Between the 'false piety' and the 'lights of the century': Projects to create an extramural cemetery in late colonial Buenos Aires

Abstract

For centuries, the intramural burials guaranteed the coexistence between the living and the dead and symbolized the eternal union of the Church, as a community of believers. The conjunction between the new medical discourse and the advance of enlightened piety throughout the 18th century contributed to undermining the foundations of that traditional model of religiosity. At the end of the colonial period, the Bourbon monarchy promoted the creation of extramural cemeteries in the main villages and cities of the Empire. In the city of Buenos Aires, this project originated a series of conflicts and controversies that involved different institutions and social actors, both ecclesiastical and secular. The dispute over the place that death and the dead should occupy within society allows us to identify the impact of enlightened ideas and the transformation of religiosity in the Río de la Plata during the late colonial period.