Catacombs

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of donations. That is how the were founded. Many of them began and developed around family tombs whose owners, newly converted Christians, did not reserve them to the members of the family. They did open them up to their fellow people, showing the faith. As time went on and room started to run out in the , the grew larger by gifts and by the purchase of new properties, sometimes by the Church itself.
With the edict of Milan announced by the emperors Constantine and Licinius in February 313, the Christians were no longer persecuted. They were free to practice their faith, to have places of worship, to build churches both inside and outside the city, and to buy plots of land without fear of seizure. Although the Christians had their freedom to worship any religion, the continued as regular cemeteries until the beginning of the fifth century. This is when the Church returned to burying only above ground or in the basilicas dedicated to important saints.
When the barbarians ...

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