Spaces of Encounters and burial Practices of the Other: Liminality, Cemeteries, and funerary Rituals in early modern Italy

ongoing

SEPOLCRI seeks to provide the first connective analysis of non-Catholic funerary practices and burial spaces in Italy c. 1500-1780. The project will focus on a variety of non-Catholic subjects (Jews, Orthodox Christians, Protestants, and Muslims) from different social strata and at different stages of mobility: settled and well-established communities; semi-permanent communities such as merchants, students, and enslaved people; and transient subjects such as travellers, seasonal workers, and seafarers. The research will focus on both key trading, religious and cultural centres (Livorno, Naples, Rome, Trieste, and Venice) and on more peripherical cities which have been neglected by the scholarship but had an important presence of minority groups (Ancona, Civitavecchia, Mantua, Padua, and Pisa); information on such cities and more peripheral territories will also be acquired through the consultation of key Inquisition archives whose material is among the best preserved in Italy (Rome, Venice, Pisa, Modena, and Naples). By focusing on how the funerary practices of non-Catholic groups shaped the relationship with the dominant Catholic community, SEPOLCRI will make a transformative contribution to the scholarship on religious diversity, urban history, and Counter-Reformation studies. The project examines continuities and changes in the relationship between the dominant Catholic community and minorities after the Reformation until the advent of the Enlightenment, reflecting changing attitudes towards minority groups linked to social and religious impurity. The research puts marginalized members of society at the core of research, reshaping the understanding of premodern issues of inclusion and exclusion, tolerance and intoler-ance, negotiation and representation in the political, religious and social urban panorama.