The Way of the Fathers � Baby Names of the Early Christians

The Way of the Fathers � Baby Names of the Early Christians
Click on the link to read the rest. This is a fascinating article about our roots and, of course, the link to Lent for all of us.

Baby Names of the Early Christians
Monday February 12th 2007, 3:06 am Filed under: Patristics, Books, Archeology
Last week I mentioned a promising new book, The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, co-authored by three members of the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archeology. Over the weekend I was able to borrow a copy from Lea Ravotti, the great contemporary Christian artist and premiere interpreter of ancient Christian art. The book is the stuff of which obsessions are made. I could blog on it for a year and never want for good material. I hope, at some point, to do a more in-depth review for Touchstone magazine. In the meantime, I’ll post occasional bits from this lavishly illustrated coffee-table volume.
Certainly the book benefits from the, um, depth of the knowledge of its authors. They’re in situ, living, teaching, noting correspondences in the many miles of underground corridors. From their intimate knowledge of thousands of inscriptions, artifacts, bone fragments, and artworks, they’re able to give us brief and brilliant glimpses of the ordinary lives of the early Christians. What kind of work did they do? Were they poor? rich? middle-class? How old were they when they married? What did they value in their spouses? In their children? In their priests? How did they die? Answers to all these questions arise from the epitaphs in the Catacombs.