An architecture of bones: the space of the Capuchin death, 16th and 17th centuries

Abstract

Death has been a recurring theme of human thought at any given time and space. Since the 15th century the Western world developed the concept of death as a violator of life. Many factors made skulls and bones part of everyday life in Europe: plague epidemics, draughts, natural calamities, religious wars and the severity of the Council of Trent. This paper outlines the culture of death within the Order of Minor Capuchin Friars during the 16th and 17th centuries. This religious order, dating from 1528, projected the importance of memento mori through the exhibition of corpses and bones in some of their funerary chapels, creating a sort of macabre museum collection that became part of their monasteries’ architecture. The Capuchins went beyond representing death; they presented it through skeletons and bones safeguarded in their chapels in Palermo, Burgio and Rome. They even mummified the corpses of friars and laymen to show the world the finite nature of life, the fear of hell, and the dejection of human condition.