"The Living Help the Living, the Living the Dead, the Dead the Living and the Dead the Dead." P. Ribeira

Concern for the Soul Expressed in the Testaments of Peasants from the Countryside around Trieste

Abstract

In order to alleviate the suffering awaiting their souls in purgatory, it was customary in the 17th and 18th centuries for testators and testatrixes from Breg near Trieste to will part of their property to the Church. The testament was a corporeal instrument which allowed the peasant men and women to provide for their souls. At the beginning of the 19th century the testators and testatrixes from Breg still made out their last will with the aim of dying as good Christians, while in the middle of the 19th century, a gradual laïcisation of the testamentary act occurs. The concern to lessen and shorten the suffering of the deceased's soul in Purgatory gave way to the need for better management of the peasant economy among the impoverished peasants as well as the upper strata of the villagers. At the end of the 19th century, the testators and testatrixes decided to pay only for as many requiems as they could afford without putting a strain on their family budgets. Thus, the move away from the traditional patterns of behaviour in the villages of Breg occurs together with the gradual and steady advance of secularisation, which, in its first phase, relegated religious sentiments from public life to the sphere of intimate perception.