RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF DEATH RITUALS
In Portugal, most of the northern citizens were historically Catholic, while in rural areas there was more religious diversity, not much more but there were a few other religious faiths. This heavy Catholic faith meant that death rituals were closely related to the religion and that church edicts carried much weight in rituals and traditions.
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Another religious aspect of death in Portugal is related to the belief in "wandering souls", or the deceased who don't have time to settle their accounts before they died or those whose relatives didn't fulfill the religious requirements of burial. This belief relates to the idea of a good death because those who become wandering souls are those who do not die a good death. This also shows that the Portuguese believe in a life after death. These wandering souls appear as ghosts, known as aventesmas or sombras in Portuguese, or as tormented souls (almas penadas). They can be encountered at night outside of the village or near the cemetery which is usually placed within or very close to the village. These souls can also appear to close relatives in dreams.
Goldey cites three reasons for the appearance of wandering souls. The first is that the dead were left unburied so they have no final resting place and can't enter into heaven. The second reason is that the dead's kin failed to perform the customary rituals. Goldey's third reason is that the dead committed some injustice that was not remedied before their death. The most common type of injustice that is spoken of in these cases is that of moving boundary stones in order to gain a few extra feet of land from their neighbors.
Deaths that occur in the mountains or by accident are cause for unease in Portugal because it can take several days for a body to be recovered. This allows for wild animals to have a chance to ravage the body and it means that there is a delay in the burial ritual, a ritual that normally takes place the day after death occurs. Despite these types of death and the problems they present, the deceased's family still has to fulfill their obligations to the dead even though the proper ritual and order of events was not able to be observed. Accidental and mountain deaths both can result in wandering souls and deaths that are not ideal.
Goldey then focuses on rituals that took place historically that were frowned upon by the Church and as such, are no longer practiced today. She does discuss some of the rituals that took the place of these older traditions and how they are daily reminders of the dead. The historical traditions are the encomendação das almas and the rezadas em comum.
The encomendação das almas ritual was a public gathering that took place inside the church during every day of Lent. The dead members of the village would be named individually and commemorated in a prayer for their souls. This ritual lasted about an hour and was attended by all the village adults. This was a non-Catholic ritual which is why the Church tried to get rid of it. Today, only middle aged and elderly citizens remember participating in this tradition because it faded out during the 20th century. Now, every day of Lent has a new ritual that takes place in the church but it is led by a group of women and the priest is not present or involved. The Rosary is recited for souls in Purgatory and not all village members attend this ritual, most of the time it is just women.
The rezadas em comum is the second community wide ritual that the Church tried to stamp out of Portuguese traditions. This practice is now only remembered by the elderly because it faded out by the 1920s. This ritual took place on January 20th, when villagers met in the open air to pray to Saint Sebastian. Married men led this tradition and every person who attended was called forward to say a prayer, the "em louvor do mártir São Sebastião". This ritual was considered a holy day and all work was suspended as long as prayers continued.
Some of the ways that the dead are commemorated daily in Portugal still include alminhas, crosses, calvaries, stone cairns, and wooden or stone crosses. Alminhas are small painted niches in house walls that, every time someone walks by, an Our Father is said for souls in Purgatory. Crosses and calvaries that are displayed are used as daily reminders of the dead, in the house and in public. Stone cairns, found in the hills and on roadsides, are built by people who pass by and place a stone at the site while praying for people who were killed in an accident or by violence. Wooden and stone crosses placed on roadsides and in fields mark the places where death occurred and when people come across them they are supposed to stop and say an Our Father for the souls in Purgatory.
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SOCIAL ASPECTS OF OF BURIAL AND DEATH RITUALS
After discussing the religious aspect of death and its traditions, Goldey moves on to the social aspects of death in Portugal. This section of her essay focused largely on what happens to land and inheritances when the head of a household dies, as well as the wills that the dead leave behind. When the head of the household dies, the land that they owned is transferred from the deceased land owner to a new one. Wills of the deceased in Portugal often laid out specifically how many masses the dead wanted said for them, how many priests they wanted to have say masses and prayers, as well as the amount of money they were willing to pay to the priests and the churches for these services. When it came to children, both in secular and religious aspects of death rituals, there was no place for them to partake in the traditions. They were considered to be anjinhos, or little angels, giving them no place in post death land redistribution and inheritances.
CONCLUSION
Patricia Goldey's essay ends by recapping her main points. The Portuguese idea of a good death is concerned with property transfers and individual salvation. Death rituals and traditions are operated on three different levels. The first is the individual, where salvation is the main point but the emphasis is on salvation in the sense of safety, meaning freedom from the torment of Hell and Purgatory, or the return to life. The second is the individual and kin, which involves land inheritance arrangements. The third level is that of the kin, where obligations fall on several individuals but mostly on the heir or heirs. This level stresses the separation of kin and the casa, or family and the house, from other landholding neighbors. Also, death and burial rituals, according to Goldey, reconcile the separation and competition of individual casas (houses) in other aspects of daily life that affects the entire village.
Patricia Goldey has offered many, many insights into death and dying, ritual and tradition, in Portugal throughout history and into the modern day. She discusses the idea of a good death, the many rituals surrounding death, the historical religious viewpoint of death, and the social aspects of burial and death rituals. These topics all give a good look into what death and dying is like in Portugal and they are written about succinctly and with much detail. This has most definitely been an amazing source for my research.
Pictures
Picture 1 - Misericórdia Church, Viseu, Portugal. Picture found at http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/2dk8Ene/viseu+church
Picture 2 - Alminhas de Padornelo VIII. Picture found at http://padornelo.blogs.sapo.pt/tag/alminhas
Sources
Chapter 1 Goldey, Patricia. "The Good Death: Personal Salvation and Community Identity." Death in Portugal: Studies in Portuguese Anthropology and Modern History, edited by Rui Feijo, Herminio Martins, and Joao de Pina-Cabral, 1-16. Oxford: JASO, 1983.
I overall enjoyed your post this week. Very interesting to hear that Portugal tried to get rid of some of their previous traditions only within the past century. The part of your post that most interested me was on the idea of "wandering souls." Living in American culture has somewhat glamorized the idea of ghosts, but as you have demonstrated these wandering souls could not fulfill their obligations to the good death and therefore are still trapped in this world. Yet similar to the American concept of the ghost is that the wandering soul you mentioned often appear due to their kin not performing the appropriate the appropriate ritual, which could be interpreted as haunting their kin. Keep up the good work.
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