Catacomba di San Giovanni, Siracusa

The funerary area of Vigna Cassia, visitable upon request at the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology of Syracuse, consists of a community cemetery and five private hypogea, chronologically attributable to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries. Proposing a topographical development similar to Roman models, the actual catacomb is divided into three regions – S. Maria di Gesù Maggiore and Marcia – of which the first two originated already in the 3rd century, the last one only in the 4th. The view of the plan certifies what has been said: the cemetery of S. Maria di Gesù, on your right, is obtained from the enlargement of a pre-existing aqueduct, on the walls of which a series of loculi (rectangular cavities with the long side visible) are cut; this solution allows for a quick and economical intervention on the rock that well suits a pre-Constantinian period. We find confirmation of the early chronology of this region in the Maggiore cemetery, located in the center of the plan and datable, based on a hoard containing, among other things, coins issued under Gallienus and Claudius II the Goth, to around the middle of the 3rd century. The materials found in this area confirm the dating, proposing a commission of pagan and Christian culture that Saint Luigi Agnello had rightly highlighted already in the fifties.

A community cemetery does not exclude the existence of private spaces (cubicula), which are almost physiological and, in this case, are represented by small rotundas obtained from a reuse, not particularly refined, of deactivated cisterns from the city’s previous water supply system.

A less confusing topographical development characterizes the Marcia cemetery, on the left in the plan, whose regular layout closely resembles that of the Catacomb of San Giovanni. The dating of the origin of this region thus shifts to the 4th century, in the period after the Peace of the Church, with use continuing well into the 5th century, also suggested by the chronology traditionally accompanying the Marcia painting, locatable in the lunette of an arcosolium in the northwestern branch of the cemetery.

The ideological pluralism that characterizes the original nuclei of the catacomb even more affects the hypogea on the slab above the community cemetery which, intended to serve individual families or guilds, reveal an even greater coexistence between pagans and Christians. Once again, inscriptions are the most effective indicators of this phenomenon. It is worth noting the restoration of the paintings in hypogeum II, carried out in October 1997 by PCAS-Syracuse, which has returned the clear images of a figurative cycle entirely Christian in subject, one of the most precious documents of the underground heritage of Syracuse.

Salvation and resurrection of the soul are the concepts symbolically expressed by the scenes decorating two arcosolia of the hypogeum: two moments of the Jonah trilogy, Daniel in the lions’ den, portrait of the deceased among orants, resurrection of Lazarus, and peacocks inserted in the blooming gardens of the paradisiacal habitat.”