PAVISSICH, ANTONIO. – Jesuit, preacher, sociologist, b. 13 June 1851 at Spalato in Dalmatia, d. 30 Nov. 1913 at Naples. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1882, he was rector of the archiepiscopal minor seminary Zmajević at Zara and later of the scholasticate of his Order at Gorizia. The remaining years of his life were almost entirely devoted to the ministry of the divine word, in which he distinguished himself by his exceptional oratorical gifts, becoming a beloved and much-heard preacher in the principal cities of Italy.
As a man of learning, Fr Pavissich took a special interest in the pressing problems of his time, which he examined not only in his discourses but also in his writings. Particularly noteworthy is his collaboration with *La Civiltà Cattolica* during the last eight years of his life.
Principal works: *La questione sociale. Conferenze triestine* (2nd ed., Treviso 1902); *Fatti e criteri sociali* (ibid. 1904); *Il cancro civile* (ibid. 1905); *Milizia nuova dei cattolici italiani, ossia la riorganizzazione delle forze cattoliche in Italia secondo la mente di Pio X* (Rome 1905); *Il nemico d’Italia, ossia l’anticlericalismo* (ibid. 1909); *Il codice della vita* (2 vols., Florence 1911), on the value and efficacy of catechism; *Scuola libera* (Rome 1913).
PAVONE. – The pavone, originally from India, was known in Israel perhaps even in the time of Solomon, and later in Greece and Rome.
It was a sacred animal to Hera and Juno, and is depicted on gems and coins such as those of Samos and Argos, already before Christ, in sepulchral monuments, and in houses, as at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Ovid writes that it carries the stars in its tail (Metamorphoses, 15, 385). Pliny calls its colours “gemmantes” (Natural History, 10, 43), which Martial refers to the wings (13, 70). Tertullian recounts the legend of Ennius that Homer was transformed into a pavone (De anima, 33-34: PL 1, 750-51; De resurrectione carnis: ibid., 841); he describes its eyespotted feathers, which it sheds and renews, in his treatise De pallio (ibid., 1090-91). For this reason the pavone became a symbol of spring and was depicted in the Chronography of 354 for the month of May; the wheel of its tail, with its hundred eyes, symbolises the starry sky (Fr. Cumont, *Recherches sur le symbolisme funéraire des Romains*, Paris 1942, p. 231). St Augustine writes that the flesh of the pavone was granted not to decay (De civ. Dei, 21, 4: PL 41, 712). Hence it became a symbol of immortality and explains why it is often represented in Roman funerary monuments, from the sepulchre of the Isola Sacra to the columbaria of the Vigna Codini, those under the basilicas “in Catacumbas”, and in the Vatican beneath the building of the Annona and beneath St Peter’s Basilica. It therefore passed into Christian funerary art, as in the hypogeum of the Acilii in the Priscilla cemetery and elsewhere in the same cemetery (Wilpert, *Pitture*, plates 91 and 109, 1, 202), in those of Bassilla (ibid., plate 151), of Domitilla (ibid., plate 196), “inter duas lauros” (ibid., plate 131), in those of Marcus and Marcellianus (ibid., plate 162, 1), in the Catacomb of Callistus (ibid., plates 37, 38, 134, 2), in that of Pamphilus (E. Josi, *Il cimitero di Panfilo*, in Riv. arch. crist., I [1924], p. 112 and figs. 59-60; 3 [1926], p. 190, fig. 78); in the hypogeum of the Viale Manzoni (G. Wilpert, *Le pitture dell’Ipogeo di Aurelio Felicissimo presso il Viale Manzoni in Roma*, in Atti e Mem. della Pont. Acc. Rom. di arch., 1, 2, plate 8).
It appears in paradise in the fresco known as “of the five saints” in the Catacomb of Callistus (Wilpert, *Pitture*, plate 110), and at Syracuse in the crypt of St Marziano (J. Führer-V. Schultze, *Die altchristl. Grabstätten Siziliens*, Freiburg i. Br. 1907, p. 304). They seem purely ornamental in the arcosolium of Bonifatia in the cubicle of Ampliatus in Domitilla (Wilpert, *Pitture* plate 30, 1). Outside Rome it is found at Naples in the cemetery of St Januarius (H. Achelis, *Die Katakomben von Neapel*, Berlin-Leipzig 1936, plate 28); at Syracuse in the catacomb of the Vigna Cassia (J. Führer, *Forschungen zur Sicilia Sotterranea*, Munich 1897, plate 10).
In all the cited examples pavoni appear alone above or below a tree; facing a vase or a chalice, on vine tendrils or emerging from a vase or pecking at a bunch of grapes, or drinking from a vessel. In mosaics the pavone is frequent both alone with its tail spread like a wheel or pecking at a flower, or in pairs facing a vase, or even in groups of three; on tomb decorations at Carthage, in the basilicas of Adrumetum, Bordj-el-Joudi, Sidi-Diedidi, Oued-Ramel, Sidi-Abich, Carthage, Cherchel, Djemila, Henchir-Guerreria, Henchir-Chigarmia, Henchir (Inventaire des mosaïques de la Gaule et d’Afrique, passim). It is also incised on sepulchral slabs, as on that of Aurelia Proba and on one from the hypogeum of Praetextatus, where the two pavoni facing the vase are accompanied by dolphins and anchors (O. Marucchi, *Monumenti del Museo cristiano lateranense*, Milan 1910, plates 58,3 and 29,3). In Gaul, on an epitaph of a religious Eusebia “magna ancilla Dei” (E. Le Blant, *Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule*, Paris 1857, plate 70, no. 423) and at Vienne that of an “Urbanus” who died in 491 or 536 (M. Faure, *Vienne, ses monuments chrétiens*, Vienne 1948, p. 132, fig. 1). In a graffito found in the Christian basilica of el-Asaba (R. Bartoccini, in *Africa italiana*, 1929, p. 77). They appear facing a cantharus also in the pavement mosaic of the synagogue at Nora, today Hammam-el-Lif in Tunisia (E. Renan, *La mosaïque d’Hammam-Lif*, in *Revue arch.*, 3rd ser., 3-4 [1884], pp. 273-76, plates 7-8). At Rome they are also on the vault of a cubicle in the Jewish cemetery of the Vigna Randanini on the Via Appia, though this cubicle may originally have been pagan and later incorporated into the cemetery (R. Garrucci, *Storia dell’arte cristiana*, VI, Prato 1881, plate 580). In non-funerary art the pavone appears in museums such as on the vaults of the mausoleum of St Constance in Rome, in S. Matrona near Capua, in S. Vitale at Ravenna. At Vid near Narona (ancient “Narona”), in Dalmatia, a fragment of a low relief shows the two pavoni facing the vase (Fr. Bulić, *Di un antico bassorilievo con rappresentazione eucaristica*, in *Nuovo bull. arch. cris.*, 12 [1906], pp. 207-14).
It is often found on chancel screens, in S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna and at S. Vitale, also on the abaci of the capitals in the reliquary urn in the Museo civico at Verona, in the sarcophagus of the atrium of S. Lorenzo al Verano in Rome which has been reworked (Fr. H. Taylor *The Sarcophagus of St. Lorenzo*, in *The Art Bulletin*, 10 [1927]). Even on a lamp from Beirut (O. M. Dalton, *Early Christian Antiquities*, London 1901, p. 152, no. 835) and on a lead bucket found at Tunis (G. B. De Rossi, in *Bull. arch. cris.*, 5 [1867], pp. 77-87).