The Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology (Italian: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra) is an official board of the Vatican founded in 1852 by Pope Pius IX for the purpose of promoting and directing excavations in the Catacombs of Rome and on other sites of Christian antiquarian interest, and of safeguarding the objects found during such excavations. In 1925, Pope Pius XI declared that the Commission was Pontifical and its competen...
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The Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology (Italian: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra) is an official board of the Vatican founded in 1852 by Pope Pius IX for the purpose of promoting and directing excavations in the Catacombs of Rome and on other sites of Christian antiquarian interest, and of safeguarding the objects found during such excavations. In 1925, Pope Pius XI declared that the Commission was Pontifical and its competencies were defined in detail and reaffirmed recently in the conventions between the Holy See and the Italian State.
At that period Giovanni Battista De Rossi, a pupil of the archæologist Giuseppe Marchi, had already begun the investigation of subterranean Rome, and achieved results which, if confirmed, promised a rich reward. In a vineyard on the Appian Way he discovered (1849) a fragment of a marble slab bearing part of an inscription, "NELIVS. MARTYR", which he recognized as belonging to the sepulchre of Pope Cornelius, slain in 253, whose...
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