MAJUS COEMETERIUM (CIMITERO MAGGIORE). — So called because it is the largest Christian cemetery on the Via Nomentana. The present entrance is on the Via Asmara.
The name is attested in the 5th century: an epigraph found near the Ponte Rotto, preserved in the Museo Capitolino, and various codices of the Hieronymian Emerenziana (v.), Vittore, Felice, Alessandro, and Papia were venerated « in cimiteru maior »; their tombs were visited here by pilgrims in the 7th century. The most precise of the itineraries, the Notitia ecclesiarum, specifies Emerenziana’s tomb in an upper basilica and that of Vittore and Alessandro « in spelunea deorsum ». Confused from the 16th century onward with the nearby cemetery of S. Agnese and called by that name, the cemetery was identified by G. B. De Rossi, who also attributed to it the reports of an apostolic ministry of s. Pietro in this region, mentioned by three late documents: the Gesta Liberii of 501, which refer to an Ostrian cemetery « ubi Petrus Apostolus baptizavit »; the Passio Sisiunii of the 5th century, inserted in the Gesta Marcelli, which recounts the burial of the two soldier-martyrs Papia and Mauro « in Via Nomentana... ad nymphas b. Petri, ubi baptizabat »; and finally « la notula » and a « pittacium » concerning the oils collected by the priest Giovanni of Monza in the time of s. Gregorio Magno « de sede ubi prius sedit scs Petrus ». The identification of the Ostrian cemetery with the M. C., initially accepted, later gave rise to a lively controversy among scholars, Marucchi wishing to transfer the memory of s. Pietro to the not-distant cemetery of Priscilla on the Salaria Nuova, on the basis of a forced interpretation of the topographical texts, which do not permit the identification of the Ostrian cemetery.
Like the others, the M. C. had an area above ground, traces of which were observed during the excavations of 1873, and in which stood the small basilica of S. Emerenziana (v.). The fairly extensive underground necropolis, on two levels, is of particular interest because of the architectural arrangement of its crypt, studied very carefully by p. Marchi, who also published an accurate plan of the cemetery. The oldest region of the part accessible today is that to the right of the entrance staircase; but it is not earlier than the 3rd century. A series of epigraphs engraved in very beautiful and distinctive letters, with a simple and concise text and produced by the same workshop, must likewise be dated to the beginning of the 3rd century; in addition to several still in the cemetery, others are in the Epigraphic Gallery of the Lateran. In the region to the left of the entrance, the excavations conducted by mons. P. Crostarosa in 1873 brought to light a spacious crypt with a skylight and an apse once decorated with foliage stuccoes, containing a cathedra and a « mena oleorum » facing one another. M. Armellini mistakenly believed that he recognized in it the original tomb of s. Emerenziana, on account of the Saint’s name deciphered in the abraded inscription in red letters, already noted by Bosio in the apse; he also connected the cathedra and certain graffiti with the memory of s. Pietro mentioned above. This cathedra, however, and the other ten scattered throughout the cemetery, which constitute one of its distinctive features (though not an exclusive one, since they are also found at Panfilo, Inter duas lauros, and S. Lorenzo), must be related to the rite of refrigerium. The tufa benches set against the walls, which are found beside some of them, served the same purpose. Their abundance in the M. C. is perhaps due to the greater skill in carving tufa possessed by the teams of fossores who worked there; this skill is also evident in the elegant corbels, cornices, and niches that adorn various cubicula, and in the architectural precision of the vaults and galleries. A crypt not far from the one described was excavated, in two different phases, with such care and elegance that it appears to be a miniature basilica.
Among the frescoes adorning the cemetery’s crypts and arcosolia, depicting the customary scenes from the Old and New Testaments, one may note a rare representation of the parable of the five wise virgins admitted to the heavenly banquet; a bust of a praying woman with strongly marked features, holding a child on her knees, between two facing Constantinian monograms, in which an image of the Madonna from the middle of the 4th century must be recognized; and finally a scene discovered and illustrated by E. Josi in 1933, in which, in a manner unique among the catacombs, two deceased persons are seen prostrate in an attitude of veneration toward a female saint, almost certainly Emerenziana, the cemetery’s eponym.
Umberto M. Fasola