Secondary burial and mummification practices in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies

Abstract

The ancient concepts of death as duration and the practices of secondary burial, first analysed by Robert Hertz, still survive in many areas of southern Italy. According to these beliefs death was perceived not as a sudden event, but as a long-lasting process, during which the deceased person had to go through a transitory phase, passing from one state of existence to another. Recent archival research about the terresante, the funerary hypogea reserved to the members of Confraternities in the ecclesiastic underground of Naples, documents the persistence of secondary burial rites in Southern Italy during the Modern Age. Furthermore, a survey conducted in the province of Messina in Eastern Sicily has identified two surviving architectural structures appointed for the treatment of the bodies: the ‘sitting colatoio’ aimed at favouring the skeletonisation and the ‘horizontal colatoio’ used to obtain mummification by dehydration. Both these structures controlled the corpse's decay and transformed the body in a stable and durable simulacre of the dead.