Masses for Madre Maria Rospigliosi at San Gregorio Magno in Rome. Unrecorded.

[Rome] / [Masses for the Dead] / [San Gregorio]. Io infrascritto ho ricevuto dal … scudi … per far celebrare nella nostra antichissima, e privilegiatissima Chiesa di S. Gregorio di Roma Messe cantate… [Rome], s.n., [dated in manuscript 16 June 1725]. Single sheet [20.9 x 13.8 cm], [1] f. letterpress form completed in manuscript, with woodcut of St. Gregory. Small marginal burn hole, otherwise very well preserved. 
 
 
Unrecorded 18th-century letterpress form printed for the Roman church of San Gregorio Magno al Celio to record payments made for the celebration of masses for the dead. From the Middle Ages, it was common for individuals to pay priests to sing or recite prayers for the dead, and there was, of course, a bureaucratic system for accounting for these orders and payments, a witness of which is this form. 
 
The masses ordered here were purchased on 13 June 1725 by a certain Abbate Antonio Paluzzi from the sacristan at San Gregorio, a Camaldolese monk named Albertino Vanini, and were to be celebrated for the soul of a certain Reverenda Madre Maria Anna Teresa Rospigliosi. I have been unable to trace the figure of Maria Anna Teresa Rospigliosi, but her prominent surname would suggest that her identity might be revealed with more looking.
 
The woodcut on the form depicts Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) at his writing desk receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Faintly visible in the background are souls emerging from the flames of purgatory though the saint’s intercession.
 
Copies of this letterpress form are 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.