Protestant Cemetery, Rome

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The Non-Catholic Cemetery (), also referred to as the Protestant Cemetery () or the English Cemetery (), is a private cemetery in the rione of Testaccio in Rome. It is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a small-scale Egyptian-style pyramid built between 18 and 12 BCE as a tomb and later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that borders the cemetery. It has Mediterranean cypress, pomegranate and other trees, and a grassy meadow. It is the final resting place of non-Catholics living in Rome or Italy in general, including but not exclusive to Protestants or British people. The earliest known burial is that of a Dr. Arthur, a Protestant medical doctor hailing from Edinburgh, in 1716. The English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as Russian painter Karl Briullov, are buried there. While mainly the resting place of British and Protestant people or non-Catholic foreigners and non-Italians living in Italy, it also serves as the burial ground for some prominent atheist, agnostic, or non-believer Italians, such as Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.

History

Since the norms of the Catholic Church forbade burying on consecrated ground non-Catholics – including Protestants, Jews and Orthodox – as well as suicides (these, after death, were "expelled" by the Christian community and buried outside the walls or at the extreme edge of the same), burials occurred at night to avoid manifestations of religious fanaticism and to preserve the safety of those who participated in the funeral rites. An exception was made for Sir Walter Synnot, who managed to bury his daughter in broad daylight in 1821; he was accompanied by a group of guards to be protected from incursions of fanatics.

thumb|[[Roman Elegy by Jacques Sablet, 1791]]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the area of the non-Catholic cemetery was called "The meadows of the Roman people". It was an area of public property, where drovers used to graze the cattle, wine was kept in the cavities created in the so-called Monte dei Cocci, an artificial hill where the Romans went to have fun.

thumb|Map of the cemetery

The cemetery developed without any official recognition and only at the end of 1700 Papal authorities started to take care of it. It was not until the 1820s that the Papal government appointed a custodian to oversee the area and the cemetery functions. The public disinterest was mainly determined by the fact that in the current mentality, where the only burial conceived by the Catholics were the ones happening in a church, the availability of a cemetery that provided non-Catholic burials was not considered a privilege.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, only holly plants grew in the area, and there was no other natural nor artificial protection for the tombs scattered in the countryside, where cattle were grazing, as the cypresses that adorn the cemetery today were planted later on. In 1824 a moat was erected that surrounded the ancient part of the cemetery. In ancient times crosses or inscriptions were forbidden, as in all non-Catholic cemeteries, at least until 1870.

John Keats

thumb|180px|Tombstone of [[John Keats]]

Keats died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 25, and is buried in the cemetery. His epitaph, which does not mention him by name, is by his friends Joseph Severn and Charles Armitage Brown, and reads:

Percy Bysshe Shelley

thumb|180px|Tombstone of [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]]

Shelley drowned in 1822 in a sailing accident off the Italian Riviera. When his body washed up upon the shore, a copy of Keats's poetry borrowed from Leigh Hunt was discovered in his pocket, doubled back, as though it had been put away in a hurry. He was cremated on the beach near Viareggio by his friends, the poet Lord Byron and the English adventurer Edward John Trelawny. His ashes were sent to the British consulate in Rome, who had them interred in the Protestant Cemetery some months later.

Shelley's heart supposedly survived cremation and was snatched out of the flames by Trelawny, who subsequently gave it to Shelley's widow, Mary. When Mary Shelley died, the heart was found in her desk wrapped in the manuscript of "Adonais", the elegy Shelley had written the year before upon the death of Keats, in which the poet urges the traveller, "Go thou to Rome ...".

Shelley and Mary's three-year-old son William was also buried in the Protestant Cemetery.

Shelley's heart was finally buried, encased in silver, in 1889, with the son who survived him, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, but his gravestone in the Protestant Cemetery is inscribed: Cor cordium ("heart of hearts"), followed by a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Other burials

thumb|180px|right|Grave of [[Gregory Corso]]

thumb|180px|right|Grave of [[Antonio Gramsci]]

thumb|180px|right|Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn, † 1850, monument by [[Benjamin Edward Spence]]

thumb|180px|right|Grave of [[Hans von Marées]]

thumb|180px|right|Story's Angel of Grief

Arthur Aitken (1861–1924), British military commander
Johan David Åkerblad (1763–1819), Swedish diplomat
Walther Amelung (1865–1927), German classical archaeologist
Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872–1940), sculptor, friend of Henry James
Angelica Balabanoff (1878–1965), Jewish Russian-Italian communist and social democratic activist
R. M. Ballantyne (1825–1894), Scottish novelist
Jakob Salomon Bartholdy (1779–1825), Prussian Consul General, art patron
Rosa Bathurst (1808–1824), drowned in the River Tiber aged 16; moving monument by Richard Westmacott
John Bell (1763–1820), Scottish surgeon and anatomist
Dario Bellezza (1944–1996), Italian poet, author and playwright
Karl Julius Beloch (1854–1929), German classical and economic historian
Martin Boyd (1893–1972), Australian novelist and autobiographer
Pietro Boyesen (1819–1882), Danish photographer
Karl Briullov (1799–1852), Russian painter
Giorgio Bulgari (1890–1966), Italian businessman, son of Sotirios Bulgari, the founder of Bulgari
J.B. Bury (1861–1927), Anglo-Irish historian from County Monaghan
Andrea Camilleri (1925–2019), Italian novelist
Asmus Jacob Carstens (1754–1798), Danish-German painter
Jesse Benedict Carter (1872–1917), American Classical scholar

Enrico Coleman (1846–1911), artist and orchid-lover
Gregory Corso (1930–2001), American beat generation poet
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882), American author of Two Years Before the Mast
Luce d'Eramo (1925–2001), Italian writer
Frances Minto Elliot (1820–1898), English writer
Robert K. Evans (1852–1926), United States Army Brigadier General
Robert Finch (1783–1830), English antiquary and connoisseur of the arts
Arnoldo Foà (1916–2014), Italian actor
Karl Philipp Fohr (1795–1818), German painter
Maria Pia Fusco (1939–2016), Italian screenwriter and journalist
Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973), Italian novelist
Irene Galitzine (1916–2006) fashion designer
John Gibson (1790–1866), Welsh sculptor, student of Canova
August von Goethe (1789–1830), son of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; his monument features a medallion by Bertel Thorvaldsen
Joseph Gott (1785–1860), British sculptor, son of Benjamin Gott
Ferdinand Grammel (1878-1951), German cyclist
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), Italian philosopher, leader of the Italian Communist Party
Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819–1904), American sculptor
Stephen Grimes (1927–1988), British Academy Award winning production designer
Augustus William Hare (1792–1834), English author
William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900), American painter and draftsman
Johannes Carsten Hauch (1790–1872), Danish poet
William H. Herriman (1829–1918), American art collector
Baroness Elizabeth Hoyningen-Huene(1891 – 1973) Fashion Designer.
Ursula Hirschmann (1913–1991), German anti-fascist activist and an advocate of European federalism
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1794–1803), son of the German diplomat and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt
Gustav (Frederico Constantiono) von Humboldt (1806-1807), also son of Wilhelm von Humboldt on his second diplomatic posting in Rome
Mathilde von Humboldt-Dachroeden (1800-1881), wife of another son of Wilhelm von Humboldt, (Eduard Emil) Theodor von Humboldt-Dachroeden (1797-1871)
Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Russian poet, philosopher, and classical scholar
Chauncey Ives (1810–1894), American sculptor
Gualtiero Jacopetti (1919–2011), Italian director of documentary films
Dobroslav Jevđević (1895–1962), Serbian World War II commander
John Keats (1795–1821), English poet
Lindsay Kemp (1938–2018), British dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist, and choreographer
August Kestner (1777–1853), German diplomat and art collector
Adolf Klügmann (1837–1880), German classical archaeologist and numismatist
Richard Krautheimer (1897–1994), German art and architectural historian
Antonio Labriola (1843–1904), Italian Marxist theoretician
Belinda Lee (1935–1961), British actress
The 12th Duke of Leeds (1884-1964), British diplomat and the last Duke of Leeds; better known as Sir D'Arcy Osborne
Sir James MacDonald, 8th Baronet of Sleat (1741–1766), Scottish baronet and scholar; his tombstone was designed by G.B. Piranesi
Hans von Marées (1837–1887), German painter
George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882), American Minister to Italy 1861–1882, author of Man and Nature
Richard Mason (1919–1997), British author of The World of Suzy Wong
Malwida von Meysenbug (1816–1903), German author
Peter Andreas Munch (1810–1863) Norwegian historian
Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro (1819–1885), British classical scholar
Giorgio Napolitano (1925–2023), Italian politician and president of Italy between 2006 and 2015
Ernest Nash (1898–1974), German-American scholar, archaeological photographer
E. Herbert Norman (1909–1957), Canadian diplomat and historian
Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (1869–1948), Australian sculptor, and her partner, Hélène de Kuegelgen (died 1948)
Thomas Jefferson Page (1808–1899), commander of United States Navy expeditions exploring the Río de la Plata
Pier Pander (1864–1919), Dutch sculptor
Milena Pavlović-Barili (1909–1945), Serbian-Italian artist
John Piccoli (1939–1955), son of American artists Juanita and Girolamo (Nemo) Piccoli of Anticoli Corrado
Bruno Pontecorvo (1913–1993), Italian nuclear physicist
G. Frederick Reinhardt (1911–1971), U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1961–1968; administrator of this cemetery, 1961–1968
Heinrich Reinhold (1788–1825), German painter, draughtsman, engraver; his tombstone features a medallion by Bertel Thorvaldsen
Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894), African American abolitionist and physician
August Riedel (1799–1883) German artist
Amelia Rosselli (1930–1996), Italian poet
Peter Rockwell (1936–2020), American sculptor and son of Norman Rockwell
Gottfried Semper (1803–1879), German architect
Joseph Severn (1793–1879), English painter, consul in Rome, and friend of John Keats, beside whom he is buried
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), English poet
Franklin Simmons (1839–1913), American sculptor and painter
William Wetmore Story (1819–1895), American sculptor, buried beside his wife, Emelyn Story, under his own Angel of Grief
Niklāvs Strunke (1894–1966), Latvian painter
Pavel Svedomsky (1849–1904), Russian painter
John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), English poet and critic
Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994), Italian architectural historian

Tatiana Tolstaya (1864–1950), Russian painter and memoirist and daughter of Leo Tolstoy and Sophia Tolstaya
Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881), English author, friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, beside whose ashes he is buried
James Turner (1829-1893), Bishop of Grafton and Armidale
Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), American painter, sculptor, graphic artist
Shefqet Vërlaci (1877–1946), Prime Minister of Albania
Wilhelm Friedrich Waiblinger (1804–1830), German poet and biographer of Friedrich Hölderlin
J. Rodolfo Wilcock (1919–1978), Argentine writer, poet, critic and translator
Friedrich Adolf Freiherr von Willisen (1798–1864), Prussian General and Ambassador to the Holy See
Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894), American novelist and short story writer, friend of Henry James
(1869 - 1927) Russian Baron and Adjutant to Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
Richard James Wyatt (1795–1860), English sculptor
Helen Zelezny-Scholz (1882–1974), Czech-born sculptor and architectural sculptor
Jutta of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1880-1946), German princess who was the Crown Princess of Montenegro from 1899 till 1918.

References

External links

On-line database of tombs and deceased
[http://www.acdan.it/danmark_italia/scand_data/protcem/index.html]
Cemetery website (in Italian and English)
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 10, No. 285, 1 December 1827, Project Gutenberg E-text contains an article entitled "Protestant Burial-Ground at Rome"
The Keats-Shelley House in Rome
GPS coordinates you need to use to find the graves of famous people in the Non-Catholic Cemetery
Elisabeth Rosenthal. "A Cemetery of Poets Is in Crisis in Rome", International Herald Tribune, 8 February 2006