This work, of historiographical nature, aims to describe and contextualize the process of institution of the ecclesiastical cemeteries of São Benedito and Nª Senhora dos Remedios in Caxias-MA. We point out the specificities of the historical period of transition from a society ruled by religiosity to a civil-secular one in the second half of the 19th century based on the perspective of the medical-hygienist discourse of reformulation of the urban space. The information and statistical data, contextualized in a research prosopography, were based on: periodicals, collections of laws and decrees, commitments of the local religious brotherhoods and regulations. Among the readings that conceptually and methodologically grounded the work, which now the reader has the satisfaction of reading, are authors such as: Ariès (2012) "History of death in the West", Le Goff (2017) "The birth of Purgatory"; Vovelle (2010) "Souls in Purgatory"; Rodrigues (1997 and 2005) "Places of the dead in the city of the living" and "On the borders of the beyond: the secularization of death in Rio de Janeiro (18th and 19th centuries)"; Reis (1991) "Death is a party: funeral rites and popular revolt in 19th century Brazil"