d'Archeologia Sacra si rinnova. "Una task force per le cento catacombe d'Italia" (Carlo Carletti)
The Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology is renewed
A task force for the hundred catacombs of Italy
Carlo Carletti
For institutions successive seasons, which may be gray or bright, dynamic or static. To the Pontifical Commission for Archaeology
the past year, five years after the deceleration has been marked by a strong revival of its institutional activity: a new season of action, concrete actions, proposals and projects for the immediate future , included in a broader context is to be placed symbolically virtuous
sub temporibus antistitis Benedicti , secondo una formula già in uso nell'epigrafia romana dal tempo di Papa Giulio I (337-352).
Una nuova direzione di rotta, esito non casuale di un appropriato rinnovamento dei vertici dell'istituzione: un nuovo presidente, il cardinale Gianfranco Ravasi; un nuovo Segretario, monsignor Giovanni Carrù; l'inserimento di un soprintendente, Fabrizio Bisconti, cioè di una figura professionale - così come nelle istituzioni di tutela dei beni archeologici dello Stato italiano - specificamente destinata alla guida e al coordinamento delle attività e delle problematiche più propriamente archeologiche, connesse alla tutela, alla conservazione, alle indagini of that immense cultural heritage by more than one hundred Costituto catacombs of Rome and Italy.
In this view has been consistently involved in the renovation included the composition of the consultative body of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology
, modified for two-thirds of its staff. I'm joined the archaeological and epigraphic (Hugo Brandenburg, Carlo Carletti, Jean Guyon) but also specialists in the history of the Church, Patristics, philology (Enrico dal Covolo, Angelo Di Berardino, Giovanni Maria Vian), which are added the components already designated in the past decade (Rosa Maria Carra, Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Antonio Baruffa).
In questa articolazione di competenze, rappresentata dalle nuove scelte, emerge significativamente l'acquisita lucida consapevolezza della complessità storico-culturale di un insediamento catacombale, come "evento monumentale" specificamente cristiano nel suo carattere di spazio sepolcrale non conclusus, cioè "aperto" - dunque ideologicamente né gentilizio né corporativo ma comunitario - coerentemente inserito nella dimensione temporale che gli appartiene, che è quella fertilissima della tarda antichità.
Ed è in questo panorama storico-culturale che la comunità dei cristiani - anche attraverso i propri burial sites and practices, and devices connected to them - gradually begins to reveal its innovative and dynamic role in society of the time. Christians are not hiding in the catacombs and the specious idea is pure legend, meta-apologetics and openly, that the Roman authorities know of their existence. The broad concept of "criptocristianesimo" that so fascinated and influenced many scholars of the past, in his monumental evidence can be found the most illuminating and effectively denied.
It is therefore difficult to understand how a historical testimony of the many must necessarily be kept in the catacombs use an extensive and specialized range of integrated skills that ensure the protection, conservation and awareness. And actually the more in-depth historical and archaeological survey of the last fifty years has highlighted how the plurality of records kept in the catacombs is a veritable repository of historical knowledge, stored in a level playing field and chronologically defined.
A multitude of information that, through the production and epigraphic figurative, the grave goods, body types and characteristics of the burials and related arrangements for the funeral ritual, reflect - albeit indirectly - the processes through which passed the birth and formation of the Christian church in the centuries of Late Antiquity. This means approaching - also through the induced archaeological - the varied and multiple ecclesial aspects of daily life and therefore, mentalities, collective imagination, habits, attitudes, or in dialectical relationship of tension with the different levels of continuity or change in traditional Roman.
The concept of "historical" legitimately attributable to the universe-the catacombs, would prove to be pure abstraction in the absence of secular care (since 1851) secured to the catacombs by the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which, especially at times of dynamism - like the current one - has successfully worked to preserve and make available an "open book" as what historians - but also ordinary visitors if properly guided and informed - they can see, read and understand descending into the bowels of the catacombs of Rome and Italy.
The specific terms of this overall action have emerged in the final of the activity in 2010, presented at the plenary meeting of 21 February 2011: an institutional meeting - already included in chirograph of Pius IX - which had almost lost memory, because it no longer called from back in 2004, as he recalled with generous indulgence, but no puns, President Cardinal Ravasi in his opening speech.
During the past year the Commission's work has appeared in all its operational capabilities, with numerous and often complex interventions both in the catacombs of Rome and those of other sites in Italy. The problems faced are typical of the scope of monuments underground, where, besides the obvious damage caused by the inevitable passage of time, responsible for structural failure and instability, there is the insidious change in the microclimate of the original environment, caused by frequent visitors - very intense, especially in Rome - and sometimes by the presence of infiltration of stormwater and sewage fognari, nonché dalla insidiosa penetrazione delle radici della vegetazione sovrastante gli ambienti sotterranei.
L'incidenza, spesso sincronica, di questi fattori genera danni - talvolta irreversibili se non preventivamente valutati - ai reperti costituzionalmente più fragili, come le pitture ad affresco, alle quali il personale specialistico della Commissione ha riservato particolare attenzione, con un monitoraggio sistematico per la prevenzione e, laddove necessario, con operazioni di restauro e consolidamento.
In questa direzione risultati eccellenti sono stati raggiunti negli interventi sugli affreschi delle catacombe Domitilla: The entire plant decorative cubicle "bakers" and dell'arcosolio of "apostles small" regained complete readability even in details. In the cemetery on the way to Decimum Labicana the frescoes of the traditio legis, and the presbyter, brought the problem - not uncommon - the restoration of a previous restoration obviously poorly done: specifically the operations of the past - inspired by the malicious and now fully addressed criterion of "reconstruction" - were arbitrarily changed the characteristics of the figures painted themselves. In these operations were of course used the latest techniques of intervention, conceptually guided by the principle of so-called "minimum intervention". These same intervention procedures will be followed in the monumental Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples Capodimonte with the launch of a large and complex project for the conservation and restoration of numerous frescoes and mosaics, profoundly altered by the penetration tunnel of rainwater and sewage is not channeled into the sewage system. Initiative particularly challenging year in which the Commission will act in consultation and in collaboration with the Interregional public works of Molise and Campania, as delegated by the Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Culture.
special attention, the Commission also reserved the catacombs of Italy: the current state thirty-six settlements, generally small to medium size, located in Tuscany, Latium, Abruzzi, Campania, Sicily, in the western and eastern Sardinia. To these may be added in the near future ones - not yet available in the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology - located in Canosa (availability being formalized), Monteleone Sabino, Sutri, Anagni, Formello, Bolsena ("Le Grotte"), Avellino , Capua Vetere, Pianosa.
A monumental heritage of great consistency still little known, managed by the Pontifical Commission for the specially constituted through local inspectors. These peripheral units in 2010 have made ordinary and extraordinary maintenance and, where possible, archaeological survey, in the catacombs of Monte Stallone at Formello, Santa Cristina in Bolsena, Villa San Faustino in Massa Martana, Santa Caterina and Santa Mustiola Chiusi and, in Italy islands, in Syracuse cemeteries of Saint Lucia, Vigna Cassia, St. John and in the catacombs of Palermo Villagrazia Carini.
Over the centuries, the catacombs have gone through various vicissitudes which, among other effects, have caused a substantial loss of material, piled up in the past often without a whistleblower policy, without the appropriate cleaning and maintenance that the materials moving require. In this process, the Commission has planned a systematic campaign of close monitoring with a view to, where possible, accommodation or relocation of museum materials in their monumental contexts of belonging: what is in progress for many centuries the marble finds III -VII from the extensive catacomb of Priscilla and intended to be exposed in the context cemetery basilica of San Silvestro.
In their original context they belong return - after a thorough cleaning and reconstruction performed in the laboratory - the inscriptions from dall'ipogeo "mixed" (ie with pagan and Christian burials) of Trebius Right on Via Latina.
parallel with the primary activities of protection and conservation, the Commission continued the archaeological survey course, often caused by improvised events, as in the case of tunnels probably related to the cemetery of San Lorenzo, accidentally came to light in the square of the Verano during the laying of underground electric cables, or, as in the Catacombs of St. Agnes on the Via Nomentana, the need to free up some galleries distressed by the presence of invasive material is accumulated at summary action taken in the nineteenth and twentieth century, during which it still uses the undesirable pratica di riempire ambienti già noti e accessibili con le terre estratte dalle gallerie in corso di scavo.
Ma accanto a questi lavori direttamente funzionali alla tutela e alla conservazione sono proseguite anche le indagini strategiche, cioè espressamente mirate alla conoscenza storica di nuove realtà monumentali, come quelle tuttora in corso - su concessione del ministero dei Beni culturali e in collaborazione con la cattedra di Archeologia cristiana dell'università di Roma Tor Vergata - nella monumentale basilica circiforme della via Ardeatina che hanno consentito di riportare alla luce un nuovo settore della navata centrale e del deambulatorio. In questa stessa direzione - in collaborazione con l'École Française de Rome and the University of Bordeaux 1 - anthropological investigations have been undertaken on the skeletons deposited in the deeper layers of polyandry (collective graves) more returns in the central region of the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus on the Via Labicana.
The cultural value of an institution is also about the preservation of the history of its activity and its ability to maintain complete and available, even in the long term, all the "hidden job", no longer visible in finished work "on "achievements": the relationship of the excavation, reconnaissance, surveys, monitoring of the work sheets, notes - which are also useful - drawn a caldo con le impressioni e le suggestioni del momento, le riproduzioni fotografiche e a disegno. Una miniera di informazioni che spesso si rivelano preziosissimi supporti documentari per la ricostruzione della storia delle scoperte e anche, rispetto allo stato attuale, dei diversificati livelli di conservazione delle strutture e dei materiali.
Tutte queste informazioni sono oggi disponibili in formato elettronico in uno specifico sito della Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, nel quale si possono agevolmente consultare e studiare i verbali delle riunioni plenarie e gli indispensabili - per la scienza archeologica - Giornali degli Scavi dal 1851 a oggi.
Non solo un dossier dal puro valore memorial - to be retained, however, with the utmost care - but also an indispensable aid for archaeological research and historiography, which integrates itself with another major initiative: the indexing information in the possession of huge photographic documentation of the institution, now at an altitude of 40,000 units, which for the part relating to the entries will fit - through a special link - the specific database information on-line Christian inscriptions of Rome (Epigraph Databank Bari) included in the international consortium EAGLE (Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy).
Among the rarities preserved in this collection of photographic reproductions and graphics have a "cameo", worthy of special mention: the photographic plates of glass are made by John-Henry Parker was commissioned by Giovanni Battista de Rossi in the catacombs of Generosa and St. Alexander, when the light needed to impress plates was carried underground through a series of mirrors arranged in sequence in the skylights. Historically invaluable documents of a technologically distant past, that recall the pioneering experiments of plastically photographic reproduction undertaken by the founding father of the archeology of the catacombs.
(© L'Osservatore Romano, 9 March 2011)
