Death and Funeral Practices in Portugal

Rafaela Ferraz Ferreira, Ana Júlia Almeida Miranda, Francisco Queiroz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367721558
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000603507
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

Academic studies on death and cemeteries are relatively recent in Portugal; those that do exist tend to adopt an essentially historical and artistic point of view. Studies on the practicalities of managing the dead and their spaces are even more recent, and they do not yet form a cohesive body of work.

Combining both approaches, Death and Funeral Practices in Portugal is the first book to offer a broad look at the evolution and current status of Portuguese funerary practice. By exploring the country's historical development, examining the contemporary legal framework, and systematizing the way Portugal manages its cemeteries, crematoria, and other death spaces, this book aims to provide an essential reference to researchers with an interest in Portuguese funeral practice. Among other themes, this book interprets the predominance of Catholic funerals, examines the relatively recent history of cremation, and contextualizes the practices of exhumation and grave re-use, which are integral to the normal functioning of a Portuguese cemetery.

This is the first book on Portuguese death and dying written specifically for a non-Portuguese audience. It will be of interest to researchers and scholars but also accessible to students and non-specialist readers first coming into the subject.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153689-1

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a sovereign state located in southwestern Europe, specifically the Iberian Peninsula. As the westernmost country in Europe, Portugal borders Spain on the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west and south. Its territory includes the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, both of which have their own regional governments.

With a foundation date of 1143, Portugal is one of the oldest nation states in Europe, with borders that have remained virtually unchanged since the 13th century. This stability has resulted in what is, by all standards, a quite homogeneous nation. Portuguese is the official language, and it is spoken in all parts of the national territory. Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion. Although there are regional differences, which manifest in both cultural practice and socioeconomic status, there is a strong sense of Portuguese identity that prevails. There are no separatist movements in Portugal. Portugal is also considered to be one of the safest and most peaceful countries in the world—the third, in fact, according to the most recent Global Peace Index (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2020).

Portugal may enjoy great safety and political stability today, along with a strong democracy and freedom of press (EIU – Economist Intelligence Unit, 2021; RSF – Reporters Without Borders, 2020), but this has not always been the case. It was only in 1974 that the country escaped the longest-lasting authoritarian regime in 20th-century Europe, António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo. The regime ended after 48 years, on the morning of April 25, 1974, with a bloodless coup known as the Carnation Revolution. With the end of the regime came, also, the end of the Portuguese Colonial War, which had been ongoing since the 1960s in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, territories the Portuguese had colonized and now refused to give up.

The Estado Novo was just the last of a series of tumultuous regime changes in 19th- and 20th-century Portugal, which had direct impact on the evolution of funeral practices, as we explore in-depth in Chapter 2. In fact, the Estado Novo was born in 1933 out of the failure of a constitutional republic started in 1910 (referred to as the First Republic), which in turn resulted from a constitutional monarchy started in 1834. Prior to that, and since its foundation as a Christian Kingdom, Portugal had been an absolute monarchy, propped up by the Roman Catholic Church.

This speaks to the immense influence of the Roman Catholic Church over all aspects of Portuguese identity. Throughout Portuguese history, religion has enjoyed more stability than politics, and Portugal remains a markedly Catholic country to this day. Despite the fact that Portugal no longer professes an official religion, this has had little impact on cultural practice. Today, many Portuguese consider themselves to be non-practicing Catholics, and they regularly return to the Church for events such as weddings and, of course, funerals, as explored in Chapter 5.

There may be room for change with recent waves of immigration to the country. Traditionally, Portugal has been a country of emigrants: first to Africa and America, and then inside Europe. In recent years, however, many foreign communities have passed through or made a home in Portugal. The tumultuous decolonization process has brought immigrants from Angola and Mozambique, some of whom are Hindu and Muslim. Communities from Eastern Europe and China are now also significant, as well as communities from Britain and Central Europe, who mainly choose the country as a retirement destination. Apart from this latter group, who is concentrated in the south (and particularly in Algarve), foreign communities have mostly gathered in the cities of Lisbon and Oporto.

Demographically, Portugal exhibits a marked territorial imbalance; traditionally, urbanization has developed along the coast, resulting in a highly centralized country. At the 2011 census, Portugal had a population of 10.5 million people, a significant number of which lived in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon (2.8 million) and Oporto (1.8 million), two seaside cities. Lisbon was the only city in the country with over 500,000 inhabitants. This centralization is an historical feature of the country and it pervades all sorts of decisions. In fact, it is clear in the development of funerary practices, with Lisbon and Oporto leading the charge in the construction of public cemeteries in the 19th century, and then again in the adoption of cremation in the 20th century.

From an administrative perspective, the Portuguese territory is currently divided into municipalities (municípios or concelhos, which are usually named after a town or city but do not necessarily overlap with its limits), and, at a local level, civil parishes (freguesias). The archipelagos of Azores and Madeira have their own regional governments, but even in these regions, the territory is divided into municipalities and civil parishes. Municipalities and civil parishes are the entities that manage public cemeteries; for this reason, many practical decisions related to funerary administration happen at this level of government.

The current Portuguese Constitution ensures the separation of powers among four bodies: the President of the Republic, the Government, the Assembly of the Republic, and the Courts of law. The Assembly of the Republic, composed of up to 230 deputies serving four-year terms of office, is the main legislative body, although the Government also has limited legislative powers. Funerary legislation is issued by these two legislative bodies. However, specific regulations on cemeteries are also issued by municipalities and civil parishes.

Portugal is a developed and industrialized country. It is a member of multiple international organizations, most importantly: the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). Additionally, Portugal and the United Kingdom share the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (Treaty of Windsor), the oldest alliance still in force today, which was signed in 1373. It is also a welfare state, providing universal health care, public education, social housing, and various other social services, including funerals.

References

• EIU - Economist Intelligence Unit. (2021). Democracy Index 2020: In Sickness and in Health?
• Institute for Economics & Peace. (2020). Global Peace Index 2020: Measuring Peace in a Complex World. http://visionofhumanity.org/reports
• RSF - Reporters without Borders. (2020). 2020 World Press Freedom Index. https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2020

2 History of Portuguese funerary practice

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153689-2

The 19th century

Portugal’s first national cemetery laws were issued in the 1830s. Periods of high mortality, often associated with armed conflicts, had motivated the creation of a few local burial laws in the past, but never on a nationwide scale. The 1830s became, therefore, the official starting point in the history of the modern Portuguese cemetery.

Prior to that, the majority of burials took place inside the churches, or outside them in the adro. In Portugal, the word adro refers to an area around the church that served multiple communal purposes, from marketplace to burial ground. The concept is similar to that of the English ‘churchyard,’ but it differs from it in that the adro was not necessarily enclosed back then. It was a fully multifunctional space that flowed into the public square, and, for this reason, tombstones were not allowed on it—as they would get in the way of other uses for the space. Over the course of the 19th century, however, many adros came to be walled in: partially because marketplaces were moved to the outskirts, which allowed the Church to claim the adro for their own use, and partially because quite a few in rural areas were adapted into modern ‘cemeteries’ and were, therefore, walled in.

Up until the 1830s, burials were arranged and conducted by clergy or by religious associations of laypeople, such as Confrarias (Confraternities), Irmandades (Brotherhoods), or Ordens Terceiras (Third Orders). These associations (henceforth referred to as ‘brotherhoods’) had appeared in the Middle Ages and, befitting their semi-laic and semi-religious status, provided practical as well as spiritual assistance to their members in times of need, including at the time of death. It was not uncommon for a person to be a member of more than one brotherhood. Beyond arranging the funeral march and ensuring that the body was buried properly, in a sacred place such as inside the church or in the adro, brotherhoods also arranged and celebrated masses for the souls of the deceased. These brotherhoods can be considered precursors to the funeral business. However, we are not aware of any work that outlines the history of the funeral industry in Portugal, so we cannot say how the shift develops, from these associations to the funeral industry as we know it today.

Figure 2.1 The main square of Moreira de Rei, taken from the base of the pillory during an archaeological survey.

Note: The square, polarized by the medieval parish church, was the core of the village: where people met daily (before and after religious services), where local market was held, where notaries would write down contracts (possibly under a long-gone church wooden porch), where public announcements were made and criminals punished. And aside from all these functions, this was also the regular burial place for almost all the deceased in the village (others were buried inside the church). The border between the adro of the church and the square is, therefore, unclear. In a way, the adro is the religious extension of the square, and the square is the civic extension of the adro. Here, as in countless other Portuguese villages, the available space around the parish church was regularly used for burials from the Middle Age until the mid-19th century.

Burial in churches and adros tended to be socially stratified. The wealthier members of the community would be buried inside the church and close to the altars, in underground vaults closed with slabs bearing inscriptions and, when appropriate, even coats of arms. The rest of the community would occupy the remaining space, in communal or individual graves. If burial space ran out inside the church, then the adro would be used. More desirable parts of the adro, such as against the apse wall or before the front door, would sometimes be used even if there was enough space inside (Queiroz, 2002).

Portugal was not an isolated case: for centuries, church burial had been the norm in European Catholic countries. The practice began to garner criticism, in Portugal and elsewhere, in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment created a new understanding of death and mortality. Scientific knowledge became more widespread in urban areas and concerns about public health moved to the forefront. The idea that decomposing bodies released noxious miasmas which could cause disease was popular among some authors of the late 18th and early 19th century. This idea led to the conviction that contact between the living and the dead should be avoided, and that bodies should be buried at reasonable distance from the community—not so far that they were exiled from it, but not so close that their miasmas could cause disease. For the sake of public health, state authorities were called to intervene in the realm of the dead, which up until then had been solely the domain of the Catholic Church.

Early attempts at regulating burial and cemeteries, issued occasionally through the first three decades of the 19th century, produced little results, and the traditional practice of church burial remained the norm. The exception was the hospital burial grounds. These were not really cemeteries, because in those days hospitals were mostly used by migrants, pilgrims, military (in case of armed conflict), and above all, very poor people who could not afford to call a doctor or pay the pharmacy bill. Thus, the majority of the burial grounds of hospitals had only walls, a door, and several temporary graves, with no monuments whatsoever. However, some were embellished to gain more dignity, as it happened in Viana do Castelo or in Setúbal (Queiroz & Portela, 2003).

The cholera epidemic that hit Portuguese ports in 1833, spreading out to other regions and causing a high death toll in the country, brought new urgency to the matter. The ongoing civil war, by then in its second year, only added to the death toll. On June 18, 1833, the government issued a Portaria that forbade burials inside the churches and cloisters of the largest Portuguese city: Lisbon. To replace these traditional burial places, the government established public burial grounds at Prazeres and Alto de São João in the outskirts of the city. These would, later, become the first municipal cemeteries in Lisbon (Queiroz, 2002).

Figure 2.2 Tile panel representing a typical burial in the 1770s in Setúbal.

Note: It represents a typical burial in the 1770s of a deceased in a hospital run by a brotherhood. The deceased died in the hospital probably because they had no family or were very poor.

A decree issued on September 21, 1835, one year after the end of the civil war, expanded on the Portaria of 1833, with the intent of extending the prohibition of church burial to the entire country. New public cemeteries should be built to replace both traditional burial places and temporary burial grounds used during the war. The underlying assumption was that, if the cholera epidemic and the civil war had shifte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 History of Portuguese funerary practice
• 3 Demographic and legal frameworks
• 4 Governance and professionalization
• 5 Religion and funerary practice
• 6 The funeral directing industry
• 7 A typical funeral
• 8 Paying for funerals
• 9 Burial
• 10 Cremation
• 11 Commemoration
• 12 Conservation
• Index