Discussion of the conceptions of death and the dead in the Christian West in the XIXth century, We aim to comprehend the Religious orders’ work in the funeral rites and the importance of taking place in one of these Orders. Yet analyzing the controversy about the change, which means, the transferring of the burial from the churches to the graveyards far from the city zone and its purpose.

Discussion about the epidemics that afflicted São Luis during the XIX century and their relation with the burial practice changes. The concepts of modernity paradigms at the capital means judgments about what should or not should be preserved, about what would be good and bad places, progress and decadence, establishing rules to be followed. One of the main actions that would be taken to wanting to turn into the ludovicense urban environment a more hygienic place, was get through with burial in the churches and move it to far way places of the city area. So, aim to decrease the great numbers outbreak of epidemics that afflicted the city during the XIX century, ceasing the actions of miasmas, plague vapor causer of physical bad to the alive.

Discussion about the extinction of church burials and the construction of new cemeteries in São Luís. In the nineteenth century, with the affirmation of medicine, the burials conducted within religious temples became the target of numerous interdictions. The development of “hygienism” gradually constructed the idea that burials within religious temples were harmful to health, since they exhaled miasmatic vapors which caused physical and even moral damages to the living. With the increase of epidemics in the nineteenth century in São Luís, the medical discourse, which claimed for the construction of new cemeteries far from the towns, water fountains, and where the wind blew reversely in relation with the urban environment, acquired further visibility. In 1828, the “Imperial Law of Municipalities Restructuring” became one among various essays of reorganization of São Luís urban space and of construction of new burial places, far away from churches, since the existing cemeteries, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, were basically for poor and helpless. In 1855, after various previous epidemical irruptions, the city was attacked by a big irruption of smallpox, which led the norm into practice, with the building of the Gavião Cemetery. Since then, that cemetery became a burial place not only for indigents and slaves, but also for a considerable part of the wealthier classes of São Luís.

Discussion about the epidemics that afflicted São Luis during the XIX century and their relation with the burial practice changes. The concepts of modernity paradigms at the capital means judgments about what should or not should be preserved, about what would be good and bad places, progress and decadence, establishing rules to be followed. One of the main actions that would be taken to wanting to turn into the ludovicense urban environment a more hygienic place, was get through with burial in the churches and move it to far way places of the city area.