Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History

Silvia Cavicchioli is Researcher of Contemporary History at the University of Turin. Luigi Provero is Full Professor of Medieval History at the University of Turin.

Introduction Part I: Norm and Praxis in Late Antiquity 1. An Ignominious Burial: The Treatment of the Body of Jesus of Nazareth 2. The Cult of Relics in the Late Roman Empire: Legal Aspects Part II: Cults, Circulations and Battles for Relics 3. A Liquid Miracle: The Origins of the Liquefaction Ritual of the Blood of Saint Januarius 4. The Circulation of Roman Relics in the Savoy States: Dynamics of Devotion and Political Uses in the Modern and Contemporary Ages 5. Jewish Intellectuals and the "Martyrdom" of Simon of Trent in Habsburg Restoration Italy: Anti-Semitism, Relics and Historical Criticism 6. Some Observations on the Itinerary of Don Bosco’s Relics Part III: Collective Spaces of Death 7. Cemeteries and Villages in the Thirteenth-Century Countryside 8. Within, Beneath and Outside the City: The Space of the Dead in Early Modern Naples (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries) 9. Bodies "as Objects Preserved in Museums": The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo Part IV: Public Uses of Human Remains Between Politics, Religion and Science 10. "Roasted and Eaten": The Neapolitan Counter-Revolution of 1799 and the Use of Jacobin Remains 11. "You Can Tell a Man from His Head": The Study and Preservation of the Skulls of Celebrated Italians in the Nineteenth Century 12. The Remains of the Vanquished: Bodies and Martyrs of the Roman Republic from the Risorgimento to Fascism 13. The Medicalisation of the Corpse in Liberal Italy: National Legislation and the Case of Turin 14. Simulacra of Eternal Life: Ostensions, Exhibitions and the Concealment of Human Remains