“Go, Tell it in the … Cemetery?” Protestant Funerals in Victorian Spain

Abstract

A clash of cultures arose in the late nineteenth century as Spanish government and Roman Catholic officials encountered marginalized Protestant missionaries on politically shifting turf—the cemetery plot. Legislation had so limited open Protestant manifestations of faith that the burial service became the only event that allowed the minority to venture into public view. As a result, the funeral service took on characteristics of a mass evangelistic crusade. Rather than meeting the needs of the dying and their families, funerals became a venue to preach the Protestant message to a Catholic audience. The majority viewed these evangelistic funerals as subversive because they jeopardized the notion of Spanish religious unity.