Bosio, Antonio

BOSIO, ANTONIO. - A distinguished archaeologist, b. in Malta in 1575, d. in Rome in 1629. Having come to Rome at a very young age, he pursued his studies there under the Jesuits and then succeeded his uncle in the office of procurator of the Order of Malta, which he held until his death. A friend of Giacomino, Ugonio, De Winghe, and Macario, and a disciple of St. Philip Neri, he was drawn by his own inclination to an enthusiastic study of Christian antiquities and especially of the catacombs. He paid his first visit to that of Domitilla with Ugonio in 1593; thereafter he progressively examined almost all the others insofar as they were then accessible. He did not carry out excavations, but contented himself with tracing the galleries through collapses or accessible light-shafts, availing himself at most of the help of a quarryman. He often brought with him a painter who depicted the paintings (Angelo Santini, called il Tocca-fondo, and the names of Antonius Bosius and Angelo Tocca-fondo recur countless times written in the cubicula of the catacombs), and above all pen and paper to note diligently what he found, proposing from the very beginning as his aim a systematic illustration of the ancient Christian cemeteries of the city. For this purpose he read attentively all the writings of the Fathers, extracting from them whatever served his purpose. Although availing himself of the index of William of Malmesbury, he rarely succeeded in identifying the cemeteries he explored; nevertheless De Rossi could call him the true Columbus of subterranean Rome. In fact he rediscovered, explored, and described for us, at least in part, almost all the Roman catacombs; he carefully distinguished what he had learned from books from what he had seen himself; he proceeded with a wise topographical order, cemetery by cemetery, attempting the identification of each and reporting what the ancients had handed down about them and what was still to be seen there in his own day; all these historical-topographical notices he accompanied with a complete treatise on the ancient burials of Christians in general and especially on those of the Romans and of the holy martyrs. This part has naturally now grown outdated (although the sum of the work accomplished by B. and the soundness of his method never cease to arouse our admiration); the description of what he saw personally never ceases to be a most precious source for the illustration of the catacombs. Such is the value of his Roma sotterranea, published posthumously in Rome in 1634 through the efforts of his Oratorian friend Giovanni Severano (v.), in a luxurious folio adorned with very numerous plans of cemeteries, cross-sections of crypts, and reproductions of paintings (he had also inherited the copies already made by De Winghe; these, however, form the least exact and weakest part of his work) and transcriptions of inscriptions, which form the enduring value and the suggestiveness of the book. The greatness of B. is understood when one considers that his work, down to De Rossi (v.), was not only not surpassed but not even notably continued. The fascination and the powerful voice that rose from his book caused it to become, as it were, an arena of polemics between Protestants and Catholics in the controversy over the customs of the early Church. In 1600 B. published the pamphlet Historia passionis b. Caceline virginis on the occasion of the discovery of the relics of the Saint, of which he has left an interesting account.

Antonio Ferrua