O processo de dessacralização da morte e a instalação de cemitérios no Seridó, séculos XIX e XX

• Autor(a) principal: SANTOS, Alcineia Rodrigues dos
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tde/1223
• topic: Seridó. Epidemia. Morte. Cemitério. Secularização. Séculos XIX e XX; Seridó. Epidemic; Death; Cemetery; Secularization; 19th and 20th century; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::HISTORIA

The beginning of this research lies at the wish of understanding the relation among the population from the region of Seridó, the death and the dead when cholera morbus, smallpox and yellow fever‟s epidemic outbreak exterminated part of the population from that region, causing deep modifications in the funeral culture. Thus, our aim is to analyze how this epidemic impact contributed to a changing action towards people‟s funeral habits and attitudes concerning death and the dead in Seridó as from 1850. During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the attitudes of the inhabitants from the Province of Rio Grande do Norte regarding life‟s finite limit were based on the familiarity between the living and the dead, which led to a relation characterized by rituals after the death and the burial inside churches. This procedure was largely used by the Catholic Christians and it allowed a close contact between the dead and the living because when the congregation was inside the church they would walk around, sit and pray on the grave. The impact of the epidemic was fundamental to change the funeral culture. The diseases were responsible for a high mortality rate and consequently the burial inside the churches turned out being unfeasible because there was no time enough to the bodies‟ decomposition. As a result, the hygienist discourse that, under European influence, struggled against the ad sanctos burial was enhanced in order to prevent from other diseases and in favor of public hygiene. Under this perspective, a secularizing process takes place in Seridó, alike other Brazilian regions such as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It is this process we want to comprehend, based on official documents produced by the Presidents of the Province and Municipal Counties, wills and parochial obituary registers, besides visual resources like ground plans, photographs and videos, so that the secularized cemeteries of the region are analyzed.