L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 10 L'Italo-Americano I n eighteenth-century Rome, the first days of November brought c r o w d s i n t o t h e churches to pray for the dead, but some of those v i s i t o r s a l s o w e n t u n d e r - ground, into burial chambers where they found something remarkably close to a theater. There were black curtains, cypress branches and painted scenery, with life-size wax fig- ures dressed to represent bib- lical stories, the lives of saints and, occasionally, the Last Judgment itself. The stages stood among actual tombs and human bones, and peo- ple came to see them during the Ottavario dei Morti, eight days of religious obser- vances beginning on Novem- ber 1. The displays became so popular that visitors could even pay a small donation and take home an engraving of what they had seen. The custom began in 1763 with the Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria dell'Ora- zione e Morte, whose mem- bers had been looking after Rome's forgotten dead for m o r e t h a n t w o c e n t u r i e s . Founded in 1538, the broth- erhood took responsibility for bodies found in the country- s i d e , r e c o v e r e d f r o m t h e Tiber or otherwise left with- o u t a n y o n e t o a r r a n g e a funeral. In a city where burial was largely a family's respon- sibility, the poor and uniden- tified could easily be denied that final service, so the con- fraternity collected them, arranged their funerals and recorded what it knew about them. Its registers show that between 1552 and 1896 the members buried approxi - m a t e l y 8 , 6 0 0 p e o p l e , a n extraordinary undertaking for an organization solely supported by religious devo- tion and charity. Their church on Via Giulia still makes its purpose clear before anyone reaches the d o o r : r e b u i l t i n t h e e i g h - teenth century by Ferdinando Fuga, Santa Maria dell'O- razione e Morte has a facade decorated with skulls, winged skeletons and funerary sym- bols, including the warning H o d i e m i h i , c r a s t i b i , o r "Today me, tomorrow you." The message belonged to the C h r i s t i a n t r a d i t i o n o f memento mori, the reminder that death comes to everyone, a n d i t s p r e s e n c e o n t h e church was hardly accidental, as the men who worshipped there spent much of their t i m e d e a l i n g w i t h t h o s e whom death had left without a family to claim them. During the Ottavario, the confraternity used its under- ground cemetery to explain w h a t t h e C h u r c h t a u g h t about death and the afterlife. A small stage was usually e r e c t e d i n t h e i n n e r m o s t chamber, called the Terra santa, where the walls were a l r e a d y d e c o r a t e d w i t h ossuaries and funerary sym- bols. Architects designed the settings, painters prepared the backgrounds and sculp- tors made the figures, some- times as many as ten of them, which were carefully dressed and arranged to illustrate a particular religious lesson. For visitors who could not read, or who understood a picture more readily than a sermon, the scenes gave rec- ognizable form to ideas about judgment, Purgatory, heaven and hell. And considering the surroundings, the message was unlikely to be forgotten. Other Roman confraterni- ties soon followed the exam- ple, and the annual displays became something of a com- petition, with each institution trying to produce an impres- sive scene; by the early nine- t e e n t h c e n t u r y t h e y w e r e attracting enough attention to be reported in the Roman press, and visits by popes and members of royal families added to their reputation. A visitor who contributed an o f f e r i n g c o u l d r e c e i v e a p r i n t e d e n g r a v i n g o f t h e arrangement, together with an explanation of its religious m e a n i n g , a p r a c t i c e t h a t proved invaluable to histori- ans: the Biblioteca Casa- n a t e n s e p r e s e r v e s 8 2 engravings connected with the Orazione e Morte, cover- ing 55 years of representa- tions, along with 24 explana- tory sheets. They show what the figures looked like, how the scenes were arranged, and how much artistic effort went into something intend- ed to stand for only a few days. Occasionally, however, the displays went considerably further than wax figures. A study published in the Stren- na dei Romanisti describes an extraordinary representa- tion of the Last Judgment staged in 1813 at the ceme- tery of Rome's Consolazione h o s p i t a l , w h e r e a c t u a l human bodies were report- edly arranged in different positions to suggest the dead rising from their graves. The same account records the testimony of a French travel- e r w h o , i n 1 8 1 1 , s a w a d e c e a s e d y o u n g w o m a n dressed and surrounded by flowers before burial. Such exhibitions were not neces- sarily part of the theatrical performances, and it would be misleading to imagine every Roman cemetery stag- ing scenes with real bodies; yet they show how directly death could be presented to the living, at a time when the dead were often kept within the religious and communal life of the city until burial. Something of this older way of commemorating the d e a d s u r v i v e d i n I t a l i a n c h u r c h e s l o n g a f t e r t h e underground theaters disap- p e a r e d . I r e m e m b e r m y brother, who was serving as a parish priest in Liguria at the t i m e , b r i n g i n g a n o l d catafalque out of his church's sacristy for the All Souls' Day Mass. It dated from the mid- dle of the nineteenth century a n d c a m e c o m p l e t e w i t h carved skulls and black velvet drapery. A catafalque was a raised funerary structure, sometimes representing a coffin when no body was pre- sent, and churches would surround it with candles and decorate it with the tradition- a l s y m b o l s o f m o r t a l i t y . Today such an arrangement might strike people as rather alarming, but its purpose was familiar to generations of Catholics: it reminded the congregation of those who had died and of their obliga- tion to pray for them. My brother's example had sur- vived for more than a centu- ry, waiting in the sacristy to be brought out again. In Rome, the theatrical representations continued regularly until 1870, when the end of papal rule and the city's transformation into the c a p i t a l o f a u n i f i e d I t a l y brought changes to its reli- gious institutions. Burial practices had already been changing, partly because of new public health regula- tions; the Verano cemetery opened for burials in 1836, and the confraternity gradu- ally had to adapt its work to the new arrangements. It continued burying the aban- doned dead until 1896, but much of its old underground cemetery was eventually lost during the construction of the embankments along the Tiber. A p o r t i o n o f t h e b u r i a l c o m p l e x s t i l l s u r v i v e s beneath Santa Maria dell'O- razione e Morte, where skulls and bones remain arranged in crosses and other decora- tions, including chandeliers. The theaters themselves dis- appeared, along with their wax figures and temporary s c e n e r y , a l t h o u g h t h e engravings collected by the C a s a n a t e n s e a n d o t h e r Roman libraries have pre- served many of the scenes. The visitors who paid for those little prints probably w a n t e d a s o u v e n i r o f a n impressive religious specta- cle; two centuries later, their copies are among the best r e c o r d s w e h a v e o f w h a t Rome's cemeteries looked like when the dead took the stage every November. D e a t h o n s t a g e : R o m e ' s f o r g o t t e n November theaters GIULIA FRANCESCHINI Carefully dressed and arranged, life-size wax figures represented biblical stories, the lives of saints and, occasionally, the Last Judgment (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI); inset: The Church of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, on Via Giulia in Rome, was historically associated with a confraternity dedicated to providing a dignified burial for the abandoned dead (Photo: Peter1936F / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) LIFE PEOPLE PLACES HERITAGE TRADITIONS

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