Unrecorded etching: Gregorian Masses for the dead in Verona.

[Gregorian Masses] / [Verona] / [Archconfraternity of the SS. Suffragio]. Adí [17 di Marzo] Anno [1801] è Morto [il M.o Rd.o D. Francesco Filippi Arcip.te] Vostro Confratello della Ven. Archiconf. Del Ss:mo Suffraggio posta nella Chiesa di S. Gregorio… S.l. [likely Verona]: s.n., s.a. [dated in manuscript 6 June 1801]. [19.4 x 13.7 cm the sheet; 13.8 x 10.0 cm the platemark], [1] f. etching, completed in manuscript, manuscript annotations on verso. Marginal loss to bottom left corner, a few minor stains.
 
 
Unrecorded etching depicting Gregory the Great interceding with the Virgin & Child on behalf of souls burning in Purgatory. The sheet was distributed by the Archconfraternity of the SS. Suffragio at San Gregorio in Verona to its members, who were obliged to fund ‘Gregorian Masses’ for the souls of their recently deceased confraternity brothers. Members were to return the completed form to the Archconfraternity to confirm that they had fulfilled their duties. 
 
This example records that a certain Francesco Filippi died on 17 March 1801 and that a certain F. Angelo Samito [?] was paid to sing a mass for his soul in the church of S. Fermo Maggiore (Verona). On the verso is the name of Marchese Gabriel Dionisi of Verona, who both funded the mass and returned the etched form with 2 soldi of alms to the confraternity, as the etched text requests.
 
The image heading the sheet shows the chain of intercession from the Virgin & Child, to St. Gregory, to (somewhat unusually) a clerical figure who tries to douse with water the flames of Purgatory engulfing five unhappy faces (i.e., souls). A church is depicted in the distance.
 
“The importance of pope Gregory the Great in the genesis of the idea of purgatory has long been highlighted by writers about the afterlife. His contributions to the idea of the effectiveness of suffrages for the dead and to the existence and location of purgatory have been seen as decisive by historians studying both the development of purgatory and the commemoration of the dead” (Dunn, p. 238).
 
 
This etched form is unrecorded elsewhere (OCLC, KVK, OPAC/ICCU), and examples of similar forms from other churches are quite rare. Such documents served little purpose after money had been collected, masses were celebrated, and souls received their relief from purgatory, and so they typically soon were discarded.
 
*Marilyn Dunn, “Gregory the Great, the Vision of Fursey and the Origins of Purgatory,” Peritia, vol. 14 (2000), pp. 238-255; Richard Matthew Pollard, Imagining the Medieval Afterlife.