In all countries and in all creeds, the dead have claimed the affectionate notice of the living. The idea of housing them, deifying them, propitiating them, of remembering them in some way, however diverse, has always been a prominent one. The belief in the soul's immortality seems to have been even more clear to the ordinary mind of the natural man than that of a Supreme and Almighty Being. When Christianity appeared, the departed had a place assigned them among the members of the church, and were commemorated as absent brethren gone before their fellows one stage further on the last great journey; when the Reformation disfranchised human nature in the XVIth century, and levelled all its hallowed aspirations with the brute instincts of the animal kingdom, the dead, though divorced from communion with the living, were yet remembered, and placed in two categories—the elect, or the precondemned. Another life was even then believed in, and later branches of the reforming sects all condescended at least to theorize on the future state of disembodied spirits. It remained for our times to foster the cruel unbelief that dooms our loved ones, not even to everlasting perdition, but to absolute annihilation. It was hard enough in Puritan days for a pious though mistaken mind to bring itself to the belief that possibly the loved companion of childhood, the chosen mate of youth, the venerable parent, the upright teacher, was one of those predestined to eternal torments, one of the holocausts to the greater glory of God; but how far harder now for a fond heart, a clinging nature, to see in those it loves so many perishable puppets, without future and without hope! But happily there is a haven to which these storm-tossed souls may come with the precious freight of their love and their unerring Catholic instincts. Their companions and brethren are not gone into trackless chaos, they are not absorbed into that monstrous “nothing” of which a false philosophy has made a bewildering bugbear. Every year the church protests against such revolting doctrines on the day which she publicly consecrates to prayers for and remembrance of the departed. This festival is like a spiritual harvest-home; coming as it does just at the close of the ecclesiastical year, it marks an epoch in the life of the church suffering; and various “revelations” made to saints, as well as the collective belief of the faithful, agree in considering it a day of liberation and rejoicing among the souls in Purgatory. “God's Acre” (according to the touching and suggestive German idiom) is reaped on that auspicious day, though, like Boaz, the Divine Reaper leaves yet a few ears of corn to be gleaned into heavenly rest by the prayers of the faithful on earth.

Before we go further into our own beautiful view of the future life, let us stop to see how other races and religions have treated the dead.

Of the Egyptians, it is difficult to speak except at too great a length, and, not having at hand sufficient authority, we can only set down what [pg 267] our recollection will supply. The readers of The Catholic World will no doubt remember some interesting articles published a few months since regarding the ancient civilization of Egypt, in which copious reference was made to the esteem and respect paid to the dead in that country. The singular custom of pledging the embalmed body of a father or ancestor, on the receipt of a loan, was noticed; also the dishonor attaching to the non-redemption of such a pledge. A learned English author, speaking incidentally of Egyptian embalming, mentions that the word mummy is derived from “mum,” which, he says, is Egyptian for wax. Representations of the embalming process have been found on tombs and sarcophagi, in which the men engaged in it are seen wearing masks with eagles' beaks, probably iron masks, thereby denoting of what a poisonous and dangerous nature this absolutely incorruptible embalmment must have been. The Pyramids are perhaps the most imposing funeral monuments ever raised to the memory of mortals, and even the famous Mausoleum of Artemisia can have had no more massive or eternal an aspect.

To pass from the cradle of older civilization to the land whose original peopling has sometimes been attributed, though we believe inaccurately, to Egyptian enterprise, the America of the Aztec and the Red Indian, we find in Parkman's Jesuits in America some lengthy details on the funereal customs of the Huron tribe, now extinct. He says that “the primitive Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, but not always in a state of future punishment or reward. Nor was the good or evil to be rewarded or punished (when such a belief did exist) of a moral nature. Skilful hunters, brave warriors, men of influence, went to the happy hunting-grounds, while the slothful, the weak, the cowardly, were doomed to eat serpents and ashes in dreary regions of mist and darkness.... The spirits, in form and feature, as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching posture of the sick, and when night came hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks; for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the gloomy country of the dead.” The public ceremony of exhuming the dead, of which some interesting details are given further on, was supposed to be the occasion of the beginning of the other life. The souls “took wing, as some affirmed, in the shape of pigeons; while the greater number believed that they journeyed on foot ... to the land of shades, ... but, as the spirits of the old and of children are too feeble for the march, they are forced to stay behind, lingering near their earthly homes, where the living often hear the shutting of their invisible cabin doors, and the weak voices of the disembodied children driving birds from their corn-fields.... The Indian land of souls is not always a region of shadows and gloom. The Hurons sometimes represented the souls of their dead as dancing joyously.... According to some Algonquin traditions, heaven was a scene of endless festivity, ghosts dancing to the sound of the rattle and the drum.... Most of the traditions agree, however, that the spirits were beset with difficulties and perils. There was a swift river which must be crossed on a log that shook beneath their feet, while a ferocious dog opposed [pg 268] their passage, and drove many into the abyss. This river was full of sturgeon and other fish, which the ghosts speared for their subsistence. Beyond was a narrow path between moving rocks which each instant crashed together, grinding to atoms the less nimble of the pilgrims who endeavored to pass. The Hurons believed that a personage named Oscotarach, or the Head-Piercer, dwelt in a bark house beside the path, and that it was his office to remove the brains from the heads of all who went by, as a necessary preparation for immortality. This singular idea is found also in some Algonquin traditions, according to which, however, the brain is afterwards restored to its owner.”

Le Clerc, in his Nouvelle Relation de la GaspÉsie, tells a curious story, which is mentioned in a foot-note by Parkman. It was current in his (Le Clerc's) time among the Algonquins of GaspÉ and Northern New Brunswick, and bears a remarkable likeness to the old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. “The favorite son of an old Indian died, whereupon the father, with a party of friends, set out for the land of souls to recover him. It was only necessary to wade through a shallow lake, several days' journey in extent. This they did, sleeping at night on platforms of poles which supported them above the water. At length, they arrived and were met by Papkootparout, the Indian Pluto, who rushed on them in a rage, with his war-club upraised, but, presently relenting, changed his mind and challenged them to a game of ball. They proved the victors, and won the stakes, consisting of corn, tobacco, and certain fruits, which thus became known to mankind. The bereaved father now begged hard for his son's soul, and Papkootparout at last gave it to him in the form and size of a nut, which, by pressing it hard between his hands, he forced into a small leather bag. The delighted parent carried it back to earth, with instructions to insert it into the body of his son, who would thereupon return to life. When the adventurers reached home, and reported the happy issue, of their journey, there was a dance of rejoicing; and the father, wishing to take part in it, gave his son's soul to the keeping of a squaw who stood by. Being curious to see it, she opened the bag, upon which it escaped at once, and took flight for the realms of Papkootparout, preferring them to the abodes of the living.”

These superstitions, although they may make us smile, yet attest, through their rude simplicity, the natural and deep-rooted existence in all races of a belief not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the possibility of communication with the departed. The Buddhist doctrine of transmigration is but a distorted version of the truth we call purgatory, that is, a state of temporary expiation and gradual cleansing. The Egyptian practice of embalming the dead and often of preserving the bodies of several generations of one's forefathers in the family house, is another consequence of the primeval belief in the soul's immortality. Everywhere reverence for the dead implied this belief and symbolized it, and even the custom of placing in the mouth of the Roman dead the piece of money, denarius, with which to pay their passage over the Styx, is referable to the true doctrine of good works being laid up in heaven and helping those who have performed them to gain the desired entrance into eternal repose.

The following minute description of the Indian feast of the dead, of which mention has already been made, is interesting, [pg 269] and is condensed from the account given by Father Breboeuf: “The corpses were lowered from their scaffolds and lifted from their graves. Each family claimed its own, and forthwith addressed itself to the task of removing what remained of flesh from the bones. These, after being tenderly caressed with tears and lamentations, were wrapped in skins and pendent robes of beaver. These relics, as also the recent corpses, which remained entire, but were likewise carefully wrapped in furs, were carried to one of the largest houses, and hung to the numerous cross poles which, rafterlike, supported the roof. The concourse of mourners seated themselves at a funeral feast, the squaws of the household distributed the food, and a chief harangued the assembly, lamenting the loss of the deceased and praising their virtues. This over, the mourners began their march for OssonanÉ, the scene of the final rite. The bodies remaining entire were borne on litters, while the bundles of bones were slung at the shoulders of the relatives, like fagots. The procession thus defiled slowly through the forest pathways, and as they passed beneath the shadow of the pines, the mourners uttered at intervals and in unison a wailing cry, meant to imitate the voices of disembodied souls, ... and believed to have a peculiarly soothing effect on the conscious relics that each man carried. The place prepared for the last rite was a cleared area in the forest, many acres in extent. Around it was a high and strong scaffolding of upright poles, with cross-poles extended between, for hanging the funeral gifts and the remains of the dead. The fathers lodged in a house where over a hundred of these bundles of mortality hung from the rafters. Some were mere shapeless rolls, others were made up into clumsy effigies, adorned with feathers, beads, etc. In the morning (the procession having arrived over night at OssonanÉ) the relics were taken down, opened again, and the bones fondled anew by the women, amid paroxysms of grief. When the procession bearing the dead reached the ground prepared for the last solemnity, the bundles were laid on the ground, and the funeral gifts outspread for the admiration of the beholders. Among them were many robes of beaver and other rich furs, collected and preserved for years with a view to this festival. Fires were lighted and kettles slung, and the scene became like a fair or caravanserai. This continued till three o'clock in the afternoon, when the gifts were repacked, and the bones shouldered afresh. Suddenly, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd ran forward from every side towards the scaffolding, like soldiers to the assault of a town, scaled it by the rude ladders with which it was furnished, and hung their relics and their gifts to the forest of poles which surmounted it. The chiefs then again harangued the people in praise of the departed, while other functionaries lined the grave throughout with rich robes of beaver skin. Three large copper kettles were next placed in the middle, and then ensued a scene of hideous confusion. The bodies which had been left entire were brought to the edge of the grave, flung in, and arranged in order at the bottom by ten or twelve Indians, stationed there for the purpose, amid the wildest excitement and the uproar of many hundred mingled voices. Night was now fast closing in, and the concourse bivouacked around the clearing.... One of the bundles of bones, tied to a pole on the scaffold, chanced to fall into [pg 270] the grave. This accident precipitated the closing act, and perhaps increased its frenzy. All around blazed countless fires, and the air resounded with discordant cries. The naked multitude, on, under, and around the scaffolding, were flinging the remains of their dead, relieved from their wrappings of skins, pell-mell into the pit, where were discovered men who, as the ghastly shower fell around them, arranged the bones in their places with long poles. All was soon over; earth, logs, and stones were cast upon the grave, and the clamor subsided into a funereal chant, so dreary and lugubrious that it seemed like the wail of despairing souls from the abyss of perdition.”

These processions and ceremonies relating to the bones of the dead remind us of the singular custom observed at the Capuchin Convent of the Piazza Barberini in Rome. The skeletons of the dead monks are robed in the habit of the order and seated in choir-stalls round the crypt, until they fall to pieces, or are displaced by a silent new-comer to their ghostly brotherhood. The bones which are thus yearly accumulating are formed into patterns of stars and crosses on the walls of the crypt and surrounding corridors, while the skulls are often heaped up in small mounds against the partitions. The convent is strictly enclosed, and is only accessible to men during the rest of the year, but on All Souls' day and during the octave, the public, men and women alike, are allowed to visit this strange place of entombment. Crowds flock to see it, especially foreigners. Hawthorne, in his Marble Faun, has described it in terms that make one feel as if his impression were vivid enough to supply the place of a personal one on the part of each of his readers.

The ancient Roman customs and beliefs concerning the dead are well worth noticing, as embodying the essence of the utmost civilization a heathen land could boast. It is said that the Romans chose the cypress as emblematic of death because that tree, when once cut, never grows again. The facts of natural history are sometimes disregarded by the ancient poets, but it is not with that that we now have to deal, but with the false idea symbolized by this choice. The Romans, nevertheless, fully believed in an after-life, though one modelled much on the same principle as their life on earth. The unburied and those whose bodies could not be found were supposed to wander about, unable to cross the river Styx, and their friends therefore generally built them an empty tomb, which they believed served as a retreat to their restless spirits. Pliny ascribes the Roman custom of burning the dead to the belief that was current amongst the people, that their enemies dug up and insulted the bodies of their soldiers killed in distant wars. During the earlier part of the Republic, the dead were mostly buried in the natural way, in graves or vaults. Some very strange ceremonies are recorded in Adams' Roman Antiquities concerning the funeral processions, which usually took place at night by torch-light. (This was chiefly done to avoid any chance of meeting a priest or magistrate, who was supposed to be polluted by the sight of a corpse, as in the Jewish dispensation.) After the musicians, who sang the praises of the deceased to the accompaniment of flutes, came “players and buffoons, one of whom, called archimimus (the chief mimic), sustained the character of the deceased, imitating his words or actions while alive. These players sometimes introduced apt sayings [pg 271] from dramatic writers.” Actors were also employed to personate the individual ancestors, and Adams' commentator adds in a foot-note: “A Roman funeral must therefore have presented a singular appearance, with a long line of ancestors stalking gravely through the streets of the capital.” Pliny, Plautus, Polybius, Suetonius, and others are the authorities quoted on this curious point. It is said by some authors that, in very ancient times, the dead were buried in their own houses; hence the origin of idolatry, the worship of household gods, the fear of goblins, etc. Relations also consecrated temples to the dead, which Pliny calls a very ancient custom, which had its share in contributing to the establishment of idol-worship. In the Book of Wisdom115 we find a reference to this in these words: “For a father, being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son, who was quickly taken away, and him who then had died as a man, he began now to worship as a god, and appointed him rites and sacrifices among his servants. Then in process of time, wicked custom prevailing, this error was kept as a law.” Adams tells us that “the private places of burial of the Romans were in fields or gardens, usually near the highway (such as the Via Appia near Rome, the Via Campana near Pozzuoli, the Street of Tombs at Pompeii), to be conspicuous and remind those who passed of mortality. Hence the frequent inscriptions—Siste, viator,116 Aspice, viator.”117 Games of gladiators were frequently held both on the day and the anniversaries of great funerals; and on the pyre slaves and clients were sometimes burnt with the body of their deceased master, as also all manner of clothes and ornaments, and, “in short, whatever was supposed to have been agreeable to him when alive.” As the funeral cortÉge left the place where the body had been burnt, they “used to take a last farewell, repeating several times Vale, or Salve Æternum,”118 also wishing that the earth might lie light on the person buried, as Juvenal relates, and which was found marked on several ancient monuments in these letters, S.T.T.L.119 “This is a very remarkable instance of the dead being considered, in one sense, as conscious, sentient beings, and evidently has an origin which can hardly be disconnected from some remote or indistinct recollection of the true religion.”

Adams goes on to say that “oblations or sacrifices to the dead were afterwards made at various times, both occasionally and at stated periods, consisting of liquors, victims, and garlands, as Virgil, Tacitus, and Suetonius tell us, and sometimes to appease their manes, or atone for some injury offered them in life. The sepulchre was bespread with flowers, and covered with crowns and fillets. Before it there was a little altar, on which libations were made and incense burnt. A keeper was appointed to watch the tomb, which was frequently illuminated with lamps. A feast was generally added, both for the dead and the living. Certain things were laid on the tomb, commonly beans, lettuce, bread, and eggs, or the like, which it was supposed the ghosts would come and eat. What remained was burnt. After the funeral of great men,... a distribution of raw meat was made to the people.”

“Immoderate grief was thought to be offensive to the manes, according to Tibullus, but during the shortened [pg 272] mourning that was customary, the relations of the deceased abstained from entertainments or feasts of any sort, wore no badge of rank or nobility, were not shaved, and dressed in black, a custom borrowed (as was supposed) from the Egyptians. ‘No fire was ever lighted, as it was considered an ornament to the house.’ ”

The common places of burial were called columbaria, from the likeness of their arrangement to that of a pigeon-house, each little niche scooped out in the walls holding the small urn in which the ashes of the dead were deposited. These columbaria, Adams tells us, were often below ground, like a vault, but private tombs belonging to wealthy citizens were in groves and gardens; as, for instance, that of Augustus, mentioned by Strabo, who calls it a hanging garden supported on marble arches, with shrubs planted round the base, and the Egyptian obelisks at the entrance. The tomb of Adrian, now the Castel S. Angelo, was a perfect palace of wealth and art, and supplied many a later building with ready-made adornment before it became what it now is, a fortress. The tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Via Appia, was also used as a mediÆval stronghold, and looks more fit for such a use than for its former funereal distinction.

From ancient and imperial, we now pass to modern and Christian Rome, so undistinguishable in the chronology of their first blending, so widely apart in the moral order of their succession.

The subject of the catacombs and the early inscriptions on Christian graves is one so widely known and so copiously illustrated by many learned works, both English and foreign, that it would be superfluous to say much about it. Yet Cardinal Wiseman is so popular an author, and Fabiola so standard a novel, that we may be forgiven for drawing a little on treasures so temptingly ready to our hand. There is in the first chapter of the second part of Fabiola an interesting reference to the old established craft of the fossores, or excavators of the Christian cemeteries. Cardinal Wiseman says that some modern antiquarians have based upon the assertion of an anonymous writer, contemporary with S. Jerome, an erroneous theory of the fossores having formed a lesser ecclesiastical order in the primitive church, like a lector or reader. “But,” he adds, “although this opinion is untenable, it is extremely probable that the duties of this office were in the hands of persons appointed and recognized by ecclesiastical authority.... It was not a cemetery or necropolis company which made a speculation of burying the dead, but rather a pious and recognized confraternity, which was associated for the purpose.” Father Marchi, the great Jesuit authority on ancient subterranean Rome, says that a series of interesting inscriptions, found in the cemetery of S. Agnes, proves that this occupation was continued in particular families, grandfather, father, and sons having carried it on in the same place. The fossores also transacted such rare bargains as were known in those days of simplicity and brotherly love, when wealthy Christians willingly made compensation for the privilege of being buried near a martyr's tomb. Such an arrangement is commemorated in an early Christian inscription preserved in the Capitol. The translation runs thus: “This is the grave for two bodies, bought by Artemisius, and the price was given to the fossor Hilarus—that is ... (the number, being in cipher, is unintelligible.) [pg 273] In the presence of Severus the fossor, and Laurentius.”

Cardinal Wiseman, jealous of Christian traditions, particularly notes that the theory of the subterranean crypts, now called catacombs, ever having been heathen excavations for the extraction of sand, has been disproved by Marchi's careful and scientific examination. He then describes the manner of entombment used in these underground cemeteries: “Their walls as well as the sides of the staircases are honeycombed with graves, that is, rows of excavations, large and small, of sufficient length to admit a human body, from a child to a full-grown man.... They are evidently made to measure, and it is probable that the body was lying by the side of the grave while this was being dug. When the corpse was laid in its narrow cell, the front was hermetically closed either by a marble-slab, or more frequently by several broad tiles put edgeways in a groove or mortise, cut for them in the rock, and cemented all round. The inscription was cut upon the marble, or scratched in the wet mortar.... Two principles, as old as Christianity, regulate this mode of burial. The first is the manner of Christ's entombment; he was laid in a grave in a cavern, wrapped up in linen, embalmed with spices, and a stone, sealed up, closed his sepulchre. As S. Paul so often proposes him for the model of our resurrection, and speaks of our being buried with him in baptism, it was natural for his disciples to wish to be buried after his example, so as to be ready to rise with him. This lying in wait for the resurrection was the second thought that regulated the formation of these cemeteries. Every expression connected with them alluded to the rising again. The word to bury is unknown in Christian inscriptions: ‘deposited in peace,’ ‘the deposition of ...’ are the expressions used; that is, the dead are left there for a time, till called for again, as a pledge or precious thing, entrusted to faithful but temporary keeping. The very name of cemetery suggests that it is only a place where many lie, as in a dormitory, slumbering for a while, till dawn come and the trumpet's sound awake them. Hence the grave is only called the ‘place,’ or more technically ‘the small home,’120 of the dead in Christ.”

The old Teutonic Gottes-Acker, the acre or field of God, denotes the same eminently Christian idea; the dead are thus likened to the seed hidden in the ground for a while, to ripen into a glorious spiritual harvest when the last call shall be heard. We have read somewhere, in an English novel whose name has escaped our memory, the same beautiful idea most poetically expressed. It was something to this effect: “We put up a stone at the head of a grave, just as we write labels in the spring-time for the seeds we put into the earth, that we may remember what glorious flower is to spring from the little gray, hidden handful that seems so insignificant just now”—a Catholic thought found astray in a book that had nothing Catholic about it save its beauty and poetry; for beauty is a ray of truth, and truth is one and Catholic. One other remark is worth remembering about the early Christian inscriptions on the tombs of the departed. There is generally some anxiety to preserve a record of the exact date of a person's death, and, in modern days, if it happened that there was no room for both the day and the year, no doubt the day, would be left unnoticed, and the year carefully chronicled. “Yet,” says [pg 274] Cardinal Wiseman, “while so few ancient Christian inscriptions supply the year of people's deaths, thousands give us the very day of it on which they died, whether in the hopefulness of believers or in the assurance of martyrs. Of both classes annual commemoration had to be made on the very day of their departure, and accurate knowledge of this was necessary. Therefore it alone was recorded.”

O ages of faith! when it was the ambition of Christians to be inscribed in the Book of Life, instead of leaving names blazoned in gold in the annals of an earthly empire!

Prayers for the dead were in use among the primitive Christians, and in one of the inscriptions mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman the following reference to these prayers is found: “Christ God Almighty refresh thy spirit in Christ.” That this hallowed custom is akin to the natural feelings of a loving heart is self-evident; the coldness of an “age of philosophy” alone could doubt it. Well might it be called the age of disorganization and not of philosophy (which is “love of wisdom”), for the wisdom that seeks to pull down instead of building up is but questionable. The disorganization of political society which we see at work through the International and the Commune; the disorganization of moral society which we behold every day increasing through the ease with which the marriage-tie is dissolved, and the hold the state is claiming on children and even infants; the disorganization of religious society which we find in the ever-multiplying feuds of sects, like gangrene gradually eating away an unsound body; these are all fitting companions to that most ruthless severing of this world from the next which pretends to isolate the dead from the spiritual help and sympathy of the living, and to dwarf in the souls of men what even human laws commanded, or at least protected, concerning their bodies. The want of our age is a want of heart; heartlessness and callousness to the most sacred, the most natural feelings, is shown to a fearful extent among our modern mind-emancipators and reformers. On the one hand, nature is held up as a god to which all moral laws are to be subject, or, rather, before whose fiat they are to cease to exist, while, on the other, nature (in everything lawful, touching, noble, generous) is told that she is a fool, and must learn to subdue “childish” aspirations and outgrow “childish” beliefs!

But the belief of a communication between the living and the departed is not only a natural one; it is also Biblical. S. Matthew speaks of the middle state of souls when he mentions the strict account that will have to be rendered of “every idle word.”121 S. Paul says that “every man's work ... shall be tried in fire: and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”122 S. Peter makes mention of “the spirits in prison,”123 and S. John, in the Apocalypse, implies a state of probation when he says that “there shall not enter into it [the New Jerusalem] anything defiled or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.”124 In the Second Book of Machabees, one of the most national of the Jewish records, and the most favorite and consolatory of the religious books held by the Jews as infallible oracles, the whole doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the departed is most plainly adverted to.