STYGER, PAUL. — Archaeologist, born at Schwyz (Switzerland) on 27 September 1889 and died at Lucerne on 14 May 1939. After six years of study at the Maria-Hilf College in Schwyz, in 1906 he entered the Pontifical German-Hungarian College in Rome; ordained a priest in 1913, he became chaplain that same year at S. Maria in Campo Santo in order to devote himself to Christian archaeology.
His first studies were: Neue Untersuchungen über die altchristlichen Petrusdarstellungen, in Röm. Quartalschr., 27 (1913), pp. 17–74; Die neusutdeckten mittelalterlichen Fresken von S. Croce in Gerusalemme, ibid., 28 (1914), pp. 17–28; Die Malereien in der Basilika des hl. Sabas auf dem Kl. Aventin, ibid., pp. 49–96; La Schola cantorum della chiesa di S. Saba, in Studi romani, 2 (1914), pp. 224–28; La decorazione a fresco del XII sec. della chiesa di S. Giovanni ante Portam Latinam, ibid., pp. 261–328; Die neuere Erforschung der altchristlichen Basiliken Roms und deren Wiederherstellung, in Röm. Quartalschr., 29 (1915), pp. 3–25; Die Christustatue im römischen Thermenmuseum ibid., pp. 27–28.
Mons. Antonio De Waal commissioned him, together with D. O. Fasiolo, to supervise the excavations he had begun on 16 March 1915 beneath the pavement of the basilica of S. Sebastiano; S. studied the entire complex with great diligence and issued the first reports on it in Scavi a S. Sebastiano (Röm.
Quartal., 29 [1915], pp. 73–110); Gli apostoli Pietro e Paolo ad Catacumbas sulla Via Appia (ibid., pp. 149–205); and subsequently in a thorough report: Il monumento apostolico della Via Appia (Dissertaz. della Pont. accad. rom. di arch., 2nd series, XIII, 1 [1918], p. 1 suppl.). After Mons. De Waal’s death in 1917 and the suspension of the excavations at S. Sebastiano, S. returned to Switzerland. In 1919 he was called to the University of Warsaw to teach ecclesiastical history and archaeology, where he taught until 1932. He subsequently published: Die erste Ruhestätte der Apostelfürsten Petrus und Paulus an der Via Appia in Rom (Zeitschr. für kath. Theol., 45 [1921], pp. 549–72); Der heutige Stand und die künftige Aufgabe der christlichen Archeologie (Schweiz. Rundschau, 23 [1923], pp. 193–208); Die altchristliche Grabeskunst (Leipzig 1927), in which he maintained that primitive Christian funerary art was purely narrative, a thesis immediately rejected by L. Lother, J. P. Kirsch, and many others. Through a series of penetrating analyses and a profound examination of the monuments, he published: L'origine delle cripte di Lucina (Atti della Pont. accad. rom. di arch., Rend., 3rd series, 3 [1924–25], pp. 269–87); L'origine del cimitero di S. Callisto sulla Via Appia (ibid., 4 [1925–26], pp. 91–153), in which he maintained that this cemetery was originally founded solely for the burial of the Roman clergy. L'origine del cimitero di Domitilla sull'Ardeatina (ibid., 5 [1928], pp. 89–144); L'origine del cimitero di Priscilla sulla Via Salaria (Leopoli 1931). These preparatory studies served as the basis for the work Die römischen Katakomben (Berlin 1933), in which the topography of the principal Christian cemeteries of Rome is presented; the author sought to locate and confine their origins to the imperial freedmen de Caesaris domo. S. rightly modified some of the datings proposed by G. B. De Rossi, O. Marucchi, and G. Wilpert. He also illustrated the crypts of the Roman martyrs in Die römischen Märtyrergrüfte (Berlin 1935). His last published study was Heidnische und Christliche Katakomben (Pisciculi, Studien zur Religion und Kultur des Altertums, Münster in V. 1939, pp. 266–75). He was preparing a work on the history of early Christian art when death interrupted II.