The Discovery and Exploration of the Jewish Catacomb of the Vigna Randanini in Rome Records, Research, and Excavations through 1895

A thick government file dating to the final years of the Papal State exists on the Jewish catacomb found in 1859 below land that had belonged until recently to the family of CDAS secretary Mons. Felice Profili. Known even today as the “catacomb of the Vigna Randanini” after the property owner who first made its discovery known, its excavation was treated with marked differences from those in the neighboring “Christian” sites, although the hard labor and primitive methodology employed in all such undertakings no doubt remained much the same. As a non-Christian site beyond de Rossi’s and the CDAS’s direct control, the catacomb was accessible to a different set of scholars eager to investigate rare material evidence of the Jews in ancient Rome. These men saw to it that the catacomb would never again be forgotten. But the catacomb’s rare fame and con tinued accessibility also led to unregulated exploitation and spoliation of the site. The lawsuit filed in 1870 against the Randanini for their illegal sale of Jewish artifacts by a bankrupt and nearly powerless Papal State contains the original excavation licenses, site reports, meeting minutes and other official communication on the Jewish catacomb between 1859 and 1870. What it best reveals, if anything, is the struggle of the Roman authorities to enforce legal measures to protect the city’s antiquities while encouraging what would otherwise not have been accomplished without funding from a private source. The drama that unfolds during the second half of the nineteenth century in this archaeological dig thus leaves modern visitors with a curious, though hardly complete, understanding of the site.2011 Roma Subterranea Judaica 5, Publications of the International Catacomb Societ