La muerte en Guadalajara, siglos XVIII y XIX

Abstract

Philippe Aries noted “the exaggeration” of attitudes of resistance among the common classes undertaken by priests in the eighteenth century with regard to the expulsion of their corpses, far from churches, the city, and traditional Parisian cemeteries, beginning in 1780. In the first third of the eighteenth century, Guadalajara witnessed three different funerary systems that nevertheless, retained the privileged practice of burial within churches. It was possible to confirm, as Aries did, the same yielding attitude of those affected by their expulsion to provisional grounds, whether they were poor or from other social classes with greater economic means, as long as the burial was free. These practices not only raised questions regarding the adhesion to funerary guidelines of the contemporary Church, but also the supposed rigid piety of the Guadalajara parishioners.