1. Introduction.
Since its founding and throughout its history,
the Catholic Church has considered the practice of cremating the corpses of the
deceased as something abominable. The very history of the towns proves that
this practice was more widespread among the most primitive towns or human
groups and not among the most developed ones. Despite the rectitude of thought
in this regard, the progressive decline of Catholic awareness among peoples,
the weakening of Catholic positions, the spread (increasingly widespread) of liberal
and Masonic ideas, and the very attitude of men who occupy important positions
in the hierarchy of the Church, give this question of morality a relevance that
it has not had in recent years,
2) Etymological definition.
Cremation comes from the Latin CREMARE: CREAM.
Cremation comes from the Latin: In Cinis; in
ashes.
It is therefore the violent destruction of the
human corpse by means of fire or great heat. It can be a “religious” rite or a
civil rite.
3) History.
a) The pre-Canaanites. Cremation existed among
the Neolithic natives of the country of Canann. In a burial cave in the Gazer
hypogeum, data was discovered that dates back to the first peoples who settled
on the hill, in the course of the fourth millennium BC. The ashes found were
recognized as belonging to human remains. They had been produced by a prolonged
or violent incineration, to the point of not leaving evidence of the body but
only a mass of whitish dust, or, having left in the black ash a remains of
incompletely calcined bones. The number of charred corpses can be estimated at
more than 100. It is the only example known up to then in Palestine.
b) The Egyptians and the Chaldeans.
The Egyptians buried their dead in the Nile
Valley, which is full of tombs. However, in archaic Egypt, the king was burned
in his monumental tomb, but before burning him the monarch was buried for the
fire to consume so that the god-king could more easily make his way to heaven
where he was to meet those of his race.
According to a reference by Herodotus, the
Babylonians embalmed their corpses with honey and took them to lower Chaldea,
in order to reunite them, after their death, with their ancestors. The Chaldeans
generally buried their dead. The rite of burying the dead was introduced in
this region by the Semites, when they entered it.
c) The Persians.
These buried their dead, the royal tombs are
proof of this. They punished the cremation of corpses with death and had
special rules to purify fire stained with such an abomination. (they worshiped
fire as a divinity).
d) The Greeks.
In early Greece, burial was the general and
universally adopted rule for the burial of the dead, over a period of many
centuries. The reason for the use of this mode of burial is that burial was
more in agreement than cremation with the beliefs of the ancient Greeks with
reference to the posthumous life.
However, in the time of Homer the rite of
cremation was introduced among the Greeks parallel to that of burial; the two
rites have simply overlapped and their simultaneous use is clearly attested.
Furthermore, if cremation was unknown in mainland Greece, it was practiced
there only exceptionally. Similarly, during the classical period, Greece
continued to adhere to the practice of burial. The same law prescribed "to
bury and put in the grave any corpse found accidentally."
All this is proven by the testimony of
Herodotus (in his history, Erato, L. VI, by that of Plutarch (“Vita Liturgi”),
Thucides (L. II), Euripides (“Suplc v. 17). that in Roman times that cremation
exceeded burial to then disappear under the influence of Christianity.
e) Among the Romans.
Burial was the primitive rite adapted for
burials and cremation did not appear more than in the advanced times of the
republic (Plinio, 1.VIII, c. XLIV). However, this practice never reigned to
such an extent that it completely supplanted burial, cremation was never
applied to dead children. Finally, even under the empire, although cremation
had ended up prevailing, burial was not totally excluded. From the Antonios
onwards, burials by inhumation were more frequent. In the fifth century
cremations had already fallen into disuse.
f) Among Christians.
At no time in the history of the Church did I
ever accept the rite of cremation. Here a parenthesis must be made on this
subject, given that the ecclesiastical authorities of our time have ignored the
traditions of the Church as always, but also the magisterium of the Church and
the Code of Canon Law, allowing, in some cases outside of those mandated by
Canon Law, but have encouraged its practice and even allowed to keep the ashes
of said cremations in the "temples", thus having large profits,
closing parentheses. Let's continue with our theme, from its origin to
consecrated burial or commonly called burial for the burial of their deceased
used among the Semites by an inviolable practice. The first Christians collected,
at the risk of their lives, the remains of their martyrs to bury them piously,
the Roman Martyrology is full of these pious examples. The persecutors
sometimes deliberately burned the martyrs and threw their ashes into the wind
or into the rivers, an action by which they insulted the Church of the Triune
and One God.
Of this absolute fidelity that the Church
always testified towards the rite of burial, there is overwhelming proof, for
the first centuries of the Christian era, in the existence of the Roman
catacombs.
The Church always fought against the practice
of pagan cremation, which was accompanied by rites incompatible with the
Christian faith. During a certain period, apart from the one mentioned in the
brief parenthesis, this impious practice was advocated, but Boniface VIII,
through the motu proprios "Detestandae Fortitatis and de Sepulturis",
decrees that those who will make such an impious and cruel transit suffer, by
the action of fire, the bodies of the deceased, instead of depositing them
intact in the grave they have chosen, WILL BE COMMUNICATED IPSO FACTO AND, FURTHERMORE, THAT
THE REMAINS OF THESE CORPSES WILL BE PRIVATE FROM THE ECCLESIASTICAL GRAVE.
“Ordinamus circa corpora defuctorum hujus modo abusus vel similiter nulatenus
observatus (…) sed ut sic impie ac crudeliter non tractatur”.
It will be necessary to reach the times of the
revolution of 1789 to witness a new attempt on the part of the followers of
cremation. However, it was only in the last quarter of the 19th century that
the idea of cremation gained some consistency in Europe, thanks also when the
Masonic societies obtained official recognition of this rite from the
governments.
---TO BE CONTINUE.
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