CIMITERO DEI GIORDANI. - On the Via Salaria nuova. Nothing certain can be said about the plural form of the name of this cemetery, which has led some to think of a corruption of "Germanorum," others of a connection with the river "Iordanus," and still others of the name of an association. Buried there were the martyrs Marcialis, Vitalis and Alexander, whom legend identifies as three of the seven sons of St. Felicity (v.). On their tombs the commemoration was celebrated from the first half of the 4th century, as indicated by the "depositio-martyrum" on the "VI idus iulias," a day that also recurs in the Leonine Sacramentary and in the Jeronymian Martyrology, which points to a group of seven virgins buried in the same cemetery and commemorated on 31 December, namely Donata, Paulina, Rogata, Do-
Dominanda, Serotina, Saturnina, Ilaria. Both these and the three martyrs mentioned above were venerated in the 7th century, as the Itineraries attest.
The cemetery, restored by Pope Symmachus (498-514), perhaps had in the open air an oratory called "ad s. Alexandrum" after one of the three martyrs; it, damaged during the Gothic siege, was restored by Pope Vigilius and is mentioned in the Capitularia Evangeliorum; the last restoration was carried out by Pope Adrian I (775-92). After the general abandonment of the Roman cemeteries in the 9th century, following the transfer of the relics into the city, the cemetery of the G. came to light by chance on 31 May 1578, when some workers, digging in a vineyard on the Via Salaria nuova, suddenly came upon the galleries of the cemetery with the tombs still closed by their inscriptions and with painted cubicula and arcosolia. This discovery drew not only the curiosity of visitors, among them St. Peter Canisius and Cardinal Cesare Baronio, but also of scholars who transcribed the inscriptions and copied the paintings, such as the Fleming Philip De Winghe (v.) and the Spanish Dominican Alonso Chacon (v.).
But the cemetery was ruined in 1590-91, and Antonio Bosio himself, who began his explorations in Nov. 1593, was unable to penetrate it, contenting himself in his Roma sotterranea with copies of the inscriptions and paintings supplied to him by Chacon and De Winghe.
The galleries came to light again suddenly in Dec. 1921 during the foundations of a small villa between the Via Salaria nuova and the Via Anapo.
It is a two-level cemetery of the late 3rd century and the early 4th, in which were found the paintings already seen between 1578 and 1590 and copied with admirable fidelity by Philip De Winghe, with the exception of two, one with the representation of the apostle Paul, the other with the fossor Trophimus at work. Among the paintings, in the Old Testament cycle one notes: Noah in the ark, the sacrifice of Abraham, the cycle of Jonah, Daniel among the lions, the three youths in the furnace, Moses striking the rock; in the New Testament cycle: Jesus teaching among the twelve Apostles, the Good Shepherd, the multiplication of the loaves, the resurrection of Lazarus; then male and female figures in prayer, little genii and a scene of hunting deer and boar. The paintings were in part barbarously defaced before 1591.
Of the inscriptions found in 1578 only two have been preserved; but from that time, as one reads in a letter of St. Peter Canisius, many had been removed or broken. Indeed, of the 120 inscriptions traced, almost all had been reduced to pieces. Two belong to sarcophagi, three are painted in red on tile, the others all in marble. Worthy of mention are that of a certain "Demofilus" who was bishop, one knows not of where, for over 23 years; of a fossor "Aelius Auxanon" who during his lifetime prepared "suis manibus" a two-body tomb for himself and for his wife Cecilia Marcella; the epitaph placed by the parents for their little child "Gregorio Phoebe in refrigerio" which ends with the prayer: "qui legitis in mente habetote." Another little child, L. Laberius Messor, is represented in beatitude between two sheep and two trees with doves. Characteristic of the epigraphy of this cemetery is the appellation "benedictus" or "benedicta" which is read either in full or abbreviated to BD in as many as 22 epitaphs out of 120, whereas it is rare elsewhere.
(from E. Jasi, in Rivista di arch. crit., I (1911), p. 181)
The exploration of the cemetery, however, may be said to have barely begun. - See plate XXXIII.
