The Cimitero Acattolico in RomePredating
Pere Lachaise and other great classic cemeteries, the
Cimitero Acattolico in Rome is believed to have the largest concentration of well-known graves in the world, which sounds suspiciously like
a typical Italian claim: hyperbolic and endearing but in all likelihood,
debatable. Nevertheless, it sits across from the
Pyramid of Cestius (dated
between 18 and 12 B.C.) and is divided into an old and a newer area, its principal
draw being the graves of
Percy Bysshe Shelley and
John Keats, the latter having come to Rome in
the winter of 1820 hoping to recover from tuberculosis, where he succumbed to the
disease only months later. Keats is buried next to his good friend
Joseph Severn, a painter, who was apparently so poor at the time of his own death that
a posse of friends paid for his internment. (An impressive crowd that included
Gabriele Rossetti, all of whom are duly credited on the back of his tombstone.)
Wedged between these lies a marker that could only belong to a child, and which turns
out to be Severn’s son, who died accidentally in his crib as an infant.
Such woeful narratives are common in cemeteries,
and the Acattolico is no exception. If Rome has rightfully earned its name as the
eternal city, it is perhaps at least in part due to the dramatic stories on the
sides of stone plinths such as these — tales
expressing the infinity of grief, the interminability of mourning, a gloom so
profound, it can only be reflected in a series of grey tablets, protruding from the
earth with a kind of deep, solemn grace. That we visited on an overcast morning
in early spring only added to the mystery: fragrant wisteria in bloom, trees
just beginning to leaf out, a poignant backdrop to the inert stones and the
stories they held. And here, you can’t help but be affected by the countless biographical
fragments, stories that remind us of our own mortality
(how could they not?), just as they gesture poetically to a time, long ago, when
war and disease claimed young mothers and soldiers, grieving parents, even children
in their cribs.
The famous are buried here, as well as the
not-so-famous: what they mostly share in common is the fact that they were, for
the most part, foreign-born. None were Catholic — there were Jews, Protestants
and others — and no crosses were allowed on tombstones before about 1870. The
graves themselves range from early neoclassical to full-tilt baroque, with no
shortage of simple, minimalist, even neo-facist gravestones, barely more than
geometric motifs in this otherwise densely plotted park. Some include typos —
as in the case of the grave shared by two of the deceased children of the
American sculptor
William Story — which, I confess, seemed perfectly logical to
me: after the loss of two children, how could you possibly remember
how to spell February?
Tombstone of Joseph StoryWhen it came time to bury his beloved wife, Story
spelled everything correctly, and placed a weeping angel on her grave. Breathtaking,
it can be seen from nearly every corner of the otherwise monochromatic site — a
smoothly polished white winged creature, bent over the grave in eternal grief.
Tombstone of Joseph Story's wifeThe social history here is evident in everything
from the inscriptions to the names of the deceased — Elspeth Passarge, Horace
Belshaw, and the inimitable (and scarcely pronouncable) Barronness Elsa
Pfafferott. The dates, too, are telling, particularly when the life represented
is, like Charles Dark (who “died for love”) such an abbreviated one.
Tomb of Elsbeth Passarage
Tombstone of Horace Belshaw
Tombstone of Elsa Pfafferott“It might make one in love with death, to think
that one should be buried in so sweet a place," wrote Percy Shelley, shortly before his own death. His first son, William, who died tragically at
the age of three, probably of cholera, is buried here, as are the poet’s ashes.
Tombstone of William ShelleyDeath, of course, eventually awaits us all. And who
among us would not want to be remembered for being “noble in dignity” as the
sculptor John Gibson; or for her “cultivated taste and cheerful Christian
spirit,” as Elizabeth Susan Percy; or as the young Charles Duncombe, “a most
dutiful and affectionate son and a rare example of piety purity of morals and
goodness of heart.”
Tombstone of John Gibson
Tombstone of Elizabeth Percy
Tombstone of Charles DuncombeOne does not have to be a poet to write
heartbreaking words on a piece of eternal stone. Or perhaps the opposite is
true, that all such memorials are lyrical remembrances — that every poem, as T.S.
Eliot
once observed, is an epitaph.
Tombstone of Derrick Plant
