LUMINARE — Inscription of the deacon Severus (4th century) mentioning a luminare — Rome, Catacomb of St. Callistus.
They belong to the discursive order, taking the form of clear and luminous syntheses, of truths that can be attained through adequate reasoning, but which in this case are perceived more rapidly and vividly. One might call them conclusions, which instead of being gathered through long mental toil from a complex of premises, result from a few operations. They are especially found in persons of great intelligence, devoted to meditative prayer, and accustomed to abstracting from the contingent the essential truths, but also in simpler souls, and then ordinarily more passively through infused gifts.
The luminaria are often sudden, similar to the so-called strokes of genius, and they greatly deepen the knowledge of celestial things (attributes of God, mysteries of life, death and resurrection of Christ, providential events, relations between the Church, the Pope and spiritual life, etc.). Being personal and not ordinarily following subjects and schemes already elaborated, they take deeper root in the soul that experiences them, moving it more effectively toward good and holiness. They are more frequent in the ascetical period known as the illuminative way.
LUMINARE — In ancient Christian epigraphy, this term sometimes occurs to denote a vertical or oblique opening made in the tufa of underground cemeteries to admit light and air to one or more cubicles or galleries. Often reinforced with masonry (examples in Rome, Naples, Syracuse). It has been observed, however, that such air shafts were also used and common in sand quarries or pozzolana pits, as in the quarry later transformed into the cemetery of Commodilla, near the Via Ostiense.
St. Jerome recalls these luminaria which rarely pierced the horror of the cemetery darkness (In Ez. 60); Prudentius also describes the penetrating light in the cavea viscera montis of Christian crypts (Peristephanon, XI, V. 165). An inscription now lost mentioned the purchase of a bisom tomb situated in luminare maiore, made for two gold coins by a certain Saturninus (G. Marchi, Monumenti delle arti cristiane primitive, Rome 1844, p. 165); that of an Eusebius of Antioch, attesting the purchase of a tomb “in catacumbas” near the luminare, is now in the Ambrosian Library in Milan. In the cemetery of Domitilla, on the other hand, there is preserved the epitaph of a Gallicanus who purchased a bisom tomb, in the crypt near the luminare. Well known is the epitaph of the deacon Severus in the Catacomb of Callistus, mentioning the luminare. Sometimes these luminaria were also plastered and more rarely decorated. Among these are remembered the frescoes in the luminare of the crypt of St. Cecilia, in Callistus, with the images of the saints Sebastian, Quirinus and Polychronius (G. Wilpert, La cripta dei papi e la cappella di S. Cecilia, Rome 1910, pl. 6); in the crypt called of St. Januarius, in the Catacomb of Praetextatus (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 34); in a cubicle on the second level in the cemetery inter duas lauros (id., loc. cit., pl. 151); and in the so-called cemetery of St. Januarius of the Poor in Naples, with the majestic representation of Jesus Christ between two angels (H. Achelis, Die Katakomben von Neapel, Berlin 1936, pl. 42).
Moon: see neomenia.