Bellarmino Bagatti

Bellarmino Camillo Bagatti (November 11, 1905 - October 7, 1990) was a 20th-century archaeologist and Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order.

Among his writings are:

• Excavations in Nazareth. Vol. II. From the 12th century until Today
• The church from the circumcision: history and archaeology of the Judaeo-Christians.

Among the discoveries Bagatti made are:

• that the town now known as Nazareth was no more than a small hamlet in the 1st century. John Dominic Crossan remarks that looking at the plans drawn up by Bagatti...one realizes just how small the village actually was^[1]
• that Saint Peter was buried in the necropolis under the modern Dominus Flevit Church, in Jerusalem; this conclusion was based on an ossuary found there, which proclaims the occupant to be Simon bar Jonah (corresponding to the Biblical Simon Barjonas,^[2] and which statistically is an extremely rare combination of names).^[3] This was at a similar time as the Pope claiming to have found evidence for Saint Peter's burial under the Vatican.

His thesis of the Church of Zion, Jerusalem (1976) gained the support of Emmanuel Testa but is not generally accepted by the majority of archeologists.

References

1. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus
2. Matthew 16:17
3. B. Bagatti and J. T. Malik, Gli Scavi del Dominus Flevit (1958)

External links

• : SBF Studium Biblicum Franciscanum