horrible in it than
we have seen in the same space, for a
long time:
From the church we descended to
the cemetery underneath, where one of
the most curious and certainly the most
horrible sight have ever beheld, met
my eyes. Within four low vaulted
chambers are kept the bones of ten
Thousand monks.
When a member of this fraternity
dies he is buried in his coarse brown
robe, in the cemetery, the earth of
which was brought from Jerusalem;
but after some months, his bones are
taken up and arranged in variety of
ways about the walls of the cemetery.
The skeletons of the most eminent or
holy fathers are preserved entire, and
reciine on couehes of skulls, or stand in
bone-built niches-wearing the coarse
brown robes and cowles they lived and
died and were buried in, and holding
rosaries and crucifxes. All about
them are bones-columns and alters of
skulls-festooned with vertebre, finger
and toe joints-ribs made into crosses
-arm-bones and collar-bones made into
lamps-leg- bones supporting shelves of
shoulder-blades and knee-pans-bones
of all sorts, arranged in all sorts of en-
blematical forms as scythes,
scales, hour glasses. On the ceiling
overhead, in horrible mockery of
frescoes of smiling Cupids and Gany-
medes, small, shining skeletons grin
down upon you, and seem about to
strike you dead. To the robed skele-
tons in the inches some dried flesh and
portions of skin adhere, and from the
chins of two or three yet depends long
grizzly beard.
1t was evidently expected, from the
position in which these defunct fathers
are placed, that they would wear look
of devotion, or pious meditation; but
the attempt has not been altogether sue
cessful. Expression varies in these
death's-heads quite as much as in living
faces For an instance, there is one
who seems chuckling with sly merri-
ment under his worm-eaten cowl-one
who has foxy look of cruelty and
cunning-one who seems to have died
cursing, and one who seems to have
never died at all, but as he lies stretched
out, with his cowl shading his face, his
beard on his breast, and his mouth open,
looks simply like an emaciated maeera-
ted old monk, sound asleep and-snor-
ing.
This underground cemetery is SO
small and ill-ventillated-the earth
above the buried monks seems SO light,
that one feels that the air must be sur
charged with pestlenee and DEATH
Yet the monks perform masses there.
wander and mediate there-breathe in
the musty atmosphere of the bones OF
the long-departed ten thousand, and
the exhalations from the uncofined
bodies of the ely-departed ten. How
strange it must be for them to contem,
plate the certain disposition of their owl
poor remains-their skulls labeled ant
packed in arches, and their bone'
builded and wreathed into ghastly orna
ments. Perhaps old friends talk to on'
another in this wise: "You will see
Brother Anselmo, that they do not scat
ter my bones too much--you yoursel
will place my skull where you can conn
and see it sometimes"
onone night in the year this cemeter!
is illuminated. Can you imagine ,
scene more grsndly horrible? From
yellow lamps and swinging chandelier
Of bones, the ghastly light cleaning Of