Niches and shrines with skulls overflow with offerings, plastic flowers, messages and transport tickets for the souls to travel through Purgatory. This is the Holy Land of the Purgatory Hypogeum (a hypogeum is an underground crypt). The corridor leads to a large low-lit room with tatty walls and skulls and bones carefully laid over earth burials. In the corridor is the tomb of the Count Giulio Mastrillo and his wife, an important benefactor of the church. On the left of the altar is a narrow corridor, where the atmosphere becomes more mysterious, more claustrophobic, more musty. In the centre, four lights and a chain decorated with skulls mark a mass grave of anonymous remains. The skull of Princess Lucia in the Holy Land of the Purgatory Hypogeum (Church website)Īn imposing cross hangs over the altar. Italian baroque gives way to austere classicism, the clutter of pews is now an empty space, light turns to mystery and gloom, oil paintings are now skulls and shrines. Now you’re in a dark subterranean chamber. It’s only when you descend into the lower church that there’s a dramatic shift in atmosphere. The upper church is standard Neapolitan baroque – beautiful, light and airy. It dates back to 1638 and was linked to the Congrega di Purgatorio ad Arco, a group founded by Neapolitan nobles and dedicated to burying the poor and praying for their souls in purgatory. Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco (Saint Mary of the Souls of Purgatory) is a church in central Naples. The devotees claimed they knew the true names of the skulls and, in exchange for their prayers to help them through purgatory, would ask for favours when they reached heaven by talking to them or writing messages on small pieces of paper that were then inserted into the eye sockets of the skulls. The skulls were cleaned with alcohol and cleaner ( refrisco)and cared for some were placed in marble shrines or boxes. They received messages from the spirits via dreams, and then adopted whichever skull or capuzzelle they believed belonged to the spirit. The Neapolitan Skull Cult, centred on the Fontanelle cemetery and ossuary, was especially popular with elderly women, widows and those with little family. The spirits are here in the city, suffering in purgatory, their only hope is for a living person to pray for them. Thousands of poor abandoned souls (le anime pezzentelle) who died in these catastrophes were buried without recording and without a send-off, in crypts, caves or pits. In 1656 the Black Death hit Naples, killing half the city’s population. Vesuvius, the city’s neighbouring volcano, is an enigmatic presence, a brooding reminder and menacing warning for the city. Neapolitans have a relationship with death and the dead that has been shaped by religion and the disasters of plague, famines and volcanic eruptions. Altar and cross in the lower church, St Mary of the Purgatory’s Souls
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