[Some Notes on the Fencing of the Non-catholic Cemeteries in Leghorn]. Livorno in the early modern period hosted a unique and extraordinary complex of languages, religions and customs. Parrallel to the living city, where Italians, Jews, Dutch, British, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, communicated, traded and quarreled with one other, there existed segregated cities of the dead. In the general history of the “nations” of Livorno that of non-Catholic cemeteries is a very important chapter in which much remains to be investigated. In this essay, Stefano Villani reconstructs the controversy that followed the request to fence off the land where English Protestants were buried since the end of the sixteenth century. The Inquisition decidedly opposed this concession seeking to emphasize, symbolically, the unworthiness of those who died outside the Catholic Church while simultaneously fearing that a physical screen mighted be used to hide Protestant ceremonies. Consequently, it was only in 1706 that the cemetery could be enclosed by a little wall and iron fencing. The opposition on the part of the Catholic Church to any concession seems to have been driven by the fear that similar privileges could ingenerate a kind of plebeian Latitudinarianism. This was spurred by the fear that concessions might popularize the notion that it was socially acceptable to be Christian without belonging to the Catholic Church, and that Catholic rites were not fundamental to salvation rather than the hypothetical conversion of Livornese to Protestantism. This was a scandal that the Catholic Church sought to avoid. For the English, demands of religious freedom had an eminently symbolic meaning related closely to their identity and dignity: it was perceived as humiliating for English merchants, some very rich, to bury their relatives in an open field where dogs could roam as they pleased, and to have to send their children to be baptized in a Catholic church. Thus the requests for a minister and a fenced cemetery seem to have been motivated more by social prestige than by religious questions. The Dutch, English and Jewish burial places were outside the city walls and although they were unfenced it was not coincidental that they contained sumptuous funeral monuments, sometimes of marble and artistically sculptured.
Alcune note sulle recinzioni dei cimiteri acattolici livornesi
VILLANI, STEFANO
2004-01-01
Abstract
[Some Notes on the Fencing of the Non-catholic Cemeteries in Leghorn]. Livorno in the early modern period hosted a unique and extraordinary complex of languages, religions and customs. Parrallel to the living city, where Italians, Jews, Dutch, British, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, communicated, traded and quarreled with one other, there existed segregated cities of the dead. In the general history of the “nations” of Livorno that of non-Catholic cemeteries is a very important chapter in which much remains to be investigated. In this essay, Stefano Villani reconstructs the controversy that followed the request to fence off the land where English Protestants were buried since the end of the sixteenth century. The Inquisition decidedly opposed this concession seeking to emphasize, symbolically, the unworthiness of those who died outside the Catholic Church while simultaneously fearing that a physical screen mighted be used to hide Protestant ceremonies. Consequently, it was only in 1706 that the cemetery could be enclosed by a little wall and iron fencing. The opposition on the part of the Catholic Church to any concession seems to have been driven by the fear that similar privileges could ingenerate a kind of plebeian Latitudinarianism. This was spurred by the fear that concessions might popularize the notion that it was socially acceptable to be Christian without belonging to the Catholic Church, and that Catholic rites were not fundamental to salvation rather than the hypothetical conversion of Livornese to Protestantism. This was a scandal that the Catholic Church sought to avoid. For the English, demands of religious freedom had an eminently symbolic meaning related closely to their identity and dignity: it was perceived as humiliating for English merchants, some very rich, to bury their relatives in an open field where dogs could roam as they pleased, and to have to send their children to be baptized in a Catholic church. Thus the requests for a minister and a fenced cemetery seem to have been motivated more by social prestige than by religious questions. The Dutch, English and Jewish burial places were outside the city walls and although they were unfenced it was not coincidental that they contained sumptuous funeral monuments, sometimes of marble and artistically sculptured.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
