Many nations and civilizations have and have had a process, in which the government condemned memorials, monuments, or memory of a person who was seen as a tyrant, traitor, or other sort of enemy to the state.
The reason – monuments are never just benign markers of the past, but the past told according to a particular narrative and made tangible in order to influence collective memory.
Some are for the common good, for example, the powerful imagery of the Lincoln Memorial as backdrop for the “I have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr (MLK).
Lincoln, long viewed by the American people as a symbol of honesty, integrity, and humanity, died from an assassin’s bullet in April 1865.
On August 28, 1963, the Lincoln Memorial would once again hold center stage in the struggle for equality in the United States.
Dr. King, along with 200,000 who gathered there represented a broad diverse mix of Americans of every occupation and religion were present 50,000 of whom were white along with celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, Odetta, and others who performed.
The grand finale of the day, Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, left the American people with the true spirit of the Civil Rights Movement.
Damnatio Memoriae, is intended to do away with such powerful imagery, and signify new nations, governments, or regime changes.
Such as Lustration, after the post Soviet state. Lustration served as a form of punishment by anti-communist politicians who were dissidents under a Communist-led government.
Lustration laws are usually passed right before elections, and become tightened when right-wing governments are in power, and loosened while social democratic parties are in power.
It is claimed that lustration systems based on dismissal or confession might be able to increase trust in government, while those based on confession might be able to promote social reconciliation.
In the days before live television, people performed similar and even more violent acts to condemn the memory of fallen regimes, bad leadership, and failed treason.
Pulling down and beating monuments alone is not enough to snuff out an ideology—but for some it’s a satisfying way to start.
The Roman’s called it Damnatio Memoriae, the condemnation of memory.
Damnatio memoriae was normally reserved for Senators and Emperors whose acts did not reflect well on Rome, or those who committed treason and a number of other serious crimes.
Brutal or tyrannical emperors were particularly susceptible to methods used to rid the world of any record of the individual in question, which included striking the individual’s name from all official records; seizing their possessions; and anything bearing their likeness or name (statues, murals, writings, etc.) would be destroyed or otherwise defaced.
This was more than a form of casual, politically-motivated vandalism, carried out by disgruntled individuals, since the condemnation required approval of the Senate and the effects of the official denunciation could be seen far from Rome.
In practice, it could mean everything from destroying sculpted busts and statues to razing castles to violent cannibalism of hated political enemies.
It functioned as a political tool to subdue one’s enemies, current and future.
To really rub it in, if the person being stricken from memory just so happened to be dead at the time, which was common, their will would be annulled and their grave defaced.
In some cases, victors used damnatio memoriae to condemn the souls of their dead enemies to oblivion, blocking them from an afterlife.
In Ancient Egypt and Rome, the spirit was thought to live on after the death of the body in an underworld—provided that it wasn’t annihilated by magic such as the curses used by the Egyptians or defamed due to the Roman damnatio memoriae.
It was this second death that many Romans feared most and the threat of being cast into oblivion after death by a damnatio memoriae, seems to have encouraged good behavior.
In the classical Roman era, ancestor worship existed as a part of religion.
The Romans believed that life existed after death, and that the spirit should be tended to just as a physical body should be tended to.
They believed that ancestors should be worshipped as gods, as opposed to just respecting them.
As seen above and below, in Ancient Rome, people kept the death masks of their relatives in their home, illuminated by candles.
In ancient Rome, an annual nine-day celebration was held to honor the spirits of the ancestors.
Much like the Day of the Dead in Mexico, it involved a visit to the cemetery, as well as offerings of cakes and wine. To celebrate the Parentalia requires visit to the graves of your ancestors, and pouring a libation of wine at the headstone.
This typically fell in February, and families gathered together to visit the graves of their deceased loved ones.
Pliny the Younger records, after Domitian’s assassination, crowds attacked bronze images of him, like a living being as if blows to the statues could cause bleeding and pain.
In the hands of the crowds, Domitian’s sculptural “bodies [were] mutilated, [his] limbs hacked in pieces, and finally that fearsome visage cast into fire.”
Domitian was one of the rare Roman citizens subjected to an official Damnatio Memoriae by the Senate.
Plenty of other emperors, politicians, and citizens were subjected to unofficial Damnatio Memoriae which could include the destruction of their family homes, death masks, erasure of their images and names from histories along with any inscriptions.
The violence done to the statues of Caligula and Domitian (along with those of other hated rulers and politicians in Rome) was intended to mimic the post-execution and defiling of common criminals’ bodies, called by historians poena post mortem, a practice that continued in the Renaissance and early modern period.
Even before the assassination of Caligula, by his own Praetorian Guard in 41 AD, the emperor’s statues had to be guarded against constant attacks and he did seem to have legitimately earned enemies among the aristocracy.
Following the assassination, his statues were hastily tossed into the Tiber River in Rome, stuffed away in warehouses, and re-carved to look like other emperors.
At least, one of the many representations of Caligula was mutilated before it was tossed into the Tiber, the eye sockets left empty, creating the illusion of demonic black eyes.
The carving out of eyes, noses, ears, and mouths from statues of hated people was not uncommon in ancient Rome.
The removal of sensory organs from the depictions was intended to rob them of their power over viewers—important because faithful likenesses in pre-modern societies could convince viewers that even the most certainly dead were still alive.
We tend to write off violence inflicted on the soon-to-be-executed and corpses as something “crazy” or out-of-control, but it was just as orchestrated for contemporaries and posterity as the razing of homes and attacks on images.
Violence, too, tells a story and can condemn the memory of a hated person. Even once buried in the ground, the bones of hated people—hated in their own lifetimes or by people in the future—were not guaranteed rest.
Coins bearing the image of an emperor who had his memory damned would be recalled or cancelled. In some cases, the residence of the condemned could be razed or otherwise destroyed.
As many as 26 emperors through the reign of Constantine, had their memories condemned; their names erased from inscriptions and if a doomed an emperor or other government official, even his laws could be rescinded, conversely, about 25 emperors were deified after their deaths.
Caligula was the first emperor to have his images purposefully destroyed after his death, so workshop procedures for official imperial portraits soon dictated that many full-length statues in stone were to be created in two pieces, so they could just switch heads to a new leader and a costly commission was not needed.
So heads of Caligula, like those now in the Getty Villa and the Yale University Art Gallery (above), could be fairly easily detached from the bodies and tossed aside and a portrait head of the new emperor would swiftly replace the offending one.
Damnatio memoriae were not always completely successful in wiping out the memory of an individual. Among the emperors who suffered damnatio memoriae are some of the best-known figures from Roman history, including Gaius (a.k.a. Caligula) and Nero.
The notoriety of these men comes to us not only from texts written during their lifetimes and later, but also from images which survived the immediate violence of the damnatio memoriae and then centuries of neglect.
Caracalla removes the image of Geta
Perhaps one of the more dark instances of damnatio memoriae is the story of Publius Septimius Geta who was murdered in his mother’s arms on his older brother, Caracalla’s, orders.
After the murder of his brother,
Caracalla, a member of the Severan Dynasty who ruled from 211-217 AD, declared Damnatio Memoriae on his brother’s name and about 20,000 people he didn’t like executed while he was at it.
Caracalla was initially co-emperor with his younger brother Geta, but after months of squabbling between the sibling rulers, Caracalla had Geta assassinated.
By all accounts, Caracalla’s order was incredibly thorough and few images of Geta survived.
However, there was one thing Caracalla couldn’t get rid of completely- the millions of coins sporting his brother’s face circulating freely throughout his empire.
Also, due to Geta’s popularity with the people of Rome, Caracalla was forced to give his brother a lavish funeral, which was heavily influenced by public opinion, suggesting that popular opinion played a part in deciding who to punish via damnatio memoriae.
This death was quickly followed by a damnatio memoriae, one in which it became a capital offense to even speak the name of the younger co-emperor.
The names of all the condemned individuals were erased from the arch and replaced with new inscriptions honoring Caracalla.
Caracalla’s boyish face—painted when he was merely heir to the throne—peers out to the viewer’s left.
Next to him is a circular erasure in the paint where Geta once appeared.
This deletion is dramatic when considering the procedures of damnatio memoriae.
Someone in the province of Egypt, far from the center of the Empire, was charged with erasing the image of a child—a child who grew up to be co-emperor, only to be killed by his own brother.
The tyranny of Caracalla and the thoroughness of damnatio memoriaemeant that practically no image of the emperor’s enemies, no matter how small or out-of-date, would escape destruction.
Damnatio memoriae continued in the Roman world through the 4th century C.E., as seen in disfigured portraits of Constantine’s rival Maxentius.
With Christianity made official in the Roman world, vandalism of imperial portraits continued, but with more of a religious bent than a political one.
The fact that Roman portraits were removed, damaged, or destroyed because of dramatic changes in the subjects’ reputations is unmistakable evidence that such images are more than just “pictures.”
Nero’s Domus Aurea (Golden House) in downtown Rome was eventually filled in and built over by his successors in the Flavian Dynasty, but it was not a systematic destruction.
In fact, there is evidence Vespasian lived in the controversial villa before he and his sons turned the land from Nero’s private estate back over to the public.
In a coup de grâce for the Cancelleria Reliefs, they seem to have never been displayed, instead discarded in a Republican-period cemetery after Nerva died just fifteen months into his reign.
Damnatio memoriae wasn’t about totally erasing history, but what it could do – is also be used to demonstrate to viewers the dishonor of people who threatened the stability of the state and sought to change the government, usually for their own benefit.
Long after the blood and bones from post-mortem punishment washed away, deliberate and eye-catching evidence of damnatio memoriae lingered, so some condemned people wouldn’t slip from memory.
Their lands were also seized by the crown, buildings razed, and the ground where they once stood was salted to prevent vegetation from growing there in the future.
Similarly, the Venetians erected a column d’infamia on the site of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s razed house after he attempted to overthrow the doge and Grand Council of Venice in 1310.
Tiepolo, who escaped into exile, was so distraught by the column that he sent henchmen to the city to destroy it.
Later, the Venetians executed doge Marin Falier after he attempted a coup in order to become Prince of Venice in 1355.
Eleven years later, the Council of Ten ordered that his portrait in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio should be covered with azurite paint, one of the most eye-catching and expensive pigments in Renaissance art.
In addition to covering his image, the Council decreed that an inscription explaining “In this place is the site where Marin Falier was decapitated for the crime of treason” should be added to explain his absence and remind viewers of the cost of plotting against the republic (the drape viewers see now was added later).
Damnatio Memoriae is still practiced on occasion by various people and groups in one form or another and most likely will for many new and old regimes.
The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse.
They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. The bodies were beaten, shot at, and hit with hammers.
Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters.
Four months later it was recovered by the authorities who then kept it hidden for the next 11 years. Eventually, in 1957, his remains were allowed to be interred in the Mussolini family crypt in his home town of Predappio. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies.
In the post-war years, the “official” version of Mussolini’s death has been questioned in Italy (but, generally, not internationally) in a way that has drawn comparison with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
Journalists, politicians and historians, doubting the veracity of Audisio’s account, have put forward a wide variety of theories and speculation as to how Mussolini died and who was responsible. At least twelve different individuals have, at various times, been claimed to be the killer.