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This article offers a first study of the traffic of corpisanti catacomb relic-sculptures between Rome and sites in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Polish Livonia in the decades just before and during the Age of Partition (c. 1750-1800). The article firstly frames an overview of current knowledge on corpisanti more broadly against cases in Livonia and the Grand Duchy. It secondly provides a clearinghouse of secondary and primary source evidence on this topic, with particular attention to providing previously largely unpublished or under-studied texts pertaining to corpisanti cults in the north in translation, included as appendices. This article also presents a study in methods of collaborative scholarship in the pandemic era, investigating across distinct genres of source materials and material and artistic cultural heritage objects accessed via scholarly networks both in the field and online, representing historic sites and institutions in present-day Italy, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.

The paper provides a general context for the development of Sant’ Agnese in Agone. It reviews the different ways the cult of martyrs was introduced intra muros in late antiquity: links were established – under the control of the papacy – between cemeterial churches and Roman tituli, some places were associated with episodes of the life of Roman martyrs, non corporal relics were venerated, relics from the catacombs were introduced in intra muros shrines. The church in the Piazza Navona fits well with such developments, but, while mindful of the interest of the bishops of Rome in the cult of Agnes from Damasus to Gregory the Great, the author finally ponders the absence of any early textual reference to the church of Sant‘ Agnese in Agone and suggests the possibility of a private foundation.