di Andrea Romanazzi

The cult of the dead has always been a fundamental element of all sacred subaltern popular cultures and is exceptionally present in many current folkloric aspects.

This research on the anthropology of mourning, starting from the examination of a Lucanian popular tradition, that of the funeral lament, also present in other Italian locations, aims to identify a common archetype to the funeral ritual of mourning and its various manifestations, from the funeral lament to the typical meal of “consolation.”

The Lucanian funeral lament, particularly the “professional lamentation,” is a ritual practice that is in the process of disappearing or practically already dissolved, of which only vague stories remain among elderly women, often seen as a form of disgrace or shame. Even today, it happens that the grief of mourning families is joined by the sorrow of other women, especially those who have recently suffered a loss themselves, but this cannot be called true lamentation in the archaic sense of the term. It is only a way to relive and re-propose one’s personal pain or to express condolences to people who, even if not closely related, were still known in the small village where they lived. Furthermore, we must not forget the geographical context from which this research begins: the most internal villages of Basilicata, where isolation and backwardness still make the peasant feel his close dependence on the indomitable forces of nature (A. di Nola, 1976). It is precisely this status vivendi that has allowed these ancient memories to persist, partially transformed by Christian-Catholic influence into a syncretic form typical of local and indigenous Christianity, expressed in that popular Catholicism woven with “pagan” influences and elements. The Lucanian funeral lament is certainly what remains of a much more complex agrarian lamentation ritual, whose evolution we will try to follow in this study. The ritual, well described by De Martino, was entrusted to true professionals of weeping and followed real ritual rules that ranged from the modes and sound of the lamentation to a verbal formula that often associated the deceased of the same kind: sailors, children, wives, and mothers.

What could be defined as the mimicry of mourning, the bodily oscillation, perfectly integrated with sound as in many Afro-American shamanic traditions, takes on particular importance, with a function almost hypnotic (E. De Martino, 1959), very similar to that of Palestinian or Arab lamenters. The gesture of waving a handkerchief over the body of the deceased and then bringing it to the nose in a continuous, incessant repetition of the gesture is also interesting.

These rituals, therefore, belong exclusively to the peasant world, as if there were a strange correlation between the farmer and the world of the dead. The entire operation would seem to hide, more than a real pain towards the deceased, an apotropaic operation to ward off death itself, as evidenced by other customs such as burning the clothes of the deceased or opening the windows after death, concluding with the interesting closing phrases of the funeral lament: “I have nothing more to say to you, nothing more to do for you, stay well and come to me in a dream to tell me if you are pleased with everything we did for you” (E. De Martino, 1959).

A first explanation of the lament would be that of a true “magical formula” meant to definitively distance the presence of the deceased. After all, the term “mourning” would derive from “lugere,” whose archaic root might come from “to break.”

Mourning, therefore, and all the rituals associated with it, is a response to a loss, a piece of that vast and intricate religious sphere that can be defined as the “cult of the dead.” With the transition of man from nomadism to agriculture and sedentary activities, and therefore with the burial of the deceased near the dwelling, necrophobia [necros=dead and phobos=fear] was born, and with it, the rituals aimed at overcoming it. According to the primitive, the dead, before reaching their homeland in the afterlife, undergo a sort of intermediate passage, whose overcoming and subsequent attainment of that final peace depends greatly on the funeral rituals reserved for them by the living, as testified by the typical verbal forms of lamentation. It is only at the end of the mourning period that the deceased can be considered truly dead. Lamentation thus becomes a spell to help them reach the afterlife and thereby free the living from their enigmatic presence. This is why those who have not had a proper burial and funeral honors would come back to life. In Homer, the deceased who lacks burial and funeral honors becomes restless and returns to torment the living until he is interred or burned on the pyre. Plato argued that if the soul remained contaminated and impure, it could not enter Hades and therefore “rolls among the funeral monuments and tombs, around which it is well known that shadowy specters of souls have been seen.” Even burial plays a fundamental role. To ensure the deceased a “symbolic” death that guarantees his permanence in the afterlife, a whole series of apotropaic rituals related to burial are born. In some cultures, it was enough to amputate a few fingers or tear out a tooth from the deceased, an operation that perhaps aimed to leave a “gap” in the mouth of the deceased so that his soul could escape, an idea still found today in popular traditions where dreaming of a tooth falling out is considered a bad omen. In other cases, the corpses were laid face down to indicate the direction to take, or wrapped in cloths or carpets, tied with ropes, or crushed by a stone, an idea perhaps from which the modern “tombstone” custom derives (A. Romanazzi, 2004). Similar burials have been found in other areas of the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Cyprus (A. Tzaliki, 2000), dated 7000-2500 B.C. On the island, a small pit grave was found with some individuals placed in a contracted position, also crushed by a slab. The same ritual is found in another Greek burial dated 1900-1600 B.C., and then in Soba (A. Tzaliki, 2000), in Sudan, in a period between the 6th-13th centuries B.C. These funerary rites are also found in later periods, as evidenced by the burial found in Chalkidiki, Greece, where the deceased was “nailed” to the tomb with a bronze wedge, or the similar one in the castle of Lamia. Similar burials have also been found in Italy, such as in the Monastery of Capo Colonna in Trani, in the province of Bari. Here, two graves were found, dated to the 9th-8th century B.C., where one and three corpses, respectively, were buried without funeral honors, in a kneeling position and crushed by a stone (A. Romanazzi, 2004). Another interesting custom was to place food in the grave to prevent the dead, hungry, from returning among the living to procure it. Often bread was offered on the graves, both as nourishment and as a symbol of the deceased’s rebirth in his new life. That real food was indeed used in graves is demonstrated by several texts such as Michel Raufft’s De Masticazione Mortuorum in Tumulis or Philip Rohr’s Dissertatio Historico-Philosophica de Masticatione Mortuorum. Here it was described how the deceased, whose food supplies were insufficient, began to feed by chewing the shroud and his own flesh. Cannibalism also becomes a way to ensure the second death of the deceased, as the stomach becomes his final grave, and it is from this interpretation that several Italian popular expressions such as “bere i morti” (drink the dead) or “mangiare i morti” (eat the dead) and the custom of the funeral banquet would derive (E. De Martino, 1959). On the Day of the Dead, almost reprising the theme of necrophagy, strange sweets shaped like bones called “bones of the dead” (A. Romanazzi, 2003) are prepared in many villages of the Peninsula and then given to children.

Various popular customs are closely connected to the offerings of bread to the deceased. In Calabria and Lucania, it was customary to prepare slices of bread for the dead, and similar traditions are found in many other Italian regions. Even the pro anima bread typical of the Campania area would have a similar function. The food is often offered during the night vigil, at the entrance of the cemetery, or the house of the mourners. In some villages in the Province of Bari, it was prepared directly on the coffin or the graves. It is in this disconcerting preparation ritual that we find a mitigated form of necrophagy. Eating bread prepared on the deceased or that came into contact with the same would be nothing but feeding on the deceased himself. The choice of bread as a ritual food, then, besides being ascribed to the typical food of the deceased, is also linked to a regenerative vision of it, in close symbiosis with death and the regeneration of wheat or cereals in general from which it is made.

In the funeral procession, it was customary for women, once their hair was untied, to approach the deceased, beating their chests violently and initially abandoning themselves to disorderly cries of pain (E. De Martino, 1958). The French term for mourning, deuil, seems to highlight this aspect, descending directly from the Latin dolium, corresponding to dolere, and thus to beating one’s chest. It was also customary to cut the flesh, scratch the cheeks and forearms to blood, beat oneself, tear at the hair, or lacerate the face. It was typical of this practice to “wring the hands, tear the hair,” attitudes found in various places, from Indian lamentations to Latin ones. The Lucanian “bitterful song,” in fact, consists precisely in tearing one’s hair.