UGONIO, POMPEO. — Priest, born in Rome around the middle of the sixteenth century, died there on 28 April 1614 and was buried in the old sacristy of the Vatican Basilica.
He was educated by the Jesuits, then a beneficed cleric of the Vatican Basilica before 1573, and from 1587 a lecturer at the Roman Archiginnasio. In 1588 he published in Rome the Historia delle Stationi di Roma che si celebrano la Quaresima, in which, besides the lives of the Saints to whose churches the station is assigned, he discusses the origins, foundations, rites, restorations, relics, and history of these churches, both ancient and modern. In the preface to this work he mentions that from childhood he had devoted himself to collecting information about the churches of Rome and taking notes on them, as is demonstrated by the manuscripts prepared for a Theatrum Romanae urbis. G. B. De Rossi identified one of these, half preserved in cod. Vaticano Barb. lat. 1994 (fols. 1–692) and half in the Biblioteca comunale of Ferrara (cod. 1619, 1, 18, fols. 693–1400). It contains much valuable information about the churches of Rome, which was used by G. B. De Rossi, E. Müntz, A. Frothingham, and G. Wilpert. Even more valuable are his manuscript notes, preserved in the Bibl. Vaticana, since his observations predate the transformations undergone by the Roman sacred buildings from the end of the sixteenth century onward; also noteworthy is a copy of the Catalogo delle chiese di Roma by N. Signorili, with chronological and topographical annotations. Furthermore, P. U.’s diary shows that he was responsible for initiating the exploration of the ancient Christian cemeteries of Rome, begun on 15 November 1593 in the crypts of the Agro Verano together with the diciannovenne e juvene Antonio Bosio, his pupil at the Roman Archiginnasio. These notes show that P. U. and Antonio Bosio visited parts of the cemeteries of S. Lorenzo, S. Sebastiano, Domitilla, Trasone, Priscilla, Panfilo, and S. Valentino, copying inscriptions and making rough drawings of the paintings.