GALANTE, GENNARO ASPRENO. – Priest, historian, and archaeologist, born in Naples on 6 October 1842, died there on 11 June 1923. As a young man he showed a passion for archaeological studies, while also deriving excellent benefit from his theological studies. Ordained a priest in Rome in 1866, he became acquainted with G. B. De Rossi, who held him in great esteem. Returning to Naples, he continued the series of his contributions.
In 1867, in fact, he wrote on the funerary slab of the archdeacon Teofilato and the paintings in the catacomb of S. Severo; in 1872 he published the Guida sacra della città di Napoli. He cherished the plan of a subterranean Naples, but was unable to carry it out. In 1882, in a grotto near Calvi, he discovered some paintings representing St Castrenus and St Priscus. In Rome, before the Society of Christian Archaeology Scholars, he reported on the discovery of images of the first Neapolitan bishops, arranged in a small underground basilica in the cemetery of S. Gennaro in Naples, analogous to the series located in the ancient Cathedral known as the “Stefania”; he identified the inscription of the Neapolitan bishop Massimo, from the time of Liberius (352–66); he made important discoveries in the atrium of the catacomb of S. Gennaro (1889), where he also brought a baptistery to light (1899). He dealt with the question of the maior and minor basilicas of S. Gennaro. He also studied the other catacombs of S. Gaudioso, S. Efebo, S. Severo, and SS. Fortunato and Massimo at Lammatari, as well as smaller hypogea. He illustrated the cemetery of S. Ipolisto, martyred at Aripalda, the coenobium of S. Severino in the Castrum Luccolanum of Naples, the mosaics of the baptistery of Naples Cathedral, and so forth. He produced a large number of studies in sacred archaeology, ecclesiastical history, classical and Jewish archaeology (149 items dating from 1862 to 1923). Much also remains in his manuscripts, preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library; he donated 4,000 volumes from his library to the Academy of S. Pietro in Vincoli of the Archiepiscopal Lyceum.