Skeletons and other Neapolitan beliefs

We walked to Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio ad Arco one morning, via the high green courtyard of the Conservatory of Music, where voices soar and pianos roll in glorious chaos, and a plump young stone Beethoven sprawls. Santa Maria is, by contrast, a quiet place with its own raucous inner music.

The Baroque church is immaculate and light--only the altar painting hints at the peculiarly Neapolitan form of worship, the adoption of the skulls of the pezzentelle--little begging souls of purgatory. In the Manneristic painting a dark haired Neapolitan Madonna reaches down for the straining burning souls in Purgatory. What is hidden from view is the marble skull below it. The practice, exemplified also by the Fontanelle Cemetery with its caves of bones, was to adopt skulls, polish them, care for them, pray and make offerings for their anonymous souls. In 1600, at Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio ad Arco, as many as 60 masses a day were held for these anonymous souls by the superstitious poor, who received in turn favors from aristocratic believers. Encouraged by The Counter Reformation, which was very interested in the souls of Purgatory, the practice was banned by a Cardinal in 1969 but continued in force till 1980, with a special streetcar to handle the heavy traffic to the church. Due to the church's official position, I couldn't take pictures--I was not even allowed to keep the brochure.

Crypt of Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio

Below is the dark crypt for worshiping the bones and skulls that have been deposited at a deeper level in a mass grave for the poor. The bones are worshiped and prayed for, in hopes that the supplicant will be given the same favor. Skulls, bones, trinkets and photographs in gaudy little niches are covered with photographs of the supplicants who hope to be favored in the afterlife. Lucy, the Patroness of Brides, is celebrated --legend has it her rich father killed her because she fell in love with a poor man. (The tale has probably been developed over time.) Tables of photographs of the dead and the supplicants reminded me of New York in the days after 9/11. The nobleman who financed the church is prominently represented by his family's skulls.

Veiled Christ

A few streets over is the much-advertised Sansevero Chapel which was open even during siesta, at an exorbitant price--7 euros to visit the small chapel and 2 ghoulish "anatomical machines." Masonic Grand Master, alchemist and touted enlightenment figure, Raimondo di Sangro, seventh Prince of Sansevero, had engaged skilled sculptors for his family's mausoleum. He envisioned an artistic monument to initiation into higher mysteries. The chapel carries the mystique of his reputation as a magus. Most celebrated among the skillful marble sculptures are the Veiled Christ, a remarkably detailed marble of the body in a placenta-like veil, and the so-called figure of Modesty who is rather an extremely explicit body beneath a gauzy clinging veil, also in marble. Another tour de force in marble is the fish net over Raimundo's prodigal father, a dissolute man who woke up to the Lord late in life. The dense chapel is filled with pompous symbols and Baroque theatre, but it was most conspicuously filled with thuggish guards. We concluded the place had been taken over by the Camorra (Naples' crime family), as more and more strong men appeared at every minute to keep me from taking photos. They urged us to the lower level with its anatomical machines (skeletons) which were supposed to be wonders of the prince's alchemical skills. So-called "real blood vessels" enveloped the two skeletons, looking more like webs of gray metal. Rumors have since hounded the alchemist that he froze the blood of two young men while they were still alive.

Cloister, Carthusian Monastery

San Gaudosio Catacomb

Skeletons, in fact, are everywhere. Skulls line the cloister of the sumptuous Carthusian Monastery. Below Naples, in the Catacombs of San Gaudosio, Dominican monks who treated the corpses of Bishops also decorated the corridors by embedding skulls and sometimes whole skeletons into the wall plaster, painting whimsical clothing around them.

Gothic chapel of the Duomo

Another repository of very Neapolitan belief is the Duomo, where we walked in the driving rain one afternoon. The Cathedral to San Gennaro is an enormous cavernous church, originally gothic, now every surface Baroque marble, but an exquisite gothic chapel remains. The Tresoro is filled with gold reliquaries, including the famous one of San Gennaro that contains two vials of his blood. They are said to liquify on two religious days of the year--if they fail to do so, calamities are imminent. This centuries' old practice continues in the present. Priests parade the vials for the people to see and kiss--certainly the heat of all these worshipers must melt the substance in the vials!

Oldest Baptistery in the Western World

What is now a side chapel of the Duomo had been the original 4th c. church. Later it was cloaked in Baroque marble, an almost carnavalesque little theatre, but it retains a dignified 14th c mosaic chapel. And in a more primitive room from the original 4th c. church is the oldest Baptistery in the Western World. A rough stone basin sits in the brick floor, where supplicants were doused in rising springs. Then they had only to raise their eyes up to sparkling Byzantine mosaics of the 4th c.

4th c. Byzantine mosaics

In many churches the tin ex-votos lined up remind you of a general faith in healing powers. One bright morning we passed through a little street famous for its mandolins, pushing against the crowds of the dense neighborhood to the opulent Gesu Nuova church, the Jesuit monument to heavy marble and Jesus. The sun poured through high windows while Neapolitans prayed and confessed to priests with their unctuous smiles.

Ex-votos in Gesu Nuova

An entire wing is devoted to a priest-doctor who tirelessly treated the poor often at his own expense, icon to the stark contrasts with Jesuit extravagance. Joseph Moscati (1890-1927, sainted 1987) cared tirelessly for the helpless and the poor. He found them waiting for him on his doorstep when he came home for lunch, when he wasn't treating them in his cabinet. A prayer on the wall of Gesu Nuova reads:

Dear Saint, ... who always took care of both the body and soul of every patient,

Look on us, who have recourse to your heavenly intercession... a share in the dispensation of heavenly favours....

Ex-votos, il Cabineto Segreti

Good luck phallus from Pompeii

In Roman times, ex-votos were more vivid, as the piles of clay genitals displayed in the il Cabineto Segreti of the Pompeii collection reminds us. These were offerings to beg for healing, or in gratitude for an affliction cured. Also in this interesting collection are bronzes of huge male organs for good luck and protection from the evil eye--the malocchio. On the streets of Naples, countless chocolate male organs are sold for the same purpose.

Priapic phallus for good luck

Another very Neapolitan belief is in the smorfia, an ancient collection of dream symbols which interprets them as numbers that people use to play the lottery. It is still widely referred to, in fact people know parts of it by heart: if you dream of an insane person, bet on #22, if you dream of Naples or God, bet on #1, and so on. It has been traced back to the Greeks' interpretations of dreams, oneirocriticism, and has only been in published form since the Middle Ages. It is also said to be connected with the Kabbalah.

Household gods of Pompeii

As mentioned in my blog on Pompeii, household gods still command Neapolitan respect. The monacello, based on the Greco-Roman Larares, merit their own little plaques in the kitchen. I too dreamt of the little boy in a white tunic quite a few times in Naples, even before knowing who he was.

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Cloister of San Gregorio Armenio

At the convent of San Gregorio Armenio, a line of street people stands at the frescoed door, waiting for the pastries the round little nuns are known for. We went in with a class of giggling teens to the delightful cloister of orange trees under Baroque arches, a life-size Christ and the Samaritan woman. Below, through a grate, we glimpsed, between teenagers, the elaborate chapel that seemed like another dimension, with its geometric trompe l'oeil floor. Amidst the baking smells we exited to go around the crammed block to see it in its full Baroque ornamentation. The guidebook pointed out the symbolism of the order of San Gregorio: beheadings, blood, etc. But what struck me was the assimilation of Mary to a pagan cow goddess. Paintings everywhere featured crescent moons on their backs, with the horns pointing upward like cow horns. But most surprising, Mary on the altar painting wore the yoke of an ox on her shoulders!

San Gregorio Armenio

 Sacred and profane are the long Neapolitan traditions, to ward off ill fortune!

Layers of Time in Naples

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Walls of ancient Greeks

Naples' greatness is still seen in the layers of history that lie in cross-section, her "stratification" as our guide to the Catacombs, Enzo, called it. The obvious example is Pompeii, buried in a snapshot of time by Vesuvius in 79 AD, and now after centuries of painstaking labor a city eternally set in the 1st c. Roman Empire. Near our apartment, walls of the ancient Greeks lay bared to the sky, alongside Roman roads still in use that border the site of the Roman forum now covered by gothic and Baroque churches.

Catacombs of San Gennaro

But one can also descend into the Catacombs to feel the air of pagan Naples, perhaps the Naples that the mythical siren Parthenope found when she was washed ashore after being rejected by Ulysses. The volcanic stone tuff (tufo) has been quarried from beneath Naples ever since, to build the ancient city. Some of the underground caverns became catacombs.

Wealthy family buried 4-5th c.

We walked there under esplanades of sooty, once wealthy villas, avoiding garbage mingled with rainwater underfoot as Italian drivers splashing by narrowly avoided us. Next to a grandiose pastiche of St. Peter's in Rome, above the poorer neighborhood of Sanita, we found the 5th c San Gennaro Extramoenia church, built on the Catacombs of San Gennaro. Today they are prominently advertised with a well-presented guided tour area, courtesy the fund-raising and efforts of the local association. Enzo, our guide, urged us on with almost religious intensity in his passion for the mission of preserving Napoli's stratification, and for his association which recruits locally and has obtained permission from the Vatican to preserve and present these most important catacombs of southern Italy.

Catacomb's Three Naves correspond to Naples' Greco-Roman streets

Beneath the terrace of the church one descends to the clearly designed "negative architecture"--that is, the quarried tuff left caverns carved into arches, vaults and divided naves. Chambers have shelves to receive the corpses of the moderately well off (in fetal position--as we arrive, so we leave the earth) 2 or 3 to a shelf. On the ground were cavities for the poor. For the rich the arcasoleum, an arch before a wall mosaic or fresco over the trough which received each member of the family in turn.

5th c. altar, 9th c. side chapels

It was a place of celebration--an actual 5th c church with frescoes, a very public and beloved place to connect between the worlds, this liminal space before eternal life. Golden lights traced the well defined space, but in ages past, openings to the sky provided light. The porous tuff drew away smells.

Once a Greco-Roman road, Via Tribunali today

Further in was the holy of holies--once the grave of San Gennaro. Surrounding it is a clearly defined cathedral, for the arrival of the martyr's body had made this a place of pilgrimage. Even today it is a place of worship and, sometimes, weddings. We were moving underground to the other end of the hill. Under this end were the original chambers of the prominent pagan family said to have donated, or shared, the catacombs in the 2nd-3rd c. BC. Further south was a true church, contiguous with the complex, its front columns from 3-4th c, its side columns from the 9th c. Exiting the building you see it has a beautiful Renaissance facade. A little further south is a hospital, which had moved its patients into the catacombs during WWII. Women gave birth where the dead had departed, crossing paths.

Roman shops below San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo Maggiore is another church where layers are peeled away. We walked there on one of the Greco-Roman roads, Via Tribunali, in the discouraging rain. Below was the Greek Agora, but it is the later Roman Forum where you can walk along the still visible shops with their Roman arches in brick, and along the covered market where shop counters remain, while further there are mosaics and painted walls of another building. The Romans, we learned later, used a diamond shaped placement for their bricks, because they learned that earthquakes sheer away on the diagonal.

Sisto V Hall in San Lorenzo

Above the Roman forum is a hall from the reign of the Swabian kings (13th c) with columns and gothic arches, leading into an elegant Renaissance hall with frescoed vaults used by Naples' Parliament from 1442. The Sisto V hall was also the friars' refectory, its frescoes dating to the beginning of 17th c.

The upper stories house a museum, with a model of the Roman and Greek buildings as they lie beneath several churches here, one of which is San Paolo Maggiore whose opulent marble inlay stands over the Greek Temple to Castor and Pollux--the original Greco-Roman columns ensconced in the Baroque facade. Like so much Baroque imagery, filled with violence--the conversion of St. Paul entailed the deaths of two horses, while elsewhere a bull implores a man not to be sacrificed.

San Paolo today

Also in the museum are pottery and stone columns from antiquity, a carved crucifix, altar painting and statuary such as St. Michael tenderly slaying a dragon, himself covered in lion parts.

The Duomohttp://www.duomodinapoli.it/en/main.htm, Cathedral to San Gennaro, is many-layered. The enormous originally gothic church is now swathed in Baroque marble, but one gothic chapel dates back to the 14th c, exuberantly painted like a medieval tapestry come alive.

Gothic chapel in Duomo

But most striking is another side chapel which was the original 4th c. church with its baptistery--the oldest in the Western world--a rough stone basin in its brick floor. Above the font the newly baptised can raise his or her eyes to glittering 4th c. Byzantine mosaics, rare examples of classical naturalism.

4th c. baptistery, oldest in the West

Byzantine mosaics, 4th c.

Cloister of Santa Chiara

Santa Chiara, Angevin burial place for kings, is another example of stratification. Now she is nearly empty of decor, except for the scarred gothic sarcophagi of the Anjou kings, guarded by monks sipping coffee from plastic cups, and a more lavish chapel for Philip, idiot Bourbon prince, and his powerful father. We dropped centimes into the electric candle box for our prayers. Outside a noseless Sri Lankan mother sat day after day on the street, beseeching with trembling eyes. Pole thin black Africans beat drums. An ancient German shepherd stared with an imploring smile from the yard, otherwise filled with teenagers smooching and playing soccer (from the school facing). That is present day Naples.

Details of tiles

But below Santa Chiara are the archeological remains of Roman baths. And above the baths is the most sublime aspect of this old church: her fresh sunlit cloister of the Clarissan convent. The vaults are frescoed with colorful Biblical stories, half worn away, but the main delight is the majolica tiles covering the all surfaces throughout the garden, bright yellow, with paintings of old Naples.

WWII remnants beneath Naples

To come full circle, visit Napoli Sotterranea. It is another journey down into the tuff quarries, this time at the site of the Roman forum. You descend 100 ft or so below ground to tunnels first carved out by the Greeks for building materials and hypogeae (burial sites), then used by the Romans for aqueducts that served Naples from the 4th c BC to the 1880's, when an engineer improved upon them.

Forgotten in the 20th c, much of the 200km of tunnel became a huge garbage dump till WWII when they were paved over for bomb shelters. Artifacts from WWII remain--child's toys, beds. A few steps away are the remains of the Roman amphitheatre. For Naples was the Romans' first encounter with the Greek civilization. Layer upon layer.