GROSSI-GONDI, FELICE. — Jesuit, man of letters, and archaeologist, born in Rome on 16 September 1860, died there on 31 March 1923. He entered the Society of Jesus on 13 September 1881 and, having completed his theological studies, obtained a degree in letters from the University of Rome. He taught Italian and classical literature at the Istituto Massimo in Rome and at the Collegio di Mondragone (Frascati); thereafter, from 1914, Christian archaeology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
He had already devoted himself especially to classical antiquities through a complete historical-epigraphic study (his doctoral thesis) of the Comites in the Roman period (from the end of the Republic to the middle of the sixth century): their progressive development during the Empire marks the gradual transformation of the entire civil and military organization, but Mommsen himself had dealt with the subject only in part; E. De Ruggiero included G.-G.’s study in his Dizion. epigraf. d’antich. romane. He had also investigated the ancient topography and monuments of the Tusculan and suburban territory, which he partly illustrated in the Bullettino d. Commiss. archeol. comun. di Roma (1898–1916), and partly in the Civ. Catt. (separately published as: La villeggiat. tuscol. di M. T. Civ., Rome 1905), and completed in the two volumes: La villa dei Quintili e la villa di Mondragone (there 1901) and Il Tuscolano nell’età classica (there 1908). He presented subsidiary questions concerning the history of art in the manual Sulle soglie dell’arte (Rome 1912; 2nd ed., posthumous, Turin 1925). On Christian archaeology he wrote articles on subjects then of current interest, and others in Civ. Catt., Röm. quartalschrift, N. bull. di arch. crist., Atti d. Pont. accad. r. di arch. and elsewhere; some were republished as pamphlets with extensive additions. The principal ones are: Leggenda e storia di Costantino nell’arte; La battaglia ad Saxa Rubra; L’arco di Costantino (2nd ed., Rome 1913); Scoperte a S. Sebastiano sull’Appia; Tomba, spoglie, altare di S. Sebastiano; Il «Refrigerium» ad Catacumbas. Origine della basilica e del monastero (there 1915–19); Catacombe tuscolane; Iscrizione agiografica in S. Prassede; S. Fabiano papa e martire: tomba e spoglie (2nd ed., there 1916); La Dormitio B. Mariae V.; Scoperte archeol. del I e II ventennio del sec. XX; Chiese di Roma dopo il 1870; Stef. Ant. Marcelli e la sua Africa cristiana (Chiari 1921); S. Callisto papa e martire; Iscrizione eucaristica in S. Lorenzo (1922), etc.
He provided a synthesis of the whole of Christian archaeology, according to the findings of the leading archaeologists of the “Roman school,” especially Bosio, Marchi, De Rossi, Garrucci, and Wilpert, in the manual I monumenti cristiani dei primi sei secoli (Rome, 2 vols.: I, I monumenti iconografici e architettonici [1923]; II, Trattato di epigrafia cristiana latina e grece del mondo romano occidentale [1920]); it had already been preceded by the volume Principi e problemi di critica agiografica. Atti e spoglie dei Martiri (there 1919). Meanwhile, he was preparing other works.
He was a member of the Accademia di religione cattolica dell’Arcadia, the Società di cultori di archeologia cristiana, the Pontificia accademia romana di archeologia, and the Pontificia commissione di archeologia sacra.