International Catacomb Society

The officers and directors of the International Catacomb Society are pleased to announce the Shohet Scholars of 2019-2020: Lily Vuong, Central Washington University: “The Apocryphal Mary in Text, Pictorial Art, and Iconography” This project examines the ways in which Marian Apocryphal material culture (mosaics, sculptures, ivory carvings, book covers, illuminated manuscripts, physical space of…

More than Just Mosaics: The Ancient Synagogue at Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee Saturday, 13 April 2019, 4:30 p.m. (reception to follow) Fordham University – Lincoln Center CampusSchool of Law BuildingRoom 7-119 (Hill Conference Room)150 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023 (map) Since 2011, Professor Jodi Magness has been directing excavations in the ancient…

The International Catacomb Society strives to increase knowledge about the interconnections between Judaism, Christianity, and the surrounding ancient world by issuing grants, sponsoring lectures, and disseminating information and publications. The attached brochure (in pdf) gives the essential information (a bird’s-eye view) of the work that the society does and the goals we would like…

The next Estelle Shohet Brettman Memorial Lecture will be held on Sunday, December 2nd, 2018 in the Remis Auditorium in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This year’s lecturer will be Bert Smith, Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University. Aphrodisias is one of the best-preserved Greek-Roman sites in modern Turkey.…

The Annual Directors’ Meeting of the International Catacomb Society was held on Saturday, 15 September 2018, in a meeting hall generously provided by colleagues at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, MA.  In addition to strategic planning for 2019 and various committee reports (scholarships, finance, website, and archives), elections were held for the society’s…

For what has become an annual ICS tradition to mark the Jewish New Year and High Holiday season, and in preparation for a big meeting of its board this coming week, the society reflects upon not only the past year of activity, but also a more remote period of its history, going back forty…

On 13 January 1980, right at the time the International Catacomb Society was being formed “to raise funds to preserve the Jewish catacombs of Italy”, society co-founder Estelle Shohet Brettman discussed her new exhibition on funerary art in the catacombs, “Judaism and Christianity in the Catacombs of Rome”, with journalists Sonya Hamlin and Frank…

The ICS learned only recently that Fabio Filippello, an ICS collaborator in the 1980’s, passed away in his native Rome on 12 February 2017. Mr. Filippello was the creator of a number of photographs of catacomb paintings and Early Christian and Jewish artifacts in museums and other collections included in the ICS exhibit “Vaults…

The International Catacomb Society is pleased to announce open source access to research on the Jewish catacombs of Rome conducted on site over many years by society founder, Estelle S. Brettman. Brettman, who died in 1991, left unfinished her lengthy monograph, “Vaults of Memory: The Roman Jewish Catacombs and Their Context in the Ancient Mediterranean…