Gravestones were used by the people to build houses

Submitted by ValdisPunk t3_yuikp1 in history

Gravestones were used by the people of Cluj-Napoca in the construction of many houses. The city wall was sold in the 18th century and people bought the stones with the commitment to demolish it, and then obviously used those stones to build new houses. This is also the case of a plaque that can be found at house no. 15 on Baba Novac Street - "Itt fekszik Pécsi Tölcséres János leánya, Kata. AD 1585" - "Here lies Kata, daughter of Pécsi Tölcséres János". The year 1585 coincided with one of the worst plague epidemics to hit Cluj-Napoca and the city administration decided that from that year onwards they would no longer allow burials inside the city walls. That is practically the year in which the current central cemetery, Hajongard, was inaugurated.

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Uncleniles t1_iwb2sto wrote

So did people building the houses take the stones directly from the cemetery or was the city wall built with the gravestones?

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britinnit t1_iwb3nxm wrote

It was common where I live, North West England. For old gravestones to be re purposed as paving stones for footpaths around church grounds and official buildings. Theirs a few near my house and some sections of the path you can just make out the etchings of the dates and names.

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Half_a_bee t1_iwba0zs wrote

Right around where I live there was a stone circle in the iron age. When they were rebuilding it in the 50s/60s they found a lot of the original stone slabs on nearby farms, used as stepping stones, tables, etc. for hundreds of years.

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milkmamasilk t1_iwbbcju wrote

So no one in history ever knew about poltergeists? Disturb a burial ground AND use the grave markers to build the house...you want poltergeists??? Cause that's how you get poltergeists.

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escalinci t1_iwbbgaz wrote

The only historical thing I saw while in Cluj was the apothecary museum, I never saw anything like this, interesting!

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ValdisPunk OP t1_iwbbpum wrote

Replying to escalinci (#525,128)

Yeah, there are plenty of historical places here, and not only here but in Romania... you just need to search a little bit more to find them. Sadly promoting historical landmarks and stories of the past aside of a fiew is not Romania's strong suit.

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buteo51 t1_iwbha7i wrote

The technical term for this is spolia if you’re interested in reading about more examples.

Why cut your own stone when there’s a perfectly good Roman mausoleum over there? The Romans aren’t using it anymore.

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prpslydistracted t1_iwbkazk wrote

Can't for the life of me remember the book but I read an autobiography of a frontier woman (late 1800s, Midwest) who lost a young daughter. She hired a laborer to help her move a stone step from the only primitive church around; she used it as a grave marker for her daughter and carved the name and dates herself. Poignant confession. The settlement knew it was her but didn't act on it. The woman died in the 1920s.

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haluuf t1_iwbo9ev wrote

Cluj-Napoca is in Romania, but that's not written in romanian, and I can't find why in my own search. Why isn't it written in romanian?

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Omg_stop t1_iwbp7do wrote

Replying to britinnit (#524,827)

This did my head in when I first moved here. It was so disrespectful and made the names vanish faster than they would naturally (anti-kuros). Now it's just a all a bit "meh" and I've resigned to the nature of mortality.

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ValdisPunk OP t1_iwbsti9 wrote

Replying to haluuf (#525,737)

Yes, that inscription is in Hungarian language. At the end of the 9th century, the ancestors of today’s Hungarians settled in Transylvania, occupying the region.

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Farinthoughts t1_iwbvnld wrote

Replying to milkmamasilk (#525,123)

I saw a documentary once where they were talking about how after WWII and the liberation of the concentration camps, when they were demolishing them - locals would come in and take the building materials (bricks and such) and build houses out of them.

"authorities noted that locals had dismantled most of the remaining camp buildings, reusing parts of them in their own houses."

Edit : Sobibor

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Tidesticky t1_iwfrysq wrote

Never heard of this before. Very interesting. I guess this happens a lot now that I found out it's a "thing". And people being buried in walls? Man I've lived a sheltered life.

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milkmamasilk t1_iwgz7mx wrote

Replying to Farinthoughts (#526,168)

Whelp...file that under begging for Poltergeists? Poltergeists don't seem to care about circumstances. Gravesites don't seem to inspire deference. Having recently driven on a highway through one that spanned acres...I know noone is really scared of them anymore.

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Farinthoughts t1_iwh2zw1 wrote

Replying to milkmamasilk (#536,590)

I am not really scared of them but certainly respectful when I visit one.

My mother usually says there is no need to be afraid in a graveyard because everyone there is already dead. I think she means living humans are what you should be afraid of.

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Farinthoughts t1_iwj92tp wrote

Replying to milkmamasilk (#540,729)

A coffin might have to be moved or there are no family members alive anymore - oh any number of reasons. Hence no need for a gravemarker anymore. We might believe our final resting place will be for eternity but often it is not.

What I mean is the graveyard caretakers has to do this but I dont think they are more prone to haunting than any other person. I am half a skeptic to the existance of ghosts.

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Random_Guy_47 t1_iwq6t8j wrote

Please ignore this comment, I just need the automod reply to this for something.

​

History is written by the victor.

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AutoModerator t1_iwq6tbw wrote

Replying to Random_Guy_47 (#554,901)

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

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