Hic requiescit papa.

Le iscrizioni funerarie dei papi nella basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano (V-XII secolo)

Forty-two funerary epigraphs of popes buried in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican are collected and presented in this volume, in a chronological period between the 5th and the 12th century, i.e. between the pontificate of Pope Leo the Great (440-461) and that of Pope Eugene III (1145-1153).

The work analyses the relationship of the epigraphic texts with the tombs and the topographical context of reference, on the one hand, and the textual references (literary, scriptural, historical, poetic) contained in the inscriptions, on the other.

The monograph intends to offer to the studies of Church History a tool for the use of material sources (the epigraphs), which assume the double value of document-monument, analysing the text and the context in which they are received.

The epigraphic text briefly describes the activity of the Bishop of Rome; the context is that of the burial of the pontiffs ad sanctum Petrum, visibly manifesting the petrinitas of the Church of Rome.