DE ROSSI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — Archaeologist, founder of the science of Christian archaeology, born in Rome on 22 February 1822, died in the papal palace at Castel Gandolfo on 20 September 1894. After completing his humanistic and philosophical studies at the Collegio Romano, he moved to the faculty of law at the University of Rome, where in 1843 he obtained the degree *ad honorem in utroque iure*; but he was unspeakably drawn to archaeological studies, declaring himself that “the subterranean Rome of Bosio was ever more pleasing to me than the Decretum Gratiani or the Corpus Iuris Civilis” (P. M. Baumgarten, 2nd ed., Rome 1892, p. 10). Already the previous year, on 20 July 1842, Fr. G. Marchi (q.v.) had surprised him transcribing Christian inscriptions in the crypt of S. Prassede, and Cardinal A. Mai (q.v.) in the Lapidary Gallery in the Vatican, while he was copying Greek inscriptions. Through these two scholars, the young Roman gained access to the Roman catacombs and to the Vatican Library: he became the devoted collaborator and friend of the former, and from the latter he received an appointment as scriptor of the Vatican Library.
His first archaeological explorations, diligently pursued, were those of the cemetery to the left of the Via Appia then called that of S. Sisto, which he later identified as that of Pretestato, between 1847 and 1850.
Here he had the opportunity to make his first fruitful observations on the chronological connections of the finds: “a clear light flashed upon my mind there, and there I matured the plan for the new *Roma Sotterranea*” (as he himself wrote in *Le cripte storiche del cimitero di Pretestato*, in *Bull. d'arch. crist.*, 2nd ser., 3 [1872], pp. 63–64).
Indeed, up to that time Christian antiquities had been cultivated in an eclectic and often empirical manner; their basis was erudition rather than rational critical method, which De Rossi alone introduced—namely, the comparative method between documents and monuments, since he recognized “that it was necessary to follow the path marked out by Bosio and to do what he wished and was unable to do,” that is, to explore on the basis of data provided by historical sources. De Rossi prepared for this method under the guidance of Bosio and the historical and topographical documents recognized after him. At the meeting of 3 July 1852 of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology, he presented the identification of the ancient Christian cemeteries of Rome based on the topographical indications furnished by ancient calendars, martyrologies, other liturgical books, and above all by epigraphic collections and pilgrims’ itineraries. The accuracy of his method was demonstrated by the discovery of the tomb of Pope Cornelius (d. 253), made in that area of the Via Appia where three years earlier he had identified a fragment of his epitaph on the surface.
DE ROSSI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — Portrait with autograph signature.
This enabled him to determine the exact location of the true cemetery of Callistus, whose name had hitherto been extended not only to all the underground galleries from the *Quo vadis?* to S. Sebastiano and the Via Ardentina, but especially to the cemetery *in catacumbas*, where through the Middle Ages all the Christian memories of the Via Appia had been gathered. In 1854 followed the discovery of the crypt of the third-century popes, the tomb of St Cecilia; in 1856 that of St Eusebius; in 1863 at Pretestato; in 1864 he uncovered the hypogeum of the Flavii in Domitilla, which he depicted; in 1873 the basilica of SS Nereus, Achilleus, and Petronilla; in 1882 the crypt of St Hippolytus; in 1883 that of St Felicitas; in 1888 the hypogeum of the Acilii; and in 1890 the basilica of St Sylvester in Priscilla.
From 1863 he began the publication of his *Bullettino di archeologia cristiana*, which for thirty years he continued to edit alone until his death (1894), to illustrate discoveries not only in the Christian cemeteries of Rome, Italy, and abroad, but also in Christian basilicas and in the epigraphic, hagiographic, and artistic fields of the early centuries of Christianity. A French translation of his *Bullettino* was first made by Martigny and then by Duchesne up to 1883. In 1864 appeared the first volume of his *Roma Sotterranea*, published at the order of Pius IX. There he wove the history of Christian antiquities from their origins to his own time, followed by an analysis of ancient topographical documents and a description of the first part of the cemetery of Callistus, which was continued in the second volume published in 1867 and in the third (1877), in which he completed the illustration of the cemetery of Callistus and that of Generosa (q.v.), and summarized the history of the origin, development, and administration of the ancient Christian cemeteries of Rome, their dependence on the urban titles up to the period of the translation of martyrs’ relics within the city. The three volumes of De Rossi’s *Roma Sotterranea* aroused such admiration among scholars that summaries were soon compiled for popular dissemination. The first were J. Spencer Northcote and W. R. Brouwlow, *The Roman Catacombs* (London 1872); P. Allard, *Rome souterraine. Résumé des découvertes de M. de Rossi dans les catacombes romaines et en particulier dans le cimetière de Calliste* by F. Spencer Northcote and W. Brouwlow (Paris 1872, 2nd ed. 1874); F. X. Kraus, *Roma sotterranea. Die römischen Katakomben. Eine Darstellung der älteren und neuesten Forschungen mit Zugrundelagung des Werkes von J. Spencer Northcote und W. R. Brouwlow* (Freiburg im Br. 1874).
The importance of De Rossi’s studies and discoveries in the field of funerary topography is no less than that in the realm of Roman topography and classical and Christian epigraphy.
In Roman topography, De Rossi’s first study dates to 1858: *Le stazioni delle sette coorti dei Vigili* (in *Annali dell’Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica*, 1858); in the same year he pointed out the site where G. Hansen later discovered so many remains of the *Acta Fratrum Arvalium*. His most notable work in this field is that on the iconographic and perspective plans of Rome prior to the sixteenth century (*Roma 1879*). It is a monumental history of the city from its origins to the age of Augustus and Aurelian, followed by a study of urban plans, from that painted in the Portico of Pollius in the Campus Martius to the *Forma Urbis Severiana*; from schematic medieval plans to the Mantua perspective of the 15th century. In 1882 he published in *Studi e documenti di storia e diritto* the *Note di topografia romana* collected from the lips of Pomponio Leto and the Pomponian text of the *Notitia regionum Urbis Romae*; in 1884 the *Note di ruderi e monumenti antichi* for the plan of G. B. Nulli preserved in the Vatican Archives (ibid.). He later illustrated the plan of Rome painted by Cimabue in Assisi (*Bull. dell’Istituto*, 1887), a drawing of the Roman Forum among the collections of the Escorial (ibid., 1888), the circular panorama of Rome delineated in 1534 by the Dutch painter Martino Hemskeerch (*Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma*, 1891); from 1886 to 1890 he published together with G. Gatti in the same periodical a *Miscellanea* of bibliographical and critical notes on the topography and history of the monuments of Rome.
Theodor Mommsen, in the preface to the third volume of the *Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum* (Berlin 1873, p. vi), states that without the aid of G. B. D. R.’s *Italiae Lumen*, the collection of Latin inscriptions would have had to neglect manuscripts, as he himself had been forced to limit himself in the case of the inscriptions of the Kingdom of Naples, whereas G. B. D. R. had opened the way to the knowledge of the manuscripts not only of the Vatican Library and the other libraries of the city of Rome, but also of the libraries of Italy and of all other nations. With a letter in Latin dated 22 January 1854, the Berlin Academy had officially invited him to collaborate on the *Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum* and solemnly declared that it reserved for G. B. D. R. himself the task of publishing the Christian inscriptions of Rome. From 1854 to 1858, in fact, the *Monatsberichte der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin* contain periodic reports of the investigations carried out by G. B. D. R. in all the libraries for epigraphic manuscripts. In classical epigraphy, G. B. D. R. had made his debut with the *Honorary Inscription of Nicomachus Flavianus* (*Annali dell’Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica*, 1849, pp. 283-363).
From the *Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres*, together with others, he was entrusted with the task of overseeing the publication of the works of B. Borghesi (*Oeuvres complètes de Bartolomeo Borghesi par les ordres et aux frais de S. M. l’Empereur Napoléon III*, later under the auspices of M. le Ministre de l’instruction publique, Paris 1862-97).
From a young age, G. B. D. R. began his work of collecting ancient Christian inscriptions. A first sample was offered by him at the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology on 3 April 1851 with his dissertation on the collection of Christian inscriptions of Rome from the first six centuries, published posthumously by G. Gatti (v.) in the last issue of the *Bull. d’arch. crist.* (1894, pp. 151-73). He insisted in particular on the usefulness of the geographical method. In 1855, in the *Spicilegium Solesmense* (III, Paris 1855, pp. 544-77), he dealt with *De christianis monumentis lybicè exhibentibus*, and in the fourth volume of the same *Spicilegium* he wrote *De christianis titulis Carthaginiensibus* (Paris 1858, pp. 505-58). In 1861, the first volume of his *Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores* appeared: the work opens with the history of epigraphic studies from the Middle Ages to his own day. This is followed by a treatise on chronological notes, laws, and formulas of consular dates, the *fasti* of the consuls, and the various solar and lunar cycles.
Of the second volume of his *Inscriptiones Christianae*, G. B. D. R. published the first part in 1888; in the preface, the history of metric and rhythmic Christian epigraphy is traced for the first time and includes the edition of ancient epigraphic collections up to the Carolingian anthologies. Pope Pius IX entrusted G. B. D. R. and Father Marchi with the task of organizing the Pontifical Lateran Museum; the former gathered the most notable Christian sarcophagi scattered throughout the city, while G. B. D. R. admirably classified the ancient Christian inscriptions, dividing them into two main classes: sacred and sepulchral. G. B. D. R. expounded the criterion he followed in this classification in the *Triglicium* homage to Pius IX and in a special article in his *Bull. d’arch. crist.* (1877).
The work accomplished by G. B. D. R. as a writer of the Vatican Library is evidenced by the five volumes of description and classification of manuscripts, the organization of the index cards of Gaetano Marini and Cardinal Angelo Mai. To the first volume of the catalogue of the Palatine manuscripts (1886) he prefixed his treatise *De origine, historia, indicibus scrinii et bibliothecae Sedis Apostolicae*.
In the jubilee homage of the Vatican Library to His Holiness Leo XIII (1888), he illustrated *The Bible Offered by Abbot Ceolfrid to the Tomb of St. Peter*, an extremely ancient codex surviving from the libraries of the Apostolic See. To this type of study also belong his writings on the *Biblia pauperum* and its very ancient origins (*Bull. arch. crist.* 1887, pp. 56-59) and on the *Biblia pauperum* of the Liceo di Castanzo (ibid.). G. B. D. R. also concerned himself with the Middle Ages in studies on Stefano Porcari, on the statutes of Anticoli, and on the collection of Roman inscriptions relating to artists and their works in the Middle Ages, compiled at the end of the 16th century (*Bull. di arch. crist.*, 5th series, I [1890], pp. 79-100). Another work by G. B. D. R. is that on *Mosaici cristiani e saggi di pavimenti delle chiese di Roma anteriori al sec. XV* (Rome 1872-96, completed by E. Stevenson), with parallel Italian and French texts. In collaboration with L. Duchesne, he published the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum ad fidem codicum, adiectis prolegomenis* in the *Acta SS. Novembris*, II, 1, Brussels 1894.
G. B. D. R. also collaborated in the most authoritative Italian and foreign periodicals. A list of all his writings was compiled by G. Gatti in the album offered to him in 1892 and updated in the last issue of the *Bull. d’arch. crist.* of 1894. His substantial card index occupies 31 volumes (*codd. Vat. lat.* 10512-43, described by M. Vattasso and E. Carusi, Rome 1920). G. B. D. R. was president of the Society of Lovers of Christian Archaeology from 1884, president of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology, secretary of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, "magister" of the *Collegium Cultorum Martyrum*, and prefect of the Sacred Museum of the Vatican Library.
A man of the most upright life, of profound piety, and averse to politics, he was held in the highest esteem by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII, who defined him as the "ornament of the city." Scholars and scientific institutions of every nation honored him, especially on the occasion of his 60th and 70th birthdays. Pope Pius XI solemnly commemorated the centenary of his birth. The summit of his desires, "I long for a Christian world illuminated by the monuments of the first six or seven centuries" (*Roma sotterranea*, I, p. 82), was cited by Pope Pius XI as the ideal goal of his Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.