MARCHI, GIUSEPPE. - Archaeologist, Jesuit, b. at Tolmezzo (Udine) on 22 Feb. 1795, d. at Rome on 22 Feb. 1860.
Having entered the Society of Jesus on 12 Nov. 1815, he taught letters in the colleges of Terni, Reggio Emilia, Modena, and at the Roman College (1825, and from 1833 onward). There he found scope to display a manifold and intense activity, also as director of the Library (1833-38) and of the Kircherian Museum (1839-60).
In Rome he was able to devote himself with ease to profane and sacred archaeology; and the problem of the origins of the arts of central Italy led him to deepen his study of very ancient numismatics. The uso grave of the Kircherian Museum (Rome 1839) was in fact a first arduous attempt at a topographical and chronological classification of such coins, to which he returned in order to illustrate those found at Vicarello (La stipe tributata alle divinità delle Acque Apollinari, ibid. 1852). In 1842-43 he played an important part in the publication of the Etruscan Gregorian Museum, especially on account of the emendations he introduced, by direct pontifical commission, into the second edition. The Cista atletica (known as the Ficoroni cist) of the Kircherian Museum (Rome 1848) is likewise connected with the questions concerning the primitive origin of the Italic arts. But already from 1838 his competence in the Christian antiquities of Rome was well known; in 1849 he began systematic explorations of the ancient hypogea of the suburbs. Entrusted to him in 1842 by Gregory XVI with the new office of conservator of the sacred cemeteries, he was able gradually to "snatch the Roman catacombs from oblivion and squalor," to prevent the destruction of their monuments and other serious abuses, to make their successive discoveries known to scholars of every nation, and fervently to promote a rigorous analytical and comparative study of them. Gregory XVI was pleased to visit, in the cemetery then called that of St. Agnes (Oct. 1844), the explorations directed by M., who thus inaugurated "a new era of studies concerning Christian antiquities... arousing the attention of all Europe" (De Rossi); at the same time preparing and tracing the way for the Commission of Sacred Archaeology, in which he retained, as long as he lived, along with the office of conservator, the direction of the excavations. Of the great work announced from 1840, Monumenti delle primitive arti cristiane nella metropoli del cristianesimo, he published only the first part, Architettura cimiteriale (pp. 5-272) with 48 plates, and another 20 plates on "basilical architecture"
(1844-47): in the last fascicle (pp. 237-72) is the report on the discovery of the intact tomb of the martyr St. Hyacinth (1845). Other parts remained suspended in the aftermath of the upheavals of 1848-49, of which the Lyonese architect L. Perret took advantage in order to publish a purported original artistic illustration of the catacombs. For his part M. ceded to Fr. Raffaele Garrucci the abundant iconographic material he had already collected, the publication of the paintings of the tombs of Vincent and Vibia, already published as Christian by Bottari, and which M. sought out and rediscovered (1847). He obtained from Pius IX that from 1850 copies be made of many cemetery paintings; and he arranged them together with the ancient Christian sculptures in the new Lateran Christian Museum, founded in 1854. His greatest merit was to have engaged the young G. B. De Rossi in Christian archaeology, reserving for him from 1842 the collection of inscriptions, and then making him, with assiduous attentions, his most valuable disciple, collaborator and successor. In Latin epigraphy M. was deservedly held to be a rival of Morcelli; and very many inscriptions composed by him celebrated important works and private and public events of the pontificate of Gregory XVI and of Pius IX. Not inferior to his gifts of intellect, erudition and industriousness were his religious and priestly virtues.
Bibliography8 works
Romano Fausti