Death is supposed to be the great leveller as no one can avoid it, but the social hierarchy of the living often tries to endure, imposing itself even after death. The Pharaohs’ sarcophagi and painted burial rooms, the terracotta armies near Xi’an, and Mayan temples honoured their leaders. Modern graveyards such as La Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires house the elite in alleyways of Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Baroque, and Neo-Gothic style vaults. The Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris hosts artists, philosophers, scientists and other notables with dedicated marble statues. My favourite is the sacred Buddhist site of Koyasan Okunoin for monks, warlords and elite families, set among its moss-covered rock lanterns and towering cedar trees.
These all deserve reams of articles, but I want to focus here on the catacombs in Naples, the Catacombe di Napoli, comprising the Catacombe San Gennaro, which started to be built in the 2nd century and was named after Naples’ patron saint in the 5th, and the Catacombe San Gaudioso, which began in the 4th century and lies under the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità.
The San Gennaro catacombs are eerie and beautiful, with their three generous arches and common spaces adorned with frescoes and mosaics from the 2nd century to the Byzantine paintings of the 9th and 10th. Multi-stack resting places have been hewn into the walls for the dead. The poor were buried in the ground or in specially cut niches in the walls. The rich had individual corners with decorated arching vaults above their resting places. They were called arcosolia – arco for the decorated arch, and solia for the thrones, which includes the sarcophagi inside and generally a flat rock on top, enabling a private mass.
In the common hall, there is a fresco depicting the biblical scene of Adam and Eve and a giant, looming snake, presumably to remind the dead of their original sin. One private arcosolium’s frescos include a peacock and doves to keep the dead company. Another, dedicated to the 6th-century family of Theotecnus, boasts frescos showing quality clothing and ornaments, underlining the family’s social status. It was painted in three layers, perhaps repainted with each death in the family.
In others, monks and priests stand vigil, forever blessing the patron’s onward journey, possibly trying to increase the likelihood of their arrival in Heaven rather than the “other place.”
In the Catacombe di San Gaudioso, they went further. The rich, if they or their families made very considerable contributions, could get their skulls encrusted in the walls, facing out to see or be seen, and still play a part in society, even if dead. One had a skeleton made of compositions of collected bones. Many others had skeletons painted as frescos. The heads were real, chosen as it was believed that they housed the soul.
Those who made the largest contributions had frescoes of clothes to indicate their station – painted by Balducci. Disturbingly, the front parts of the skulls crumbled away, and we now can see only the hollow cavern of their skulls. Their attempts at being honoured for their social status were eroded by time. See also the article: Is this the world’s most macabre art gallery?
Now for the more disturbing part: the draining ritual for the nobles and clergy. The newly dead was lowered through a trap door in the ceiling (from the crypt of the basilica above) to the schiattamuorto, the undertaker given the task of draining the corpse. The schiattamuorto cut holes in the corpse to enable the cadaveric fluids to drain out and set the body in a niche called seditoi (i.e. sitting), with an opening at the base for remaining fluids to flow away. Once the body was emptied, the schiattamuorto cleaned it and left it to desiccate, beheading it if its owner’s head was to adorn the walls. Finally, the bones were washed and laid to rest. The work was done by prisoners or monks their superiors judged as needing to be taught a lesson.
Fortunately, the practice has long passed, and the catacombs do not assault our senses, at least not our sense of smell. But our minds reel at the lengths to which the elite would go to insist on maintaining their social hierarchy even in death.
Access to the catacombs is relatively recent and thanks to the efforts of the La Paranza Cooperativa. This social cooperative was inspired by Don Antonio Loffredo, the parish priest at the Basilica of Santa Maria della Sanità, who initiated the movement of engaging youth to help rejuvenate the Sanità region of Naples, retore past and create new local cultural heritage. While I’ve focused here on the Catacombe di Napoli, they also attracted and worked with the sculptor Jago to create an exhibition in the Chiesa di Sant’Aspreno ai Crociferi (see Marble Sentinels) and painters to capture the community in giant blue mural paintings in the Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena ai Cristallini, this time not celebrating the rich and dead, but the local and alive and the people who make up the community.
Go to Naples, visit the Catacombe di Napoli and explore the range of uniquely restored churches in the Rione Sanità thanks to the efforts of La Paranza Cooperativa and supporting artists.
