Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History

Silvia Cavicchioli, Luigi Provero, Silvia Cavicchioli, Luigi Provero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032086156
• eBook ISBN: 9781000752120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

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.

Part I
Norm and Praxis in Late Antiquity

1 An Ignominious Burial

The Treatment of the Body of Jesus of Nazareth

Andrea Nicolotti

The story of what happened to the mortal remains of Jesus of Nazareth—put to death on the cross in Jerusalem on an Easter Friday between the years 27 and 34 ce—is told in the Gospels. Of these, the oldest and most useful to any historical reconstruction, which is at least probable, are those attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Peter.

Their accounts are compatible as a whole, are partly interdependent, and are most likely drawn from sources now lost to us. Sometimes, however, their narratives are contradictory, each being influenced by the personal perspective of the compiler, who based his account on information available to him and which he believed was well-founded. Many of their differences could be due to the fact that there were a number of coexisting streams of information about Jesus, probably arising from several places. It is therefore possible, with due caution, to treat the Gospels as broadly reliable recollections, though we should not forget that they were written, in the form in which they have reached us, several years after the facts and using not always exact memories and stories as their foundation. Furthermore, they are not dry historical accounts, but rather testimonies of a faith lived in the light of belief in the resurrection of Jesus, in constant dialogue with the ancient Hebrew scriptures and with an explicit parenetic and apologetic intent. Thus the events that will be discussed from here on should not be automatically considered facts corresponding to reality because the truth of every detail of the Gospels cannot actually be proved and is the subject of debate among scholars. What I will reconstruct in the following pages is above all what Jesus’ followers could and/or wanted to remember about him.

An Ignominious Burial

The funeral of a first-century Jew¹ began with a procession that accompanied the deceased to the sound of flutes and the keening of weeping women, and then there followed laments, ceremonies, blessings and eulogies, ending with the inhumation in the family tomb.² Jesus, however, had none of this. His burial recalls, at least in part, the punishment that Josephus demanded for blasphemers: “Let him that blasphemes God be stoned, then hung for a day, and buried ignominiously and in obscurity.”³ The Mishnah described this custom as follows:

They did not bury [the felon] in the burial grounds of his ancestors. But there were two graveyards made ready for the use of the court, one for those who were beheaded or strangled, and one for those who were stoned or burned. […] And they did not go into mourning, but they observed a private grief, for grief is only in the heart.⁴

These were the two essential characteristics of what is known as “ignominious burial”: the prohibition of burying the criminal next to his “fathers”—in other words in a family tomb that housed the bodies of innocent people—and the ban on carrying out all the public ceremonies of mourning. Dishonourable burials were an ancient practice and can in fact be found in texts predating the time of Jesus.⁵

The burial of Jesus described by the Gospels has certain characteristics that identify it as dishonourable.⁶ The joint condemnation by the Roman and Jewish authorities (this is what the Gospels say) excluded the possibility of a solemn funeral for those guilty of blasphemy, and so the ignominious suffering of the cross had to be matched by an equally ignominious burial. The Gospel of Peter confirms this when it mentions that the women were not able to perform the usual lamentations on the day of the burial, and adds that they meant to do so later:

Now at the dawn of the Lord’s day Mary Magdalene, a female disciple of the Lord—who, afraid because of the Jews since they were inflamed with anger, had not done at the tomb of the Lord what women were accustomed to do for the dead beloved by them—having taken with her women friends, came to the tomb where he had been placed. And they were afraid lest the Jews should see them and were saying: “If indeed on that day on which he was crucified we could not weep and beat ourselves, yet now at his tomb we may do these things.”⁷

But isn’t all of this in contradiction with the Gospel passages where it is said that Jesus was buried in a new and dignified tomb, and not in the criminal cemetery mentioned in the Mishnah? Some have replied that their account is false, and sometimes go as far as to claim that Jesus was thrown into a mass grave. Yet there are good reasons for believing that things did not turn out like that.

The Handing Over of the Body

The Jews did not deprive anyone of a burial. Leaving a corpse unburied was considered an unworthy act; it could only happen in moments of great tension, such as war, when relatives feared that burying their dead might put their own lives at risk or when they were prevented from doing so.⁸ In the case of Roman executions governors reserved the right of deciding whether to return the body, and generally preferred to comply with Jewish custom. It is therefore likely that Jesus’ body was handed over to be buried. Even Yehohanan, a man crucified in the first century whose bones have been found in Jerusalem, did not end up in a mass grave, but rather in a tomb, and the same is true of other executed people whose remains have come to light. The Mishnaic norm prescribing burial in a separate cemetery concerns criminals judged by the Sanhedrin, not those executed by the Roman civil authority.

Furthermore, Jewish law did not allow a body to remain exposed overnight, something that according to John even Jesus’ opponents brought to the notice of Pilate.⁹ Jesus’ closest followers and friends were not present either at the Deposition or at his burial. It might be assumed that they had escaped, fearful and confused at the death of their master. Yet somebody had to take care of the necessary, and the Gospels name Joseph of Arimathea, who obtained permission from the Roman governor to remove the body from the cross and arrange for it to be buried.¹⁰ According to Matthew and John, Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but Mark and Luke say that he was a member of the Sanhedrin, while Peter says that he was a friend of both Jesus and Pilate.

Assuming that the evangelists had credible information about him (something that cannot be taken for granted),¹¹ some think, as suggested in the Gospel of Peter, that Joseph did not act out of any sympathy for the deceased, but had instead been formally assigned to do so by the Sanhedrin,¹² which would not have allowed night to fall on an unburied victim of crucifixion.¹³ This would also explain the apparent anomaly regarding why Joseph was never mentioned in the Gospels as a follower of Jesus either before or after the burial, when we might otherwise have expected that he would have assumed a prominent position among the disciples. Joseph was not a witness either to Jesus’ death or to his subsequent resurrection: it is as if his task lasted only a few hours, in other words, the time needed to take care of the burial in accordance with Jewish rules. This hypothesis may be indirectly corroborated by the passage in John where it is stated that it was the Jews themselves who asked Pilate to bring down the corpses of Jesus and the two criminals from their crosses, while the Acts of the Apostles, which quotes the words of Paul, states that it was they who also took measures to ensure the burial.¹⁴

Removing the body from the cross, transporting it and burying it, and sealing the tomb with a large stone were not tasks that could be carried by one person. Joseph may have used his own servants or else staff of the Jewish authorities.¹⁵ It is also possible that he tried to avoid the contamination deriving from any operation that involved contact with a corpse, something which rendered a person impure for seven days. In such an eventuality Joseph would have been unable to take part in the Passover festivities.

The Cleaning of the Body

The practice of cleaning a corpse, known as t˙aharah, is also mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.¹⁶ One would think that the ablution of a crucified and bloodied body was an obvious course of action, and the Gospel of Peter specifically states that Jesus was washed.¹⁷ The four older Gospels, however, do not mention any washing, perhaps because it went without saying.

Some, however, have maintained that it could not have taken place, making reference to the modern Jewish custom: those who die a violent death or through bleeding must not be washed, but must be buried together with the clothes impregnated with their blood. The oldest known formulation of this precept is the work of Yaakov ben Moshe Moelin, known as Maharil (d. 1427):

About one woman who fell from a roof and died due to her fall—may it not happen to us—the Maharash taught that if blood came out of her, she should not be purified, because if she was, the blood would be washed off. But she would be buried as she is clothed. And he also said that if a quarter-log¹⁸ of blood came out of her a priest should not rend himself unclean to her. […] And it is customary to bury all those slain by transgressors and oppressors simply as they were found, with all their clothes, to raise anger and get revenge.¹⁹

Maharil had probably been taught this rule either by his master, Maharash, or by Shalom ben Yizhak, the rabbi of Neustadt in Austria (died c. 1413). In the nineteenth century the Hungarian rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried elucidated it by talking of lifeblood:

If a person collapses and dies instantly, if his body was injured, and blood flowed from the wound, and there is reason to fear that perhaps his lifeblood was absorbed in his clothes and his shoes, he should not be ritually cleansed, but he should be buried in his clothing and his shoes. Over his clothing, he should be wrapped in a cloth. The sheet is called sovev (“wrapping”). It is customary to scoop up the earth from the spot where he fell, if any blood is there. The earth nearby that spot should also be dug up, and he should be buried with all the earth that contains blood.²⁰

The current justification for this is that the last drops of blood, shed in the instant when a person passes from life to death, is lifeblood. If those drops had been absorbed by cloth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• Part I Norm and Praxis in Late Antiquity
• Part II Cults, Circulations and Battles for Relics
• Part III Collective Spaces of Death
• Part IV Public Uses of Human Remains Between Politics, Religion and Science
• Contributors
• Index