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The principal theme of this volume is the importance of the public use of human remains in a historical perspective. The book presents a series of case studies aimed at offering historiographical and methodological reflections and providing interpretative approaches highlighting how, through the ages and with a succession of complex practices and uses, human remains have been imbued with a plurality of meanings. Covering a period running from late antiquity to the present day, the contributions are the combined results of multidisciplinary research pertaining to the realities of the Italian peninsula, hitherto not investigated with a long-term and multidisciplinary historical perspective.
From the relics of great men to the remains of patriots, and from anatomical specimens to the skeletons of the saints: through these case studies the scholars involved have investigated a wide range of human remains (real or reputed) and of meanings attributed to them, in order to decipher their function over the centuries. In doing so, they have traversed the interpretative boundaries of political history, religious history and the history of science, as required by questions aimed at integrating the anthropological, social and cultural aspects of a complex subject.
List of contents
Introduction Part I: Norm and Praxis in Late Antiquity 1. An Ignominious Burial: The Treatment of the Body of Jesus of Nazareth 2. The Cult of Relics in the Late Roman Empire: Legal Aspects Part II: Cults, Circulations and Battles for Relics 3. A Liquid Miracle: The Origins of the Liquefaction Ritual of the Blood of Saint Januarius 4. The Circulation of Roman Relics in the Savoy States: Dynamics of Devotion and Political Uses in the Modern and Contemporary Ages 5. Jewish Intellectuals and the "Martyrdom" of Simon of Trent in Habsburg Restoration Italy: Anti-Semitism, Relics and Historical Criticism 6. Some Observations on the Itinerary of Don Bosco's Relics Part III: Collective Spaces of Death 7. Cemeteries and Villages in the Thirteenth-Century Countryside 8. Within, Beneath and Outside the City: The Space of the Dead in Early Modern Naples (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries) 9. Bodies "as Objects Preserved in Museums": The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo Part IV: Public Uses of Human Remains Between Politics, Religion and Science 10. "Roasted and Eaten": The Neapolitan Counter-Revolution of 1799 and the Use of Jacobin Remains 11. "You Can Tell a Man from His Head": The Study and Preservation of the Skulls of Celebrated Italians in the Nineteenth Century 12. The Remains of the Vanquished: Bodies and Martyrs of the Roman Republic from the Risorgimento to Fascism 13. The Medicalisation of the Corpse in Liberal Italy: National Legislation and the Case of Turin 14. Simulacra of Eternal Life: Ostensions, Exhibitions and the Concealment of Human Remains
About the author
Silvia Cavicchioli is Researcher of Contemporary History at the University of Turin.
Luigi Provero is Full Professor of Medieval History at the University of Turin.
Summary
Venerated and studied, or else repudiated and rediscovered, human remains ensure continuity with the past. This volume intends to reconstruct the complexity of the cult and symbols they have generated and the uses assigned to them in Italy in different historical periods.
