Familial and Common Graves

From : Omertaa.org

"Familial and Common Graves When a person dies in Malta they end up either in a family or a communal grave. Family graves are seen as more respectable. Common graves (qabar komuni) are for people of a lower socio-economy class (it costs 200 euro/1000 Maltese pounds for a family grave), or for those who are not religious (Galea 2011). A family grave will normally have compartments for four or five coffins, but it can hold up to six bodies. There is space below for bones, which are put into plastic bags during “cleaning” by cemetery workers (Sean 2011). In the past flour bags were used instead. Each set of bones is then put into a box which is stored in the family grave. The boxes used to be wooden or tin, but now they use plastic (Victor 2011; and Vincent 2011). From the Hypogeum to the catacombs, communal graves have been a part of Maltese history. Graves of this nature seem to make the most sense in urbanized areas where space creates an issue. Although this is the case in cities such as Valetta, it does not apply to all of Malta, and is even less relevant in Gozo. It must therefore hold importance in the collective conscious of the people. One explanation is that a burial of this nature delivers the dead from “the isolation in which he was plunged since his death, and reunites his body with those of his ancestors” (Hertz 1960:54). Hertz is referring to a body’s transition from a temporary to a final burial place, but I believe that this is also relevant when discussing communal, at least familial, burials. Common graves may not be as respected as family graves because they contain the bodies of the poor and secular, but it may also be a result of the subconscious idea that the dead buried there are alone. This may be why, after two years, the bones from common graves may be removed and stored in crypts, or thrown down wells located on the cemetery grounds, while the bones from family graves cannot. "

Malta - Graves

"Times of Malta"
2004

"Owning a grave does not mean that problems could not arise and is not a guarantee that a person will definitely be buried there. Mr Attard Kingswell explained that if a grave is not separated in sections, then a year has to pass between one burial and another. However, he said, most private graves have three compartments. The lower compartment is usually used as an ossuary - where the bones are put after the grave is cleaned - but could take up to one coffin. He explained that this compartment is sealed with stone slabs and burials usually take place in the middle compartment, which can take up to two coffins. The second level is also sealed with stone slabs so that the top level can be used if the necessary time frame to open the main compartment has not passed. He said that as long as the section was sealed off, and there were no coffins in the section being opened, a burial could take place at any time.

Ta' Braixa - Malta

3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines 1947-1962

Fallen Stones - Msida Bastion Cemetery

Fallen Stones
Msida Bastion Cemetery - Malta

Msida Bastion Cemetery - Malta



Msida Bastion Cemetery
"A delight to visit"

The Msida Bastion Cemetery near the Excelsior Hotel is one of those magical finds that you make every now and again through sometimes humdrum cemetery hunting. The cemetery is on the Island of Malta and it's set against the walls of the City facing out to Marsamxett Harbour. The waters of the harbour are soft and blue and the walls of the ancient Bastion or fortress are hard and blindingly white in the sunlight of Malta. The Cemetery is on the edge of the City and I suspect that many Maltese don't know that the cemetery / garden is there hiding behind the walls holding secrets to itself. The guests of the 5* hotel nearby may not even know that such an historical jewel is so close to the hotel and within easy walking distance.

The opening hours are a little restricted and access is available on a limited basis which is frustrating although if you want to get there then you'll try to make space in your routine. The heat of the day means that you may not want to be out in the garden for long. There is only so much time in the sun that you can manage in Malta and the cemetery seems even hotter than usual because the cemetery is situated between the stone walls of the bastion. The stones warm up and throw heat outwards towards the visitor. The volunteers who work with the National Trust of Malta are rather wonderful as they give their time to maintaining the cemetery to the present high standards. In many ways it would be good to see the many Anglicans Churches in the UK spend so much time on their heritage. In Malta the volunteers work towards maintenance and restoration under the hot sun. During my visit I observed a 'mature' lady haul a heavy bucket of weeds through the heat (coming up to mid day)  after spending time lifting them out of the dry and inhospitable soil. The dedication of volunteers to heritage and conservation is clear and the outcome of the effort is that the cemetery is a beautiful garden.



Msida Bastion Cemetery
A beautiful and well conceived garden

The flowers in the cemetery are well chosen. They require little water and are just right for the dry Mediterranean environment although there are water pipes carefully laid out around the edges. The wild lawn looked good on the day of the visit in April although in the heat of August the lawn may look a little brown and threadbare. The flowers are reminiscent of an English Garden and they carry the atmosphere of the 'homeland' left behind by the inhabitants for this corner of the Mediterranean. The flowers aren't overwhelming. The visitor isn't oppressed with the weight of floral displays. Everything is balanced and 'tasteful'. It takes a lot of thought to be this understated. The Cemetery is a garden that befits its original purpose and which does honour to the frail remains of humanity resting under the thin sandy soil.

The monuments themselves are an interesting mixture. There are the simple 'stele' type of monuments that stand there with a name and details on one side and there are truly massive monuments belonging to the great and the good. In this cemetery there are the ordinary people brought to Malta as well as the landed gentry brought to govern as well as those in transit from one part of the growing Empire to the other. The stonework is a measure of the social cohesion of death. The stonework is a way of bringing together the Protestant community of Malta and those Catholics such as Vassaillis who had fallen out with the Catholic hierarchy. The Bastion cemetery is a place for the in gathering of the dead in a strange land.



Msida Bastion Cemetery
The lives of ordinary people preserved
for the future

The stone is largely very worn and de-laminated as the result of pollution and hard wear. Some monuments are very much on their last legs as they fade before our eyes. The work in the cemetery has conserved the monuments for the future although a lot of stonework in Malta is ready for re-building after the ravages of time. The headstones have been put together as much as possible although there is only so much that can be done with the weathered and shattered limestone and broken marble.

On the day of the visit I hadn't left enough time and I aimed to run off to Pieta and Hamrun to see other things and meet other people. Thanks to the work of the volunteers there would be time to visit again and take in the peace and special tranquillity of this garden that sits so peacefully  under the hot sun and behind the limestone walls.

Charles McCorrie VC

 

Charles McCorrie VC

Msida Bastion Cemetery - Malta

"He was approx. 25 years old, and a Private in the 57th Regiment (later Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge's Own)), British Army, during the Crimean War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC. On 23 June 1855 at Sebastopol, in the Crimea, Private McCorrie threw over the parapet a live shell which had been thrown from the enemy's battery.
He died in Malta on 8 April 1857"

Antonius Grech-Delicata-Testaferrata

Clergy and aristocrats in Gozo

The Theatre of death in Malta

The theatre of death at
The Cathedral of The Assumption - Gozo

I was in Malta again recently and had some time in Gozo which is the smaller island off the coast of the main island of Malta. The island of Gozo is green and pleasant and less frantic than the larger island. The houses are further apart and have a rural atmosphere compared to the other place. Gozo is interesting if you have the time to visit the place. More often as not tourists spend a day on Gozo before hurrying back on the last ferry.

Gozo has a unique atmosphere and the the capital of Victoria or Rabat (you take your pick as with many other Maltese towns) is a place of small shops, sometimes bad tea and the Cathedral that sits on the heights above the market square. The walls of the citadel are intimidating and as intended. The masonry was always there to ensure that the locals knew who was in charge and that invaders were aware of the outcome of any attack. Even now the ascent to the citadel is difficult on foot and you have to stop and catch your breath in the last sun of the year when the sun was unseasonably strong.

The citadel (built on the site of a Roman temple)  was hot and dry and bathed in sun and yet the Cathedral frowned down upon anyone who made it into the square and shelled out the 6 Euros to go inside. I resent paying the Roman catholic Church anything at all. The congregations are often complicit in assaults carried out upon children and many of the clergy (although not all) are aware of child abusers and are aware of those who have 'got away with it'. The light, air and beauty of this hilltop covered in stone is damaged by the Cathedral which has a monumentally dark energy. The larger than life statues of Popes on the steps ensures that a feeling of power and monumentality is created. This is Roman Catholicism in large scale and in a sort of funny farm baroque way. The site is harmed by the building and it gets worse as you go inside.

Death as an object of fear and veneration

The interior of the Cathedral embodies the sort of melancholy I have mentioned on this blog previously. The darkness of the interior is evident as the tourist is drawn inside towards the tombs in what is a small and rather insignificant building. The floor is the first things that grips you as the graves are laid out like Baroque crazy paving. The clergy and aristocrats find their place under marble tombs and ornate marble work that fills the imagination. The colours are bright for this oppressive environment and the brightness of the materials makes up for the Christian tendency to fill Churches with the dead. The floor is filled with the dead and the so are the walls where we find tombs. Here we also find effigies of a Pope in a cabinet and this is where the Roman Catholics are the cult of the dead incarnate. Death has become something that it inevitable to become something that is actual desirable. Death is the thing that brings the Christian closer to God and the Christian forgets the joys of life in a rush to death.

The voices of tourists are hushed as they feel their way around in the darkness and Japanese tourists clearly have no idea what they're looking at and they seemed confused by the images and the apparently random placing of the dead and the living. That is nothing new as many Churches are little more that indoor burial sites where the great and the good await a place in the next life. They point to the image of a silver cross with an emaciated and tortured Christ and this is the centre of this faith.

The Church led by the dead!

I leave the Cathedral of Victoria / Rabat with relief and I quickly go round the back to find that the masonry walls enclose a garden and I touch the clean soil of the garden. This is clean dirt rather than the filth that fills the cathedral's substructure and the walls give a good view of the landscape. The wind at this height blows the cobwebs away and the sun destroys any feelings of negativity.

I like the idea of Churches as places of spirituality and hope in a troubled life and a difficult world although I increasingly encounter the idea of Christianity as a cult of the dead where we encounter suffering and darkness. The dead are destined for the Earth and for recycling although the Church proves to be a barrier to that cycle.

The Cathedral at Gozo

The cross

The power of the cross
for Christians

Kalkara

Miss Lily A, Jackson
Died 21 October 1918
© Godric Godricson

Raymond Henery Goddard
Died 7 February 1924
© Godric Godricson

Alex Anderson - 193 Brand Street, Govan - SS Elysia

Alex Anderson
Died 24 May 1916

SS Elysia (1908-1942)

For details on the SS Elysia see this link
For  Alex on Glasgow's role of honour  see this link 
For Alex in the Kalkara site see this link

Gan Falaris - Kalkara

Gan Falaris Died 1916

Jack Bibby - Died 11 June 1917

Edward Bedingfield - Kalkara

Edward Bedingfield died 10th June 1929
© Godric Godricson

William G Sledge Lunner Died 2nd May 1915

© Godric Godricson  




John Dobson - HMS Baccante. Died 31st october 1907

© Godric Godricson  

Ernest Elliott Died 6th June 1907

© Godric Godricson  

Ecclesiastical Curiosities

Ecclesiastical  Curiosities
Edited William Andrews (1899) Project Gutenburg
© Godric Godricson

Among all classes of English people there are mixed feelings relating to our churchyards. They are either places of reverence on the one hand, or superstition on the other. The sacred plot surrounding the old Parish Church carries with it such a host of memories and associations, that to the learned and thoughtful it has always been God’s Acre, hallowed with a tender hush of silent contemplation of the many sad rifts and partings among us. We almost vie with each other in proclaiming that deep reverence for this one sacred spot, so dear to our family life, and affections, by those mementos of love which we raise over the resting-places of our lost ones gone before. This is strangely apparent in the stately monument, where the carver’s art declares the virtues of the dead, either by sculptured figure, or verse engraven, as well as in the ofttimes more pathetic, and perhaps more beautiful, tribute of the floral cross or wreath culled by loving hands, and borne in silence, by our poorer brethren, as the only offering, or tribute, their slender means allows them to make. Be sure of this one fact, that our English Churchyards are better kept—more worthy of the name of God’s Acre than in the times past, for what is a more beautiful sight, than to see the kneeling children around the garden grave of a parent, or a child companion, adorning the little mound with flowers for the Eastertide festival. Here we have a living illustration of the truth of the concluding words of our Great Creed: “I look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to come.”

Fra Dom Vincenzo Labini




Maltese Death, Mourning, and Funeral Customs
A. Cremona
"Folklore"  Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec. 31, 1923)

"The hiring of poor women and beggars to pray over and watch the corpse for the whole night. This custom prevails mostly in Gozo. In old days official female mourners, named neiffiieha (from neiiiiah, " to cry ") were employed. The prac- tice was abolished in Malta during the plague of A.D. 1676.1 Sicilians employed mourners called Praeficae or Reputatrices, a custom of Greek and Roman origin and practised by the Irish until A.D. 1849. It still prevails among the Corsicans and the Sahara tribes of Algeria.

The old ceremonial of the Maltese female mourners is described by Abela as follows :- They wore trailing veils (kurkdr), and when they entered the premises of the deceased they cut down the bower vines in the yard and threw the flower pots from the balconies and windows into the street. They searched the house for the finest piece of china, dashed it on the floor, and mixed the fragments with ashes from the hearth. They boiled the whole together in a pot, and with the mixture washed the door posts and window shutters of the house. During these proceedings they sang couplets which ended in long-drawn sighs and lamentations. Then they gathered round the corpse and knelt down, extolling the virtues of the deceased, the relations joining in their mourning".

Walter Cummings Died 7th April 1902

Buried - Kalkara, Malta [Link]

© Godric Godricson