Fossors (FOSSORI) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, p. 922

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

FOSSORI. — This is the name given, even by pagans, to the workers engaged in digging burial pits. Hippolytus explains why the fossor is paid his wage and the price of the bricks (Apostolica tradita, 34). The fossori liked to have themselves represented in the cubicula of the underground cemeteries. Six are represented in Callistus.

The cemetery ad duas lauros has no fewer than eight cubicula, in each of which two fossori are represented, either at work, or with the sack and the lamp, or with the lamp and the pickaxe; in addition, there are two isolated fossori. In Domitilla, the cubiculum of the fossor Diogenes, damaged by Boldetti, is well known (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 180). In the cemetery of the Giordani, a copy was made of the depiction of the fossor trofimus intent on his work above ground (J. Wilpert, Die Katahomboengemälde und ihre alten Kopien, Freiburg im Breisgau 1891, pl. 4, 2). Effigies are also found.

Article illustration — (photograph Pont. comm. arch. sacra) FOSSORI – Inscription of a fossor (378) – Rome, cemetery of SS. Marco and Marcellino.

in other cemeteries as well. The oldest dated inscription to mention a Christian fossor is the one in the cemetery called that of SS. Marco and Marcellino; it concerns a tomb purchased by a fossor named Alessandro sub Iulio Alutisite, that is, between 336 and 352. The cemetery of S. Lorenzo al Verano is the one that has yielded approximately twenty inscriptions of fossors, COMMODIANO (v.). In the cemetery called that of Marco and Marcellino, another inscription of a fossor dates from the year 378, while in a third the fossor is scratched, shown with a lit lamp, a pickaxe, and a sack.

In the second half of the fourth century, the sale of tombs by fossors was frequent; they charged high prices, not without some abuse, for tombs situated near the venerated tombs of the martyrs. Quite a few inscriptions are true titles of ownership, documented by the names of the fossors who sold the tomb and by the corresponding price, which had even been paid in gold. One inscription even recalls the presence of all the fossors (O. Marucchi, Monumenti del Museo Cristiano Pio Lateranense, Milano 1910, tav. 3, n. 26).

BIBL.: For representations of fossors: Wilpert, Pitture, tavv. 48, 1-3; 50, 2; 65, 3; 103, 5; 112, 5; 113, 3. For the inscriptions: E. Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinos Christianes veteres, 3 voll., Berlino 1924-1931; H. Leclercq, s. V. Fossopours, in DACL, V. II, coll. 2065-92.

Enrico Josi