Doctrinal and Physical Marginality in Christian Death: The Burial of Unbaptized Infants in Medieval Italy

The burial of unbaptized fetuses and infants, as seen through texts and archaeology, exposes friction between the institutional Church and medieval Italy’s laity. The Church’s theology of Original Sin, baptism, and salvation left the youngest children especially vulnerable to dying unbaptized and subsequently being denied a Christian burial in consecrated grounds. We here present textual and archaeological evidence from medieval Italy regarding the tensions between canon law and parental concern for the eternal salvation of their infants’ souls. We begin with an analysis of medieval texts from Italy. These reveal that, in addition to utilizing orthodox measures of appealing for divine help through the saints, laypeople of the Middle Ages turned to folk religion and midwifery practices such as “life testing” of unresponsive infants using water or other liquids. Although emergency baptism was promoted by the Church, the laity may have occasionally violated canon law by performing emergency baptism on stillborn infants. Textual documents also record medieval people struggling with where to bury their deceased infants, as per their ambiguous baptismal status within the Church community. We then present archaeological evidence from medieval sites in central and northern Italy, confirming that familial concern for the inclusion of infants in Christian cemeteries sometimes clashed with ecclesiastical burial regulations. As a result, the remains of unbaptized fetuses and infants have been discovered in consecrated ground. The textual and archaeological records of fetal and infant burial in medieval Italy serve as a material legacy of how laypeople interpreted and sometimes contravened the Church’s marginalizing theology and efforts to regulate the baptism and burial of the very young.

Cilliní: (Re)addressing the past in the present

This article examines the ‘Cilliní’ project’s interdisciplinary approach of research and filmmaking practice to explore the phenomena of cilliní. The project has created artwork that investigates and visualizes landscapes and provides a spatial narrative on the subject of cilliní, which were historic sites in Ireland used for the burial of ‘unfortunates’, principally stillborn and unbaptized infants. The article draws on the material created and experiences involved in making the short film The Lament and creating a virtual reality installation, Cilliní Tales, which, respectively, employ the technologies and approaches of drone and 360° camera filmmaking. As the article combines the perspectives of digital storytelling, cultural memory and a consideration of the ethics of undertaking such a project, it is written in the form of a triptych. This article addresses how the (re)visitings and difficult enquiries of arts-based research in the ‘Cilliní’ project contribute to an ongoing social, political and ethical reappraisal of cilliní and the implications of (re)addressing the past in the present.

Afterlives: Testimonies of Irish Catholic Mothers on Infant Death and the Fate of the Unbaptized

Older Irish Catholics remember a metaphysical space or place called Limbo. This was the destination of unbaptized infants. They could never enter Heaven because the stain of original sin had not been removed. In addition, they were denied burial in consecrated ground. Fear of such eventualities drove parents to baptize as soon as possible. Nor was this a purely Irish phenomenon. In emergency cases, even baptism in utero was permitted in some parts of Catholic Europe. The centerpiece of this study is the testimonies of Irish mothers and their remembrances of the perils of Limbo, the disposal of infant corpses (in cillíní), and “churching.” Why belief in Limbo has become almost extinct in recent decades is explored, drawing on both demand and supply side explanations. More generally, considerations of Limbo, the unbaptized, and the afterlife give rise to challenging questions as to secularization and even the definition of childhood.

Children’s Burial Grounds (cillíní) in Ireland

Children’s burial grounds (cillíní) are a recognized class of Irish archaeological monument that were used as the designated burial places for unbaptized infants among the Roman Catholic population. The evidence from historical and archaeological studies indicates a proliferation in the use of cillíní following the 17th century and that the tradition continued in use until the mid 20th century. This can be linked with the rise of Counter-Reformation Catholicism and the role played in Ireland by the Franciscans of Louvain, who were strong Augustinianists. The chapter reviews the development of new burial legislation in the Victorian era and suggests that this led the Church to take greater responsibility for the burial of the unbaptized through the creation of unconsecrated burial plots in Catholic cemeteries. The end of the tradition can be ascribed to the reforms undertaken within the Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Dante and the Classics

Thus was Dante welcomed by Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, and invited to become a member of the select circle in Limbo, the upper section of Hell containing the souls of unbaptized infants and distinguished pagans. The commentators tell us that this account of himself has been adduced as a proof of Dante's modesty; I have never been able to discover who proposed this idea. The poets entered the Palace of Wisdom and later on took their stand on an eminence from which Dante had a good view of the noble souls on the green sward in front of him, and he was told who many of them were.Owing to lack of space I must confine myself to the literary figures seen by Dante, although there were many other notable inmates of Limbo, e.g. Aeneas, Caesar, and Saladin in spite of his adherence to the religion of the renegade Christian Mahomet who was sent down to the circle allotted to the Schismatics.This list, with its supplement in Purg. xxii, deserves study; both should, however, be used with caution: the omission of well-known names should not be taken to imply ignorance on the poet's part. As Dante had but little Greek, it is obvious that he had not read the works of all the authors named.The writers and philosophers in the first list are: the five poets already mentioned, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno, Dioscorides, Orpheus, Cicero, Linus (v.l. Livy), Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen (Inf. iv. 131 ff.).