What is it about?
Ugly Antiquities: Religion and Reason in the Catacombs of Rome” and “Sacra Selecta: Relic Invention and the ‘Science of Piety’” address the ties that effectively bind Christian Archaeology to the material record for Jews in Ancient Rome. They shed light on the mindsets and methodologies used to record individual and broadly scattered Jewish artifacts in various parts of Rome before de Rossi’s time. The historic presence of Jews in Ancient Rome was accepted without question. Yet the Jewish cultural relics primarily drew attention for their linguistic puzzles, ethno-cultural expressions, and apparent connections to period texts. Even so, what we might now view as an incomplete approach to data collection helps explain why the locations of all but one of the Jewish cemeteries were not public knowledge until de Rossi’s topographical surveys on the Via Appia beginning in the 1850s. Until then, the Jewish catacombs were collectively bound up in a monolithic Christian narrative and given a “specific sacredness” or dogmatic value, held captive to reason, in the perennial critic Mommsen’s terms.
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Why is it important?
The knowledge gap regarding ancient cemetery topography persisted into the late twentieth century. Not all the catacombs were documented and preserved. The vast majority of those that were excavated could not be easily seen. The Jewish catacombs fell into these categories. Meanwhile, the Jewish scholars most involved in this line of research did not have the institutional authority and funding to make excavations. The literary indicators, too, were extremely vague and, at times, even counter-current to the long-lived notions that the Roman Jews held about their collective past. The most Jewish scholars could do was wait, in a heightened state of vigilance and expectation, using the new freedom of the press across much of Europe to review and discuss the archaeological developments in Rome.
Perspectives
By the mid-nineteenth century, Rome’s dominance in classical scholarship was not guaranteed. In recent decades, scholars from other nations had begun exploring more ancient civilizations, diminishing the Romanocentric perspective of the field. In the process, an alternative universe was emerging along other Mediterranean shores. The “boasted catacombs” of Rome and Naples were reportedly dwarfed by more extensive labyrinthine structures, such as those in Malta. New perspectives on the chronology and occupation of catacombs— many of which were older theories revitalized by new associations and categorical roles, as well as a growing awareness of Egyptian, Greek, Near Eastern, and Etruscan civilizations—were critical of the Church’s reliance on prints and drawings of the catacombs from three centuries earlier. This reproval led to speculation that much of the evidence for the early Christian presence in the catacombs may have either disappeared or never existed.
Dr. Jessica Dello Russo, Ph.D.
North End Historical Society
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This page is a summary of: Ugly Antiquities: Religion and Reason in the Catacombs of Rome, September 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004735385_004.
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