1. The Persecution of the Jews/Christians
 At first, Roman officials were indifferent to the new
religion
 But soon there were problems because the Christians
would not worship ancient pagan deities or the
emperor and were accused of
disloyalty, atheism, and crimes such as
cannibalism, infanticide and were blamed for
plagues, floods, famines
 Examples of what was said by prominent Romans
 Christians began to be persecuted and found safety
in the catacombs like those under the city of Rome

2. History of the Catacombs
 In the first century, Rome’s Christians did not have
cemeteries. If they had land of their own, that is
where they buried their dead
 In the first half of the second century, the Christians
received grants and donations of land and then
started to build catacombs

3. More on Catacombs
 Many catacombs were family tombs who were new
converts to Christianity
 These families allowed fellow Christians outside of
their own families to be buried there.
 There are more than sixty catacombs in Rome with
hundreds of miles of galleries and ten of thousands
of tombs
 There are also catacombs in North
Africa, Naples, eastern Sicily
 These catacombs are basically cemeteries

4. However, catacombs are cemeteries with a story!

5. Other images from the catacombs

6. The catacombs gave us great examples of early Christian
art

7. More of the most important images is that of Christ

8. Another image of Christ

9. The catacombs allow us to know the lives of early
Christians