The ceremonial of the funeral of a cardinal is considered as one of the
most imposing at Rome, which is a city of ceremonies, and yielding only
in magnificence to the obsequies of royal personages. The burial of the
Mezzo-ceto classes is conducted rather differently. The body is exposed
much in the same manner, at home; but the convoi, or passage from the
habitation to the sepulchre, is generally considered as an occasion which
calls for the utmost display. Torches, priests, psalmody, are sought for
with a spirit of rivalry which easily explains the sumptuary laws of the
Florentine and Roman statute-books, and which, unnoticed but not
extinguished in the present age, in a poorer must have been highly
offensive to the frugality and jealousies of a republic. The religious
orders, the Capucins particularly, are in constant requisition; not a day
that you may not meet two or three of their detachments in various parts
of the city:---the religious or charitable fraternities, such as the
Fratelli della Misericordia, of which the deceased is generally a brother
or a benefactor, or both, think it also a point of duty and gratitude to
swell the _cortège_, and in the greatest numbers they can muster to attend.
Their costume, which is highly picturesque, is always a striking feature,
and adds much to the brilliancy of the display. They wear a sort of sack
robe or tunic, which covers the whole body, girt with a rope round the
waist, and with holes pierced in the _capuchon_ for the eyes; their large
grey slouched hat is thrown back, much in the manner in which it appears
on the statues of Mercury, on their shoulders; their feet are often in
zoccoli, or sandals of wood, and sometimes, though rarely, bare. The
colour of their dress varies according to the rule of their society; at
Rome, I have noticed white, blue, and grey: at Florence they prefer black.
The corpse is dressed up with great care, and often with a degree of luxury
which would become a wedding; the best linen, the richest ornaments, are
lavished; garlands are placed on the head; the hands crossed, with a
crucifix between them, on the bosom, and the face and feet left quite bare.
Sometimes, through a capricious fit of piety, all this is studiously
dispensed with, and the body appears clad in the habit of some religious
order, to which the deceased was especially addicted during life. In this
manner the procession begins to move after sunset, preceded by a tall
silver cross, beadles, &c.; friars, priests, &c. chanting the De Profundis
through the principal streets to the church where it is intended it should
be interred.
The effect, with some abatements for boys following to pick up the
drippings of the torches, and the perfect indifference of the assistants,
for neither friends nor relatives attend, is certainly very solemn. The
deep hoarse recitative of the psalm, the strange phantom-like appearance
of the fraternities, the flash and glare of the torches which they carry,
on the face of the dead; the dead body itself, in all the appalling
nakedness of mortality, but still mocked with the tawdry images of this
world, in the flowers and tinsel and gilding which surround it; the quick
swinging motion with which it is hurried along, and with which it comes
trenching, when one least expects it, on all the gaieties and busy
interests of existence (for at this hour the Corso and the Caffés are most
crowded)--all this, without any reference to the intrinsic solemnity of
such a scene, is calculated, as mere stage effect, powerfully to stir up
the sympathies and imagination of a stranger. On the inhabitants, as might
be apprehended, such pageants have long since lost all their influence;
and I have seen a line extending down a whole street, without deranging a
single lounger from his seat, or interrupting for an instant the pleasures
of ice-eating and punch-drinking, which generally takes place in the open
air. Whether this passion for bringing into coarse contact, as is often
the case, both life and death, the gloomy and the gay, be constitutional
or traditional, I know not; but a traveller can scarcely fail of being
struck with the prevalence of the feeling and practice amongst southern
nations at all periods of their history, and finding in the modern
inhabitants of those favoured regions, frequent resemblances to that
strange spirit of melancholy voluptuousness, which travelled onward from
Egypt to Greece, and from Greece, together with the other refinements of
her philosophy, into the greater part of Italy. On reaching the church,
unless the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation
or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the
tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have
not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by
whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country,
and in smaller towns, the corpse is usually exposed for at least a day: I
know few exceptions, from Trent to Naples. It is generally an affecting
ceremony. One of the most touching instances of the kind I can remember,
was the exposure of a young girl, who had just died in the flush of beauty
in a small village in Tuscany. I was passing through at the time, and
stepped by chance into the church. The corpse was lying on a low bier
before the altar; a small lamp burnt above. Her two younger sisters were
kneeling at her side, and from time to time cast flowers upon her head.
Scarcely a peasant entered but immediately came up and touched the bier,
and, after kneeling for a few moments, rose and murmured a prayer or two
for the spiritual rest of the departed. All this was done very naturally,
and with a kindliness which spoke highly for the warmth and purity of their
affections. A similar custom still continues at Rome. The day after the
execution of the conspirator Targioni, who suffered in the late affair of
the Prince Spada, flowers and chaplets, notwithstanding every precaution
on the part of the police, were found scattered on his tomb. He has been
refused, for his contumacy in his last moments, Christian sepulture, and
was buried in a field outside the Porta del Popolo. It is remarkable that,
very nearly in the same place, the freedmen of Nero paid a similar tribute
of affection to the mortal remains of their master. Garlands and flowers,
the morning after his death, were also found upon _his_ tomb.
_New Monthly Magazine._
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