Why were Crypts Built?

From "The Pilot", 1969, comes this, an interesting historical ramble.

Some Church Customs Explained
By S.G. Thicknesse

Why were Crypts Built?

Some of the earliest Christian churches were apparently built above an even earlier vault or crypt, which held the body of a saint. The tradition that the church of St. Peter at Rome was so built, over the burial place of the Apostle, though not above Nero's circus where he was martyred, seems to have been confirmed by the recent excavations at Rome.

This part of a church was, therefore, in some cases not only the oldest but also one of the most sacred parts of the whole building. It is possible that the very word crypt is derived from the same root as the word shroud.

For the first fifty years at Rome, Christians appear to have shared burial places with the Jews: they also believed that the bodies of the departed should be laid in the earth or in the rock, and not burned.

But from the second half of the first century they began to construct their own underground cemeteries beyond the city, or to make use of natural caves under the Appian Way. When collective Christian burial became general, some of the crypts were made large enough for funeral or memorial services to be held in them, although few would have easily held a congregation of more than fifty people.

Although the Eucharist may also have been said in these catacombs even in peaceful times, this certainly became more general in time of persecution. This was not because the catacombs were secret places but because, as cemeteries, they were rigidly protected by Roman law. That similar crypts should continue to be built and used for the saying of the Eucharist, and for burials, after Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, is easily understandable.

In England there are a few very early crypts, for example, that at Hexham. But churches with crypts became more common when the Romanesque styles of architecture were brought in after the Norman Conquest.

The extraordinarily large and beautiful one under Canterbury Cathedral was started by Prior Ernulf, and finished in A.D. 1105 by Prior Conrad. Some seventy years later, on the same night that he was murdered in the Cathedral, the body of Thomas Becket was carried down to this crypt by the monks of Canterbury and laid in state on a tomb before the altar of the Blessed Virgin.

The next day the Archbishop was buried in the crypt, which remained his shrine for fifty years, and became the dearest place of pilgrimage in the country.

And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seeke,
That them hath holpen when that they were weeke.

By the fourteenth century when Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales, the body of St. Thomas was housed in the great shrine behind the high altar, of which, not much more than a century later, Henry VIII was to leave no trace.

Although no other of the remaining crypts in England is as famous as that of Canterbury, some of them are very lovely-for example, those at Durham and Worcester, or the twelfth-century crypt under the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, in Queen's Lane, at Oxford. This crypt was restored and brought into use again in 1932. Originally, like those in many Italian churches, it was directly accessible from the nave. The passages, however, which used to lead up from the three doorways in the west wall of the crypt were long ago blocked.

It is possible that the barrel-vaulted chamber, eight feet by seven, opening off the crypt, is a twelfth-century reconstruction of an earlier arrangement, which may itself have been a tomb.

Like the catacombs, even the smallest of these crypts is full of ornamentation. In both are to be found the sacred monogram IHS, the three Greek letters which begin the name of JESUS; the XP, the first two Greek letters of CHRIST, and painted or carved foliage and symbolic creatures.

In the crypt of St. Peter's-in-the-East, for example, one capital has a winged dragon and two men and a beast carved on it. Many catacombs had the eagles and peacocks of eternal life, as well as ships of salvation and palms of victory, painted on their walls.