Researches

ORIGINS OF THE WESTERN WORLD CREMATION

Marina Sozzi

This essay aims at clarifying the cultural and philosophical context in which, at the time of the Directory and the Napoleonic Consulate, the first cremational issue in the modern Western World arose in France. To this purpose the fourty "mémoires" sent in 1800 to the Institut de France, which, on request of the government, had arranged a contest on the theme: "What are the ceremonies to make for the funerals and the regulations to follow as regards the place of burials?" will be studied. The study aims at identifying the ideas of Death and Life, the theorical and practical requirements and the philosophical traditions which led, at the end of the Century, to the idea that cremating dead bodies was plausible and acceptable.
Apparently the two most influent factors of this opening to cremation are on one side laity, which characterized the society of the Directory and the First Consulate (requiring the creation of a new rituality which was different and independent from traditional Catholic rituality); and on the other side, a conception of nature derived from the materialistic thought of the second half of the 18th century: the universe is a great whole, where things are transformed without ever disappearing definitively. Birth, life and death are essentially processes of composition and decomposition, which do not alter the total equilibrium of nature.

THE CONTEST OF THE YEAR VIII

Charles Porset

This essay analyse the documentary "corpus" of fourty reports presented to the Institut de France on the occasion of the1800 competition: "What are the ceremonies to make for the funerals and the regulations to follow as regards the place of burials?"
The first part of the work will deal with the collection of bio-bibliographical information on the authors of the fourty reports, so as to compile a personal card.
The Competition was not an "ex-nihilo" creation, but was part of an institutional strategy which had its roots in the secularization brought by the Revolution. This is way the essay will deal whit official documents of revolutionary assemblies on cimiteries and death legislation.
Finally, the study will consider if and how freemasonry, encentrated on the myth of Hiram's death, was able to introduce a new representation of death and consequently on how to deal with death in the secularized world.