Naples’s Cult of the Souls of Purgatory | Atlas Obscura
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- “When you enter the Cemetery delle Fontanelle, it feels like you are going down to hell, descending into the underworld.” In Naples, members of the cult of the souls of purgatory practice an ancient tradition, where they express devotion to the skulls of lost or abandoned souls in order to help them seek salvation and make their way out of purgatory. The tradition lives on underneath the city as a representation of the unusually close relationship Neapolitans have with death.
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A touching video....there are people all over the world with good and kind natures who are praying for the whole of humanity, living and dead. That’s a very comforting thought!
There's also the purgatory of ending up forgotten in a mass grave, any loved one still remembering who you were long gone too. I think that visiting the skulls is a good way of keeping the memory of your city, part of your history.
I guess it doesn't matter who they were but that they existed.
@@truth4004" from energy we came, to energy we will return ". Sounds better than *dust* , right ?
Interesting look at the continue attention of what is essentially ancestor worship alongside Christianity.
No, that’s missing the theological point, it’s more subtle than that: those who are not completely free of the burden of sin must be purified before they are completely united with Christ since he is free from and the antithesis of sin. So the Church Fathers (early Church history) have interpreted Holy Scripture to show that God revealed a state of Purgatory after death for this cleansing. Second, there is a difference between worship (latria) and veneration (dulia). Latria is only for the Holy Trinity-God is the only one who truly has the omnipotence in Heaven and on Earth. Dulia is veneration by which we can ask the deceased to pray for our intercession to the Holy Trinity. By intercession, we mean the deceased can only pray for us to God because they have no power and dominion themselves and are only souls. So we need to be careful to say this is not ancestor worship and is part of the essential doctrine for a majority of mainstream Christians worldwide.
Really an interesting variation of the Catholic "poor souls" belief. Usually, the dead in purgatory are pitied and even feared, as they are often seen as still bound to the world, a soucre of ghosts and spectres. They are usually not believed to be in a position to grant wishes. In most areas, rituals and prayers for them are usually meant to shorten their time in purgatory.
In Greco-Roman belief, the underworld was the ultimate source of wealth (the gods having forced humanity to dig for food and minerals). Not surprising that the underlying belief survived Christianization.
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers I think it's unlikely that you'd be able to draw a direct line between these two beliefs. You'd most likely end up with a gap of up to a thousand years. Pagan survivalism is rarely a good explanation, especially in a case like this. It's a twist on the poor souls folk belief.
Christianity around Italy papered over existing religious and cultural beliefs. Purgatory is Hades by another name (the only novelty of Christianity being that it becomes a pit stop instead of a destination).
Other than this, a whole set of Greco Roman practices and beliefs are still active with barely a wink and a nod, basically a Christianized version of one deeply engrained local Mystery Cult or another.
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers This is less true than you might think. While Roman paganism deeply influenced ritual practices in the Christian church, the amount of influence on the philosophy and mindset has been vastly exaggerated by 19th century scholars. The mistake thy made was not taking the around 1500 years after the christianization into account: many of the traits they saw as pagan survivalism did not appear before the high middle ages or the baroque era. The poor souls belief had its high time in the 17th and 18th century. This practice here is most likely as young.
Naples was settled by Greeks a millennium before Jesus, and they brought with them a culture that was older still. But yeah, talk about how Christianity came out of the blue, fully formed, and just happened to have this mythology about Purgatory which wasn't even written down until the 1200 years after Jesus.
It has a "Blasphemous" (the video game) vibe.
Worshipping skulls is not what they do. They pray for them. Don't say that
I love this video, felt so touched! thank you so much!
We can be very different in life, but in death we are all the same.
I wonder if there is such a thing as a soul, or a life after death, feeling empathy for others even if the other is death is not a religion matter, is about humanity.
I was thought that been a soul, you wanted to go directly to heaven, who knows what is the true of everything . May everyone rest in peace anywhere.
Keep up the videos! Love your channel!
Thank you for sharing this.
Awesome video guys! Great documentation of this pretty obscure Italian belief
You mean the Catholic Church's doctrine of purgatory? The Christian denomination that has a mere 1.34 billion nominal members.
Kinda looks like a Bekzinski paintng🖤💜💙 but still pecefull.
👀👀👀 good job .👍🏻
Pretty easy to see how pre-Christian beliefs about shades in Hades are welded onto the Christian context. Notice that the souls here are middle class -fairly wealthy but not aristocrats- and likely tied to the Greco-Roman belief that the underworld was the origin of wealth
I was due to visit a couple of years ago, ran out of time :(
Fascinating place
Atlas obscura can you please make a video about the tree of 40 fruit and about mortar man in West Virginia.
Praying for the souls in purgatory is a catholic belief
But not worship. Worshiping is a big no-no
@@stevenargueta5082 Usually, but obviously not in this variation shown here. They clearly pray to the dead for wishes and help. That's not true to catholic doctrine, as John correctly said, but a form of popular piety. That's why it was banned by the church for some time.
Do they take new burials? I'm interested. Its crazy beautiful.
This channel has so much more potential
Suppose they've to keep it in mind, considering half the city sits inside the caldera of a mega volcano that could get very active very quickly 🤔
Why isn't anyone mentioning the catacombs of Paris? They are essentially the same.
No such thing as purgatory . Repent and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ . The world would have you believe there are other ways into .heaven ..that even after you die there is still hope. No repent while there is still time. He says behold i stand at the door and knock . HE IS THE TRUTH THE WAY AND THE LIFE ONLY THROUGH HIM CAN THE FATHER ACCEPT US INTO HIS ETERNAL GLORY . THERES NO IN BETWEEN ITS HEAVEN OR HELL
CHOOSE JESUS CHOOSE ETERNAL LIFE ❤❤❤❤
How can these people pray to Jesus over these idols? Do they not know the Bible? What in the world are they taught? Pray for these people
😥🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
So praying in front of a tomb is idolatry?
I don’t think you know what idolatry is lmao
Except for if you meant them worshipping the skulls. That’s a big no-no
@@johnmarston6643 exactly
@@brandibuffkin9740 people can pray for the dead in purgatory and that’s totally a great thing, but when they begin worshipping them is when it goes too far