Protestant Cemetery, Rome Explained

Non-Catholic Cemetery
Protestant Cemetery
Native Name:Cimitero acattolico
Mapframe-Zoom:13
Mapframe-Wikidata:yes
Established:1716
Country:Italy
Location:Rome
Type:Public
Style:18th–19th-century European
Findagraveid:1642834

The Non-Catholic Cemetery (Italian: Cimitero Acattolico), also referred to as the Protestant Cemetery (Italian: Cimitero dei protestanti) or the English Cemetery (Italian: Cimitero degli Inglesi), is a private cemetery in the rione of Testaccio in Rome. It is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a small-scale Egyptian-style pyramid built between 18 and 12 BCE as a tomb and later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that borders the cemetery. It has Mediterranean cypress, pomegranate and other trees, and a grassy meadow. It is the final resting place of non-Catholics including but not exclusive to Protestants or British people. The earliest known burial is that of a Dr Arthur, a Protestant medical doctor hailing from Edinburgh, in 1716.[1] The English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as Russian painter Karl Briullov and Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci are buried there.

History

Since the norms of the Catholic Church forbade burying on consecrated ground non-Catholics – including Protestants, Jews and Orthodox – as well as suicides (these, after death, were "expelled" by the Christian community and buried outside the walls or at the extreme edge of the same). Burials occurred at night to avoid manifestations of religious fanaticism and to preserve the safety of those who participated in the funeral rites. An exception was made for Sir Walter Synod, who managed to bury his daughter in broad daylight in 1821; he was accompanied by a group of guards to be protected from incursions of fanatics.[2]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the area of the non-Catholic cemetery was called "The meadows of the Roman people". It was an area of public property, where drovers used to graze the cattle, wine was kept in the cavities created in the so-called Monte dei Cocci, an artificial hill where the Romans went to have fun. The area was dominated by the Pyramid of Caius Cestius which for centuries was one of the most visited monuments of the city. It was the non-Catholics themselves who chose those places for their burials, and they were allowed by a decision of the Holy Office, which in 1671 consented that the "non-Catholic Messers" who died in the city were spared a burial in the shameful cemetery of Muro Torto. The first burial of a Protestant was that of a follower of the exiled King James VII and II, named William Arthur, who died in Rome where he had come to escape the repressions following the defeats of the Jacobites in Scotland. Other burials followed, which did not concern only courtiers of King James II, who in the meanwhile had settled in Rome. It is said that in 1732 the treasurer of the King of England, William Ellis, was buried at the foot of the Pyramid. By that time the area had acquired the status of a cemetery of the British, although the people buried there were not only from the United Kingdom.[3]

The cemetery developed without any official recognition and only at the end of 1700 Papal authorities started to take care of it. It was not until the 1820s that the Papal government appointed a custodian to oversee the area and the cemetery functions. The public disinterest was mainly determined by the fact that in the current mentality, where the only burial conceived by the Catholics were the ones happening in a church, the availability of a cemetery that provided non-Catholic burials was not considered a privilege.[4]

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, only holly plants grew in the area, and there was no other natural nor artificial protection for the tombs scattered in the countryside, where cattle were grazing, as the cypresses that adorn the cemetery today were planted later on. In 1824 a moat was erected that surrounded the ancient part of the cemetery. In ancient times crosses or inscriptions were forbidden, as in all non-Catholic cemeteries, at least until 1870.

For a long time, there have been common graves divided by nations: Germany, Greece, Sweden and Romania.

As of 2011, the custody and management of the cemetery was entrusted to foreign representatives in Italy.

The great, hundred-year-old cypresses, the green meadow that surrounds part of the tombs, the white pyramid that stands behind the enclosure of Roman walls, together with the cats that walk undisturbed among the tombstones written in all the languages of the world, give to this small cemetery a peculiar aura. As in use in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, there are no photographs on the tombstones.

Italians

The Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome is intended for the rest of all non-Catholics, without any distinction of nationality. Because of the scarcity of space, relatively few illustrious Italians are buried there, on the grounds of having expressed in life alternative culture and ideas ("foreign" compared to the dominant one), for the quality of their work, or for any other circumstances for which they were somehow deemed "foreign" in their own country. Among them, the politicians Antonio Gramsci and Emilio Lussu alongside Giorgio Napolitano, the writer and poet Dario Bellezza, the writers Carlo Emilio Gadda and Luce d'Eramo and a few others. It is rare that new burials are added. On 18 July 2019, the writer Andrea Camilleri was buried here. In 2023, former President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano was buried here.

Burials

Nicholas Stanley-Price has published an Inventory of early burials at the Non-Catholic Cemetery.[5]

John Keats

Keats died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 25, and is buried in the cemetery. His epitaph, which does not mention him by name, is by his friends Joseph Severn and Charles Armitage Brown, and reads:

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley drowned in 1822 in a sailing accident off the Italian Riviera. When his body washed up upon the shore, a copy of Keats's poetry borrowed from Leigh Hunt was discovered in his pocket, doubled back, as though it had been put away in a hurry. He was cremated on the beach near Viareggio by his friends, the poet Lord Byron and the English adventurer Edward John Trelawny. His ashes were sent to the British consulate in Rome, who had them interred in the Protestant Cemetery some months later.

Shelley's heart supposedly survived cremation and was snatched out of the flames by Trelawny, who subsequently gave it to Shelley's widow, Mary. When Mary Shelley died, the heart was found in her desk wrapped in the manuscript of "Adonais", the elegy Shelley had written the year before upon the death of Keats, in which the poet urges the traveller, "Go thou to Rome ...".

Shelley and Mary's three-year-old son William was also buried in the Protestant Cemetery.

Shelley's heart[6] was finally buried, encased in silver, in 1889, with the son who survived him, Sir Percy Florence Shelley,[7] but his gravestone in the Protestant Cemetery is inscribed: Cor cordium ("heart of hearts"), followed by a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Other burials

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. https://www.cemeteryrome.it/press/webnewsletter-eng/no21-2012.pdf
  2. Book: Il cimitero acattolico di Roma – Guida per i visitatori. 1956. Rome.
  3. Web site: Amici del Cimitero Acattolico di Roma. cemeteryrome.it..
  4. Book: Menniti Ippolito, Antonio. Il Cimitero acattolico di Roma. La presenza protestante nella città del papa. Viella. 2014. Rome.
  5. 2020-11-02 . The Old Cemetery for Foreigners in Rome . 2022-03-30 . Editorial Committee of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome . en-GB . 10.30549/opathrom-13-08. 228811518 . free .
  6. Or, some have suggested, his liver. See "Possibly Not Shelley's Heart?", The New York Times, 28 June 1885.
  7. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/06/books/l-shelley-s-heart-678095.html Lexa Selph, "Shelley's Heart", Letter to the Editor, The New York Times, 8 June 1985.
  8. Web site: Bandettini . Anna . Morta Maria Pia Fusco, una vita di passione per il cinema . Repubblica.it . 28 February 2019 . it . 14 December 2016.

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