burial and funeral customs
Part of The Encyclopedia of Southern Italy.
burial and funeral customs: In Campania, it is still common to bury the deceased in a grave dug directly into the volcanic soil. The special properties of this soil dry out the corpse, and turn it into a mummy. Once the process is complete, the desiccated body is unearthed and placed into a family vault.
In the case of funerals for children there are a number of special practices. Near Bari, in Puglia, the parents and relatives follow the coffin at a short distance and periodically toss handfuls of sweets on it. In Sicily, the sound of church bells ring out joyfully during a child’s funeral. This latter practice appears to have come from Spain, where it is called la misa d’angel (the angel’s mass).
In 1823, it was recorded how the remains of the poor received little care or ceremony. At Naples a burial-ground (campo santo) was set aside for those who died in the public hospitals and paupers. Here were located 366 vaults, each sealed with a pile of lava rock. Each morning one of the vaults was opened and all of the bodies of the dead for that day were put there. The bodies, stripped of most of their clothing except for a small loincloth, were unceremoniously thrown in without any effort to position them. At nightfall the vault was sealed and another was opened on the following day. By the time all of the vaults were used, a year had passed. This was plenty of time for the remains of those interred earlier to dissolve and be replaced by a new batch. This practice was a survival of a practice used in Italy at least as far back as the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Roman writers like Varro, Festus, and Cicero mention puticuli, large trenches into which the dead bodies of the poor were thrown and left to rot away.
The Capuchin convent of Palermo includes a sort of catacomb in which the mummified remains of dead monks, still dressed in there robes, are hung by their necks along the walls. The four long subterranean corridors also cases or coffers containing the remains of local gentry and nobility who paid for the privileges to be interred there. Each of these coffers is locked and the keys held by the loved ones of the departed.