A catafalque is a raised bier, box, or similar platform, often movable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a Christian funeral or memorial service. Following a Roman CatholicRequiem Mass, a catafalque may be used to stand in place of the body at the absolution of the dead or used during Masses of the Dead and All Souls' Day. According to Peter Stanford, the term originates from the Italiancatafalco, which means scaffolding. However, the Oxford English Dictionary says the word is "f unknown derivation; even the original form is uncertain; French pointing to -fald- or -falt-, Italian to -falc-, Spanish to -fals." The most notable Italian catafalque was the one designed for Michelangelo by his fellow artists in 1564. An elaborate and highly decorated roofed surround for a catafalque, common for grand funerals of the Baroque era, may be called a castrum doloris.
Papal catafalques
Large processions have followed the catafalques of Popes. The households of the cardinals carried the catafalque of Pope Sixtus V in 1590. The bier, decorated with gold cloth, was followed by "confraternities, religious orders, students of seminaries and colleges, orphans and mendicants". In 1963, a million people filed past the catafalque of Pope John XXIII, which had been carried in procession to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. In Catholic Liturgy, the catafalque is either an empty casket or a wooden form made to look like a casket that is covered by the black pall and surrounded by six unbleached candles ; it is a symbolic representation of the deceased or a monument erected to represent the faithful departed. When it is present, the priest sings the absolution for the deceased as if the body was present. The body was the Temple of the Holy Spirit and must be shown the greatest respect, even symbolically, the catafalque is thus this symbol of hope in God and in His promise to raise our bodies and that of our departed ones in glory like the Risen Body of His Son seated at His right hand.
Thirteen years after his death, the remains of Voltaire were transferred on a catafalque to the Panthéon in Paris, a building dedicated to the great men of the French nation. It bore the inscription: "Poet, philosopher, historian, he made a great step forward in the human spirit. He prepared us to become free."
