Baptism

natatorium, and also as piscina with its allusion to birth and life in the waters
(Tertullian, De bapt., 1 St. Augustine, De schis. Donat., III, 2). The name fons
was also used which meant spring. alluding to the "springs of living waters
out of the belly" of the believer. The oldest western fonts that are excavated
are found in the Roman catacombs. These are remains of the earliest churches
who because of persecution lived their religious life underground. These
cisterns are hewn from the stones in the floor. Examples are to be found
# in the Ostrian Cemetery, where in a small shallow basin in the floor a
spring wells up in the Cemetery of Pontianus, where an oblong reservoir
about eighteen square feet in surface area and three feet in depth, (still filled
with water) is found. (Marucchi, Archéologie Chrétienne, II, 63);
# in St. Felicitas ((Marucchi, Archéologie Chrétienne, II 304); and
# in St. Priscilla, (Marucchi in Nuovo Bullettino, 1901, 73).
In every case the baptismal fonts were shallow pools where only the
candidate’s feet were immersed. These were certainly unsuitable for total
immersion as is practiced today. Even in the squatting mode immersion could
not be accomplished. Water was certainly poured on people from an overhead
stream or from a pitcher held by the person baptizing.
It is therefore almost certain on the basis of extensive archeological studies
that this indeed was the mode of baptism employed by the early Christians.
(de Rossi, Bullettino di Archeol., 1876, 8-15; Duchesne, Les Eglises séparées,
Paris, 1905, 89-96).
As the churches began to incorporate baptisteries within the church they
followed similar structures. But with additional significance attached to the
steps. These pools were built at lowered and built in rectangular (the tomb of
Christ, the four corners of the earth, the four Gospels or the tetragram of
Jahweh), hexagonal or octagonal (the eighth day - that of New Beginnings,
the General Judgment, Final Resurrection and Salvation) forms. In the East
108