Roma Subterranea Novissima. Volume I. PAOLO ARINGHI

Roma Subterranea Novissima. Volume I. PAOLO ARINGHI (1600-1676).
Volume I. In Latin.
Printers Vitalis Mascardi, Blasius Diversinus and Zanobius Masottus.
Good general state of preservation. Deterioration due to the passage of time.
Measurements: 42 x 29 x 10 cm.

The First Volume of Roma Subterranea Novissima, published in Rome in 1651, is one of the most significant works of the seventeenth century dedicated to Christian archaeology. Written by Paolo Aringhi, an Oratorian priest, this monumental publication is based on the pioneering works of Antonio Bosio, who is recognized as the "Christopher Columbus of the catacombs". Aringhi not only translates Bosio's unfinished work from Italian into Latin, but reorganizes, expands and illustrates it with a remarkable graphic richness, making it a fundamental reference for the study of the Roman catacombs and the first vestiges of Christianity.

The volume, printed in folio by the printers Vitalis Mascardi, Blasius Diversinus and Zanobius Masottus, has a binding typical of the period, often in parchment or leather, and opens with an engraved title page of great iconographic richness. Interspersed throughout the text are numerous intaglio illustrations that reproduce with remarkable accuracy funerary inscriptions, epitaphs, frescoes, reliefs and plans of the subway cemeteries of Rome. These images not only serve a documentary function, but also reflect the Counter-Reformationist spirit of the 17th century in its interest in legitimizing the antiquity of Christian worship through archaeological evidence.

The contents of the volume are organized into six books, in which Christian cemeteries, martyrs' tombs, funerary symbols and early Christian iconography are described. Aringhi strives to provide the work with a rigorous scholarly apparatus, including extensive patristic and epigraphic references, as well as a thematic and chapter index at the end of the volume. The work is written in humanist Latin, with a clear and solemn style, oriented to a learned ecclesiastical and academic audience.

Volume I of Roma Subterranea Novissima is much more than an archaeological treatise: it is a printed testimony to the devotional and scholarly fervor of its time, a work that combines the spirituality of subterranean Rome with Baroque rationality, and which laid the foundations of modern Christian archaeology.