ABSTRACT
On Sunday, 18 August 1901, receiving the archaeologists from the Commission for Sacred Archeology, Pope Leo XIII – after listening to the reports on all the investigations carried out in recent years in the hypogeous cemeteries of the countryside around Rome – said that the Roman catacombs were to be considered “the Cradle and the Archives of the Catholic Church”. In them, in fact, were preserved the most precious testimonies of the heroic age of persecutions. Emptied, with almost industrial rhythms, of the supposed relics of martyrs of the early centuries by ecclesiastical hierarchies, but also desecrated and destroyed by unscrupulous illegal treasures hunters, the underground catacombs knew – from the middle of the nineteenth century – a moment of renewed brightness thanks to the work of archaeologists who undertook scientific researches. Interrupted relics extraction, the dark galleries soon became a pilgrimage destination for devotees eager to tread,as was believed in the Middle Ages, those roads still rubricatae sanguine sanctorum.
