Based on many years of dedication, and much of the information previously catalogued in the "Virtual Guide to Florence’s English Cemetery" on her website (www.florin.ms/WhiteSilence.html), the hardback edition of Julia Bolton Holloway's Florence’s English Cemetery, 1827–1877: Thunders of White Silence far exceeds in scope the various introductions to the cemetery available in other printed sources. At over 900 pages, it traces the history of the first Protestant cemetery in Florence, and is, without question, the definitive and most extensively researched work on this hallowed and much-visited burial-ground.
Holloway, a renowned scholar on Dante, Julian of Norwich, and the Brownings, and author of several earlier books, has dedicated her later years to the research and restoration of the cemetery. She founded and organized the Aureo Anello Association in 2001 which has joined her in the cross-generational effort to restore the previously neglected tombs and landscape by bringing together a host of collaborators from descendants, donors, scholars and workers. Among the latter, the Roma community has contributed most of the labor at the cemetery. Dr. Holloway details the Association’s beginning and its quest to save the ruined cemetery in Chapter X ("From Graves to Cradles," 804-848). The project's origins were naturally influenced by the fact that most of the foreign burials in the cemetery were of British origin. She explains, for example, that the Association takes its name from a dedication on a plaque, at the former apartment in Florence of Robert and Elizabeth in Florence, Casa Guidi, written by Niccolo Tommaseo, proclaiming that "Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry crafted a golden ring between Italy and England — e fece del suo verso Aureo Anello fra Italia e Inghilterra" (20-21).
Left: Dr Holloway in the past with one of her helpers at the entrance to the cemetery. Right: The main path of the cemetery.
Yet the author's wide-encompassing approach also reflects the universal nature of those buried there: people who hailed from different backgrounds, faiths, and nations, just like those who attended and presented written works for the numerous City and the Book Conferences in Florence, sponsored by the Aureo Anello, to support the restoration efforts. The vital labor of cleaning and repairing tombs and refurbishing the landscape was important and, as mentioned above, carried out mainly by the Roma community. In particular, Holloway draws attention to the efforts of Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, the leading Roma restorer at the cemetery, paying tribute to his principled nature, as well as his skill (818). The illustrations of the Roma women and children and the stories connecting them to the cemetery are also well documented in Chapter X. Holloway included the Roma community in the Aureo Anello very deliberately. The Concordat of 1929 between Mussolini and the Catholic Church had provided funding only for Catholic cemeteries in Italy. The Swiss Evangelical Reform Church owns the property, which they refer to as the Porta A Pinti Cemetery, but it failed to form a private association for the upkeep of the cemetery which is permitted under Italian law. Hiring the Roma Community to work under the stipulations of this law was a wonderful Christian coup, that she was able to orchestrate, and then record in this book.
Holloway's other achievements were to rescue the 150-year-old original burial records in French kept by the Swiss, which fortunately were not destroyed in the 1966 flood of Florence; to restore the cemetery grounds with its original plant species; and to open a library with works about and by many who were buried there. The library is located at the gatehouse, and this book is now part of the collection there. Holloway is still, at the time of writing, the curator in residence.
The Gateway, in "The Protestant Cemetery of Florence," Harper's Monthly Magazine of 1873 (Vol. 47: 507), on the HathiTrust website.
The book itself is divided into chapters which detail each section of the cemetery and the burials. Although a great number of English are buried there, it is an international collection which includes American, Austrian, Belgian, Croatian, Dutch, Egyptian, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Indian, Italian, Latvian, Nubian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, and Swiss burials as well (see p. 19). There are military veterans such as those who fought in Crimea and the Napoleonic wars. Officials of the British East India Company and of other parts of the empire lie at rest here too, and the remarkable story of Kalima Nadezhda de Santis, a fourteen-year-old slave girl from Nubia brought to Florence and later freed here, is also recorded in this book. Holloway concludes that the cemetery
crams together all of our dividing categories: the masters and servants of the social classes, honouring the servants; men particularly showing tenderness and love for women and children, transcending distinctions of gender and age; the rival professions, whether military, naval, medical, legal, or religious, and warring, rebellious nations, all come together in a peaceable cosmopolitanism. Death is a democracy. [20]
The records are copious, following a good deal of what the Swiss Evangelical Reform Church’s sexton had catalogued about each burial. From the cover, which carries the 1873 engraving of Florence’s "English" Cemetery from volume XLVII of Harper’s New Monthly, onwards, the book is generously provided with drawings, illustrations, maps and photographs, while the bibliography and index provide both the general reader and the scholar with extensive information.
The English cemetery in Florence is closely connected with two other Protestant burial places in Tuscany: the English Cemetery of Livorno and the Allori Cemetery of Florence. Both the English Cemetery and the Allori in Florence share burials of family members because, when the English Cemetery closed in 1877, the Allori was opened for non-Catholic burials.
Knowing the location of the burial sites however, is just the beginning. The book catalogues, when known, a brief biological sketch of the person. For this work, Holloway drew on all available sources. Pastore Luigi Santini in his book, The Protestant Cemetery of Florence called "The English Cemetery" (Firenze, 1981) had documented many of the Italian Protestant deaths, even those laid to rest in tombs no longer to be found. Diana and Tony Webb provided research from their book, The Anglo-Florentines: the British in Tuscany, 1814-1860 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). Still, Holloway notes that as many as 700 burial places can no longer be identified, including those for the poor — mothers, for example, who died in childbirth, and infants. In her introduction, she calls theirs the "lost tombs" (7), and devotes her penultimate chapter to them.
The last part of the book's title, Thunders of White Silence, comes from a poem written by Elizabeth Barret Browning, on the statue of The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers. Of special interest to many visitors are the records in the book cataloguing the artwork of many tomb monuments, along with the artist if known. The tomb sculptors included Lorenzo Bartolini, Odoardo Fantacchiotti, William Holman Hunt, Frederic, Lord Leighton, Francesco Jerace, Emilio Zocchi, Launt Thompson, Hiram and Preston Powers, and William Wetmore Story. Holloway notes that some notable burials covered in the book include not only Elizabeth Barrett Browning herself, but Frances Trollope, Walter Savage Landor, Arthur Hugh Clough, Thomas Southwood Smith, Hiram Powers, Theodore Parker, and Jean Pierre Vieusseux. As might be expected, one of the most famous tombs, that of the poetess, Elizabeth Barret Browning, is recorded with accurate and historical detail.
The controversy surrounding the tomb’s creation Holloway has already been described on her florin.ms website as the
most famous and beautiful tomb, a sarcophagus on six columns, for England's almost Poet Laureate, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in section (B8). Lord Leighton wanted it to have Elizabeth Barrett Browning's portrait, her head bowed down in pain, her spaniel ringlets, but the sculptor, Francesco Giovannozzi, Count Cottrell, Robert Browning's friend, and Robert Browning himself, all decided against having her portrait, showing instead a standard blonde haired blue-eyed beauty, her head held high, her hair carefully coiled behind her ears, the exact opposite of Elizabeth whom Govannozzi and Cottrell said was ugly. Browning only paid for the initials, E.B.B., and her death date of "Obit.1861." No one recognizes the tomb as hers. Leighton was furious, livid with rage when he saw the changes made to his design.
Holloway provides even more details in the book on the divisive nature of the poet’s burial (see pp. 147-74).
Left to right: (a) Casa Guidi. (b) The tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (c) William Wetmore Story's bust of Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Casa Guidi.
Any person interested in the history of Florence or any institution which offers a historical reference section would be well advised to purchase a copy of this book. Reading the accounts of each person and their final resting place is a pleasure. The general reader can enjoy the book: why did the Grand Duke of Tuscany grant the petition for a Protestant cemetery in Florence? Was the site a former Etruscan burial place? How did the movie, Tea with Mussolini by Franco Zeffirelli, help popularize the plight of the cemetery? These are just a few of the fascinating questions recorded — and answered — by Holloway. The scholar will also delight in the meticulous documentation. Despite its size, it will be particularly useful as a guide when visiting the cemetery, since it provides not only a general map of the layout of the cemetery, but details of each individual section of burials.
Links to Related Material
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Bibliography
Holloway, Julia Bolton. Florence’s English Cemetery, 1827 – 1877: Thunders of White Silence. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024. 912 pp. Hardback. £79.99. ISBN: 1-0364-1377-2
Created 21 February 2025