In 1958 the ethnologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino published a book destined to become a classic: Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico. Dal lamento pagano al pianto di Maria ("Death and ritual weeping in the ancient world: from the pagan lament to the weeping of Mary"). In it he brought together two apparently distant worlds: the women who wept for the dead in the villages of 1950s Lucania and the funeral laments of ancient Greece, the Near East and the Christian tradition. The thread linking them was an idea: ritual weeping is a technique for crossing the hardest passage, the death of a loved one.
The fieldwork
De Martino (1908-1965) carried out a series of research expeditions in southern Italy in the 1950s, often in teams with scholars from different disciplines. For the study of lament he worked, among others, with the ethnomusicologist Diego Carpitella, who recorded songs and laments. These recordings are today a precious source for the history of Italian popular culture.
In the villages of Lucania the funeral lament was still practised by women of the family or by expert lamenters. It was not spontaneous, disorderly weeping, but behaviour with recognisable forms.
The form of the lament
De Martino described the lament as a set of stable elements:
- stereotyped gestures: rocking the upper body, clapping the hands, tearing the hair or pretending to, waving a handkerchief;
- recurring verbal modules: fixed formulas combined and repeated, addressed directly to the deceased;
- a melodic line, simple and repetitive, halfway between song and cry;
- an alternation between moments of outburst and moments of regained control.
The content addressed the dead person as though they could hear: they were called by name, reminded of the work they had done, affectionately reproached for abandoning their family, entrusted with messages for other dead.
The crisis of presence
To explain the function of lament, de Martino used a central concept of his thought: the crisis of presence. Faced with an extreme event such as death, a person risks losing the capacity to be in the world, to act, to make sense. Grief can overwhelm, turning into mute despair or formless delirium.
Ritual weeping offers a way out. Precisely because it is codified, it allows grief to be expressed without being submerged by it. The learned formulas and gestures form a kind of track: the mourner follows a path already traced by the community, and along that path grief is transformed. In the end the deceased is "placed" in memory, and the living can return to life.
In terms of rites of passage, lament accompanies the living through the marginal phase, when the loss is still open.
The comparison with the ancient world
The second part of the book shows that the same model is found in many ancient cultures. In the Iliad, the body of Hector brought back to Troy is mourned in turn by Andromache, Hecuba and Helen, each with her own lament, while the chorus responds with groans. It is a perfectly structured scene of ritual lament.
De Martino also examined laments for gods who die and are reborn in the ancient Near East and the Greek world, in which collective weeping accompanied the cycle of vegetation. Mourning for a god became a model for human mourning.
From pagan lament to the weeping of Mary
The book's subtitle points to the final step of the inquiry. Christianity looked with suspicion on the extreme forms of funeral lament, considered incompatible with hope in the resurrection. Over the centuries church authorities and town statutes repeatedly tried to curb its excesses.
At the same time, however, the Christian tradition developed an exemplary lament: that of Mary at the foot of the cross, sung in laude, sequences and sacred plays. The Mother's weeping for her Son offered the faithful a model of grief oriented by a perspective of salvation. According to de Martino, ancient weeping was not erased but transformed and reinserted into a new religious horizon.
A legacy still alive
The book deeply influenced anthropology, the history of religions and the study of popular culture in Italy. It showed that gestures often judged "archaic" or "superstitious" had a profound logic and a precise function.
For those who study rites of passage the lesson is clear: grief too needs form. The community does not leave those who remain alone, but offers them words, gestures and times for crossing the threshold.
In short
- Ernesto de Martino's Morte e pianto rituale, from 1958, is a classic in the study of mourning.
- The research began from funeral laments still practised in Lucania in the 1950s.
- Lament has stable gestures, formulas and melodies, addressed directly to the deceased.
- For de Martino ritual weeping helps overcome the "crisis of presence" caused by death.
- Christianity transformed ancient lament into the model of Mary's weeping.
