PROFUMO, ATTILIO. - Archaeologist and historian, b. in Genoa in 1859, d. in Rome in 1945.
He first studied architecture in Naples, then, having moved to Rome, he devoted himself to historical studies; he was editorial secretary of the periodical Il Bessarione, and took part as vice-secretary in the Second International Congress of Christian Archaeology in Rome in 1900. He is the author of the extensive volume Le fonti ed i tempi dell'incendio neroniano, Rome 1905; he was president of the steering committee of the periodical Studi romani, where he published Un battistero cristiano dell'anno 140 ca. (1 [1913], pp. 71-160), attempting to identify in the so-called Greek Chapel, in Priscilla, a eucharistic hall to which the neophytes baptized nearby would have been admitted. In the same periodical are Una nota alla lettera del 177 delle Chiese di Vienna e Lione (2 [1914], pp. 121-34) and on La memoria monumentale « in catacumbas » degli apostoli Pietro e Paolo (2 [1914], pp. 415-70). In 1916 his study appeared on La memoria di S. Pietro nella regione Salario-Nomentana (in Römische Quartalschr., 21 Supplementheft, Rome 1916), with an analysis of the Passio Marcelli and the Gesta Liberii and the proposal to recognize a liturgical character in the seats of the "coemeterium maius". He was a member of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology and of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology.
Enrico Josi