Churches and Crosses in Cemeteries

[anthony72]

When my son-in-law was driving my wife and I from Wichita back to the airport in Kansas, I asked him the reason why tombstone in the cemetery we just passed by were all oriented toward the east. He mentioned that was a Christian tradition to let the resuscitated body to face Christ who will come from east.
I made the question because I have seen the same orientation toward the east of crosses in small town cemeteries in Nicaragua. Before seeing the tombstone in Kansas, I thought it was an Indian tradition in Nicaragua, it was my guess, because the crosses in cemeteries in the main cities face the aisles in the cemeteries that followed the classical colonial Spanish town grid. Only the small town cemeteries show the crosses looking east, while Granada cemetery, for example, is built as a grid with tombstones facing north, south, east or west as determined by the cemetery streets or aisles.
Today I learned that we were both wrong according to Patrick S. Werner, a scholar at Ave Maria College Of The Americas, San Marcos, Nicaragua located in the same campus where the University of Mobile used to be. Werner says that is a Roman tradition put in writing by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (75-20 BC) a Roman architect who wrote De Architectura. Here is the English version of Vitruvius paper taken from De Architectura, Book IV, Chapter 5, Paragraph 1,
http://www.ku.edu/history/index/euro...Vitruvius/home
.html

"If there be nothing to prevent it, and the use of the edifice allow it, the temples of the immortal gods should have such an aspect, that the statue in the cell may have its face towards the west, so that those who enter to sacrifice, or to make offerings, may have their faces to the east as well as to the statue in the temple. Thus suppliants, and those performing their vows, seem to have the temple, the east, and the deity, as it were, looking on them at the same moment. Hence all altars of the gods should be placed towards the east."

The connection between churches and tombstones is well established by the Catholic Church and is exactly what my son-in-law told me. Visit the website "Catholic Cemeteries ... A History ... A Tradition" at http://www.clevelandcatholiccemeteri.../09_main.html. In the mind of the writer it is the same issues as in my mind that is why he/she connected the church orientation and the burial place orientation in the same paragraph. I do not have any doubt that the tradition was taken from Vitruvius as Werner says.

"Another interesting practice is that of placing the bodies in the ground in such a manner that they face towards the east. While this practice is not necessarily enjoined by the Church and is no longer followed, its origin is another indication of the Church's adherence to appropriate symbolism. The sun, rising in the east, is the physical light of the world and is a symbol of the
Resurrection. When bodies are facing the east, it signifies that the deceased places his hope in Christ who is the light of the soul. In a similar manner, Churches were once built with their altars facing the east. When individuals were buried in the Church, the face of the deceased was turned toward the altar, therefore toward the east. The bodies of the clergy were reversed, since during
life they were turned from the altar toward the people."

In Werner article about Spanish Urbanization in Colonial Nicaragua during the 16 Century, ten out of the eleven small town church maps shown the churches oriented as Vitruvius says with the church at the east side of the square with the front gate toward the west. In that way the faithful will be looking toward the east while praying in front of the altar. Only the church in
Chinandega has a different orientation. The cathedral in Granada is also oriented as Vitruvius recommended, as it was the old cathedral in Managua.