Hermeneutics and cemeteries: a look at the Santa Casa cemetery in Porto Alegre

Abstract

We realized different ways societies express the feeling of death, but always keeping the idea of preserving the memory of the dead by the image in an attempt to keep alivetheir identity. For Christians, the belief in eternal life represents a link between the living world (secular) and the dead (sacred). Hence arises the need to preserve the memory of the dead, creating a permanent relationship between the secular world and the sacred world. We analyzed the funeral works through a specific hermeneutic, because when a family chooses a statue of Christ, holy and inserts some other elements of the Christian faith, is reaffirming his belief or religious community in which they live. Thus, it is the diversity of props that compose the funerary art that makes it possible to identify the concepts present in a religious holy ground.