Corpse Theatre in the Sacred Spaces of Italy: Guest Post by Elizabeth Harper, All The Saints You Should Know Blog

Elizabeth Harper of the fabulous All the Saints You Should Know blog has some astounding details to add to the material covered in our recent post on Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses in 18th and 19th Century Italy. She kindly agreed to write the following guest post which expands on the idea in surprising ways.

All image credits listed below. Please click on images to see larger, more detailed version!

Corpse Theatre, by Elizabeth Harper

There’s a building that’s hard to overlook on via Giulia in Rome. It’s the one with laughing skulls over the door. 

On a marble plaque at eye level, a winged skeleton holds a spent hourglass over a fresh cadaver. The plaque reads “Alms to the poor dead, which they get in the countryside.”

  “They” is La Confraternita dell'Orazione e Morte, or the Confraternity of Prayer and Death. They were a group of Catholic laymen who buried Rome’s indigent dead and this building was their oratory.

Burying the dead is a particularly important Catholic ritual because burial is linked to the concept of purgatory. Purgatory is a place where heaven-bound souls undergo a final purification before entering heaven, but in Catholic imagery it can easily be mistaken for hell. Fire surrounds writhing nude bodies. This fire is supposed to cleanse the souls just like the grave eventually cleanses bones of rotting flesh. Appropriate, since sin and flesh are often inextricable, like in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he calls everything from drunkenness to sorcery a “sin of the flesh”. After purgatory, when sin and flesh are gone for good, the clean, white bones are considered at peace and safely in heaven, which is why skeletons like the one on the façade are often shown with wings. But conversely, no burial means no peace. Though it’s not entirely orthodox, folk traditions imply that the dead can find themselves stuck in a netherworld between this world and the afterlife if they’re not given a Catholic burial.

Migrant workers in the farms outside of Rome were particularly susceptible to this fate. Malaria could kill them in the midst of their work and without family or friends to tend to them, weather and animals could ravage their corpse. The brothers in the Confraternity of Prayer and Death made the trip out to the countryside by foot and gathered these bodies year-round. It could take them four days to carry the dead back to Rome on their stretcher. They did this from 1552 to 1896. Their handwritten ledgers indicate that they picked up at least 8,600 bodies during those 344 years. If they passed a parish churchyard they would bury the workers there, but if not, they would carry them back to their oratory on via Giulia.

Today, the nuns who use the oratory open it for just a few hours every week while they pray for souls in purgatory. If you happen to find the church open, a donation to the sisters yields access to the crypt where you can see the lifetimes of work done by the brothers before them. Down there, you’re likely to be alone. The erratic hours mean that unlike Rome’s famous Capuchin crypt, there’s no line of nervously giggling tourists. It’s just you, the bone chandeliers, the engraved skulls, an altar full of legs and arms, and somewhat ominously, a scythe.

The overall effect is a bit ramshackle because we’re only seeing salvaged pieces of the original crypt. When the Tiber embankments were added in the late 19th century, the majority of the crypt and the order’s cemetery were destroyed. Including, unfortunately, the crypt’s theatre.

The scythe is actually nothing more than a theatrical prop, but somehow that’s even more unnerving than the real thing.

Here are a few images of how it once looked:
  In 1763 the confraternity built a stage in their crypt. They started using the corpses they collected in tableaux staged for the public called sacred representations. If you’ve ever seen one of those Christmas manger scenes where a real Baby Jesus is depicted more or less in a petting zoo, you’ve seen a sacred representation. The only difference was the confraternity was using dead people, not farm animals. 

They staged a sacred representation every year for the week following All Souls Day. It started simply with “The Burial of Jacob”. A few flat paintings were used as scenery and a corpse played Jacob’s corpse. Specific death scenes were always popular, The death of Judith, Jezebel, and St. Paul were all staged along with a few more universal tableaux, like “the allegory that we all must die”.

Every year the productions became more elaborate. By 1790 they had life-sized wax figures playing the roles of the living, dressed in costumes designed for the occasion.  In 1802 when they staged “The Mountain of Purgatory” they built a mountain surrounded by candelabra. The figure of Justice was perched up high holding scales and a sword. Beneath him you could see souls in the flames of purgatory. One lucky soul was shown being lifted by a cherub and taken up to heaven. When staged with actual dead people, it’s hard to make a scene like this any more literal. The sacred representations were seen as a useful teaching tool that transcended language and literacy barriers.

Other churches in Rome like Santa Maria in Trastevere and the now deconsecrated cemetery chapel of the Lateran put on similar, though less elaborate tableaux. But another place that rivaled the Baroque stagecraft of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte was the hospital just across the Tiber—Santo Spirito.

If you visit Santo Spirito today, you won’t find a trace of the sacred representations, but there are eyewitness accounts and engravings of the shows that were performed in their graveyard starting in 1813. The confraternity there cared for the dead from the hospital and like the brothers at Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, they had access to a large number of unknown or unclaimed bodies. In the days before the medicalization of death, dying at home was considered preferable and a hospital death was often a last resort for people who were poor and alone.

After sunset, theses brothers would come collect the dead from the hospital and carry them out to the cemetery. There, they would open one of the hospital’s 24 mass graves and lower in the naked body with chains. The bodies would stay there, unless they were cast in a sacred representation. A particularly noteworthy performance in 1831 depicted the final judgment. The mass graves were opened and the freshest corpses were costumed and propped up beneath a wax angel blowing the last trumpet. Fortunately, Antoine Jean-Baptiste Thomas left us with an engraving of this particular dramatization.

Starting in the early 19th century, Rome’s confraternities started to get some pushback from the pope on their use of bone and corpses. The final nail in the proverbial coffin of corpse theatre was hammered in when Rome joined unified Italy in 1870. A strict ban on burying people in convents, crypts or hospitals was enforced for the sake of public health. One of the last sacred representations was done at Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte in 1880. The brothers there preformed the “Vision of Ezekiel” in secret knowing their cemetery and their performances were about to become a thing of the past. In the end, their customs were as ephemeral as human flesh. 

More on this topic can be found at the recent post Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses, 18th and 19th Century Italy by clicking here.

Image List

1.  Insignia, or stemma, of the Confraternita dell'Orazione e Morte
2. "Chapelle de l'Eglise de la Mort" Engraved by Francois Alexandre Villain after Jean-Baptiste Thomas, Wellcome Images
3-8. Photographs by Elizabeth Harper
9-13. Images of Orazione e Morte on via Giulia ; Photographs from the Archives from the Roman Society of Natural History
14. "Dramatisation of Purgatory" at Santo Spirito; Engraved by Francois Alexandre Villain after Jean-Baptiste Thomas

SOURCES: Amadei, Emma. "Il Culto Dei Morti Nella Roma Dell'Ottocento." Archivio Storico Capitolino. 1 Jan. 1957. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
L'Arciconfraternita Di S. Maria Dell'Orazione E Morte in Roma E Le Sue Rappresentazioni Sacre. Vol. 33. Rome: Roma, 1910. Print.

Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses, 18th and 19th Century Italy

Doing research for my upcoming book on the Anatomical Venus, I came across the following choice tidbit in the excellent Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (on which more here).

Italy, it explains, never developed a tradition of wax museums as we think of them; instead, it enjoyed a flowering of often macabre sacred waxworks located in confraternities devoted to caring for the dead. It continues:

Despite Italy’s lack of wax museums,the country can claim a pre-eminent role ... of transferring the profane popular amusements of such displays to pious representations that, for more than a century, attracted the devout and curious alike. They were set up by the various confraternities devoted to burying the poor and bodies that had been abandoned in the countryside… The oldest was the archconfraternity of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte… to enhance the solemnity of the octave of the dead in November, the association prepared musical oratorios, artistic biers and sacred representations. The latter were staged in the cemetery under the church, which, in 1762, the provveditore Agostino Ancidoni had decorated entirely with skulls and bones “artistically' arranged to create a lugubrious mise-en-scène. It was also at this time that the representations began to be staged…”

 ... an even more macabre representation was prepared in 1813 when, in the atrium of cemetery of Santo Spirito in Sassia, the scene of the Last Judgment was staged in a singular manner. Set at the feet of a wax angel sounding the trumpet to rouse the dead and call them to the Last Judgment, at the end of the pits were the real corpses of those who had died the previous night at the adjacent hospital. 

You can read more in Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax, edited by Andrea Daninos; find out more--or buy a copy!--here.

Image: Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, Rome; Dorli Photography on Flickr

For more on this topic, see Corpse Theatre in the Sacred Spaces of Italy: Guest post by Elizabeth Harper, All The Saints You Should Know Blog by clicking here.

On Saint Agatha and Preserved Breasts: Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Museum

Below is a guest post by Evan Michelson, board member of The Morbid Anatomy Museum and co-star of TV's "Oddities," from our recent trip exploring the history of the preservation and display of the human body in Italy. Text by Evan, and photo by myself.

Joanna Ebenstein shot this at the Museo di Anatomia Umana located in the medical school in Pisa, Italy. I am holding a human breast, preserved through mercury injection using the Mascagni technique; you can still see the metal glistening in the vessels running through the glazed, preserved skin. This specimen has an ancient and somewhat festive look; a cross between a holy relic and marzipan. It is typical of a certain school of Italian anatomical preservation where the line between anatomical didacticism and a more decorative, metaphorical presentation is often blurred.

In Italy, the healing powers of science and medicine often walk hand-in-hand with the miraculous, restorative powers of the saints. St. Agatha of Sicily, patron saint of breast cancer (among other things) is often depicted presenting her amputated breasts on a tray. It is said that Agatha was martyred for being a virtuous woman who refused the advances of a local Roman prelate; in the course of his retaliatory torture her breasts were torn off (a not-uncommon punishment for women, much documented during the Medieval period). St. Peter visited Agatha in her jail cell, where he miraculously restored her mutilated mammaries. 

Breast cancer surgery was frequently (but not always) fatal for most of recorded human history: the cancer was often found too late and the surgery itself, performed in highly unsanitary conditions, often led to serious complications. By the time a woman sought medical help, she was usually in great distress - obviously disfigured and/or in serious pain. A terrifying, risky visit to the surgeon was the only option left to her. It is only relatively recently that early detection and advanced surgical techniques have made seemingly-miraculous breast reconstruction a common occurrence. Anatomical collections like the one in Pisa had an important part to play in the progress of scientific and medical advancement. Mysterious, strangely decorative preservations like this breast are a part of that story.

You can read more of Evan's writings on her Facebook page by clicking here. You can find out more about the museum by clicking here.

Dream Summer Course in Florence? Museum Studies: Museum Origins Course; Applications Due April 1

Via The Attic:

Museum Studies: Museum Origins Course
Summer Course for MAs or PhDs in Italy

--Do you ever wonder why people collect things?
--How did 15th century private desires to own collections lead to the museum as we know it today?
--Why is Florence, Italy, considered one of the birthplaces of the modern museum?
--Find out this summer in Museum Origins!

June 10- August 3: An 8-week course that blends online learning with onsite investigation (in ITALY!) and scholarly research.

Open to current graduate students and alumni of master's or Ph.D. programs in any field from any college or university

Great for students in art, art history, literature, history, public history, anthropology, psychology, museum studies, library & information science, classics - all majors welcome!

• First three weeks: Course readings and discussions online.
• Middle two weeks: You go to "class" in museums in Italy.(How cool is
• that?!)
• Last three weeks: You write a research paper.
• After the course: An experience that lasts a lifetime.
• APPLY NOW! Applications are due April 1!

And more, from the Kent State website

Class limit: 15 participants
Open to: Graduate students at any institution
Alumni of any graduate program (master’s or Ph.D.)
NOW ACCEPTING UPPER-DIVISION UNDERGRADUATES FROM ANY INSTITUTION, ANY MAJOR! 

Itinerary in Florence:
Morning: Visits to museums
Afternoon: Discussions and lectures at Kent State Florence Palazzo de Cerchi

Course Description
While the collecting of objects can be found as far back as ancient times in various parts of the world, the birth of the modern museum finds its roots in Europe, especially in Italy. In the context of today’s world, students will “go back in time” to understand the origins of Western museums and the meaning of publicly shared collections through a series of competing dualisms in knowledge creation and organization. Students will explore the history of the modern museum and spend two weeks visiting actual sites and collections that played a role in this history. Exploring the past in this way is geared specifically to help today’s museum workers gain a better understanding of their own role and purpose in their community, society and nation.

This course is part of a Museum Studies specialization within the Master of Library and Information Science degree at Kent State School of Library and Information Science. Museums, like libraries, are in the information business. The museum studies courses at Kent State employ a holistic approach to the study of museums as institutions that generate and perpetuate knowledge. Students will gain an understanding of museums in context as dynamic, interactive information systems composed of people, objects, and activities. Because the SLIS courses are structured within a library and information science framework, students are able to cut across the spectrum of traditional academic disciplines, which strengthens the skills of future museum professional by giving them a broader perspective, a larger knowledge base, and more flexibility. Students in the Museum Origins class do not need to be in the M.L.I.S. program, but should understand this unique approach to the discipline of museum studies.

More here.

Image: "The Tribuna degli Uffizi," Johann Zoffany, 1772-1779; found here. Click in image to see larger, more detailed version.

Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze : Italy Trip Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Library

Following, please find one more guest post in which Evan Michelson (2nd photo, right hand side) of "Oddities" fame documents our recent trip through Italy researching the history of the preservation and display of the human corpse.

Here, her response to the amazing Florence pathology museum, or the "Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze"; interestingly, the fine and senstivie pathological waxes you see here were made in the early 19th century by the la Specola workshop, which also brought us Clemente Susini's unforgettable Anatomical Venuses:

The Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze is a happy example of a newly-renovated, early anatomical collection that has been well loved and cared for. The waxes, osteological preparations and wet specimens are all housed in their original, highly ornamental wood and glass display cases, making the place seem more like a treasury than a didactic collection of pain, healing and preserved suffering. Indeed some of the small, ornately jarred specimens, with their delicately handwritten labels are nearly indistinguishable from sacred relics.

The history of this collection goes back to 1824, with the founding of the Medical Society in Florence. It was always intended as a teaching tool for the medical students at the university, and the wax models here are some of the most beautiful examples of the ceroplast's art. The casts were individually commissioned by the anatomy professors and executed by some of the most renowned wax workers of Florence. The result is a 3D catalogue of benign and cancerous tumors, burns, venereal infections, abnormal growths and congenital birth defects, all rendered with the greatest loving care and verisimilitude. The full-sized wax leper could be a saint in any church, his suffering as profound as any wax Christ.

Our guide Gabriella Nesi (2nd image, left; a professor of pathology who has taken the museum under her wing) was particularly eager to point out the models of before-and-after facial reconstructive surgeries, which demonstrated the progress of 19th century plastic surgery by recording not only the sutures and healing wound sites, but the more subtle details like post-surgical stubble on a shaved head. The results are strangely intimate, and we were surprised to learn that many of these models were not only cast from actual patients, but that the museum still has most of the case histories. It is rare to know the story behind any given wax medical model - once a thing has a name, it all becomes unavoidably real.

Although the wax models themselves are breathtaking, it was the presentation of some of the smaller waxes, housed in delicate paper and glass boxes, that drew our attention. These preparations, although clearly intended for a scientific audience, utilize the decorative, visual language of spiritual offerings. Indeed, many of the wax modelers of the 19th century functioned in both the religious and the didactic realm, and the result is a transcendent form of visual art that straddles the spiritual and the scientific, lending the anatomy itself an air of great mystery.

You can find out more about the museum by clicking here; you can see more photos by clicking here or here. You can read future posts by Evan both on this blog and on her Facebook page, which you will find by clicking here. All photographs are my own. Click on images to see larger version.

Cimitero delle Fontanelle and "The Neapolitan Cult of the Dead" or "The Neapolitan Skull Cult" of Naples, Italy

Whilst in Naples recently, I spent many hours exploring and photographing the enigmatic and fascinating Cimitero delle Fontanelle, epicenter of what is known as "The Neapolitan Cult of the Dead," or "The Neapolitan Skull Cult." In this vast underground ossuary you will find, among the usual piles of bones, tiny stuctures--some with text engraved, others draped in rosaries and embellished with prayer cards--enshrining chosen skeletal bits. To the uninitiated, their meanings are unclear.

One invaluable source in trying to decipher the meaning here was the work of author/scholar/photographer Paul Koudounaris of Empire of Death fame; he explains the cult thusly in his Fortean Times article "Sisterhood of the Skulls" (excerpted below; click here to read article in its entirety):

...One of [Naples'] greatest enigmas was a strange cult, composed almost exclusively of elderly women who communed with the dead, lavishing their attention on, and even making offerings to, human skulls.

The cult was centred on a cemetery known as the Fontan­elle... A curious cult dedicated to the remains began to evolve around the site, especially after 1872. In that year, Father Gaetano Barbati had large deposits of bones exhumed, and the skulls were cleaned and placed on racks or in troughs, where they took on the role of devotional items for this death-obsessed group. There was no formal organisation to this cult, but it rapidly grew popular with older women, especially widows or those with little or no family. They claimed to receive messages from the deceased in their dreams, and would then “adopt” whichever skull they believed had belonged to the spirit that had contacted them, becoming in effect a kind of caretaker of not just the remains but also the soul of the dead person. They would clean and care for their skulls, even constructing engraved marble shrines for them. These boxes might enclose a single skull, or multiples if the same person adopted more than one.

Cult devotees would bring flowers and gifts as offerings for their chosen crania, and address them by name. The dead at the Fontanelle were of course anonymous, but this army of old ladies claimed the skulls would reveal their true names to their benefactors. In return for this doting care, the deceased would grant favours to their devotees, who would petition the skulls for assistance in a variety of forms – through dreams, direct conversation, various forms of telepathy, or by writing their requests on small slips of paper, which would be rolled up and inserted into the skulls’ eye sockets.

The shrines in which adherents housed their adopted charges were frequently inscribed with messages thanking the skulls for various favours or services; usually the inscriptions were simple, something along the lines of “Per Grazie Recev­uta” (thanks for what was given). But they could be more elaborate, even containing names. The inscribed names were not those of the deceased, however, but rather those of the skulls’ benefactors. The devotees were highly possessive of their skulls, and the shrines were not intended solely to show gratitude to the deceased, but also to mark a specimen as having been adopted, a sign to potential rivals that they should find their own skull and not commune with remains which were already spoken for. Some of the boxes even included doors with locks and chains, as some people didn’t want anyone else to be able even to look upon their skulls...

The members of the “necrophiliac” group based on the Fontanelle were not so interested in these more orthodox types of religious sentiment, however. Their devotions were primarily inspired by a different and surprising mechanism: lottery numbers. One might beseech the dead for any number of favours, but the typical requests made of the skulls at the Fontanelle, on which all this devotion was lavished, centred on an obsessive desire for precognition of winning lottery numbers...

The aid of the bones would also be beseeched when family and friends were ill, or to help with various dom­estic problems. One skull, considered to be “public property,” was understood to aid infertile women. Young women who could not bear children were encouraged to come to the cemetery and caress it – with the consequence that it became the most smoothly polished skull in the ossuary, as generat­ions of women rubbing it over in the hopes of getting pregnant left it, even today, with an almost supernatural sheen. Another skull is enshrined in a box inscribed with the owner’s thanks, and the date “6 September, 1943”. In fact, that was the date of the heaviest allied bombing of Naples in the war. During air raids, the Fontanelle became a makeshift bomb shelter, especially for devotees of the site who found strength and hope in the presence of their adopted skulls. As the bombs fell on 6 September, someone apparently begged a particular skull for protection, and attributed her own survival to its powers, rewarding it with a shrine.... 

As far as the Roman Catholic Church was concerned, the cult based on the Fontanelle was wholly unacceptable. If this was all just superstition, it had degenerated into a form of heathen fetishism, and if any of the stories about mysterious occult happenings were true then it was something even worse. The Church became convinced that the place would have to be shut down; the only surprise is that, perhaps fearing a local backlash, it took them until 1969 to actually do it, when Card­inal Corrado Ursi ordered the premises perm­anently closed. The Fontanelle languished after its closure, and by now most of the devotees of the site have passed on and become what they once adored. For brief periods, it has been open for tourism, but even that is no longer permitted, and it now receives few visitors – mostly just scholars and VIPs. “But we do get some Satanists who break in and hold Black Masses down here, and we have to chase them out,” Alamaro acknowledges...

Another source for getting deeper into this enigmatic practice--especially the pagan/Catholic aspects, which particularly intrigued me-- was the article "The Fontanelle Cemetery and the Skull Cult in Contemporary Naples," sent to me by Sicilian anthropologist Dario Piombino-Mascali, his co-contribution (with Albert Zink) to the exhibition catalog Schädelkult: Kopf und Schädel in der Kulturgeschichte des Menschen. Following is an excerpt from that article via Google Translate (from the German); I did my best to streamline the text into something readable; when I was not sure of the meaning, I kept the original Google Translated text in quotes.

In the Campania region of Italy, traces of a cult with roots in pre-Christian beliefs has been preserved. The so called Skull Cult is a merger of the ancient with the Catholic religion; it exists independently of the official faith, with its own principles and values. Every Monday--a day once dedicated to Hecate, goddess of the moon and mistress of the underworld--believers descend to the tombs and ossuaries of the city. The process is a vestige of pagan heritage.
The most obvious manifestation of this takes place at the Fontanelle Cemetery, located in an ancient tuff mine in the historic Sanità district, very close to a pagan and later Christian Cemetery...

Visitors to the Fontanelle Cemetery these days are touched by the immense quantity of bones and skulls, or capuzzelle in the Neapolitan dialect. There are the human remains, the cult of the skull, the culto delle capuzzelle, the Fontanelle Cemetery and at other Tombs of the city alive.

These anonymous skulls embody the idea of ​​the the souls in purgatory, whose worship is a Neapolitan folk rite is of great importance. Believers think of them as mediating between the world of the here and the hereafter. Prayers are dedicated to the abandoned souls, popularly called le Anime Pezzentelle, in order to alleviate their pain, in exchange for promises of a returned help to the prayer. The believer thus concludes with the anima pezzentella an agreement that compassion and obligations to the other presupposes and is based on a shared sense of still determines the actions of the Neapolitans.

Anonymous Souls to help make as if it is their own nationals would act, they are in fact the male morti, the poor Dead, where the faithful allow refrisco - a relief from their suffering through prayer. It is generally noted that the skull cult always begins the same way: a worshipper chooses her soul of a dead person "Intercessor on earth made by him in a dream and the will Situation of the skull inside the cemetery reveals " In this way will create a physical adoption of the capuzzella instead. The phenomenon of skull adoption occurs first between the two world wars; the skull is cleaned placed in display cases that range from boxes to fruit boxes or cookie jars from. The skull is treated as care and prayer objects, in turn, promised the believer grace, prayers or even luck.

In the showcases were also messages and "Votivbildchen", a process that very close to the veneration of saints occurs. Oral sources suggest that the skull cult began in 1709 after the body of the Holy Candida, an early Christian martyr from Naples, was buried together with the remains of another anonymous and forgotten "geratenen" found early Christians. While the souls of the heavenly spheres were traditionally considered unreachable, those in purgatory was perceived as relatively close, as purgatory represented the lowest level on the way to paradise and therefore nearer the earthly sphere. By worshiping the anonymous skull a direct contact with death was attempted. "Worship cult that was the foundation of a Community Ethics and solidarity with the most vulnerable in society." On Earth, the needy were the lively correspondence with the Le Anime Pezzentelle, as in the case of the so-called poor St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples, who had the task of accompanying funeral processions. Thus, a connection between  the living and the dead were created, by their common traits "Ausgegrenztsein her and her neediness" - the disinherited of this world to which deputies are allowed to ask for help from those in the next life

"The skull, or capuzzelle, are symbolic of individuals who died a cruel death. It is therefore likely that men who dies in the plague most worshiped. In 1685 Father Domenico D'Alessandro writes from Dominican order, nothing more solvent from divine wrath as the failure to assistance to the souls in purgatory. It is therefore necessary, both to souls in purgatory to gain relief and the poor of the earth to give alms, for the the latter are, as already mentioned, the deputy for the dead."

If you want to know more, you can visit the Morbid Anatomy Library to spend some good time with the wonderful book/exhibition catalog Schädelkult: Kopf und Schädel in der Kulturgeschichte des Menschen, recently donated by longtime friend of the library Ryan Matthew Cohn. If you are in and around London, I also invite you to come out on June 10th to see filmmaker Chiara Ambrosio speak on the Neapolitan Cult of the Dead as part of the lecture series I am organizing at The Last Tuesday Society taking place this June and July; more her lecture here, and on the entire series here. You can also read Paul Koudounaris' entire article "Sisterhood of the Skulls" by clicking here, or check out his invaluable (and beautiful) book Empire of Death by clicking here.

All photos are my own; you can see many more images from the Cimitero delle Fontanelle by clicking here or here.