New Light on Jewish Catacombs

St. Domitilla, St. Callistus, St. Sebastian--these are among the early Christians whose shrines attract thousands of pilgrims to the catacombs underneath Rome. The 1929 Concordat that established Vatican rule over these ancient burial grounds also gave the Roman Catholic Church control of two other catacombs in which it had little interest. These, several centuries older than the Christian sites, contained the graves of more than 100,000 of the Jews who had migrated to the ancient capital after the 1st century B.C. And so the crypts were sealed off and left in darkness.

Now, under a new Concordat being worked out by the Italian government and the Vatican, the Jewish catacombs will soon be turned over to Italy's Jewish community, which will eventually open them to visitors. "We have long wanted them placed under our Jewish communities because they represent an extremely important period of Jewish history," says Rome's chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, "a transition period when Christianity was evolving out of Judaism."

Cleared Rubble. Working by the light of gas lamps, Vatican laborers have finally cleared the centuries' accumulation of rubble from blocked passages and dusted off the marble commemorative stones. In the course of this work, they have discovered elaborate decorations in the catacomb located on the Via Appia Pignatelli, off the Appian Way south of the city. A burial place for rich Roman Jews, the catacomb has a small mosaic-paved courtyard aboveground, leading downward to a main passageway six feet wide, branching off into narrower tunnels. One leads to a pair of burial vaults covered with frescoes, their bright blues, reds, greens, yellows and whites still preserved. One wall depicts religious themes including, in the center, an open tabernacle showing the sacred Torah, flanked by two menorahs. The other walls, however, are decorated with such pagan symbols as peacocks, doves and sea horses. On the ceiling of one vault is a mysterious picture of a woman crowning a naked man with a wreath.

The entrance to the second catacomb is hidden behind a mass of shrubbery on the Villa Torlonia, a 13-acre estate in the center of Rome that was once the residence of Mussolini. Slippery, moss-covered steps lead into an airy passageway lined with crude burial slots --probably designed for poorer Jews --about 1 ft. deep, 2 ft. wide and varying in length for children and adults. Both catacombs feature memorial stones carved with Greek or Latin inscriptions (Hebrew was apparently reserved for religious rites). Reads one: "Here lies Pe-gaianos, the scribe and lover of the Law." Both catacombs are relatively well preserved, "thanks to the Vatican," says Rabbi Toaff. And thanks to the Jewish custom of not burying precious objects with the dead. Knowing that fact, vandals of the Middle Ages paid less attention to Jewish tombs than to those of wealthy pagans and Christians.

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