TOMBED CITIES: SYMBOLISM IN CATHOLIC CEMETERIES OF NEW ORLEANS

Abstract

This paper examines the various symbols found in two Catholic cemeteries of New Orleans in order to evaluate the symbolic language surrounding death. From that evaluation, I hope to better understand how that symbolic language surrounding death presents in the two cemeteries in question. Utilizing Mircea Eliade's theory of sacred space as well as elements of a "lived religion" approach, it examines the kinds of symbols used within the cemeteries and the way the symbols communicate various ideas about death. From that, it extrapolates a consideration of the relationship Catholic New Orleanians who bury in the two cemeteries being considered have with their dead. It draws upon data collected in two cemeteries, St Louis Cemetery No 1 and No 3, as well as on various sources relating to Catholic theology and the history of New Orleans. This paper illustrates some of the motifs present in the cemeteries and sets a broad-base pattern of categories — explicitly religious, largely secular, and hybrid. These three categories provide a constructive framework for considering how symbols denote sacrality, how secular symbols become sacred through context and proximity to the sacred, and how these ideas function in a way that is particular to New Orleanian Catholics. This research also engages in the essential work of understanding the religious life of New Orleans as a distinct phenomenon within American Catholicism, in addition to contributing to the necessary undertaking to document New Orleans in both pre-and-post-Katrina conditions. As such, it is the beginning of a larger effort to expand both efforts in the future.