Here in 1575, 13 churches,
A convent, a fort
The Aragonese Castle is a building of extraordinary beauty perched on top of an island adjacent to the island of Ischia, opposite the island of Procida. Situated in the splendid panorama of the Bay of Naples, it provided shelter and hospitality to the Ischitans during the restless raids of pirates, when raiding parties came from the sea to raid towns and villages.
In 1575 it was a castle, a real town with 13 churches, a convent of priests, a casemate for the castle and a bishop, and a cathedral. The widowed Beatrice was enriched by the arrival of the Poor Clares, who came in Quadra's wake. of Muzio d'Avalos, who settled with forty nuns from the convent of San Nicola.
Nuns were destined to a life of seclusion from childhood, a measure adopted by noble families of the time to prevent the inheritance from being divided into many parts and to save it especially for boys. The history of the convent lasted about 250 years and ended in 1810 when the French general Joachim Murat suppressed all the religious orders to seize their wealth.
During this long period, the nuns lived and died in an area of extraordinary beauty, adopting a special strategy to remind them of the transience of life. Adjacent to the monastic cemetery was, of course, the putridarium, a small room where the decaying bodies of dead nuns waited until the bacteria were completely removed.
The nuns (the living ones) visited the hall daily to pray for the dead and observe the changes in their bodies. The bodies actually drain their fluids into the hole beneath the seat, purifying the soul from the flesh, a corrupting element of human existence. Hence, the putridarium, or scolatoio, was a kind of purgatory for the dead, where the body was finally freed from its waste and its essence, the bones alone, were then buried in the adjacent cemetery.
The drainage of the Poor Clares in Ischia was certainly not the first or the only one in Italy. Drains were common in the ancient Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and can be found in Naples, Palermo, Piazza Armerina, Eboli, Matera, Lamezia Terme and many other cities. Their last disappearance dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when health authorities implemented security measures for priests and the faithful.