Walking on the Dead

The practice of burying people in the church, known as intramural burial, goes back a ways. The churches in Florence harken back to the emergence of Italy from the dark ages--well, she really peaked out in a big way very early, then had a significant set back, which sent Dante packing and left Galileo under house arrest and in isolation from his fellow scientists. So it is not surprising that the practice of burying people in churches persisted into the modern era.

These two graves are in the floor of the Basilica of Santa Croce. There was a time when churches smelled of the dead buried beneath their floors--admittedly, it probably didn't smell that great outside at that time either. Bodies were buried in shallow graves, and if they died within the Christian faith, they were buried near the church. At some point, the problem of contagion from the dead to the living was pointed out--perhaps we shouldn't bury them so close by, and maybe deeper is better than just beneath the surface. I know, we are walking on graves all the time. We know not what lies below our feet. Whole cities are built upon the resting places of people who died before. The idea of digging up bones and sticking them in big anonymous piles in an ossuary is also a concept I am not settled in with either. But it strikes me as odd that people would want to spend eternity constantly under the feet of others.