THE ROMAN MARTYRS ARE STILL THE OBJECT OF VENERATION OF PEOPLES

Eugene was constantly amazed and edified by the reminders in Rome of the martyrs. Perhaps his arithmetic is a bit exaggerated when he speaks of their numbers, but his awe is not. He describes how the Christian slaves had to build the Roman edifices, which today are in ruins, while the memory of the martyrs continues.

And what food for devotion is provided at the sight of so many monuments which attest the victory of the martyrs who have drowned idolatry in their blood. Their bodies still exist and their memory, so to say, is still fresh after eighteen and nineteen centuries which have destroyed both their persecutors and their works which seemed established for all eternity; the ruins which are trod underfoot still stagger the imagination, so vast they are in conception and in their details.

The baths, for instance, as vast as a great city, were the work under Diocletian of forty thousand Christians who received as salary martyrdom in frightful torments. These baths were adorned with statues, porticoes, colonnades; there were fountains, shady groves, and even lakes which had been artistically designed within their enclosure. The works of architecture of the best masters, the priceless tableaux, the marbles that are only to be seen here, porphyry, alabaster and even exquisite libraries; nothing was spared.

There no longer exists anything but the site and the broken masonry, while the poor slaves, the vile Christians as they were looked upon by their sacrilegious tyrants, are still the object of veneration of peoples, and their remains are preciously kept in the neighbouring catacombs where one kisses the ground and tears flow.

Letter to Fr Hippolyte Courtès in Aix, 6 December 1825, EO VI n 210