Christians preferred to bury the dead rather than to cremate the remains, as was common in Roman culture. The early church carried on Judaism's respect for the human body as being created in God's image, and followed their practices of speedy interment, in hopes of the future resurrection of all dead. The Roman catacombs and Medieval veneration of relics of Roman Catholic saints witness to this preference. For them, the body was not a mere receptacle for a spirit that was the real person, but an integral part of the human person. They looked on the body as sanctified by the sacraments and itself the temple of the Holy Spirit, and thus requiring to be disposed of in a way that honours and reveres it, and they saw many early practices involved with disposal of dead bodies as pagan in origin or an insult to the body.