Dealing With the Dead: Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe



Dealing With The Dead

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_001

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Explorations in Medieval Culture General Editor Larissa Tracy (Longwood University) Editorial Board Tina Boyer (Wake Forest University) Emma Campbell (University of Warwick) Kelly DeVries (Loyola University, Maryland) David F. Johnson (Florida State University) Asa Simon Mittman (CSU, Chico) Thea Tomaini (USC, Los Angeles) Wendy Turner (Georgia Regents University) David Wacks (University of Oregon) Reneé Ward (University of Lincoln)

VOLUME 5

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/emc





Dealing With The Dead Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Edited by

Thea Tomaini

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Detail of a page from ‘The Office of the Dead (Matins)’, The Murthly Hours, MS.21000, f. 170r. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tomaini, Thea, editor. Title: Dealing with the dead : mortality and community in medieval and early modern Europe / edited by Thea Tomaini. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Series: Explorations in medieval culture, ISSN 2352-0299 ; volume 5 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017048945 (print) | LCCN 2017053959 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004358331 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004315143 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Death--Europe--History. | Funeral rites and ceremonies--Europe--History. | Dead--History. | Europe--History--476-1492. | Europe--History--1492-1517. Classification: LCC HQ1073.5.E85 (ebook) | LCC HQ1073.5.E85 D43 2018 (print) | DDC 306.9094--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048945

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2352-0299 isbn 978-90-04-31514-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-35833-1 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Contents

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Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Illustrations viii List of Contributors x xii Introduction 1 Thea Tomaini

Part 1 Discourses and Intercessions 1

The Talking Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living in AngloSaxon Writing 17 Hilary Fox

2 Sudden Death in Early Medieval England and the Anglo-Saxon Fortunes of Men 36 Jill Hamilton Clements 3 Monumental Memory: The Performance and Enduring Spectacle of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England 68 Melissa Herman 4 Dealing with the Undead in the Later Middle Ages 97 Stephen Gordon 5 “Look at my Hands:” Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton 129 Kathryn Maude 6 The Corpse of Public Opinion: Thomas of Norwich, Anti-Semitism, and Christian Identity 148 Mary E. Leech

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Contents

Part 2 Law and Civic Life 7 Outlaws and the Undead: Defining Sacred and Communal Space in Medieval Iceland 175 Justin T. Noetzel 8 A Funeral Procession from Venice to Milan: Death Rituals for a LateMedieval Wealthy Merchant 201 Martina Saltamacchia 9 Live by the Sea, Die by the Sea: Confronting Death and the Dead in Medieval Liguria, 1140-1240 CE 221 Nikki Malain 10 The Medieval Cemetery as Ecclesiastical Community: Regulation, Conflict, and Expulsion, 1000-1215 253 Anthony Perron 11 The Corpse as Testimony: Judgment, Verdict, and the Elizabethan Stage 274 Thea Tomaini

Part 3 Funerary Art and Mementi Mori 12 Reappropiated Antiquity in the Funerary Art of the Kingdom of León and Castile in the High Middle Ages 305 Sonsoles García González 13 Exploring Late-Medieval English Memento Mori Carved Cadaver Sculptures 331 Christina Welch 14 Holbein’s Mementi Mori 366 Libby Karlinger Escobedo

Afterword: A Few Thoughts on the Dead, the Living, and Liminal Existence 393 Wendy J. Turner

General Bibliography 397 Index 438 449

Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments The editor would like to thank Brill Publishers, especially Marcella Mulder and Julian Deahl. Many thanks to the Editorial Board of the Explorations in Medieval Culture series, especially series editor Larissa Tracy. Special thanks to Wendy Turner, for her assistance and commentary, and for her authorship of the Afterword. Acknowledgments on behalf of the individual authors are found in their respective chapters.

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List of Illustrations

List Of Illustrations

List of Illustrations 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Figures

Grave 9 from the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Chadlington, Oxfordshire 106 Anglo-Saxon deviant burial, Southwell, Nottinghamshire 111 Burial 78 from St. Martin’s churchyard in Wallingford, Oxfordshire 111 Skeleton 5053 from St. Nicholas Shambles, London 116 Prone burial SK1023 from the cemetery of St. Peter’s, Leicester 120 Plan of the cemetery of the hospital of St. Giles, Brompton Bridge, North Yorkshire, showing the liminal burial 1710 125 8.1 Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice 203 8.2 Chapel of the merchants’ confraternity in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice 203 8.3 Itinerary of Marco Carelli’s corpse transport from Venice to Milan 214 8.4 Funeral procession of Marco Carelli 217 12.1 Sarcophagus of Ithacius 311 12.2 The lateral of the sarcophagus of Ithacius 311 12.3 Sarcophagus of Astorga 313 12.4 Sarcophagus of Husillos 316 13.1 The now anonymous carved cadaver at St. Andrew’s Church, Feniton, Devon 332 13.2 Detail of the carved cadaver of Bishop John Carpenter (d. 1476) at Holy Trinity Church, Westbury on Tyrm, Bristol 337 13.3 Detail of the hands of the carved cadaver and effigy of Henry Chichele 338 13.4 Detail of a mouse on the belly of the carved cadaver attributed to Abbot John Wakeman at Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire 342 13. 5 Detail of the carved cadaver of John Denston (d. 1473/74) in the Church of  St. Nicholas, Denston, Suffolk 343 13.6 Detail of an eviscerated carved cadaver in the Church of St. John the Baptist, Keyston, Cambridgeshire 351 13.7 Detail of the abdomen on the carved cadaver of Sir Roger Rockley (d. 1522 or 1534) in St. Mary’s Church, Worsborough, Yorkshire 353 13.8 Detail of the skull-like head on the carved cadaver of Sir Roger Rockley (d. 1522 or 1534) in St. Mary’s Church, Worsborough, Yorkshire 353 13.9 Detail of the carved cadaver of Sir John FitzAlan (d. 1435) in the FitzAlan Chapel, Arundel Castle, West Sussex 355 13.10 Detail of the body of the carved cadaver of Bishop Paul Bush showing paucity of ribs (d. 1558) at Bristol Cathedral, Bristol 361

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13.11 Detail of the carved cadaver of Bishop Stephen Gardiner (d. 1555) at Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire 361 14.1 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (“The Ambassadors”), 1533 367 14.2 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Pope” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 382 14.3 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Monk” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 383 14.4 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Senator” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 385 14.5 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Count” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 387 14.6 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Astrologer” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 388 14.7 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Escutcheon of Death” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526 390



Maps

12.1 Map of Western Europe – Location of reused sarcophagi 307

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List of Contributors Libby Karlinger Escobedo Aurora University Hilary Fox Wayne State University Sonsoles García González Universidad de Oviedo Stephen Gordon University of Manchester Jill Hamilton Clements Lindenwood University Melissa Herman University of York Mary Leech University of Cincinnati Nikki Malain Sherwood Test Prep Kathryn Maude King’s College, London Justin Noetzel Chaminade College Preparatory School Anthony Perron Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles Martina Saltamacchia University of Nebraska – Omaha

List Of Contributors

List of Contributors

Thea Tomaini University of Southern California Wendy Turner Augusta University Christina Welch University of Winchester

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List Of Contributors

Introduction Introduction

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Introduction Thea Tomaini Death is not an easy thing. Its inevitability is difficult to accept for the individual who must one day die, and its inescapability is difficult to recognize among the survivors who must accept the deaths of family, friends, and neighbors. Human beings have a paradoxical relationship with death, one which is indicated by centuries of cultural traditions that both celebrate and abhor it. Folklore and literary narratives complicate this relationship further, and so do centuries of academic traditions that analyze and interpret death, and theological traditions that rationalize its mystique. The chapters of this book describe various facets of the continuing relationship between a community and its dead in medieval and early modern Western Europe concerning the degrees of vocality in the relationships between the dead and the living, and concerning the community spaces in which these dialogues take place. The chapters of this book offer close readings of literary examples, interpretations of historical events and archeological findings, discussions of folklore, and examinations of works of art over the course of several centuries – from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Elizabethan – and over the large geographical area of Western Europe. Specifically, the authors of the following chapters contribute to an ongoing interdisciplinary study of the dead and their continued enfranchisement in the world of the living. In this relationship, the corpse remains enfranchised in community life from the moment of death, to the period of its “waking,” to its burial, or to its disinterment and/or reburial, and ultimately to its (presumably) permanent commemorative space. This phenomenon is part of what Paul Binski calls “Medieval Death Culture”:1 it involves the whole of society and is best understood when its elements are liberated from the isolation of genre and discipline, and appear in an interdisciplinary context. Living with the dead was, for medieval and early modern communities, an element of everyday life that was characterized only partly by the wellknown issues of saint veneration and revenant belief. Saints and revenants hold special status in the ongoing relationship between the living and the dead, but they do not define that relationship exclusively. Although there were many injunctions and doctrines of the Church that drew distinctions between saints, revenants, and the “everyday dead,” these groups nonetheless shared 1 Paul Binsky, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1996).

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some common ground.2 By way of all its dead, of the venerated, the noble, and the common, a community knows itself and considers itself whole. There are many excellent and comprehensive studies of death rituals and beliefs, of funerary practices and folklore, of monumental architecture and funerary art. This volume draws upon those sources to present case studies that participate in an ongoing academic dialogue about this complex and multifarious subject. This volume does not present a history of death, of funerary practices, or of the corpse per se in the manner of Christine Quigley’s The Corpse: A History, for example.3 As a series of targeted discussions and close readings, Dealing with the Dead functions as a continuation of scholarly enquiry into funerary practices and art, and of wide-ranging discussions of hagiography, folklore, and literature. In his book, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (1996), Binski makes an important point: that after the Christianization of Rome the dead were “fundamentally resocialized” to accommodate the development of an apocalyptic vision for the early Church. He refers to this process of resocialization as an adjustment of the boundaries between the divine and the natural worlds, between that of the dead and that of the living.4 Over the next few centuries, the dead were de-marginalized and eventually became integral to the overall structure of “the natural expressions of kin and community.”5 Peter Brown also makes this point in his study of the early Christian period in The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (2015). Brown outlines the process by which Christian deaths became unique and departed souls were endowed with undeniable individuality.6 He proposes that Christian representations of the other world produced ways of drawing the living and the dead

2 Victoria Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004), 38-44. 3 Christine Quigley, The Corpse: A History (Jefferson, NC, 2005). 4 Binsky, 11 (my emphasis). 5 Ibid., 11. 6 Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge, MA, 2015). Brown’s study emphasizes the gradual process by which this tradition was established. Victoria Thompson also examines changes in ideas about the dead during the period of Christianization in Britain, noting that the “conversion period” is fluid and that issues of uniqueness in life and identity in death were redefined continuously over the course of centuries; and that even once the “conversion” period ended and the “converted” period began there remained many inconsistencies in, and varieties of, belief, observance, and experience, and certainly no conformity on a large scale. Thompson, Chapter Two, at 26-9 and 45-6.

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closer together, in both a figurative and literal sense.7 He says, “Each side – the living and the dead – was believed somehow to need the other.”8 In this sense, the two worlds developed a reciprocity that was both spiritual and practical: the dead became a part of civil life. These attitudes toward the dead produced a unique culture of death and community that characterized the Middle Ages, was affected profoundly by the Reformation, and continued into the Early Modern Period. As Patrick Geary discusses in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (1996), the dead were an important part of a unique bond of social cohesion that held medieval and early modern communities together.9 Geary goes so far as to consider the dead “a veritable age group” in these communities, and, although his language in that description is strong, he does not overstate his assertion by much.10 The shared social spaces and experiences among the living and the dead ensured stability for societies whose structures were continually threatened.11 As Geary states, present-day scholarship on death in the Middle Ages often presumes that the dead, with the exception of saints, were pushed away so that the living could resume normative activity.12 This presumption represents only part of the issue. The same communities that emphasized the finality of death via funerary rites and tomb monuments nevertheless recognized the need for what Geary calls “a system of exchanges informing the relationship of mutual dependence” between the living and the dead in medieval communities.13 These are exchanges of words, of gifts, of liturgical and ritual provisions, of spaces.14 They are part of what Victoria Thompson calls “a complex economy of prayer” that includes diverse modes of communication of the living with the dead for the benefit of both worlds.15 This system appears diversely, but consistently, over a wide geographical area and over the course of many centuries. Issues of voice indicate this mutual dependence, via the collective voice of a community, city, or nation, via the individual voices of community members, and also by way of the dead themselves. The chapters of this book indicate some of these issues of voice. For example, the culture of saint veneration emphasizes the vocality of prayer and intercession as direct address. Chapters 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 17. Ibid., 17. Patrick Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (1996), 78. Geary, 78. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Thompson, Chapters Two and Three. Thompson, 18-19.

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by Kathryn Maude and Mary Leech demonstrate that saints have the responsibility to answer the prayers of the living and intercede accordingly. The venerated but uncanonized dead could be included in masses and other services where intercession is replaced by a form of address that is less direct but still communicative: the dead could be talked about rather than talked to, and included in, rather than invoked by, liturgy or commemorative rituals.16 Vocalized communication could be interrupted, as in the case of sudden death, as Jill Clements explains in her chapter; and vocalized exchanges could also take place with revenants – the animated dead. Where revenants are concerned, vocalized communication takes place via the observances of cultural and folkloric traditions rather than prayer, but nonetheless involves plenty of speaking, as a chapter by Hilary Fox shows. Revenants may be negotiated with, combatted, or compelled to warn or serve the living community, as Justin Noetzel discusses in his chapter on the subject. Together these chapters present a culture of dialogue and intercession, discussing the ways in which the living spoke literally to the dead and expected the dead to respond. Other types of exchanges take place via legacies, wills, and funerary rites, as chapters by Martina Saltamacchia, Nikki Malain, and Melissa Herman illustrate; and by legal judgments and regulations of law, as chapters by Thea Tomaini and Anthony Perron show. In these chapters, a variety of situations in diverse geographical locations demonstrate efforts to keep the dead actively franchised in the law, to ensure that justice was performed for the living and the dead. Here, the communication between the living and the dead can be either vocal or nonvocal, depending on the situation. Funerary rituals that included prayers, songs, dedications, feasts, and processions vocalized the belief that the deceased was present, cognizant, and participatory in those observances, even if he or she was not expected to respond. Similarly, legacies and wills, when read aloud and their stipulations applied, communicated with the dead by way of the language of the law as a guarantee that their wishes were being respected to the letter. Criminal courts included the dead via beliefs about the application of the bier-rite, in which a corpse would bleed or otherwise respond physically to the presence of its murderer. The bier-rite was believed to produce a confession of the guilty party, and a confession witnessed by the murder victim could be accepted as testimony. These chapters

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Patrick Geary mentions a tenth-century example of the Lower Rhone Valley in which the names of the deceased were written into the margins of liturgical text so that they might literally be made present each time the text was used. Geary, 88, n. 31; Paris, BN MS lat. 2812, fol. 136v. See also Thompson, 18-19 for the inclusion of the dead in liturgy.

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describe dialogues with the dead that are part of the course of human business. Artistic expression also demonstrates exchanges between the living and the dead that are characterized by degrees of vocality, as chapters by Libby Karlinger Escobedo, Christina Welch, and Sonsoles García Gonzáles demonstrate. Whether artistic expression appears in paintings, carved memento mori, or funerary monuments, and whether the subject matter is Classical, English, Italian, French, or Spanish, the aim of the work is the same: to communicate ideas about, and to, the dead. This communication is interpretative rather than literal, symbolic rather than vocal; but it was believed nonetheless to be effective – and affective. In addition, archaeological investigation into burial sites and monuments, and the examination of grave goods reveals much concerning the connections between folkloric belief and the “resocialization” of the corpse after the death of a community member, as a chapter by Stephen Gordon shows. On the subject of artistic expression, the communication between the living and the dead is nonvocal, but represents deep sentiments that the dead were expected to share with members of the living community who observed, meditated upon, or interpreted works of art. Monuments and grave goods contribute to this idea because they emphasize materiality as the medium through which the dead remain “socialized.” The dead shared the deep sentiments of the living community about their burial places because of the materiality of the tombs in which they were placed and the grave goods with which they were buried. Like the living, the dead were expected to see, perceive, and interpret. The issue of vocality is therefore connected to the establishment of the identity of a person in death. Strategies of memory and issues of voice, varied as they are, produce social identities for the dead that are separate from that which they enjoyed during life.17 Peter Brown provides a thorough explanation of the development of this process, noting that the living did not just want to remember the dead, they wanted to be remembered by the dead.18 Moreover, this identity is tangible and real rather than being solely mystical, and it is aided by the pervasive belief throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period that the corpse was not entirely insensible, but retained some measure of awareness of its ongoing role in the community.19 As Williams notes in his study of identity in death, identities are distributed among the living via the 17 18 19

Williams, 97; also, Thompson, 66. Brown, 36. Sarah Tarlow, Ritual, Belief, and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2011), 128-29.

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media of material culture, architecture, art, and the narratives of folklore and literature, but this is also true of the dead.20 In fact, it is just as much of a challenge to avoid generalization about identity among the dead as it is to avoid generalization about identity among the living.21 The dead too are affected by the “divisible” qualities of personhood that define them, and at the same time differentiate them from the identities they enjoyed in life. Identity in death, therefore, is multifarious and complex. The chapters of this volume discuss some of these complexities and indicate the problems that can arise when identity in death is generalized in societies where the living and the dead are not so far apart: sometimes saints are obliging, and sometimes they must be negotiated with to extend favor to communities that desire relationships with them. Sometimes revenants are malevolent and hostile, and other times they are confused, afraid to leave the comforts of the domestic milieu for an afterlife away from the living. Sometimes an afternoon at the theatre becomes an opportunity for an estimation of the justice system when a stage murder becomes a staging for a murder. Sometimes a man is an honored guest at his own funeral; while at other times the corpse in the sarcophagus can only rest if he or she does so by appropriating someone else’s identity. These complexities reflect a system of interchange by which the dead and the living acknowledge each other and offer benefits to one another. Without these exchanges, which include honors and dedications, property rights, warnings, and justice,22 the imbalance between the communities of the dead and the living would become intolerable and the relationship would break down, resulting in a loss of identity and meaning for both communities. In addition to considering the importance of voice – both verbal and nonverbal – in the relationships between the living and the dead, the chapters of this volume also consider the importance of community space shared by the living and the dead. Stephen Basset articulates this important aspect of the relationships between the living and the dead by explaining that the continued enfranchisement of the dead in living communities is specifically connected to ideas of civil responsibility and urban life.23 Vanessa Harding also discusses this issue in her study of the dead and urban space. Harding establishes the groundwork for her study by noting the strong traditions that had 20 21 22 23

Williams, 11. Ibid., 11. Geary, 78. Stephen Bassett, Death in Towns: Urban Responses to Dying and the Dead 100-1600 (Leicester, 1992), 3.

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prescribed the coexistence of the living and the dead in early modern cities for centuries: In the medieval and early modern city, the dead were everywhere; unlike today, they were neither out of sight nor out of mind. Their place was among the living. They occupied important spaces in the urban map, in the parish churches and churchyards that were the focus of the local community, as well as in the ritual calendar. The living recognized and, to a great extent, honoured the claims of the dead to such a space and seem to have been willing to maintain a dialogue with them […]. The dead had to share their space with other dead, with generations of burials past and future, and to give room to the rites associated with burial, but churches and churchyards also teemed with the activities of the living, domestic, commercial, communal, and ceremonial, as well as religious.24 It was important to people where and how the dead were buried in the towns and cities in which they lived because urban burial space was important to that town’s or city’s identity. The chapters of this book examine this idea and discuss the spatial relationships between corpses and communities concerning sacred and secular spaces, and also public and private spaces. One of the most important aspects of these spatial relationships is hagiographic: the desire to have the saintly body in direct physical proximity, and therefore direct communication, with the community. The chapters by Mary Leech and Kathryn Maude explore how hagiography and saint veneration make specific provisions for locating saints in community spaces. The bodies of saints are accepted by medieval communities as fully invested in the welfare of the population of the parish, district, or city in which they are buried. Saints are localized, with their ability to communicate with the living attached to their burial sites or shrines. This attachment makes pilgrimage to a saint’s tomb singularly important; but it also means that people living near the tomb or shrine of a saint (or his or her relics) could expect better, and more frequent communication and intercession than those devotees who did not enjoy proximity to that space. The corpse of an aristocratic or royal body is a continuous, active participant in the community where it is buried. As Danielle Westerhof shows in Death and the Noble Body in Medieval England, the noble corpse (or parts of it where multiple burial is concerned) does not merely lie within community 24

Vanessa Harding, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 2002), 46.

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space; it becomes part of the enduring identity of that space.25 As Martina Saltamacchia discusses in her chapter, a nobleman choosing to inter his body in a grand church or monastic house in a metropolis like Milan (or London or Paris), contributes to the identity of that city because of the presence of his corpse, not in spite of it. If that same nobleman chooses a form of multiple burial, interring his heart or viscera on his lands in the country, he provides the people on his lands the respectability and political security of having his body physically near them, in a local church, which is at the center of a smaller but no less significant community space. By his death, he is not absent from his city, but is present in a different way than when he was alive. This is also true of a person presumed to be lost at sea, as Nikki Malain shows in her chapter. The deceased can continue to be invested in his or her family’s interests by way of negotiations over a will or legacy. In effect, the dead person is included in the dealings of a family after the death of one of its members. As for the burial place itself, a nobleman’s tomb brings prestige and political clout to an important spiritual space at the heart of a living community: its urban center, where that community’s grandest church is located. His monument creates a visual and tangible environment of experiential memory that contributes to a paradox of remembering and forgetting that characterizes funerary rituals.26 Similarly, Sonsoles García Gonzáles’s chapter shows that tomb monuments are often constructed with the purpose of communicating multiple perspectives rather than a single vision – or single identity – for the occupant of the tomb.27 The cemeteries and gravesites of commoners are also examined in this book, especially concerning folkloric beliefs about revenants in Anglo-Saxon culture and those of Icelandic culture, called draugur. Archaeological, folkloric, and literary examples illustrate the close association of sentimentality with fear that forms an important aspect of the relationship of a community to its dead. As Stephen Gordon demonstrates in his chapter, this association reflects a human desire to maintain control over its posthumous members, to regulate their behavior, and also to protect them from unwelcome and unholy outside forces that threaten those above and below ground. Again, urban space is an important issue, as revenants leave their graves in churchyards and roam the streets of a city or town to seek out the living and deliver warnings, appeal for intercession, or exact revenge. In some cases, as in Justin Noetzel’s chapter on Icelandic folklore, draugur insist upon remaining in household spaces, often preparing food or doing everyday chores, in an effort to preserve their 25 26 27

Danielle Westerhof, Death and the Noble Body in Medieval England (Suffolk, 2008). Williams, 145-46. Ibid., 145-46.

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living identity and dignity. Conversely, draugur can also be condemned as outlaws and treated as such, suffering banishment from urban space to a lonely exile in the wilderness, a space they share with the living criminal group.  Memento mori and the danse macabre are two forms of artistic expression that articulate the relationships between the living and the dead visibly and publicly, within the space of a church or churchyard. Here, the “dialogue” between the living and the dead takes place in a sacred space, a place where the living pray and the dead are buried. Christina Welch’s chapter on cadaver sculptures demonstrates how the living and the dead stand face-to-face within the architectural space of the church. Libby Escobedo’s chapter on Hans Holbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors examines an adapted interpretation of this awareness: its sitters, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, construct an arcane and symbolic memento mori and appropriate the sacred space in which they stand so that it functions as an ersatz burial space. In this sense, the painting functions as an adaptation of the danse macabre and identifies Westminster Abbey as a space where those leading political lives can observe the means by which they can be carried away to their tombs, regardless of their status or ambitions, by the political dead. In addition, this volume examines theatrical space as a locus for the ersatz corpse of the stage. Not to be equated with the voluminous numbers of prophesying and vengeful ghosts that are found in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, stage corpses function in a unique capacity. They “act” as non-vocal members of the community to emphasize issues of justice that cannot be articulated by the living. This is especially true where the crime of murder is concerned. As a chapter by Thea Tomaini illustrates, stage corpses present evidence, give testimony, and provide justification for revenge so that they and the living can rest in peace together. In the case of stage performance, memory is performed ironically, but the stage performance acknowledges the reality of verbal discourse with the dead in real life nevertheless. Part 1, “Discourses and Intercessions,” explores the verbal communications between the living and the dead. Hilary Fox presents a chapter entitled, “The Talking Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living in Anglo-Saxon Literature.” The chapter explores one subgenre of homiletic writing in Anglo-Saxon England called the “exhortation of the dead to the living.” These exhortations involve the corpse (usually decayed) addressing those who have come to gawk at it, as it delivers a lecture on the perishable human body and permanence of one’s eternal fate. This memento mori is not merely an object, but a moment in which that formerly inert object takes voice, reminding the still-living members of its community of their future. Unlike other genres in which the dead interact with the living, such as visions, the visitation of souls, or the viewing of

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a saint’s uncorrupted body, the exhortation of the dead vividly demonstrates the agency of the dead body, as the corpse – there is no mention of the soul – speaks with its own authority. A chapter by Jill Clements, entitled, “Sudden Death in Early Medieval England and the Anglo-Saxon Fortunes of Men,” examines the place of sudden death in Anglo-Saxon literary representations of the dying and the dead. The concept of “deað unþinged” [sudden death] occurs in a number of homilies and verse texts as an object lesson for the living: because death can come at any time, one must always be prepared. The eleventh quire of the Exeter Book articulates this message. Fortunes of Men and Maxims I open with oblique lists of disconcerting bodily fates and have a resounding theme that “God alone knows,” the fate of those who die suddenly; but Maxims I further warns that sudden death is a consequence of a lack of faith: “foolish is he who does not know his Lord, often to him comes sudden death.” Kathryn Maude’s chapter, entitled “Look at my Hands: Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton,” examines the hagiographic writing of Goscelin of St. Bertin (active 1070s-1090s). One of Goscelin’s early works in England was the Legend of Edith, written in about 1080 at the request of the nuns at Wilton Abbey. In the Legend, nuns at Wilton complain repeatedly about St. Edith’s intercessory capabilities, stating that their saintly patron has abandoned them. This anxiety stems from Wilton’s precarious position at the time that the Legend was written, with parts of its lands annexed by Norman lords and concerns about retaining its wealth and status. The nuns’ complaints about Edith’s neglect are exacerbated by her physical (rather than spectral) appearance in the space at Wilton. For the nuns, Edith’s physical presence in the nunnery is proof of her miracle-working potential: the community’s concerns can be resolved only by a saintly intercessor who remains with them in body as well as in spirit. Edith and her mother Wulfthryth are entombed onsite, and are seen repeatedly coming out of their tombs in the nunnery church. The status of Edith and Wulfthryth as sanctified, non-living insiders gives them a unique ability to intervene in the politics of the nunnery. Mary Leech also addresses hagiographic issues in her chapter, “The Corpse of Public Opinion: William of Norwich, Anti-Semitism, and Christian Identity.” The hagiography of William of Norwich (d. 1144), written by Thomas of Monmouth, laid the social and legal foundations for accusing particular Jewish communities of a specific murder. By manipulating the narrative of William’s corpse and exploiting fears about the local Jewish community, Thomas used propaganda and hagiographic marketing to generate the need for a saint’s cult in Norwich. His first goal was to create a saint’s body out of a mere corpse.

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Also in this part, Melissa Herman examines the architectural structure and grave goods of early Anglo-Saxon burials in her chapter, “Performance of Death: The Public and Spectacular Nature of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England.” A large and ceremonial burial was an extremely visible act, providing a spectacle for public consumption as a pyre, gravesite, or burial chamber was constructed and the body (or ashes) was interred along with the goods. The deliberate choice and placement of goods emphasizes the performance of burial, making a public statement about the deceased to the audience of mourners. When considering burial rituals to be public acts or spectacles, the quantity and quality of the grave goods takes on further significance, illustrating a culture that values visible display as sign of status in life, and also in death. Stephen Gordon’s chapter, entitled, “Dealing with the Undead: The Archaeology of Revenant Belief in Medieval England,” discusses the material evidence in medieval burials of revenant belief. The chapter presents research on medico-magical techniques for containing pestilential revenants, and assesses whether more overt, or “mechanical,” methods of assuagement can also be discerned in Britain’s archaeological record. Using the extant corpus of medieval revenant narratives as a structuring device, Gordon contends that practices such as cremation, decapitation, prone burial, the use of “occult” grave goods and deposition in liminal areas of the landscape may, in certain contexts, represent a need to protect the living from the agency of the dead. Part 2, “Law and Civic Life,” explores legal dealings with the dead. This part examines the long history in Western Europe of the establishment of a system of judgment that included the dead and dying, which sometimes extended legal rights to deceased members of a community.28 Martina Saltamacchia’s chapter, entitled, “Confraternity, Community, and Committal: The Public Funerary Rites of Marco Carelli in Fourteenth-Century Milan,” investigates a case study revolving around the funeral of Milanese merchant Marco Carelli. After an initial interment in Venice, where he died, Carelli was transported to Milan several months later. The procession was lavish, having been planned and executed by members of the guild Carelli founded. When the guild members arrived in Milan, a vast crowd of citizens, civic authorities, nobles, and clergy accompanied the coffin to the cathedral. They passed through the city’s streets along a route that stopped at all the places important to the merchant in his lifetime, and the funeral concluded with a huge public banquet. This episode presents a crucial “snapshot” of fourteenth-century Italian politics and the fraternal guilds, clergy, and aristocratic families that generated intricate constructions of memory that served both the living and the dead in their 28

See Thompson, Chapter Six, “Judgment on Earth and in Heaven,” at 170, and 196-98.

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community. A chapter by Nikki Malain entitled, “Live by the Sea, Die by the Sea: Confronting Death and the Dead in Medieval Liguria,” describes the culture of seafaring in Liguria and the subject of death at sea. Shipwreck, illness, and military assaults were the most commonly-recorded causes of death at sea in medieval sources; but murder was also a real risk. So was attack by pirates. Her chapter examines four cases of murder at sea involving Genoese and Pisan citizens between the mid-twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries. The part continues with Justin Noetzel’s chapter, “Outlaws and the Undead: Defining Sacred and Communal Space in Medieval Iceland,” which contains a discussion of revenants – specifically how the undead sought to share communal space with the living in Iceland. Depicted as unwanted and marginalized in the sagas, draugur are treated as outlaws in these poetic narratives. They are banished to the fringe geographical space of the wilderness – a space they must share with living human outlaws and with monsters. This chapter examines the Eyrbyggja Saga and the famous outlaw-heroes Gisli Sursson and Grettir Ásmundarsson, as well as lesser-known stories like that of Gull-thorir and Horth and the Hol-Dwellers. Noetzel uses a theoretical framework that combines space and place theory with monster studies. His chapter also describes the pivotal role that the Icelandic landscape has on the life, death, and afterlife of monsters and outlaws. Anthony Perron’s chapter, “The Medieval Cemetery as Ecclesiastical Community: Regulation, Conflict, and Expulsion, 1000-1215,” examines the cemetery as a focal point of medieval life in Central Europe and France. Graveyards were frequently the sites of social conflict (and reconciliation), most notably between the clergy and the laity. Perron’s essay discusses the efforts to regulate cemeteries in the High Middle Ages by prohibiting “secular” forms of conduct on consecrated burial grounds and by barring certain “unworthy” people, most notably the excommunicated, from interment in the churchyard. Lastly, in “The Corpse as Testimony: Judgment, Verdict, and the Elizabethan Stage,” Thea Tomaini examines Elizabethan tragedy and its focus on a devastated and obsessed relative avenging the death of a loved one. The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd and the anonymous Arden of Faversham present corpses of murder victims as evidence of the crime of murder, and also as witnesses to murder. Here, the corpse functions as an active, albeit inanimate participant in a system of justice in which it is enfranchised inclusively, yet uniquely, among the living. Part 3, “Funerary Art and Mementi Mori,” focuses on tomb monuments and funerary art. A chapter by Sonsoles García Gonzáles, entitled, “Depictions of Antiquity in the Funerary Art of the Medieval Kingdoms of Asturias and León,” examines the appropriation of antiquity in funerary art in the kingdoms of

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León and Asturias between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries. Her chapter especially concerns the re-use of spolia, especially sarcophagi, as tombs for the rulers of these kingdoms. Members of royal and aristocratic families were eager to appropriate the identities of classical heroes in death. They re-used sarcophagi bearing allegorical figures from classical history and mythology in order to reconstruct the narratives of their lives and to create new texts for the corpses inside the sarcophagi. Those narratives were transferred to the living, as family members who visited the tomb associated their dead ancestors, and ultimately themselves, with the virtues and victories of classical heroes. Christina Welch’s chapter, “Exploring Late-Medieval English Carved Cadaver Memento Mori Sculpture,” explores the thirty-eight individual carved cadaver sculptures of the English religious and secular elite in the context of late-Medieval Catholic communal conceptions of the afterlife. Her chapter examines how the unique English carved cadaver sculptures combine memorializing the elite with a pedagogical lesson for all concerning mortality and its connection with suffering in the afterlife. It also demonstrates how the sculptures continue in their didactic role, and affect the culture and scholarship of the twenty-first century. This part also contains “Holbein’s Mementi Mori,” by Libby Karlinger Escobedo, which provides an interpretation of Holbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors. Her chapter argues that the painting is a sixteenth-century adaptation of the earlier tradition of memento mori, and that it represents a modernization of the tradition of the danse macabre. Escobedo’s analysis of the painting also takes into account the satirical tone of the danse macabre tradition and shows how an adaptation of that cleverness is integrated into Holbein’s painting via symbolism and arcane representations of the subjects of the painting, their clothing, the room in which they stand, and the objects that surround them. Christian theology of the medieval and early modern periods maintained that human beings are literally born to die, that from the moment of birth a human being should prepare for death, but that death nevertheless did not represent the end of existence for the human soul.29 These chapters function together to form a comprehensive discussion about spatial relationships and voice – both collective and individual – that demonstrates the idea that death did not represent the end for the human body, either. These chapters look closely at what it really meant to be fully and physically invested in medieval and early modern communities in life and death. They look deeply 29

For a detailed discussion on the changes and developments in the Christian theology of death between the Bronze Age and the twentieth century see Peter Jupp and Clare Gittings, eds. Death in England: An Illustrated History (New Brunswick, NJ, 2000).

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into premodern conceptions of identity and community, of interaction and interplay, and into the many ways in which these dead shared ecclesiastical, occupational, domestic, and entertainment space with the bodies of the living.

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Part 1 Discourses and Intercessions

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The Talking Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living

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Chapter 1

The Talking Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living in Anglo-Saxon Writing Hilary Fox

In the Old English Blickling Homily X, a rich man’s beloved relative dies. Bereaved by his loss and inconsolable, he sojourns in a distant country for many years until he returns to his homeland impelled by the desire to see his relative’s long-dead corpse. Once he arrives at the tomb, the bones of his kinsman address him – not with fond greetings, but with rebuke. Why, the bones demand, has the man come to look at them, when all he will see is decay and dust? The man, shaken by his experience, leaves the tomb and embarks upon a religious life spent learning and teaching holy doctrine, a life that benefits not only himself but his dead relative, whose soul is saved by the man’s prayers on his behalf. The homily concludes with a stern reminder of the fallen state of the world, and an adjuration to flee from the strife and temptations of the present life and work toward eternal reward in the next. The trajectory of Blickling X’s narrative takes its protagonist and its audience from grief to morbid fascination to redemption, a journey instigated by that (supposedly) most passive of objects, the corpse. Within the narrative, however, the corpse acquires a sort of power in its assumption of a voice, and uses this power to refigure relationships between itself and the still-living man who mourns it, reminding its kinsman not only of his mortality but the necessity of spending that mortality virtuously. Moreover, the protagonist’s gaze, turned from the spectacle of death to the state of his own soul, becomes a moment in which the audience itself is invited to turn from contemplation of the story to their inward selves – and, from contemplation, to turn to action. In 1957, J. E. Cross identified a homiletic set-piece, which he named “The Dry Bones Speak,” in three anonymous Old English homilies associated with later Anglo-Saxon preaching traditions: Homily XIII in the Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare MS 117), Homily XII in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 343, and the homily discussed above, Blickling X (Princeton, Scheide Library MS 71, also known as the Blickling Homilies).1 The set-piece features an 1 J. E. Cross, “‘The Dry Bones Speak’: A Theme in Some Old English Homilies,” JEGP 56 (1957): 434-39. I refer to Bodley XII as Irvine VII when citing the text directly, following the numbering

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_003

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audience of tomb-visitors being addressed by the bones of the tombs’ occupants, who warn their audience against sin and remind them that, as the bones were once alive, so too will the audience one day be dead. Cross identified the source common to the speaking bones in the three Old English texts as Caesarius of Arles’ Sermo XXXI, in which the bones appear as part of Caesarius’ disquisition on the uselessness of wealth and the necessity of giving alms to atone for past sins. While the Old English homilies ultimately derive the dry bones from Caesarius, Cross notes that Blickling X’s treatment of the device differs radically from that in both Bodley XII and Vercelli XIII and suggests that the Blickling homilist had encountered a different version of Caesarius’ sermon than the one used by the authors of the Vercelli XIII and Bodley XII homilies.2 What that version might have looked like, Cross does not specify; it may be that the Blickling homilist knew Sermo XXXI in something close to its original form and adapted the dry bones thema himself to suit his own purposes. The Vercelli and Bodley homilies treat the speaking dry bones in passing – almost as a brief thought experiment (“what would dead bodies say if they could speak to us?”) – while Blickling X expands the trope into the vignette described in the introduction, juxtaposing corporeal dissolution with the perduration of filial and kinship ties. Whether Blickling X’s treatment of the device is derived from a different version of Sermo XXXI, as Cross suggests, or whether the homilist freely adapted Caesarius’ homily for his own uses, the homily’s reworking of the dry bones motif represents a distinctly Anglo-Saxon way of dealing with death and the dead. While Cross is right to observe that Blickling X represents a variation on the theme, the specific form this variation takes melds together popular Anglo-Saxon commemorative practices and the early medieval eschatologies that informed them. The narrative that results offers a vision of relationships between the dead and the living as continual and mutually beneficial, and employs secular or biological ties in the service of spiritual growth or salvation. As such, reading Blickling X at the intersection of archaeological and documentary evidence sheds light on how Anglo-Saxons – particularly lay Anglo-Saxons – may have envisioned and negotiated their own relationships to the afterlife, or how they may have been invited by one homilist to do so. Specifically, the fusing of the eschatologies of Julian of Toledo and Gregory the Great to the skeleton (as it were) of Caesarius’ dry bones allows the homilist to develop a narrative that redirects its protagonist’s, and its of the homilies in her edition. When discussing the homily generally, I refer to it as “the Bodley homily” or “Bodley XII.” 2 Ibid., 438.

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audience’s, gaze away from the spectacle of death and toward a vision of death that, while still terrifying, presented possibilities for renewal and redemption. Caesarius of Arles (b. 469/70) served as bishop of Arles from 502 until his death in 542, and during his career produced a body of work that exerted a lasting influence on Frankish and Anglo-Saxon ecclesiasts.3 In the course of his episcopate, Caesarius advocated strenuously for the anointing of the sick and dying, along with the administration of deathbed penance and the viaticum to reconcile the dying individual to God; for the dead, he prescribed church burial and prayer as remedies for those whose sins may not have been fully expiated before death.4 His extant corpus includes over 200 sermons, at least sixty of which (in addition to other material) made their way to Anglo-Saxon England. Of interest here is his Sermo XXXI, “De elemosinis,” a sermon on the importance of almsgiving as a remedy for greed and acquisitiveness, which combines Caesarius’ interests in post-mortem ritual with the pre-mortem correction of sin.5  Sermo XXXI advocates generosity toward the poor while warning against concupiscence and excess. Caesarius criticizes the greediness of the rich, for whom a life of dissipation and acquisitiveness amounts to nothing, and whose bad example should be a warning to visitors who behold their opulent tombs. He writes: Si velis, o homo, audire, ipsa tibi ossa arida poterint praedicare. Clamat ad te pulvis alterius de sepulchro: Ut quid, infelix, tantum pro sae­culi cupiditate discurris? Ut quid superbiae vel luxuriae infelicia colla sub3 For details on Caesarius’ prominence as a Gallic ecclesiast and his role in formalizing the community rituals of the church, see William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (New York, 1994) and William M. Daly, “Caesarius of Arles: A Precursor of Medieval Christendom,” Traditio 26 (1970): 1-28; earlier, but still important, biographies are Arthur Malnory, St. Césaire, évêque d’Arles (Paris, 1894) and C. Franklin Arnold, Cesarius von Arelate und die Gallische Kirche seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1894). For the influence of his work in Anglo-Saxon England, see Joseph B. Trahern, Jr., “Caesarius of Arles,” in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Thomas N. Hall, online at , which surveys Caesarius’ career, along with pertinent manuscripts, quotations, and citations present in Anglo-Saxon writing. 4 Frederick Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1996), 48-56. 5 The edition used is Caesarius of Arles, Sermones, ed. D. Germani Morin, CCSL 103 (Turnhout, 1953); citations are to paragraph and page number, following Morin’s edition. Translations are from Caesarius of Arles, Sermons, trans. Sr. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 2004), 152-58; citations are to Mueller’s page numbers.

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mittis? Ut quid te ad serviendum crudelissimis dominis, id est, vitiis et criminibus tradis? Clamat ad te mortuus de sepulchro: Adtende ad me, et agnosce te; considera ossa mea, et vel sic tibi horreat luxuria vel avaritia tua. Quod tu es, ego fui; quod ego sum, tu eris. (XXXI.2.129, 135). [If you are willing to listen, man, those dry bones can preach to you. The dust of another cries out to you from the grave: Why, unhappy soul, do you run about so much for the sake of worldly pleasure? Why do you bend your miserable neck to pride and dissipation? Why do you surrender yourself to the service of exceedingly cruel masters, that is, to your vices and sins? The dead [man] shouts to you from the grave: Look at me, and recognize yourself; consider my bones, and so let your dissipation and avarice shudder for you. What you are, I was; what I am now, you will be.] (154) The cry of the dead bones forms the heart of “The Dry Bones Speak” and encapsulates other themes Caesarius draws out elsewhere in the sermon. In Sermo XXXI, the corpses of the rich discover that the earthly goods after which they chase – “ornamenta, anuli vel inaures, diademata pretiosa, honorum vanitas, luxoriae voluptas” [ornaments, rings, earrings, precious diadems, the vanity of honors, the pleasure of dissipation] (2.129, 135; 154) – have won them only a grave of ashes and worms and an afterlife of torment. In the speech of the dry bones, the visitor is meant to recognize himself, both what he is now (a living, avaricious man) and what he will be (a dead one). Later in Sermo XXXI, Cae­ sarius returns to the economic dimension of a morality tied to eschatology; in the exemplum of the rich man who sees the beggar Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham (Luke XVI.19-31), Caesarius finds occasion to talk of Christ as debtor, repaying those who give aid to the poor by rewarding them with eternal life among the riches of paradise (XXXI.4.130-131, 136-37). Moreover, “just as water extinguishes fire,” Caesarius tells his audience, “so do alms extinguish sins” (XXXI.3.130, 136). To the (self-)discerning listener, the bones of the avaricious dead warn about the punishment attendant on a life of dissipation and misspent riches; indeed, with the implication that the bones of the dead can speak if the viewer wishes, the viewer assumes control over the bones’ ability to speak and the content of their speech – a control notably absent in Blickling X, as will be seen. The authors of the Vercelli, Bodley, and Blickling homilies imported the lessons of Cae­sarius’ dry bones into their own work. As in Sermo XXXI, the dry bones are objects of fascination to those who visit their tombs. And, as in Caesarius, the bones address those looking at them in unequivocal terms:

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“Look upon me, know what I was, and see what I have become.” However, all three Old English homilies employ the dry bones in different ways and for different ends. Rather than suggest the bones can “preach” to their audience if the audience wishes (si velis… ipsa tibi ossa arida poterint praedicare), the author of Vercelli XIII poses this dialogue between the living and the dead as a thought experiment: “Gewiorðan meahte þæt ða drigan ban sprecan meahton of ðære byrgenne to ðam men þe hie swa giorne behealdeð?” [What if it should happen that the dry bones could speak from their tombs to the men who look so eagerly upon them?] (XIII.21-22).6 Like Caesarius, he imagines the bones speaking as a hypothetical situation (what if it should happen?), and also like Caesarius he imagines the bones admonishing the onlookers to be aware of their sinful state and commanding them to look upon the bones themselves: To hwan, la, ðu earma man and þu ungesæliga, gymest ðu þysse worulde swa swiðe, oððe to hwan upahebbast ðu ungesæliga þe in geweald oferhiede oððe fyrenlustum, oððe to hwan begæst ðu þe ðam wælhreowestan hlafordum þæt is leahtrum and uncystum? Beheald me and sceawa mine ban and ondræd þe þinne fyrenlust and þine gytsunge. Þæt ðu eart nu, þæt ic wæs io; þæt ic eom nu, þæt ðu wiorðest eft. (XIII.27-28) [Why, oh why, you wretched and unlucky man, do you value this world so greatly, and why do you exalt yourself, you unfortunate, in power through pride or vice, and why do you submit yourself to the fiercest lords, that is to sins and vices? Look upon me and study my bones and fear your wicked desire and your avarice. What you are now, I once was; what I am now, you will become in turn.] As in Sermo XXXI, the bones of Vercelli XIII issue a double injunction to the audience: first to look on the bones and then, turning from the bones, to look upon themselves and see, not their own bones, but their sins. The focus of Vercelli XIII on sin and its expiation, and its placement in the calendar, suggests why the homilist found the dry bones so compelling. Vercelli XIII was written for the last of the three days of Rogationtide (gangdæg), that is, the days immediately preceding Ascension Thursday on which Christians did penance and beseeched God for mercy; the homily, like many of its companions in the Vercelli Book, is concerned not with almsgiving (or, at least, almsgiving for

6 Donald Scragg, ed., The Vercelli Homilies, EETS o.s. 300 (Oxford, 1992). I cite Vercelli XIII by line number according to Scragg’s edition, and have silently expanded the Tironian et to “and.”

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its own sake), but with penance and preparation for death and the impending judgment.7 The Bodley homily echoes Vercelli XIII in both wording and use. While it is not rubricated for any particular day in the calendar, it follows two Lenten homilies; its theme, on the transience of earthly delights, would have been appropriate for both Lent and Rogation days.8 It is in this context of mortality and penance that the bones of Bodley XII say to their audience: To hwan, þu earme, on þisse worlde gytsungum swinces? Oðer to hwam þu on oferhydo þy sylf up ahæfst on ofermetto and on unþeawes, and sunne to swyðe fyligedest? Beheald me, and onscyne þine yfelæ þoncæs and ongit þe sylfum. Sceawe mine ban her on þissere molde and biþeng þe sylfen. Iu ic wæs swylc þu nu eart, and gyt þu iwurðæst swulc ic nu eom. Geseoh mine ban and mi dust, and forlæt þine yfele lustæs. (Irvine VII.10-15) [Why, you wretched man, do you strive after your desires in this world? And why, in your arrogance, do you exalt yourself in pride and in sin, and chase after sin so eagerly? Look upon me and observe your evil thoughts and understand yourself. Behold my bones here in the earth and consider yourself. I was once as you are now, and eventually you will become exactly as I am now. Look upon my bones and my dust, and abandon your evil desires.]9 Like Caesarius and the Vercelli XIII homilist, the homilist of Bodley XII uses the speaking bones to turn the viewer’s eyes from the bones themselves to their own spiritual state – to behold their thoughts (onscyne þine yfelæ þoncæs) 7 R. D. Fulk and Christopher Cain, A History of Old English Literature (Malden, 2003), 76. Of the twenty-three homilies in Vercelli, the majority are concerned with penance. Eight involve penitence in the context of the Easter season: Homily I (for Easter), Homily III (for Lent), and six homilies divided into two groups for the three Rogation days (Homilies XI-XIII and XIX-XXI; Homily XIV is rubricated for Rogation days; see Scragg, ed., Vercelli Book, 237). Of the remaining homilies, five are concerned with penance in relation to avoiding damnation (II, IV, VIII, IX, XV). 8 Susan Irvine, ed., Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343, EETS o.s. 302 (Oxford, 1993), 181. I have silently regularized Irvine’s yoghs to g. 9 For the sources of the homily, see Irvine, Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343, 177-96. Of particular interest is the fact that the second part of the homily is derived from Vercelli homily X, which was “clearly associated with Rogationtide” and in other manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library Junius MSS 85 and 86) that are probable Lenten collections (182).

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and themselves (ongit þe sylfum), and after taking stock of their mortality and their sinfulness, to abandon their evil ways. Unlike Caesarius, though, Bodley XII (and Vercelli XIII) frames these desires not as avarice or luxury specifically, but as desire (gytsung) in general. Bodley XII also uses the speaking bones as a preface to the homilist’s adjuration to his audience to remember the impending Day of Judgment, to remember the transitory state of worldly goods, and to reform their behavior accordingly (VII.22-78). Also unlike Caesarius, the Bodley XII homilist is more interested in penance and avoiding the threat of Hell than in almsgiving for its own sake; this may suggest that Anglo-Saxon homilists inherited Sermo XXXI’s treatment of the dry bones not as an admonishment to generosity but as a warning of the fate of the soul after its parting from the body. The differences between the Old English homilies and Sermo XXXI extend to the homilists’ treatment of the possibility of dry bones somehow acquiring the power of speech. In his comparison of both Vercelli XIII and Bodley XII, Cross notes that the homilists insert a caution Caesarius does not: where Caesarius asserts “If you are willing to listen, man, those dry bones can preach to you” (Sermo XXXI.2.129, 135), both the Anglo-Saxon homilists clarify that, in fact, bones cannot literally speak. Bodley XII bookends the scene with hypotheticals and qualifiers: first “Þenne magon þa ðyrle ban us læren, and þæs deaden dust of þare burignes to us cwæðon wolden, gif heo specen mihten” [Thus the gnawed-on bones can teach us, and the dead dust would speak to us from the tomb, if they could speak] (VII.8-10; my emphasis) and afterward, “Þenne, leofe men, þeah þe ða deade ban of þare burignes specon ne magon, þeah we magen us sylfæn bi þam læren” [Then, beloved men, although the dead bones cannot speak from the tomb we yet can instruct ourselves by them] (VII.16-18; my emphasis).10 Cross attributes this modification to the homilists seeking to produce a text “to suit a less sensitive (yet hard-headed) audience” than those who would have heard Caesarius, perhaps laypeople or even monks whose capacities the homilist did not precisely trust.11 Irvine suggests that the homilist of Bodley XII felt compelled to add this disclaimer because he wished to deny the ability of the body of a non-saintly mortal to speak: saints, especially those whose bodies were uncorrupted, could perform miracles while in the tomb but a layman could not. Further, Anglo-Saxon soul-and-body literature, such as the Soul and Body poems and Vercelli IV, insists repeatedly on the body’s muteness 10

11

Cross, “The Dry Bones Speak,” 434-35, 437. Compare Vercelli XIII.33-34: “Ðus cleopedon þa ban to us gif hie sprecan meahton of þære byrgenne” [Thus the bones would call to us if they could speak in their graves; my emphasis]. Ibid., 437.

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as well as its lack of sensory perception; the inert, passive, rotting body of poetry and sermon would hardly accommodate a suddenly-loquacious skeleton.12 One other possible reason for the Vercelli and Bodley homilists’ dwelling on the fact that corpses cannot literally speak (and could never speak) might be the persistence of remnants of pagan belief in revenants or corpses who refused to rest in Christian peace – a belief that persisted alongside orthodox Christian insistence that dead bodies that stayed in their graves.13 Unlike the Vercelli and Bodley homilies, Blickling X features a corpse that does explicitly talk, with no suggestion that this is an extraordinary event or one that needs careful hypothetical framing to avoid misunderstandings of reality. In Blickling X, a rich man dies suddenly, and a kinsman who loves him dearly, who is distraught at his death, travels to a far country where he lives for many years. After some time, he returns home to visit the dead man’s tomb – apparently out of a morbid impulse to see the effects of decay on his kinsman’s body. While he examines the corpse, the bones address him. Þa ongan hine eft langian on his cyþþe, forþon þæt he wolde geseon eft and sceawian þa byrgenne, hwylc se wære þe he oft ær mid wlite and mid wæstmum fægerne … geseah. Him þa tocleopodan þæs deadan ban, and þus cwædon, Forhwon come þu hider us to sceawigenne? Nu þu miht her geseon moldan dæl & wyrmes lafe, þær þu ær gesawe godweb mid golde gefagod. (X.113) [Then he began to long for his homeland, because he wished to see and study the tomb again, and what he might be whom he had often seen beautiful in face and form… Then the bones of the dead man addressed 12 13

Irvine, Old English Homilies from MS Bodley 343, 185. Victoria Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004), 4. One significant difference between revenant legends and the bones of “The Dry Bones Speak” is that revenants are never dry bones but bodies still fully possessed of flesh. (The Vercelli and Bodley homilists may have considered that distinction too fine, however.) Later iterations of revenant tales in England, the Continent, and Scandinavia, though, all reinforce the understanding that the dead are bound by the same laws as the living. See, among others, Nancy Mandeville Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past & Present 152 (1996): 3-45; John D. Martin, “Law and the (Un)-Dead: Medieval Models for Understanding the Hauntings in Eyrbyggja saga,” Saga-Book 29 (2005): 67-82; Torfi H. Tulinus, “Revenants in Medieval Icelandic Literature,” Caeitele Echinox 21 (2011): 58-74. For the legend of a young runaway monk whose newly-dead body did not stay in its grave, see Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2012), 98-104.

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him and said thus: “Why do you come here to study us? Now you may see here a portion of dust and the worm’s leavings, where you earlier had seen a fair garment decorated with gold.”]14 Once the bones fall silent, the man departs the tomb and goes out “from þære dustsceawung” [contemplation of the dust] to lead a reformed life. The homilist adds that the man’s adoption of the spiritual life leads not only to his own salvation but that of his kinsman: “He… hine þa onwende from ealre þisse worlde begangum, and he ongan godes lof leornian and þæt læran, and þæt gastlice mægen lufian; and þurh þæt geearnode him þa gife Haliges Gastes, and eac þæs oþres saule of witum generede, and of tintregum alesde” [He… turned from all the preoccupations of this world and began to learn and teach the praise of God, and to love spiritual virtues, and by these means won for himself the grace of the Holy Spirit and also freed the other’s soul from torments and released it from punishment] (X.113). Blickling X’s conclusion to the narrative thus insists on the vision as a transformative experience, one by which the man’s contemplation of the dust turns to contemplation of his life and then to substantive change that benefits himself and others. Cross’s discussion of the homily takes notice of how it radically individualizes Caesarius’ text: while Caesarius deploys the dry bones motif as part of an address to the audience (a strategy copied by the Vercelli and Bodley homilists), the Blickling homilist turns it into an exemplum of a specific character whose emotional response to the speech of the bones provides the trajectory for the narrative; while Caesarius seeks to extirpate selfishness and acquisitiveness, the Blickling homilist allows his narrative’s hero, through his embrace of selfless love, to find redemption and, through him, his relative – a “happy ending” that Caesarius holds in abeyance.15 Vercelli, Bodley, and Blickling have slightly different ways of dealing with the death that lies at the heart of the “dry bones” motif. Both Vercelli and Bodley are united in their use of the motif as a means for admonition to live better and more wisely, in light of one’s mortality. Blickling X’s more complex handling of its bones and their message reflects Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward burial and death that render the homilist’s modifications necessary. Like his Vercelli and Bodley counterparts, the Blickling homilist removes Caesarius’ descriptions of lavish tombs; unlike them, he does so because his primary interest is in spiritual economies, in which prayer becomes a method of 14 15

Richard Morris, ed., The Blickling Homilies, 3 vols., EETS o.s 58, 63, 74 (1874-80; repr. Millwood, 1967). Citations are to the homily number and Morris’ page numbers. Cross, “The Dry Bones Speak,” 438.

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fulfilling social obligations to the dead, rather than in penance as such. His interest in prayer is dictated by the theologies of Gregory the Great and Julian of Toledo, whose influences lie behind Blickling’s treatment of its protagonist. And the protagonist himself is yet another significant modification – the kinsman of the dead rich man (rather than the general you of the audience), whose status as a layman has parallels with Bede’s Visio Drythelmi. His reformation, moreover, points to the usefulness of visions, rather than a hypothetical encounter with the talking dead, as a means to instigate self-reflection and reformation. In Sermo XXXI, Caesarius commands his audience to stop by the luxurious tombs of the rich (“adspicite ad sepulchra divitium”; XXXI.128.2.33) and to study the tombs of the proud (“Considerate diligentius et videte superborum sepulchra”; XXXI.129.2.5-6); it is in this study, Caesarius hopes, that the astute viewer will “listen” to the warnings of the bones instead of admiring the tombs’ magnificence and turn from vice. Blickling X includes no such injunction to look at the tombs of the rich and powerful, perhaps because Christian AngloSaxon burials of non-royal laymen were not ostentatious, nor were they equipped with the treasure that would have been used to furnish the graves of pagans – even if they included other means of marking social status and identity.16 The only marker of the dead man’s class affiliations in Blickling X is his burial shroud or clothing, which the homily describes as a “godweb mid golde gefagod” (X.114). Godweb could refer either to the quality of the textile or its color; in the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, Osthryth of Mercia decorates Oswald of Northumbria’s tomb with her uncle’s ensign, which was “mid golde and mid godwebbe gefrætwad” (auro et purpura compositum), in order to preserve the memory of his royal status (“se cynelica had”; regia uiri sancti persona).17 Like Oswald’s ensign, the rich man’s godweb serves as an indicator of his social status; unlike Oswald’s ensign, which is clearly 16 17

Annia Cherryson and Jo Buckberry, “Introduction,” in Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, c. 650-1100 AD, ed. Annia Cherryson and Jo Buckberry (Oxford, 2010), ix. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), 246; for the Old English translation, see Thomas Miller, ed., The Old English Version of Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People,’ EETS o.s. 95, 96, 110, 111 (London, 1898), 183-84. In Riddle 35, the speaker (a coat of mail) tells the audience that it was not made by worms, “þa þe geolo godwebb geatwum frætwað” [those that adorn the yellow silk with ornaments] (10a); see George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III (New York, 1936), 198. In the glosses to Aldhelm’s prose De uirginitate, godweb translates purpura as well as oloscericus and bombicinus (silken), where it is paired with eallseolcen (pure silk); see Louis Goossens, ed., The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library 1650 (Brussels, 1974), ll. 1111, 1405,

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intended to be a perpetual symbol of its owner’s royalty, the rich man’s godweb has disintegrated or vanished, leaving only “moldan dæl and wyrmes lafe” [a bit of earth and the worms’ leftovers] (X.113) and no trace of its owner’s wealth or status. The absence of sculptural or architectural grandeur and the disintegration of the dead man’s godweb points perhaps to the homilist’s adaptation of his source to account for funeral practices in late Anglo-Saxon England. Numerous scholars have noted that the decline in furnished tombs following the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons had begun by the eighth century; they have cautioned, however, against a view of tenth- and eleventh-century burial practices that held that later Anglo-Saxon burials assumed an equality or common humility in death that meant everyone, regardless of station, should be buried in the same way.18 Andrew Reynolds has pointed out that ways of burying undesirable individuals – “deviant burials” – marked those individuals as different, often by placing them outside the borders of communal cemeteries or consecrated ground, near town walls or other borders, or in other “liminal” spaces such as pagan barrows and boundary markers.19 The refusal to commemorate criminals or heretics, and the determination to forget, stands in stark contrast to strategies of memorialization and postmortem identity construction through which graves became “texts” that, when read, inscribed their occupants with posthumous identities.20 These identities, although they could be social (expressed through class status, kinship, marriage, etc.), were primarily spiritual: the immortal soul, rather than the body, was the reason for commemoration, even if the social relationships developed in life would be called upon to assist the soul in the next world. Grave markers and memorial crosses erected by family members in memory of the deceased frequently call upon their viewers to pray for the tomb’s occupant or assert that they were raised for the soul of the deceased and the person who commissioned the work; this suggests that Anglo-Saxons considered death to be “a transformation but not a

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3060, and 3061. For godweb, see An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1921), s.v. godweb. Cherryson and Buckberry, “Introduction,” ix-x. Andrew Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burials (Oxford, 2009), 237. Other burials that might not receive commemorative rites or postmortem prayers included those for suicides or those who contributed to their own deaths; see Sally Crawford, “Differentiation in the Later Anglo-Saxon Burial Ritual on the Basis of Mental or Physical Impairment: A Documentary Perspective,” in Cherryson and Buckberry, Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, 93-102, 99. Nicole Marafioti, The King’s Body: Burial and Succession in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2014), 7-8.

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fundamental break in the relationship between the dead person and his or her community.”21 One example of the transformation of the relationship between the corpse and its community can be found in Anglo-Saxon grave markers and crosses. Although the Blickling homilist does not describe the grave of the rich man beyond the fact that he was apparently buried in a fine garment, popular commemorative practices included memorials (beacen) that gave the name of the deceased and occasionally the name of the loved one who commissioned the monument (or the one who made it), with a request that the viewer pray for the soul of the interred.22 As Carol Farr argues, stone crosses or grave markers, as public monuments, “may have participated in [the process of negotiating gender and holiness] by presenting images of holiness which in turn could have been reinterpreted according to the needs of patrons and audiences.”23 These needs are identified by the homilies as being propaedeutics for or stimulants to self-reflection; these needs can be met by epitaphs requesting prayer for the soul, written in the voice of the deceased, which “[transfer] greater hermeneutic responsibility to the reader… with implications both for reciprocal response and his own moral future.”24 As a result of this transfer, it is the reader who is now charged with correctly interpreting, and carrying out, what the epitaph requests; the reader’s ability, and willingness, to pray on behalf of the deceased consequently affects not only the soul of the dead person but the reader’s soul as well. In the “dry bones” motif in the Latin homily and its Old English descendants, the bones become their own inscription, emphasizing the extent to which the dead man’s moral present, and the audience’s moral future, are in doubt. In all three homilies, the message the bones convey is: “What you are

21 22

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Geary, Living with the Dead, 86. A few examples from Elizabeth Okasha, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1971) by Okasha’s handlist number: a carved stone from Falstone (North­ umbria) that reads “ – in memory of Hroethber[t], a monument in memory of (his) uncle; pray for the (–his) soul” (39); a stone cross-shaft from Lancaster that reads “Pray for the soul of Cynib[.] [?] who had promised this work […] to the glory of the Lord” (68); at Lantegos in Cornwall, a stone shaft reads “Ælseð and Genereð made this family-place (or place of peace) for Ælfwyn’s soul and for themselves (or for Heysel),” (69). Carol Farr, “Questioning the Monuments: Approaches to Anglo-Saxon Sculpture through Gender Studies,” in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings, ed. Cath­ erine E. Karkov (New York, 1999), 375-402, 378. Catherine A. M. Clarke, Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England: Texts, Hierarchies, Economies, Anglo-Saxon Studies 15 (Rochester, NY, 2012), 48.

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now, I once was; what I am now, you will be.”25 The Latin Caesarius employs, “Quod tu es, ego fui; quod ego sum, tu eris” (XXXI.2.129.18-19), has a longstanding tradition as a funerary inscription on the Continent, such as in a Roman inscription which implores the bystander to pause and consider “Sum quod eris, quod es ante fui; pro me, precor, ora” (I am what you will be, what you are I was; I beseech you, pray for me).26 No similar inscription survives in the extant corpus of Anglo-Saxon stonework, although Frederick Parkes Webber claims that the epitaph of Eadulph, Bishop of Devon (d. 932), contained the phrase, along with injunction to the viewer to pray for the soul of the deceased.27 The persistence of the phrase across all three Old English homilies suggests that its conciseness and emphatic declaration of community between the living and the dead ensured its preservation, even if there was no correlate in the Anglo-Saxon repertoire of stone inscription. It further suggests that the authors of the Vercelli, Bodley, and Blickling homilies, writing for their multifarious living audiences, all thought it would be effective in conveying the epitaph’s message that the decayed corpse could speak usefully to those confronted with it. Late Anglo-Saxon burial practices derived their meaning in part from eschatological traditions that made their way, both overtly and tacitly, into vernacular texts; these theological traditions lay at the center of ways of thought and practice that united memorialization of the dead with the welfare of the dead in the next world.28 The focus here is on two theologians whose eschatological writing plays an important role in the Blickling homilist’s reshaping of Caesarius. Both Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) and Julian of Toledo (642-690) exercised significant influence on Anglo-Saxon theological inheritance, including eschatology and beliefs regarding the afterlife. Gregory, whose sponsorship of St. Augustine’s mission to England saw the beginning of the conversion of the English, was widely read throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, particularly his Cura pastoralis translated in the ninth century under orders of Alfred the Great of Wessex and the Dialogi, translated into Old English by Wærferth (Bishop of Worcester, consecrated 869/72). Julian of Toledo was closely familiar with Gregory’s work as well as with that of Isidore of Seville, and was thus 25

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Blickling X.113: “þu eart nu þæt ic wæs io; and þu byst æfter fæce þæt ic nu eom”; Vercelli XIII.28-29: “Þæt þu eart nu, þæt ic wæs io; þæt ic eom nu, þæt ðu wiroðest eft”; Irvine VII.14-15: “Iu ic wæs swylc þu nu eart, and gyt þu iwurðæst swulc ic nu eom.” G. B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (Rome, 1888), 2.233. Frederick Parkes Webber, Aspects of Death and Correlated Aspects of Life in Art, Epigram, and Poetry (New York, 1918), 108. Paxton, Christianizing Death, 1.

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placed within the ambit of Continental authors known and prized by the Anglo-Saxons.29 His Prognosticon futuri saeculi is, as Tommaso Stancati says, “a manual on the future life… a complete systematic synthesis” of the first six centuries of Christian eschatological thought, which eventually became an indispensable part of pastoral practice as well as more sophisticated flights of exegesis.30 Seven manuscripts of the Prognosticon survive from the AngloSaxon period, largely from the tenth through late eleventh centuries and all in Latin; this is somewhat less than the Dialogi, which survives in nine Latin manuscripts and four Old English.31 The significant number of manuscripts still extant suggests the extent to which Anglo-Saxons were interested in Gregorian and Julian eschatologies; the hints of these eschatologies in Blickling X also suggest the extent to which they permeated vernacular writing and pastoral care. Two related facets of pastoral care in the afterlife as discussed by Book IV of the Dialogi and the Prognosticon are pertinent here: first, the release of the rich kinsman’s soul from torment through prayer; and second, the burial and commemorative practices that inform the protagonist’s encounter with his kinsman’s bones and subsequent determination to reform. Part of the “happy ending” accorded to the protagonist and his kinsman in Blickling X is that the protagonist’s prayers release his kinsman’s soul “of 29

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Julian of Toledo. Prognosticum futuri saeculi: Foreknowledge of the world to come, ed. and trans. Tommaso Stancati, OP, Ancient Christian Writers 63 (New York, 2010), 33. For the Dialogi, I follow the Old English version in Hans Hecht, ed. Bischof Wærferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen (Leipzig, 1900-7; rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965); citations are to page and line number according to Hecht’s lineation. Stancati, Prognosticum, 165. Between the ninth to eleventh centuries, fifty-two manuscripts of the Prognosticon were produced throughout Europe; see Julian of Toledo, Opera, ed. J. N. Hillgarth, CCSL 115, 2 vols., vol. I (Turnhout, 1976), 162. Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Tempe, AZ, 2001) provides the numbers used for the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts below. For the Prognosticon, the seven manuscripts are Gneuss no. 34.1 (mid-to-late eleventh century), 105 (early to mid-ninth century and in England by the tenth), 478 (second half of the tenth or early eleventh century), 599 (eleventh or twelfth century), 658 and 693 (both late eleventh century), and 800e (first quarter of eleventh century). The Latin Dialogi exist in the following manuscripts: 34 (mid-to-late eleventh century), 208 (beginning of eleventh century), 510 (first half of eleventh century), 667 (late eleventh or early twelfth), 715 (tenth century), 856.1 (second half of eighth century), 924e (end of tenth century), 937.3 (seventh or eighth century), 943.8 (early or mid-eighth century); the Old English are in 92 (second half of eleventh century), 207f (end of tenth century), 359 (middle of eleventh century), 632 (first half of eleventh century).

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witum… and of tintregum” [from torments… and from punishments] (X.113), a detail conspicuously absent from Caesarius’ discussion. Redemption for both characters, and the dead man, in particular, is made possible through popular attitudes towards prayer that made the inscriptions on grave markers – ora pro anima mea, ora pro me – meaningful adjurations. These attitudes are also articulated in Book II of the Prognosticon when Julian turns his attention to the differences between states of postmortem torment and blessedness; for those not good enough to escape torment, for them is decreed a purifying fire (purgatorius ignis) that redresses sins that had gone unredressed in life: “profecto non est ipse aeternus ille ignis. In illum enim soli sinistri nouissima et perpetua damnatione mittentur; iste autem ignis dextros probat” [certainly that fire (i.e. the purifying fire) is not the eternal fire. For into this fire only those on the left hand will be cast, and that with final and everlasting damnation; but that fire proves those on the right hand] (XX.29-31). In its separation of truly unrepentant sinners from sinners whose faults can be corrected, the Prognosticon represents the beginning of a delineation of a four-tiered afterlife that segregates the valde mali (very bad) from the non valde mali (not-very-bad) and the valde boni (very good) from the non valde boni (not-very-good); the valde mali are condemned to hell for eternity and the valde boni are able to participate fully in the joys of heaven, while their lesser counterparts can be freed from torment (non valde mali) or elevated from relatively minor bliss to greater (non valde boni) through prayer and masses offered on behalf of their souls.32 The fourfold afterlife found its way into Anglo-Latin writing relatively early on. Ananya Kabir traces its development in English thought from the Prognosticon itself through to Boniface and Bede in the Vision of the Monk of Wenlock and the Vision of Dryhthelm, respectively; both visions are visions of heaven and hell in which the lesser hell is a place of temporary punishment meant for the “animae examinandae et castigandae” [the testing and punishment of souls], a process that will take until Doomsday to complete.33 While Doomsday seems to be the terminus for the tenure of all souls in the Purgatorial flame, there are hints that some souls can escape earlier if they are remembered through prayer and masses offered on their behalf. Masses offered on 32

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Peter Brown, “The Decline of the Empire of God: Amnesty, Penance, and the Afterlife from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” in Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia, PA, 2000), 41-59, 42; Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Litera­ ture (Cambridge, 2006), 88-93. Kabir, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday, 88-89. For a translation of the Vision of Dryhthelm, see Eileen Gardiner, ed. and trans., Visions and Heaven and Hell before Dante (New York, 1989), 57-64.

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behalf of the dead were gifts given to God, gifts which would be then reciprocated in the incorporation of the soul into heaven or its release from torment.34 The Prognosticon implies as much when Julian asserts that the souls of the dead benefit from burial in the church; not only are the faithful enjoined to care properly for the dead by burying them and giving them their final obsequies (I.19.1-35), but they must care for the soul afterward: “Cum enim Deo sacrificium pro spiritibus defunctis offertur, pro ualde bonis gratiarum actiones sunt, pro non ualde malis propitiones sunt, pro ualde malis etiam si nulla sint adiumenta mortuorum qualescumque tamen sunt consolationes uiuentium” [In fact, when sacrifice is offered to God for the departed souls, it is a thanksgiving for the very good ones, propitiation for the not so bad, while for the very bad, even if the sacrifices are of no benefit to the dead, the act is nevertheless consolation for the living] (I.22.8-12). In light of this prescription, the Blickling protagonist’s removal from his dead family member’s presence means that, while he remembers him: “him næfre seo langung ne geteorode, ac hine swiþe gehyrde and þreade” [the longing never faded, but greatly oppressed and tormented him] (X.113) – those memories do no good: he grieves but does not commemorate or help his kinsman with prayers. Finally, the fact that the protagonist of Blickling X is a layman who experiences a vision (or something that could be construed as a vision) attests to the Dialogi’s assertion that laymen could receive visions;35 indeed, he may have an antecedent in the titular protagonist of Bede’s Vision of Dryhthelm. Dryhthelm, like the Blickling X protagonist, begins his journey as a layman, a householder who lives a religious life in private but in public appears to be secular. After his vision of the fourfold afterlife, Dryhthelm, like the Blickling X protagonist, 34 35

Paxton, Christianizing Death, 66-68. Kabir, Paradise, Death, and Doomsday, 79. In the opening of Dialogi IV.27, Gregory tells Peter that it is a natural ability of the soul to make predictions: “soðlice þæt mægn sylf þara sawla is þyllic, þæt hwilum hi hit ongytað for heora smeaþancolness” [truly that very power of the soul is of such [a nature] that at times they perceive [the future] on account of their subtlety] (IV.27, 296.23-24). He cites as support for this contention the story of a man named Advocatus (Wærferth’s mistranslation; the man is a lawyer named Cumquo­ deus), who experiences a vision of his impending death: “þæt we witan, Petrus, þæt se ylca wer wæs gebunden mid woruldlicum scirum and higode aa þara eorþicra gestreona; hwanon wolde him cuman, þæt he mihte swylc færeld beforan secgan, nymþe þæt mægn sawle and seo smeaþancolnes þæt forsæde, þæt þam lichaman toweard wæs?” [so we know, Petrus, that the same man was bound with worldly offices and thought always on earthly treasures; whence would it come to him, that he could foretell such a course of events, unless the power of the soul and that subtlety foretold what [fate] was approaching the body?] (IV.27, 297.21-25).

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divides up his wealth among his family and the poor before retiring to the monastery at Melrose, giving up the trappings of a wealthy, worldly life.36 In both cases, the experience serves as the catalyst for self-reformation, and the fact that the visionaries change their ways serves as the warrant for the visions’ veracity.37 The Blickling X homilist employs dustsceawung, “contemplation [or meditation] on the dust” – that is, the dead body – to describe what the nameless man experiences. The sceawung is not a vision explicitly (though it may be understood to be that); what is significant here is that the soul of the dead man does not appear, but the bones themselves speak to the visitor, the physical remnants of a dead body are given voice. The initial emphasis of the corpse’s speech, as with those of the Vercelli and Bodley homilies, is not on advice but on visual examination: look on me and see. The act of focusing on the bones brings into stark relief the reality of mortality and, in the Blickling homily, the transience of mortal wealth. The corpse of the Blickling homily seems annoyed at its kinsman’s morbid curiosity – why come to look at my bones? – and draws a sharp distinction between the finery of transient life and the dusty fragments of death. The entirety of the vision is based on the man’s ability to interpret not only the corpse’s words, but the physical reality of the corpse itself; the man contemplates the dust (not the dust’s words) and, in doing so, examines the advice it gives him, to good advantage: the man abandons worldly things, begins to lead a virtuous life in God’s service, and in the end, earns grace for both himself and his departed kinsman (X.122-27). The beholding of the corpse and the redirection of that gaze from the corpse to the self represents what Marcia Dalbey refers to as the purely tropological function of the Blickling Homilies: the gaze the protagonist directs onto his dead kinsman is then turned, literally and figuratively, onto himself in the same way that the homilist demands of his audience: “ic myngige and manige manna gehwylcne þæt he his agene dæda georne smeage, þæt he her on worlde 36 37

Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, 57. Visions meant for the reformation of individuals who experience them or hear the visions related receive their authorization in Dialogi IV.32, where a saintly man named Reparatus sees a dissolute man, the priest Tiburtius, thrown onto a pyre in hell. Gregory tells Peter that this vision was not meant for the benefit of Reparatus or Tiburtius (who is, in fact, already dead), but for the mourners who hear Reparatus’ account of his vision of hell: “openlice hit is gecyþed, þæt he ne geseah þa no him sylfum, ac us, þe her nu gyt forgifen is, þæt we lifiað, and eac alyfed is, þæt we motun us sylfe gebetan and gerihtan fram yflum weorcum” [it is clearly understood that he [Reparatus] did not see [this vision] for himself, but for us, to whom it is now permitted that we live, and it is also allowed that we might amend ourselves and turn away from evil works] (IV.32, 307.26-308.1).

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for Gode rihtlice lifge” [I admonish and remind every man that he zealously scrutinize his own deeds, so that, in this world, he live properly for God] (X.109). In Dalbey’s reading, Blickling X demonstrates that the homilist’s skill was not in exegesis, but rather in exhortation to virtuous behavior; Milton Gatch’s studies of the collection, perhaps a bit more generously, suggest that the guiding principle behind the collection was “general instruction” for Christian people – they are equally applicable to ecclesiasts (whether bishop, priest, or monk), secular prelates, and uneducated laypeople.38 Adjurations to correct living must surely count as “general instruction,” and Blickling X is closely concerned with private devotion and public service, emphasizing the social obligations of individuals – whether living or dead – to one another;39 the homilist, even before his exemplum, comments on the requirement that all people, regardless of station, be charitable to the poor and vigilant on behalf of the virtue of children.40 This is “general instruction,” according to Gatch,41 instruction carried out through Blickling X’s imaginative engagement with a multiplicity of textual forms: the theologies that not-so-silently inform the homilist’s interpretation of Caesarius and the material texts – monuments, churches, bodies, inscriptions – that would make encounters with the dead meaningful to those listening to the homily. The modifications to Blickling X work by drawing on visual texts that demanded readers participate in communion with the dead, 38 39

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Milton McG. Gatch, “The Unknowable Audience of the Blickling Homilies,” Anglo-Saxon England 18 (1989): 99-115, 101 and 110. Marcia A. Dalbey, “Themes and Techniques in the Blickling Lenten Homilies,” in Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppé, eds., The Old English Homily and Its Backgrounds (Albany, NY, 1978), 236-47, 229. “Syn we rummode þearfendum mannum, and earmum ælmes-georne, swa us God sylfa bebead þæt we soþe sibbe heoldan, and geþwærnesse us betweonon habban; and þa men þe bearn habban læran hie þam rihtne þeodscipe… þæt we þurh þæt ealle Gode lician, swa hit eallum geleaffullum folcum beboden standeþ, næs na þam anum þe Gode sylfum underþeodde syndon mid myclum hadum, biscopas, and cyningas, and mæssepreostas, and heahdiaconas, ac eac soþlice hit is beboden subdiaconum and munecum. and is eallum mannum nedþearf and nytlic þæt hie hiora fulwiht hadas wel gehealdan” [Let us be generous to poor people and charitable to the wretched, as God himself has bidden us so that we keep true peace and have concord among us; and those men who have children, let them teach them orthodox belief that we through all of this may please God, as is bidden to all those who believe, and not only to those of exalted state who are subject only to God, such as bishops, kings, and mass-priests, but truly it is bidden to subdeacons and monks, and it is necessary for all men and useful that they keep their baptismal vows] (X.109). Gatch, “Unknowable Audience,” 101.

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by remembering them, judging them, and praying for them; Blickling X minimizes the memorial’s attempt to “[advance] the fame and prestige of the dead” in favor of advocating for prayer on behalf of the soul of the deceased.42 These inscriptions and burial practices also draw on widespread theologies that viewed the placement of the dead body as necessary for its soul’s health in the afterlife, both to reassert its membership in the community of the faithful (by burying it in consecrated ground or in the enclosure of a church) and to keep its memory alive within the community, which would undertake to pray for its soul. The “dry bones” in Blickling X recast the simple admonition of Caesarius’ bones into an admonition that produces a clear effect: the protagonist abandons the grief that has allowed him to dwell on only the physicality of his dead relative – on the body, tomb, and its furnishings – and, as part of his reformation, saves both his soul and that of his kinsman from torment. The exemplum thus dramatizes the formation of an ideal kinship between the living and the dead that the homilist, given his concern over right behavior, is eager to inculcate. Whatever emotional impact the dry bones had on their tenth-century audiences, that impact was likely informed by a world that saw the living and the dead in communion with each other, and saw the afterlife as being just as vital as the life of this present, transitory world. 42

Clarke, Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England, 56.

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Chapter 2

Sudden Death in Early Medieval England and the Anglo-Saxon Fortunes of Men Jill Hamilton Clements

In Book IV of the Dialogues, Gregory the Great tells the story of a lecherous courtier who rapes his own goddaughter and, though fearing God’s judgment, decides to attend mass. After coming through the service unscathed, he returns to church cheerfully every day for six days, assuming that God did not see or care about his sin. But his respite proves to be brief: Die autem septimo subita morte defunctus est. Cumque sepulturae traditus fuisset, per longum tempus cunctis uidentibus de sepulcro ipsius flamma exiit, et tamdiu ossa eius concremauit, quousque omne sepulcrum consumeret […]. Quod uidelicet omnipotens Deus faciens, ostendit quid eius anima in occulto pertulit, cuius etiam corpus ante humanos oculos flamma consumpsit.1 [On the seventh day, he died by sudden death. And, with the customs of burial completed, for a long time in the sight of all a flame came out of his grave, and it burnt his bones for so long, until it consumed the entire grave […]. In doing so, almighty God showed what his soul suffered in concealment, whose body, even now, flames consume before human eyes.] Through its “exemplum formidinis”2 [fearful example] of the bones burnt to nothing in the grave, Gregory’s anecdote projects the eternal suffering of the sinner’s soul in damnation. It also indicates a particular category of dying that precedes the courtier’s entry into hell: he dies by “sudden death,” or mors

1 Gregory, Dialogues Book IV, 33.25-28, 30-32, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé and Paul Antin, Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand: Livre IV, Texte Critique et Notes, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris, 1980), 110-12. Translation by Jill Hamilton Clements. 2 Ibid., Book IV, 33.33.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_004

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subita: literally a death that comes stealthily or secretly and is unexpected.3 Elsewhere called mors improvisa or mors repentina – with improvisus and repentinus carrying the same sense of the unexpected or unforeseen4 – a sudden death takes an individual unawares and unprepared for dying, therefore casting the soul into jeopardy. To speak very broadly, a “good death” in the Middle Ages was not a quick death: ideally, one should have time to get one’s earthly and spiritual affairs in order and thereby transition from the community of the living to the community of the saved in the afterlife. While in the early Middle Ages the ordines for the sick and the dying varied from one community to the next (and the majority of evidence relates to religious rather than lay communities),5 they often included last rites with confession for the dying, administering the Eucharist as viaticum, and praying and chanting Psalms at the deathbed.6 After death, these rituals continued through prayers over the corpse and at the graveside, and through votive masses meant “to fulfill the penitential obligations incurred by sin.”7 Such practices aided an individual in leaving the community of the living so that his soul could be commended to the afterlife while his body was buried alongside others awaiting resurrection. This postmortem care was fostered by the system of confraternity that developed in the seventh and eighth centuries, as religious communities circulated lists of the living and the dead for commemoration.8 But commitments to care for the dead were contingent on the preparations an individual made prior to dying, ensuring his place in this continuum between the living and the dead. Failure to prepare for death left one in a liminal space, divorced from both communities; a death without 3 See s.v. subeo (1774), I.A, 2: “to come on secretly, to advance or approach stealthily, to steal upon, steal into,” which shares a sense of unexpectedness with subitum (1775), in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879). See also s.v. repentinus, “sudden, hasty, unlooked for, unexpected.” Ibid., 1568. 4 Ibid., s.v. improvisus, “not foreseen, unforeseen, unexpected” (909). 5 Helen Foxhall Forbes addresses the evidence for last rites within Anglo-Saxon monastic, episcopal, and lay communities in Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an Age of Faith (Farnham, Surrey, 2013); see 111-25, and 273-94. 6 Modifications to the Roman ordines were largely defined by Caesarius of Arles; see Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1990), 50-55. 7 Ibid., 98. The saints also have a role in interceding for the dead, as Kathryn Maude shows regarding St. Edith in “‘Look at my Hands’: Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton,” in Chapter Five of this volume; Edith appears in the dream of a nun after the death of Wilton’s Abbess Ælfgifu to encourage the community to pray for Ælfgifu’s soul. 8 See Paxton, Christianizing Death, 99-100, and 134-38.

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preparation might not only damage material and social bonds in this world (from the distribution of goods to the location of burial), but also hinder one’s salvation in the next. Dying suddenly was feared to the extent that, by the later Middle Ages, popular beliefs had developed that one might prevent sudden death by “looking at St. Christopher […] and seeing the raised host,” but those protections lasted only for that single day.9 The Anglo-Saxon textual record does not provide abundant evidence of such popular practices to prevent sudden death,10 but this manner of dying certainly carried significant weight in Anglo-Saxon culture. Anecdotes of those who died suddenly served as object lessons for the living: by living in expectation of departure from this life, one may effectively take measures to ensure the security of one’s soul in the next. To date, the concept of sudden death has been examined largely as a historical or cultural phenomenon in the Middle Ages, including studies in the history of medicine that focus on descriptions of the speed of death in order to diagnose real physiological ailments and conditions.11 It has also been explored 9

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Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550 (New York, 1997), 32. Miri Rubin also notes the belief in the manifold protections offered by the elevated host; see Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), 63. A similar belief is found in Irish texts regarding the measurement of Christ’s body: a brief note in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 512 (fol. 52v) indicates that seeing the measurement of Christ’s body (represented materially or visually) will spare one from sudden death on that day. See Kuno Meyer, “Die Leibeslänge Christi,” Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 10 (1915): 401-2. Likewise, a fifteenth-century German woodcut instructs the observer to kiss the image of Christ’s wound “with devotion” in order to be “protected from sudden death or misfortune;” see David S. Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe (Burlington, VT, 2010), 245. Similar protection is promised from looking at or carrying the seals drawn in Canterbury Cathedral Library, Additional MS 23; see Don C. Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2006), 199-214. Anglo-Saxon medical texts and charms include a number of protective rituals to prevent or remedy illness, and in Ælfwine’s Prayerbook (London, British Library MS Cotton Titus D.xxvi and xxvii) there is “an early version of [the] later popular amulet measured according to the length of Christ’s body and the wood of the cross,” though this early version gives no clear sense of what is promised by the amulet; see Karen L. Jolly, “Tapping the Power of the Cross: Who and for Whom?” The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer, and Karen Louise Jolly (Wood­ bridge, 2006), 58-79, at 62. See also the discussion of Anglo-Saxon hymns and prayers as loricae or amulets in Skemer, Binding Words, 42. Henry Mayr-Harting and Peter Harris have suggested, for example, that a myocardial infarction most likely caused the death recorded in the Liber Eliensis in which a badtempered man quickly dies after being poked in the chest with a staff by St. Etheldreda. “St. Etheldreda and the Death of Gervase,” International Journal of Cardiology 12.3 (1986):

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within the “death culture” of the later Medieval Church; Paul Binski notes that “Christians, as their wills often show, feared a quick death – a mors improvisa – because it robbed them of the opportunity to render themselves penitentially into a state of grace,” and so “part of the threat posed by Death personified” was “his capacity to surprise.”12 More recently, these concerns about sudden death have been mapped onto later Medieval literary texts, including Sir Orfeo’s graphic catalogue of the “taken” in the fairy kingdom, whom Alan J. Fletcher has argued “would have been regarded as dying out of a secure context.”13 But as a literary trope in earlier English texts intended to impel readers and listeners to right living, the significance of sudden death in Anglo-Saxon England has only recently begun to be explored. In a presentation of her ongoing research on the subject, Jana K. Schulman suggests that sudden death in early Medieval texts does not appear at random, but is a recurring pattern, a motif put to a variety of uses by Anglo-Saxon authors, including the demonstration of God’s knowledge and the exhortation to repent and care for the soul.14 Distinct from simply a medically “fast” death, such as the færsteorfa of livestock,15 the Anglo-Saxon trope of sudden death comes with particular implications for the salvation of the dead and has an important place in literary representations of dying and damnation. This concern over sudden death is borne out particularly in a pair of catalogue poems in the eleventh quire of the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, c.975). These poems, Fortunes of Men and Maxims I, both contain oblique lists of disconcerting bodily fates, including the inexplicable deaths of children. With the resounding Boethian theme that “God ana wat” [God alone knows] what will befall a man, both poems seem to suggest death’s cold inevitability; but Maxims I then turns to the spiritual condition of the doomed, stating that “Dol biþ se þe his dryhten nat, to þæs oft cymeð deað unþinged” [foolish is he who does not

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369-71. The forensics of sudden death in coroners’ rolls and its relation to conditions such as epilepsy are discussed in Sara M. Butler, Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England (New York, 2015). Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1996), 36. Alan J. Fletcher, “Sir Orfeo and the Flight from the Enchanters,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 141-77, at 148. Jana K. Schulman, “‘A Prayer against Sudden Death’: Constant Danger, Vigilant Readiness,” Center for Medieval Studies 25th Anniversary Conference: Teaching and Learning in the Middle Ages, Univ. of Minnesota (8-9 November 2013). I am grateful to Jana Schulman for kindly sending me a copy of this paper. The Lacnunga offers instructions for dealing with the sudden murrain (færsteorfa) of sheep and swine; see Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga, ed. Edward Pettit, 2 vols. (Lewiston, 2001), 1: §§ 134 and 136.

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know his Lord, often to him comes sudden death].16 Owing to the poems’ juxtaposition in the manuscript and their shared imagery, the admonition in Maxims I regarding sudden death can be mapped back onto Fortunes, offering a clue for interpreting Fortunes’ enigmatic catalogue of deaths and understanding how readers of Fortunes from the late tenth century onward would have encountered this poem in context. This “thematic sequence” in the Exeter Book,17 which includes in its orbit two additional poems in quires 10 and 11, throws light onto early Medieval anxieties about death, the afterlife, and the proper preparation for both. Sudden death is a recurrent feature of Anglo-Saxon prose and verse, occurring dozens of times in the corpus of both Old English and Anglo-Latin texts. A brief discussion of two prose texts – a pair of death narratives in Book V of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum and the supplications made in an Anglo-Saxon “Prayer against Sudden Death” – will provide a sense of the vocabulary used to describe this literary trope and demonstrate the weight that sudden death would have carried within the more abbreviated poetic context of Fortunes of Men. These examples also illustrate how Anglo-Saxon views regarding sudden death underpin the relations between spiritual preparedness and the community that is left behind. The foremost examples of the trope of sudden death in Anglo-Saxon prose come from Bede’s Historia Book V, which offers contemporary Anglo-Saxon anecdotes to bring a cautionary message closer to home for Bede’s readership. In addition to their main warning about how one’s unrepented sin leads to a sudden death, Bede’s examples suggest sudden death’s tangible repercussions for a living community. Book V contains a series of three death narratives, starting with that of Dryhthelm (HE 5.12), who dies, has a vision of the afterlife, comes back to life, and then repents for his sins.18 Dryhthelm’s lifestyle prior to 16

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Maxims I l. 35. All quotations of Maxims I are taken from The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. III, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (New York, 1936), 156-63. All translations of Old English are by Jill Hamilton Clements. This “thematic sequence,” to borrow Karma Lochrie’s phrase, runs parallel to Lochrie’s argument for the grouping of Exeter Book poems that deal with wyrd [fate], Resignation A and B and Judgment Day I. See Lochrie, “Wyrd and the Limits of Human Understanding: A Thematic Sequence in the Exeter Book,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85 (1986): 323-31. A vision of the afterlife while ill, followed by recovery and repentance, is also found in the case of Fursa. Bede relates an abbreviated version of Fursa’s vision and its circumstances in HE 3.19, but in the original version of the Vita Fursei, Fursa is allowed to repent of his sins because during the vision he is still living and therefore has the opportunity for penance. See Charles D. Wright, “The Interim State of Souls in Early Irish Literature,” The

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death is not described and his illness and death are dispatched in a single sentence, but his successful repentance makes Dryhthelm’s story quite unlike the two that follow it in Book V. In the next chapter (HE 5.13), Bede relates the story of a Mercian layman and friend of King Cenred “cuius uisiones ac uerba, non autem et conuersatio, plurimis sed non sibimet ipsi, profuit” [whose visions and words, but not his way of life, profited many but not himself].19 This man is an industrious and respected military officer, but neglects the needs of his soul despite the king’s admonitions: Ammonebat ergo illum sedulo ut confiteretur et emendaret ac relinqueret scelera sua, priusquam subito mortis superuentu tempus omne paenitendi et emendandi perderet. Verum ille, frequenter licet admonitus, spernebat uerba salutis, seseque tempore sequente paenitentiam acturum esse promittebat. Haec inter tactus infirmitate decidit in lectum, atque acri coepit dolore torqueri. Ad quem ingressus rex (diligebat enim eum multum) hortabatur, ut uel tunc, antequam moreretur, paenitentiam ageret commissorum. At ille respondit non se tunc uelle confiteri peccata sua, sed cum ab infirmitate resurgeret, ne exprobrarent sibi sodales, quod timore mortis faceret ea quae sospes facere noluerat […].20 [The king warned him constantly to make confession, mend his ways, and give up his sins, before sudden death robbed him of all opportunity of repentance and amendment. But though he was frequently warned, he spurned this salutary advice, always promising that he would repent at some future time. Meanwhile he fell sick and took to his bed, suffering cruel pains. The king who loved him greatly went in to him and urged him to repent of his wickedness even then, before he died. He answered that he did not wish to confess his sins then, but only when he had recovered from his illness, lest his companions should accuse him of doing, for fear of death, something which he would not do when he was in good health …].

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End and Beyond: Medieval Irish Eschatology, ed. John Carey, Emma Nic Cárthaigh, and Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh (Aberystwyth, 2014), 309-96, at 394. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.13, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), 498. All references to Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica are from Colgrave and Mynors’ edition, cited by book, chapter, and page in the edition; all translations of Bede are from this edition unless otherwise noted. Ibid.

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The Mercian layman has lived indulgently and is convinced that he has more time: not wishing to be seen as fearful of death, he denies death’s proximity, unaware that he has been “daemonica fraude seductus” [deceived by the wiles of the devil].21 As his illness grows worse, the layman is visited again by the king and relates a vision in which he sees two books; the first, which is beautiful but “uehementer modicum” [exceedingly small], is given to him by two white-robed youths.22 This tiny, opulent book contains all his good deeds, its size indicative of their paucity. The second book, however, is “codicem horrendae uisionis et magnitudinis enormis et ponderis pene inportabilis” [a volume of enormous size and almost unbearable weight, horrible to behold],23 and is presented by a troop of evil spirits; in it the layman finds his numerous sins written out in “tetricis…litteris” [gloomy letters].24 The evil spirits ask the white-robed youths, “Quid hic sedetis scientes certissime quia noster est iste?” [“Why do you sit here since you know that this man is certainly ours?”]; the youths concede immediately and tell the evil spirits to take the layman to be counted among the damned.25 Abandoned by his erstwhile heavenly advocates, the layman is knocked by the evil spirits on the head and feet with knives that are, even as he relates this vision to the king, creeping through his body, proving fatal when their points meet; shortly after this speech, the layman dies. This narrative offers a critical definition of what constituted a sudden death for Bede and his eighth-century audience: the king advises that the layman repent “priusquam subito mortis superuentu tempus omne paenitendi et emendandi perderet,” which can be rendered literally as “before death’s coming suddenly destroys all occasion to repent and emend.”26 The point here is not that the death itself is quick, but that its coming “subito” [suddenly] abolishes any opportunity for cleansing the soul and making amends.27 Although 21

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Ibid. The devil’s deception in making an individual think he has plenty of time to confess is also found in the Latin homiletic motif of the three ways the devil lulls men into a false sense of security. This motif appears in Old English homilies, including Napier Homily LVII (Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst untersuchungen über ihre echtheit), ed. Arthur S. Napier (Berlin, 1883), 298-99, and Nuove omelie anglosassoni della rinascenza benedettina, Filologia germanica, Testi e Studi 1, ed. Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda (Florence, 1977), 145. Many thanks to Charles D. Wright for pointing out these connections. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.13, 500. Ibid. Ibid.; translation by Jill Hamilton Clements. Ibid. Translation by Jill Hamilton Clements. In Ælfric’s version of Bede’s anecdote, the king warns the layman to repent “þylæste he færlice forðferde mid his synnum” [lest he depart suddenly with his sin], which faithfully

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sudden death does appear in the Anglo-Saxon textual corpus as a means of divine punishment and retribution – and Schulman notes that pagans and the unrepentant being struck dead are among the most common scenarios for sudden death in the corpus – conceptually, a sudden death is rooted in issues of preparation, not merely speed.28 This Mercian layman does not die swiftly or violently: his illness is drawn out, met first with his seemingly brave (but actually foolish) refusal to repent, and then with a vision illustrating that it is simply too late. The layman’s vision, unlike Dryhthelm’s, is therefore not for his own benefit but, as Bede explains, for the benefit of others who, upon hearing of the layman’s damnation, will fear delaying their own repentance and “ne inprouiso mortis articulo praeuenti inpaenitentes perirent” [not be cut off by sudden death and die impenitent].29 Here, mors improvisa cannot refer to the speed of dying, but rather to the nature of that death with respect to one’s preparation and repentance. As the story of the Mercian layman shows, a lengthy but fatal illness during which one technically has time to repent but does not – perhaps owing to pride or to denial of death’s nearness – is still considered a sudden

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translates the Latin adverb “subito” but also suggests that the problem is not that he would die quickly but that death’s sudden coming meant he would die “mid synnum” and so jeopardize his soul’s fate. Ælfric, “De Doctrina Apostolica” (Homily XIX), Homilies of Ælfric, A Supplementary Collection, vol. II, ed. John C. Pope, EETS 260 (Oxford, 1968), 630.144. Schulman, “‘A Prayer against Sudden Death’.” Sudden death as divine retribution appears in, for example, the metrical psalms of the Paris Psalter, in which Psalm 54:13 is rendered, “Hi ofer cume unþinged deað, / astigon heo on helle heonan lifigende” [let sudden death overcome them, let them sink hence, living, into hell]. Where the Vulgate has only “mors” [death] without qualification, the use of “unþinged deað” [sudden death] in this trans­ lation suggests that this type of death was befitting the unrighteous ones tormenting the psalmist. The Paris Psalter and the Meters of Boethius, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. V, ed. George Philip Krapp (New York, 1932), 3-150, at 6. Because of its fearful consequences for the unrepentant, sudden death (“færlic deað”) is leveled as a threat in the laws of King Edgar for anyone who withholds his tithes; see 4 Edgar §1.4, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Part I), ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1925), 30. It should be noted that while being “struck dead” by God may qualify as a sudden death, it is not simply violence to the body that categorizes a death as “sudden” within this trope; as martyrdoms in Anglo-Saxon hagiography attest, a death by beheading, beating, burning, etc., is clearly not unilaterally an indication of a “bad death” or of the individual’s state of sin at death. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.13, 502. Alcuin also warns of delaying conversion until it is too late and risking sudden death (mors repentina), asking “Quid tu peccator [converti] dissimulas, et non metuis, ne tibi mors repentina subripiat diem conversionis? Nonne homines subito moriuntur?” Alcuin, De Virtutibus et Vitiis in B. Flacci Albini seu Alcuini Opera Omnia, Patrologia Latina 101, ed. Jacques Paul Migne (Paris, 1851), col. 623B.

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death.30 What makes it “sudden” is the life lived up to the moment of death, at which point the layman was unrepentant. Put another way, given the king’s warning that his illness could be fatal, the layman’s death is neither surprising nor swift, but it is an event for which he is nonetheless spiritually unprepared. Bede remarks at the chapter’s close that the layman might have been able to be counted among the blessed if he had bothered “errores pueritiae corrigere in adulescentia” [to correct the errors of childhood in his youth].31 Without that earlier correction, however, any type of death met by the unrepentant is necessarily a mors improvisa, one for which the individual’s soul is not ready.32 What matters most to Bede is not that the body has drawn its last breath (all bodies must at some point), but which group, the robed youths or the demons, will afterward take possession of one’s soul. Bede reinforces this point about preparation for death in the third death anecdote in Book V: in the next chapter (HE 5.14), he relates the story of a man he knew whose demise underscores the consequences of sudden death with respect to burial and a community’s remembrance. Shifting from a lay to a monastic community, this account is of a frater who “positum in monasterio nobili, sed ipsum ignobiliter uiuentem” [belonged to a noble monastery but lived an ignoble life].33 Like the Mercian layman, the brother is chastised for seeking pleasure but does not change his lifestyle. He later falls ill and when death is imminent, “uocauit fratres, et multum merens ac damnato similis coepit narrare, quia uideret inferos apertos et Satanan demersum in profundis […]” [he called his brothers; lamenting like one already damned, he began to 30

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Binski overlaps these concepts – death’s speed and one’s spiritual preparation – in his definition of mors improvisa: he states, “Earlier, pagans had hoped for a quick (and presumably pain-free) death; Christians, as their wills often show, feared a quick death – a mors improvisa – because it robbed them of the opportunity to render themselves penitentially into a state of grace.” Binski, Medieval Death, 36. Speed and preparation are not mutually exclusive, however, since, as Bede’s examples show, a slow death might also be one for which the individual is “unprepared.” Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.13, 502. The link between penance and “sudden death” is articulated in Vercelli Homily XIX for Rogationtide, which credits three days of prayer with the ending of the plague in Vienne. The homily uses the phrase færlic deað to describe the plague, an alteration from its Latin source that uses simply mortalitas. This plague seems to kill indiscriminately, but the cure of fasting and prayer, followed by righteous living, suggests that the Vercelli homilist specifically associated unrepented sin with “sudden death.” See Vercelli Homily XIX, ed. D. G. Scragg, The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS o.s. 300 (Oxford, 1992), 315-26, at 324.149-64. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.14, 502.

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describe how he had seen hell opened and Satan in its infernal depths…].34 He tells them he saw “heu misero mihi locum despicio aeternae perditionis esse praeparatum” [“a place of everlasting damnation prepared, alas, for me, wretched man that I am”].35 The monks urge him to repent because he is still “in corpore” [in the body] and not yet dead, but the brother denies that possibility: “Non est mihi modo tempus uitam mutandi, cum ipse uiderim iudicium meum iam esse conpletum” [“There is no time now for me to change my way of life, since I have already myself seen judgement passed upon me”].36 As with the Mercian layman, this vision foretells his soul’s fate in hell, but in this case, the brother’s vision appears to be proleptic, in spite of the monks’ exhortations: he cannot – or possibly out of the sin of despair, will not – confess on his deathbed, and his vision is solely for the benefit of the living.37 The tangible effects of such a death do not end on the deathbed, but affect this ill-fated brother’s remembrance within the community. Bede goes on to explain: Talia dicens sine uiatico salutis obiit, et corpus eius in ultimis est monasterii locis humatum, neque aliquis pro eo uel missas facere uel psalmos cantare uel saltim orare praesumebat.38 [As he uttered these words, he died without receiving the saving viaticum and his body was buried in the furthest corner of the monastery; nor did anyone venture to say masses or sing psalms or even pray for him.] The brother’s lack of preparation is illustrated by his not receiving the viaticum; without confession and reconciliation, he is not eligible to receive these last rites. And lacking these measures, the brother’s death is treated as an anathema: his grave, while still on monastic grounds, is on the brink, pushed to the periphery of the churchyard.39 The liminal treatment of his body shows 34 35 36 37

38 39

Ibid., 504. Ibid. Ibid. In Dryhthelm’s guide’s explication of his visions in Chapter Twelve, there is a place for the souls of those who delay confession and repentance until the point of death, and the prayers, alms, and masses of the living can help them become free; see ibid., 5.12, 494. Ibid., 5.14, 504. Foxhall Forbes discusses the deliberate exclusion of this brother’s burial in Heaven and Earth, 294-97; she points out that the significance of this story “was not lost in later centuries,” as one Old English version of Bede’s Historia “seems to advert to its unhappy end with the image of a small figure, its legs entangled with rings, as the initial I at the

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that the brother is no longer considered fully a part of this community. Like the unrepentant courtier in Gregory’s Dialogues, whose grave was consumed by fire so that the soul’s eternal punishment would be “visibly revealed on the body which was buried in the earth,”40 the brother’s burial in Bede’s narrative reflects the community’s suspicions of his spiritual fate: although not buried outside the churchyard, the brother is buried in such a way that suggests the monks question his exclusion from the saved at Judgment. This exclusion is further reinforced by the community’s deliberate forgetting; beyond avoiding his far-away grave, no one took part in his commemoration. Perhaps because the brother had already pronounced the finality of his own damnation, any postmortem intervention for his soul was viewed as a lost cause, but this final detail also suggests that he was deliberately excised from collective memory. Denying him masses and postmortem prayer effectively bars this brother from the monastic confraternity, an institution in which Bede himself participated.41 The depth of this forgetting is visible in Bede’s introduction to this chapter: “Noui autem ipse fratrem, quem utinam non nossem (cuius etiam nomen, si hoc aliquid prodesset, dicere possem)” [I myself knew a brother, and I would that I had not known him, whose name I could mention if it were any use].42 Erased from communal memory, the brother’s particular identity is of no consequence because of his sudden death. In other words, remembering him individually has lost all its potential value because he is situated at once outside the community of the living and beyond the reach of their prayers to help him into the fold of the saved. For Bede, the brother is simply a fearful example of the dangers of putting off right living until it is too late. The fear and consternation associated with sudden death not only cross genres of Anglo-Saxon texts, but also span the period. The dread of dying suddenly is expressed in a late Old English prayer known as the “Prayer against Sudden Death” that survives in three mid-eleventh-century manuscripts.43 This prayer provides a further definition of sudden death that underscores the

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beginning of this chapter” (295). Regarding Anglo-Saxon practices of exclusionary burial, see also Victoria Thompson, Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2004), 170-80. Foxhall Forbes, Heaven and Earth, 270. See, for example, Bede’s request for prayer and entry into the register of Lindisfarne in the Prologus of the Vita Sancti Cuthberti Auctore Beda, in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (1940; rpt. New York, 1969), 144-46. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.14, 502. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 391. See Thompson, Dying and Death, 60-62.

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concerns expressed in earlier texts, including Bede’s Historia. It begins with a plea for both God’s forgiveness and a death that is, above all, not “sudden”: Drihten for þinre þære miclan mildheortnesse 7 for ealra þinra haligra lufan 7 geearnunga. gemiltsa me synfullum swa swa þin mæra willa sy. 7 min mod to þinum willan gestranga. 7 gestaðela. 7 min drihten ne læt me næfre færlicum deaðe of þissum earman life gewitan. Ac loc hwænne min tima beo. 7 þin willa sy. þæt ic þis hlæne lif forlætan scyle. læt me mid gedefenesse mine dagas geendian.44 [Lord, for Your great mercy and for love and favor of all Your holy ones, pardon sinful me according to Your great will, and strengthen and secure my spirit to Your will, and, my Lord, let me never depart from this wretched life by sudden death. But whenever my time is, and Your will is, that I shall abandon this transitory life, let me end my days with gentleness.] The suppliant asks first that God “gemiltsa” [pardon] him out of love and according to His will, establishing the penitential tone of his entire prayer. He then requests that his spirit be secured to God’s will and, further, that God not allow him to die “færlicum deaðe” [by sudden death]. The Old English equivalents to the Latin mors improvisa and mors repentina,45 færlic deaþ or færdeaþ, have the sense of not merely suddenness in terms of speed, but a death that is above all not expected.46 By asking instead, “hwænne min tima beo. 7 þin willa sy” [whenever my time is, and Your will is], that God grant a death “mid gedefenesse” [with gentleness], the suppliant suggests that the moment of his death is known by God, and also that a desirable death is one marked by gedefenesse, which means “gentleness,” but also “quietness” and “mildness”; it is a death

44 45

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The Portiforium of Saint Wulfstan (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 391), vol. II, ed. Dom Anselm Hughes (London, 1960), 14. For example, where Gregory the Great used mors improvisa in the example of the courtier in Book IV of the Dialogues, the Old English translation uses “færlic deað”; see Bischofs Wærferth von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. Hans Hecht (1900; rpt. Darmstadt, 1965), Book IV.33, 309. See The Dictionary of Old English: A to H Online, eds. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey, et al. (Toronto, 2016) (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/); s.v. færlic and færdeaþ: the latter was also used to gloss Latin apoplexia in reference to a particular medical condition outside of this literary trope. The other Old English term for sudden death is unþinged deað, discussed below in its use in vernacular poetry.

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“with decency.”47 The prayer continues, further contrasting the notion of an indelicate, “sudden” departure from life with a description of a desirable death: Eac ic bidde þe min drihten leof for þines sylfes naman 7 godnysse. þæt þu me of þisse weorulde ne læte. ær ic þurh ðine mycclan mildheortnysse forgifenysse hæbbe ealles þæs ðe ic æfre ongean þinne mæran willan geworhte […].48 [Also, I ask You, my beloved Lord, by Your own name and goodness, that You not let me go from the world before I – through Your great mercy – have forgiveness of all that I ever worked against Your great will….] The suppliant asks that God not allow him to die until he has had the chance to seek forgiveness for all his trespasses, which he then elaborates as sins committed “dæges oððe nihtes. gewealdes oððe ungewealdes. on worde oððe on weorce. oððe on minum þystrum geþance”49 [by day or by night, willingly or unwillingly, in word or in deed or in the darkness of my thoughts]. His concern, then, is that he not die without the opportunity for spiritual preparation and confession of all his misdeeds, since his soul could be jeopardized for eternity. To lack this preparation is the primary characteristic of a færlic deaþ. One would hope for a smooth transition from deathbed to grave and, most importantly, a transition for which adequate provision for the soul had been made. With the help of a local monastic or clerical community, one went through rituals that, as Victoria Thompson writes, “centred on a series of controlled moments, the most important of these being the period of critical illness during which life and death hang in the balance (when confession is central), the death struggle, the washing of the body, and the placing of the body in the grave.”50 Ideally, then, one does not die unexpectedly, but with the necessary rites performed and “in a domesticated and regulated fashion.”51 Of course, many of the deaths one encounters in Anglo-Saxon texts occur far from a regulated, domestic space – death happens on the battlefield, at sea, in the wilderness, and on journeys far from home. Such examples, especially in the 47 48 49 50

51

See ibid., s.v. gedefenes. See also Thompson, Dying and Death, 61. Portiforium, 14. Portiforium, 14. Thompson, Dying and Death, 61. Regarding the work of memory in the visible processes and performance of Anglo-Saxon burial, see also Melissa Herman, “Monumental Memory: The Performance and Enduring Spectacle of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” in Chapter Three of this volume. Binski, Medieval Death, 36.

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following selection from the Exeter Book, highlight the peril of a death faced in less-conventional circumstances, and how poetic texts seek a similar didactic end in urging the reader’s preparation for whatever befalls him. Situated in the eleventh quire of the Exeter Book between Widsith and Maxims I, the poem known as The Fortunes of Men (fol. 87r-88v) has received limited attention from scholars of Old English verse, leading Richard H. Dammers to state in the mid-1970s that it is “one of the most undervalued poems in Old English literature.”52 Much of this neglect is owing to the perplexing structure of the poem and the lack of a clear internal explanation for its contents. The first half of the poem (ll. 10-57) lists several forms of death and misfortune that might befall a person, from being eaten by a wolf to being killed in an inebriated brawl at the mead bench. The second half of the poem (ll. 58-92) presents a more palatable list of various skills, fortunes such as wealth or poverty, and occupations in a manner much like Gifts of Men (Exeter Book fol. 78r-80r), followed by a brief conclusion that points to God’s jurisdiction over the fates of humankind (ll. 93-98). Its conventional form as a catalogue poem53 and its abstract content have inspired some scholars to identify various rationales for this list of fates. Their suggestions of sources and structural agendas for Fortunes have resulted in extremely diverse readings of the poem, ranging from the poem’s Christian didacticism (with allegedly distinct Christian and pagan treatments of fate)54 to its invocation of global mythologies in cataloguing “ancient or archaic traditions” (such as tree-climbing and falling, Fortunes lines 21-26).55 Where the subject of death in the poem’s initial section is concerned, Karen Swenson has argued that Fortunes “reflects a non-Christian sensibility” in the poet’s efforts to interpret and interpolate an “older core” of Germanic material on “ritual deaths.”56 Swenson’s reading of the deaths in Fortunes as a compilation of preChristian material – situated however awkwardly with Christian sentiments regarding fate – has been the dominant interpretation of the poem since the early 1990s, but scholars have since revisited Swenson’s claims. Stefan Jurasinski 52 53 54 55

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Richard H. Dammers, “Unity and Artistry in The Fortunes of Men,” American Benedictine Review 27 (1976): 461-69, at 461. See Nicholas Howe’s defense of this genre in Fortunes and Gifts in The Old English Cata­ logue Poems, Anglistica 23 (Copenhagen, 1985), 104-105. See Dammers, “Unity and Artistry,” 461-62. Neil D. Isaacs, “Up a Tree: To See The Fates of Men,” in Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores W. Frese (Notre Dame, IN, 1975), 363-75, at 374. Karen Swenson, “Death Appropriated in The Fates of Men,” Studies in Philology 88.2 (1991): 123-39, at 126 and 127.

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resituates the poem in a Christian context, drawing on Old English pastoral and liturgical texts to show that a fear of physical consumption and concerns over bodily resurrection underlie the deaths in Fortunes.57 More recent interpretations broaden this focus on the poem’s sources to consider the human element at work in these deaths: Thomas D. Hill relates Fortunes to laws governing accidental injury58 and Lindy Brady examines the role of the landscape in “mask[ing] the societal culpability at the heart of these dark fates.”59 By and large, these interpretations of the deaths in Fortunes reach outside the Exeter Book for their rationales. While Brady notes that Fortunes shares the death by wolves with the poem that directly follows it in the Exeter Book, Maxims I (fol. 88v-92v),60 there remains a series of broader connections that link these poems and others in this section of the manuscript. The first part of Maxims I (hereafter, specifically Maxims I A)61 encourages a reading of Fortunes through the lens of sudden death, which appears in Maxims I A as a rubric for the fates it catalogues – fates that directly echo those described in Fortunes. Such an interpretation of Fortunes transforms its own gruesome catalogue of deaths, as well as the subsequent list of “living fates,” into a subtle admonition to submit to the providence of God, for the purpose of preparing for anything that might befall a person, namely death. Before analyzing the parallels between Fortunes 57

58

59 60 61

Stefan Jurasinski, “Caring for the Dead in The Fortunes of Men,” Philological Quarterly 86.4 (2007): 343-63. Jurasinski remarks that “this is a poem that delights […] in seeing the living body as potential food either for animals or for destructive natural forces” (347). Thomas D. Hill, “Hæthcyn, Herebeald, and Archery’s Laws: Beowulf and the Leges Henrici Primi,” Medium Ævum 81.2 (2012): 210-221. Hill goes as far as to suggest that Fortunes “offers a catalogue of the modes of violent purposeless deaths which can befall a young man and presents these deaths as seen and experienced by grieving parentes…” (214-15). The high regard for the “craft or art” of parenthood in Fortunes, though the parents cannot secure their child’s survival, was proposed by Stacy S. Klein in “Parenting, Humanity, and The Fortunes of Men,” 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (14-17 May 2015). See also Klein, “Parenting and Childhood in The Fortunes of Men,” in Childhood and Adolescence in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, ed. Susan Irvine and Winfried Rudolf (Toronto, 2018). Many thanks to Stacy Klein for generously sharing a prepublica­tion copy of her essay. Lindy Brady, “Death and the Landscape of The Fortunes of Men,” Neophilologus 98 (2014): 325-36, esp. 326. Ibid., 330. Krapp and Dobbie label the Exeter Book maxims as Maxims I and mark out the three distinct poems, which are separated visually in the manuscript with the capitalization of the first words of each, as I, II, and III. I use T. A. Shippey’s designation of A, B, and C for the three parts (and thus Maxims I A) to avoid confusion with Maxims I as a whole. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Totowa, NJ, 1976).

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and Maxims I A and the implications of reading the catalogue of deaths in Fortunes as part of a broader warning about sudden death in this manuscript, it is important to consider briefly how these fates in Fortunes are framed by God’s providential control over life and death.  Fortunes opens with the birth and rearing of a child, presenting a scene that is both familiar and general to human life. The poet allows for some human agency in bringing forth life and providing for offspring, only to articulate coolly man’s inability to control the fate of that life given the unknowable nature of the passing years: Ful oft þæt gegongeð,  mid godes meahtum, þætte wer ond wif  in woruld cennað bearn mid gebyrdum  ond mid bleom gyrwað, tennaþ ond tætaþ,  oþþæt seo tid cymeð, gegæð gearrimum,  þæt þa geongan leomu, liffæstan leoþu,  geloden weorþað. Fergað swa ond feþað  fæder ond modor, giefað ond gierwaþ.  God ana wat hwæt him weaxendum  winter bringað!62 [Very often it happens, through God’s might, that a man and woman bring forth a child into the world by birth and adorn him with colors, coaxing and gladdening, until the time comes, with the passing of a number of years, that the young limbs, lively limbs, become grown. Thus, the father and mother carry and feed him, provide for and dress him. God alone knows what the years bring for him growing up.] T. A. Shippey remarks that in these opening lines, the efforts of the mother and father to care for the child are set against the verb “bringað” and the fact that “the force of ‘winter’ is stronger than any affection from ‘wer ond wif, fæder ond modor’.”63 It is not merely man’s lack of influence over time, but his complete weakness in light of God’s “meahtum” [might] and omniscience – “God ana wat” [God alone knows] – that renders any person incapable of controlling the longevity of his own life or that of his child, however skilled his parenting may be. By opening the poem with the creation and fostering of life, the poet

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Fortunes of Men ll. 1-9. All quotations of Fortunes of Men are taken from The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. III, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, 154-56. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning, 10.

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poignantly demonstrates man’s limitations and sets in high relief the list of deaths that follow. The reference to “God ana wat” and humankind’s ignorance of fate foregrounds the gruesome catalogue starting in line 10, in which the human inability to predict the outcomes of life (or its ending) is an understated but constant theme. This “sum catalogue” of different ways to die includes the misfortunes of blindness, infirmity, and exile, and each fate is treated with a varying degree of detail: Sumum þæt gegongeð  on geoguðfeore þæt se endestæf  earfeðmæcgum wealic weorþeð.  Sceal hine wulf etan, har hæðstapa;  hinsiþ þonne modor bimurneð.  Ne bið swylc monnes geweald! Sumne sceal hungor ahiþan,  sumne sceal hreoh fordrifan, sumne sceal gar agetan,  sumne guð abreotan. Sum sceal leomena leas  lifes neotan, folmum ætfeohtan,  sum on feðe lef, seonobennum seoc,  sar cwanian, murnan meotudgesceaft  mode gebysgad. Sum sceal on holte  of hean beame fiþerleas feallan;  bið on flihte seþeah, laceð on lyfte,  oþþæt lengre ne bið westem wudubeames.  Þonne he on wyrtruman sigeð sworcenferð,  sawle bireafod, fealleþ on foldan,  feorð biþ on siþe. Sum sceal on feþe  on feorwegas nyde gongan  ond his nest beran, tredan uriglast  elþeodigra, frecne foldan;  ah he feormendra lyt lifgendra,  lað biþ æghwær fore his wonsceaftum  wineleas hæle. Sum sceal on geapum  galgan ridan, seomian æt swylte,  oþþæt sawlhord, bancofa blodig,  abrocen weorþeð. Þær him hrefn nimeþ  heafodsyne, sliteð salwigpad  sawelleasne; noþer he þy facne mæg  folmum biwergan, laþum lyftsceaþan,  biþ his lif scæcen, ond he feleleas,  feores orwena,

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blac on beame  bideð wyrde, bewegen wælmiste.  Bið him werig noma! Sumne on bæle sceal  brond aswencan, fretan frecne lig  fægne monnan; þær him lifgedal  lungre weorðeð, read reþe gled;  reoteð meowle, seo hyre bearn gesihð  brondas þeccan. Sumum meces ecg  on meodubence yrrum ealowosan  ealdor oþþringeð, were winsadum;  bið ær his worda to hræd. Sum sceal on beore  þurh byreles hond meodugal mæcga;  þonne he gemet ne con gemearcian his muþe  mode sine, ac sceal ful earmlice  ealdre linnan, dreogan dryhtenbealo  dreamum biscyred, ond hine to sylfcwale  secgas nemnað, mænað mid muþe  meodugales gedrinc.64 [To some unfortunate one it happens that the woeful end comes in the time of youth. A wolf shall eat him, hoary heath-stepper; then his mother mourns his departure. Such matters are not in humankind’s control. One hunger shall destroy, one a storm shall drive away, some a spear shall spill, one war shall destroy. One shall have use of a life devoid of light, grope about with hands, one shall, infirm of foot, weak with sinew injuries, lament the pain, fear the decree of fate, oppressed in spirit. One shall in the forest fall featherless from a high branch; he is in flight, flies in the air nevertheless, until he is no longer the fruit of the tree. Then he, somber, sinks in the rootstock, bereft of his soul, falls on the ground; the soul is on a journey. One shall by necessity go on foot on the remote paths and carry his provisions, tread the track of strangers, the perilous earth; he has few living supporters, everywhere is hostile to the friendless man because of his misfortunes. One shall ride the wide gallows, swing to death until the body, bloody bone-coffer, becomes broken down. There the raven takes the eyes from his head, the dark-plumaged one tears at the soulless man; neither may he defend himself with his hands from that wickedness, the loathsome aerial robber; his life is departed, and he insensible, deprived of life, waits for fate, pale on the beam, covered with death-mist. Miserable is his name. One the flame shall afflict on the fire, the perilous flame shall 64

Fortunes ll. 10-57.

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devour the fated man; there death comes to him quickly, the fierce red ember; the woman weeps, she sees the flames cover her son. One, an angry ale-drinker on the mead bench, the sword’s edge deprives of life, wine-satiated man; earlier his words were too hasty. One shall become through the cup-bearer’s hand a mead-drunk man; then he knows not moderation to mark his mouth with his mind, but he shall completely wretchedly yield up his life, suffer great misfortune, sheared of delights, and men shall call him a suicide, declare by mouth the drunkenness of the mead-drunk one.] While scholars have suggested several explanations for the poet’s choices of these particular modes of dying, it is equally possible that the list itself is simply meant to suggest variety – that, as Thompson states, the poet is simply “bringing all of these terrifying fates into the realm of ordinary life.”65 The poet neither indicates an obvious rationale that drives all these misfortunes, nor directly prescribes ways one might avoid such ends. But the list is not pointless. Although, as Brady notes, “God is indisputably absent between lines ten and fifty-seven,”66 the structure of the sum catalogue suggests that the deaths starting in line 10 – attacks by wolves, starvation, exposure in storms, death by spears and war, blindness and infirmity (“a kind of death in life”),67 falling from trees, exile, hanging, burning, fighting at the mead-bench, and alcoholism – are all governed by the acknowledgement of God’s providence in lines 8b­-9 that “God ana wat / hwæt him weaxendum winter bringað” [God alone knows what the years bring for him growing up]. This structure suggests that the fates that follow this line about the knowledge of God are therefore simply examples of “hwæt him…winter bringað.” Likewise, while abrupt, the shift at line 58 to “living fates” suggests a deliberate patterning with the first section; what is consistent from start to finish is the thematic refrain of God’s power.68 This second section is introduced by the statement, “Sum sceal on geoguþe mid godes meahtum / his earfoðsiþ ealne forspildan, / ond on yldo eft eadig weorþan”69 [Some shall in youth by God’s might bring to nothing all his troublesome journey, and in old age 65 66 67 68

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Thompson, Dying and Death, 191. Brady, “Death and the Landscape,” 328. Howe, Old English Catalogue Poems, 120. The relationship between the catalogue of misfortunes and the second section of living fates is among the most debated issues regarding Fortunes, and explanations range from “there is no connexion” (Thompson, Dying and Death, 191) to the two halves represent the “Christian experience of conversion” (Howe, Old English Catalogue Poems, 116). Fortunes ll. 58-60.

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become prosperous again], echoing the “mid godes meahtum” from the first line of the poem and underscoring the fact of God’s control over all fates.70 This view of God’s sovereignty is then repeated a final time in the concluding lines of the poem: Swa wrætlice  weoroda nergend geond middangeard  monna cræftas sceop ond scyrede  ond gesceapo ferede æghwylcum on eorþan  eormencynnes. Forþon him nu ealles þonc  æghwa secge, þæs þe he fore his miltsum  monnum scrifeð.71 [So wondrously the Savior of hosts shaped and assigned the skills of men throughout middle-earth and guided the fate of each one of humankind on earth. Therefore, let each now say thanks for all that He, through His mercies, ordains for men.] However unsatisfying and comfortless it may seem, the image here is of God’s control over the shape one’s life takes; the recurrence of the verbs scirian and scrifan emphasize God’s ordaining power over humankind and their “gesceap” [fate].72 Taken at face value, Fortunes appears to leave humankind in a rather helpless state, subject to fates both in life and in death that are known only to God; Shippey goes as far as to state, “The whole poem invites the paraphrase: ‘These are the fortunes of men. There is nothing to be done about them.”73 There is, however, more to say about the issue of “gesceap” [fate] in the catalogue of deaths in Fortunes and the eternal consequences that underlie them when one considers the immediate manuscript context of Fortunes. Maxims I A, which directly follows Fortunes on fol. 88v, mirrors the juxtaposition of life and death in Fortunes but it also includes an admonition regarding “unþinged deað” [sudden death] that may be mapped back onto Fortunes as a way of explaining the catalogue of disconcerting fates: because the circumstances and timing of these deaths in Fortunes are unknown to all except God, man 70

71 72

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See ibid., ll. 64-66: “Swa missenlice meahtig dryhten / geond eorþan sceat eallum dæleð, / scyreþ ond scrifeð ond gesceapo healdeð” [So variously the mighty Lord across the surface of the earth deals out to all, decrees and allots and controls fate]. Ibid., ll. 93-98. See s.v. gesceap, which means “creature,” “creation,” and “shape,” but also “decree,” or “fate,” in Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898) (hereafter Bosworth-Toller). Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning, 11.

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must at every moment be prepared for death in whatever form it arrives in order to avoid its taking him unexpectedly, in a state of unconfessed sin. This imagery of death and God’s hand in human fate emerges as a thematic sequence that includes Fortunes and Maxims I A along with The Seafarer and Precepts as part of the Exeter Book’s deployment of advice to readers about living (and dying) well. Following an invitation to exchange words and knowledge, and proclamations about the praiseworthiness and gifts of God, Maxims I A lists things that belong in pairs, such as “ryht mid wisum”74 [justice with the wise ones]. The poem shifts in line 23b from the more cerebral human qualities of wisdom and negotiation to the physical world of procreation and death:        Tu beoð gemæccan; sceal wif ond wer  in woruld cennan bearn mid gebyrdum.  Beam sceal on eorðan leafum liþan,  leomu gnornian. Fus sceal feran,  fæge sweltan ond dogra gehwam  ymb gedal sacan middangeardes.  Meotud ana wat hwær se cwealm cymeþ,  þe heonan of cyþþe gewiteþ. Umbor yceð,  þa æradl nimeð; þy weorþeð on foldan swa fela  fira cynnes, ne sy þæs magutimbres  gemet ofer eorþan, gif hi ne wanige se þas woruld teode. Dol biþ se þe his dryhten nat,  to þæs oft cymeð deað unþinged. Snotre men sawlum beorgað,  healdað hyra soð mid ryhte.75 [The two are companions; a woman and man shall bring forth a child into the world by means of birth. The tree shall lose76 its leaves on the earth, its limbs mourn. The ready one shall go, the doomed die and every day contend with their lot on earth. The Lord alone knows where death comes, and to where it goes from the homeland. The infant grows, then 74 75 76

Maxims I A l. 22b. Ibid., ll. 23b-36. The similarity of the line of Maxims I A beginning “sceal wif ond wer” to ll. 2-3a of Fortunes and to ll. 193ff of Solomon and Saturn II dictates the definition of “liþan” in Maxims I given by Bosworth-Toller: Shippey remarks that “In both the other poems the idea of childbirth leads to gloomy reflections; and it is this which prompts the translation of ‘liþan’ in the next line as ‘to lose,’ (Bosworth-Toller (1898) ‘to suffer loss’). ‘Liþan’ is not found in this sense elsewhere.” Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning, 130 n.1.

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disease takes it away; thus on earth there are so many human beings, there would not be space for children over the earth if He who populated the world did not make them fewer. Foolish is he who does not know his Lord, often to him comes sudden death. Wise men protect their souls, maintain their truth with justice.] The first indication that Maxims I A directly engages the themes in Fortunes is the statement, “sceal wif ond wer in woruld cennan / bearn mid gebyrdum,” which repeats almost verbatim the opening lines of Fortunes: it often happens “þætte wer ond wif in woruld cennað / bearn mid gebyrdum” [that a man and woman bring forth a child into the world by birth]. In both poems, this phrase signals the start of a section that discusses life and swiftly transitions to death. This is not to suggest that Maxims I A and Fortunes share authorship, but that this repetition could indicate the basis for the compiler’s placing these poems in sequence – perhaps even arranging Maxims I A to respond to Fortunes.77 At the very least, the striking similarity of these lines and also the subjects and images that follow this passage in Maxims I A would have been recognizable to a reader of the Exeter Book.78 The thematic connection continues as Maxims I A moves from this initial scene of the birth of a child to a statement that a tree must lose its leaves (ll. 25-26), which fall to the ground as the “leomu gnornian” [limbs mourn] their loss. The parallel to Fortunes here is twofold: first, it recalls the description of the person who “fealleþ on foldan”79 [falls on the ground] from a tree limb as if a leaf; like the body of the falling man, the leaves fall to the ground, dead. Second, this passage evokes the twice-mentioned image of a mourning woman in Fortunes – “modor bimurneð” and “reoteð meowle” – whose child has died, 77

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Brian O’Camb has argued that the similarity of these lines in the Exeter Book “introduces the possibility that there was some degree of influence from one statement to the other,” enacted by the Exeter Book scribe; see “The Inscribed Form of Exeter Maxims and the Layout of Quire XI of the Exeter Book,” The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A. N. Doane, ed. Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles (Turnhout, 2011), 137-59, esp. 143. In addition to images of parenthood and child rearing (Fortunes ll. 1-8a; Maxims I A ll. 23b-25a, 45b-47), Fortunes and the whole of Maxims I (not simply part A) share a number of parallel references: the exclusive knowledge of God (Fortunes ll. 8b-9; Maxims I ll. 29b-30), wolves (Fortunes ll. 10-14a; Maxims I ll. 146-51), hunger (Fortunes l. 15a; Maxims I ll. 111-14a, 124), blindness (Fortunes ll. 17-18a; Maxims I ll. 39b-44), infirmity (Fortunes ll. 18b-20; Maxims I l. 45a), trees and falling (Fortunes ll. 21-26; Maxims I ll. 25b-26, 158-60), and exile and friendlessness (Fortunes ll. 27-32; Maxims I ll. 37-38, 144-47a, 172-73). Fortunes l. 26a.

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the first eaten by a wolf and the second destroyed by fire.80 With a remarkably human quality, the tree limbs in Maxims I A grieve like a mother who has lost her child, and echo the “limb” imagery in the parenting scene of Fortunes when the mother and father nurture their child until his “geongan leomu, / liffæstan leoþu” [young limbs, lively limbs] grow. The effect when these passages are read together is at once natural, with the falling leaves suggesting death and the onset of winter, and universal: death, however painful, is certain and as common to humans as it is to leaves in autumn. The theme of death persists as Maxims I A shifts from the loss of leaves to the loss of life among humans: the poet states that the “fus sceal feran” [ready one shall go]. Here “fus” carries connotations of not only readiness in general, but preparedness for death specifically. “Fus” has this sense elsewhere in the Exeter Book, appearing some eleven times in the model death of St. Guthlac in Guthlac B, in which the saint demonstrates the Christian eagerness for passing into eternal life.81 Such a reading of “fus” in Maxims I A is supported by the phrase that follows it: “fæge sweltan / ond dogra gehwam ymb gedal sacan / middangeardes” [the doomed (shall) die and every day contend with their lot on earth]. Fate is here presented as entirely inescapable; the “fæge” must daily walk the earth and struggle with the portion they have been dealt until the moment in which they are fated to die, in whatever manner death happens to take them. As in Fortunes, fate in Maxims I A is given a divine origin, since the poet states, “Meotud ana wat / hwær se cwealm cymeþ, þe heonan of cyþþe gewiteþ” [The Lord alone knows where death comes, and to where it goes from the homeland].82 Once again, foreknowledge of death – when and where it occurs – is ascribed to God alone, echoing the unknowable future of the child at the beginning of Fortunes. Maxims I A, however, expands the concept of God’s control over life and death, observing that “Umbor yceð, þa æradl nimeð” [the infant grows, then disease takes it away]. The poet rationalizes these deaths by the need to provide space for the continuous influx of children: “ne sy þæs magutimbres gemet ofer eorþan, / gif hi ne wanige se þas woruld teode” [there would not be space for children over the earth if He who populated the world did not make them fewer]. Every death is replaced with new life in order 80 81 82

Ibid., ll. 14a, 46b. The word fus is used by or about the dying Guthlac once in Guthlac A (line 801a) and in Guthlac B at lines 945a, 1044b, 1050a, 1054a, 1077b, 1148a, 1157b, 1214b, 1228a, 1299b, 1375b. The phrases “Meotod ana wat” and “drihten ana wat” also appear in a passage of Maxims II (Cotton Maxims) that expresses God’s knowledge of the soul’s fate on one’s death day; see lines 57b-63a in The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. VI, ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (New York, 1942), 55-57.

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to maintain a certain number of humans on earth, and both the deaths and births are fully overseen by God. Like the tree limbs mourning the loss of leaves, this passage of Maxims I A also shares with Fortunes the discourse on the difficulty of losing children, as the reality of God’s providence over the lives of offspring necessarily removes parental control over their fates. These deaths are not presented as punitive, but simply a difficult fact of life: children will die, only God knows when it will occur, and these deaths through disease or misadventure cannot be avenged but must be endured by those who are left behind.83 The dominant message of this passage in Maxims I A remains the inevitability – the necessity, even – of death, but in line 35, the poet clarifies the message regarding the circumstances of death and the spiritual condition of the doomed: “Dol biþ se þe his dryhten nat, to þæs oft cymeð deað unþinged” [foolish is he who does not know his Lord, often to him comes sudden death]. Having established that death is inescapable (“fæge sweltan” [the doomed die], line 27b) and that God is the governing force behind its timing and means, the poet here offers guidance about how to handle these realities: the foolish man lacks knowledge of God and so his particular death comes to him suddenly, a “deað unþinged.” The foolish man does not die suddenly because he does not know God – in the sense that he is struck down for his ignorance – but rather, his death is considered “sudden” because he, lacking an understanding of God’s providence, could not prepare for it spiritually. Like the adjective færlic, unþinged means not only sudden, but also “uninvited” and “unexpected” (equivalent to the Latin repentinus); with the element þing carrying a sense of negotiation, unþinged suggests a lack of concord or settlement.84 A death that is unþinged, then, is one that would necessarily be uninvited by the fool who does not know God, as he is ignorant of God’s grace and therefore is unable to hope for concord with God’s will and the deliverance of his soul after death. The foolish man’s demise by sudden death is further clarified in its contrast with the conduct of the wise, which is related in the very next line: “Snotre men sawlum beorgað, healdað hyra soð mid ryhte” [wise men protect their souls, maintain their truth with justice]. Unlike foolish men, wise men look out for their souls, shielding them from corruption and, one assumes, submitting their souls to a greater Guardian. By safeguarding their souls in this way and living with integrity, wise men demonstrate an awareness of the eternal 83

84

See Hill, “Hæthcyn, Herebeald, and Archery’s Laws,” 214; Hill also suggests that a death that is accidental or that otherwise cannot be avenged is “particularly devastating to the parentes of the victim” (213). See Bosworth-Toller s.v. unþinged.

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consequences for the soul on account of one’s earthly conduct. Implicit in this comparison is that death may come as an unwanted surprise to the foolish, but not to the wise, who live in such a way that they are ready to meet God. Further evidence for the relationship between the foolish man and his “deað unþinged” occurs only three poems before Fortunes in the Exeter Book, where a line from The Seafarer (fol. 81v-83r) closely parallels Maxims I A. Appearing toward the end of The Seafarer, as the speaker discusses the futility of material goods in eternity, this gnomic statement about death (emphasized in the passage below) uses language remarkably similar to Maxims I A: Micel biþ se meotudes egsa,  forþon hi seo molde oncyrreð; se gestaþelade  stiþe grundas, eorþan sceatas  ond uprodor. Dol biþ se þe him his dryhten ne ondrædeþ;  cymeð him se deað unþinged. Eadig bið se þe eaþmod leofaþ;  cymeð him seo ar of heofonum.85 [Great is the fear of the Lord, because this world shall pass away; He established the strong foundations, the surface of the earth and the sky above. Foolish is he who does not fear his Lord; to him comes sudden death. Blessed is he who lives in humility; to him comes the mercy of heaven.] The use of nearly the same line in both The Seafarer and Maxims I A suggests in part that such gnomic phrases might be “detachable” to circulate in various texts, leading Nicholas Howe to conclude that “this maxim does not depend for its meaning on those which surround it.”86 However, reading the line independent of its context also undermines its particular value in both poems, since in each case the line is underpinned by a broader, contextual message about preparation for death and humanity’s relationship to an omnipotent God. This section of The Seafarer establishes God’s awesome power, displayed through the immensity of creation, and states that the fool is the man who, in spite of God’s might, does not “ondrædeþ” [fear] Him. Maxims I A uses “nat” [does not know] rather than “ondrædeþ,” but this line still carries much of the same weight: a fool does not acknowledge the awe-inspiring glory of God and consequently is not ready for death. A man who does not fear God would approach 85 86

Seafarer ll. 103-07, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. III, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, 143-47. Howe, Old English Catalogue Poems, 134.

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his mortality like the friend of King Cenred in Bede’s Historia, who did not want his friends to say he had “timor mortis” [fear of death] if they saw him prepare for death through confession and penance; instead, the layman had no fear at all, which robbed him of the opportunity for those vital preparations. Moreover, the Seafarer-poet contrasts the “dol” man with a blessed man who “eaþmod leofaþ” [lives in humility], which further suggests that the fool’s fearlessness may come from unwarranted pride or belief in his own indestructibility. The ends of the foolish and blessed are set in contrast to each other: the fool meets death suddenly, whereas the blessed man – who has lived humbly in recognition of God’s power – is granted “seo ar of heofonum” [the mercy of heaven]. A similar contrast between wise and foolish men underlies the advice regarding fate in the poem immediately before The Seafarer, a collection of proverbs known as Precepts (fol. 80r-81r). This poem is composed as the advice of a “frod fæder” [wise, old father] given to his son in ten separate points. The seventh precept reads: Seldan snottor guma  sorgleas blissað, swylce dol seldon  drymeð sorgful ymb his forðgesceaft,  nefne he fæhþe wite. Wærwyrde sceal  wisfæst hæle breostum hycgan,  nales breahtme hlud.87 [A wise man seldom delights without worry, just as the foolish man seldom rejoices with any concern regarding his future, unless he knows enmity. A prudent man must be cautious in speech, consider things well in his heart and not be raucous and loud.] The poet uses a set of contrasts in lines 54-55 – sorgleas/sorgful, blissað/drymeð – to establish the importance of prudence in how one considers one’s own future. Whereas the wise man rarely is “sorgleas” [lit. “free from sorrow”] even when he rejoices, the “dol” [foolish] man gives no thought to “his forðgesceaft” [his future] when he finds pleasure in the moment. The implication is that one ought always to be concerned about one’s “forðgesceaft” – a compound containing the word gesceaft [fate] – because living in expectation of what is to come yields mindfulness of God’s providence. For negligent people, there is no hope of concord with what God has ordained and, by extension, no hope of a 87

Precepts ll. 54-58. The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. III, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, 140-43.

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“good death.” These texts suggest that for such men, there can be only sudden death, as their unrepentant behavior leaves them entirely unmindful of their own spiritual states when death does come. What was feared was not the swiftness of the death itself or even its horrific or violent manner, but rather the spiritual preparation that swiftness would prevent. Thompson notes the general “suddenness” of the deaths in Fortunes in her remark that “All the deaths listed are brutal and sudden; the poet has no interest in the slow processes of disease, in death in or after childbirth, or in old age. […] Instead, [the bodies] fall apart or are dissected in dramatic ways, […] the antithesis of a death mid gedefenesse.”88 But the discussion should be extended to include the connection with “deað unþinged” in Maxims I A and The Seafarer, and with the particular phenomenon of “sudden death.” If the Fortunes-poet were simply cataloguing the means by which people die in general, it seems that death in old age, peacefully and in one’s own bed, would have made the list.89 Equating this omission to the poet’s lack of interest, however, bypasses the implications of a list of fates that all occur seemingly at random and that would be particularly unwelcome – even unexpected – ends. Read through the lens of sudden death, as encouraged by the parallels with Maxims I A, the deaths in Fortunes take on a new meaning: these are not merely “untimely deaths,”90 but are part of a defined category of dying that has certain implications for the spiritual fate of the deceased. What was perhaps once an older, formerly discrete catalogue of deaths from Germanic tradition91 is in Fortunes a collection of examples teaching that God alone knows when death may come and implicitly exhorting the reader to live righteously in expectation of death. In other words, because an unpredictable end may befall any man, however pious or irreverent, he ought to emulate the model provided by the “snotre men” [wise men] of Maxims I A and described in The Seafarer and Precepts, who constantly guard their souls; only a “dol” [foolish] man would remain, in ignorance of God’s providence, unprepared. That death might come unexpectedly to anyone the list in Fortunes itself demonstrates: within this poem, the wolf’s appetite, the lack of food, the inclement weather, the events on the battlefield, the ailments of blindness and 88 89

90 91

Thompson, Dying and Death, 192. The closest Fortunes comes to including death in old age is the reference after the main catalogue of deaths to one who “on yldo” [in old age] lives prosperously among kin; see ll. 58-63. Because death is never mentioned in this passage, however, I consider this section the start of the catalogue of “living fates.” Thompson, Dying and Death, 190. See Swenson, “Death Appropriated,” 126.

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lameness, and – if taken literally and not as a gallows metaphor92 – the fall from a tree are all positioned as though they could be anyone’s fate. Those taken away by hunger, storms, spears, and war are also “morally neutral,” or situated as “the victims of larger, elemental forces.”93 Like the infants in Maxims I A whose deaths by disease are part of God’s natural order, such deaths could certainly occur without warning and so the reader of Fortunes is implicitly advised to prepare for whatever God has ordained. The remaining deaths in Fortunes lines 27­-57 are more directly linked to human responsibility, although the behavioral cause for the actual death is clear only in the final two examples. The friendless one who must wander alone (lines 27-32) may have been exiled for his own deeds or simply abandoned by his community; the poem notes only that he is compelled by need (“sceal…nyde gongan”) and is friendless for his “wonsceaftum” [misfortunes], but he is not directly assigned blame. Even the hanged man who is described next (lines 33-42) is never referred to as a criminal; hanging was a typical method for Anglo-Saxon capital punishment,94 but here we learn only that “Bið him werig noma” [Miserable is his name]. This hanged man’s infamy is ascribed as much to the means of execution and its reception in society as to his deeds that preceded or caused his death. In fact, he is made sympathetic on the gallows, his body picked apart by scavenging birds while he is unable to do anything about it. Likewise, the man who burns (lines 43-47) is depicted with sympathy through the eyes of his helpless mother, who “hyre bearn gesihð brondas þeccan” [sees the flames cover her son]. This fate is particularly enigmatic because it is not clear whether the man dies in the fire or his corpse is being cremated,95 but his behavior prior to death is not indicated. Without

92 93 94

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Ibid., 127-29. Howe, Old English Catalogue Poems, 122 and 120. Dorothy Whitelock notes the prevalence of hanging as a means of execution in The Beginnings of English Society (Harmondsworth, UK, 1952), 144. See also Kari Ellen Gade, “Hanging in Northern Law and Literature,” Maal og minne 3-4 (1985): 159-83. The relationship between the execution of criminals and their spiritual state is discussed by Nicole Marafioti in “Punishing Bodies and Saving Souls: Capital and Corporal Punishment in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Haskins Society Journal 20 (2008): 39-57. Burning to death is more likely in context; in all the other example deaths, Fortunes notes a means of dying, not funerary practices. It states that he is tormented in the fire (“brond aswencan”) and dies there (“þær him lifgedal lungre weorðeð”), which suggests fire as the cause of death; however, a funerary pyre for the deceased is technically possible since sentient corpses appear in several Anglo-Saxon texts – including Fortunes itself, whose hanged man is personally tormented by the scavenging birds – and the presence of a

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clear causes, these scenarios still give the sense that such deaths “Ne bið…monnes geweald” [are not in humankind’s control]. Only the final two deaths in this catalogue in Fortunes – the “two drunks” in lines 48-57 (sometimes read as a single individual)96 – indicate immoral behavior as the cause of death, but even these do not lie outside the Anglo-Saxon concept of sudden death.97 The first is a man who, while intoxicated, speaks indiscriminately in the hall and “meces … ecg…ealdor oþþringeð” [the sword’s edge deprives [him] of life].98 The second, labeled a sylfcwalu (lit. self-slaughter; suicide), has a less apparent cause of death outside of the alcohol itself: the man is unaware of both moderation and his own limits (“gemet ne con / gemearcian his muþe mode sine”), and he loses his life “ful earmlice” [completely wretchedly]. After his death, the community blames drinking for his miserable end (“mænað mid muþe meodugales gedrinc”), pitying him with the same verb of mourning, mænan, as the mother whose child was eaten by a wolf.99 While the case has been made that these alcohol-related deaths are one and the same, it seems a stretch to consider a death met by another’s sword owing to one’s own hasty speech a sylfcwalu. In this second scene – following another sum that signals that this section is a different death scenario altogether – the man dies at the “hand” of a cup-bearer (“þurh byreles hond”), but he is ultimately responsible for accepting the drink.100 Both episodes reaffirm admonitions about drunkenness in Scandinavian texts101 and, unlike the other deaths in Fortunes, they are judged on moral grounds by the poet. But if the point is that one must be vigilant of the state of one’s soul and ready for

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mourning woman suggests a funerary context. See Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learn­ ing, 129 n. 4. See Jurasinski, “Caring for the Dead,” 351-54. The Anglo-Saxon church’s view on drunkenness is visible in the penitentials, which are focused less on the drinking than the “variety of sins resulting from drunkenness;” see Allen Frantzen, “Alcohol,” Anglo-Saxon Keywords (Chichester, 2012), 10-11. See also Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 51-59. Quarrels among drunk individuals resulting in violence were perhaps not uncommon; the laws of Ine fine men who fight while intoxicated (§6.5), and the laws of Hlothhere and Eadric issue fines “Gif man wæpn abregde þær mæn drincen” [If one draws a weapon where men are drinking], which are paid to the house’s owner regardless of whether there is no harm done or blood is drawn (§§13-14). See The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. F. L. Attenborough (1922; rpt. Felinfach, 2000), 38 and 20. See Jurasinski, “Caring for the Dead,” 353. Howe relates the second drunkard’s death to the sin of despair; see Howe, Old English Catalogue Poems, 122-24. See Geoffrey R. Russom, “A Germanic Concept of Nobility in The Gifts of Men and Beowulf,” Speculum 53 (1978): 1-15.

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whenever death comes, a death owing to drunkenness qualifies as dying in a state of sin, unprepared. In fact, drunkenness is linked explicitly to sudden death in other texts. In Ælfric’s “De Natale Domini,” he calls for honoring Christ’s nativity through right living, quoting Luke 21:34: […] swa swa crist cwæð on his godspelle; Beoð wære þæt eowere heortan ne beon gehefgode mid oferfylle. and druncennysse. and mid woruldcarum. and se færlica deað becume ofer eow;102 [… just as Christ said in his gospel: “Be wary that your hearts are not afflicted by over-eating and drunkenness, and with worldly cares, and sudden death come over you.”] Modifying the Vulgate’s wording that “superveniat in vos repentina dies illa” [the day (of death) itself will arrive quickly], Ælfric here warns that one ought to take care to avoid excessive eating, drinking, and worrying, lest one suffer a “færlica deað” and die in a state of sin. Since the designation of sudden death is predicated on the person’s spiritual condition when death comes, these alcohol-related deaths are the most “sudden” of all in Fortunes: at the moment of death, the individual is in a state of active sinfulness instead of repentance. The list of deaths in Fortunes largely begins with the accidental or seemingly undeserved deaths of those who are simply victims of circumstance, and ends with deaths in the midst of, or possibly caused by, particular immoral behavior. But that is, perhaps, the entire point: as both Fortunes and Maxims I A state explicitly, only God knows the manner and moment of death’s coming, and it is by His “meahtum” that various fortunes are distributed to men. By praising God for all that He “fore his miltsum monnum scrifeð” [through His mercies, ordains for men], as the final line of Fortunes declares, the reader can acknowledge God’s limitless jurisdiction and submit himself in preparation for the future. In this respect, the tacit lesson of Fortunes, to live virtuously in preparation for whatever demise might befall a person, echoes the message in Vercelli Homily XIII regarding God’s sovereignty in death’s timing. Following a “dry bones speak” illustration in which the bones of a dead man warn a living onlooker of his sins,103 the homilist writes,

102 103

Ælfric, “De Natale Domini” (Homily I), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, the Second Series, EETS, SS no. 5, ed. Malcolm Godden (Oxford, 1979), 11.288-91. See J. E. Cross, “‘The Dry Bones Speak’: A Theme in Some Old English Homilies,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 434-39. See also Hilary E. Fox, “The Talking

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[…] emne us gewiorðeð eft se ilca deað, þæt he us adrifeð of eardunga usses lichoman. Utan we nu þy giornlicor hine geþencan, þone deað, þe we hine ær witon, ær þan þe he færinga cume. For þan he cumeð on us ungeþingod, for þan [þe] God wolde þæt þam men wære his ytemesta dæg uncuð, þæt he hine for þan to þan gegearwode butan ænigre ablinnednesse.104 [… even to us will the same death later come to pass, so that it will drive us from the dwelling of our bodies. Let us now the more eagerly think on it, that death, which we already know, before it comes suddenly. It comes to us unexpected because God desired that the last day be unknown to a man so that he might prepare himself without any cessation.] A person cannot know when his “ytemesta dæg” is upon him, which is by God’s own design: with the same sense of “God ana wat” [God alone knows] as Fortunes and Maxims I A, the homilist emphasizes that because a man is unaware of when death will come, he must be ever aware of death’s possibility and prepared (“gegearwode”) spiritually for it. The homilist thus echoes the dry bones’ warning to repent of sin while there is still time to prepare for death, since “Þæt ðu eart nu, þæt ic wæs io; þæt ic eom nu, þæt ðu wiorðest eft”105 [What you are now, I once was; what I am now, you will become later]. While every person “knows” about death, the homilist urges that we earnestly “geþencan” – ponder or reflect on – death’s reality and potential nearness before it takes us by surprise. Vercelli Homily XIII demonstrates the same relationship between preparation and sudden death that is abbreviated in the wisdom poetry of the Exeter Book: for the person who does not live in a state of readiness, death necessarily comes “suddenly” (“færinga”) and is ultimately “unexpected” (“ungeþingod”). Read in isolation, Fortunes’ message is that people are powerless in comparison to God’s might, which is beyond human comprehension or control; in this view, the bodies of the eaten, battle-slain, starved, hanged, burned, and stabbed seem to pile up in the poem’s initial catalogue simply as a testament to death’s cold inevitability and the limited influence an individual can have on the manner and moment of his demise. But read in tandem with Maxims I A and in the context of this thematic sequence in the Exeter Book, the message of Fortunes

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Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living in Anglo-Saxon Writing,” in Chapter One of this volume. Vercelli Homily XIII, ed. Scragg, The Vercelli Homilies, 234-38, at 235.35-40. Ibid., 235.28-29.

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becomes more precise: God has inviolable control over the fates of men – bringing pleasant and unsavory fortunes to the impious and the virtuous alike – so one must, for the soul’s sake, be always mindful of death and ready for whatever may come. In this way, Fortunes participates in the Medieval Christian discourse on sudden death and nods to this literary trope’s exhortation to moral living. It suggests not that humanity is helpless – as Shippey paraphrases it, “These are the fortunes of men. There is nothing to be done about them”106 – but that something must be done; Fortunes asks not for resignation in light of death’s manifold and unknowable nature, but for a life lived in righteous expectation. Like the dry bones’ warning in Vercelli Homily XIII, Fortunes entreats the reader to recognize himself in the anonymous dead it describes, as their unwelcome meetings with death form an inherent reminder that he must be spiritually prepared whenever his own time has come. 106

Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning, 11.

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Chapter 3

Monumental Memory: The Performance and Enduring Spectacle of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England Melissa Herman The act of burial is a nexus point, a sort of transformative process, making what was once visible – a living person – invisible by burying it in the ground. Funerary rites and customs are therefore often complex and powerful statements about a culture’s belief systems and values, reinforcing the importance of the moment. Accordingly, Anglo-Saxon burial is by no means a homogeneous process but encompasses an array of different customs ranging from cremation, inhumation in cemeteries, boat burials, mound burials, and chamber burials. With such a wide range of customs and possible meanings, what remains constant is therefore the most basic aspect: the deliberate removal of the deceased from the sight of the community with ritual and respect in order to enact this transformation. Once the funeral takes place, the event is marked and the deceased memorialized by the site of the burial, an enduring testament to both personal and communal loss that might long outlast those who experience the loss directly and those who witness the performance of the funerary rites. Both these acts, the funeral and the grave marking, are intensely visible and communal processes, involving members of society as both participants and audience. They are also deliberate constructions of physical space as well as communal memory of the deceased, being consciously planned, arranged, and performed in order to present and preserve a picture of the community member lost. The subject of funerary rituals and burials in Anglo-Saxon England is one of considerable interest and its study, both archaeologically and within the historical record, has been well established by contemporary scholars;1 an 1 Helen Geake, The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-Period England, c.600-c.850 (Oxford, 1997); and “Persistent Problems in Seventh-Century Burial,” in Burial in Early Medieval England, ed. Sam Lucy and Andrew Reynolds (London, 2002); Martin Carver, “The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Sutton Hoo: An Interim Report,” in The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in NorthWestern Europe, ed. Martin Carver (Woodbridge, 1992), 181; Sam Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England (Stroud, 2000); Frans Theuws, Rituals of Power: from Late

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_005

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unsurprising trend perhaps given the cemetery context of a significant portion of the surviving material evidence dating from early Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the study of Anglo-Saxon burial was prioritized for excavation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite the technological advances and methodological shifts that occurred in archaeological pursuits over that span of time. As Sonja Chadwick Hawkes expresses, the material richness of Anglo-Saxon burials provides a tantalizing glimpse into past society: … abandoned homes rarely yield more than building foundations and the kinds of objects people threw away. Their cemeteries on the other hand, contain the things treasured by the Anglo-Saxons, their mortal remains and the precious possessions which they sought to take with them after death.2 However, while Anglo-Saxon cemeteries do offer abundant material evidence of the culture and practices of those buried in them, it is important to remember that such spaces were constructed and their contents placed deliberately to serve a specific purpose within the community. Death, and the representation of death, play a significant role in art, literature, and the study thereof from the medieval period through to contemporary works and scholarship. These representations seek to make death comprehensible.3 In the later medieval period there is both a fascination with and revulsion of the dead, as exemplified by the macabre images of death.4 The image of embodied death is so powerful because it is linked to the anxiety of awareness of one’s own future state, and of the transition from one state to Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), 134; Howard Williams, Death & Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2006), 31; Richard Hoggett, The Archaeology of the East Anglian Conversion (Woodbridge, 2010), 12-20. 2 Sonja Chadwick Hawkes, “Finglesham. A Cemetery in East Kent,” in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. James Campbell (London, 1982), 24. 3 Elisabeth Bronfen and Sarah Webster Goodwin, “Introduction”, in Death and Representation, ed. Sarah Webster Goodwin and Elisabeth Bronfen (Baltimore, MD, 1993), 4. 4 This is an extremely brief summary of a rich and varied field of academic scholarship. For further discussion please see for example: the essays included in Death and Representation, ed. Sarah Webster Goodwin and Elisabeth Bronfen (Baltimore, MD, 1993); Christian Kiening, “Le double décomposé: Rencontres des vivants et des morts à la fin du Moyen Age.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 50.5 (1995): 1157-1190; Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1996); and Elina Gertsman, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance (Turnhout, 2010).

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another; such as from life to not-life, from presence to absence.5 In the case of death, representation is, by necessity paradoxical; it stands for absence, removed from what is pictured but in envisioning or embodying the dead corporeally, either in art or literature or by some physical means, the deceased, now absent, is given voice in the minds and the community of those who encounter that representation.6 Although temporally and culturally at quite some distance from works usually considered in this manner (the earliest of which dates from the late medieval period), early medieval marked graves may be a means by which the absence left by death is visualized and represented. Whatever pageantry surrounds death and burial, the process of mourning, concerning both personal experience and communal ritual, is the reconciliation of memory and loss.7 Death is, in essence, absence; it is both the absence of the life of the deceased person and the absence of the deceased person within the familiar and societal space he or she once occupied. That absence arises in counterpoint to the memory of the deceased within the wider community. However, although memory is indelibly associated with death and funerary ritual, it is a difficult concept to define clearly, encompassing an overwhelming array of nuance and complexity.8 In simplistic terms, there are what can be called individual memories, which are drawn from individual life experiences, and societal or communal memories, which are created and shared by a group.9 It is often the second category of memories that becomes the realm of the medieval historian, preserved to some extent in the literature, ritual practices, and folktales that can be accessed through textual and/or archaeological evidence.10 5 6 7

8

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Binski, Medieval Death, 138; Gertsman, Dance of Death, 44, 138. Bronfen and Goodwin, “Introduction”, 6-7. There is a vast corpus of scholarship focused on discussion and analysis of death, mourning, and memory from psychological, sociological, and religious perspectives. For further study see: Margaret Gibson, Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life (Melbourne, 2008); and the essays included in Peter Homans (ed.), Symbolic Loss: The Ambiguity of Mourning and Memory at Century’s End (Charlottesville, VA, 2000). For an in-depth discussion of memory theory specifically related to burial in the medieval period see Zoe Devlin, Remembering the Dead in Anglo-Saxon England: Memory Theory in Archaeology and History, BAR British Series 446 (Oxford, 2007), 1-15. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed., trans. and with an introduction by L. A. Coser (Chicago, IL, 1992), x-xi; R. M. Van Dyke and S. E. Alcock, “Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction” in Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Van Dyke and Alcock (Oxford, 2003), 2; Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 2-3, and 10-11. James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992); M. Innes, “Keeping it in the Family: Women and Aristocratic Memory, 700-1200,” in Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, ed. E. C. M. Van Houts (Harlow, 2001), 17; Howard Williams,

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The performance of rituals surrounding Anglo-Saxon funerary practice is, arguably, a means by which a memory is formed and fixed in the wider community.11 A narrative of the deceased is fashioned by the manner in which he or she is buried; which garments are placed on the body, which goods are deposited with it, and finally how the grave is marked, physically, in order to be remembered after the rituals are completed. These aspects are, in all likelihood, controlled and manipulated deliberately in order to fashion a specific set of associations that might not be precisely accurate. In this way, a personal memory from a shared experience with the deceased might differ dramatically from the narrative being crafted by the funerary rituals as a lasting impression for the wider community. The funerary performance cements the final role of the deceased, both as absent among the living and yet preserved as memory among the other remembered dead. The physical marking of the grave then serves the practical necessity to indicate the placement of the deceased but also acts to reinforce the funerary rites and therefore the memory of the deceased expressed through that performance. An understanding of the deliberate and emotive nature of those rites is key to an examination of how such rituals drive the creation of communal memory. Generally speaking, the task of analyzing a historical period is determined by what can be discovered in contemporary records and also by utilizing the details to create a coherent account;12 the greater the number of sources, the more credible the account.13 There is a conspicuous lack of contemporary, historical, and textual sources for the early Anglo-Saxon period, which necessitates the study of other kinds of evidence to decipher what these rituals might have looked like. In the absence of substantial historical narrative, evidence of Anglo-Saxon practices can be found in non-historical sources, like Old English literature, and the material remains of the culture recovered through archaeological excavation. These evidentiary sources of literature and archaeology are not without their problems and must therefore be utilized cautiously. Surviving versions of most Old English literature were written down only in the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries, and often reflect the cultural mindset of the later time; nevertheless, it is likely that these later texts record

11 12 13

“Introduction: The Archaeology of Death, Memory and Material Culture,” in H. Williams (ed.), Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies (New York, 2003), 6; Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 8-13. Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 81-84. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. P. Putnam (New York, 1954), 40-57. Jane Hawkes, “Symbolic Lives: The Visual Evidence,” in The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. J. Hines (Woodbridge, 1997), 311-337.

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earlier oral poetic traditions,14 which preserve aspects of earlier Anglo-Saxon culture and customs.15 The cultural traces contained in these “non-historical” texts must be considered critically for, in addition to the fact that many postdate their subject matter, they were written for specific purposes other than historical accounting, be they entertainment or instruction. Many of the events they recount may thus be only based loosely in historical events, while many details have been added, amended, embellished or removed to suit the needs of the narrative and the efficacy of its purpose.16 Despite the problematic nature of using literature as historical evidence, poetic sources provide insight into aspects of Anglo-Saxon society. These sources can be examined and compared with other records, namely archaeological, in order to present a general account of Anglo-Saxon England in the sixth and seventh centuries.17 Like literature, archaeological evidence of early Anglo-Saxon culture must be treated with some caution. The varied nature of archaeological evidence and the imperfect nature of the information generated by it – even by those objects found and recovered within well-established archaeological contexts – means that analysis is limited without other sources of information. Much of the material is recovered piecemeal, either in the course of excavation or as stray finds, and only certain materials survive the vagaries of burial underground without significant damage and decay. Furthermore, while artefacts and other physical evidence are unequivocal, they must be interpreted by modern scholarship based on the same scant cultural remains of Anglo-Saxon society. Nevertheless, the archaeological record does provide an invaluable source of information about the material remains of early Anglo-Saxon England, being almost the only contemporary evidence with which to work. Although problematic, the poetic and archaeological evidence can be used in combination to offer a clearer picture of early Anglo-Saxon life than might otherwise be produced. For example, the descriptions of funerary practices found 14

15 16 17

For more extensive discussion about orality and the overlap between oral and literary culture in Anglo-Saxon England see Dennis Green, “Orality and Reading: The State of Research in Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65.2 (1990), 267-280; Katherine O’Brian O’Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse (Cambridge, 1990); Andy Orchard, “Oral Tradition,” in Reading Old English Texts, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 1997), 101-123; Leslie K. Arnovick, Written Reliquaries: The Resonance of Orality in Medieval English Texts (Amsterdam, 2006). Elizabeth M. Tyler, Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2006), 9-37. M. B. Parkes, “Rædan, Areccan, Smeagan: How the Anglo-Saxons Read,” Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), 1-22. Bloch, Historian’s Craft, 40-57.

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in Beowulf, a poetic epic not set in England but thought to be well-known and perhaps even composed there,18 have long been regarded as a source of information about the rituals and social reactions surrounding the deaths of high-ranking Germanic warriors, and so have informed understanding of the archaeological evidence discovered in Anglo-Saxon burials like that at Sutton Hoo.19 In Anglo-Saxon England, the methods of burial could be elaborate and highly ritualistic. Funerary rites were public spectacles, a theatre of the dead. Although no specific narrative or description of these rituals exists, through the combination of archaeological remains and poetic texts it is possible to plausibly reconstruct some of the rites. Anglo-Saxons were buried either by cremation, an arduous process involving the construction of large funeral pyres capable of turning flesh and bone into ash,20 or inhumation, the placement of the body into the ground.21 The practice of furnishing graves with both personal and practical items was used in both inhumation and cremation burials, but the objects included varied considerably in quantity and quality, depending on the wealth and status of the deceased.22 Although once assumed to be a clear indication of a pagan belief system,23 furnished burial is now more commonly interpreted as a display of the socio-political identity of the 18 19

20

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Richard North, The Origins of Beowulf from Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford, 2006), 297-332. Roberta Frank, “Beowulf and Sutton Hoo: The Odd Couple,” in Voyage to the Other World: The Legacy of Sutton Hoo, ed. Calvin B. Kendall and Peter S. Wells (Minneapolis, MN, 1992), 47-64; Williams, Death and Memory, 8-11. Audrey Meaney, A Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (London, 1964), 16-17; Howard Williams, “Death Warmed Up: The Agency of Bodies and Bones in Early AngloSaxon Cremation Rites,” Journal of Material Culture 9 (2004), 263-291; 2006: 91-92; Ruth Nugent and Howard Willams, “Sighted Surfaces: Ocular Agency in Early Anglo-Saxon Cremation Burials,” in Encountering Imagery, Materialities, Perceptions, Relations, ed. I.-M. Back Danielsson, F. Fahlander and Y. Sjöstrand (Stockholm, 2012), 187-208. Lucy, Way of Death, 97; Williams, Death and Memory, 86-91; Hoggett, East Anglian Con­ version, 9-21. Both types of funerary practice are described in Beowulf: cremation on a pyre (ll. 1110-1113), and furnished burial under a mound (ll. 3156-3182); Klaeber’s Beowulf, Fourth Edition (Toronto, 2008), 36, 107-109. Hutton, The Pagan Religions, 275; Geake, Use of Grave Goods, 134; Nick Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear: A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite (Oxford, 1999); Williams, Death and Memory, 86-87. Julian D Richards, “Funerary Symbolism in Anglo-Saxon England: Further Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices.” Scottish Archaeological Review 3 (1984), 42-55; David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London, 1992), 97-98; Hilda Ellis Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (New York, 1993), 134-135; Lucy, Way of Death, 150-168; Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 105.

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deceased; of expressions of age, ethnicity, gender, kinship, and status.24 Indeed, grave goods should be considered as props, in essence, deliberately selected and utilized by those performing the funerary rites to establish and enhance the memory of the deceased. All objects have their own set of associations that allude to the way people interact with them.25 Given the potent connotations of certain types of objects or specific artifacts, as in the case of heirloom or legendary objects, it is understandable that they would play a significant role in the construction or manipulation of the memory of the deceased; their inclusion serves to shade the perceptions of the deceased among society. In casting the dead into carefully constructed roles, reinforced by the use of selected grave goods, the funeral served to create a strong singular memory of the deceased that endured within the community, ensuring a continued role within it despite corporeal death. Mortuary monuments, like the earthen barrows of the Anglo-Saxons, are structures of dual purpose, serving as the locations and markers of funerary rites within the communal space, but were also deliberate constructs upon which grander and more wide-reaching meaning could be mapped.26 The marking of the space of the dead is about situating and preserving the memory of the deceased, which has been carefully constructed by the funeral, within the societal memory. However, the marking of specific sites and specific dead in a monumental manner was about more than individual memories or the memories of an individual.27 The very size and scope of the burial mound, larger than many contemporary buildings, and towering three or four meters overhead, seems to insist that the construction indicates larger narratives than the mourning and loss of a single person. The monumentality of the barrow inflates the significance of the loss to similar monumental proportions, becoming not just the burial site of a man (or woman) but the grave of a great leader, a hero, or even in some manner of a way of life in the face of drastic cultural 24

25

26 27

Heinrich Härke, “Changing Symbols in a Changing Society: The Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite in the Seventh Century,” in The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in NorthWestern Europe, ed. Martin Carver (Woodbridge, 1992); Stoodley, Spindle and Spear; Howard Williams, “At the Funeral,” in Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. Martin Carver et al. (Oxford and Oakville, CT, 2010), 67. A. B. Weiner, “Inalienable Wealth,” American Ethnologist, 12.2 (1985), 210; Catherine Cubitt, “Monastic Memory and Identity in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” in Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain, ed. W. O. Frazer and A. Tyrell (London and New York, 2000), 271-272; Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 19-21. J. C. Barrett, “The Monumentality of Death: The Character of Early Bronze Age Mortuary Mounds in Southern Britain,” World Archaeology 22 (2) (1990), 179-189. Williams, Death and Memory, 145-147.

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changes. The loss embodied by the monumental burial mounds becomes mammoth and the scope of that loss endures through time as the mounds remain visible. These earthen constructions were intended to dominate the environment, to make a permanent mark on the landscape and ensure that they would have been seen, recognized, and remembered.28 Unlike the marked graves in a cemetery, however, burial mounds endured long after the memory of the deceased buried within had vanished; and it is perhaps this idea of longevity that drove the construction of these monuments. Evidence of the importance placed on community in death, burial, and mourning is preserved, albeit paradoxically, in the late Old English elegy The Wanderer,29 which, in keeping with the genre, reflects on suffering and loss, often juxtaposing the bitter present with a better past.30 In The Wanderer, an exile recalls his lost lord whom he has buried, and mourns the loss of his place and purpose – in essence, the absence of the community to which he once belonged. His deepest sorrow seems to be the lack of a lord as central figure of that community, the epicenter from which all else stemmed: Swa ic modsefan  minne sceolde oft earmcearig,  eðle bidæled, freomægum feor  feterum sælan, siþþan geara iu  goldwine mine hruse heolstre biwrah,  ond ic hean þonan wod wintercearig  ofer waþema gebind, sohte seledreorig  sinces bryttan, hwær ic feor oþþe neah  findan meahte þone þe in meoduhealle  [mine] myne wisse, oþþe mec freondleasne  frefran wolde, wenian mid wynnum. [Thus I, wretched with care, removed from my homeland, far from dear kinsmen, have had to fasten with fetters the thoughts of my heart–ever since the time, many years ago, that I covered my gold-friend in the darkness of the earth; and from there I crossed the woven waves, winter-sad, downcast for want of a hall, sought a giver of treasure– a place, far or

28 29 30

Pollington, Burial Mounds, 35. Anne L. Klinck, Old English Elegies (Montreal, 1992), 30-40; Michael Alexander, A History of Old English Literature (Peterborough, ON, 2002), 139-140. Ibid., 221-252; Amodio, Anglo-Saxon Handbook, 229.

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near, where I might find one in a mead-hall who should know of my people, or would comfort me friendless, receive me with gladness.]31 The description of his lord’s burial, although brief, implies that the community, including the Wanderer, was part of the funeral performance. The Wanderer’s memory of his “ring-lord” is fixed indelibly in his mind by that funeral and remains, despite the time, distance, and hardships he has suffered in the interim. This descriptive burial and its enduring memory presents an implied counterpoint to the Wanderer’s own lonely, foreshadowed death. Banished from his community, he will be denied the chance to have a funeral attended by those who will remember him; and thereby he will lack final enduring remembrance and an opportunity to retain membership, albeit one of memory alone, in that community. The idea of the dead remaining part of their community is one that endures into later Anglo-Saxon society, as examined by Kathryn Maude in Chapter Five of this volume.32 The deceased is a present and even active member of the community whose physical presence, marked by grave marker, mound, or tomb, reinforces their continued membership in that community. Whether the events in the poem are intended to indicate real occasions or allegorical devices, the descriptive use of a funeral rite provides a familiar frame of reference for a reader and reveals the potency of the ritual within Anglo-Saxon culture. The Wanderer’s memory of his lord’s funeral is filled images of his kinsmen who share his grief and acknowledge their communal loss. Separated from them in both life and death, he is left only with his memories and solitude, and perhaps the promise of a community to join in heaven. Here, the rhetorical use of the first person singular pronoun heightens the Wanderer’s sense of loss and longing by emphasizing the personal nature of mourning.33 The first line of The Wanderer refers to the protagonist as an anhaga, a word often translated as “lonely one” or “solitary one,” establishing from the outset that his isolation from community and kin is largely what defines him and consumes him for the rest of the poem. It is not his physical banishment or exile, which would likely be referred to by a more physical word choice, that troubles him, but the emotional one that leaves him divorced from 31 32 33

Wanderer, ll. 17-29: The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. I, ed. Bernard J. Muir (Exeter, 2000), 215-216; Anglo-Saxon Poetry, trans. S. A. J. Bradley (London, 1982), 322-323. Kathryn Maude, “‘Look at my Hands’: Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton,” in Chapter Five of this volume. Klinck, Old English Elegies, 30-34; Dee Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 7001500 (Cambridge, 2001), 105-123l; Amodio, Anglo-Saxon Handbook, 229-230.

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the security of kinship ties and community. He is alone with only his memories of his past community to comfort him, but is left with the knowledge that there will be no community to remember him, to mark his passing, perform his funerary rites, and construct his memory. There is an inarguable sense of fatalism within the melancholy verse of The Wanderer that is steeped in the protagonist’s memory; he has lost his community and is therefore fated to wander alone in his own private loneliness; unremarked, unremembered, and unmourned. Death and its accompanying rituals were certainly an ever-present concern in the warrior culture that typified early Anglo-Saxon England. Such awareness of one’s eventual end seems to have led to a need to be prepared for it; a concern that persisted for centuries. In Chapter Two of this volume, Jill Hamilton Clements discusses this awareness of death and the lengthy spiritual and logistical preparations that were performed to ensure that one was ready to go when the time came.34 The Anglo-Saxons had a deeply ingrained belief in fate, or wyrd, as a powerful force driving the events in their lives.35 The term wyrd has a number of meanings in Old English verse,36 but its more portentous use is usually translated as “fate,” “fortune,” or “providence,” indicating that, in certain contexts, the term is being used to signify a somewhat fatalistic attitude towards life and death in Anglo-Saxon society.37 In such a world, one dominated by warfare and driven by fate, death was inescapable; and therefore the marking of death and practice of mourning became central in Anglo-Saxon culture. This awareness of death, or its inevitability likely prompted the consideration of the funerary performance and the importance of legacy that can be found throughout the corpus of Old English literature as well as the 34 35

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Jill Hamilton Clements, “Sudden Death in Early Medieval England and the Anglo-Saxon Fortunes of Men,” in Chapter Two of this volume, 42-76. Brian Branston, The Lost Gods of England (London, 1957), 57; Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (Oxford, 1991), 272; Mark Amodio, The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook (New York, 2013), 372-373. A more general meaning for the term wyrd would be simply, “that which happens,” or “event”; sometimes it may mean simply “circumstance.” In a more Christianized setting, further meaning seems to have shifted away from the event to that which caused the event, and wyrd could thus be translated as “fate,” “fortune,” “providence,” or even “one’s lot.” (B. J. Timmer, “Wyrd in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry,” Neophilologus 26.1 (1941), 227; Mark Griffith, “Does ‘Wyrd bið ful Aræd’ mean ‘Fate is wholly Inexorable’?” in Studies in English Language and Literature, ed. M. J. Toswell and E. Tyler (London, 1996), 137. Griffith, “Does wyrd”, 137; Joseph B. Trahern Jr., “Fatalism and the Millenium,” in The Cam­ bridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. M. Godden and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1991), 160.

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elaborate graves that dotted the landscape. These visible rituals entailed lengthy and involved preparations, speaking to the necessity of planning for death before the event occurred. The funerary rites and marking of graves were, in part, a way to craft and control the legacy of the deceased by manipulating the community’s memory at the spectacle of the funeral and ensuring that memory endured through the visibility of the marker. Perhaps in making sure that the deceased would remain an evident part of the community, if only as a marked grave, the Anglo-Saxons were able to conduct the business of living despite wyrd and the inescapability of one’s coming death. Like The Wanderer, The Seafarer also tells of the loss and longing of exile.38 Unlike its counterpart however, the narrator of The Seafarer does not lament the death of another but seems to explicitly contemplate his own future death and the lack of ritual and mourning that will accompany his final departure. Yldo him on fareð,  onsyn blacað, gomelfeax gnornað,  wat his iuwine, æþelinga bearn,  eorþan forgiefene. Ne mæg him þonne se flæschoma,  þonne him þæt feorg losað, ne swete forswelgan  ne sar gefelan, ne hond onhreran  ne mid hyge þencan. þeah þe græf wille  golde stregan broþor his geborenum,  – byrgan be deadum – maþmum mislicum  þæt hine mid wille, [Old age advances upon him, his face grows pallid, grey-haired he mourns: he is conscious that his former friends, the sons of princes, have been committed to the earth. Then, when life fails him, his body will be unable to taste sweetness or feel pain or stir a hand or think with the mind. Although a brother may wish to strew the grave with gold for his kinsman, to heap up by the dead man’s side various treasures that he would like to go with him.]39  The Seafarer has a significantly more recognizably Christian tone throughout, with descriptions of the rewards of the afterlife for those who were devout in

38 39

Klinck, Old English Elegies, 35-39; Dyas, Pilgrimage, 105-123; Magennis, Images of Com­ munity, 303-318; Amodio, Anglo-Saxon Handbook, 235-237. Seafarer, ll.91-99: Muir, Exeter Anthology, 232; trans. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 334.

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this one.40 The didactic tone of the poem has led to significant discussion about the theme and purpose of the work, about its significance as elegy, homily, allegorical tale, wisdom poetry, or literal narrative. Regardless of the interpretation, The Seafarer utilizes the imagery of burial and of community mourning to contrast with the protagonist’s lonely, solitary situation. The passage begins with the old Seafarer’s contemplation of his lost friends and he mourns, like the Wanderer of the other poem, for the comfort of the kinship he once had. More importantly for present purposes, his memories of those friends are linked immediately to their burial in the earth, to the funerals that he undoubtedly witnessed. This contemplation of his friends inevitably leads to contemplation of his own death and a description of his burial in the earth, his grave strewn with gold placed there by his mourning brothers, an act that reinforces the central role of community in burial rites in Anglo-Saxon culture. The lines of the poem allude to the importance of grave goods in that final rite and the necessity of a community of mourners both to construct the deceased’s legacy and to witness the performance of the funeral. As Howard Williams argues, the mortuary practices performed by the living serve to transform the dead; be it to purify the body made unclean by death, to prepare the deceased for the afterlife, or to create an ideological perception of the world and the person who has departed from it.41 Funerals reflected the deliberate decisions made by the mourners on behalf of the deceased, referencing aspects of burial remembered from past funerals they saw performed.42 The symbolic (and actual) transformation for the dead necessitates a series of acts that were highly ritualized and acted as a sort of funerary theatre of both practical and symbolic aspects of burial.43 Whether it was a cremation or an inhumation, the funerary rituals associated with death in the Anglo-Saxon world were arduous and invariably public acts, both in their preparation and performance. Cremation burial demanded that a series of practical steps be performed before the final deposition of the ashes, in a specially designated and often decorated cinerary urn, in the earth. The body would have been prepared, a 40

41 42 43

John C. Pope, “Second Thoughts on the Interpretation of The Seafarer,” in Old English Shorter Poems: Basic Readings, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (New York, 1994), 213-229; Santha Bhattacharji, “An Approach to Christian Aspects of The Wanderer and The Seafarer,” in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul Cavill (Cambridge, 2004), 153-163; Amodio, Anglo-Saxon Handbook, 236. Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, 1991); Williams, “At the Funeral,” 68-69. Williams, “At the Funeral,” 71-72. Williams, “At the Funeral,” 69-70.

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funerary pyre constructed and likely covered with furs and textiles, and perhaps other artifacts. The deceased would have been placed on the pyre, possibly along with offerings of food, drink, and companion animals ranging from horses to foxes that were killed and placed alongside the deceased.44 When the pyre and the body were ready, the fire would have been lit, destroying and transforming the body before the eyes of the mourners present and of the wider community who saw the flames or smoke from a distance. Beowulf offers an evocative portrayal of a pyre burning at the titular hero’s funeral at the end of the poem.  Him ða gegiredan  Geata leode ad on eorðan  unwaclícne, helmum behongen,  hildebordum, beorhtum byrnum,  swa h bena wæs· alegdon ða tomiddes  mærne þeoden hæleð hiofende,  hlaford leofne. Ongunnon þa on beorge  bælfyra mæst wigend weccan;  wudurec astah sweart ofer swioðole,   swogende leg wope bewunden  – windblond gelæg – oð þæt hw ða banhus   gebrocen hæfde hat on hreðre.   Higum unrote modceare mændon,  mondryhtnes cwealm; [The people of the Geats then prepared for him a splendid pyre upon the earth, hung with battle-shields and helmets and bright bymies, as he had bidden; there in the middle they laid the mighty prince, the heroes lamenting their dear lord. Then the warriors kindled there on the cliff. The greatest of funeral pyres; dark over the flames the woodsmoke rose, the roaring fire Mingled with weeping – the wind lay still –  until it ha broken that bone-house hot at the heart. With heavy spirits they mourned their despair, the death of their lord;]45

44

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Julie M. Bond, “Burnt Offerings: Animal Bone in Anglo‐Saxon Cremations,” World Archaeology 28 (1) (1996); Howard Williams, “Death Warmed Up,” Journal of Material Culture 9 (3) (2004), 260-264; Williams, “At the Funeral,” 72-73; Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 85-90. Beowulf, ll. 3137-3149: (Klaeber, 2008): 106-107; Ray M. Liuzza, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Peterborough, CA, 2000): 149.

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Although there is little surviving archaeological evidence of pyre-sites in early Anglo-Saxon England, what has been discovered seems to coincide with the description of Beowulf’s pyre: wood and brush stacked square with goods and the body laid atop it.46 In the poem, emphasis is placed on the extraordinary spectacle caused by the funerary pyre, leaping flames, billowing smoke, roaring sound, and in the end the immolation and complete desolation of the once-great man. This tremendous display can be interpreted as a physical manifestation of the enormity of the community’s grief, performed as they weep and wail for their collective loss and construct the memory of their beloved and far-famed lord. Once the pyre site cooled, the ashes were placed in a decorated urn and eventually taken to the burial site, with possibly some time passing between the two acts.47 It has been suggested that some of the artifacts and bone left from the pyre could have been retrieved and circulated amongst the mourners,48 perhaps reinforcing the sense of community involvement in the loss of the deceased and the performance of the funeral. Even without any physical contact with the goods, the body, or surviving artifacts from the fire, the physicality of the funerary pyre and the spectacle of the flame would have been inescapable by any members of the community performing the funeral. There is another cremation funeral described in Beowulf, much earlier than the hero’s own, recounted by the scop, or minstral, to celebrate Beowulf’s victory over Grendel. The poem within the poem tells the tale of a brutal battle between the visiting Danes, led by Hnæf, brother of Hildeburg, and the Jutes, ruled by King Finn, husband of Hildeburg. The bloody fight leaves many dead, including Hnæf and Hildeburg’s sons, and in its wake a truce is made and a pyre constructed to serve the dead. The recitation of this cremation is graphic in its description and gruesome in some of its detail, but leaves no doubt as to the extreme visibility of the ritual and the pageantry of the mourning. Æt þæm ade wæs  eþgesyne swatfah syrce,  swyn eal gylden, eofer irenherd,  æþeling manig wundum awyrded;  sume on wæle crungon. Het ða Hildeburh  æt Hnæfes ade 46 47 48

Williams, “Death Warmed Up,” 269-271. Ibid.; “At the Funeral,” 73; Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 89-90. Jacqueline McKinley, “The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham. Part VIII: The Cremations,” East Anglian Archaeology 6 (1994); Williams, “Death Warmed Up;” “At the Funeral,” 71-72.

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hire selfre sunu  sweoloðe befæstan, banfatu bærnan,  ond on bæl don eame on eaxle.  Ides gnornode, geomrode giddum.  Guðrec astah wand to wolcnum;  wælfyra mæst hlynode for hlawe.  Hafelan multon, bengeato burston  ðonne blod ætspranc, laðbite lices;  lig ealle forswealg gæsta gifrost,  þara ðe bær guð fornam bega folces.  Wæs hira blæd scacen. [It was easy to see upon that pyre  the bloodstained battle-shirt, the gilded swine,  iron-hard boar-images, the noblemen  with fatal wounds – so many felled by war!  Then Hildeburh commanded at Hnæf’s pyre that her own son be consigned to the flames  to be burnt, flesh and bone, placed on the pyre  at his uncle’s shoulder; the lady sang  a sad lament. The warrior ascended;  to the clouds coiled the mighty funeral fire, and roared before their mound; their heads melted,  their gashes burst open and spurted blood,  the deadly body-bites. The flame devoured,  most greedy spirit, those whom war destroyed  of both peoples – their glory departed.]49 The visibility of the pyre is made explicit in the words of the poem, the bodies piled upon it, the personal effects laid beside them, all made ready for the flame. Hildeburg directs the ritual, ordering her son’s placement and singing the lament, publically sharing her grief with the gathered mourners until the final spectacle of fire completely consumed the bodies.50 The vivid description of the lit pyre forces the listeners in the hall (and by extension the readers of poem) to join Hildeburgh and the other mourners and witness the display. The combined pyre reinforces that sense of community, forcing onetime enemies to share the funerary ritual, rejoining the broken bonds of kinship as they all become reduced to ash and smoke.51 The exhibitional nature of cremation automatically includes the community in the funeral and its spectacle ensures that it will be well-remembered. In light of this visibility, any, if not all, of the stages of the cremation process could have become ritualized and symbolic as well as practical. Every step in the 49 50 51

Beowulf, ll. 1110-1124: (Klaeber, 2008): 39; (Liuzza, 2000): 87. Owen-Crocker, Four Funerals, 48. Ibid., 49.

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arduous process of building the pyre, placing the goods, preparing the body, and lighting the flame would become charged with meaning and steeped in memory. The enduring memories of the deceased formed at the funeral would have been reinforced at the later deposition of the cinerary remains by the continued ritual and physical marking of the gravesite. The visibility of the funerary practices demands communal involvement, be it active in performing the rites or passive in witnessing them, and the wide involvement of the community ensures that the place of the deceased within that community is polished, secured, and memorialized. As with cremation burial, Anglo-Saxon inhumation was a visible process, enacting the preparation and deposition for an audience of mourners and the wider community. Inhumation was practiced alongside cremation and is no less ritualized or public a process.52 The body was prepared similarly to cremation, and laid out with specific garments and artifacts. The grave would have been dug, sometimes directly into the earth and sometimes lined with wood or stone to form a burial chamber; a process that, like the building of a pyre, took time and active involvement by the members of the community. Even simple graves show evidence of being much larger than necessary, suggesting that the space was intended for display and viewing by the mourners and the community.53 The body would have been positioned within the grave and the assemblage of grave goods displayed deliberately around the space with the implication that the arrangement of the grave was intended to display the deceased to the community prior to its burial. While many burial spaces were likely simple and utilitarian, more elaborate burial chambers were created for higher status burials, likely lengthening the preparation time needed and the number of people involved in the process. Returning to the role of grave goods, it is perhaps unsurprising that the furnishings of a grave, although undoubtedly relevant to the deceased, reveal as much, if not more about what those left to bury them wished symbolically to state.54 In considering burial rituals to be a public act, indeed a performance, the choice of the quantity and quality of the grave goods takes on further significance. In a culture that values visible displays of wealth and status in life, as suggested by both the literature and the material evidence of personal

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Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 95-96. William Filmer-Sankey and Tim Pestell, Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery: Excavations and Sur­veys 1824-1992 (Ipswich, 2001), 36-38, 238; Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 95; Williams, “At the Funeral,” 77-78. Crawford, 2004: 89-90; Lucy, 2000: 142-143; Williams, Death and Memory, 86-87.

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ornamentation,55 the quality and variety of the objects given to the dead becomes highly significant and symbolic.56 The objects themselves need not necessarily have been visible when placed in the grave to carry this symbolic significance, any more than the body itself needed to be seen clearly for the audience to know who was being interred. Indeed, if items have the mnemonic role of constructing, manipulating, and reinforcing the remembered identity of the deceased, then they must have a recognizable value and set of associations within the wider community to achieve that role.57 Even if they were seen physically by only a limited number of community members during their preparation for burial, they still were “seen” and their implications understood, therefore, by the wider community. Reinforcing this paradoxical sense of visibility is evidence that both the body and some of the grave goods would have been veiled or wrapped in textile before being placed in the earth;58 however, the lengthy preparation process and the visibility of each stage would have ensured that those participating and viewing the funeral would have known what was being placed, just as those depositing the goods intended. This paradox of visibility ensures that even those not participating actively in the funeral would still “see” the picture being constructed and remember the deceased. Because significant importance was placed on the visible display and dispersal of wealth and its hallmarks, it is possible to reconcile the status of wealth with regular burial, where it would no longer be seen or used. One suggestion is pagan religious devotion, whereby the deceased takes the best and most personally important objects into the grave and subsequently into the afterlife.59 Despite the evidence for this tradition, the act of burying someone with goods reveals much more about both the deceased and their family than the mere utility of such goods would indicate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the furnishings of a grave, although undoubtedly relevant to the deceased, reveal as much, if not 55

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Beowulf, ll. 229-255 (Klaeber, 2008: 10-11); C. J. Arnold, An Archaeology of the Early AngloSaxon Kingdoms (London, 1997), 203; Barbara Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early AngloSaxon England (London and New York, 1990), 166-167; Härke, “Changing Symbols,” 150-155; Catherine Karkov, The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2011), 101-102; Leslie Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New History (Ithaca, NY, 2012), 117-119. Martin Carver, “Burial as Poetry: The Context of Treasure in Anglo-Saxon Graves,” in Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (Woodbridge, 2000), 46. Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 24. Elisabeth Crowfoot, “The Textiles,” in William Filmer-Sankey and Tim Pestell, Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery: Excavations and Surveys 1824-1992 (Ipswich, 2001), 211-212; Williams, “At the Funeral,” 78. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 97-98; Williams, Death and Memory, 31; Lee, Feasting the Dead, 59-60.

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more, about what those left to bury them wished to display ritually. A large and ceremonial burial would have been a highly visible act.60 With funerary rites being public performances, both enacted by and played for the close kin and wider community of the deceased, some of the rare and perhaps unusual types of burial achieve new relevance. Martin Carver argues that Anglo-Saxon graves are better analyzed, not as cultural artifacts, but as poetry, as “text with attitude,” which contain allusions and nuances far more complex than simply those of place and time.61 They are deliberate constructs with individual purpose that may include aspects of wider cultural practice, but are intended to perform a specific task for a specific reason at a specific time. Illustrating his point, Carver refers to the rare phenomenon of AngloSaxon boat burial, typified by Mound One at Sutton Hoo, one of the most well-known examples of Anglo-Saxon funerary practice.62 These boat burials have been linked, in turn, to Scyld Scefing’s funeral in a ship, as described in Beowulf,63 and to high-status funerary traditions, or Scandinavian cultural exchange, none of which seem particularly persuasive given the extremely limited evidence and tenuous connections between comparable examples.64 Rather than trying to interpret them as continuations of traditional practice or adoptions of foreign influence, Carver argues that an Anglo-Saxon boat burial represents an innovative and unexpected act done consciously and for a purpose in a particular time and place, like the composition of a poem in a specific cultural milieu.65 Similarly, Guy Halsall approaches early medieval burial as a kind of text, a symbolic language made from material culture, and used to speak to an audience.66 In this way, a furnished grave can be approached as a deliberate and conscious construct, a portrait of the deceased, and an effort to somehow manipulate and preserve a social identity. The nature of burial for the early Anglo-Saxons was visible, ritualistic, and protracted; it was a performance enacted for and by the mourners and the wider community, in order to create a final and lasting narrative about the deceased and those left behind. From the moment of death (regardless of the burial method), an audience is present 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Lucy, Way of Death, 142-143; Williams, Death and Memory, 86-87. Carver, “Burial as Poetry,” 37. Ibid., 38-46. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, The Four Funerals in Beowulf and the Structure of the Poem (Manchester, 2000), 30-32. Carver, “Burial as Poetry,” 35-37. Ibid., 47-48. Guy Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992-2009 (Lieden, 2010), 203-215.

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at each step to witness the process until the final burial, when the body, the goods, or the ashes, are covered with earth, rendering them invisible to their audience and the performance complete. In that public act of witnessing and participation, the community of mourners both create and affix a memory of the deceased; this creation is perhaps a social construct, perhaps true to life, perhaps something of both, but one which remains nevertheless after the burial is completed. Interest and concern with the highly-ritualized performance of the funerary acts in Anglo-Saxon England is consistently evident in literature, in the historic record, and in the archaeological remains themselves. However, although the funeral, be it cremation or inhumation, was an evocative performance played by and for the community of the deceased, it does not represent the spectacle’s conclusion. The grave is marked and left to act as a physical indication of the memory created by the funeral, a monument within the community. In early Anglo-Saxon England, most settlements had burial grounds near if not adjacent to them,67 in contrast to other cultures, such as that of late antique Rome, which buried the dead far from the cities of the living. Cemeteries were fairly commonplace near Anglo-Saxon settlements and, once the body or urn and the accompanying goods were placed in the grave, the grave was filled and marked. An un-inscribed wooden stake or stone acting as grave marker was a common early medieval Germanic tradition, possibly used to identify the deceased or simply to indicate where in the landscape an individual was buried.68 Alternatively, the Anglo-Saxons had a tradition of cutting a ring-ditch around an important grave and heaping the displaced soil into a small mound over the grave.69 More striking, however, were the large burial mounds called barrows that were raised over some of the higher status, or “princely” burials in the seventh century. These mounds of earth could loom well over three meters and were often placed on high ground overlooking valleys or bodies of water, making them even more visible.70 These large mounds were complex engineering endeavors, allowing for the construction and placement of the burial chamber and goods and for the stable building of the mound above without 67

68

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Helena Hamerow, “Communities of the Living and the Dead: The Relationship between Anglo-Saxon Settlements and Cemeteries, c. 450-850,” in Intersections: The Archaeology and History of Christianity in England, 400-1200, ed. M. Henig and N. Ramsey (Oxford, 2010), 72. Rupert Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial 2: Arms, Armour and Regalia (London, 1978), 363; Stephen Pollington, Anglo-Saxon Burial Mounds: Princely Burials in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries (Norfolk, 2008), 32-33. Pollington, Burial Mounds, 54. Carver, “Burial as Poetry,” 39-40.

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crushing the mound-builders or collapsing the mound into the grave below.71 Prehistoric constructed earthen mounds, as well as natural features thought to be constructed mounds (in particular the Bronze Age round barrow), were visible and recognized aspects of the Anglo-Saxon landscape.72 Barrows were not the only ancient monuments that were present and familiar to the AngloSaxons: indeed, they utilized a number of older monuments, including hill forts, henges, Roman villas, and temples for funerary purposes, although they seem to have preferred barrows.73 The burial mound at Taplow in Buckinghamshire was situated on a hill overlooking the Thames valley and stood five meters high and twenty-seven meters in diameter.74 It was excavated in the late-nineteenth century and those who performed the excavation seem to have been overzealous in their practices, causing significant damage to both the artifacts and the burial chamber itself.75 However, it has been possible to date the burial to the early-seventh century and ascertain that the occupant was placed in a large, oak-lined chamber, likely on a bier, dressed in finery ornamented with sumptuous jewelry, and surrounded by an impressive array of goods including weapons and numerous feasting vessels.76 The careful construction of the chamber and placement of the body and accompanying goods illustrate clearly the deliberation with which this funeral and burial were performed. The picture presented to the audience of the funeral was designed to evoke a certain sense of the man being buried and his role in the wider community. Compounding the impressive statement made by the rich burial is the construction of the tumulus atop the burial chamber, which marks the gravesite in a manner that makes it stand tall and dominant on the surrounding landscape as a further statement of remembrance of what has been lost. 71 72 73

74 75 76

Pollington, Burial Mounds, 54. Sarah Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England: Religion, Ritual, and Rulership in the Landscape (Oxford, 2013), 13-14. Howard Williams, “Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites,” Medieval Archaeology 41 (1997), 8-14; Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 13-14. Webster, 2001; Lucy, Way of Death, 87; Williams, Death and Memory, 147; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 168. Leslie Webster, “Metalwork of the Mercian Supremacy,” in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. M. Brown and C. Farr (London, 2001). J. Stevens, “On the Remains Found in an Anglo-Saxon Tumulus at Taplow, Bucking­ hamshire,” Journal of British Archaeology 2, 40 (1884), 61-71; Webster, “Mercian Supremacy;” Lee, Feasting the Dead, 72-73; Elizabeth M. Tyler, Treasure in the Medieval West (Woodbridge, 2000): 55-56.

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Another large barrow, constructed overlooking the Thames valley at Asthall in Oxfordshire, was placed deliberately on a ridge so as to be visible from both a major Roman road – now known as Akeman Street – and the Windrush River.77 The large mound stood four meters high with a perimeter of eighteen and a half meters when it was excavated by E. T. Leeds in the early 1920s; however, it was understood to originally have been even larger before soil erosion caused it to collapse somewhat.78 The Asthall barrow has also been dated to the early seventh century, but unlike its counterpart at Taplow it held cremated remains rather than an inhumation, although an assortment of grave goods was also found, including bone and antler gaming pieces, fragments of silver, copper-alloy bowls and imported Merovingian pottery.79 The use of such a large tumulus to inter cinerary remains is an evocative decision suggesting that the burial mound was a conscious and deliberate component in the creation of a memorial legacy, a final act of the funeral performance. Taken as a whole, the funerary rites, from the spectacle of the funeral pyre to the construction of a massive landscape feature, dominated life within the community while they were being performed, reinforcing to all the members the importance of the deceased and the narrative of memory being manipulated by those same rites. The final placement of the mound, visible by land and waterway, and looming over the rest of the landscape, makes an effective and enduring reminder of that legacy. The cemetery complex at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk is perhaps the most widely recognized of the Anglo-Saxon burial mound cemeteries, as it was the site of one of the most significant Anglo-Saxon archaeological finds of the twentieth century in Mound One. There are, however, nineteen distinct mounds that have been identified, situated into three groups along the crest of a ridge that overlooks the River Deben.80 The largest of the mounds were likely those that covered the two ship burials in Mounds One and Two. The ships, measuring thirty meters and twenty-seven meters long, respectively, were placed intact into deep trenches and covered with a further four meters or more of dirt to

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Williams, Death and Memory, 202-204; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 160-162. E. T. Leeds, “An Anglo-Saxon Cremation-Burial of the Seventh Century in Asthall Barrow, Oxfordshire,” Antiquaries Journal 4 (1924), 113-26; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 160. T. M. Dickinson and G. Speake, “The Seventh-Century Cremation Burial in Asthall Barrow, Oxfordshire: A Reassessment,” in The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in NorthWestern Europe, ed. M. O. H. Carver (1992), 95-130 at 113-114; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 161. Meaney, A Gazeteer, 233-235; Williams, Death and Memory, 158-160; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 145.

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form the mounds.81 The Sutton Hoo mounds contain an assortment of inhumation and cremation burials with a wide range of associated grave goods.82 As with the other mounds discussed, the Sutton Hoo complex prioritizes the visibility of its memorial monuments, situating the mounds high on the landscape and visible from some distance along a major water route. Arguably, the congregation of mounds in a singular burial ground served to enhance the potency of the mound’s symbolism and reinforce the efficacy of the memories they were intended to preserve. These mounds are only a few among the many Anglo-Saxon tumuli that were raised on the landscape to mark an important burial in sixth-and seventh-century England. Furthermore, they, and their counterparts across the country, often serve as foundations or special status burials within much larger cemeteries, highlighting their importance but situating them within the wider Anglo-Saxon community. Regardless of the nature of the burial inside the mound, be it a princely inhumation or a cinerary urn, the mound was the final, calculated act to capture the attention of the community and serve as a mnemonic aide for the lasting memory of the deceased. However, although the raising of mounds in the early Anglo-Saxon period was not uncommon, mounds should not be considered simply to be cultural statements of power, authority, or status; instead, each mound should also be considered to be an individual statement constructed for a specific memorial purpose, whether one prefers to call that purpose a poem, text, or portrait.83 Barrows and mounds were places charged with mystery and potency as well as memory. References in Beowulf and Maxims II link the ancient mounds with hidden treasure and lurking dragon guardians.84 By virtue of their physical presence they could act as boundaries between territories.85 William Chaney suggested 81

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Martin Carver, “Reflections on the Meanings of Monumental Barrows in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (London, 2002), 132; Williams, Death and Memory, 137-141; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 145146, 148-149. For more detailed discussion of the Sutton Hoo mounds based on their modern excavations see Martin Carver and Angela Evans, Sutton Hoo: A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and its Context (London, 2005). Carver, “Burial as Poetry;” Halsall, Cemeteries and Society; Williams, “At the Funeral.” Semple, “Fear of the Past;” Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 110-111; Victoria Symons “Wreoþenhilt ond Wyrmfah: Confronting Serpents in Beowulf and Beyond,” in Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia, ed. M. Bintley and T. Williams (Woodbridge, 2015). D. Bonney, “Pagan Saxon Burials and Boundaries in Wiltshire,” Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Magazine LXI (1966), 25-30; “Early Boundaries in Wessex,” in P. J. Fowler

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that barrows may have been used as meeting places or sacred spaces in AngloSaxon England,86 in deference to their visibility and emotionally charged atmosphere. The placement and grouping of such visible markers of death, mourning, and memory along well-traveled routes, like Roman roads and waterways, was no accident and only served to make the public spectacle of Anglo-Saxon burial more explicit.87 This undeniable presence of the mounds on the landscape is synonymous with the continued presence of those buried within them amongst their communities, if only as enduring memory. However strong and pervasive the funeral-emphasized memory of an Anglo-Saxon decedent, it inevitably fades as time passes and contemporaries or direct witnesses depart the community, or die. It has been theorized that there is a marked difference between personal or “living” memories, which can be preserved relatively intact for several generations, and transmitted knowledge of an older past in the form of stories, myth, and tradition.88 Moreover, it appears that the Anglo-Saxons had an understanding both of the importance of an enduring memory or legacy and of the ephemerality of that memory over long time-spans. From the fifth to the eleventh century there existed the deliberate and systematic reuse of older monuments as sites of Anglo-Saxon burial by internment of remains near or even within the original structure.89 The seemingly-preferred type of monument used for such mortuary practices during the seventh and into the eighth century was the round Bronze Age barrow.90 The deliberate reuse of prehistoric monuments in later funerary rituals suggests that the early Anglo-Saxons attached a great deal of significance to the monuments. The temporal distance between the original use of the barrows and their appropriation by the Anglo-Saxons makes it unlikely that any knowl-

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(ed.), Archaeology and the Landscape (London, 1972), 68-86; “Early Boundaries and Estates in Southern England,” in Medieval Settlement, ed. P. H. Sawyer (London, 1976), 72-82; L. V. Grinsell, The Ancient Burial Mounds of England (Westport, CT, 1975); M. Gelling, The PlaceNames of Berkshire (Nottingham, 1976); D. Hooke, “Burial Features in the West Midland Charters,” Journal of English Place-Name Society 13 (1981), 1-40. Chaney, Cult of Kingship, 80-81, 104-105. Owen-Crocker, Four Funerals, 62; Carver, “Monumental Barrows,” 132-143; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 53-54. E. C. M Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900-1200 (London, 1999), 27-28; Devlin, Remembering the Dead, 10. Sam Lucy, “The Significance of Mortuary Ritual in the Political Manipulation of the Landscape,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 11.1 (1992), 97; Williams, “Ancient Landscapes,” 16-17; Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 15. J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud, 1994), 32-33; Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 15.

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edge or memory of their original specific purpose was determined with any clarity, namely, who was buried within them and why a mound burial was chosen, leaving behind only vague impressions of the barrows as places of power, of significance, and of the dead.91 The lack of clear knowledge about the monuments meant that barrows could become spaces open for interpretation and repurposed to suit an Anglo-Saxon narrative, whether it was a narrative of longevity, of the right to rule the land, of political inheritance, of supernatural favor, or indeed of any construction that could be applied.92 The appropriation of a perceived ancestral past as embodied by the prehistoric monuments lends a longevity and a sense of historicism to a population that, in the sixth and seventh centuries, had only been settled in England for a handful of generations.93 Laying claim to the ancestors understood to be buried in the barrows enabled the Anglo-Saxons to make claims on lands and territories with a legitimacy they lacked otherwise.94 The construction and use of burial mounds in the seventh century in particular does not represent a continuation of ancient and unbroken traditional burial practices dating from the Bronze Age after a long cessation.95 Instead, the seventh-century barrow burials represent an intentional re-appropriation of a prehistoric practice, either through the reuse of existing barrows,96 or the creation of contemporary mounds intended to recall Neolithic barrows.97 One interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon borrowing of the distant past is that it was an attempt to draw a clear link between that past and the Anglo-Saxon present 91 92 93 94 95

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Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 47-48. For extensive discussion of the role of prehistoric monuments in Anglo-Saxon culture see Williams, “Ancient Landscapes,” and Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric. Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 5-6. Lucy, “Mortuary Ritual;” Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 5-6. Pollington, Burial Mounds, 35; also M. O. H. Carver, “Reflections on the Meaning of AngloSaxon Barrows,” in Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. Sam J. Lucy and Andrew Reynolds (London, 2002), 134-5. Hutton, The Pagan Religions, 277; Hoggett, East Anglian Conversion, 117; Williams, “Ancient Landscapes;” “Monuments and the Past in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” World Archaeology 30.1 (1998); “Placing the Dead: Investigating the Location of Wealthy Barrow Burials in Seventh-Century England,” in Grave Matters: Eight Studies of Burial Data from the First Millennium AD from Crimea, Scandinavia and England, ed. M. Rundkvist (Oxford, 1999); and Death and Memory. See also Sarah Semple, “A Fear of the Past: The Place of the Prehistoric Burial Mound in the Ideology of Middle and Later Anglo-Saxon England,” World Archaeology, 30.1 (1998); “Burials and Political Boundaries in the Avebury Region, North Wiltshire,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 12 (2003); and T. Bell, The Religious Reuse of Roman Structures in Early Medieval England (Oxford, 2005). Pollington, Burial Mounds, 27-28.

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in an effort to legitimize and strengthen contemporary rule.98 The return to a long-abandoned form of burial in the late-sixth and seventh centuries, particularly one with such a visible end result, suggests that there was a significant cultural shift that prompted the re-emergence of barrow burial in response. However, the appeal of the mound as grave marker is understandable in the context of burial performance, forming part of the spectacle of the AngloSaxon funeral by creating a very public, very visible final resting place.99 The reuse of prehistoric barrows and the appropriation of prehistoric burial practices create a new potent symbolism, rewriting an existing narrative of the funerary rites and introducing a highly visible and durable means by which to mark the grave. The enduring presence of such constructions in the landscape long after their original function presented the Anglo-Saxons with an opportunity for cultural appropriation. The loss of the barrows’ original designated role meant that new meanings could be constructed and applied to the monuments but their enduring nature, so uncompromisingly physical and present, offered a tantalizing sense of longevity, providing a connection to the distant past and promise of continued endurance into an unknown future. The ancient mounds had power for the Anglo-Saxons long after the societies that built them vanished or were conquered or assimilated by more recent societies. Given the enduring potency surrounding the prehistoric burial markers within Anglo-Saxon culture, in re-appropriating the monument type the AngloSaxons perhaps were hoping to achieve a similar longevity of their own gravesites. If so, they would be able to exert some control over the legacy they left behind for future generations, thereby preserving the memory they created at burial and in some way the community to which it belonged as well. This mindset can be found in the orders given by Beowulf for his own funeral, as he demands that his tumulus be built high and overlooking the sea, so that people will see it long after he is buried: Hatað heaðomære  hlæw gewyrcean beorhtne æfter bæle  æt brimes nosan; se scel to gemyndum  minum leodum 98

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Lucy, “Mortuary Ritual”; Williams “Monuments and the Past;” and “Placing the Dead;” Richard Hoggett, “The Early Christian Landscape of East Anglia,” in Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. N. J. Higham and M. J. Ryan (Woodbridge, 2010), 206-207; Pollington, Burial Mounds, 37. See Frank Battaglia, “Not Christianity Versus Paganism, but Hall Versus Bog,” in AngloSaxons and the North, ed. Matti Kilpiö, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Jane Roberts, and Olga Timofeeva (ACMRS, 2009), 47-68.

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heah hlifian  on Hrones Næsse, þæt hit sæliðend  syððan hatan Biowulfes Biorh,  ða ðe brentingas ofer floda genipu  feorran drifað. [The brave in battle will bid a tomb be built shining over my pyre on the cliffs by the sea; it will be as a monument to my people and tower high on Whale’s Head, so that seafarers afterwards shall call it “Beowulf’s Barrow”, when their broad ships drive from afar over the darkness of the flood.]100  Beowulf demonstrates anxiety as well as fascination by way of the use of AngloSaxon burial mounds, especially surrounding the memory of the dead and the endurance of that memory. Indeed, the manipulation and strengthening of memory in order to create a legacy of the deceased within the community was, in part, the purpose of the performance of elaborate funeral rites. Marking the grave can then be considered a means by which the memory of the deceased is upheld beyond the immediacy of the funeral. In the Beowulf passage, it is clear that Beowulf’s legacy, both among his own people in his own time and those to come, is of vital importance to the titular character, even at the moment of his death. In ordering the construction of the barrow Beowulf ensures that he will be remembered. Burial mounds, with their huge scale, high visibility, and longevity are a monumental means to mark a grave and ensure that the memory endures. However, the very durability of the burial mounds ensures that these monuments outlast any reasonable communal memory of the deceased, and even the memory of the community that performs the burial. They lose their particular memorial purpose, which is related to the inhabitant of the mound, but remain as artefacts in their own right, as texts or even as performances that convey meaning without specifics and can be seen, read, and interpreted. The monumentality of the mounds can still transmit a sense of significance, of power, and of loss even after centuries. Burial mounds, both Anglo-Saxon and prehistoric, remained large and visible aspects of the landscape, serving a number of roles aside from their original burial functions throughout the Anglo-Saxon period and well beyond into modern times.101 Place name evidence indicates that barrows were places of gathering or meeting points and in the later Anglo-Saxon times they became 100 101

Beowulf, ll. 2802-2808: (Klaeber, 2008): 95; (Liuzza, 2000): 138. For discussion of the disparate roles of constructed barrows, both Neolithic and AngloSaxon, as boundary markers, as sites of punishment and execution, as landmarks, as

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places of judicial execution and deviant burial.102 Over time, perceptions of barrows changed, and although they were still potent spaces they came to be seen as haunted places associated with the damned.103 Of course, deviant burial, or the deposition of the morally and criminally condemned in later Anglo-Saxon England, employed a spectacle and pageantry of its own, using specifically proscribed mutilation and burial positions intended to disrupt traditional funerary practice and ensure the punishment was carried through to the next life.104 Through these practices of reuse and repurpose, the AngloSaxon burial mounds had a visible but varied existence after their initial incarnations as specific grave markers, much as the Bronze Age barrows were visible and utilized by the Anglo-Saxons long past their original context. The mounds were notable for their size and visibility, looming over the landscape and anyone who traveled past them. It is the enduring quality of this monumentality that performs their role in the spectacle of Anglo-Saxon death. Monument (and by extension monumentality) is a relatively democratic term that can be applied to a wide range of structures, or naturally occurring sites.105 The term “monument” suffers from somewhat imprecise definitions that allude vaguely to the site or structure in question in terms of its size, its endurance, its connection to notable events or people, its memorial quality, and its historical importance.106 This imprecision and utility in the application of the term “monument” (and monumentality) is due to the necessity of human perception and interpretation in the making of a monument. Despite their size and visibility, not all large structures, buildings, or landscape features are monuments; a monument must be recognized as marking something important, defined by its relationship to the society that engages with it.107

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battle sites, and supernatural borderlands, see Pollington, Burial Mounds, 79-95; Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 143-192. Audrey Meaney, “Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-Names and Hundred Meeting-Places,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8 (1995), 29-42; Andrew Reynolds, AngloSaxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford, 2009); Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 9. Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric, 193-223. For more detailed discussion of deviant burial in Anglo-Saxon England see: Reynolds, Deviant Burial; and the essays in Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Jay Paul Gates and Nicole Marafioti (Woodbridge, 2014). J. F. Osborne, “Monuments and Monumentality” in J. F. Osborne, ed., Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology (Albany, NY, 2014), 3-4. “monument, n.”. OED Online. March 2015. Oxford University Press. (accessed May 2, 2015). Kevin D. Fisher, “The Creation and Experience of Monumentality on Protohistoric Cyprus” in Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology, ed. J. F. Osborne (Albany, NY, 2014), 357.

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Human agency is therefore necessary to imbue the monument with its very meaning, to construct a narrative of remembrance, memorial, and evocation that is mapped onto the structure or site. Out of the context of the original funeral, or the subsequent generations when specific memory of the decedent in the mound might persist, the AngloSaxon burial mound endures on the landscape, open for interpretation but isolated from its original compositional meaning. Nonetheless, the scale, scope, and endurance of the structures speak to a potency and significance that, although it is subject to interpretation from subsequent communities, remains evocative. In contemporary society, large memorials, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC or the National September 11 Memorial in Manhattan serve as a way of marking death and communal loss on a grandiose scale in a way that individual funerary rites simply cannot accomplish, regardless of how public the figure or how much of a media spectacle is made of them. Through these oversized memorials, death and loss take on the monumental scale of the structures, overwhelming any aspect of personal and private mourning in the interest of constructing a grander narrative of memory than can be reasonably mapped onto a single person. Moreover, these spectacular statements of collective loss and community grief endure when the immediacy of the events memorialized recedes into the somewhatfaded realm of history. Such is the case with the Anglo-Saxon barrows, long removed from the context of their original construction; they offer a potent statement of the collective and monumental grief experienced by the community that built them. They are memorials that are stripped of their individual memory but no less effective as monuments for that absence. Indeed, given the complex role of prehistoric monuments in England from the fifth to the eleventh century, there may have been awareness of such an end result even within Anglo-Saxon culture. This idea of memorial outlasting memory may be hinted at in the final lines of Beowulf:  Wedra leode hlæw on hoe  se wæs heah ond brad wegliðendum   wide gesyne, ond betimbredon  on tyndagum beadurofes becn,  bronda lafe wealle beworhton,  swa hyt weorðlicost foresnotre men  findan mihton. Hí on beorg dydon  beg ond siglu eall swylce hyrsta  swylce on horde ær niðhedige men  genumen hæfdon;

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forleton eorla gestreon eorðan healdan, gold on greote  þær hit nu gen lifað, eldum swa unnyt  swa hyt æror wæs. [Then the Weder wrought for him a barrow on the headland; it was high and broad, visible from afar to sea-voyagers, and in ten days they built the beacon of the battle-brave one; the ashes of the flames they enclosed with a wall, as worthily as the most clever of men could devise it. In the barrow they placed rings and bright jewels, all the trappings that those reckless men had seized from the hoard before, let the earth hold the treasures of earls, gold in the ground, where it yet remains, just as useless to men as it was before.]108 Death, and more specifically burial, has long been established as a point of significant meaning and ritual in both Christian and non-Christian society. Burial represents a transitional point of interaction between the living, the dead, and the afterlife, but it also acts as a deliberately-orchestrated performance enacted by the mourners through the funerary rituals for the delectation of the other mourners and wider community. The performance of the funeral and construction of the grave marker serve both to craft a narrative about the deceased and ensure a memorial legacy for them within the community by acknowledging their absence from it. The funeral and burial construct a memory; they compose it as though it were a poem, and the mound raised to mark the grave preserves that memory. The burial mounds, enduring long past the boundaries of living memory of the deceased, maintain a potency and signify that something was remembered and mourned, even in the absence of the specifics. Through these funerary acts the dead are made invisible, yet in memorializing them, marking the grave and especially building the mound, the invisible dead are once again made visible, as enduring spectacles on the landscape becoming a monument to a culture long past. 108

Beowulf, ll. 3156b-3168: (Klaeber, 2008): 107-108; (Liuzza, 2000): 150.

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Chapter 4

Dealing with the Undead in the Later Middle Ages Stephen Gordon Ibi quidam vir pecuniosus, sed pessimus, ut postea plenius claruit, post fata sepultus, operatione, ut creditur, Sathanae, noctibus egrediebatur ex tumulo, et canum cum ingenti latratu prosequente turba, huc illucque ferebatur, et multo cunctis accolis terrore incusso, ante lucem tumulo reddebatur [...] decem juvenes audacia insignes qui corpus infandum effoderent, et membratim exsectum redigerent in combustionem et cibum ignis. Quod et factum est et cessavit quassatio. [In this town [Berwick] a certain man, very wealthy, but as it afterwards appeared a great rogue, having been buried, after his death sallied forth (by the contrivance, as it is believed, of Satan) out of his grave by night, and was borne hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings; thus striking great terror into the neighbours, and returning to his tomb before daylight [...].Ten young men, renowned for boldness [exhumed] the horrible carcass, and, having cut it limb from limb, reduced it into food and fuel for the flames. When this was done, the commotion ceased].1

…

A. d. MCCCXLIV. Quedam mulier in Lewin mortua fuit et sepulta. Post sepulturam autem surgebat et multos iugulabat et post quemlibet saltabat. Et cum fuisset transfixa, fluebat sanguis sicud de animali vivo et devoraverat slogerium proprium plus quam medium, et cum extraheretur, totum fuit in sanguine. Et cum deberet cremari, non poterant ligna aliqualiter accendi nisi de tegulis ecclesie ad informacionem aliquarum

1 William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vols. 1 and 2, ed. by Richard Howlett, Rolls Series 82 (London, 1884-5), 2: 476. For the English translation, see Joseph Stevenson, The Church Historians of England, vol. IV, pt. ii (London, 1861). Online edition, ed. Scott McLetchie, 2009, available from [accessed 17 September 2014].

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_006

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vetularum. Postquam autem fuisset transfixa, adhuc semper surgebat; sed cum fuisset cremata, tunc totum malum conquievit. [AD 1344: A certain woman died in Lewin [Levin] and was buried. After her burial she rose and killed many, and ran after whomever she pleased. And when she was transfixed [impaled], blood flowed as if from a living animal. She had devoured more than half of her shroud, and when it was extracted, it was covered completely in blood. When she was to be cremated, the wood could not be set alight unless, according to the instruction of some old women, it was made from the roof of a church. After she had been impaled, she always kept rising, but when she was cremated, all evil subsided].2

⸪

The above extracts, taken from William of Newburgh’s Historia Rerum Angli­ carum (c.1198) and Neplach of Opatovice’s Chronicon (c.1371), describe a turn of events that was not uncommon in the rhythms of medieval and early modern life. The belief that the dead, through whatever agency, could rise from the grave and terrorize the living finds expression in a great many cultures from across the continent.3 While not nearly as prevalent as accounts of the Norse draugr4 or Slavic vampyre,5 the insular iteration of the walking corpse finds reference in such disparate and well-known works as William’s Historia, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum Anglorum (c.1125) and Gesta regum Anglorum (c.1127), Geoffrey of Burton’s Vita sancte Moduenne virginis (c.1140s), Walter Map’s De nugis curialium (c.1182), the Chronicon de Lanercost (c.1346), the Byland “ghost stories” from British Library Royal 15 A. XX (c.1400) and the Armburgh Papers (c.1425). Additionally, despite the wealth of late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century writings on the “vampire epidemic” – a function, 2 Neplach of Opatovice, Chronicon, in Fontes rerum Bohemicarum III, ed. J. Emler (Prague, 1882), 481. For the English translation, see the Magia Posthuma blog: [accessed 19 September 2014]. 3 For overviews on the revenant, see Nancy Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past and Present 152 (1996): 3-45; John Blair, “The Dangerous Dead in Early Medieval England,” in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter et al. (London, 2009), 539-559. 4 Laxdæla Saga (c.1245 [detailing events from c.850−c.1000]), Eyrbyggja Saga (c.1250 [c.1000]), Grettis Saga (c.1300 [c.1000]) and the Saga of Hrolf Kraki (c.1400 [c.500]) are amongst the most prominent Icelandic works to feature tales of the undead. 5 Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death (New Haven, CT, 1988).

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perhaps, of the impetus to codify the “unenlightened” Eastern domains of the Habsburg Empire by members of the administrative and religious elite6 – it is surprising to note that Central European sources from the medieval period are mostly silent on the phenomenon. The above extract is one of two narratives from Neplach’s Chronicon that, taken together, represent almost the entire Czech literary corpus on the walking dead. The archaeological evidence from this region provides much more evocative evidence for the belief in the restlessness of the corpse. While ontological differences between the revenants in William’s Historia and Neplach’s Chronicon must be acknowledged, especially given the different socio-political and geo-temporal contexts in which each account was written, it is nonetheless apparent that the Berwick and Lewin encounters follow the same narratological formula: the agency of the deceased causes illness, destruction and mayhem among the local townspeople, to the extent that the corpse must be exhumed and cremated lest its pestilence begin to spread. This is a pattern for dealing with the undead also discernible in the Icelandic Family Sagas, specifically the encounters with the ghosts of Hrapp (Laxdaela Saga) and Glam (Grettis Saga).7 If, as some scholars suggest, the fear of such entities was part of the habitual repertoire of European folk belief,8 then a case can be made for using continental case studies (both written and archaeological) to help evaluate the insular evidence, and vice versa. Where there are undeniable structural similarities between the two cultures under discussion – for example, shared concerns about social disorder and the fate of the body and soul after death –the use of cross-cultural analogy is certainly valid. The vampire myths recorded in the 1920s by Agnes Murgoci9 are similar in both context and content to the testimony collected in the eighteenth century by Augustin Calmet,10 in the seventeenth century by Henry More,11 in the fourteenth century by Neplach of Opatovice, and in the twelfth century by William of Newburgh. This is not to suggest that these authors (or indeed the social actors within the tales themselves) subscribed to the exact same worldview, or that 6 7 8 9 10

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Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilisation on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA, 1994). Laxdaela Saga, ed. and trans, M. A. C. Press (London, 1906), 41-43, 77-79; The Saga of Grettir the Strong, ed. and trans. G. A. Hight (London, 1978), 86-99. Blair, “The Dangerous Dead,” 546. Agnes Murgoci, “The Vampire in Roumania,” Folklore 37 (1926): 320-349. Augustine Calmet, Dissertations upon the Apparitions of Angels, Dæmons, and Ghosts, and Concerning the Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (London, 1759), 184330. Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, 3:8 (London, 1655), 209-14.

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attitudes to the dead were uniform and static, but that there existed a base mental schema in which dying an ill-timed death, the outbreak of disease, and/or the lack of bodily decay led, in certain situations, to the belief that the dead could rise. There were only a finite number of ways to “bind” the corpse to the grave and/or expel it from the community (dissolution; staking; burial outside consecrated ground). As such, variations on these practices can be expected to persevere over distance and time.12 Previous scholarship on “deviant” burial in the British Isles focuses mainly on the Anglo-Saxon period. Andrew Reynolds, one of the foremost experts on the topic, first charted the relationship between corpse management, judicial authority and burial location in “The Definition and Ideology of Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites,” a body of research that culminated in the 2009 publication AngloSaxon Deviant Burial Customs.13 Although Reynolds’ work operates mainly as a synthesis of known “execution cemeteries” in pre- and post-Conquest England, with the ultimate aim of charting the socio-political context of nonnormative burial practices, he makes brief mention of the “superstitious” nature of prone burial, decapitation, and amputation. Social outcasts, he argues, demanded extra funerary provisions to prevent their ghosts from haunting the living, a habit of belief that may have persevered into the twelfth century and beyond.14 Sarah Semple’s assertion that the deviant dead “haunted” their place of rest touches on similar material; although, like Reynolds, her discussions form part of a wider investigation into the AngloSaxon concept of damnation and exile.15 In later medieval contexts, Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane’s survey of British monastic cemeteries includes references to practices – for example, the inclusion of absolution scrolls within the burial matrix – that seem to index a fear of the corpse. Gilchrist’s further research into apotropaic and medicinal grave goods explores the “positive” aspects of non-normative burial; that is, amuletic items such as a papal bullae and quartz stones that may have been used as forms of physical and metaphysical protection. However, she acknowledges nonetheless that certain 12 13

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Barber, Vampires, 102-119. Andrew Reynolds, “The Definition and Ideology of Anglo-Saxon Execution Sites and Cemeteries,” in Death and Burial in Medieval Europe, Papers of the Medieval Europe Brugge 1997 Conference 2, ed. G. de Boe and F. Verhaeghe (Zellik, 1997): 33-41; Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford, 2009). Reynolds, Deviant Burial Customs, 89-94, 234. Sarah Semple, “A Fear of the Past: The Place of the Prehistoric Burial Mound in Ideology of Middle and Later Anglo-Saxon England,” World Archaeology 30 (1998), 109-126; “Illustrations of Damnation in Late Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,” Anglo-Saxon England 32 (2003), 231-245 (at 244).

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practices may have had a secondary function of keeping the dead (or their spirits) in the grave.16 In a previous work on the subject I consider a related argument, that the “protection” of the deceased involved the need to re-enforce their spiritual/material boundaries lest the devil infiltrate and ambulate the corpse.17 The archaeology of medieval revenant belief is given much more emphasis in continental scholarship. Leszek Gardeła’s recent work into Viking funerary practices examines the Norse tradition that some categories of the dead enjoyed a second “life” within the burial mound, suggesting that chambered tombs were, as the saga literature intimates, gateways through which certain individuals could communicate with the dead.18 Gardeła notes that while some “deviant” practices such as decapitation provide strong evidence that the deceased was dangerous in some way, others, like the weighing down of the corpse with stones, may indicate a need to protect the dead from the living. Rather than applying a universal interpretation for each type of practice, nonnormative burials should be analyzed on an individual basis.19 Recourse to the extant literary or oral evidence can help prevent a misreading of the archaeological remains. Investigations into the materiality of the Central European “vampire,” for example, often include references to local history and folklore.20 One possible interpretation for the presence of sickles in medieval and post-medieval Polish graves concerns their use as apotropaic devices, with the aim of puncturing the corpse’s heart or neck should it ever have the inclination to rise.21 Such practices occurred in the region well into historical 16

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Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (London, 2005); Roberta Gilchrist, “Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials,” in Medieval Archaeology 52 (2008): 119-159. Stephen Gordon, “Disease, Sin and the Walking Dead in Medieval England, c.1100-1350: A Note on the Documentary and Archaeological Evidence,” in Medicine, Healing and Performance, ed. Stephen Gordon et al. (Oxford, 2014), 55-70. See also Caciola, “Revenants,” 13. Leszek Gardeła, “Dead or Alive? ‘Chamber Graves’ and their Inhabitants in the Old Norse Literature and Viking-Age Archaeology,” in Scandinavian Culture in Medieval Poland, ed. Sławomir Moździoch, Błażej Stanisławski and Przemysław Wizerewski (Wrocław, 2013), 373-393. Leszek Gardeła, “The Dangerous Dead? Rethinking Viking-Age Deviant Burials,” in Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Leszek Słupecki and Rudolf Simek (Vienna, 2013), 99-136. Annette von Stülzebach, “Vampir- und Wiedergängererscheinungen aus Volkskundlicher und Archäologischer Sicht,” Concilium Medii Aevi 1 (1998): 97-121. Andrzej Janowski and Tomasz Kurasiński, “Rolnik, wojownik czy “odmieniec?” Próba interpretacji obecności sierpów w grobach wczesnośredniowiecznych na terenie ziem

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times.22 Taking into account the recent media interest in the “vampires” excavated from Gliwice, Poland (c.1500s)23 and Sozopol, Bulgaria (c.1400s),24 and the “staked” skeleton from Southwell, Nottinghamshire (c.500-700AD),25 postConquest England operates in a remarkable lacuna where the archaeological evidence for − and popular interest in − the fear of the corpse is concerned. And yet, while it is true that the reform of the Latin Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries impacted Western funerary practices and led to an increased belief in the incorporeality of ghosts,26 the above-mentioned extract from William of Newburgh’ Historia provides an insight into the measures taken when “official” corpse-management strategies failed. The habitual belief in the walking dead was difficult to eradicate. “Deviant” burials in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages reflect a fear of the restless corpse, with emphasis on the mechanical (rather than medicomagical) techniques for assuaging a suspect body. The written sources and archaeological case studies from the Anglo-Saxon period and mainland Europe show that practices such as cremation, decapitation, prone burial, and deposition in liminal areas of the landscape may, in certain contexts and experiential circumstances, represent a need to protect the living from the agency of the dead. Given the seeming prevalence of revenant encounters in twelfth-century England – according to William of Newburgh, “fuere qui dicerent talia saepius in Anglia contigisse,” [such things often happened in England],27 with “crebris in re consimili clarebat exemplis,” [frequent examples occurring in similar cases]28 – it is surprising that so few attempts have been made to assess the archaeological truths of these statements.

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polskich,” in Wymiary Inności, ed. Kalina Skora and Tomasz Kurasiński (Łodz, 2010), 79-95; Tracy K. Betsinger and Amy B. Scott, “Governing from the Grave: Vampire Burials and Social Order in Post-Medieval Poland,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24 (2014): 467476. Barber, Vampires, 50. “Roll over Dracula: ‘Vampire Cemetery’ found in Poland,” Der Spiegel, July 22, 2013, [accessed 20 September 2014]. “Vampire Skeletons Found in Bulgaria, Near Black Sea,” BBC Online, 6 June 2012, [accessed 20 September 2014]. “Buried with a Stake through the Heart: The Medieval “Vampire” Burial,” The Telegraph, November 1, 2012, [accessed 22 September 2014]. Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages, trans. Teresa L. Fagan (Chicago, 1998). Newburgh, Historia, 475. Ibid., 476.

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“Indecorum nimis atque indignum,” [undignified and improper]: these are the words William Newburgh attributes to St. Hugh of Avalon (d. 1200), the Bishop of Lincoln, upon being told that peace would not return to an unnamed Buckinghamshire village until “corpore effosso et concremato,” [the body [of the revenant] was dug up and burnt].29 While three of the four narratives from the Historia rerum Anglicarum adhere to this traditional method of dealing with an undead corpse, the exemplum involving Hugh differs in that he demands a scroll of absolution be placed on the dead man’s chest.30 Such goods – further exemplified by the absolution cross found in the grave of bishop Godfrey of Chichester31 and, perhaps, the lead parcel from the east cemetery of St. James’ Priory, Bristol32 – are much easier to detect in the archaeological record than burnt human remains. Indeed, if the normal procedure was “cineres quoque disperserunt,” [to scatter the ashes to the wind], as William notes in the conclusion of his third narrative,33 then the archaeological attestation of the burning of revenants is almost impossible. Conspicuously empty coffins, such as the examples found in the graveyard of St. Peter’s Church in Barton-Upon-Humber (c.1200), provoke tantalizing albeit unprovable suppositions that their previous occupants were exhumed and put to the flame.34 However, as the anthropological literature testifies35 and Howard Williams notes in his investigation of Early Anglo-Saxon death rites,36 the total dissolution of the body was a dif29 30

31

32 33 34 35

36

Ibid., 475. A similar method of dealing with a troublesome ghost can be discerned in Story II from the Byland Abbey narratives (c.1400). See M. R. James, “Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories,” English Historical Review 37 (1922): 413-422 (at 415-418). Elisabeth Okasha, “The Lead Cross of Bishop Godfrey of Chichester,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 134 (1996): 63-69. The apotropaic function of grave crosses can be discerned in a revenant narrative from Walter Map’s De nugis curialium. Although Map’s description of Roger the Bishop of Worcester (d. 1179) ordering that a cross be placed in the grave of a wandering “wretch” (miseri) does not specify the material from which the device was made, it is feasible that it was indeed made from lead. See Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ed. and trans. M. R. James; revised C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), 204205. Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, 200. Newburgh, Historia, 479. Warwick Rodwell and Kirsty Rodwell, “St. Peter’s Church, Barton-Upon-Humber: Excavation and Structural Study, 1978-81,” Antiquities Journal 62 (1982): 283-315 (at 301). Jane Downes, “Cremation: A Spectacle and a Journey,” in The Loved Body’s Corruption: Archaeological Contributions to the Study of Human Mortality, ed. Jane Downes and Anthony Pollard (Glasgow, 1999), 19-29. Howard Williams, “Death Warmed Up: The Agency of Bodies and Bones in Early AngloSaxon Cremation Rites,” Journal of Material Culture, 9 (2004): 263-291.

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ficult process. The resources needed to burn the corpse down to its constituent parts were immense, taking up to ten hours, with the pyre reaching a temperature of 1200°C. In local contexts, where the reactions to the walking dead were spontaneous and the danger required an immediate response, building a pyre was, in most cases, unfeasible. Henry More’s retelling of a 1591 report that the corpse of a Breslau (Wrocław) shoemaker was “burnt to ashes [the remains] swept together and put into a sack [and] poured into a river” suggests, however obliquely, that the bone fragments were problematically large, even given the fuel resources available in such a prominent town as Breslau.37 Decapitation, dismemberment, and the removal of the heart are acts of dissolution that are just as symbolically potent as cremation but much easier to perform. Although the revenant in the Historia’s final revenant narrative is subject to full bodily cremation, the removal of the heart is the means by which it loses its uncanny resistance to fire (cadaver pestiferum ardere non posse nisi corde extracto).38 Likewise, it is notable that the Breslau revenant is dismembered and has its heart removed before it is put on the pyre.39 A variation of this technique can be discerned in an exemplum from Geoffrey of Burton’s Vita sancte Moduenne virginis (c.1140s), a source that also makes reference to the more archaeologically identifiable practice of decapitating the corpse and placing the head between its legs. Employed as a means of advertising the efficacy of Modwenna’s cult, Geoffrey’s exemplum details the post-mortem activities of two peasants from the village of Stapenhill, Burton-upon-Trent, who, in 1090, leave the service of Burton Abbey, travel to nearby Drakelow, and swear fealty to the local secular Lord, Roger de Poitevin. Following the peasants’ sudden deaths (wrought, it seems, by the abbot’s petitions to Modwenna), their corpses take to roaming the streets of Drakelow, spreading death and disease in their wake: Porro aliqui pertimescentes prefatos mortuos, qui et ad uesperas et in noctibus quasi archas ligneas sicut predictum est phantastice super colla gestabant, accepta licentia ab episcopo, abierunt ad supulcra eorum et diffoderunt eos et inuenerunt adhuc integros, pannis tamen lineis super ora deformissime cruentatis, et abscisa capita in ipsis tumulis posuerunt inter ipsorum crura et, abruptis cordibus carneis de cadaueribus rursum­ que de terra coopertis corporibus, portauerunt corda carnea ad locum qui Dodefreseford nuncupatur ibique combusserunt ea a mane usque ad 37 38 39

More, An Antidote Against Atheism, 213. Newburgh, Historia, 482. More, An Antidote Against Atheism, 213.

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uesperam, que tandem cremata et ueluti multum coacta cum maximo sonitu uix ad ultimum crepuerunt et confestim malignum spiritum tanquam coruum uolantem de ignibus uniuersi qui aderant uisibiliter conspexerunt. Mox autem postquam hec facta sunt cessauerunt simul et mortalitas et phantasia. [Men were living in terror of the phantom dead men who carried their wooden coffins on their shoulders every evening and night, as has been described, and they received permission from the abbot to go to their graves and dig them up. They found them intact, but the linen cloths over their faces were stained with blood. They cut off the men’s heads and placed them in the grave between their legs, tore out their hearts from their corpses, and covered the bodies with earth again. They brought the hearts to the place called Dodefreseford and there burned them from morning until evening. When they had been burnt up, they cracked with a great sound and everyone there saw an evil spirit in the form of a crow fly from the flames. Soon after this was done both the disease and the phantoms ceased.] 40 Hagiography is not the only genre that references this type of practice. While the satirical nature of Walter Map’s De nugis curialium (c.1182) preludes a moralistic reading of its revenant stories, the use of decapitation as a habitual response to the undead can be inferred from a remark − attributed to Gilbert Foliot, then Bishop of Hereford (1148-63) − that a Welsh revenant be “collo reciso fossorio,” [cut through the neck with a spade] before being sprinkled with holy water.41 Such descriptions are not confined to Anglo-Norman literature. The fight between Grettir and Glam in Grettis Saga concludes with the eponymous hero placing the draugr’s head between its thighs, an action that seems to keep the body in check before it was fully cremated.42 Book Five of Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (c.1180-1208) recounts events which purportedly took place during the first century AD. One of the book’s most evocative episodes concerns the torments suffered by a certain Asmund who, bound by oath, is buried alive in the barrow of his friend, Asvith. Due to the ill-timed nature of Asvith’s death, it is not long before his corpse begins to stir and, having consumed the horse and dog carcasses that had been placed 40 41 42

Geoffrey of Burton, Life and Miracles of St Modwenna, ed. and trans. Robert Bartlett (Oxford, 2002), 196-197. Map, De Nugis, 202-203. The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 99.

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Figure 4.1 Grave 9 from the AngloSaxon cemetery at Chadlington, Oxfordshire, showing a middle-aged male with the skull placed between the knee joints (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford).

within the tomb, violently attacks his friend. On being rescued from the mound by grave robbers, Asmund explains that he has managed to quell the revenant “nam ferro secui mox caput eius perfodique nocens stipite corpus,” [by scyth[ing] off his head with my sword and thrust[ing] a stake through its wicked body].43 Archaeological analogues to these decapitation narratives, specifically the act of placing the head between the legs, cover a similarly wide temporal/geographical spectrum. Skeleton 48 from the Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Mitcham, Surrey (c.450-600), was found with a skull near its ankles. However, given that the upper half of the body was almost completely destroyed, save for a few ribs and vertebrae, there was some doubt among the excavators as to whether the skull actually belonged to the associated skeleton.44 A much less ambiguous case study appears in a cemetery unearthed near Chadlington, Oxfordshire 43 44

Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes: Books I–IX, 5.11.3-4, trans. Peter Fisher, ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson (Cambridge, 1979), 150-151. Harold F. Bidder and W. L. H. Duckworth, “Excavations in an Anglo-Saxon Burial Ground in Mitcham, Surrey,” Archaeologia 60 (1906): 49-68.

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(c.600-700s). Grave 9 contained the decapitated remains of a middle-aged male whose skull had been pointedly positioned between the knee joints (Fig. 4.1). Although the act seems to have been deliberate, at the time of the excavation it was undetermined as to whether the removal of the head was the cause of death (i.e. an execution) or took place post-mortem. If the latter was indeed the case, it may well have been a strategy for keeping the corpse in the grave.45 The ongoing excavations at Gliwice, Poland (c.1500), have unearthed four skeletons that were subjected to similar treatment. It should be noted, however, that despite the proliferation of images and news items devoted to these “vampires,” the findings have yet to be published.46 While the post-Conquest data may not be as abundant or clearly defined as that from the Anglo-Saxon period or continental Europe, there is enough evidence to suggest that Geoffrey of Burton and Walter Map were not merely regurgitating old folk knowledge and stock genre tropes. The juvenile skeleton C8 from the cemetery of St. Mary Spital, London (c.1200-1300), was buried with the skull near its feet. Roberta Gilchrist acknowledges the feasibility of the excavators’ initial interpretation that the body was interred after decomposition had begun to take place, with the head already separated from the torso,47 but suggests that the act of decapitation could also have been intentional, aimed at managing the perceived “danger” presented by the deceased.48 A similar type of inhumation was discovered in a roadside burial ground in Brandon, Suffolk. Not only was the skull of Skeleton 0002 found between its tibia bones, but the body had been interred in a north-south position, contrasting with the east-west alignment used for normative Christian burials. The liminal location of the graves, combined with the lack of churches in the vicinity, suggests that the cemetery operated as a gallows site. Radiocarbon dating estimates that the cemetery was in use between the late eleventh and early thirteenth centuries, contemporaneous with the written Anglo-Norman sources.49 45 46

47 48 49

E. T. Leeds, “Two Saxon Cemeteries in North Oxfordshire,” Oxoniensia 5 (1940): 21-30. As an aside, there seems to be no nuance of interpretation in the popular media when differentiating between “vampires” and criminals. The possibility that sinners could become “restless” after death and that decapitation was at once an act of humiliation and protection cannot be discounted. Christopher Thomas, Barney Sloane and Christopher Phillpotts, Excavations at the Priory and Hospital of St. Mary Spital, London (London, 1997), 122. Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, 201. Andrew Tester, “46-48 Woodcock Rise, Brandon. A Report on the Archaeological Exca­ vation 2003.” (Unpublished Archive Report: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service Rep No. 2004/25, 2004), 11.

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Whether through the piercing of the flesh with stakes or the use of heavy weights on the chest, the need to keep the body in the ground represented a fundamental technique for dealing with the restless dead.50 Burchard of Worms, writing in his penitential, the Corrector (c.1020), bemoans the Germanic practice of impaling unbaptized infants to the ground, asking: Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres instinctu diaboli facere solent? Cum aliquis infans sine baptismo mortuus fuerit, tollunt cadaver parvuli, et ponunt in aliquo secreto loco, et palo corpusculum ejus transfigunt, dicentes, si sic non fecissent, quod infantulus surgeret, et multos laedere posset? [Hast thou done what some women do at the instigation of the devil? When any child has died without baptism they take the corpse of the little one and place it in some secret place and transfix it with a stake, saying that if they did not do so the child would rise up and injure many?] 51 Neplach of Opatovice makes further allusions to the impalement of the restless corpse. Aside from the previously-mentioned Chronicon extract − which makes an interesting reference to the fact that the vampire is able to terrorize the Lewin residents despite being “transfixa,” [transfixed] − Neplach also records the post-mortem activities of a shepherd called Myslata, who died in the vicinity of Bohemian town of Cadan (Kadaň) in 1336. Interestingly, the revenant retains the power of speech, causing “quemcumque ex nomine in nocte vocabat, infra octo dies moriebatur,” [anyone who he called by name at night to die within eight days]. Again, it seems that Myslata was considered dangerous even after he is “fuisset cum palo transfixus,” [impaled by a stake], for his remains are exhumed and taken by cart to a nearby pyre, to be cremated. Moments before the pyre is set alight, a bystander pokes the body with a stick, whereupon “continuo erupit cruor sicut de vase,” [blood poured out from him as from a vessel].52 A similar turn of events appears in Johann Flückinger’s Visum et Repertum (1732), written some four hundred years after Neplach’s Chronicon. 50 51

52

Barber, Vampires, 143. Burchard, Decretum, XIX. v. 180, in John T. McNeill and Helen M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1965), 339; Burchardi Vormatiensis Episcopi, Opera, PL 140 (Paris, 1880), col. 974D. Neplach, Chronicon, 480. Geoffrey of Burton and Walter Map also note the “contagious” nature of the revenant’s speech. The Drakelow revenants speak to their fellow villagers, shouting “Promouete, citius promouete! Agite, agite et uenite!” [Move, quickly, move! Get going! Come!], after which all but three of them succumb to plague. The victims of the

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Flückinger, a field surgeon in the Austrian army, is tasked by Emperor Charles VI to uncover the truth surrounding reports of a “vampire epidemic” that had been ravaging the Serbian village of Medvegia (c.1728), near Belgrade. Upon his arrival in Medvegia, Flückinger is told the story of Arnold Paole, whose death and subsequent resurrection was said to be the cause of the entire epidemic. Forty days after his death, during which time he kills at least four people, Paole’s body is exhumed. With the corpse seemingly untouched by decay and the coffin covered in fresh blood − confirming Paole’s status as a vampire − the heart is pierced with a stake, after which the body is cremated and the ashes re-deposited in the grave. Flückinger ends the account by referring to the local belief in the contagious nature of vampirism, noting that those who were killed by Paole were liable to become undead agents themselves.53 Aside from William of Newburgh’s Historia, the medieval English sources do not make much reference to the piercing of the suspect corpse or, indeed, to its bloated and bloody nature. According to William, the exhumation of the Anantis (Alnwick) revenant and the revelation of its “distentum turgentique,” [swollen and turgid] appearance prompted “nec territi juvenes, quos ira stimulabat, vulnus exanimi corpori intulerunt: ex quo tantus continuo sanguis effluxit ut intelligeretur sanguisuga fuisse multorum,” [two young men [to] inflict a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons].54 The flow of “fresh” blood from the corpse recalls the Neplach and Flückinger narratives, above. Given that William does not specify how exactly the men inflicted the injuries upon the corpse, it is likely that they hit it with their spades (ligone) rather than using stakes or poles created for the purpose. Impalement, then, seems to have been a predominantly continental practice, used either pre-emptively (i.e. when restlessness was suspected but not confirmed, such as in the case of Burchard’s unbaptized infants) or else as a means of testing the corpse for signs of vitality before the final act of cremation. This said, a recent reappraisal of the Anglo-Saxon deviant burial discovered in a narrow trench in Southwell, Nottinghamshire (c.700), suggests that the use of stakes may not have been unusual in English contexts. The right ankle, left shoulder, and chest cavity of the skeleton were found to have been

53 54

Welsh revenant, meanwhile, fall sick and die within three days of being “called” (vocati). See Burton, Modwenna, 196-197; Map, De Nugis, 202-203. Johann Flückinger, Visum et Repertum (Nuremberg, 1732). Newburgh, Historia, 481-482.

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impaled by iron nails (Fig. 4.2).55 While caution must be shown when interpreting such finds as unequivocal evidence of revenant activity – the culturally-loaded term “vampire” is pointedly used in media articles relating to this discovery56 – it should be noted that at the time of deposition the gravesite may have been waterlogged. As such it cannot be discounted that the deceased was buried (or, more precisely, re-buried) in unhallowed ground.57 Placing a boulder or slab on the chest is a much more archaeologically identifiable technique for keeping the corpse in the grave, with numerous examples being reported. Burial 78 (c.1000s) from the churchyard of St. Martin’s in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, was found with a single flat stone deliberately positioned under its chin.58 Unusually, the head was also flanked by two further disarticulated skulls, a variation, perhaps, of the popular Anglo-Saxon use of “pillow stones” (Fig. 4.3).59 Contemporaneous graves from Raunds, North­ amptonshire, and St. Nicholas Shambles, London, also contain evidence for the covering of the body with stones.60 The discovery of juvenile burial F1245 in the cemetery at Haverhill, Suffolk (c.1200-1400), confirms that the practice of using heavy bricks to weigh down the corpse was a habit that survived well into

55 56 57

58

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60

C. M. Daniels, “Excavation on the Site of the Roman Villa at Southwell, 1959,” Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire 70 (1966): 13-33. See n. 25. Matthew Beresford, “The Dangerous Dead: The Early Medieval Deviant Burial at Southwell, Nottinghamshire in a Wider Context,” MBArchaeology Local Heritage Series 3 (2012): 1-16 (at 14). Iain Soden, “Archaeological Excavations at the former St. Martin’s Churchyard, Walling­ ford, 2003-4,” (Archaeological Date Service Grey Literature Library: Northamptonshire Ar­chaeology Report 10/157, 2010), 68. The contradicting symbolism of this burial highlights the problems involved in using the binary definitions “good” and “bad” death. The use of pillow stones has been seen generally as a “positive” interpolation of the burial rite. Pillow-stones protected the head, which theologians such as Isidore of Seville and John Chrysostom insisted was the seat of the intellect and the principal member of the body. Protecting the head in such a way maintained a sense of bodily/spiritual integrity, ensured that the deceased did not change position in the grave, and allowed them to rise facing east come the Last Judgement. See Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, XI. i. 25, ed. and trans. S. A. Barney (Cambridge, 2006), 232; St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessa­ lonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA, 1964), 99. Andy Boddington, “Raunds, Northamptonshire: Analysis of a Country Churchyard,” World Archaeology 18 (1987): 411-425 (at 422); William J. White, Skeletal Remains from the Cemetery of St. Nicholas Shambles, City of London (London, 1988), 25.

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Figure 4.2 The iron studs that pierced the shoulder, ankle and heart of the Southwell deviant burial (by permission of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire).

Figure 4.3 Burial 78 from St. Martin’s churchyard in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, with a stone slab placed on the chest and the head flanked by disarticulated skulls (by permission of MOLA Northampton).

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the High Middle Ages.61 The cemetery of St. Peter’s in Leicester, meanwhile, contained two bodies, SK673 (a juvenile, c.1300) and SK665 (a young adult, c.1300), that were also weighed down by boulders.62 Nor was the act of weighing down a corpse confined to England. Graves 21 and 34 from a recently discovered cemetery at Newhall in Ross & Cromarty, Scotland (c.1100), contained infant skeletons that had been overlain with large sandstone blocks.63 If, according to Burchard, the binding of unbaptized infants to the grave was against the will of the Church, then the use of heavy stone blocks may have been seen to be an acceptable local compromise – a less gruesome iteration of staking. Exact written analogues for the weighting (as opposed to the staking) of the dangerous body are difficult to ascertain. Too heavy and bloated to be carried to a churchyard, the body of Glam from Grettis Saga is buried in marginal land under a cairn of stones. This, however, fails to stop him from rising.64 As Andrew Reynolds notes, William of Malmesbury’s account of the post-mortem fate of the Witch of Berkeley (d. 1065) contains motifs that, however exaggerated, seem suggestive of the use of weights in cases of dubious death. Having learnt of the death of one of her sons and already resigned to the fate which awaited her soul, the witch entreats her remaining children to protect her body against her “strongest foes” (that is, demons) when she herself succumbs to death. She implores them to: Insuite me corio ceruino deinde in sarcofago lapideo supinate, operculum plumbo et ferro constringite; super haec lapidem tribus catenis ferreis magni scilicet ponderis, circumdate [...] Ita, si tribus noctibus secure iacuero quarto die infodite matrem uestram humo [Sew up my corpse in the skin of a stag; lay it on its back in a stone coffin; fasten down the lid with lead and iron; on this lay a stone, bound round with three irons of enormous weight [...] if I lie thus secure for three nights, on the fourth day bury your mother in the ground.] 61 62

63

64

Jon Murray, “Excavation of a Medieval Cemetery at Crowland Road, Haverhill,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 41 (2005): 5-42 (at 16). Tony Gnanaratnam, “The Excavation of St. Peter’s Church and Graveyard, Vaughan Way, Leicester 2004-2006, vol. I: Stratigraphic Sequence.” (Unpublished Archive Report: ULAS Report No 2009-156, 2009), 128-129. David Reed, “The Excavation of a Cemetery and Putative Chapel Site at Newhall Point, Balblair, Ross & Cromarty, 1985,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 125 (1995): 779-791 (at 786). The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 90.

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Despite these provisions, on the third and final day the devil rips her corpse from the coffin and vanishes. Her cries for assistance are so loud, so “miserabiles,” [pitiable] that they are heard from almost four miles away.65 A subtextual reading of this passage reveals a number of important issues regarding the treatment of the deviant dead: a body that is in danger of being accosted and ambulated by demons needs to be restrained in the coffin; weights are the most obvious method of accomplishing this task and, if judging by the witch’s screams, the corpse itself seems to retain some sort of vestigum vitae in the grave. Traces of these beliefs can be discerned in the extant revenant stories as well as the archaeological record. William of Newburgh’s statement that it was believed the corpse moved due to “ope­ratione, ut creditur, sathanae,” [the contrivance of Satan]66 is agonizingly ambiguous: do demons move within the dead, as per traditional Augustinian teachings, or does “contrivance” allude to external demonic movement of bodies that retained a residue of personhood, as suggested by the Witch of Berkeley narrative? Whatever the answer, staking/weighting was a practice that suited every potential outcome. The discovery that the corpse had chewed on its burial shroud, its mouth covered in blood, is one of the most common narratological elements to be found in medieval and early modern revenant stories. Paul Barber proposes a biological explanation that suggests that the escape of blood-flecked fluid from the orifices − forced from the body by the pressure of the methane produced during decay − can make it seem as though the corpse has recently fed. Similarly, the act of mastication is said to be a function of “capillary attraction on the shroud” as the fluids leaked from the mouth.67 Geoffrey of Burton’s description that the bodies of Drakelow peasants were found intact, “pannis tamen lineis super ora deformissime cruentatis,” [but the linen cloths over their faces were stained with blood] certainly reflects Barber’s model. William of Newburgh notes something similar when discussing the exhumation of the Anantis revenant: “facie rubenti turgentique supra modum. Sudarium vero, quo obvolutum fuerat, conscissum penitus videbatur,” [its countenance [was] turgid and suffused with blood, while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces]. The act of shroud-eating is much more explicit in the above-mentioned extract than in Neplach of Opotovice’s Chronicon, 65 66 67

William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors; completed by R. M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), 378-379. Newburgh, Historia, 476. Paul Barber, “Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire,” Journal of Folklore Research 24 (1987): 1-32, esp. 11.

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which describes the Lewin revenant as having “devoraverat slogerium proprium plus quam medium,” [devoured more than half of her veil]. Early modern treatises on the masticating dead make concerted attempts to analyze the agency behind the phenomenon. Part two of Heinrich Kormann’s De Miraculis Mortuorum (1610) discusses how God may have permitted evil spirits to ambulate the body, the results of which include the seemingly-revitalized corpse chewing on its burial shroud.68 Agreeing with Kornmann that the principal cause of post-mortem mastication is the agency of the devil, Phillip Rohr’s De Masticatione Mortuorum (1679) includes a brief survey of the historical evidence, from the 1344 Lewin encounter to oral testimony the author himself heard from close confidants.69 Other contemporary treatises, such as C. F. Garmann’s De Miraculis Mortuorum (1670) also devote a part of their discussions to the chewing actions made by the corpse. Both Rohr and Garmann reference the folkloric practice – apparently still flourishing in lateseventeenth century Saxony – of placing stones or coins in the mouth of the deceased, with the aim of providing an outlet for the corpse’s “hunger.” Quoting testimony collected by Kornmann, Garmann notes that Jewish skulls “que ante aliquot centum annos sepulta, aureum nummum in ore habentia,” [buried centuries ago were found to contain gold coins in their oral cavities],70 giving the practice a decidedly medieval provenance. Given the weight of historical data, it is perhaps unsurprising that archaeologists have been quick to interpret any skull found with an object between its teeth as evidence of restlessness or vampirism. Emilio Nuzzolese and Matteo Borrini, the excavators of a recent and well-publicized discovery of a late medieval “vampire” in Lazzaretto Nuovo, Venice (c.1500s), determined it to be the first burial of its type to be archaeologically attested in the field.71 While their claims to be the first to explore the bioarchaeology of vampirism may not be entirely accurate – see, for example, the work conducted by Anastasia Tsaliki, Paul Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni 72 – Nuzzolese and Borrini nonetheless highlight the problem of confronting evidence which seems to depend 68 69 70 71

72

Heinrich Kornmann, De Miraculis Mortuorum (Frankfurt, 1610). Phillip Rohr, Dissertatio Historico-Philosophica de Masticatione Mortuorum (Leipzig, 1679). C. F. Garmann, De Miraculis Mortuorum (Leipzig, 1670), 28. Emilio Nuzzolese and Matteo Borrini, “Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Casework of “Vampire” Skeletal Remains in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus,” Journal of Forensic Science 55 (2010): 1634-1637. Anastasia Tsaliki, “Unusual Burials and Necrophobia: An Insight into the Burial Archaeology of Fear,” in Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record, ed. Eileen M. Murphy (Oxford, 2008), 1-16; Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni, “Brief Communication:

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solely on folklore or historiography for interpretation. The female skeleton now known as the “Venice Vampire” possesses no significant osteological or morphological defects and was buried in the normative east-west supine position. Interred in a single grave within a larger plague cemetery, the “vampire” shows no particular anomalies for a burial-rhetoric of its type, save for the insertion of a brick into the oral cavity. Despite seeming to corroborate the belief that revenant activity became much more pronounced in times of disease – indeed, masticating corpses were sometimes believed to cause the epidemic73 – it has been suggested that the excavators may have been too quick to ascribe a “vampiric” explanation to this particular burial. The possibility that the slab (which was unusually large) accidently became lodged in the oral cavity after decomposition cannot be discounted, especially considering the amount of loose bricks in the surrounding earth and the fact that the brick seems to have been indented vertically in the mouth, supported by sediment. The lack of damage to the teeth is also suggestive of a lack of human agency.74 This is not to suggest that all such cases can be explained by the processes of taphonomy. Deliberate insertion, perhaps as a means to placate the agency of the deceased, remains a possibility in certain contexts. Two adult male skeletons (c.700) uncovered during excavations at the ecclesiastical complex at Kilteasheen in County Roscommon, Ireland, were found to have had small stones inserted into their oral cavities. Although the excavation report has yet to be fully published, these bodies are believed to represent the only extant examples of such a practice occurring in Ireland.75 The media interest afforded to the Kilteasheen “vampires” − see, for example, the television documentary on the subject76− contrasts sharply with that given to a similar set of burials

73 74

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Bioarchaeological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 94 (1994): 269-274. Rohr, De Masticatione Mortuorum, Chaps. 12-13. Simona Minozzi, Antonio Fornaciari and Gino Fornaciari, “Commentary on E. Nuzzolese and M. Borrini Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Casework of “Vampire” Skeletal Remains, in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus. J. Forensic Sci. 2010; 55 (6): 1634-1637,” Journal of Forensic Science 57 (2012): 843-844. “Documentary Focus on Unique Deviant Burial Find,” IT Sligo, September 12, 2011, [accessed 2 October 2014]. Mysteries of The Vampire Skeletons: Revealed, Documentary, produced by Mark Fielder (London, UK: Channel 5, 2011).

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Figure 4.4 Skeleton 5053 from St. Nicholas Shambles, London, with a pebble placed in the oral cavity (by permission of the Museum of London).

from the early eleventh-century parish graveyard at Fillingham, Lincolnshire.77 Trench 5 revealed six east-west supine inhumations, four of which had pillow stones framing their skulls. The oral cavity of Skeleton 004 had been prised open and a brick placed within. Two small, flat stones had also been placed over the eye sockets.78 The principal excavators, Jo Buckberry and Dawn Hadley, do not go into much detail with regard to the interpretation of this burial, stating that the placement of the stones in the skull was “to act as a weight to prevent the person from ‘rising up’,”79 As feasible as this explanation might be, the very act of putting cobbles in the mouth suggests that there were other aspects of the corpse (its “voice?”) that gave the local populace cause for concern. Numerous bodies with pebbles placed in their mouths were also discovered in the cemeteries of St. Nicholas Shambles (c.1000−c.1200),80 and St. Margaret Fyebriggate in Norwich (c.1240-1468). It is interesting to note that four of the five skulls that had been subject to the practice at St. Nicholas Shambles belonged to middle-aged females (Skeletons 5053, 5189, 5192, 5240), with the fifth (skeleton 5195) a mature male, all of whom were buried in the northern part of the churchyard (Fig. 4.4). Rather than view the practice in a negative, apotropaic light, William J. White believes that it may symbolize part of the “soul-scot,” the fee paid by the dead person’s estate to the clergy, usually at the open grave.81 Contextual differences, combined with changes in secular 77 78 79 80 81

J. L. Buckberry and D. M. Hadley, “Fieldwork at Chapel Road, Fillingham,” Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 36 (2001): 11-18. Ibid., 15-16. Ibid., 16. White, The Cemetery of St. Nicholas Shambles, 25-26. Ibid., 26.

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and canon law following the Conquest, make it difficult to relate such a theory to the evidence from St. Margaret Fybriggate, which was a known burial ground for deviants and criminals.82 The placement of a coin in the mouth of SK220 from St. Peter’s, Leicester, may equally have negative connotations.83 Being buried within the bellcote (thus symbolizing the individual’s relatively high status) does not preclude the possibility that the deceased was susceptible to walking after death. According to the anonymous Byland Abbey monk, James Tankerley, a former rector of the church of Kirby, was buried in front of Byland’s Chapter House but nonetheless emerged each night to attack his former concubine, “exsufflauit,” [blowing out] her eye.84 Burial within close vicinity of the church building was no guarantee that the body was truly “safe.” In Central European contexts, suspect corpses (whether because they lived a sinful life or died an ill-timed death) were liable to be infiltrated by demons and also to chew on their burial shrouds, a precursor to their rising from the grave to sate their “hunger” through more violent and deadly means. The descriptor William of Newburgh uses to refer to the Anantis revenant – sanguisuga (“leech” or “bloodsucker”85) – provides an indication, however subtextual, that the English undead also fed on and enervated their victims. A causal relationship is also apparent in insular medieval contexts between the outbreak of disease (perhaps tuberculosis?) and recent cases of “bad death.”86 Such crises demanded an extra ritual response from the local community. The bloodied, tattered rags removed from the faces of the Anantis and Drakelow revenants confirmed just how dangerous a masticating and disease-spreading corpse could be. Placing objects in the mouth not only prevented the corpse from chewing on its shroud (or potential victim), but also protected the local community from the malign effects of its infectious breath and speech. The “haustu pestilenti,” [pestiferous inhalations] of the Anantis revenant caused the townsfolk to fall sick and die, much the same way as the Cadan, Drakelow, and Herefordshire revenants actively “called” their victims into death.87 The mouth of the suspect corpse was a dangerous thing indeed and needed to be dealt with accordingly. If staking, weighting and decapitation served as a 82 83 84 85 86 87

Ann Stirland, Criminals and Paupers: The Graveyard of St. Margaret Fyebriggate in Combusto, Norwich, East Anglian Archaeology, Report No. 129 (Norwich, 2009). Gnanaratnam, “St. Peter’s,” 144. James, “Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories,” 418. Blair, “The Dangerous Dead,” 541. For the relationship between aetiology of tuberculosis and the agency of the undead corpse, see Sledzik and Bellantoni, “The New England Vampire,” 273. See n. 52; Newburgh, Historia, 481; Burton, Modwenna, 196-197; Neplach, Chronicon, 480; Map, De Nugis, 202-203.

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means to keep the physical body in the ground, then disease prevention seems to have been the primary function for the insertion of stones and coins into the oral cavity. In this way, the revenant was unable to “evocare,” [summon], infect, and kill its intended victims. Prone burial is one of the most common types of deviant burial to be found in the insular archaeological record, especially in Anglo-Saxon contexts.88 It is also the most problematic where the intentionality of the act is concerned. Carelessness during the funerary performance, expediency in times of mass burial, secondary disturbance, and the possibility that the corpse could have moved or convulsed in the grave may account for a significant number of the non-supine burials thus far discovered.89 Literary analogues dating to the medieval period are appropriately scarce. An oblique reference can be discerned in chapter twenty-six of Abbot Suger’s Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis (c.1148). Discussing the architecture amendments made to the entrance of St. Denis, the abbot explains how: et deponentes augmentum quoddam, quod a Karolo Magno factum perhibebatur honesta satis occasione (quia pater suus Pipinus imperator extra in introitu valvarum pro peccatis patris sui Karoli Martelli prostratum se sepeliri, non supinum, fecerat), ibidem manum apposuimus [we tore down a certain addition asserted to have been made by Charlemagne on a very honourable occasion (for his father, the Emperor Pepin, had commanded that he be buried, for the sins of his father Charles Martel, outside the entrance with the doors, face downward and not recumbent); and we set our hand to this part.]90 In Abbot Suger’s view, to be buried “non supinum” [face downward] was a sign of familial transgression, a way for Pepin to assuage the negative effects of Charles Martel’s sin. Cross-cultural analogies suggest that prone burial was an almost universal technique for differentiating, or “othering,” the corpse.91 The concept of “difference” can also refer to the ways in which the individuals themselves were expected to behave after death. As Andrew Reynolds and Paul 88 89 90 91

Reynolds, Deviant Burial Customs, 68-75. Moreno Tiziani, “Vampires and Vampirism: Pathological Roots of a Myth,” Antrocom 5 (2009): 133-137. Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd ed., chap. 25, ed. trans. and annotated Erwin Panofsky (Princeton, NJ, 1979), 44-45. Caroline Arcini, “Burial Face Down,” Current Archaeology 231 (2009): 30-35.

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Barber note, sufferers of “bad” death, whether in the British Isles or the continent, were often buried face down to prevent their corpses from rising.92 In circumstances where there was fear surrounding the agency of the deceased and the humiliation/judicial punishment of the corpse was a secondary concern,93 prone burial, like weighting, should be seen as a preventative and not as an ultimate apotropaic response. The final measure, cremation, was reserved for when these initial devices failed and the danger – the spread of the revenant’s pestilence – became much more explicit. A late seventh-century inhumation from the Bay of Skaill, Orkney, acts as a pointed example in this regard. Not only was the skeleton of the young male buried face down, but the hands were bound in front of its chest and the grave, a cist, was located on the very edge of a cliff-face.94 The bound extremities and deposition in a liminal area of the landscape are pointed apotropaic practices in themselves. Taken together, this “triple-bind” was a highly deviant burial pattern, reflecting the degree of danger that the corpse represented to the living. It can be hypothesized that these protective measures were sufficient to keep the anonymous “outcast” in the grave and precluded the need for cremation.95 As noted above, a significant number of extant Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries contain bodies that had been interred in a prone position.96 Evidence for such a practice in the later Middle Ages is much less prevalent than in these earlier judicial contexts. A single non-supine burial (SK1023, Fig. 4.5) was discovered in the cemetery of St. Peter’s Leicester (c.1300). Due to the condition of the body, the excavators were unable to determine whether this was an intentional act or a mistake during the process of deposition.97 If carelessness was indeed the cause, then similar mistakes should have been recognizable among the one thousand, six-hundred bodies that were recorded during excavation.98 The uniqueness of this burial suggests that the deceased, a middle-aged male, was considered suspicious or dangerous in some way. Similarly, an infant buried face downwards in the cemetery of St. Mary Spital may have been seen as 92 93 94

95 96 97 98

Reynolds, Deviant Burial Customs, 90; Barber, Vampires, 115. Reynolds, Deviant Burial Customs, 69. Heather F. James, “Excavations of a Medieval Cemetery at Skaill House, and a Cist in the Bay of Skaill, Sandwick, Orkney,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 129 (1999): 753-777 (at 772). James, “Skaill House,” 773. Reynolds, Deviant Burial Customs, 104-127. Gnanaratnam, “St. Peter’s,” 134. Harriet Jacklin, “The Excavation of St. Peter’s Church and Graveyard, Vaughan Way, Leicester 2004-2006, vol. III: Skeletal Analysis,” (Unpublished Archive Report: ULAS Report No 2009-047), 104.

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Figure 4.5 Prone burial SK1023 from the cemetery of St. Peter’s, Leicester (by permission of University of Leicester Archaeological Services).

“not fully human,” especially if they died without receiving baptism.99 The cemetery at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, also contained a single prone burial, with the unsexed skeleton (Sk 7) dating to the fourteenth or fifteenth century.100 Unlike the isolated grave from the Bay of Skaill, the Holyrood, St. Mary Spital and Leicester inhumations were interred among normative supine burials and displayed no other signs of deviance. Although its relative scarcity suggests that prone burial was a minority rite in this era, it would be unwise to dismiss the possibility that excavation biases and the inability to conduct investigations in “active” graveyards have impacted on the archaeological attestation of such burials. The practice may not have been rare as the extant evidence indicates. Such constraints may also explain the relative dearth of weighted and decapitated remains from later medieval contexts. Whereas burial in the churchyard provides an indication that, initially at least, the deceased’s soul was considered worthy of salvation – even if preventative measures were sometimes needed to keep the body in the grave – (re) burial in unconsecrated ground was a powerful and unambiguous statement 99 100

Thomas, St. Mary Spital, 117. Susan Bain, “Excavation of a Medieval Cemetery at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 128 (1998): 1047-1077 (at 1054).

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that the deceased had been expelled from the wider Christian community. Like prone burial, it is a practice that is especially apparent in Anglo-Saxon contexts. The deposition of bodies in “heathen burial grounds” is believed to have emerged as a way of demarcating hundred boundaries and advertising the efficacy of law within a judicial area. However, the religious connotations of liminal burial did not go unrealized by the secular and ecclesiastical authorities of the day.101 The burial of outcasts in barrows or crossroads was not purely about temporal punishment. Considering the influence of Archbishop Wulfstan (d. 1023) in drawing up the law codes for both Æthelred II and Cnut – mutilation being conceived as an act of penitence as well as secular punishment – the secular and religious readings of the body tend to converge.102 Homily IX from the Vercelli Manuscript (c.1000) describes how “exile” (wræc) was considered one of “fif onlicnessa be helle gryre,” [the five earthly deaths analogous to the horrors of hell].103 The exile of the deceased for their temporal transgressions signify their exile from the heavenly community and, ultimately, their damnation. As Sarah Semple notes, folios 71v and 72r from BL MS Harley 603 (c.1000) appear to depict demons, pitchforks in hand, presiding over a barrow-like Hellscape teeming with the executed, or exiled, dead.104 The use of the term eorðscræfe (“earth-hell” or “earth-grave” [barrow], l.28) to describe the place of banishment in the Old English poem The Wife’s Lament (c.1000) similarly evokes the late Anglo-Saxon fusion of liminal landscapes, living-death and damnation. According to some readings of the poem, the wife – or, more precisely, her embodied ghost – is condemned to haunt the overgrown, godless wastelands, forced to “wunian,” [dwell] (1.27) in a pagan barrow.105 William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (c.1125) describes a variation of this belief in his retelling of the untimely death of Bishop Brihtwold of Malmesbury (d. 1010): Eum, inertum ad bonum, alacrem ad malum, miserabilem mortem obisse tradit vetustas, in villa inter medios potationum apparatus extinctum, in ecclesia Beati Andrae, quae magnae adherebat ecclesiae, inter praede­ 101 102 103 104 105

Reynolds, “Anglo-Saxon Executions Sites,” 37-39. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Body and Law in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 27 (1998), 209-232. Homily IX, ll. 85-89, in The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. Donald G. Scragg, EETS OS 300 (Oxford, 1992), 166. Semple, “Illustrations of Damnation,” 240. Elinor Lench, “The Wife’s Lament: A Poem of the Living Dead,” Comitatus 1 (1970): 3-23.

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cessores sepultum. Satisque constat custodes locis umbris fantasticis inquietatos, donec cadaver suffossum longe a monasterio paludi profundae immerserint; unde aliquotiens teter odor emergens sevam vicinis exhalat mefitim [Brihtwold] being slow to do good but quick to do evil, came to a pitiful end, dying in the town surrounded by the materials for a drinking bout, and was buried among his predecessors in the church of St. Andrew, which is right next to the big church. It is generally believed that the watchmen at the church were disturbed by dreamlike shadowy shapes, until they dug up Brihtwold’s body and sunk it in a deep marsh far away from the monastery. At intervals a noxious smell rose from the marsh and spread its noisome stench over the surrounding countryside].106 Whilst there is only tangential evidence that Brihtwold’s body is responsible for terrorizing the church wardens – “umbris fantasticis,” [dreamlike shadowy shapes] suggests something of the incorporeality of the evil agent – it is nonetheless decided that in order to quell the haunting and bind the bishop’s spirit to the grave, the corpse must be reburied in a liminal area of the landscape. Brihtwold’s malign spiritual nature is confirmed by the noxious gases that emanate from his new place of rest. As further noted by John Blair, the Vita et Miracula S. Kenelmi (c.1070) describes how the saint’s sister, Cwenthryth, is unable to stay buried until her corpse is thrown into a gully, highlighting the prison-like qualities of marshland – a belief that may also explain why a waterlogged location was chosen for the Southwell deviant burial above, and why an adolescent skeleton (SK72, c.676-870) was placed in a ditch abutting the cemetery at Carrowkeel, Galway.107 John Mirk (d. 1414), the influential homilist and Prior of Lilleshall Abbey, reaffirms the idea that suicides, the lecherous and the unrepentant should be buried “neyther in chyrch ne in chirch-ȝorde,” but does not specify the exact location.108 Writing at about the same time as Mirk, the Byland monk, in the second of his twelve ghost stories, does not record the location of the body of the excommunicate whose ghost terrorized the tailor 106

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William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England, ed. and trans. David Preest (Woodbridge, 2002), 281. For the Latin, see De gestis pontificum anglorum libri quinque, V. 258, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1870), 411-2; Blair, “The Dangerous Dead,” 550. Blair, “The Dangerous Dead,” 550-551; Brendon Wilkins and Susan Lalonde, “An Early Medieval Settlement/Cemetery at Carrowkeel, Co. Galway,” The Journal of Irish Archaeology 17 (2008): 57-83 (at 65). Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, ed. Thomas Erbe, EETS Extra Ser., 96 (London, 1905), 297-299.

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“Snawball”.109 The grave may have been located in a field or crossroad – the tailor is accosted on the road between Gilling and Ampleforth – but the narrative does not make this explicit; it states merely that “infoderet illam in sepulcro suo penes caput eius secrete,” [he secretly buried the absolution in the grave near his head].110 Given that the ghost seems to have been excommunicated after death (“you will defame [diffamabis] my bones to no-one”) it is equally possible that he was afforded a normative burial in a local graveyard, with the spirit, rather than the corpse, being exiled from the church and condemned to roam the hinterlands. Neither does the compiler of the Chronicon de Lanercost (c.1346) give details on the location of the grave of the excommunicated monk from Clydesdale, Scotland, who, following his pessime [wretched] death in the spring of 1295, “vexed” (fatigasset) the local townsfolk and “clara luce confligendo deterreret” [terrified them by molesting them in broad daylight]. Unusually for the genre, the narrative concludes without any apotropaic action being taken against the monk, the author choosing to end the exemplum with a moralization on the death of a local knight’s son at the revenant’s hand.111 With regards to the continental sources, Burchard of Worms’s warning against the staking of unbaptized infants includes reference to the taking of the corpse to some “secreto loco,” [secret place], intimating that the liminal nature of the landscape was just as important for the efficacy of the rite as the act of transfixion itself. This is a belief that may partly explain the decree made in the thirteenth-century Silesian law codes (landrecht) that suicides, the most dangerous of dead, must be buried at road junctions.112 The Icelandic narratives, ostensibly describing events that occurred during the Christianization of the island, present similar scenarios to Burchard when discussing individuals who made − or were liable to make − a nuisance of themselves after death. As noted above, the body of the cowheard Glam is buried under a cist in open moorland. The violent nature of Hrapp’s ghost in Laxdæla Saga prompts his exhumation and reburial in marginal land, away from the local community.113 109 110 111

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James, “Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories,” 415-418. Ibid., 416. Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1839), 163-164. For an English translation, see The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow, 1913), 118-119. Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, vol. II: The Curse on Self-Murder (Oxford, 2000), 46-47. For the powers of the crossroad to “bind” a ghost, see Robert Halliday, “Wayside Graves and Crossroad Burials,” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 84 (1995): 113-119; S. I. Johnston, “Crossroads,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 88 (1991): 217-224. Laxdæla Saga, 42.

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Eyrbyggja Saga describes a similar reaction to an errant corpse. In response to the destruction wrought by Thorolf Half-Foot, whose post-mortem activities include the killing of both men and livestock, members of the community remove his body from its tomb and deposit it on a headland, around which a large wall is built so that he will be unable to wreak further havoc on the living.114 The archaeological data from the later Middle Ages confirms that ditch, headland and boundary burials were indeed viable techniques for dealing with suspect bodies. An isolated beachhead at Tangleha’ in Kincardineshire was the location for an east-west supine inhumation dating to the thirteenth century. The body itself was free from any discernible injury or disease, although the cranium and feet were missing, suggestive of someone who had died at sea and was washed ashore. Numerous loose, small pebbles were found within the burial matrix. Although it is tempting to suggest that these may have possessed some kind of apotropaic effect, the evidence is tenuous at best.115 Nonetheless, the isolated nature of the gravesite and the decision made by the local townspeople to prevent the deceased from being buried in consecrated ground suggest that, as a potential drowning victim – a stranger who had died unshriven – he presented too much of a threat to the local community and needed to be dealt with accordingly.116 SK149 from St. Peter’s, Leicester, was the only body to be found outside the immediate bounds of the graveyard. Following the schema advocated by Mirk, it can be hypothesised that the deceased was a convicted felon or suicide and thus denied a Christian burial. Given that the deceased’s family would have undoubtedly wanted their relative to enjoy the reflected protection of the holy ground, this may account for the proximity of the grave to the churchyard.117 Likewise, the cemetery attached to the hospital of St. Giles in Brompton Bridge, North Yorkshire (c.1181-1440), was notable for the discovery of a female burial, Skeleton 1070, beyond the perimeter of the north boundary wall (Fig. 4.6).118 With the hospital located on the very edge of the parish, perhaps used to accommodate travellers as well to care for the infirm, the decision to bury the corpse outside the churchyard suggests that it must have been considered especially physically and spiritually suspect. It was 114 115 116 117 118

The Eyrbyggja Saga and the Story of the Heath-Slayings, trans. William Morris and Eirkr Magnússon (New York, 2011), 68. John Sherriff, “A Medieval Burial from Tangleha’, Kincardineshire,” Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal 2 (1996): 42-44. Ibid., 43. Gnanaratnam, “St. Peter’s,” 86, 144. Peter Cardwell et al., “Excavation of the Hospital of St. Giles by Brompton Bridge, North Yorkshire,” Archaeological Journal 152 (1995): 109-245 (at 214).

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Figure 4.6 Plan of the cemetery of the hospital of St. Giles, Brompton Bridge, North Yorkshire, showing the liminal burial 1710 (by permission of the Royal Archaeological Institute).

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determined by the excavators that the individual was either a criminal or a suicide.119 Across the sea in Ireland, the pre-Christian practice of bog disposal flourished well into the Middle Ages.120 The belief that peat bogs were suitable places to bind the dangerous dead derives from the ambiguous, supernatural qualities of the landscape itself. Bogs are formed by the incomplete decomposition of plant matter in water-logged soils. The anaerobic conditions ensure that the dead plant tissue builds up to such an extent that peat layers are produced.121 The only plants that can grow in this type of environment are those that do not rely on groundwater to survive, such as spaghnum moss.122 The preservation of the flesh results from the effects of sphagnan, a polysaccharide released by the sphagnum which tans the skin a reddish-brown and renders certain parts of the body resistant to decay. With the corpse being unable to rot and thus prevented from following the “correct” rite of passage, the deceased becomes trapped in a limbo-like existence between life and death. The Tumbeagh bog body from County Offaly dates to the turn of the sixteenth century and was about eighteen years old when he/she died. Although it is difficult to determine whether the wooden poles found in the burial matrix signified a desire to keep the body in the grave, given the widespread use of “stakes” as apotropaic devices and the fact that Iron Age bog bodies such as Yde Girl (Netherlands, 54BCE) and Gallagh Man (Ireland, 200BCE) were also pinned down, the Tumbeagh grave goods may have served a similar function. Brammer Man (Denmark, c.1440-1625)123 and the Moanflugh Body (a suicide named “Denis Looney” from Ireland, c.1600s)124 are further examples of late medieval/early modern bodies that, by virtue of their graves goods (such as stones and poles), appear to have been deliberately imprisoned in the bog. Having been sunk into a “paludi,” [marsh], Bishop Brihtwold’s corpse may well have been pinned to the ground with poles, or else had nails embedded into its chest, ankles and shoulders like the Southwell deviant burial.125 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

Ibid., 114. Nóra Bermingham and Máire Delaney, The Bog Body from Tumbeagh (Bray, 2006). Wijnand van der Sanden, Through Nature to Eternity: The Bog Bodies of Northwest Europe (Amsterdam, 1996), 21. Pauline Asingh and Niels Lynnerup, Grauballe Man: An Iron Age Bog Body Revisited (Moesgaard, 2007), 275. J. van der Plicht, “Dating Bog Bodies by means of 14C-AMS,” Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004): 471-491. The Annual Register: Or, a View of the History and Politics of the Year 1838, ed. Edmund Burke (London, 1839), 117-118. Daniels, “Southwell,” 25.

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The belief that the dead could rise from the grave and terrorize the living does not seem to have been restricted to a particular time period or geo­ graphical location. In this respect, the eighteenth-century vampire, the most prominent and well-documented iteration of the walking corpse, should not be considered a unique phenomenon.126 The tendency to take the written sources as direct analogues of popular, unwritten belief has led to the separation of the “ghost,” “revenant,” and “vampire” into distinct ontological categories when, perhaps, no such distinctions existed in the local, often unwritten worldview. The authorial and contextual biases that permeate the chronicles, preachers’ manuals and vitae – to pick three of the most common sources for medieval revenant narratives – suggest that aspects of revenant belief which were not compatible with the goals of the text or the worldview of the author tended not to be committed to vellum. It is feasible that William of Newburgh’s Anantis revenant was not the only entity whose leech-like qualities were feared by the rural communities of medieval England. A re-evaluation of the “cultural facts” of the English revenant, Icelandic draugr and Continental vampire narratives reveals that they are all variations of the same, seemingly universal fear: that of restless, pestilential corpses whose assaults caused terror, languishment and death.127 The cultural articulations of this fear were governed by the social, religious and environmental constraints of the society in which the undead agent appeared. Dying in a manner that contravened the expectations of the local community, the sudden onset of disease and the discovery of a dubiously fleshy corpse were conditions – structures – which could generate only a select range of beliefs and responses. Thus, the uniqueness of the Central European vampire lay not it is propensity to drain the life force of its victims, but in the authors’ decision to record the fact that it attacked in such a manner.128 As intimated by William of Newburgh’s use of the term sanguisuga and the discovery of coins/pebbles inside the oral cavities of the skeletons from Fillingham and St. Peter’s, Leicester, the belief that revenants could “feed” on others may not have been unknown in medieval England. The vampiric qualities of the English revenant – including its propensity to cause illness and assault the living – are oblique, but nonetheless apparent, and can be 126 127 128

David G. Keyworth, “Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead Corpse?” Folklore 117 (2006): 241-260. Caciola, “Revenants,” 10. The “vampire epidemic” of the 1700s may be simply a reflection of the increasing impetus to document and categorise the “uncivilized” habits of those living on the periphery of the Germanic empires. It was an epidemic only in a sense that there was an epidemic of writings on the subject. See Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 49.

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evaluated against the characteristics of their Central European and Scan­ dinavian counterparts.129 Staking, the placement of the head between the legs, prone burial and deposition in liminal areas of the landscape (and all variations thereof) were long-lived, habitual practices that can be detected across a wide temporal and geographical spectrum. Post-Conquest England and Scotland were no exception. And yet this is not to suggest that the material evidence of revenant activity can be found everywhere, or that the belief in this particular phenomenon was all-pervasive. While the social and spiritual condemnations of deviant behaviour were often encoded in law, the evidence has shown that the local reactions to “bad” death were in no way uniform. Different situations required different apotropaic strategies, from absolving the deceased (with absolution scrolls or grave crosses) and making sure they stayed in the grave (via weighting or prone burial), to managing the corpse’s contagious speech/ breath (with objects in the oral cavity) and proactively destroying the physical source of the pandemic (by dissolution or dismemberment). The possibility that the bodies of those who died “badly” could return to haunt the living was always present, enmeshed within the general habitual schema of local life, even if people did not always realize this possibility. Special circumstances, such as periods of severe social and environmental distress, provided an avenue through which an abstract belief in the undead could sometimes be made manifest. Despite residing in opposite corners of Latin Christendom, the Berwick and Lewin townsfolk mentioned at the beginning of this chapter were equally aware of just how dangerous a walking, pestilential corpse could be.

Postscript

Following the completion of this chapter, new evidence has emerged of potential revenant activity in the insular archaeological record. A re-evaluation of the disarticulated skeletal remains found in a pit at Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, revealed a minimum of ten individuals (c.1000-1200) whose bones had been subject to cuts and burning. Focusing on the head, neck and chest, these mutilations reflect the type of apotropaic strategy described in the twelfth-century written sources. For further details, see S. Mays et al, “A multidisciplinary study of a burnt and mutilated assemblage of human remains from a deserted Mediaeval village in England,” Journal of Archaeolgical Science: Reports (2017) 129

Blair, “The Dangerous Dead,” 556-559.

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Chapter 5

“Look at my Hands:” Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton Kathryn Maude

Immediately following the Norman Conquest, Wilton Abbey was in a precarious position. It was losing its lands to Norman lords, the nuns were sickly, and its links to royalty were unstable. The textual evidence on Wilton at that time shows the nuns lamenting that their land is being appropriated, that their abbess spends too much on hosting guests, and – worst of all – that their saintly intercessor, Edith, has abandoned them. The text also shows that saintly intercession functions successfully in such an unstable, doubting context. As Edith’s cult was a later development at the abbey, the saint could only assuage the nuns’ fears and temper their anxiety about the abbey’s status by appearing to them in person from her tomb at the center of the abbey alongside her saintly mother, Wulfthryth. Being physically present at Wilton in their tombs endowed Edith and Wulfthryth with a privileged status: they functioned as both insiders and outsiders, able to intercede in the abbey as nuns but possessing the saintly authority conferred upon them by death. With the sovereignty of the nunnery in question, only seeing their saints in the flesh could reassure the nuns of their abbey’s survival. Physical presence, then, came to the fore as the key to assuaging doubt. The narrative of Wilton Abbey’s saints is transmitted via The Legend of Edith, commissioned by the nuns from the Flemish monk Goscelin of St. Bertin. Goscelin was a prolific hagiographer in post-Conquest England, writing from the late 1070s to the 1090s. The Legend of Edith was one of his early works in England, written around 1080.1 It tells the story of St. Edith from her arrival at the abbey as a child up to her death in 984, ending with a description of her translation and the miracles experienced at the abbey after her death. The Legend also includes miracles performed by Edith’s mother Wulfthryth, a former abbess of Wilton. Although the nuns commissioned Goscelin to write the life of Edith, her mother Wulfthryth was at least as important to Wilton and 1 For description of the text and dating evidence, see: Stephanie Hollis, “Introduction,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts (Turnhout, 2004), 4.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_007

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Wulfthryth’s life and miracles make up a large part of Edith’s Legend.2 Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and his subsequent Lives of the Barking saints form what Stephanie Hollis calls the “earliest surviving accounts of the lives of late AngloSaxon female saints and their relationship with the communities who possessed their relics.”3 The Lives have been studied primarily as evidence for the late Anglo-Saxon period. However, Goscelin’s narratives draw heavily on the testimony of the late eleventh-century nuns. As such, the Lives also function as important sources for Wilton and Barking in the years following the Norman Conquest.4 In particular, the Lives evidence the nuns’ anxieties about the precarious position of Wilton Abbey in this period.5 Two elements of the Legend of Edith are particularly important: the weight afforded to the testimony of women, and the production of a saintly lineage from Wilton’s nuns tracing back to their saintly intercessors. Both the Wilton and Barking Lives include praise for the testimony of women in their prologues, which extoll women’s reliability through links to female figures of the New Testament.6 The prologue to the Wilton Legend of Edith takes particular care to set up a genealogy of female knowledge that stretches back to Edith herself. Goscelin explains that he has spoken to abbess Godiva and the nuns, and that 2 Stephanie Hollis, “Strategies of Emplacement and Displacement: St. Edith and the Wilton Community in Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius,” in A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, ed. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing (University Park, PA, 2006), 156. 3 Stephanie Hollis, “St. Edith and the Wilton Community,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 9 (Turnhout, 2004), 254. 4 For more work on re-writing Anglo-Saxon saints in the Anglo-Norman period, see: Barbara Yorke, “Carriers of the Truth: Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints,” in Writing Medieval Biography: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, ed. Julia Crick, David Bates, and Sarah Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2006): 49-60; Susan Millinger, “Humility and Power: AngloSaxon Nuns in Anglo-Norman Hagiography,” in Distant Echoes I: Medieval Religious Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, MI, 1984):115-29, and David Townsend, “Anglo-Latin Hagiography and the Norman Transition,” Exemplaria, 3.2 (1991): 385-433. 5 Paul Hayward also uses these lives to discuss the post-Conquest period but focuses particularly on their evidence for resistance to the Normans. See Paul Anthony Hayward, “TranslationNarratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest,” in Anglo-Norman Studies XXI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1998, ed. Christopher HarperBill (Woodbridge, 1999), 67-93. 6 G. Whalen, “Patronage Engendered: How Goscelin Allayed the Concerns of Nuns’ Discriminatory Publics,” in Women, the Book and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference, 1993, vol. II, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane Taylor (Woodbridge, 1993), 123-35.

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his account is based on: “aliis idoneis testibus ea que ab his uenerabilis matribus audiere, que ipsam sanctam uirginem et uidere, et deuotissime sunt obsequute” (24) [those things which they heard from the venerable senior nuns, who both saw the holy virgin herself and devotedly obeyed her] (37).7 Here, Goscelin traces a direct lineage from the current nuns back to Edith, emphasizing that she was an integral part of the community at Wilton. Goscelin’s explicit foregrounding of the nuns’ eyewitness testimony in the prologue to the Legend sets up from the outset the importance of Edith’s membership of the Wilton community. The prologue emphasizes the unbroken historical continuity at Wilton up to the time of the composition of his text; this continuity is then evidenced and given validity through the words and testimonies of the nuns themselves. Thus, the historical continuity and continued relationship between Wilton and Edith in the text lay the groundwork for her saintly intercession. Edith’s membership in the community is only certified, however, by her appearance to the nuns from her tomb – this is the only way she is able to address the nuns’ anxieties about the material reality of Wilton’s dispossession and powerlessness. Throughout this account, visions of Edith that do not center on her tomb are at best potentially efficacious but cannot guarantee the safety of the abbey. Investigation of the material and spiritual realities of doubt for the Wilton nuns shows that it is indeed possible for Edith to be doubted at Wilton. Ultimately, the account of Edith and Wulfthryth’s physical presence at the abbey demonstrates how their emergence from their tombs at the heart of the abbey seems to be the only way in which the saints can intercede effectively within the community. Edith’s intercession takes place in the context of Wilton’s post-Conquest situation characterized by the loss of land and patronage. Wilton, although rich by the standards of women’s houses in the period, had a downturn in its fortunes after the Conquest, and the nuns’ anxieties about their abbey’s loss of power and status are prominent in the Legend of Edith. This precarious feeling contributes to the nuns’ concerns about Edith’s intercessory potential. The Legend includes two scenes in which Wilton’s land is stolen, and the difference 7 The Latin text of the Legend of Edith is taken from: Goscelin of St.-Bertin, “La Légende de Ste Édith en Prose et Vers par le Moine Goscelin,” ed. A Wilmart, Analecta Bollandiana 56 (1938): 5-101 and 265-307. The English translation of the Legend of Edith is taken from: Goscelin of St.-Bertin, “Legend of Edith,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis, trans. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 9 (Turnhout, 2004), 15-93. The page numbers of quotations from both editions will be referenced in parentheses in the text.

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between the two narratives indexes Edith’s fluctuating efficacy in the eyes of the nuns. At such an anxious time for the abbey, visions of Edith alone were not enough to ensure the safety and integrity of Wilton. The first scene takes place before the Conquest, in the reign of Queen Emma. A local man named Agamund occupies a piece of Wilton’s land known as Ferelanda: “atque impenitens morte correptus est superueniente” (281) [and was struck down by the arrival of death without having repented] (79). As his friends keep vigil around his corpse, “repente homo exitalis assurgit omniumque luctus in stuporem conuertit,” (281) [suddenly the dead man rose up and turned all their mourning into amazement] (79). The revenant explains that St. Edith will not let him remain dead unless he returns her land, and he calls for Queen Emma to oversee the return of the alienated land to Wilton. When the land is returned, he dies in peace. In this case, Edith’s intervention leads directly to the return of the abbey’s land. At the time of the Legend’s writing, however, Edith’s intercession did not seem to be as effective. Goscelin goes on to relate: “Item de alio similiter visio” (283) [Likewise about a similar vision of another man] (80), calling attention to the narrative’s similarities to another story: a second land theft that took place during the time of Goscelin’s residence near Wilton, between around 1064 and 1078.8 A man named Brihtric took some land from Wilton, and the abbess sent his kinswoman, who was a nun at Wilton, to ask for it back. He refused, and then died. His kinswoman then saw a vision of Brihtric hiding from St. Edith after his death; it was clear to her that Edith punished Brihtric in the afterlife for stealing the abbey’s land. However, this vision does not seem to have frightened Brihtric’s kinsmen sufficiently, as there is no suggestion that the nuns received their land back as a result of the vision. Edith’s intercessory capabilities in this story are different; her visionary appearance to the nun at Wilton is not sufficient to compel Brihtric’s family to return the land to the abbey. These two stories of land theft act as a springboard for Goscelin to pause in his narrative and excoriate those who take ecclesiastical property. This anxious focus on land theft demonstrates how precarious the nuns felt the abbey’s position to be: Sed, ut illos his tangamus quibus nullus finis possessionum sufficit et thesaurorum, nisi uictualia subsidia ligurriant eclesiarum, nisi domum Dei lacerent, diripiant, deuorent, nisi santuarium Domini exeredent et here8 Stephanie Hollis, “Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 9 (Turnhout, 2004), 219.

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ditate possideant, ue illis, quando eos ponent Deus ut rotam et sicut stipulam anti faciam uenti (284). [Here we may say of those for whom no end of possessions and treasure is sufficient unless they feast on the sustenance of the churches, unless they mangle, tear at, devour, the house of God, unless they disinherit the sanctuary of the Lord and take possession of its inheritance: woe to them, when God shall make them like a wheel and as stubble before the wind] (81). Based on the intensity of his critique, the problem of laymen appropriating monastic land is still very much present. As both Agamund and Brihtric are dead, the diatribe cannot be aimed at them. These men are utilized as exempla, demonstrating what could happen if others take land from Wilton: God will ensure that they are punished, as he has punished Agamund and Brihtric through his servant St. Edith. Goscelin does not name names here, but it seems that he has written this narrative as a thinly-veiled critique of the post-Conquest removal of monastic land by Norman lords, from which Wilton suffered. Without the support of St. Edith, Goscelin threatens, attempts to alienate Wilton’s lands will come to nothing. Nevertheless, Edith’s intercession in visions was not enough to reassure the nuns of their abbey’s safety. From external evidence, it is clear that Wilton did lose land before the Conquest, so the nuns were right to be concerned. As W. F. Nijenhuis’ research demonstrates, in the time of Queen Emma when Agamund’s death supposedly took place (before 1066), Wilton lost sixty-five hides of land.9 However, the majority of Wilton’s land loss took place after 1066. The Domesday Book shows that Wilton fell prey to William the Conqueror’s land seizures between 1066 and 1086, losing one hundred twenty-five hides of land to Norman lords. This loss of land included two extensive estates: twenty-one hides of land at West Firle were lost to William de Warenne, and forty-eight hides of land at Falmer to Count Robert of Mortain. There were also smaller transfers, for example, nine estates comprising 4.89 hides of land in total went to Count William d’Eu.10 Barbara Yorke notes that in the Domesday Book Wilton, although 9

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W. F. Nijenhuis, “The Wilton Chronicle as a Historical Source,” Revue Benedictine 115.2 (2005): 370-99, at 388-89. See also the table on pages 398-99 of the specifics of the land lost by Wilton to Norman lords. Domesday data for Wilton Abbey from Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, accessed 13th February 2014,

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wealthy for a house of nuns, “was only the thirteenth wealthiest religious community when male and female houses are grouped together,”11 suggesting that they could ill afford this loss of land. The nuns’ anxieties over land come from a place of genuine powerlessness against this appropriation. Goscelin’s Legend of Edith attempts to utilize the fate of the dead land thieves to threaten those who steal Wilton’s land, but the recurring narratives and Goscelin’s outburst against land theft demonstrate the inadequacy of Edith’s response as far as the nuns are concerned.  The Legend of Edith includes another vision that sheds light on Wilton’s anxieties about wealth, status, and Edith’s role in the life of the community. After Abbess Ælfgifu’s death, an unnamed nun had a vision of St. Edith in which she “quandam sororum adhortatur, ut consororum eclesiam pro sua Æluiua instantius orare comprecetur” (297) [exhorted one of her sisters to implore her community of fellow sisters to pray very earnestly for her own Ælfgifu, as the Lord has forgiven all her sins except one] (89). Goscelin suggests that the sin that continues to function as a black mark against Ælfgifu may be her excessive hospitality. Although Goscelin is lenient – her “hospitalitas excusauerit” (297) [hospitality itself excused] (89) her excesses – Hollis argues that, given the background of the Abbey’s monetary fears, Ælfgifu’s hospitality “might well have been regarded by some members of her community as a serious offence.”12 St. Edith, ventriloquized through the unnamed nun, demonstrates her ability to participate in and influence the abbey’s financial dealings as a member of the community even after her death. Edith involves the whole community in a debate about the maintenance of the abbey’s status as a royal – and hospitable – house, and worries about how much this status costs to maintain. In so doing, she is very clearly produced as a member of the community even after death;13 but in this ventriloquized account, she is certainly not an efficacious saintly intercessor, but rather is activated as part of the internal squabbles produced by dispossession and anxiety, without the ability to intercede effectively. Queen Edith (c.1025-1075), named after Wilton’s saint and educated at the abbey, certainly saw the abbey as needing monetary support. The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster, which Queen Edith commissioned to commemorate her husband Edward the Confessor, explains that when she 11 12 13

Barbara Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London, 2003), 87. Hollis, “St. Edith and the Wilton Community,” 253. This communal vision is reminiscent of the visions chronicled by Rosalynn Voaden at Helfta in her article “All Girls Together: Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta,” in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Stroud, 1997): 72-91.

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visited Wilton the church was still wooden. Seeing this as a sign of poverty, Queen Edith decides to donate a stone church, as “nowhere did she believe alms better bestowed than where the weaker sex, less skilled in building, more deeply felt the pinch of poverty, and was less able by its own efforts to drive it away.”14 The text depicts Wilton as a deeply impoverished house, unable to help itself and in need of substantial assistance. Of course, Queen Edith commissioned The Life of King Edward, and therefore she had a vested interest in depicting herself as a generous benefactor. The Legend of Edith, describing the deeds of the saint, does not mention Queen Edith or her stone chapel at all, despite having been written after the completion of the building work; and Catherine Karkov rightly points to this omission as evidence of the unwelcome nature of Edith’s gift. Karkov argues that this snub of Edith on the part of the Wilton nuns may have stemmed from their respective post-Conquest situations, suggesting that her “retention of her lands after the Conquest did not sit well alongside the abbey’s losses.”15 Although Wilton was not in dire financial straits, then, throughout the contemporary sources the sense of anxiety concerning the wealth, land, and status of the abbey is palpable. Edith, when she appears as a saintly intercessor in the visions of the nuns, is only ever partially efficacious in preventing the loss of land. Meanwhile, when she appears in a vision as a community member, she is able to pass judgment on the cause of the abbey’s dispossession and impotence but unable to intercede effectively. Wilton’s loss of land and its increasingly precarious financial status, then, contribute to the Wilton nuns’ doubts about the intercessory power of their patron saint Edith.16 After all, what good is a patron saint that cannot maintain the abbey’s status? Throughout the Legend of Edith, nuns at Wilton repeatedly complain about St. Edith’s lack of assistance and challenge her to intercede for them more effectively. These doubts can only be assuaged by Edith’s appearance in person out of her tomb in the abbey church, demonstrating that she remains part of the community alongside being a saintly 14 15

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Frank Barlow, ed., The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, trans. Frank Barlow (Edinburgh and London, 1962), 47. Catherine E. Karkov, “Pictured in the Heart: The Ediths at Wilton,” in Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, ed. Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Contexts 334 (Tempe, AZ, 2008), 283. Susan Ridyard’s work on saints’ relics discusses the particularity of the “special rela­ tionship” between community and patron saint, as she states that, “the function of the monastic patron saint of the Middle Ages was to provide for the individual community both a spiritual example and a powerful protector in heaven – a mediator between the community and the divine power,” in The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988), 148.

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intercessor. The repeated questioning of Edith’s efficacy is distinctive, as this kind of doubt is not present in Goscelin’s saints’ lives written for the community at Barking, suggesting that Wilton’s relationship with Edith was particularly fraught.17 The nuns never questioned the capabilities of St. Edith’s mother St. Wulfthryth because her miracles were more frequent than Edith’s, and because she had uncontested status as community member due to her many years as abbess. Even though Goscelin describes Wulfthryth as a lesser saint and handmaiden to her daughter, this hierarchy is his own and not that of the nuns, as they have more faith in Wulfthryth than in Edith. The nuns’ lack of faith in Edith is demonstrated in the Legend when Goscelin reports that they feel Edith is not only neglecting them, but in fact is deliberately ignoring them. He describes a particular situation at Wilton when: Gregem Domini cum superna uirga examinaret et plerasque sororum lues infirmitatis decoqueret, mirari et conqueri inter se, mente cum corpore languentes, cepere quod sancta Editha, quibuslibet externis terra marique tam promta succurreret, proprie uero inexorabilis uideretur familie (297). [a debilitating epidemic was testing the Lord’s flock with the supernal rod, and was wasting away many of the sisters, they began to wonder and complain among themselves, diseased as they were in mind and body, that Saint Edith, who was so prompt to help any outsiders, on land and sea, seemed nevertheless so unbending towards her own household] (89). The nuns join to disparage Edith in this passage; in Goscelin’s narrative, this disbelief is a community-wide problem. He feels the need to justify the nuns’ disparaging of their patron saint by suggesting that they were not in their right minds, but in fact “diseased” in “mind and body.” Edith’s status as a saint, he suggests, should be above reproach. Complaining about Edith’s lack of assistance is pathologized; the nuns are not reacting as they should to their saintly protector. Subsequently in the Legend he also exclaims: “Cui si quis detraxerit – quod absit – incredulitate obstinate, timenda est illi detrahentis Moysi Marie 17

For the full text of the Barking Lives in Latin, see: Martin L. Colker, “Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury, which Relate to the History of Barking Abbey,” Studia Monastica 7.2 (1965): 383-460. For a partial translation, see Goscelin of St. Bertin, “Goscelin of St. Bertin: Lives of the Abbesses at Barking,” in Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents, ed. Vera Morton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, trans. Vera Morton (Woodbridge, 2003): 139-55.

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lepra,” (299) [If anyone disparages her – may it not be so – through unbelieving obstinacy, they should fear the leprosy that afflicted Miriam for disparaging Moses] (91). Again, disparaging Edith’s power is linked to a disease – in this case leprosy. The fact that this warning occurs immediately after Goscelin’s description of the debilitating epidemic at Wilton, in which the nuns fall ill and disparage Edith, is not coincidental. Goscelin suggests that the nuns of Wilton, through their disbelief, brought their illness upon themselves. Edith cannot heal the nuns if the nuns do not have faith in her intercessory abilities. Edith’s appearance in a vision castigating the nuns for their lack of faith is not sufficient to heal the nuns of their disease. Once again, then, visionary presence is not efficacious on its own. Edith is primarily a member of the community even before she is a saint and, as such, is not above reproach; the nuns feel entitled to question her judgment and intercessory power. Wulfthryth’s long-standing association with Wilton as its abbess meant that the nuns remembered her as an authoritative member of the community, unlike her daughter Edith. In the Legend, Wulfthryth performs numerous miracles and the nuns remember her fondly; indeed, much of the section concerned with the translation of Edith’s remains discusses Wulfthryth’s miracle-working. Goscelin attempts to attribute Wulfthryth’s miracles to Edith’s grace, associating the unproblematic mother saint with her more questionable daughter. He introduces Wulfthryth’s miracles by stating: “hic materna filie dedicamus preconia … genitricem filia et socrum Domini colligat sponsa,” (271). [we here dedicate to the daughter the praises of her mother … [t]he daughter, the bride, brings her mother to the Lord as mother-in-law] (72-73). Here Edith, as the bride of Christ, acts as mother-in-law to her birth-mother; as Edith has died and ascended to heaven first, she intercedes on behalf of Wulfthryth and bring her closer to Christ. However, this addition ought to be seen as an attempt on behalf of Goscelin to maintain the focus on Edith, as the miracles performed by Wulfthryth do not involve Edith as participant; Edith’s cult needs Wulfthryth’s support but not vice versa. Hollis’ argument seems to hold true here, that “the cult of Edith was not the creation of the Wilton community; it was Edith’s mother, Abbess Wulfthryth who was venerated as the convent’s saint.”18 If Edith’s cult only became important to Wilton later, during the rule of Abbess Ælfgifu, then this would help to explain the community’s anxieties about Edith’s intercessory power, especially when taken alongside Wilton’s post-Conquest precariousness.

18

Hollis, “St. Edith and the Wilton Community,” 255.

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Wilton’s anxieties concerning Edith’s intercessory power are not confined to the past in Goscelin’s account. He describes one particular incident that occurred when he was resident near the abbey: Aput episcopum pie memorie Hermannum soror Wiltoniensis, que ad presens uernaret iuuenta, Alditha dicta, Serbirie est hospitata. Vespera erat; querimoniam nobis de distractione possessionum monasterii sui susurrabat. Inter que zelo icta, aut fide infirmata, calumpniabatur sanctam Editham nullam a Deo habere potentiam, que tantam impune pateretur iniuriam, nec debita correptione suam defendisset causam (298). [In the time of Bishop Herman, of pious memory, a sister of Wilton, called Ealdgyth, who at the time of writing is still in the springtime of her youth, was a guest at Salisbury. It was evening; she was grumbling to us about the erosion of the possessions of her monastery. In the course of this, either driven by zeal or weakened in her faith, she defamed St. Edith: she had no power from God since she suffered so great a wrong without retaliation, and had not defended her own cause with the deserved intervention] (90). Here, Goscelin includes the strongest statement against St. Edith in the Legend. Ealdgyth explicitly says that she believes Edith “had no power from God” because if she were able to intercede for Wilton, then she would not allow its possessions to be stripped from it without retaliation. Again, Goscelin uses vocabulary linked to illness to describe the doubting nun: Ealdgyth is “fide infirmata,” [weakened], made ill in her faith. Goscelin also calls attention to how recent this event was; it occurred while Goscelin was visiting Salisbury in the lifetime of Bishop Herman, and after Goscelin became known to the Wilton nuns. Hollis dates Goscelin’s time at Wilton between c.1064 and Herman’s death in 1078, so this dinner must have happened within that time.19 As Goscelin describes Ealdgyth as being “in the springtime of her youth,” at the time of his account, the event took place presumably towards the end of this period. So, while Goscelin was gathering material to write the Legend of Edith, the nuns were still not totally convinced of her merits and were openly defaming her when visiting other abbeys. Abbess Godiva’s request to Goscelin to write a biography of Saint Edith must have been, at least in part, an effort to bolster her own nuns’ faith in the saint. Goscelin’s Legend takes on this chal19

Hollis, “Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women,” 219.

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lenge, focusing on Edith’s physical presence in the abbey to counter her critics. The doubts of the Wilton nuns about Edith’s efficacy are only resolved by Edith’s physical presence among them at the abbey, and Goscelin emphasizes her active, miracle-working presence both at her tomb and in the visions of the nuns. According to the narrative of the Legend, Ealdgyth’s bold defamation of Edith does not go unnoticed by Edith. That night at Wilton, a nun named Thola is sleeping when “de dormitione ipsius regie filie uox audita illam compellat ex nomine” (298) [the voice of the king’s daughter herself called her by name out of her sleep] (90). Goscelin’s inclusion of Edith’s calling Thola by name evinces Edith’s closeness to the community at Wilton: she knows them well enough that she can call them individually by their names, and even after Edith’s death they are still her sisters. After waking Thola, Edith then appears to her physically outside her tomb in the abbey church: Aperta erat a pedibus aurosa edicula sancte glebe; uisa deintus est regia uirgo ut in thalamo speciosissimo requiescere, ornatus decore et forme conspicua splendore. Iterum alloquitur intuentem: “Quare, inquit, sero dixit Alditha me nichil posse? En aspice manus meas et uirtutum official, quam sim michi compos, quam efficax, libera, uiuida et ualida; et sane, quicquid uolo diuina possum potencia” (299). [The golden chapel of the holy clay opened at her feet; inside, the royal virgin was seen lying at rest as if on a glorious bridal bed, splendid with adornments, and a spectacle of shining beauty. Then she addressed the woman who looked at her. “Why,” she said, “did Ealdgyth say lately that I can do nothing? Look at my hands, and the services rendered by my virtues, what control I have, how efficacious, generous, energetic and strong I am; indeed, whatever I wish I can do, by divine power”] (90). Edith’s presence in the abbey is the proof of her miracle-working potential, as she is able to raise her own body from the dead. The community’s concerns about Edith’s power, here expressed by Ealdgyth, can only be resolved by a saintly intercessor who remains with them in body as well as in spirit. Edith’s appearance to Thola while lying in state in her tomb makes literal the metaphor of her tomb as a bridal bed where she meets Christ. Speaking from her tomb shows both Edith’s heavenly status as bride of Christ and her claim to intervene in the abbey’s affairs as a former inhabitant of the abbey who is still physically present at Wilton. Every time the nuns see her tomb, they remember that Edith’s bones lie there; she knows their movements and is always ready to

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speak to them by name. This vision of Edith also foregrounds the communal nature of the nuns’ interaction with their saint. One nun, Ealdgyth, defames Edith; but instead of appearing to Ealdgyth directly to counter this insult, Edith appears to Thola and asks her to intervene with Ealdgyth on Edith’s behalf. Rather than the insult to Edith being between Ealdgyth and herself – that is, a purely personal matter – the intervention of Thola makes it a communal issue. In this sense, the Legend of Edith performs a similar task to the saints’ lives in the Campsey Ash Priory manuscript. Sara Gorman discusses these lives, which “prescribe a form of contemplating and even ‘practicing’ nunnish identity” as a communal exercise.20 Edith is recollected as a community member in situ at Wilton, acting as a local focus for devotion. Goscelin’s description of Edith’s appearances at the abbey confirms the importance of her physical presence to the nuns at Wilton. He explains: Non solum quippe corporeis optutibus et exterior mirificentia, sed etiam spiritualibus mundarum mentium oculis prelucet clarissima, atque inter sorores uersari uidetur ac si adhuc in corpore posita. Declarat se adeo piis uisionibus super dormientia sororum pignora materno affectu uigilare (294). [Not only in corporeal sights and external miracle working, but she is also radiantly visible to the spiritual eyes of pure minds, and is observed to pass among the sisters as if still present in her body. She declares in pious visions that she still keeps watch with maternal affection over the sleeping sisters pledged to her] (87). Edith exists at Wilton as if she never left; she walks among the nuns not as a vision but as a bodily presence. Combined with the miracle-working that she performs, this physical presence at Wilton at the center of the abbey’s church reassures the nuns of her care for them. This centrality of Edith in the monastery – as the holiest of the community – contrasts with the monk who fails to repent and receive the viaticum in Jill Clements’ essay in Chapter Two of this volume. The “liminal treatment of his body,” buried at the very edge of the monastic precinct, shows that the brother is no longer considered fully a part of his monastic community;21 on the other hand, even after death Edith 20

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Sara Gorman, “Anglo-Norman Hagiography as Institutional Historiography: Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval Campsey Ash Priory,” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 37.2 (2011): 110. See Chapter Two, 57.

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remains at the very center of Wilton’s monastic life. The focus on sight in this section is also key; the nuns see Edith in their “corporeal sights” and also with their “spiritual eyes.” Edith, in turn, declares that she is able to “watch” the nuns in her maternal affection. The observation travels both ways; Edith watches the nuns, and the nuns watch her. This concentration on the nuns’ ability to see Edith at Wilton demonstrates the importance of Edith’s existence at the abbey as part of the community. Goscelin emphasizes the physicality of Edith’s appearance when she appears to Thola, directly calling attention to her body. She commands Thola: “aspice manus meas et virtutum official,” (299) [look at my hands, and the services rendered by my virtues] (90). This statement is closely reminiscent of Christ’s words to Doubting Thomas in the Gospel of John: “Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing,” (John 20:27). Just as Thomas needs to see Christ physically and touch his side in order to believe in the resurrection, so do the Wilton nuns need to see Edith in the flesh in order to believe in her saintly power. This analogy does not paint the nuns in a particularly flattering light, as they are cast as doubters who do not believe; but it elevates Edith by comparing her to Christ. Her body at Wilton is the proof of her power, as his body on earth was the proof of his resurrection. Goscelin makes this correlation between Edith’s appearance at Wilton and the Wilton nuns’ belief in her intercessory power more explicitly in the Legend during a verse interlude: Daniel Nabugodonosorque, Incredulus atque fidelis, Christum spectant oriturum, Euuangelicusque Ioseph Studet angelicis monimentis. Sic uisa suis uigilantem Eadgitha frequentat amorem (294). [Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, the unbeliever and the believer, saw that Christ was to rise, and Joseph in the gospel took notice of angelic admonishments. So Edith appearing to her people keeps alive their watching love] (87). These lines allude to visions concerning Christ: they interpret Daniel’s explanation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as a prophecy of Christ’s triumph, as they do Joseph’s vision of an angel who told him Mary would bear a son who would

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save the people from their sins. Putting Edith’s appearances at Wilton in this company implies that visions of Edith prefigure the second coming of Christ: she appears at Wilton to strengthen the nuns’ faith and prepare them for the resurrection to come. The object of the nuns’ “watching love” is purposefully left obscure here. Relating their love to the visions of Nebuchadnezzar and Joseph suggests that Edith strengthens their love for Christ. However, in the context of the nuns’ doubts about Edith’s intercessory power, it also suggests that her appearance at Wilton keeps alive the nuns’ love for Edith herself in the face of their great anxieties and doubts over her intercessory power. Even when the nuns do revere Edith without reservation, as Abbess Ælfgifu does throughout the Legend, they show this love through a desire to be physically close to the saint. This physical closeness resolves the nuns’ doubts about Edith’s intercession, as they can feel her presence in their community. Goscelin describes Ælfgifu’s implicit belief in Edith’s power and in her ability to intercede for Ælfgifu after death. As she lay dying, “tam longe uie ducem [et lucern] am afferri sibi flagitat corpore ipsam suam Editham,” (296) [she requested that Edith, who had so long been the guide and light of her life, should be brought to her in the body] (88). When Edith’s body is brought to her, “illa de lectulo, discipularum minibus suffulta, tante aduene suplex prosternitur,” (296) [she, from her bed, supported by the hands of the disciples, prostrated herself in supplication before her great visitor] (88). This section encapsulates Goscelin’s strategy for enhancing belief in Edith as patron saint of Wilton. The focus is on Edith’s bodily presence; she is brought out of her tomb to Ælfgifu so that Ælfgifu can experience that physical closeness one more time before she dies. Edith’s physical presence at Wilton links her not only to imagery of the resurrected Christ, but also to her mother Wulfthryth. Connecting Edith closely with her tomb in Wilton’s church also connects her to Wulfthryth – and Wulfthryth’s miracles – as the two saints are buried side by side.22 A paralyzed woman is “ad domine Wulftrudis tumulum deferretur gratia salutis, est ammonita,” (277) [carried for healing at the tomb of the lady Wulfthryth] (76), and after lying in front of it for a few days is able to walk out of the church. Likewise, a child “oculis et pedibus obtusus,” [disabled in feet and eyes] lies before the 22

For a wider discussion of Anglo-Saxon funerary practices and the rituals of burial and entombment, see Chapter Five of this volume: “Monumental Memory: The Performance and Enduring Spectacle of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England.” As Melissa Herman puts it, “[t]he marking of the space of the dead is about situating and preserving the memory of that dead, which had been carefully constructed by the funeral, within the societal memory,” (85). Edith and Wulfthryth’s tombs at the center of the abbey, marked by repeated visions, preserve their memories at the center of the abbey that they called home.

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tomb and as the nuns watched as “uisu et gressu reparatur,” (277) [its sight and its ability to walk were restored] (77). One of the nuns is cured of dysentery by lying at Wulfthryth’s “opifere tumulum,” (277) [wonder-working tomb] (77). This cure is particularly significant, as Edith does not cure the nuns of the epidemic that sweeps through the abbey. Her apparent indifference in the face of that epidemic is one of the elements that leads to the nuns doubting her power. Linking Edith back to her mother through her appearances at their twinned tombs at Wilton associates Edith with Wulfthryth’s efficacy as a saintly intercessor. In fact, Edith’s emergence from her tomb in Thola’s vision parallels directly a miracle that occurs at Wulfthryth’s tomb. A nun named Ælflæd sees a vision that confirms Wulfthryth’s holiness. On Easter day, “subito a uertice tumbe niue candidior agnus egreditur,” (276) [a lamb whiter than snow suddenly came out of the top of the tomb] (76). The lamb walks around Wulfthryth’s tomb three times and then vanishes back into the tomb. Goscelin explains that this vision proves that the “estimabile agnum paschalem in pascali die sue tam intente ministre refulsisse” (276) [revered paschal lamb had shone upon his eager servant on the paschal day] (76). The appearance of the lamb from out of Wulfthryth’s tomb is a sign that Christ favors her, and it parallels Edith’s appearance to Thola out of her tomb. It is clear that, to the nuns, both Edith and Wulfthryth are present in the church at Wilton. Their sanctity stems from their closeness to the nuns in body; Wulfthryth’s intercessory power is more certain, as shown by the miracles at her tomb; whereas the nuns’ belief in Edith needs to be bolstered by reminders of her physical presence and links back to her saintly mother. Edith and Wulfthryth’s physical presence at Wilton within their tombs allows them to make their opinions known within the abbey. They function as sanctified insiders – physically present as actors in the nunnery but removed from it by death – and this liminal position allows them to intervene in the politics of the abbey. Goscelin’s emphasis on the presence of the saints in the abbey means that they are agential forces at Wilton; they have a view on what should be done, and take steps to make that view known. Although Edith’s involvement in attempts in the Legend to regain Wilton’s land have mixed success, her contribution to debates about the abbatial succession in the nuns’ visions is crucial. Abbeys such as Wilton traditionally did not choose their own leadership. This change in the responsibility for electing an abbess was one of a set of reforms of around 973 by the Regularis Concordia, a collection of rules for

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Benedictine reformed monasticism.23 There is little evidence concerning the breadth or depth of reform in women’s religious houses. Sarah Foot argues that they appear to have been “expected to institute the precepts of the Regularis Concordia on their own initiative.”24 This personal interest in reform seems to be demonstrated in the translation of the Regularis Concordia to which Joyce Hill calls attention; the text is translated into Old English with female pronouns, suggesting that there was at least some interest in reform among female communities.25 Wilton’s traditions connect St. Edith with Dunstan, one of the major reformers, but there is little evidence in the Legend for a sustained reform of community practices. The description of Abbess Ælfgifu’s succession to the abbacy in The Legend of Edith demonstrates, as Yorke puts it, that “the idea of election of an abbess by the community was sufficiently novel as to require saintly endorsement.”26 Edith and Wulfthyrth become legitimat­ing presences in the succession debate, casting their votes for a particular candidate. As the Regularis Concordia required a leader to be elected from within the monastic community, the involvement of Edith and Wulfthryth in this process at Wilton was particularly suitable. Wulfthryth, a well-respected former abbess of Wilton, and her saintly daughter Edith continued to be present in the abbey as active members of the community even after death and, as community members, exercised their right to take part in the choice of successor. In two visions that focus on Edith and Wulfthryth’s physical presence among the nuns, the two saints make clear their choice for the next abbess. The first vision comes to Ælfhild, a “proba et clara Wiltonie matron,” (295) [worthy and famous lady of Wilton] (88). She sees: etheream Editham de thalamo dormitionis sue ad sepulcrum genitricis a gradibus descendentem, ad ipsius dextrum latus locum propriis pedibus metientem, Æluiuam supliciter assistentem; beatam Editham sumtum 23

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For the full text of the Regularis Concordia, see Thomas Symons, ed., Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque, trans. Thomas Symons (London, 1953). A useful description of the Benedictine Reform can be found in: Julia Barrow, “The Chronology of the Benedictine Reform,” in Edgar, King of the English 959-75: New Interpretations, ed. Donald Scragg (Woodbridge, 2008), 211-23. Sarah Foot, Veiled Women Volume I: The Disappearance of the Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England (Aldershot, 2000), 94. Joyce Hill, “Making Women Visible: An Adaptation of the Regularis Concordia in Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS. 201,” in Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Catherine E. Karkov and Nicholas Howe (Tempe, AZ, 2006), 153-67. Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses, 88.

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uelum de proprio uertice eius capiti imponentem, anulum quoque eius digito inse­rentem, atque ita alloquentem: “Accipe huius monasterii benedictionem tociusque huius familie fidelem procurationem; huic enim domui in habundantia rerum principaberis, set scilicet breui tempore durabis: defuncta uero in loco hoc quem mensa sum iuxta matrem meam in pace sepelieris.” His dictis, uirgo speculatiua eodem quo prodierat uisa est regredi (295). [heavenly Edith descending the stairs from the bridal chamber of her dormition to the tomb of her mother, going on foot to a place on the right-hand side, where Ælfgifu stood in supplication; Saint Edith took the veil from her own head and put it on Ælfgifu’s and also put a ring on her finger and addressed her thus: “Accept the blessing of this monastery and take faithful care of all this family; for you will be the ruler of this house in prosperity, but indeed you will last only a short time; however when you die you will be buried in peace in this place which I have measured out beside my mother. After this pronouncement, the vision of the virgin was seen to return to the same place from which she had come] (88). In Ælfhild’s vision, Edith intervenes directly in the abbatial succession. Edith’s appearance in the abbey enables this intervention, as she transfers the symbols of her sanctity to Ælfgifu. Although Ælfgifu is alive and Edith is not, in Ælfhild’s vision they are both equally present at Wilton. The vision emphasizes Edith’s corporeal presence, as she does not appear beside Ælfgifu; she leaves her tomb (“the bridal chamber of her dormition,”), and walks down the stairs to the tomb of her mother. Ælfhild notes specifically that Edith travels “on foot;” she has a bodily connection with the ground beneath her. Being physically present in the space, Edith can interact with Ælfgifu on the same plane, and place her veil onto Ælfgifu’s head. Edith re-enacts Ælfgifu’s dedication ceremony, passing her own veil and ring to Ælfgifu, and thus identifies her as her successor in piety. Edith’s status as sanctified insider, as a continuous resident at Wilton despite her death, means that she can be asked by the nuns to intervene in abbatial politics. It is not only Edith who intervenes in the succession debate. In the second vision concerning the succession, Wulfthryth too makes her views known by appearing directly to Ælfgifu, alongside Edith. Ælfgifu sees: sancta Editha armillas et dextralia ac uelum suum sibi induerit. Fertur quoque domna Wlftrudis in portico Gabrielis super altare ornatissime sibi uisa iacuisse, et ipsam ut secum iaceret inuitasse, atque indignam se

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reclamantem ultro apprehensam secum collocasse. Omnia ergo suo euenerunt ordine (295). [Saint Edith put her bracelets and armbands on her, and her own veil. It is said also that the lady Wulfthryth was seen by her, lying in the Gabriel Chapel above the altar, most splendidly dressed, and she invited Ælfgifu to lie beside her; and when she cried out that she was unworthy, Wulfthryth grasped her and placed her beside her. All these things in fact came to pass in due time] (88). Ælfgifu’s vision reiterates two important elements of Ælfhild’s vision: Ælfgifu receiving Edith’s veil and jewelry, and the prediction that Ælfgifu will be buried alongside Wulfthryth. Again, Edith takes her own veil from her head and gives it to Ælfgifu, though in this vision Ælfgifu receives Edith’s bracelets and armbands rather than her ring. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, armbands were given by lords to reward faithful warriors; this gift may reflect Ælfgifu’s belief that she acts as an earthly representative to the heavenly lady of the abbey.27 The vision shows Ælfgifu that she will be buried alongside Wulfthryth, and this vision also depicts that element physically. Wulfthryth places Ælfgifu in line within the tradition of Wilton abbesses by pulling Ælfgifu to lie beside her; before Ælfgifu becomes abbess in life, she is already abbess in death. In her vision, rather than seeing herself performing her abbatial function, she sees her place within the abbey church buried beside Wulfthryth. As in previous visions of Edith, Wulfthryth is in a specific place within the abbey – lying above the altar – and is physically present to Ælfgifu, to the extent that she is able to grasp Ælfgifu’s arm and pull her down beside her. As Edith was never the abbess of Wilton, the spiritual authority invested in Ælfgifu in the visions of Edith do not automatically make her a candidate for the abbacy, especially in light of the nuns’ apparent preference for Wulfthryth. Edith’s transference of her adornments to Ælfgifu provides spiritual authority, and this transference combines with the spiritual and practical authority shown by Wulfthryth placing Ælfgifu literally in line with her as her successor. The concentration on the tombs of Wulfthryth and Edith is striking in both these visions. The tombs of the saints are important not only because of their status as holders of relics, but also because Edith and Wulfthryth dwell within 27

See, for example, lines 1192-1195 of Beowulf where Hrothgar presents Beowulf with “earmréade twá/hrægl ond hringas,” [two arm ornaments, robe and rings]. Klaeber’s Beowulf: Fourth Edition, ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Toronto, 2008), 42.

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them: they are simultaneously vessels for the dead and houses for the living. When Ælfgifu is promised the abbacy in a vision, she is also promised a place beside Wulfthryth in death. At Wilton Abbey, the boundary between life and death was permeable: while alive the nuns anticipated their deaths, and when dead Edith and Wulfthryth continued their influence at Wilton. Entering a tomb was not a one-way process, and neither was it something that one might expect to do only once. Through all of Edith’s intercessions at Wilton, it was her physical closeness to the nuns at the abbey that was key to mitigating their doubts about her intercessory power. After all, if Edith were in the abbey’s chapel, and could at any moment call one of her sisters by name, it would be foolish to discount her altogether.

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Chapter 6

The Corpse of Public Opinion: Thomas of Norwich, Anti-Semitism, and Christian Identity Mary E. Leech

The story of Hugh of Lincoln is the best-known hagiographic legend of a saintly boy allegedly murdered by Jews. Invoked in Chaucer’s The Prioress’s Tale and used as the topic of ballads collected as late as the nineteenth century,1 Hugh’s story grew out of an established institution of anti-Judaic sentiment and the profitability of boy-martyr cults. By the time little Hugh of Lincoln was venerated as a saint in the mid-thirteenth century, the cults of boy saints presumably murdered by Jews through violent anti-Christian rituals were long established both in England and on the Continent.2 While the myth of ritual murder of Christians by Jews had been around for centuries,3 it was the hagiography of William of Norwich (d. 1144), written by Thomas of Monmouth, that laid the social and legal foundations for accusing specific Jewish communities of a specific murder. By manipulating the narrative of William’s corpse, Thomas creates a saint’s body through which he establishes a cult; motivated by greed, social rivalry and religious identity, other communities used Thomas’s work to form narratives for the corpses of boys murdered violently in order to generate

1 This tale is motif #155 in Francis James Childs’ The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York, 1965). There are numerous ballads collected about Hugh of Lincoln, including an AngloNorman ballad (based on an Italian legend) that may have been a source for Chaucer’s tale. Michel Francisque, Hugues de Lincoln: Recueil de Ballades Anglo-Normande et Ecossoises Relatives Au Meurtre de Cet Enfant Commes par les Juifs MCCLV (Paris, 1834). 2 Montague Rhodes James lists the most prominent of the English and French boys presumably murdered by Jews in his chapter “The Legend” in The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. and trans. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge, 1896), lxxiv-lxxvii. 3 Jessopp cites a possible fifth-century source for a story of ritual murder of Christians by Jews. Jessopp states, “The original story of the Jews of Inmestar who were punished by magistrates on the charge of beating a boy to death in the fifth century is to be found in the ecclesiastical history of Socrates, who was alive at the time of the [alleged] occurrence.” Augustus Jessopp, “The Norwich Jews,” in The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. and trans. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge, 1896), xl.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_008

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similar local cults.4 Through his hagiography of William, Thomas establishes a pattern that became the standard for explaining similar deaths of boys in subsequent hagiographies.5 While anti-Judaic sentiments fostered these tales, there was also a base economic motivation on the part of local communities in which the tales flourished and produced a sensational martyr as a local saint.6 William of Norwich’s hagiography, begun by Thomas several years after William’s death, is as much a propaganda piece justifying William’s saintliness as it is a marketing campaign for his tomb at Norwich, with Thomas as the administrator of William’s cult. Throughout the hagiography of William, Thomas aligns local stories of the boy’s death with the sanctity and miraculous events associated with sainthood. Thomas’s desire to promote the cult of William and to promote himself as the cult’s custodian required a hook to attract his audience’s attention, and that hook was the myth of Jewish ritual murder. Despite Thomas’s best attempts to validate that myth, there is no evidence in the hagiography that the Norwich Jews – or any Jews – had anything to do with the murder. However, by inscribing a hagiographic narrative onto William’s corpse and thereby rewriting the body as a surrogate for Christ’s, Thomas evokes a

4 Historian Joe Hillaby explains the connection of William’s murder to the death of Harold of Gloucester and the deaths of other boys that followed. According to Hillaby, although the cult of Harold did not flourish, it did demonstrate that the deaths of boys, particularly around Easter, could be presented to the public as ritual murders or “blood libels,” thus popularizing boy-martyr cults and spreading such notions outward and into Europe. “The Ritual-ChildMurder Accusation: Its Dissemination and Harold of Gloucester,” Jewish Historical Studies 34 (1994-1996): 74-77. 5 The hagiographies of Harold of Gloucester and Robert of Bury St. Edmunds do not survive. The story of Robert is recounted by Rev. H. Copinger Hill in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute for Archaeology & History XXI Pt. 2 (1932), along with mentions of Harold, William, Hugh, and an unknown boy in Winchester. At the end of the piece is a ballad about Robert, taken from MS Laud 683. Bury St. Edmunds already had a thriving cult for their namesake, St. Edmund, who is invoked in the ballad, but used the death of Robert to build another cult for the town. 6 The economic benefits of relics, saints’ tombs, and pilgrimages are discussed in a variety of sources. Hillaby states that “England and indeed Europe had precious few new martyrs in the twelfth century as the extraordinary success of the cult of St. Thomas in Canterbury shows.” “The Ritual-Child-Murder,” 69-70. Also see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1978), 25-27, and Thomas A. Prendergast, Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus (New York, 2004). Among other things, Prendergast discusses the activities of pilgrimages and the economic benefits derived from pilgrimages in the coda of the book, 141-146.

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sensationalism that promotes his argument for William’s sainthood and cements his own place as a saint-maker. Although Thomas wanted to be seen as the initiator of William’s cult, E. M. Rose explains that the sanctification of William initially was the work of a clerical faction that wanted a saint cult for Norwich.7 According to Rose, “Other members of the priory [the Norwich Cathedral Priory] were instrumental, including the monks who commissioned Thomas to write William’s Life, the chief means by which Norwich publicized its possession of the relics.”8 There may also have been some local rivalry in wanting William in particular as Norwich’s patron saint. Rose demonstrates a connection William had to neighboring Bury St. Edmunds. Among other reasons, “the priory might have wanted to emphasize the saint’s choice of Norwich over Bury as his final resting place and the site of his miracles.”9 Though Bury St. Edmunds already had a notable patron saint in its namesake, the ninth East Anglian King Edmund, in 1181 the town used the death of a boy named Robert to create their own “blood libel” saint, most likely to compete with William. Though the Norwich Priory was eager to have William sanctified, Rose notes that William had little popular appeal, evidenced by Thomas’ descriptions of William’s death, burial, and translations.10 The use of saints’ cults for political and economic gain was nothing new in the twelfth century. However, as Barbara Abou-El-Haj discusses, changes in political structures and social needs directly influenced the way saints were presented to the community. One example is the cult of St. Cuthbert in Durham, who died in 687. Bede wrote His Life and Miracles (the same title Thomas uses for William) in 721, and two hundred years later or so, the Histo­ria de Sancto Cuthberto11 was written under the patronage of the Bishop of 7

8 9 10 11

It was fairly typical for an area to want a saint for local protection and prestige. One of the many reasons that Durham venerated Cuthbert so emphatically was that “up to this time, the Church of Lindisfarne could boast no Saint [sic] of its own, although almost every other Saxon See had long before this period canonized some one of its departed bishops, and had placed itself under his especial protection.” James Raine, Saint Cuthbert: With an Account of the State in which His Remains Were Found upon the Opening of His Tomb in Durham Cathedral in the Year MDCCCXXVII (Durham, 1828), 35. J. M. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of Medieval Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2015), 98. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 98, and 105-7. Barbara Abou-El-Haj comments that this work is mainly a record of royal donations and a description of how Cuthbert’s body and cult followed the community to Durham. Even before the Conquest, the cult had obvious economic and social importance to the

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Durham. However, after the Conquest in 1066, the records expanded and changed at a rapid pace, which again is related to the economic and spiritual power associated with a popular cult. Abou-El-Haj explains, “the texts formed only a portion of the activities centered around the cult, advanced by William of St. Calais, Norman bishop of Durham, who inaugurated an ambitious program to reorganize Durham spiritually and expand it economically.”12 Abou-El-Haj goes on to detail the increase of miracles at Cuthbert’s tomb that followed the various translations of his body. These miracles, which were subsequently added to the records of Cuthbert’s life, reflect a power struggle between William the Conqueror, William of St. Calais, the Anglo-Saxon bishop Athelwine, and other Norman appointees by the Conqueror, for the taxes and monies to be made from the cult.13 Likewise, Thomas’s creation of William’s martyrdom was an attempt to fashion a reputation for himself in Norwich. The economic benefits of a saint’s cult14 would also give Thomas more power, power that he attempted to assert throughout his own participation in William’s later translations and miracles. The cult of a saint, particularly a local saint, was a significant part of a medieval community. As intermediaries between the human and divine realms, saints, particularly martyrs, held a central place among the Christian faithful.15 The saint’s body became a focal point for how the saint interacted with the community, and in many ways saints were seen as having a continual living

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community. “Saint Cuthbert: The Post-Conquest Appropriation of an Anglo-Saxon Cult,” Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Context, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, 1996), 177-8. Abou-El-Haj, “Saint Cuthbert,” 178. Ibid., 178-184. More on manuscripts depicting images of Cuthbert’s life, death, burial, and translations follow to page 200. In addition to the influx of pilgrims that would boost local business, Thomas also appears to have had personal gain in mind. At various times he describes taking teeth from William’s corpse, pulling thorns from his body, and wiping away blood. It seems likely that Thomas describes these things in order to verify relics from William’s corpse in order to sell these alleged relics at William’s burial sites. Saints operated as intercessors to God, not replacements for God. Their role in the community was meant to bring Christians closer to God, and remind Christians of God’s presence among them. Augustine of Hippo writes that a Christian should “offer to God, in the places of their memorials, whom God has made men, and martyrs, and advanced them into the society of His angels in heaven, that we at the solemnity may both give thanks to God for their victories, and be encouraged to endeavor the attainment of such crowns and glories as they have already attained: still invocating Him at their memorials.” City of God, trans. John Healey (London, 1934), 7.27.

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presence within a community.16 A tomb was a visual reminder of the saint’s presence, a place where pilgrims could go to plead for favors and have access to the miraculous. As Patrick Geary writes, “saints, by their physical presence were a primary means of social integration, identity, protection, and economic support for the communities in which they were found.”17 The body of the saint, access to that body, and a narrative about how the body is defined in reference to the community’s needs were essential to how the cult of a saint functioned both locally and regionally.18 As Geary explains, “Saints were vital powerful members of society and commanded reverence, honor, respect, and devotion…. They in turn owed, to their faithful, services that varied with the nature of the particular community.”19 Some of these services included protection of lives and property, and miracles that encouraged the appeal of the cult. The saintly martyr was cast as a link between the divine (particularly Jesus, in whose suffering the martyr shared) and the faithful.20 The bodies of martyrs played important roles as texts, as the body of the saint is inscribed with the marks of suffering inflicted by the non-Christian Other.21 The body of the saint became a text in and of itself, both as evidence of saintliness and as a physical presence within the community. The association of a saint’s body with the body of Christ was pro forma, particularly for martyrs, who shared in the suffer16 17 18

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For a discussion on saints as living members of their communities, see Geary, Furta Sacra, 108-28. Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 171. The physical presence of a saint’s body and tomb was an important tactile and psychological aspect of the saint’s role in the community. Peter Brown states, “[Wor­ shippers] did not only come to bow, to pray, and to be prayed for. They came to touch – to rub themselves against the tombs, to take away their dust and their candle wax, and to drink the oil of their lamps. What they wanted was a participatory, one might almost say ‘symbiotic,’ relationship with the other world.” The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Enlarged Edition (Chicago, 2015), xxvii. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, 120 Martyrs, as Geary writes, held a particularly important place in a community. He states, “Martyrs, through their passion and death, were seen to have a special relationship with Christ, and the celebration of their memoria came to involve not simply a remembrance of the dead, but the petitioning of these special dead to continue to intercede before God for their friends of this world.” Living with the Dead, 201. Typically, the tormenters in hagiography were pagans of the Roman era, or other so-called “heathens” who rejected the one true God in some way. The use of Jews as the tormentors in hagiography has obvious roots in the persecution of Jews based on the gospel account of their role in the execution of Christ, but Jews do not seem to have been commonly used in hagiography until Thomas’s Life of William.

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ing of Christ. Caroline Walker Bynum, in discussing the piety of women, speaks to the complicated issues that made up medieval views of the relationship between the body and the divine: Because preachers, confessors and spiritual directors assumed the person to be a psychosomatic unity, they not only read unusual bodily events as expressions of soul but also expected the body itself to offer a means of access to the divine. Because they worshipped a God who became incarnate and died for the sins of others, they viewed all bodily events – the hideous wounds of martyrs or stigmatics as well as the rosy-faced beauty of virgins – as possible manifestations of grace.22 The body of a martyr, then, took on special significance in terms of the social status acquired by the body and the discourse that proceeds from and by that body.23 Complicating the relationship between the saint and the faithful was the way the union of the soul and the body in general was perceived by contemporary theological philosophy. Belief in the resurrection of the body was central to a religion based on the resurrection of Christ, but the concept that the soul could reenter the body and live again, or that the living could communicate with the dead24 (the communication usually being through miracles that benefited individuals and/or the larger community) created a confusing relationship between the body and the soul. Bynum discusses the philosophy of the body after death and the relationship of the body to the soul, put forth by Aquinas, John of Paris, and Durandus, as a theory of form identity: Since only substances exist, matter does not exist apart from form: prime matter is potency. When the human being dies, therefore, one cannot say 22 23

24

Carolyn Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), 235. Miri Rubin states that “Bodies, medieval and others, are subjected to [intersecting discourses], areas of understanding, fields of knowledge and power; these were lived by medieval people with and by the many messages and various teachings about their bodies, themselves. We can, thus, assume no prime grounding for the body, but an altogether primary place for the understanding of embodied existence.” “The Body Whole and Vulnerable, in Fifteenth-Century England,” in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minnesota, 1991), 20. Martha Rampton, “Up from the Dead: Magic and Miracle,” in Death and Dying in the Middle Ages, ed. Edelgard E. DuBruck and Barbara I. Gusick (New York, 1999), 276.

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that its body or its matter waits to be reassembled, for its [italics Bynum] body or matter does not exist at all…. The cadaver that exists after we die, like the body that exists before, is second matter – formed matter – but the cadaver is informed not by the form of the soul but by the form of the corpse.25 The corpse of a person no longer contains a soul, but the corpse itself can reflect the sanctity of the person through miracles, such as incorruptibility, movement, and pleasing odors. It is this transformation of the corpse of a nondescript boy into the body of a saint that informs the hagiography of William of Norwich. Thomas of Monmouth’s revision of William of Norwich’s corpse uses the communal desire for divine presence in that community as the basis for his creation of William’s holiness. Peter Brown’s seminal The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity explores, among other things, the social importance that a physical reminder of the divine has in a community. That link is created by the immediacy of the saint’s body and relics in the community. He says, [I]t enabled the Christian communities, by projecting a structure of clearly defined relationships onto the unseen world, to ask questions about the quality of relationships in their own society … and to examine in the searching light of ideal relationships with ideal figures, the relation between power, mercy, and justice as practiced around them.26 However, Brown also notes that for martyrs, their suffering was connected to Christ symbolically, but that “they were vibrant also with the memory of a dialogue with and a triumph over unjust power.”27 Thomas took advantage of general prejudice against Jews, in order to put forth an immediate danger to Christianity. As a persecuted minority, the Jews do not represent an unjust power, but, as John M. McCulloh explains, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were marked by great social, political, and religious change. With those changes came a

25

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Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 259. The whole concept of form was different than the actual matter that made up form. The soul also had form, but it was not made of matter and so its connection to the body was not entirely physical. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 63. Ibid., 101.

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sharp decline in Jewish-Christian relations.28 By making the Jews the oppressors of Christianity through the vicious murder of a boy, Thomas uses existing prejudice against Jews in his narrative, and exacerbates that prejudice through a horrifying scenario of torture and murder.29 Up until Thomas’s accusations in his hagiography of William, there had not been actual associations of Jews to ritual murder, particularly of children.30 Thomas’s use of Jews as persecutors is a way for him to establish a sensational aspect to the death of William and set himself up as the manager of William’s saintly reputation.31 Thomas writes 28

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According to McCulloh: “Economic opportunities for Jews became more restricted; their legal status declined; and they came to be regarded as enemies of Christ and the Christian religion. The appearance of the ritual murder accusation represents an important stage in the increasingly negative attitudes of the majority toward the minority. This myth helped to justify Christian hostility by assuring the Christians that Jewish enmity toward Christ had not been satisfied with his execution; it continued, directed at his followers.” John M. McCulloh, “Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth.” Speculum 72.3 (1997): 700. Jeffrey J. Cohen says that Thomas “promulgated a myth of Jewish international conspiracy against Christians, in order to render the Jews of Norwich, not a local community with their own potential eccentricities, but representatives of a worldwide race of people united in their malice and murderous intentions.” Jeffrey J. Cohen, “The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich,” Speculum 79.1 (January 2004): n. 116. Gavin Langmuir asserts that William’s hagiography is the first known accusation of ritual murder by Jews. As stated above, legends about ritual murder had been around for a long time, but until Thomas there had been no actual deaths associated directly with Jewish malice. Gavin I. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder,” Speculum 59 (1984), 820-46. McCulloh cites Israel J. Yuval’s contention that Thomas used an incident from the Rhineland in 1096 as inspiration. Yuval describes how when faced with forced conversion, many Jews chose to kill their families and themselves, provoking fears by Christians of the murderous tendencies of Jews. “Vengeance and Damnation, Blood and Defamation: From Jewish Martyrdom to Blood Libel Accusations” (in Hebrew), Zion 58 (1993), 33-90; English summary, vi-viii. Yuval is referenced in McCulloh, “Jewish Ritual Murder,” 699. One of the arguments that Thomas gives in Book II concerning the guilt of the Jews, which is meant to be proof of William’s status as a martyr, relates a story told purportedly by a converted Jew named Theobald, who confirms that ritual murder is part of Jewish tradition: “Referebat quidem in antiquis patrum suorum scriptis scriptum haberi, iudeos sine sanguinis humani effusione nec libertatem adipisci nec ad patrios fines quandoque regredi. Vnde ab ipsis antiquitus decretum est omni anno eos in obprobrium et con­ tumelisam Christi christianum ubicunque terram deo litare altissimo” [He verily told us that in the ancient writings of his fathers it was written that the Jews, without the shedding of human blood, could neither obtain their freedom, nor could they ever return to their fatherland. Hence it was laid down to them in ancient times that every year they

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his hagiography with an agenda, which includes the reinvention of William as a saint, the fabrication of Jews as an enemy,32 and the construction of himself as custodian of William’s holy legacy. Defining how the body of a saint, particularly a martyr, contributed to community life among the living came through such hagiographies, which were used as myth-making devices that aligned the saint’s life with communal needs. These traditions followed basic formulas of retelling saintly performance that were expected by audiences. As Larissa Tracy explains, “The hagiographic tradition did not rely solely on the verbatim transmission of saints’ lives, but also on the ability and desire of scribes to author their own revisions, interpreting and rewriting legends to appeal to their chosen audience.”33 Thomas uses the death of William and his association with Jews to indicate a threat so that there appears to be a need for a local saint’s protection. He also sees an opportunity for himself as the guardian of William’s cult, and the potential for influence and power in Norwich. With the murder of William of Norwich and Thomas’s subsequent hagiography, a pattern of specific accusations developed in order to explain the deaths of boys that occurred around Easter. Via these accusations, the corpse of William becomes evidence of un-Christian acts and consequently he was reinvented as a martyr to his Christian faith. The hagiography written about William reinvents him as a saintly martyr. In this way William’s corpse is transformed into the body of a saint via the text; and his corpse becomes a body that verifies holiness and the potential for miraculous intercession. In order to pres-

32

33

must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world in scorn and contempt of Christ, that so they might avenge their sufferings on Him]. Life and Miracles, 93. Scholars generally regard this statement as an invention by Thomas. Another factor, according to Rose, was the trial of Simon de Novers. De Novers, a knight deeply in debt to a Jewish banker referred to as Deulesalt, decided to solve his money problems by ambushing and killing Deulesalt. Deulesalt was a leading member of the Jewish community in Norwich and had connections to London and King Stephen. The Jewish community demanded justice, for which they were willing to pay quite generously. Though sympathy was originally against de Novers, Bishop William Turbe connected Deulesalt and the Norwich Jews to the murder of William. In this way, Bishop Turbe was able to argue that the killing of Deulesalt was a revenge killing by de Novers. Rose attributes the Bishop’s motive to “an opportunity for William Turbe to raise his profile throughout the realm.” The Murder of William of Norwich, 79. Rose discusses the trial of de Novers and the context in chapter three of his book. Thomas uses the trial, which happened long before he arrived in Norwich, to emphasize the villainy of the Jews and local outrage over William’s death. He describes the trial in Book II of the Vita. Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, 2012), 32.

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ent William as saintly, Jews must be depicted as persecutors and a threat to the community as well as to Christianity at large. In his exploration of the association with Jewish ritual murder in Thomas’s work, Gavin Langmuir meticulously investigates Thomas’s hagiography of William, noting the contradictions and obvious falsehoods throughout. Langmuir concludes, “Since [Thomas] had not acquired all the elements of his story until 1149, and had apparently written Book I by 1150, we may feel reasonably sure that the fantasy that Jews ritually murdered Christians by crucifixion was created and contributed to western culture by Thomas of Monmouth about 1150.”34 Langmuir notes that Thomas did not seem to hold any particular obsession or animosity towards Jews,35 and so his motivations for purveying such a myth lie elsewhere. Rose attributes the origin of specific blood libel cases to a legal tactic used by Bishop William Turbe to exonerate Sir Simon de Novers for the killing of a Jewish banker,36 which Thomas then used to promote William’s cult. McCulloh makes a strong argument that Thomas did not invent this myth, but that he used other texts, both English and Continental, as sources for his depiction of Jewish murderers in his Life of William. McCulloh’s argument lessens the culpability that Langmuir gives Thomas in escalating violent anti-Judaism, but does not in any way exculpate Thomas for using the prejudices of his day to promote a cult he had a vested interest in seeing popularized.37 Within the text, it is clear that Thomas struggled to make a case for William’s sanctity, and that the local church authorities in Norwich were less than eager for William to receive such honors. William’s body is found in the woods near Norwich, left unburied for four days, and then reburied in the woods where he is found. His family later digs him up and identifies him, but then reburies him in the woods. A month later, William is reburied in the Monk’s Cemetery in Norwich. Six years after William’s death, visions direct Thomas, now in residence at Norwich Cathedral, to have William’s body translated to the cathedral itself, which the Prior is reluctant to do. Once William is translated to the cathedral, the Prior has items of veneration (candles and a carpet) removed. Complaints about inconveniences to the monks result in William being moved quietly to another part of the cathedral. Later, large crowds lead the Bishop of

34 35 36 37

Gavin. I. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder,” Speculum 59 (1984): 842. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth,” 845. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich, 89. See note 32 for details. McCulloh, “Jewish Ritual Murder,” 739-40.

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Norwich (the earlier Prior having died by this time) to move William to a chapel to accommodate the pilgrims. In her article, “The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich,” Denise L. Despres recounts the difficulties Thomas had in persuading local authorities, both secular and clerical, of William’s holiness. Some of the possible reasons for this difficulty concerned William’s lowly background,38 his familiarity with local Jews (William had trained as a skinner, and regularly took work from the Jewish community in Norwich), and the perceived lack of holiness during his life; moreover, there was a general reluctance of authorities to accept a purported real example of ritual murder by Jews rather than what was considered unsubstantiated rumors.39 Another reason for the reluctance of local authorities to accept William as a saint could be the character of Thomas himself. Augustus Jessopp states, “When we come to look at the character of Brother Thomas again, we find it very far from blameless.”40 Montague Rhodes James continually dismisses Thomas’s storytelling as part of an “appalling and destructive myth” about ritual child murder, pointing to Thomas’s motivations of personal gain in promoting the cult of St. William.41 Throughout the hagiography, Thomas wrestles with presenting William as a saint while having to incorporate into the text material that was commonly known about William and his murder. According to Jessopp, it is unlikely Thomas arrived in Norwich until after 1146, because “all the incidents related in the first two books [of the hagiography] (i.e. the books that describe William’s life, death, and translation to the Monk’s Cemetery) are confessedly reported on hearsay evidence.”42 Since Thomas had to rely on hearsay for the time he 38

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Rose presents William as being from “a notable family,” stating that William’s association with the peasant class comes from a misinterpretation of the word “ruri” as meaning “farmer,” and from Norman snobbery against Anglo-Saxon families. If this is true, the initial treatment of William’s body becomes all the more strange. Denise L. Despres. “The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich,” The Journal of Religion 90.1 (2010): 35-37. Augustus Jessopp, “Thomas of Monmouth,” The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. and trans. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge, 1896), xii Jessopp, “Thomas of Monmouth,” lxiv, lxxii, lxxiv. Despres notes the interaction between hagiographers of Thomas Becket and the work of Thomas, demonstrating the strategy Thomas used in contrast to that of others in cultivating devotion to such cults. Despres, “The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich,” 60-62. Jessopp, “Thomas of Monmouth,” x. Thomas himself writes “Quod ego Thomas monachus Norwiscensis, eisdem referentibus audiens et reuera uerum esse cognoscens, script tradere curaui,” [All of which I, Thomas, a monk of Norwich, after hearing it from their lips and knowing it to be certainly true, have been careful to hand down in writing], Life and Miracles, 30.

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was not in Norwich, a detail such as that of the corpse lying in the woods for several days would need to be explained if Thomas were to make a convincing argument that William was a saint deserving of veneration, and not a poor boy no one cared enough about to bury properly.43 William was either not missed for four days, or he was known to be dead but no one was particularly concerned about what happened to his corpse. One of the oddest events concerning William’s death is the indifferent treatment of his corpse. Rather than the reverence one would expect towards a saintly person’s body, the lack of concern over what happens to William’s body is unusual, even for an average person who is not being presented as a saint. On March 25, 1144, the corpse of twelve-year-old William, a skinner’s apprentice, was found in the Thorpe Wood outside of Norwich by Henry de Sprowston; Thomas assumes that William was killed the day before and left there. Since March 25 was Easter Eve,44 Henry decided to wait to return until after Easter (the implication being that he has better things to do before a holiday) and have William, who was yet unidentified, buried in the churchyard at Sprowston. On Monday Henry returned but, because he did not have the permission of the bishop to bury William at the Sprowston church, he decided to bury the body himself in the woods. Godwin, a priest and William’s uncle (by marriage) heard through companions of his nephew that William may be the boy buried in the woods. Godwin, his son, and William’s brother went to identify the body. They dug William up, identified him, said prayers over him, and then reburied him in the woods. In order to address the treatment of William’s corpse, Thomas enhanced the story with divine intervention to explain why the body was left in the woods. Before he relates the story of Henry’s discovery of William’s body, Thomas tells the story of a nun, Legarda, who sees a “lucis uisione ualde”; “interius radiabat in mente” [vision of strange light” that “sent forth its beams into her mind].45 43

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Rose theorizes that the reason William was left in the woods was because “[f]inding a dead body is invariably an awkward experience. It raises troubling questions, draws unwanted attention to the finder, and generally entangles the discoverer in costly officialdom and paperwork, not to mention emotional distress.” The Murder of William of Norwich, 13. Rose also states that the first person to find William who was obligated to do something about it was Henry de Sprowston, a forester whose duties included patrolling the woods (14-15). This still does not explain why de Sprowston would leave William unburied in the woods for at least two days, or why William’s family leaves him buried in unhallowed ground for a month. This is the term used throughout Thomas’s hagiography. The implication seems to be that the preparations for the holiday took precedence over the body in the woods. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 32.

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The light leads her to the body of a dead boy (William), “capite rasum, et puncturis inumeris aporiatum” [his head shaved, and punctured with countless stabs],46 and she sees ravens that “nullatenus tagnere neque se sustinere ualentes” [were wholly unable to touch him or settle upon him].47 She then “plurimi quidem esse meriti iacentem agnouit” [began to understand that he who lay there was certainly a person of extraordinary merit],48 yet “oratione facta illum conseruatori suo commendas cum sodalibus domum gratulabund regreditur” [after offering up a prayer and commending him over to the care of his Saviour, she returned home with her companions rejoicing].49 Thomas’s inclusion of miracles typical of saints works to establish William as a saint, but also furiously attempts to explain why the boy’s corpse was left in the woods for so long. Other critics have noted this odd treatment of the corpse as well. In his discussion of Thomas as the first purveyor of a specific ritual murder attributed to Jews, Langmuir observes that “Thomas would have us believe that the wounds indicated a crucifixion, but he cannot help revealing the manifest lack of concern with which the body was treated for a whole month until someone suggested its potential as a relic.”50 In order to give William a saintly aspect, Thomas inserts no fewer than three miracles into the story of William’s discovery (light appearing in the shape of a ladder, God directing Legarda through the light to William’s corpse, and ravens being unable to eat his corpse). In doing so, Thomas projected the text of hagiography onto William’s body. God’s will, not the indifference of the community, was the reason why the body was there. Rather than presenting the grisly sight of a corpse left in the woods for four days in early spring, Thomas presents William’s body as a beatific vision of light and incorruptibility, and as emanating a heavenly odor. After inscribing the text of hagiography onto the corpse, Thomas continues to redefine William’s body as saintly. Henry finds the body, and deprehendit uulneratum, lingneumque uidit in ore tormentum. Inusitatis uero attrectatum penis conspiciens ex ipso penarum modo suspicari nimirum iam cepit, quoniam non christianus sed reura iudeus fuerit qui eiusmodi innocentem tam temerario [sic] mactarae presumpsit

46 47 48 49 50

Ibid., 33. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 33-34. Ibid., Life and Miracles, 34. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth,” 829.

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[he perceived that he had been wounded, and he noticed the wooden torture in his mouth (a teazle,51 which is a wooden block put in the mouth as a gag); becoming aware that the boy had been treated with unusual cruelty, Henry began to suspect that it was no Christian but in very truth a Jew who had ventured to slaughter an innocent child of this kind with such horrible barbarity].52 Thomas then proposes that “eius rei reatu iudeos non immunes quidam autumant; nonnulli uero quodam reuera presagio impulsi sic esse affirmant” [some suspected that the Jews were not guiltless of the deed; but some, led on by what was really a divine discernment, protested that it was so].53 William is later described by his companions as “Willelmum qui iudeos diebus preteritis frequentare solebat ipsum esse fama promulagauit” [William who formerly used to have dealings with the Jews]54 because of his work as a skinner.55 Thomas makes a point of emphasizing William’s association with the Jews (which was already well-known), and thereby giving the Jews in his text the opportunity needed for the murder.56 Accusing Jews of the murder only solved part of Thomas’s problem as far as the narrative of William’s corpse is concerned. There is also the issue of why the boy was left in the woods and then buried there before being translated to consecrated ground a month later. Thomas resorts to the device of divine intervention to explain why it was all part of a divine plan for William to be buried on unconsecrated ground, thereby establishing a continuing line of miraculous events surrounding the corpse of William. When Henry and his family go 51

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The description of the teazle is reflective of a Jewish tradition of wearing a tefillin, which is a small wooden box containing prayers that is attached to the forehead of a Jewish male by means of a leather strap. While it seems unlikely that a Christian monk would know the purpose of a tefillin, the visual of the tefillin on the heads of Norwich Jews could be a familiar one to Thomas and the Christian residents of Norwich. Thomas’s description of the teazle becomes another method used by Thomas to connect William’s death to the Jewish community. My thanks to Bea Opengart of the University of Cincinnati for her explanation of the tefillin tradition. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 34-5. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 38. Opengart also suggested that William’s work as skinner in the Jewish community may have included making the straps for tefillins. This would be yet another way Thomas connects William’s torture and death to his association with the Jews in Norwich. In discussing the process by which Thomas de Cantilupe (d. 1282) was canonized, Robert Bartlett lists anti-Semitism (his term) as a factor in Thomas’s favor. Robert Bartlett, The Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory, and Colonialism in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 24.

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back to bury William in Sprowston, Thomas states that Henry is “diuini ut reor instinctu permonitus, aliter quam disposuerat faciendum adiudicauit” [forewarned by a divine impulse as I think, he decided he must take another course].57 Despite a sweet odor that arises when William’s body is moved, he is still unceremoniously buried in the woods with nary a prayer said for him.58 Thomas explains, “Neque sine diuina dispositione actum esse reor ut ibi eum tumularie contingeret unde ad maiorem uenerationem libere postmodum transferretur” [I do not think it was without divine disposal that the burial happened to take place there, to the intent that afterwards the body might be removed for greater veneration].59 Again, the disrespect to William’s corpse is explained as part of the divine plan to honor him later. With all this in mind, the treatment of William’s corpse by his family is also very odd. William’s relatives, among them his brother Robert, Godwin, and Godwin’s son, go to the place where William is buried. There, they decide to dig him up in order to identify his corpse. As they dig, another miracle takes place: “contra faciem eius aperte uisa est terra uelut forti quodam impetu de infra sulleuari, et sulleuata quasi repelli” [suddenly the earth before their very eyes seemed by some strong force to be lifted up from below and as it were to be thrown out].60 This happens twice, giving Godwin hope that William may still

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Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 37 The various miracles that presumably happen around William’s corpse are meant to establish a connection between William and heaven, a standard part of what a saint was meant to do for a community. Brown discusses this in The Cult of the Saints. See particularly 5-7, and 20-23. For a view of a secular body and its elevation to an almost saint-like status, see Thomas A. Prendergast, Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus (London, 2004). See especially the comparison of the pilgrimages to Thomas Becket’s tomb and the translations of Chaucer’s body, 141-46. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 37. Ibid., 38. Isidore of Seville marks a difference between a corpse and a cadaver: “Everyone who is dead is either a corpse (funus), or a cadaver. It is a corpse if it is buried…. The term cadaver, on the other hand, is used if the body lies unburied, for ‘cadaver (cadaver) comes from ‘falling down’ (cadere), because it cannot stand upright anymore.” The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 3rd edition, trans. Stephen A. Barney, et al. (Cambridge, 2011), XI.ii.33-35. Thomas does not make this distinction directly, but his language does change somewhat during his descriptions of what happens to William’s body. Often what is translated as “body” comes from a pronoun that refers to William. When Thomas does use a word for the dead body, he generally uses “corpus,” though he used “minibus” occasionally. Once William is buried, Thomas does not often refer to him as a “body” except during trans­ lations, but when he does he uses “corpus.” More often, Thomas refers to William postburial as “martiris” [martyr].

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be alive.61 When they see William’s face, they recognize him and realize that he is dead. The miracle of a sweet odor recurs, which astonishes all of them. William’s attempts to leave his undignified grave in the woods indicates, among other things, that both he and God want him buried properly, with appropriate ceremony, on consecrated ground. However, this is not what his family does. Despite all the indications of sainthood, his relatives pray over William, rebury him in the woods, and then “deoque corpus et animam commendantes regressi sunt” [commending the soul and body to God, they went on their way].62 The family’s acts do not indicate that the family viewed William’s corpse as particularly valuable in terms of saintliness, nor do they seem consistent with the Thomas’s depiction of William as a virtuous boy beloved by his family.63 Thomas goes on to describe a dream William’s aunt had of her nephew “nepotuem quem plurimum dilexerat” [whom she had so greatly loved],64 but the purpose of the dream in Thomas’s narrative is to accuse the Jews of the murder rather than to argue for his veneration. Likewise, William’s mother is distraught at the news of her son’s death, but her reaction is to visit her sister, Godwin’s wife, and discuss how Jews must be the ones responsible for so heinous a crime. In fact, the next several sections of the narrative recount the accusations against the Jews, relate Godwin’s offer to prove the accusations through ordeal, discuss the local sheriff’s protection of the Jews, describe the Prior of St. Pancras’s demand for ecclesiastical justice and the Jews’ refusal to submit to the ecclesiastical courts. The corpse of William then disappears from the text even as Thomas works to inscribe evidence of martyrdom onto it.65 61

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Geary describes miracles in which saints are unwilling to be moved to new locations, and so the relics “miraculously become heavy when attempts were made to transport them.” Living with the Dead, 172. Here is seems that William wants to escape his uncere­monious burial spot. Geary suggests that for more detail on the miracles associated with translation, see Martin Heinzelmann and Joseph-Claude Poulin, Les Vies Anciennes de Sainte Geneviève de Paris: Etudes Critiques (Paris, 1986), 46-77. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 39. Leaving the body in the woods also does not seem consistent with the idea that William was from a notable family, as Rose claims. See note 38. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 41. Brown discusses how the merita of the saint, “their personal high standing with God,” that establishes the relationship between the community and the saint. Brown, Cult of Saints, 95. All the cults that Brown describes begin with a person who is already considered connected to God in a special way, and while the narratives may change as the needs of the community change (Abou-El-Haj discusses this issue in relationship to Cuthbert, see notations above), the essential recognition of holiness is not at stake. Thomas’s movement

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Thomas’s movement from a discussion of William’s corpse to the establishment of Jewish guilt in his murder indicates Thomas’s attempt to establish a threat that needs addressing more than an argument for sainthood. This attempt forces Thomas to explain over and over the indifferent treatment of William’s corpse by his relatives even as Thomas decorates the hagiography with as many trappings of sainthood as he can. The primary method he uses is a focus on the assumed villainy of the Jews, which creates a need for holiness in William and the boy’s role as a sacrifice. This role makes William’s death analogous to the sacrifice of Christ after the fact, and gives him an importance to the community he did not have in life. Thomas’s insistence on Jewish guilt permeates the narrative, often giving the impression of defensiveness in how William’s status as a martyr should be interpreted. It is essential to Thomas’s objective for establishing William’s cult that William be seen as a saint, yet Thomas’s descriptions of William’s life and his death do not seem to have been perceived as particularly extraordinary. For William to be a martyr, his death must be depicted as spectacularly gruesome, as an assault on his faith, as something that will pull the community together in a unified need to see William as a saint who can protect them from similar assaults. The hagiography states that the accusation against the Jews is first brought up publicly by Godwin at a Synod presided over by Bishop Eborard shortly after William’s death (April 7, 1144). According to Thomas, Godwin insists that Jews were responsible for William’s brutal death, citing his wife’s visions and those of William’s mother as evidence. Though Thomas insists that the Bishop is moved by the speech and wants justice, the Bishop puts off a hearing until the next day so the Jews can have their say in the matter. John, the local sheriff who Thomas villainizes as a sympathizer of the Jews,66 advises them against attending the hearing. John’s reasons are legal, in that “neque iudeos rege absente super talibus christianorum nugis responsuros mandauit” [in the absence of the King,67 the Jews should make no answer to such inven-

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to establishing the guilt of the Jews and the martyrdom of William works to set up holiness that does not appear to be assumed in any way. Thomas states that John “utpote quem rei ueritas non latebat [was not ignorant of the truth], making John complicit in the murder. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 46 According to an appended note to Jessopp’s introductory chapter on “The Norwich Jews,” W. Hudson says that “the Jews were the ‘King’s Chattels,” and later states “[the] Jews belonged to the king and were under the special protection of his local representative.” “Note: The Political Condition of Norwich,” xlv, xlvii. The sheriff was responsible for their actions, and so John’s defense of the Jews may also be a defense for himself against charges that he had not properly controlled an alien population in the town. Rose’s connection of the murder of William to the defense of Simon de Novers is relevant here,

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tions of the Christians].68 Thomas presents the Jews as disrespectful of ecclesiastical authority and flourishing under the protection of a corrupt official. He portrays their desire to establish a place in the community as a desire to murder innocent Christians. With a danger so near, the town needs saintly protection from such a dire threat. The presentation of William as a martyr and the founding of a cult around him would satisfy the fears of the community and associate Thomas as a defender of Christianity through William. Once Thomas writes martyrdom onto William’s body, he then tries to create tension over the ownership of the reconfigured body in order to show its value to various church authorities. This act is also meant to invest the community with a sense of ownership and pride in having the body of a saint in their town. Thomas writes that the Prior of St. Pancras declares that William “(ille puer) in obprobrium Christi a iudeos reura occisus fuisset” [(the boy) had in very truth been killed by Jews as an insult to Christ],69 and he requests permission to take the boy’s body back to St. Pancras, a request that is denied. The Prior refers to William as “thesaurum preciosissimum summa” [a most precious treasure] that “sed digen pro meritas exaltatum plurimoque uenerationis culta celebrum” [should have been exalted worthily according to his deserts and have become famous by conspicuous veneration and worship].70 Thomas writes: “Que prioris uerba pontificis Ebrardi adeo commouerunt animum, ut et ei uenerationis fierent argumentum atque erga puerum sanctum deuotionis ministrarent incrementum” [Which words of the Prior so affected the mind of Bishop Eborard that they became an incentive to his veneration and served to increase his devotion to the boy].71 Once William’s corpse is considered valuable as a saint/relic by someone else, the Bishop sees William differently. The irony is, of course, that the boy’s actual corpse still lies buried in the woods. The myth therefore becomes more important than the corpse, even as the corpse becomes the text by which William’s life is reinvented.72 Thomas

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as he says Thomas is implying that Sheriff John took the bribes from the Jews that Bishop Turbe refused. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 46 Ibid., 49. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 50. The grammar of this sentence is convoluted in Latin and the English translation here takes some liberties with the text. Ibid., 50. Thomas gives several examples from William’s life that laid claim to his purported holiness, including a dream his mother had while she was pregnant, in which William is prophesied “qui et in terris honorem maximum consequetur” [to attain the highest honor in the earth], Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 11. In Thomas’s narrative, William also performs miracles as a baby, such as breaking the iron fetters of a penitent. Thomas

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conveniently relies on unsubstantiated rumors to create outrage which helps form the core of a saintly hagiography. Next, the body is defined as saintly through communal spectacle that transforms William into an object of public performance. The translation of a saint’s body was a celebratory event in a town. A translation confirmed a relationship between the saint and the community by demonstrating the community’s devotion to the saint and establishing the saint’s role in the community.73 This relationship is characterized by praesentia, which Brown defines as “the physical presence of the holy, whether in the midst of a particular community or in the possession of particular individuals.”74 Usually, the town was eager to have possession of the saint’s body and the benefits that came with having the body and its relics in the town.75 The key component of saint cults was a shrine (or shrines) for veneration and pilgrimage; the integrity of the saint’s relics, especially the corpse, was paramount. Communities jealously fought to keep recognized saints in the towns,76 and so the location and attention to the body would seemingly be very important.77

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also tries to absolve William for dealing with the Jews in his work as a skinner, saying that they hired him because he was “siue quia simplicem et artificiosum didicerant, seu quoniam auaritia ducti minori ipsum pacari precio existimabant” [guileless and skillful, or because attracted to him by their avarice they thought they could bargain with him for a lower price], Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 15. Thomas thus recasts William as an innocent victim (sacrifice) to predatory and greedy Jews (anti-Christian threat). Bartlett describes the significance of a translation: “The translation (ritual relocation) of a body was an ancient and traditional method of marking the sanctity of the individual concerned. Indeed, for many centuries before the popes asserted their own monopoly of the power to canonize, translation was the virtual equivalent of canonization.” Bartlett, The Hanged Man, 117. Brown, The Cult of Saints, 88. This is the case with Cuthbert. Abou-El-Haj describes how various miracles are meant to direct whether Cuthbert’s body is meant to be buried in Lindisfarne or Durham. When the Anglo-Saxon bishop Athelwine fought with the Normans for control of Cuthbert’s cult, he took the body of Cuthbert to their Anglo-Saxon monastery in Lindisfarne in 1069. In 1104, William of St. Calais, as part of his program in Durham, had Cuthbert’s body translated to the cathedral he built in Durham. The rights to the cult therefore depended on where the body of Cuthbert was, and as the power shifted, Cuthbert was moved, always under the auspices of new miracles that directed the translations. “Saint Cuthbert,” 178-179; 184-194. Geary, Living with the Dead, 172. The treatment of Cuthbert’s remains demonstrates the proprietary importance of a saint’s body. Upon Cuthbert’s death, his body was washed, carefully clothed in the vestments of his station with a cloth wrapped over his face, and then buried in a stone

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Translations were not meant to establish the saint’s status in the community, but rather to affirm it. William’s body was translated four times, each time to a place of higher honor, presumably due to the increasing devotion of pilgrims. William’s translations, as described by Thomas, correspond to the established pattern of a symbiotic communal relationship with a saint, but once again there are contradictions and discrepancies in Thomas’s story; the details do not always fit the assertions Thomas makes. During William’s first translation from the woods to the Monk’s Cemetery at the Cathedral Church in Norwich, Thomas was not in Norwich. His description of the translation employs celebratory aspects typical of such events: William’s body is retrieved by specially chosen monks, and brought into town amid a large crowd.78 The body is then set up on a bier in the cathedral, and given a funeral in a full church. After the mass of requiem, the body is shielded from the pressing crowds so that the monks can wash the body, which, typical in such narratives, is found to be incorrupt. As the monks wash William’s face, his nose begins to bleed.79 In a continuing emphasis on William’s martyrdom, Thomas describes

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coffin next to the altar in the church at Lindisfarne. When the Norse raided Lindisfarne in the eighth century, Cuthbert’s body was exhumed by the Lindisfarne monks and kept with them as they traveled around Britain. See the description in Raine, Saint Cuthbert, 33-4. Thomas writes that “tanta popularis multitudinis occurrit affluentia, quod perpaucos intra urbem remansisse estimares” [so vast a concourse of the common people met them that you would have thought very few had stayed behind in the city.” Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 50 The detail that William’s nose bleeds is odd. Often bleeding corpses in medieval literature indicate the presence of the murderer, but the blood normally comes from the wounds. A nosebleed was often associated with the feminine, particularly the purging of feminine blood analogous to a menstrual period. For example, in Malory, Guinevere claims to have a nosebleed when Lancelot’s blood is found on her bedroom floor (possibly a euphemism for menstrual blood) but her claim is dismissed, the implication being that the blood is too obviously masculine for it to be from her. Chaucer gives the miller a nosebleed in The Miller’s Tale as an indication of his emasculation when he is cuckolded. The association with nosebleeds, menstruation, and purging is mentioned in several ancient medical sources as well. Hippocrates does not recommend purging someone who has bled from the nose. Galen describes how a woman is saved from the lack of menses by a copious nosebleed, and the Trotula, which relies heavily on Galen, describes how the lack of menses can result in the purging of blood from other places, such as the mouth or nostrils. See Hippocrates, “On Regimen in Acute Diseases,” in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. IX: Hippocrates and Galen, Second Edition, ed. Mortimer J. Adler, trans. Francis Adams (Chicago, 1990), para. 23; Galen, “On Venesection against the Erasistrateans in Rome,” Galen on Bloodletting, trans. Peter Brian (Cambridge, 1986), K190-1; “Book on the Con­ ditions of Women,” The Trotula, ed. and trans. Monica Green (Philadelphia, PA, 2002),

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the thorns the monks pull out of his body, and the wounds they find on his hands, feet, and side (echoing the wounds of Christ). Finally, although the monks intended to bury William in a plain wooden coffin, they happened upon an unused sarcophagus, an event interpreted by Thomas as a miracle: “Id tamen consequenter conicimus, quod diuina prouidentia ea sancto Willelmo tam diu reseruauerat intacta et illibata” [Consequently, we conjecture that these [sarchophagi] had been preserved by divine providence so long intact and unused for Saint William].80 Throughout his description of the translation, Thomas includes a variety of events and miracles that are meant to relate William’s position as saint and the town’s acceptance of William as a holy figure. Because Thomas is present in Norwich for William’s second translation, he is able to insert himself into the story. For this reburial, Thomas relies on more supernatural elements of saintly translation while also attempting to increase his own reputation in relation to William’s. Thomas claims to have received a vision from Herbert, the first bishop of Norwich, six years after William’s death;81 in the vision William tells him that if his body is not moved to a more prestigious location, “quoniam si neglegentie impulsu paterne iussioni non obaudierint, eos citius illum ad maximum ecclesie detrimentum amissuros cognoscant” [let [the monks] know that very soon they will lose that treasure to the great harm of their Church].82 Thomas wants his audience to believe that the town and the church would suffer from the loss of William’s indulgence, but the church authorities do not appear to see it that way. The Prior, Elias, has items of veneration removed: a carpet and candles Thomas had placed near the sepulcher. After Elias’s death, the carpet is restored, and William is moved for a third time. Thomas, always the opportunist, uses Elias’s

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para. 3. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood, in which she discusses the difference between interior and exterior blood, stating that blood from natural orifices was usually seen as polluted, and therefore not miraculous. See  Wonderful Blood (Philadelphia, PA, 2007), 16-18. The nosebleed from William’s corpse does not really fit into any of these categories, making it all the stranger in this context. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 53. Visions are often part of how a saint communicates the desire for a translation of his or her corpse. Geary explains: “one usually hears that the saint had appeared to a holy member of the community, complained that he or she was not presently receiving adequate veneration, and asked to be transferred to a new and proper community.” Geary, Living with the Dead, 173. It is interesting that Thomas uses the first bishop of Norwich rather than William to make the request. Even six years later, William does not seem to enjoy the reputation necessary to initiate the moving of his body to a more prestigious location. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 117.

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death as proof of God’s favor towards William, moving attention away from the fact that the prior of the cathedral did not see anything particularly saintly in William.83 Thomas tries to force a relationship between his community and William, with himself as the herald. He repeatedly uses the dead to improve his standing among the living. Thomas describes two more translations of William’s body, both for decidedly non-miraculous reasons. For the third translation, which is inexplicably done in secret by order of the bishop, William is moved near the high altar of the cathedral. Normally a translation of a saint’s body was a public affair. Geary explains how secrecy in a translation usually precluded the theft of the relics of a saint; in the case of controversial translations, secrecy could also be used to avoid the anger of the populace. There was also the belief that a saint controlled his or her body even after death, and so, consequently, any removal of a saint’s relics took place with the approval of the saint.84 Neither one of these explanations applies to William, so the reason for the secrecy is unclear. Thomas uses this translation to anticipate the ultimate placement of William in a chapel, while presenting himself as one of the few witnesses to William’s incorrupt body.85 This translation, like the others, took place just before Easter, so Thomas uses the language of Christ’s resurrection,86 with himself and Giulfus, a sacrist, as the two witnesses to the opened tomb. In another attempt at misdirection, Thomas makes an analogy to the resurrection of Christ, which William, as a martyr, was supposed to represent in the town. The fourth translation is more in line with how translations of saints were generally done: with a large crowd of pilgrims and a formal ceremony. Thomas claims that the large crowds were inconvenienced by the small space near the altar, so “suggerente Ricardo priore et conuentu exoptante, congruus ab episcopo decernitur, locus, ubi et maiori ueneratione requiescat” [it was suggested 83

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Rose also comments on the contradiction in what Thomas tries to assert about William and what the actions he describes actually imply. See The Murder of William of Norwich, 105-6. Geary, Furta Sacra, 133-34; 138. “ego et memoratus Giulfus sepulcro accessimus, reuolutoque lapide superposito, ipsum sub eiusdem tenoris statu inuenimus quo eum ibidem et antea composueramus” [I and Giulfus whom I mentioned came to the tomb and rolled away the stone that was on it and found the saint in the condition in which we had laid him there before]. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 186. Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” go to the tomb when “[A]ngelus enim Domini descendit de caelo et accedens revolvit lapidem et sedebat super eum” [For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and coming rolled back the stone and sat upon it], Mt. 28:1 (Vulgate text with Douay Rheims translation).

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by Prior Richard and begged by the convent and decreed by the Bishop that a fit place be found for the martyr where he might rest in greater honour]. 87 Again, the translation takes place around Easter.88 This time there is a “popularum stipante caterua … eoque sollenniter dedicato, corpus memorati martiris illuc summa cum ueneratione transfertur” [great throng of people … and after solemn dedication thereof, the body of the foresaid martyr was translated thither with all reverence].89 Once William is in a proper place of honor, Thomas lists miracle after miracle,90 generally of healing, that happen at William’s tomb. The church and local populace have acknowledged William’s place in the town, and in return, William fulfills his role as protector and holy guardian of the town and its people. Thomas is often vilified as an early propagator of anti-Judaic violence justified through supposed crimes against Christian children. While Thomas certainly did not invent such stories, his hagiography of William establishes a template for such accusations that set off waves of persecution against Jews across England and the Continent.91 In rewriting the corpse of William as a martyr, Thomas uses existing prejudices to establish himself as the protector, champion, and at times prophet for William’s cult. His manipulation of William’s corpse and reputation are often in contrast with local conceptions of William, but Thomas works over many years to build up William’s saintly character. By applying the trappings of sainthood to William and relying on the fear of a non-Christian Other, Thomas is able to create the need for a local saint, both spiritually and economically. His reinvention of a common boy’s corpse into the miraculous body of a saint encourages other communities to sensationalize the deaths of boys at the expense of the Jewish population. The corpses of the boys become the texts upon which these cults are based, as the dead bodies are interpreted as evidence of horrific crimes against Christians, 87 88

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Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 221. Easter Monday, 1154. William’s corpse was first buried in the woods on Easter Monday ten years earlier. The Easter association, particularly Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, was a central feature of these boy saint cults. Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Miracles, 221. Though the list of miracles is extensive, it does not include notable people, such as kings and bishops. Other saints, such as Cuthbert, cure nobility and ecclesiastical authority figures. Perhaps Thomas is trying to promote William among a reluctant populace, or perhaps William did not have the necessary eminence to believably cure people of such high rank. Langmuir draws a line from Thomas to John de Lexinton, who conducted interrogations of the Jews accused of murdering Hugh, to Hitler’s Final Solution. Langmuir, “Thomas of Monmouth,” 479-82.

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motivated by religious hatred. Fear and local pride are joined with an underlying materialism as communities use the model Thomas set up in William’s hagiography to create their own boy martyrs that will connect them to the divine and protect them from disease, physical ailments, and an underlying danger to Christian faith.

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Part 2 Law and Civic Life

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Chapter 7

Outlaws and the Undead: Defining Sacred and Communal Space in Medieval Iceland Justin T. Noetzel

The story of medieval Iceland, from its Viking settlements to its innovation as a democratic state, is a story of competing spaces and conflicting cultural identities. With the migration from Norway to Iceland, the brave men (and some women) who sailed their ships across the North Atlantic literally translated their sacred spaces from their familial homeland to the wild frontier of Iceland. For example, the thirteenth-century Eyrbyggja saga, which narrates the ninthcentury settlement of the Snæfellsnes peninsula on the west coast of Iceland, tells how a man named Þórólfur Mostrarskegg [Mostur-beard] discovered his new home in Iceland. When he reaches the Icelandic coastline he throws overboard his öndvegissúlum [high-seat pillars] that he has brought from his temple to Þor [Thor] in Norway.1 These high-seat pillars were physical aspects of Þórólfur’s sacred space in the temple, and by settling where the öndvegissúlum wash ashore and naming the new land Þórsnes [Thor’s Headland], he allows the god Thor to choose and sanctify his settlement in the new country.2 On such divinely-appointed sacred land, Þórólfur and many settlers like him build their first farmsteads and temples, while maintaining a careful distinction between these sacred spaces of religious activity and the profane spaces where 1 Guðni Jónsson, trans., “Eyrbyggja saga,” Íslendinga Sögur: Þriðja Bindi (Offsetmyndir: Prentverk Odds Björnsonnar, 1986), at 5 and 28. The best translation of the saga is Eyrbyggja Saga, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (New York, 1989). I would like to thank Tom Shippey, Paul Acker, and my colleagues at Saint Louis University for their invaluable support and contributions to this project. 2 Heather O’Donoghue, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), describes this same ritual practice in the Landnámabók, The Book of Land Takings, and she adds, “it seems likely that these [pillars] formed part of the throne on which the head of the family might sit on formal occasions, and that they might have been carved, and had a religious significance,” 20. Many of the first settlers of Iceland chose their new homes through this practice, including Ketill Flat-nose and his daughter Unn the Deep-Minded, members of the first generation of settlers in the famous Laxdæla saga. For more information, see “The Saga of the People of Laxardal,” trans. Keneva Kunz, in The Sagas of Icelanders (New York, 2000), at 277 and 279.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_009

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they would otherwise live their lives – raising their livestock, drinking and feasting, and occasionally killing each other. The Íslendingasögur, [Icelandic sagas] come from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and describe the settlement of the country in the ninth and tenth centuries.3 These sagas include love stories and the adventures of warriors and poets, as well as supernatural folktales and myths from the Icelanders’ Viking ancestry; and collectively they define medieval Icelandic culture.4 Many scholars have remarked on the preponderance of violence in this culture, where the code of the blood-feud led to ever-escalating tensions and murders. Jesse Byock describes this culture thusly: “Icelandic blood feud was a form of vengeance-taking. It involved deep, smoldering animosities leading to repeated reprisals… The taking of vengeance was understood as action that satisfied honor, and exchanges of violence could go on for a very long time, frequently over generations.”5 In addition to this internal strife, the threat of the Otherworld was never far from Icelandic life – trolls lurked in the mountains, and even a member of one’s own family could become a draugr, (pl. draugar) a revenant or demonic walking corpse, and return after death to assault and kill people and animals. Consequently, Icelandic society had to insulate itself from the dual threats of blood-feuding men and blood-thirsty monsters. As medieval Iceland forged and stabilized its democratic structure, it identified the threats to its collective communal identity, and so outlaws and the undead, as the enemies defined by medieval law and ancient myth, were necessarily excluded and pushed to the borders of society. Outlaws were forced either to leave the country or be hunted throughout Iceland, and they were consequently forced to occupy the borderlands of society: the highlands of Iceland’s interior and the small outlying Islands. As Kendra Wilson notes, outlawry “reflects and shapes native conceptions of social and geographical space

3 Kendra Wilson, “Inside and Outside in Gísla saga Súrssonar and Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,” The Book of Nature and Humanity in The Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. David Hawkes and Richard C. Newhauser (Turnhout, 2013), 292. 4 For a very thorough presentation on the history of criticism of the Family Sagas, see Carol J. Clover, “Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur),” Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. Carol J. Clover and John Lindow (Toronto, 2005), 239-315. 5 Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), 208. For more detail on the legal stratagems employed within the feud culture, and the narrative ways that feuds manifest themselves in the sagas, see Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley, 1982), 114-142, and William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), 179-220.

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as reflected in imaginative literature.”6 This geographical displacement forced outlaws out of the law-bound “social” space of the country and into “the wild,” to use Kirsten Hastrup’s vocabulary,7 and in this realm of the supernatural the outlaws and the undead walked the same literal borders on the periphery of society. These two marginalized groups also occupied the same metaphorical space, because the cultural body that forcibly excluded them from society defined them as liminal beings that dwell at the threshold between living human culture and the death that haunt the wilds of nature. Many notorious outlaws were hunted to their deaths, and their dehumanized life on the run overlapped with the monstrous return to society enacted by the draugar. The legal and spiritual transgression of these killers threatened the domestic space of Iceland, because their attraction to the community drove them to return continually to their farms, great halls, temples, and churches. The uncanny reentry into society of revenants and men sentenced to death, however, always resulted in destruction and death. It took a balanced combination of armed combat, religious intervention, and legal action to completely eradicate the outlaws and draugar, but those elements nevertheless played an instrumental role in shaping and defining the human culture of medieval Iceland. In the Icelandic sagas, a monstrous presence is always lurking just beyond human society, because trolls, evil spirits, and revenants all come from a geographically peripheral place and embody the conceptual liminality of  the Otherworld. Grettis saga comes from the thirteenth century, like so many of the Icelandic sagas, and it details the exploits of the folk hero Grettir Ásmundarsson, who comes to be known as Grettir the Strong. Throughout his legendary life, Grettir defends his fellow Icelanders from numerous otherworldly threats, including a haugbúi (pl. haugbúar), an undead mound-dweller who revels in the funerary goods that are buried alongside his body.8 Grettir also saves a farm at Sandhaugar from a pair of marauding trolls, defeating a “huge trollwoman” inside the great hall (and thereby defending the sanctity of the human domestic realm), and then climbing down the side of a cliff to defeat the trollwoman’s ljótr vinr [ugly friend] inside their waterfall-cave dwell6 Kendra Wilson, “Inside and Outside in Gísla saga Súrssonar and Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,” 293. 7 Kirsten Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change (Oxford, 1985), 136. 8 Bernard Scudder, trans., The Saga of Grettir the Strong (New York, 2005), 38-39. For more information on haugbúar, see Matthias Teichert, “‘Draugula’: The Draugr in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Literature and His Relationship to the Post-Medieval Vampire Myth,” The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend, ed. Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan (Madison, NJ, 2013).

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ing.9 The sagas’ trolls have an intimate connection to the Icelandic landscape, and so do the landvættir (“land-wights” or “protective spirits”) that appear in many doom-filled dreams in the saga literature.10 These creatures do their fair share of harm, but the most destructive otherworldly threats in medieval Iceland are the draugar who return after death to their communities and cause great physical damage and death. Glámr in Grettis Saga, for example, is an uncanny outsider because of his Swedish descent, his disavowal of Christian beliefs and practices, and his general obstinacy. His bloodline and pagan beliefs set him apart from his employer Thórhallur and the rest of the people who live and work at Thórhallur’s farm. When Glámr scorns the community’s Christmas Eve mass celebration and instead goes for a leisurely stroll on that cold night, he is attacked by a troll that leaves his dead body “black as hell and bloated to the size of a bull.”11 Because of this bodily deformation, Glámr’s companions cannot transport his corpse to the church either by hand or by dragging it behind oxen and horses, and so he is buried in a shallow grave near his place of death. Icelandic burial practices reveal a great deal about the intimate relationship between the living and the dead. The early Icelanders employed different variations on the traditional funerary practice, and each difference from the norm had consequences for the departed. For example, the appropriately named Vígr-Hrappr [Killer-Hrappr] in Laxdæla saga is a cantankerous old man who, sensing his impending death, asks his wife to bury him standing upright beneath the doorway to his kitchen so that after death he can “keep a watchful 9

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Bernard Scudder, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 150-15. Trolls have a long history that extends back to Norse mythology and legend, and they also appear in numerous modern folktales, fairy tales, and fantasy stories. For a general introduction to this creature, see Jenny Bann, “Troll,” The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Farnham, 2014), 544-549; for an examination of trolls in Norse and Icelandic literature, see Martin Arnold, “Hvat er troll nema þat?: The Cultural History of the Troll,” The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, ed. Tom Shippey (Tempe, AZ, 2005), 111-156. One of the most poignant instances of these spirits occurs in Laxdæla saga, when Óláfr þái [Óláfr the Peacock], one of the leading men of the valley, accidentally kills his prize ox Harri. The ox is linked to the spiritual landscape of this particular region of the countryside, and his death brings tragic consequences for the formerly prosperous Óláfr. He is soon visited in a dream by a land-wight, and she tells him that she will seek vengeance for her son’s death: “you have had my son killed and sent him to me disfigured, and for that I will make sure you see a son of yours covered with blood,” in Kunz, “The Saga of the People of Laxardal,” 32. Many events unfold in the saga until this prophecy is fulfilled when Óláfr’s son Kjartan is tragically cut down by his own foster-brother. Scudder, 78.

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eye” on his family and home, which he does by attacking his farm and killing his own family.12 The saga’s author describes the consequences of Hrappr’s abnormal burial: “if it had been difficult to deal with him when he was alive, he was much worse dead, for he haunted the area relentlessly. It is said that in his haunting he killed most of his servants.”13 The symbolism of the old man’s last wish is clear – if normal burial occurs away from the home and in a peaceful and resting reclined position, then his upright postmortem posture will prolong his existence on earth in the most monstrous and destructive way possible. Using Hrappr as a paradigm, Matthias Teichert notes five defining characteristics of the Icelandic draugr: a “sociopsychiatric” profile that describes such individuals as “aggressive, anti-social, and egomaniacal;” an “ability to recover physically from debilitation caused by a defective apotropaic;” the unnatural preservation of a buried body; the ghost-like ability to move through walls and sink into the ground; and the stamina to continue haunting until the body is properly disposed of.14 For the men in the sagas who epitomize this aggressive character profile, such as the strong-willed and bitter Hrappr, their personality remains present even after they die, and its potency surges and causes greater destruction and death when the individual returns as a draugr. Upright inhumation, as well as burial in a seated position, is a common motif in the sagas, and in each instance it helps to ensure the deceased’s return as a revenant. In addition to the manner of burial, the exact place of burial is important. Many of the bodies of those killed by trolls or other monsters, like Glámr in Grettis saga, cannot be taken to consecrated ground, and the combination of supernatural death and displaced funeral rites always leads to the creation of a revenant. Even the smallest of details can lead to either a peaceful or tragic funerary event. A dead man’s shoelaces may seem insignificant, but they play an important narrative role in Gísla saga Súrssonar [The Saga of Gísli Sursson]. The common practice of securely fastening a dead man’s helskór [hell-shoes], by tying the shoelaces tightly, is meant to ensure safe passage to the afterlife.15 This practice occurs when Gísli’s sister’s husband Þorgrímur fastens Gísli’s brother-in-law Vésteinn’s shoes; and some of the saga characters (and many critics) believe that Þorgrímur’s actions signify his tacit confession of guilt for the mysterious killing of his near-kinsman, because Gísli performs a similar action later in the saga after he murders Þorgrímur. The boundary 12 13 14 15

Kunz, 297. Ibid., 297. Matthias Teichert, “The Draugr in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Literature,” 5. Martin S. Regal, trans., “The Saga of Gisli Sursson,” The Sagas of Icelanders (New York, 2000), 516.

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between life and death in the sagas remains fluid, and the placement and manner of one’s burial has far reaching implications for the dead man’s eternal rest or horrific return. Hrappr in Laxdæla saga senses his impending death, yet wants to remain in command of his farm, and he accomplishes this monstrous feat by ruling from beneath the center of the home’s power, the doorway to the kitchen, where life-giving food is prepared. William Sayers describes how after all men die, particularly troublesome men like Hrappr, “byproducts and residue [of their monstrous behavior] persist, like carryover from life into draugr status.”16 Sayers further argues that in episodes such as Glámr’s and Hrappr’s, such walking corpses are infected with a “spiritual contagion” that further deteriorates their psyches and can create more monsters out of each draugr’s victims. The incomplete or deviant disposal of the draugar’s bodies enacts an encroachment on the world of the living by the dead, and the only way that Icelandic society can defend its living community is by the actions and abilities of cultural leaders. Hrappr’s reign of terror abates temporarily when a man named Höskuldur, one of the leaders of Laxardal, directs the re-burial of the old man’s body in a traditional posture and far away from the farm. Höskuldur hopes that his actions will not only increase the geographical distance between Hrappr’s body and his farm, but also embody a more permanent separation between the living community and the dead. Hrappr’s evil contagion continues to infect the farm for years, however, because a demonic seal causes the deaths of a few sailors in the bay, and the old man’s ghost later appears, threatens Höskuldur’s son Óláfr Pái [Olaf Peacock] and a servant, and steals a spear.17 Óláfr inherits his father’s role as the valley’s supernatural authority, and so he exhumes Hrappr’s body (and recovers his spear), burns the body in a large bonfire, and then scatters the ashes at sea. With a startling note of finality, the episode concludes, “no one else was harmed by Hrappr’s haunting after that.”18 The draugar and trolls pose such a great threat to humanity precisely because they refuse to observe the rules of life in early Iceland by fracturing the distinctions between the living and dead and between the ordered human realm and chaotic monstrous wild. These monsters repeatedly inject strife and destruction into human society by transgressing this boundary between inner safety and outer danger. This destruction does not always come from an entirely ominous motive, however. As Sayers describes, draugar cannot escape 16 17 18

William Sayers, “The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders,” Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN, 1992), 247. Kunz, 299 and 317. Ibid., 317.

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a strong “nostalgia for communal life” under whose pull they keep circling back home, because these creatures are forever “tied to the geographic areas of their burial sites and former lives.”19 Instead of moving towards the afterlife or at least away from human society, these monsters retain enough of their human essence so that they can continually satisfy their desire to return home. This nostalgic impulse can indeed be unsettling to the still-living members of the community, but the undead are not always evil in their intentions. One of the more unusual supernatural stories of Icelandic literature occurs in Eyrbyggja saga and follows the death of a woman named Thórgunna. While drying the hay, she dies shortly after being caught in an ominous rain of blood that falls from a black cloud. The men transporting her coffin for burial encounter rough terrain and bad weather, which delay their journey. The funeral party reaches a farm late at night but the farmer refuses to give them hospitality, so the exhausted and famished pallbearers go to bed without any food. Soon after, Thórgunna rises from her coffin: They hadn’t been long in their beds when they heard loud noises coming from the larder, and some of them went to see if thieves had broken into the house. When they came to the larder, there was a tall woman, stark naked, not a stitch of clothing on her, getting a meal ready. The people of the household were too scared when they saw her to come anywhere near … The woman was Thórgunna, and everyone thought it best to leave her in peace. When she had finished doing what she wanted in the larder, she carried the food into the living-room, laid the table, and served the meal.20 After her meal preparation in the nude, Thórgunna happily returns to a peaceful death, because her “haunting” is simply meant to provide for those ushering her body to eternal rest. The mean-spirited nature of a draugr like Hrappr continues past his death, but so too does Thórgunna’s communal spirit and caring essence. 19

20

William Sayers, “The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead,” 249; Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, “The Restless Dead: An Icelandic Ghost Story,” The Folklore of Ghosts, ed. Hilda R. Ellis Davidson and W. M. S. Russell (Cambridge, 1981), 155-175. Davidson makes a similar point on the geography of the restless dead in Icelandic literature, as well as other medieval sources and modern British and European folklore, and she presents numerous examples of undead beings like draugar returning to their homes or to places that are familiar to them from a wide array of sources. Pálsson and Edwards, Eyrbyggja Saga, 134.

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As Eyrbyggja saga continues, Thórgunna’s corpse-bearers are treated with the utmost hospitality for the remainder of their journey. As John D. Martin notes, she “functions as a sort of protective ghost or spirit, attending to the needs of those who had fulfilled her final wishes.”21 Thórgunna’s belief in her society’s values is so strong that she rises from death just to see that her human community is accorded the usual customs for visiting travelers. Jennifer Livesay describes how Eyrbyggja saga serves as a “weather vane” for scholars of medieval Iceland because of the ways in which its “thematic and structural elements” render it “meaningful for its author and the intended audience.”22 In particular, Livesay is interested in the communal roles and power possessed by supernatural female characters. Thórgunna reinforces the customs of her community even after death, thereby strengthening the social bonds that unite Icelanders from one farm to the next. Thórgunna stands apart in Eyrbyggja saga and in the rest of the saga corpus because her domestic impulses and actions are strikingly different from the usual destructive behavior of the medieval Icelandic undead. In almost every other instance of draugar appearance in the sagas, the animated corpses return to their communities to haunt the living, attack their farms, and kill people. These draugar possess the same nostalgia for their human communities that Thórgunna possesses, but their evil nature results in mayhem and murder instead of peace. Perhaps the most famous example of this monstrous posthumous existence is Glámr in Grettis saga, whose menacing personality, Swedish ancestry, pagan belief, and death at the hands of a troll lead to a particularly menacing undead existence. Nora K. Chadwick describes Glámr the draugr as “an animated corpse of hideous aspect and destructive habits,”23 and although he displays the same belligerent nature that he did when he was alive, his supernatural death and incomplete burial cause him to draw strength from the harsh natural world beyond the great hall and farmstead. The way one opposes the marauding draugar of medieval Iceland is to draw them into battle inside the geographical boundaries of the human realm. Glámr, like Thórgunna and many other draugar of saga literature, exhibits an unmistakable nostalgia for human society, and Grettir uses Glámr’s nostalgia 21 22 23

John D. Martin, “Law and the (Un)dead: Medieval Models for Understanding the Hauntings in Eyrbyggja saga,” Saga-Book 29 (2005), 76. Jennifer Livesay, “Women and Narrative Structure in Eyrbyggja Saga,” Folklore Forum 21.2 (1988), 182. Nora K. Chadwick, “The Monsters and Beowulf,” The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of Their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes (London, 1959), 128.

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to draw the monster inside the hall where the odds of a favorable outcome are much better. Grettir lies down in his bed as night falls, and springs from beneath his cover to grab the approaching Glámr around the waist. The draugar delight in destroying property and leaving dead bodies in their wake, and they accomplish these feats with their hideously strong and gigantic bodies.24 Grettir and other Icelandic heroes draw their monsters inside the great hall because that cultural foundation is the source of their power, whereas monsters like Glámr draw their strength from the chaotic wilderness outside. Therefore, Glámr tries to gain the advantage in his wrestling match against the superhuman Grettir: “difficult as Glámr was to deal with indoors, Grettir saw he would be even harder to deal with outdoors, so he struggled with all his might to stay inside.”25 Grettis saga also adds important details concerning the destruction caused when the characters leave the hall, because when Grettir and Glámr finally crash through the door and out into the night, the monster’s “herðarnar námu uppdyrit, ok ræfrit gekk i sundr, bæði viðirnir of þekjan frorin,” [shoulders take the door-frame with him and the rafters are torn apart, the wooden roofing and the frozen turf on it].26 The timber construction of medieval Icelandic halls is exceedingly stout, and the destruction caused by this monumental battle indicates the great ferocity of the monster and power of the hero.27 24 25 26

27

Scudder, 83. Ibid., 84. Guðni Jónsson, trans., Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (Reykjavik, 1964), 121, and Scudder, 85. Scudder provides the most accurate and compelling translation of Grettis saga, and all translations (unless otherwise noted) are his. R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn (Cambridge, 1959), Nora Chadwick, “The Monsters and Beowulf,” and other scholars have noted the many compelling similarities between Grettis saga and the Old English poem Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxon hero Beowulf wins a number of heroic victories, just as Grettir does, and Glámr seems to share a common literary source with Grendel, the monster who attacks the great hall Heorot in Denmark. For example, Grendel is similarly outsized and greater than any other man (1351b-1353b), he dwells and attacks in darkness (86a-89a), he causes great destruction to the hall’s doorway and interior (720a-726a), and has a fiery glance in his eyes (726b-727b). (All Beowulf quotations come from Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2009) and are cited by line number.) The most recent assessments of the possible relationship between Grettis saga and Beowulf are Janice Hawes, “The Monstrosity of Heroism: Grettir Ásmundarson as an Outsider,” Scandinavian Studies 80.1 (2008), 19-50, Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Toronto, 1995), 140-168, and Theodore M. Andersson, “Sources and Analogues,” A Beowulf Handbook, ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (Lincoln, NE, 1997), 125-148. I am inclined

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The doorway of a great hall plays an important part in Icelandic stories of draugar invasion, because it is a dichotomous dividing line between man and monster, civilization and nature, and order and chaos. In Floamanna saga and some other examples, the draugar simply knock at the front door of the great hall to try to gain access. With this type of haunting, anyone who opens the door to the undead becomes seized with madness, dies before morning, and then returns the next night as a draugr him or herself.28 As physical barriers to the outside world, human structures suffer the first blows of the draugar’s assault against their community. Glámr bursts through the door under his own supernatural power in Grettis saga, and he also attacks the rest of the great hall by “straddling the roof” and kicking at the building with his massive, strong legs until it is “nearly smashed to pieces,” and the author describes the specific reactions to the draugr’s reign of terror: “he wrought such havoc that some people fainted at the sight of him, while others went out of their minds.”29 Bernard Scudder elaborates on the typology of this architectural destruction by writing: “Sitting across the ridge of the roof and kicking against the sides is a distinctive trait of Icelandic ghosts, which in many cases seem to take delight in causing disturbance and damage as much as scaring people by their very presence.”30 Glámr is so monstrously outsized that he can reach up to the hall’s rafters and rest his arms on the crossbeams, and so the physical threat that he poses to Grettir and the Icelandic homesteaders is explained using architectural and building metaphors.31 As William Sayers notes, a revenant like the draugr sees the great hall as “a metonym for human culture in the north” and “a social and cultural microcosm” of society, so Glámr’s destruction of the building comes from the same fury that results in the butchering of livestock and the deaths of people.32 If the great hall is the epitome of human culture and civilization on the harsh Icelandic frontier, then the hall’s roof, walls, and doorways stand as divisive structures separating inner security from outer chaos. In addition to allowing the daily ingress and egress of the building’s inhabitants, the doorway also possesses a symbolic power in the proverbial wisdom of

28 29 30 31 32

to agree with scholars who argue in favor of a common source folktale or myth behind these texts. Magnús Fjalldal and others argue against such common ancestry. For more detail on this counterargument, see Magnús Fjalldal, The Long Arm of Coincidence: The Frustrated Connection between Beowulf and Grettis Saga (Toronto, 1998). H. R. Ellis Davidson, “The Restless Dead,” 167. Scudder, 78. Ibid., 214. Ibid., 84. Sayers, 252.

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Norse literature. Grettir, for instance, is particularly well-versed in proverbs and sententiae. He warns one companion about the danger of meddling in the feuds of others by telling him, “Never reach around a door for the handle,” and when Grettir is warned about the danger that Glámr poses, he counsels another companion to always consider what fate has in store by exclaiming, “peril waits at a man’s door, though another goes in before.”33 A wise man like Grettir knows the power and danger that the doorway represents, and he also knows the harm that occurs when proper procedure and common sense are abandoned. Such folk wisdom is entrenched in Icelandic society, and it extends back as far as the settlers’ ancient Norse belief. In the Old Norse wisdom-poem Hávamál, “The Sayings of the High One,” Óðinn himself, the all-father of Norse mythology and the leader of the gods, counsels: “All the entrances, before you walk forward, / you should look at, / you should spy out; / for you can’t know for certain where enemies are sitting / ahead in the hall.”34 Óðinn, just like Grettir, offers words of warning against the proverbial danger that might lurk just beyond the doorway, and this symbol has an important mythic resonance in the harsh world of Iceland’s frozen frontier. Humans must defend themselves (and their realm of warm houses and arable land) against the monstrous wild of nature, the snowy highlands and ice-filled seas that are dominated by monsters. Since nature can be harsh and destructive, humanity needs the final line of defense that the door provides, and because the monster attacks the door, the hero must combat nature and then reassert human dominance within the natural world. The door to the great hall is the ultimate line of demarcation between man and monster, and so it must be defended at any cost from the monster’s attack. Revenants like Glámr are such an imposing threat to medieval Icelandic society because of the physical and psychological torment they can cause. Not only must the damage they cause to humanity, farmsteads, and livestock be curbed by society’s defenders (like Grettir), but the draugar must also be defeated in the wild and be properly buried before the haunting can come to an end. Even though Grettir defeats his foe, Glámr curses the hero with his uncannily evil eyes that reflect the sinister light of the moon. Grettir obtains the position of strength in their final struggle, but as he lies atop Glámr, the 33 34

Scudder, 68 and 82. Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 1996), 14. The most up-to-date edition of the Poetic Edda is Gustav Neckel, ed., Edda: Die Lieder des Codex nebst verwandten Denkmälern, 5th ed., rev. Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg, 1983). For more information on Old Norse mythology and the Poetic Edda, see Joseph Harris, “Eddic Poetry,” Old NorseIcelandic Literature, ed. Clover and Lindow, 68-156.

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monster makes a harrowing proclamation with his dying breath: “you have become renowned until now for your deeds, but henceforth outlawry and killings will fall to your lot and most of your deeds will bring you misfortune and improvidence … and this curse I lay on you: my eyes will always be before your sight and this will make you find it difficult to be alone. And this will lead to your death.”35 Glámr is driven to return to his human community by his violent nostalgia, and since his insatiable desire to rejoin society cannot be met, he curses Grettir to a similar life driven by an unquenchable need for community. The saga narrator notes that Glámr “was endowed with more evil force than most other ghosts,” and the monster’s final curse and shining eyes haunt Grettir for the rest of his life. As Bernard Scudder notes, “[Grettir] is haunted by loneliness and fear of the dark during his long outlawry and ceases to develop his full potential. Grettir’s life from this point on might be described as “prolonged death throes,” which do not come to an end until he himself is finally hunted down and killed.36 The evil power of the draugr Glámr leads to the outlawry, destruction, and inevitable death of the (soon to be infamous) monster-hunter Grettir. Grettir’s renown as a strongman and monster fighter grows throughout the rest of his life, but so too does his troublesome nature and fear of dark nights and the phantoms that haunt him through his nightmares of the fire of Glámr’s burning eyes. Even after animated corpses like Glámr are defeated, the menace caused by these draugar can only be truly eradicated if their bodies are properly interred. The society’s leaders, men of physical strength or legal authority, must cleanse the landscape from its contagion in a careful process that often involves burning the corrupted corpse of a draugr and then distributing the ashes far away from human society. These ashes are often scattered at sea or, as is the case with Glámr’s remains, bound in an animal skin and buried “as far away as possible from grazing land or paths.”37 Another method involves beheading the corpse and burying it with the head next to the buttocks, and Grettir uses this method for another ornery draugr named Kar hins Gamla [Kar the Old].38 William Sayers notes that the recently deceased, who were susceptible to becoming draugar in the sagas, were often removed from the house through a hole in the wall, because Icelanders believed that this action would inhibit any future damage the revenant may cause.39 The door of the hall or farmhouse is 35 36 37 38 39

Scudder, 85. Ibid., 215. Scudder, 85-86. Ibid., 39. Sayers, 250.

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sturdy, but it is nevertheless a point of access to the inner realm of human society, and therefore attractive to the monster’s advance. If the body is removed through a hole in the wall, and that hole is repaired after the body is buried, Icelandic folk belief held that the draugr would not find a way to enter the house.40 The Icelanders would rather destroy and rebuild their sturdy walls than remind an evil spirit that it can enter the house so easily through the front door. Creating temporary doorways in medieval Icelandic dwellings is one of many nábjargir [funeral rites] that must be observed when taking care of dead bodies properly.41 Such indirect removal of the bodies of particularly troublesome individuals is meant to safeguard the home should the person become a destructive draugr. The proper disposal of a revenant’s lifeless body is the final action that must be undertaken to ensure that the human community becomes safe once again. When he defeats draugar (and any other supernatural foes), Grettir engages in landhreinsun [land-cleansing] which removes the monstrous element from the landscape and also reaffirms Icelandic social values.42 The attacking revenants exert pressure on the fluid borders between human settlement and the monstrous outerlands, and on the boundary between life and death, so Grettir’s strength ultimately purifies the landscape and removes the monstrous contagion of the draugar. Apart from the demonic draugar of medieval Iceland, the most culturally destructive individuals in the sagas are the outlaws, the moody, emotional, and quick-tempered men who often become great folk heroes despite their troublesome natures and killing sprees. The most infamous Icelandic outlaws are 40

41

42

Teichert, 6. In addition to analyzing a number of the sagas, Teichert also connects the Icelandic draugar tradition to the “classical” Eastern European tradition of the vampire – see especially 12-14. Guðni Jónsson, “Eyrbyggja saga,” 90. The proper observances of the dead in medieval Iceland included closing the eyes, mouth, and ears immediately after death, and burying the body in sacred ground, either the grounds of the temple in pre-Christian times or in the church-yard after Christian conversion in Iceland. For more information on nábjargir, see Geir T. Zoega, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Toronto, 2004), 309. Jónsson, Grettis saga, 217-218, translated in Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, 163. The sagas contain many additional occurrences of supernatural cleansing, and they take place both when Icelanders are in their native landscape and when they travel abroad. In Anthony Maxwell, trans., “Gold-Thorir’s Saga,” The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, vol. II, ed. Viðar Hreinsson (Reykjavik, 1997), 335-359, the Grettir-like protagonist Þorir leads a troop of men to a mountain called Blesaverg near Finnmark in Norway to defeat a pack of dragons hiding behind a waterfall. His heroic exploits and the treasure that he recovers from the dragons lead to his appellation Gold-Þorir.

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threatened with death, so they flee to the geographic margins of society. The doomed outlaws therefore inhabit the same metaphoric space as draugar, because both groups are shunned and demonized, and they also share the same literal place far away from the comforting fires of the homestead. Jesse Byock describes medieval Iceland as a “great village,” because the “cultural setting” of the island gave its inhabitants an incentive to live peacefully, and “peer pressure demanding moderation and consensus emerged as a potent force.”43 Despite the geographic dispersal of the early settlers along the island’s coastline, they inhabited the same symbolic community and shared common judicial systems and agricultural structures. Outlawing and executing unlawful individuals, Byock continues, “served to guarantee the integrity of the greatvillage environment, removing those who could not or would not abide by its rules … outlawry provided Icelandic society with an efficient and cost-effective means of doing away with troublemakers.”44 Outlaws who remain living defy the same cultural rules regarding life and death as the draugar, because both groups adamantly refuse to rest in peace; instead they long for and revisit the day-to-day existence of the living. As the actions of Hrappr, Glámr, and many other monsters reveal, this unnatural longing often turns destructive for both the exiled individual and his or her former home. While the draugar perturb and assault the great village of Iceland from the wilds of nature, outlaws threaten to destroy society from within its boundaries. The murders they commit inside the great hall or on the farmstead cause internal rupturing that is just as destructive as the draugar’s battering of roofs and walls. In addition to this thematic parallel between supernatural and human enemies, draugar and outlaws also fit the descriptors of “the monstrous” as defined by Jeffery Jerome Cohen. Cohen argues that the monstrous body is “pure culture” because it “quite literally incorporates [the] fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy” of the culture that created it.45 Cohen also describes how this cultural understanding of the term monster connects to its Latin roots in the term monstrum, “that which reveals [or] that which warns.”46 The location of the draugar and outlaws on the periphery of society defines proper behavior 43

44 45 46

Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 219. Byock also references the work of W. P. Ker, who writes, “Iceland, though the country is large, has always been like a city-state in many of its ways; the small population though widely scattered was not broken up, and … the distant corners of the island are near each other.” W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages (New York, 1958), 200-201. Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 231. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” Monster Theory, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN, 1996), 4. Ibid., 4.

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and belief in medieval Icelandic culture, because these bodies warn what not to do. They exist as biological, legal, social, and cultural Others, and when pressure builds up inside Icelandic society through feuding and violence, this pressure is vented by pushing outlaws far beyond the borders of the community until they are killed. Medieval Icelandic outlaws were subject to the many conditions of extensive law codes, and could be convicted of fjörbaugsgarðr [lesser-outlawry] (from fjörbaugr [life-money], the price for killing a man) and sentenced to a finite exile from Iceland as a result of their first murder.47 The term for full outlawry was skóggangr [forest-going], which refers to the wilderness that composed the new space for one sentenced as a permanent outlaw with an indefinite sentence.48 Such a doomed man was deprived of all legal status and personal property, while those who hunted and killed outlaws were held in high esteem. William Ian Miller describes this legal ruling as a substitution for immediate execution, because “in either mode of resolution, legal or self-help, a corpse was anticipated,” and instead of a formal state apparatus coordinating the execution, “it was up to free adult males to do the work of the law.”49 The outlawed feud-perpetuators and killers were sentenced to leave their native country behind permanently, but many stayed in Iceland to face their own deaths because they preferred life as hunted prey to the desolation of abandoning their homeland. The doorway plays an important symbolic role in the characterization of Icelandic monsters, and so too does it serve as an important barrier between the heart of society and the outlaws on the margins. These outlaws are often driven out of society literally through the front door, and merely allowing an outlaw to enter one’s house brings with it important legal ramifications. As a man named Þórður tells his wife in Laxdæla saga, because of her actions they are now responsible for a local outlaw and must pay the monetary penalty, since they have “allowed the door to shut behind this man.”50 The doorway, once closed, signifies a unified community that must protect its own and defend against intruders. This anecdote also reveals the seminal importance of the interior/exterior dimension of the sagas, as well as the way that the doorway helps to define society: the living and contributing members of the community reside within the doorway and come and go freely, while undead 47 48 49 50

For more information on lesser and full outlawry, see Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga, 219-221. Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 231. William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 232. Kunz, 292.

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draugar and “dead to society” outlaws are driven beyond the door and forced to dwell among the chaos of the outer world. Amidst this chaos, the sagas describe the blurring boundaries that lie between outlaws and monsters – Grettir, for instance, is confused at times with a troll, and his monstrous strength and quarrelsome nature mark him as different from most of society but not unlike the draugar that he fights. Grettir is an archetypal example of Cohen’s “disturbing hybrid” and “mixed category” of a monster who “resists any classification built on hierarchy or merely binary opposition” and who “threatens to smash distinctions.”51 As a man with superhuman strength, Grettir is one of a small few who can rid Icelandic society of revenants, but at the same time, his freakish size and belligerent lineage mark him as distinctly Othered from humanity. Grettir also demonstrates his difference from society by spending much of his adult life on the run as an outlaw. His legal troubles begin when he kills a young man named Skeggi following a quarrel over their missing food bags.52 The teenaged-Grettir is convicted of fjörbaugsgarðr [lesser-outlawry] and sentenced to a three-year exile from Iceland, and while he is abroad he battles supernatural foes, bears, and hostile humans.53 Grettir then returns to Iceland and continues to build his reputation as a famous warrior, but he also becomes infamous for his quick temper and overbearing nature. After another trip to Norway and an ever-growing list of feuds and killings, Þóroddur drápustúfur [Þorod half-poem] prosecutes Grettir as a full outlaw and sentences him to death. Grettir’s strength and fighting spirit help him become famous for dealing with the undead, but these same traits also force him to spend the last years of his life trying to outlast his own execution. As a result of his full-outlawry, Grettir begins moving from farm to farm and stealing for sustenance, relying on the assistance of the few friends he has left but also making even more enemies. He first heeds the wisdom of his companion Björn Hítdælakappi [Bjorn of the Hitardal people] and journeys to a secluded cave on a mountain called Fagraskógafjall, and later moves to a valley that is protected on all sides by the Geitlandsjökul glacier.54 This secluded glacial setting is a rare and wonderful refuge for Grettir, because he finds “beautiful slopes with grass and brushwood on them,” as well as hot springs, a small

51 52 53 54

Cohen, 6-7. Scudder, 31. For more information on lesser and full outlawry, see Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga, 219-221. Scudder, 132.

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brook, and countless sheep.55 The outlaw lives a pleasant but lonely life in this valley, and he is driven by the same nostalgia for human community that plagues the draugar, and soon he moves on to search for companionship. This natural comfort is a rarity in Iceland, as Heather O’Donoghue notes, because the national landscape is almost entirely a harsh and unforgiving place: “most of the interior of Iceland is completely uninhabitable [because of] high snowy mountains and great rocky glaciers,” and along the coasts, the “sands are black, there are great stretches of old, hardened lava, and everywhere evidence of fresh volcanic activity in hot springs, bubbling mud pools and the pervasive smell of Sulphur.”56 Such environmental realities add potency to the despair and doom that come with the slow death of an outlaw. Grettir, who often lapses into versification in describing his motivations and psychology, remarks: “I tread a solitary path, a life / of tribulation is shaped for me.”57 His words reveal the difficult life of a hunted man among a harsh and pitiless landscape, because once he is considered as good as dead by his former society, his friends dwindle, it becomes more difficult to find a safe dwelling, and his enemies close in on him. Cohen’s description of the “geography of the monster” fits perfectly with an understanding of the draugr’s monstrous wilderness and with Grettir’s outlawry, because he defines this realm as “an imperiling expanse, and therefore always a contested space.”58 While the living dead return to their former communal homes, the sentenced-to-death outlaws continually move around Iceland as they flee legal authorities. These two groups embody the same conflict with the cultural center of Icelandic society, because they stray far from their appointed geographic and symbolic places. The draugar do not remain dead and the outlaws (often) do not submit to their sentences, and instead of remaining in the relative stability of the isolated wilderness, both groups return home and transform the domestic realm into a contested space. Grettir 55 56 57

58

Ibid., 141. Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, xi. Scudder, 147. Grettir’s solitary lifestyle, as difficult as it was on him, probably allowed him to survive longer than if he had taken up with a larger band of outlaws. Frederic Amory, “The Medieval Icelandic Outlaw: Life-style, Saga, and Legend,” From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, ed. Gísli Pálsson (Enfield Lock, 1992), 196, describes how the largest outlaw group in Iceland was “socially and economically, also the most precarious, and much more short-lived than some of the solo careers of individual outlaws.” Cohen, 7. Cohen further explains his spatial analysis of monstrosity by noting, “to step outside this official geography is to risk some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself,” Cohen, 12.

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seeks refuge at many farms while living on the lam, but the only refuge he can find after fifteen years of exile is the isle of Drangey, a small rocky outcrop in Skagafjörður just off the northern Icelandic coast. This island towers above the Atlantic below, with “cliffs that rose so steeply that they could not be ascended except by putting ladders up to them,” and without such infrastructure in place, “it was impossible for anyone to land on the island.”59 In a small and cold hut atop this windswept rock in the North Atlantic, Grettir makes a final attempt at recreating the society from which he was exiled, but of course, his dream cannot be realized. Much like the draugar that populate the Icelandic sagas, Grettir (as a social and cultural monster) can never escape his essential desire for the simple comforts of peaceful human life. He assembles a makeshift family on Drangey with his brother Illugi and a servant named Glaum, but his outlawry and cursed fate soon catch up with him from the sword of Þorbjörn öngull [Thorbjorn Hook], a powerful and menacing landowner from the Skagafjörður region. It is only after the complete destruction of his island home that Grettir is felled, because Þorbjörn’s warriors echo Glámr’s structural assault and destroy the roof before attacking the three inhabitants.60 William Sayers describes Grettir’s life as encapsulating Icelandic history in its climb from an “early self-fulfilling heroic age to the vigor and renown of manhood,” followed by inevitable decline and the “solitude of individual powerlessness.”61 As the collective Icelandic culture defined its identity through the first generations after settlement, its people drove away or killed strong-willed individuals that threatened this identity. Laurence de Looze echoes Sayers’ assessment by arguing for an overall “arc of estrangement” in Grettis saga, which leaves Grettir completely “peripheral and hostile to Icelandic society, living on its fringes, [and] largely unassimilated.”62 Grettir becomes famous after death for his heroic exploits against man and monster, 59

60 61 62

Scudder, 159. This small isle is an appropriate place for a monstrous outlaw like Grettir because, according to nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore, part of the island was created when two night-trolls were transformed into giant rock pillars when they were caught in the sunshine. For more information, see Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Berkeley, CA, 1972), 83-84. Scudder, 184-185. Sayers, 262. Laurence De Looze, “The Outlaw Poet, The Poetic Outlaw: Self-Consciousness in Grettis saga Asmundarsonar,” Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 106 (1991), 86. De Looze adds to this geographic and cultural estrangement by describing how Grettir’s prodigious poetic ability further displaces him: “If the poet tends to be, literally or metaphorically, an outsider/outlaw figure, he in turn banishes society at large from the chosen community of the practitioners of his craft,” 99.

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as well as for his long survival as an outlaw; but his troublingly hybridized essence as a fluid category between man and monster means that he must be driven out and hunted down so that society as a whole can continue to survive. As medieval Icelandic people developed their community and built their democratic nation, they had to eliminate the threats to this community – monsters had to be killed and buried properly, and outlaws had to be sent away or hunted down. Occasionally, however, Icelanders had to rethink how they employed their legal and supernatural disposal methods. “Even in contests between men and supernatural creatures,” Jesse Byock writes, “the Icelanders tended … to perceive these struggles within the legalistic concepts of feud.”63 For example, legal proceedings could be held to evict reanimated corpses just as they did to sentence men to outlawry. Eyrbyggja saga describes an obscure practice called duradómar [Door-courts], in which a group of draugar are prosecuted for trespassing because they return to the warm and dry confines of the great hall at Fróðá to sit by the fire for many nights after they drown on a sea voyage. Two of the leaders of the Snæfellsness Peninsula, Kjartan and his uncle Snorri, summon the dead fishermen and accuse them of “trespassing on the home and robbing people of life and health.”64 This troop of the undead simply long for the comforts of the living, much like the draugr Þórmóður in Havarðar saga Isfirðings, [The Saga of Havard of the Isfirthings], who only wants to return to his warm bed each night.65 The draugar in Eyrbyggja saga simply do not wish to relinquish the comfort and security of the warm, fire-lit, and friendship-filled homestead. The monsters do little harm, but their stout refusal to rest in peace transforms the farmhouse’s living room into a “living-dead room” and unnerves the still-living residents.66 This episode is one of the most provocative in saga literature because of the manner by which the uncanny Other literally returns home; the conflict that occurs when the revenants attempt to continue their former lives right alongside the living simply puts too much pressure on the cultural composition of society. Instead of the brute force represented by a monster-fighting hero like Grettir, this kind of undead behavior requires an intellectual and legalistic response. In such a case, the legal system operates just as it would when prosecuting mortals: “the door-court was held and charges made, the 63 64 65 66

Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga, 128. Pálsson and Edwards, 140. Frederik J. Heinemann, “The Saga of Havard of Isafjord,” The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, vol. V, ed. Viðar Hreinsson (Reykjavik, 1997), 316-317. Martin, “Law and the (Un)dead,” 79.

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proper procedure of ordinary lawcourts being observed throughout. The jury was appointed, testimony was taken, and the cases were summed up and referred for judgment.”67 The legal system is such an important part of medieval Icelandic society that Icelanders in the sagas attempt proceedings such as the duradómar against Otherworldly creatures, and are often successful. After the court finds the draugar guilty, they depart the house one by one, exclaiming with real sadness that they have stayed as long as they were allowed. The saga concludes the episode by noting, “It was clear that none of them wanted to go.”68 Like outlaws banished under penalty of death, the draugar accept their sentence glumly, and march out the door and into their culturally-and legally-appointed realm of the world outside. The legal ruling forces these supernatural monsters to accept exile from the community of the living and embrace a resigned return to death. Furthermore, the fates of both outlaws and supernatural monsters serve to reinforce the communal values of medieval Iceland, because, as Janice Hawes notes, “the physical boundaries (outdoors/indoors) become symbolic of the societal and human boundaries;” both outlaws like Grettir and revenants like Eyrbyggja’s draugar are “forced to live outdoors and outside of human society.”69 The duradómar are a tantalizingly mysterious phenomenon in Icelandic history – as Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards note, “Door-courts … are not mentioned in the Icelandic laws; and it has been suggested that Eyrbyggja saga may here preserve the memory of a judicial practice which went early out of use.”70 Most of the laws of medieval Iceland are preserved in the Grágás, a collection of numerous legal books that portray “the law of a society in which order was maintained principally through negotiation and compromise and in which the upholding of an individual’s rights [occurred] through legal proceedings and extralegal arbitrations.”71 This collection of laws was so expansive that it covered both the living and the dead, as William Ian Miller points out, because the “Icelandic corpse had an especially active legal existence,” and the laws allowed for the “survival of its legal person for the purposes of holding it liable.”72 Miller uses an episode from Brennu-Njáls saga [The Saga of Burnt67 68 69 70 71

72

Pálsson and Edwards, 140. Ibid., 141. Hawes, “The Monstrosity of Heroism: Grettir Ásmundarson as an Outsider,” 31-32. Pálsson and Edwards, 51. Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 308. For more detail on the legal texts of medieval Iceland, see Jesse Byock, “Grágás: the ‘Grey Goose’ Law,” Viking Age Iceland, 308-323, and Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 43-51. William Ian Miller, “Choosing the Avenger: Some Aspects of the Bloodfeud in Medieval Iceland and England,” Law and History Review 1 (1983), 189.

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Njal] to illustrate how the dead can be summoned for actions committed when they were still alive, and can also be held legally responsible for a murder in which another person has performed the actual killing. As a historical and literary remnant of medieval Icelandic society, the duradómar in Eyrbyggja saga show how the pervasive legal and cultural values extend to draugar as well as the fully dead. As John D. Martin notes, undead monsters model the behavior of the living and are “full participants in the living world, subject even to its legal conventions,” and these legal conventions grow so powerful that they control the profane as well as the supernatural realm.73 As early Iceland moved beyond the heroic Viking ancestry of the first settlers’ Norwegian lineage, and as these settlers forged their own society, the breadth of the legal system and the wisdom of those who could understand and execute the laws came to define Icelandic culture. In describing the anthropological concept of “cultural focus,” Jesse Byock writes: Cultural focus … is the tendency of every culture to exhibit more complexity and a wider scope in some if its aspects and institutions than in others. When a society focuses on a particular dimension of culture, that dimension is more likely to develop new ways and to generate innovation because more activity and closer scrutiny are directed to it than to other aspects. In Iceland, the cultural focus was on law, and disorder was avoided through dependence of legalistic solutions arrived at through arbitration and court cases.74 The sagas’ countless stories of draugar and outlaws on the run reveal the true potency of the nation’s legal cultural focus. Society’s many laws and the peace they created helped to unite what Heather O’Donoghue refers to as the “scattered but cohesive community of independent farming settlers [and] pioneers fighting for survival in the face of a harsh climate and a recalcitrant landscape.”75 The sagas certainly contain their share of draugar and outlaws, but as each story progresses, it increasingly falls to political and intellectual figures to rid the people of the threat of both monster and outlaw. In fact, one of the defin73

74 75

Martin, 80. Martin also provides an extensive explanation of how the Icelandic draugr fits alongside ancient and medieval conceptions of death and humanity, including the Augustinian notion that the dead can have no further contact with the living, and Gregory the Great’s view that spirits can remain on earth after death. Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 73. Byock builds his cultural assessment from Miles J. Herskovits, Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology (New York, 1970), 542-60. O’Donoghue, 23.

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ing characteristics of the Icelandic saga is the emergence toward each story’s conclusion of powerful men who wield legal and social power instead of the strength and martial ability of their Viking ancestors. One of the most famous of these leaders is Snorri the goði, who appears in many of the most famous sagas and ends numerous strings of murder caused by both blood-feuds and draugar. The wisdom and legal prowess that men like Snorri possess transforms the “socially destructive force” of the feud into “a formalized and culturally stabilizing element.”76 Snorri is referred to as a goði (plural goðar), a term whose meaning evolves throughout the early history of medieval Iceland from “priest” to “priest and social leader” and finally, as in the case of the famous Snorri, to “social leader with command of Icelandic law.” In this extensively-litigated society, those with a strong knowledge of the law hold the true power. Snorri helps feuding parties reach arbitrated settlements, sentences men to outlawry when necessary, and even deals with his fair share of revenants. He uses his legal authority multiple times against supernatural foes in Eyrbyggja saga, including his duradómar eviction of the fishermen draugar, and also his prosecution of a woman named Geirrídur for “being a night-witch” and causing his nephew bodily harm. Similarly, he also helps to defeat the draugr of his father-in-law Víga-Styr in Heiðarvíga saga. The funeral party transporting Víga-Styr’s body encounters similar transportation difficulties to Þórgunna’s pallbearers, and because Víga-Styr was a tyrant and bully when he was alive, he returns from the dead and causes the death of his daughter. Styr’s corpse becomes so restless and monstrously overgrown that he forces his carriers to leave his body under a rock until the weather improves, and it is only through Snorri’s “considerable force of character” that the goði can finally quiet the draugr and move him to his final resting place.77 Herman Palsson and Paul Edwards describe early Iceland as a “period of internal strain and violence” where “the laws are hammered out on the lives of the spirited and inflexible individuals.”78 As Iceland became a stable democratic commonwealth, these laws evolved and society grew stronger, in no small part through the elimination of the most violent outlaws. From the ninth to the eleventh centuries, as O’Donoghue describes, “Iceland established itself as a nation, and its settlers set up a strong and workable parliamentary and legal system [and] much power in this society was still in the hands of hereditary chieftains, or goðar.”79 As a goði, Snorri is the new model of the defender 76 77 78 79

Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 79. Davidson, 160. Palsson and Edwards, 2. O’Donoghue, 23.

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of Icelandic society, and even though he may not possess the folk cachet of a hero like Grettir, he is nevertheless instrumental in strengthening his society. Both Grettir and Snorri defeat the undead, but Snorri can also use his legal intelligence and calm demeanor to resolve feuds, outlaw troublesome men, and permanently separate the dead from the living. Byock further describes the advantages of Iceland’s new cultural values system by stating, “advocacy and arbitration tended to cool hotheadedness by taking the conduct of a quarrel out of the hands of the original, perhaps more emotionally engaged, rivals and entrusting the decisions to third parties,” and this system “facilitated problem-solving by compromise rather than by military victory.”80 An essential element of this compromise is the social and legal connection that society maintained with the undead. Draugar like the Froða fishermen retain so much nostalgia for the world of the living that they abide by its legal rulings, even when such decisions permanently exile them from house and home. This contrast between physical power and legal authority is present in many of the Icelandic sagas, and it represents a turning point in the history of the nation. Theodore M. Andersson refers to this motif in the sagas as “the replacement of a warrior ideal with a social ideal.”81 Whether they are characterized by decades of outlaws on the run or generations of feuding, many of the sagas end with the ascension of legal authority and those with knowledge of history and society. The famous saga Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða [The Saga of Hrafnkell Frey’s Goði], features two powerful men, Þorgeirr and Hrafnkell, who wield power and help to regulate their society much like Snorri in Laxdæla saga. In describing Hrafnkels saga, Tom Shippey notes that such powerful men need to possess both sapientia [wisdom] and fortitudine [strength].82 As Shippey details, the traditional separation between these virtues characterizes most medieval literature – in the famous Brennu-Njáls saga, for example, the wise and calculating Njál is contrasted with his strong but quick-tempered son Skarphéðinn. For Njál and Skarphéðinn, and even Grettir and Gísli, possessing 80 81 82

Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 124. Theodore M. Andersson, “The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas,” Speculum 45.4 (1970), 592. Tom Shippey, “Proverbs and Proverbiousness in Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,” The Hero Recovered: Essays on Medieval Heroism in Honor of George Clark, ed. James Weldon and Robin Waugh (Kalamazoo, MI, 2010), 135-136. Shippey builds on this concept from R. E. Kaske, “Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf,” Studies in Philology 55.3 (1958): 423-56. The best translations of “Hrafnkels saga” are Terry Gunnell, trans., “The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi,” The Sagas of Icelanders (New York, 1997), 436-462, and Gwyn Jones, trans., “Hrafnkell the Priest of Frey,” Erik the Red and other Icelandic Sagas (London, 1961), 89-125.

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only strength or wisdom is often disastrous. Too often outlaws and draugar possess bodily power but not intelligence, and so their old guard eventually loses out to the new generation of pragmatic and legally wise rulers. Carol J. Clover notes that Grettir thrives when he “can perform epic tasks for lordly persons,” but “in the long stretches of civilian life that lie between such heroic occasions (the call for heroes not being what it once was) Grettir is positively dysfunctional.”83 Another example of the danger that comes from a lack of wisdom occurs in Brennu-Njáls saga when the outlawed Gunnarr sets off for his exile. At this crucial turning point in the saga the outlaw’s horse stumbles, causing him to look back at his farm; when he looks back, Gunnarr decides he loves the place too much to leave, because the landscape exudes a nostalgic power that overrides common sense. Gunnarr’s legally directed movement outside of Icelandic society might have led to a peaceful resolution of the saga’s central feud, but instead, he idealistically chooses to remain on his beloved landscape and within his native society. Instead of facing the symbolic death that will come with his exile from the farm, he stays home to face a literal death at the hands of his enemies. O’Donoghue further notes the importance of the “landscape transformed by human endeavor” in Gunnarr’s decision, noting, “what Gunnarr sees is hard-won prosperity, a farm operating as it should, facing the coming autumn in good shape.”84 Gunnarr’s love for his homeland and belief in the cultural importance of agriculture prevents him from facing his exile; and this geographic transgression, like so many of the other outlaw and draugr stories, leads inevitably to widespread death and destruction. He refuses to follow his appointed sentence, resulting in another episode where an imbalance between life and death leads to more loss of life. Shippey further delineates the opposition between strength and wisdom by using Robert Fulk’s paired concepts of “ideologues” and “pragmatists”: while ideologues like Skarphéðinn and Gísli Sursson live and die by the code of the bloodfeud, pragmatic men like Hrafnkell and Snorri the goði use their intelligence and communication skills to yield peaceful and mutually beneficial resolutions to their conflicts.85 Snorri is a paragon of sapientia and the pragmatic worldview needed to survive in the sagas because, as Byock notes, the goði was “an astute power-broker who was 83 84 85

Clover, “Icelandic Family Sagas,” 266. O’Donoghue, 60. The best translation of the saga is Robert Cook, trans., Njal’s Saga (New York, 2001). Shippey, “Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,” 136. For more detail on ideologues and pragmatists, see Robert Fulk, “The Moral System of Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,” Saga-Book of the Viking Society 22.1 (1986): 1-32.

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revered as an ancestor by many of the prominent people of the thirteenth century” when the sagas were written, because his “reputation was based on shrewdness rather than on physical prowess.”86 The ninth-century settlers of Iceland, like Thórólfur Mostrarskegg in Eyrbyggja saga, escaped the increasingly tyrannical rule of the king of Norway and began constructing a democratic society that dealt with its problems largely through group action and communal decisions. Jesse Byock argues that “the sagas helped an immigrant people form a coherent sense of who they were,” and that the sagas are also “a window into the otherwise lost worlds of private life, social values and material culture.”87 As a whole, the society of the sagas had to define its existence, and this identity largely came to be because of the cultural role and geographic place of draugar and outlaws. These creatures are above all else peripheral beings, those confined to the rough wasteland and frontier of society because of their nature and actions. In Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s terminology, these supernatural and human monsters exist to “demarcate the bonds that hold together that system of relations we call culture, to call horrid attention to the borders that cannot – must not – be crossed,” because they “delimit … the social space through which cultural bodies may move.”88 At the same time, these creatures are liminal, from the Latin limin [threshold], because “they dwell at the gates of difference.”89 Cohen’s language is informative when discussing draugar and their connection to outlaws because his linguistic description of the symbolism and action of monsters also helps to convey the constructive function they play in medieval Iceland. These social and physical Others are forced to dwell apart from society and in the Icelandic wilderness; but in doing so, they help to define human society as everything they themselves are not. Killers like Glámr and Gísli, as well as the unsettling but peaceful undead like Thórgunna and Eyrbyggja saga’s drowned fishermen, are spatially unstable and liminal figures who nevertheless illuminate medieval Icelandic culture, ironically by (forcibly) dwelling in the peripheral shadows while the farms, temples, and great halls reside in the light of culture. Outlaws and the undead bring shape and meaning to Icelandic culture because they limn this societal body by outlining it in sharp detail, embellish86 87 88

89

Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 107. Ibid., 23. Cohen, 13. Cohen goes on to describe how this spatial phenomenology connects medieval and modern monsters to their classical origins, as seen primarily in figures like Homer’s cyclopes (14). Ibid., 7.

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ing it, and adding color.90 This lineal demarcation profoundly influences the development of medieval Iceland precisely because it is created through a combination of folkloric, socio-cultural, and legal means. Kirsten Hastrup describes how “the boundary between the human and non-human world is associated with the definition of society as coterminous with the law, beyond which a wild and uncontrolled space encloses the outlaws and related antisocial elements.”91 And not only do draugar like Hrappr and outlaws like Grettir literally limn Icelandic society by walking along the borderland, but they also define and ultimately illuminate Icelandic culture. These monsters give life to the etymology of their name by warning, marking, and demonstrating what it means to be just beyond society’s borders and social norms. Grettir is remembered as the wisest and strongest outlaw in Icelandic history because he remained alive despite living in exile for many years and overcoming mortal and supernatural foes alike. The Icelandic monsters and outlaws were the most famous individuals in the medieval period because their presence on the periphery of society, and their absence from the community’s heart, truly made the Icelandic commonwealth as powerful and lasting as it was and continues to be. 90

91

Oxford English Dictionary, “Illuminate,” Accessed May 1, 2015, , and Oxford English Dictionary, “Limn.” Usage of the verb to limn is largely archaic or literary in nature, and it extends back to Middle English usage in the fifteenth century and was used extensively in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century by writers including William Shakespeare and John Milton. Kirsten Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change, 156.

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Chapter 8

A Funeral Procession from Venice to Milan: Death Rituals for a Late-Medieval Wealthy Merchant* Martina Saltamacchia

Towards the end of September 1394, news arrived in Milan of the death of merchant Marco Carelli in Venice. Three years before, the brilliant businessman had named the Fabbrica – the administrative body of the Cathedral of Milan – as heir to his entire fortune, which was estimated at the astonishing sum of 35,000 ducats. When, in 1392, total Cathedral income failed to cover its building expenses, threatening the continuation of the work, the Fabbrica turned to Carelli and asked him to consider, given the urgent necessities, advancing to them at least a part of the promised inheritance. The wealthy merchant did more and agreed to donate immediately everything he owned, divesting himself entirely even while he lived. After Carelli’s death, the Fabbrica did not find, in the almost three hundred lines of his will, any mention of the funeral rites or rituals he desired to be performed. The merchant had specified precisely the destinations of his assets and goods, and he made monetary provisions for perpetual masses to be celebrated for his soul, but he left neither an indication of a preferred burial site nor details about the funeral itself, with only the telling exception of his request that the cathedral councilors purchase modest brown dresses for his wife and his cousins, to be worn at the funeral.1 Given Marco Carelli’s attention to detail in everything of importance to him, it appears that his will reflects a

* The essay is based upon the research on Marco Carelli undertaken for my doctoral dissertation in Economic and Social History (“Marco Carelli, Il Mercante di Milano,” PhD diss., Bocconi University, 2011) and for my doctoral dissertation in Medieval History (“The Cathedral of Milan and its Fabulous Donor,” PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2013), soon to be published as Saltamacchia, Marco Carelli: The Merchant of Milan, forthcoming. I wish to thank Rudolph M. Bell, Samantha Kelly, James Masschaele and Thomas F. Madden for their comments and feedbacks to this essay. Archival sources are here indicated with the abbreviations AFD (Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo, Milan), ASV (Archivio di Stato, Venice) and MARIEGOLA (ASV, S. Maria Gloriosa ai Frari, b. 100-XIV-1: Mariegola della Scuola dei Milanesi 1361-1790, f. 63v). 1 AFD, Testamenti, c. 42, f. 13, Marco Carelli.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_010

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calculated decision about what was and what was not important, made in contempt for ambition and earthly glory. Despite the stunning indifference toward the funerary celebration that Marco Carelli demonstrated in his written testament, a long, sumptuous and elaborate ritual marked his death. Regardless of whatever spiritual value these rites intended, it takes no stretch of the imagination to suggest that the Fabbrica chose to perform such lavish ceremonies as an act of gratitude towards its generous benefactor, in the hope of soliciting new donations from the Milanese by offering to the crowds the shining example of this devout merchant. The first men to learn of Marco Carelli’s death were his brothers in the Scuola dei Milanesi [confraternity of Milan and Monza merchants] that Carelli founded in Venice thirty years before. As was customary, they inducted his passage to the next world by reciting five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers2 – so that, as the confraternity Mariegola [constituent rule and statute] explained, “[…] che lo meta dio piu tosto a la gloria del santo paradixo” [God could destine him more hastily to the glory of the Holy Heaven].3 As precisely described in the Mariegola, at the death of a brother two nonzoli4 attended to the preparation of the corpse and the coffin, and they organized the funeral procession.5 After the corpse was washed and dressed, it was transported to the confraternity’s elected church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, and displayed so as to receive homage from the confraternity brothers (Fig. 8.1). The confraternity chapel (Fig. 8.2) was decorated for the occasion with silk drapes depicting St. Ambrose and St. John the Baptist (its co-patrons). These rituals affirmed the deceased’s continued membership in the association even after his death. They solicited the two saints’ protection, “so that they could be advocates for his soul before God.”6 The rituals staged by the Scuola dei Milanesi at a brother’s death served as forceful reminders of the communion between the living and the dead that its members believed formed naturally at this stage of the ceremonial process, 2 ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 6v. 3 ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 6v; ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 26. 4 The word nonzolo is a lemma from the Venetian dialect, meaning “gravedigger.” According to Boerio, the term derives from the gravedigger’s task of announcing mass times to the people. Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano, I (Florence, 2006), s.v. “nonzolo.” 5 ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 5-5v, 24-25. It was customary for confraternities to have paid officials appointed with executive tasks–while all the other appointments in the associations were pro bono. Giancarlo Angelozzi, Le confraternite laicali. Un’esperienza cristiana tra medioevo ed età moderna (Brescia, 1978), 56; Francesca Ortalli, «Per salute delle anime e delli corpi». Scuole piccole a Venezia nel tardo Medioevo (Venice, 2001), 24. 6 ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. iiiv-iiiiii, 26v.

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Figure 8.1 Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. Photo by Apollonio Tottoli.

Figure 8.2 Chapel of the merchants’ confraternity in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. Photo by Apollonio Tottoli.

and that marked the eternal place of the deceased within the living body of the pious association.7 Every member of the confraternity present in Venice was expected to take part in the commemoration ritual, first by visiting the chapel to pay homage to the corpse, then by attending the funeral, and lastly by accompanying the Scuola’s priors and officials to the burial site.8 7 8

Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1990), 12. The attendance of at least six friars at the funeral ceremony of a defunct brother was one of the terms of mutual allowances and responsibilities stipulated between the friars of Santa Maria Gloriosa and the Scuola dei Milanesi. A pecuniary penalty equivalent to one grosso was inflicted upon the convent for each absent friar from the minimum number of six. ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 9, 11v, 36. In order to allow all the brothers to have time to pay homage to the corpse, the confraternity statute forbade precipitous burials. According to the confraternity’s minutes, brothers sometimes went to the priors to ask permission for

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Indeed, along with the feast days of patron saints, funeral ceremonies constituted the community’s defining moments: all the brothers gathered together, forcefully united by their belief in the same destiny, as their dead companion silently reminded them.9 There were theological as well as social reasons for these communal moments. As James Banker points out, the commemorations of these pious associations were modeled after the funeral rituals performed in monastic communities, where all the monks together prayed for each deceased brother. In the monastery as in the confraternity, contributions to the Treasury of Merit earned by the brothers, through asceticism in the former and charity in the latter, could never be deemed sufficient to assure a place in heaven for the dead brother’s soul. Piety demanded a collective final plea for God’s mercy by as large a contingent of living persons as possible.10 At the end of the funeral mass, a somber, long cortege of hundreds of brothers followed the bier, led by the confraternity’s priors and anziani [elders], as the confraternity’s board was called. A large processional cross in gilt copper and four black torches led the way for the mourners, each carrying a lighted candle. The funeral procession then moved from the chapel to the designated place of burial – a small area within the church graveyard, near the bell tower.11 And there Marco Carelli’s body was initially put to rest, while awaiting clearance from Milan for the exhumation, transportation, and reinterment of the corpse at Carelli’s city of birth – a wait initially expected to last only the few weeks necessary to transport the body from Venice to Milan but that, due to complications related to an outbreak of plague, was prolonged by several months.12 Carelli died on September 18, and by September 24 Albertino de Nigri, who was in charge of supervising Carelli’s Milanese household accounts during his

9 10 11

12

immediate burial of a companion but even in these instances a minimum interval of time was always observed between notification of the demise, reception of the coffin at the confraternity’s chapel, and the burial rite. ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 37v-38v. James Banker, Death in the Community: Memorialization and Confraternities in an Italian Commune in the Late Middle Ages (Athens, GA, 1988), 9. Ibid., 51, 62. The concession to the Scuola dei Milanesi of an area within the church graveyard for the burial of its members and its poor, stipulated informally with the Franciscans since the inception of the Scuola, was officially ratified in 1422, with an act signed by twenty-two friars, transcribed in the Scuola’s statute. ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 16-19v. For a description of the tasks of the nonzoli, see ASV, MARIEGOLA, f. 5-5v, 24v-25. Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo dall’origine fino al presente, pubblicati a cura dell’Amministrazione della Fabbrica (Milano, 1877-1895) [from here on, ANNALI], 1: 131 (February 14, 1395).

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sojourn in Venice, ceased to record expenses – a sure indicator that Marco’s death was known to de Nigri.13 Under the terms of Carelli’s testament, upon his death all of his household goods belonged to the Milan Cathedral, no matter that he had died and would be buried initially by his community in Venice. Anxious to assure that none of its new assets went missing, the Fabbrica immediately ordered an inventory of everything Carelli possessed in Milan.14 On the following Sunday, September 27, the Council of the Fabbrica gathered to deliberate on rites and rituals to be performed in Milan to commemorate the merchant’s demise in Milan, even though his body was interred in Venice. They decided to celebrate the settimo, the mass usually celebrated seven days after the death, two days late – a delay necessary to allow them enough time to prepare the funereal apparatus and spread news of the commemoration among the city’s inhabitants.15 On the morning of Tuesday, September 29, 1394, the clergy of the cathedral of Milan, along with the clergy of nearby Santa Tecla, the city’s second cathedral, and the canonici decumani, gathered to celebrate the Office of the Dead.16 The assemblage of presbyters then went in procession 13 14 15

16

AFD, Eredità, c. 67, Marco Carelli, f. 60. ANNALI, 1: 118 (September 27, 1394). ANNALI, 1: 117 (September 27, 1394). Christians believed that celebration of masses for the dead seven and thirty days after death shortened the souls’ torments. Clare Gittings, “Urban Funerals in Late Medieval and Reformation England,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100-1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, 1992), 171-173. The numerology, adopted from Jewish tradition, refers to the seventh day of the Genesis creation narrative and to the thirty day period of mourning for Moses, as narrated in Deuteronomy 34:8. The original Jewish commemoration ritual, consisting of a period of up to seven days of abstention from work, personal care and adornment, was explained as referring to the time of Joseph’s mourning for Jacob – and it subsequently passed into Christian observance and transformed in the celebration of the settimo. Geoffrey Rowell, The Liturgy of Christian Burial: An Introductory Survey of the Historical Development of Christian Burial Rites (London, 1977), 4, 12. The rich symbolism typical of the late medieval period here found expression in elements of funeral ritual meant to express beliefs and hopes about death that had their roots in two millennia and more of Judeo-Christian tradition. Those in attendance readily understood the profound mean­ings of such simple observances as the seven and thirty-day masses. The Office of the Dead, a prayer cycle from the Book of Hours divided into vespers, matins and lauds, was enacted before the Mass. Paul Binski, “Ways of Dying and Rituals of Death,” in Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation, ed. Paul Binsky (London, 1996), 53. The canonici decumani was a body of chaplains founded in Milan between the eight and the ninth century, who were called upon to celebrate masses, funeral ceremonies and offices of the dead, and who often also worked as church custodians. They were called decumani after the decime [tithes] they collected for their services. Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni (Venice, 1854), s.v. “stallo,”

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to the Church of San Babila, the parish where the Carelli family lived, to celebrate twenty-five masses. Everyone in attendance received a two-ounce candle. Two nine-ounce candles and two large crosses stood in front of the altar, each surmounted by ten three-ounce candles. A black drape was spread on the pavement, a rite stemming from an ancient pagan belief that corpses veiled in black were invisible to the spirits who might otherwise molest them. The black or sable hue of the drape originated in a practice of rolling burial sackcloth in dirt and ashes as a sign of penitence – a custom later forbidden in Christian funerals, which allowed for expressions of grief, but were more a triumphant reminder of the resurrection that awaited all the dead. The use of the black drape had long lost its ancient pagan significance and so the obvious fact that Carelli’s corpse was actually many miles away in Venice was of no consequence.17 Rather, the hope for eternal salvation, symbolized as light, contrasted powerfully with the black hue of the drape as it expressed the deep grief of the mourners while reminding the living about the realities of unconsciousness and decomposition with its absence of color.18 In the afternoon, the presbyters returned in procession to the main cathedral of the city of Milan to recite the Office of the Dead together with the cathedral priests, in the presence of a crowd of mourners who flocked from every corner of the city and the countryside. Funerals for important people attracted popular curiosity for their great scenic apparatus and for the promise of doles of food and drink customarily distributed to participants at the end of the ceremony.19 On occasions of grand commemoration, such as the one celebrated for Marco Carelli, officials were sent everywhere in Milan and into the villages nearby to invite the people to participate. A large assemblage of mourners rendered great honor to the deceased, firm in their belief that the number of intercessory prayers multiplied to reduce the sufferings of his soul.20

17 18

19

20

69: 180. Santa Tecla, or Basilica Maior, was an ancient paleo-Christian basilica which was used as a summer cathedral. Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 23; Bertram S. Puckle, Funeral Customs: Their Origin and Development (London, 1926), 98. Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, 1979), 63; Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY, 1967), 89; Binski, “Ways of Dying,” 54-55. Giuliana Vitale, “Pratiche funerarie nella Napoli aragonese,” in La morte e i suoi riti in Italia tra Medioevo e prima età moderna, ed. Gian Maria Varanini, Anna Zangarini, and Francesco Salvestrini (Florence, 2007), 423; Gittings, “Urban Funerals,” 171. Robert Dinn, “Death and rebirth in late medieval Bury St. Edmunds,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100-1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, 1992), 156; Gittings, “Urban Funerals,” 171.

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Dozens of flames illuminated the scene, symbolizing that hell’s darkness would not prevail over the death of a just man: four one-pound candles glowed in front of the draped altar, the cathedral canonici ordinari [resident priests] each held a six-ounce candle, while the presbyters, the cathedral officials and guardians carried smaller two-ounce candles. Such a magnificent visual display was yet another form of intercession for the deceased’s soul, one that gave due recognition to the individual’s former rank and position.21 The number of candles and their size varied within strict limits, set according to the deceased’s prestige. From the thirteenth century onward, Milan’s sumptuary laws regulated precisely the expenses for candles and torches, with the intent of curbing status pressures that compelled the governing classes to squander greater riches on wax and apparatuses for funerals, endangering their financial stability.22 At the same time, the fact that such restrictions were dependent upon the social status of the dead reveals the hesitation of the community to detach entirely the deceased from the place he or she had occupied in life. While people crowded around the cathedral, gargantuan doles were given out: in the Chiesa Maggiore, three moggia [bushels] of wheat bread were distributed to the poor, while five moggia of wheat bread and four staia23 of chickpeas with the grassa [fat] were brought to Marco Carelli’s house to be distributed to the “poor of Christ,” to the beggars houses in Milan, to the incarcerated debtors in Malastalla, San Satiro and other prisons in Milan, and to the houses of his family and neighbors.24 The total was roughly equivalent to 2,475 pounds of bread and 154 pounds of chickpeas, enough to feed a throng of over six thousand mourners and prisoners.25 The doling out of food to the poor 21 22

23 24

25

Puckle, Funeral Customs, 78; Gittings, “Urban Funerals,” 171. Diane Owen Hughes, “Mourning rites, memory, and civilization in premodern Italy,” in Riti e rituali nelle società medievali, ed. Jacques Chiffoleau, Lauro Martines, and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Spoleto, 1994), 33, 36; Vitale, “Pratiche funerarie,” 431. A word that also means “bushel,” but refers to a smaller unit of dry measure; see n. 25, below. The use of chickpeas as funerary dole may derive from a combination of ancient traditions. Among pagans, it was customary to offer male mourners food that was round in shape, such as lentils and eggs, to remind them of the revolving wheel of fortune. In ancient Greece, huge pots of chickpeas, beans and broad beans were cooked on the occasion of the Feast of the Dead to provide the deceased with a fulfilling meal before her or his return in the afterlife. Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 4; Ignazio Buttitta, I morti e il grano: Tempi del lavoro e ritmi della festa (Rome, 2006), 94-96; Alberto Capatti, Alberto De Bernardi and Angelo Varni, “L’alimentazione,” in Storia d’Italia, 13 (Turin, 1998), 126; Ottavio Cavalcanti, Cibo dei vivi, cibo dei morti, cibo di Dio (Soveria Mannelli, 1995), 81-82. In late medieval Milan, one moggio da grano was equivalent to 146.23 liters, one staio was equivalent to 18.28 liters, and 1 liter = 0.96 kilograms. Hence, 8 moggia = 1169.84 liters =

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after funerals derived from the pagan Roman custom of serving meals on the same day and the day following a death, essentially marking the incorporation of the deceased into the next world and the reestablishment of the social order among the survivors. Adopted by early Christians, this ritual was later replaced by Augustine with provisions for the poor, forcefully tying together care for the dead with care for the poor.26 However much these enormous doles may have been joyously welcomed by hundreds and even thousands of beneficiaries, they were not distributed with the intent of addressing the problem of poverty in the city. Had that been the primary concern of the donor, he or she could have stipulated a fund for daily distribution of bread to the city poor – as in fact other merchants did at the time.27 Rather, such offerings had a symbolic meaning, as suggested by the numerology of the quantities distributed: three moggia for the Holy Trinity; another five moggia for the wounds of Christ; and four staia for the Evangelists.

26 27

1123.0464 kilograms = 2475.8935 pounds; 4 staia = 73.12 liters = 70.1952 kilograms = 154.7539 pounds. For the value of the moggio da grano and the staio, see Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia: Ossia, Misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli (Turin, 1883), 350-51. Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 11; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 24-27; Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago, 1960), 20-24, 164-65. Historian Wilbur K. Jordan harshly criticizes the offering of such gifts to the poor at funerals, arguing that they encouraged mendicancy rather than solving the problem of poverty. I believe Jordan’s argument does not get it right, as funerary doles, although sometimes quantitatively significant, as in Marco Carelli’s case, were limited to the funeral day and sometimes to its anniversary every year, a scope too restricted to have a positive impact on the population. Wilbur K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660: A Study of the Changing Pattern of English Social Aspirations (London, 1959), 146-47; J. A. F. Thomson, “Piety and Charity in Late Medieval London,” The Journal of Ecclesiastic History XVI, 2 (October 2012): 182. For a telling example of a contemporary merchant who disposed of his wealth with the intent of providing a concrete and sustained help to the city poor, see the case of the fifteenth-century Milanese merchant Giovanni Rottole. He left several properties to the charitable institutions Consorzio della Misericordia and Scuola delle Quattro Marie, designating their revenues to the “poor of Christ, for the soul of the aforementioned donor and the dead of his family.” He prescribed for the two beneficiaries of his inheritance specific acts towards the needy. On St. Francis’s feast, every year, they were to clothe twelve poor people from head to foot, and every weekday in perpetuum an official on horseback was to distribute baked bread and wine through the streets of the city. Gino Barbieri, Origini del capitalismo Lombardo (Milan, 1961), 157-247; Patrizia Mainoni, “La seta a Milano nel XV secolo: aspetti economici e istituzionali,” Studi Storici 35, 4 (1994), 871-96.

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The beneficence was not indiscriminate, but targeted specific groups: the poor, debtors, prisoners, one’s family, and one’s neighbors.28 Food distribution constituted a final work of charity exercised on behalf of the merchant Marco Carelli; it was a literal response to the words Christians recite daily in the Pater Noster (“Give us this day our daily bread”) and satisfied the Gospel’s injunctions to feed the hungry and visit the prisoners.29 At the same time, the beneficiaries of such generosity were expected to pray for the deceased. Their role as powerful intercessors for the soul of the dead was warranty of a safe passage to the hereafter, in a reciprocal “economy of redemption,” as Miri Rubin defines it.30 Following the distribution of bread and chickpeas, at the fourteenth hour of the day, the merchant’s family took part together with local authorities in celebrating the settimo mass. As Richard Trexler elucidates, the sacredness of a ritual was mediated and heightened “by the combined authority of heaven and earth,” and the simultaneous presence of the spiritual and civil establishment reinforced this perception in the spectators.31 The Carelli family occupied the front position. Marco’s widow, Flora de Aliprandi, was most probably accompanied by the four cousins Marco mentioned in his will: Giovannola and Beltramola, the daughters of Marco’s uncle Franzio; Malgarola, the daughter of Marco’s uncle Albertolo; and Petrolla, also known as Muzia, the daughter of Marco’s cousin Simonolo. Carelli in his will had specified that the cathedral councilors provide his widow with a plain dress, expressly for the occasion of his funeral celebration: a dress of cloth thirteen arms long, of the value of thirty-two to thirty-six soldi per arm, in brown, the color the deceased’s female family members were required to wear in Milan at obsequies.32 Instead, Flora de Aliprandi wore the new dress that the cathedral administrators had ordered for her. In defiance of the dead man’s 28

29

30

31 32

P. H. Cullum and P. J. P. Goldberg, “Charitable Provision in Late Medieval York: ‘to the Praise of God and the Use of the Poor’,” Northern History: A Review of the History of the North of England 29 (1993), 38. Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase, Death in the Middle Ages; Mortality, Judgment, and Remembrance (New York, 1972), 122; Cullum and Goldberg, “Charitable Provision,” 28, 34; Banker, Death in the Community, 49. Cullum and Goldberg, “Charitable Provision,” 37; Dinn, “Death and Rebirth,” 157; Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité d’au-delà: les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age (vers 1320-vers 1480) (Rome, 1980), 314-16. Richard Trexler, “Ritual Behavior in Renaissance Florence: The Setting,” Medievalia et Humanistica (1973), 128. AFD, Testamenti, c. 42, f. 13, Marco Carelli; Rita Levi Pisetzky, “Come vestivano i Milanesi alla fine del Medioevo,” in Storia di Milano, IV (Milan, 1955), 746.

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instructions, the Fabbrica chose to forgo the ascetic specifications in Marco Carelli’s will. The councilors, “to give a good example to everyone,” decided to buy Carelli’s widow a longer and more expensive outfit, completing her sober mourning costume with two siptulares,33 three velleti (the small veils a widow put on her head),34 and two lamponi vayrorum (inserts of the fur of a vair, a sort of blue squirrel)35 to line her mantle as a sign of nobility. Standing immediately behind the family were Milan’s civic authorities: the Vicar, the Twelve of Provision, the Board of the Judges, and dozens of deputies and councilors from the board of the cathedral. Each of them was given a sesino (a little coin worth six dinars) to be brought to the altar as a token offering for the Fabbrica – presumably with the intent of attracting offerings from the people in emulation of this long procession of noble officials. The same elaborate ritual was celebrated again on the thirtieth day after his death, on October 17.36 All this was done without the presence of the dead man’s body. On the very next day, October 18, the Council of the Fabbrica met to organize the transportation of Marco Carelli’s corpse from Venice to Milan. They decided to appoint this task to deputy Martino della Croce, who, in the immediate aftermath of the merchant’s demise, had been sent to Venice together with his brother Giovannino della Croce on behalf of the Fabbrica to recover Carelli’s credits, ensure the payment of his debts and supervise the retrieval of his remaining goods and merchandise.37 However, complications related to sanitation restrictions imposed during a 1394 outbreak of plague meant that for five months the councilors had no choice but to postpone the transfer.38 Over several decades of recurrent epi33

34 35

36 37 38

The term siptulares derives from the medieval lemma sitularius, from the verb serare, to close. See Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, s.v. “serare,” accessed December 31, 2012, . Presumably, it indicated the benda [band] the widow customarily put around her head to express humiliation, as a sign of her “rejection of the world and loss of identity.” Owen Hughes, “Mourning Rites,” 33. During the fourteenth century, the use of veils for widows became widespread, with a similar symbolic value as the former custom of letting down the hair disheveled. Vair fur inserts were a status symbol. The Sumptuary Laws redacted in Milan two years later, in 1396, allowed only officials and counselors of the Collegio di Milano to wear clothes lined with vair or ermine fur. Rita Levi Pisetzky, “Nuove mode della Milano viscontea nello scorcio dell’300,” Storia di Milano, vol. V (Milan, 1955), 887, 905; Owen Hughes, “Mourning Rites,” 34. Interestingly, the blue of vair pelts was incorporated into heraldry, which was also called “vair” because of the blue and white pattern that recalled the pelts sewn together. ANNALI, 1: 119 (October 11, 1394). ANNALI, 1: 119 (October 18, 1394). AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 23, f. 116; ANNALI, 1: 131 (February 14, 1395).

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demics and plagues, the Milanese had heeded well the practice of barricading themselves within the city’s walls as soon as news of an outbreak reached them, greatly reducing the possibility of contagion. Thanks to such firm measures, while the Black Death rapidly spread and ravaged Europe during the infamous year 1348, Milan managed to isolate itself and remained untouched by the deadly disease – although the Lombard center did not always enjoy that same good fortune in the following years. Only in March 1395, did Fabbrica officials present to the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, a formal request for exemption from the norms regarding corpse transportation. A few days later, they received a special permit to carry the merchant’s coffin solemnly from Venice to Milan along the Po and the Adda Rivers, entering through Porta Orientale.39 Given the immediate circumstances and the experience gained from decades of taking measures to isolate the city from epidemics, the insistence of the Fabbrica in bringing Carelli’s body back to his native place, even at the cost of a considerable sum of money and exposing their lives to the risk of disease and infection, which were often the fate of embalmers and gravediggers, is noteworthy.40 Surely, the Fabbrica’s desire to provide the Milanese with the relic of their great benefactor’s whole body played an important part, as the sumptuous ceremonies they organized at the corpse’s arrival in Milan attest. Yet, even more, the councilors’ insistence on obtaining the merchant’s remains reveals the substantial importance corpses had for the councilors; and in this the Fabbrica officials were not alone. By the end of the fourteenth century, the practice of secondary burial – the disinterment of the bones of kin who had died far from home, and their return for burial in the family tomb – was becoming common practice among the elite, as Sharon Strocchia documents in the case of Florence.41 Pagans, Jews, and Muslims deemed the corpse to be a source of pollution, and therefore any contact with it had to be avoided, but for medieval Christians the corpse was seen as the sacred temple of the Holy Spirit. For them, Jesus’ resurrection in the flesh had transformed and dignified corporality; care for the deceased’s corpse, as Augustine had affirmed centuries before, was not a mere esthetic concern 39 40

41

AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 119; ANNALI, 1: 133 (March 14, 1395). Just to give a notorious example, when King Henry I of England died in 1135 at SaintDenis-en-Lyons in Normandy, his corpse was sent for burial at Reading, the abbey he had founded a few years before “for the salvation of [his] soul, and the souls of King William, [his] father, and of King William, [his] brother, and Queen Maud, [his] wife, and all [his] ancestors and successors.” Yet, such was the state of his body that the surgeon who carried out the embalming operation died of infection. Boase, Death, 113. Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 1992), 66-67.

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but a profession of faith in the resurrection of the body.42 In the High Middle Ages, when the death of an important man occurred away from his native land, it was customary to bring home the bodily remains. The corpse was disemboweled, cut into pieces and boiled in water or wine to separate flesh from bones. Then, the flesh was interred at the place of death while the bones, considered the noblest part because they were more long-lasting, were sent home to be buried solemnly in the man’s native soil.43 Some theologians looked askance at this practice, which posed a number of challenges to belief in bodily resurrection. In 1299, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed what he intended to be the definitive sentence on the matter, declaring “impious and abominable” such a custom, and allowing the transportation of the corpse’s remains only when, after being buried at the place of death, it had decomposed. However, as Elizabeth Brown observes, the papal bull, far from restraining the practice, had the opposite effect, rendering the practice yet more desirable, as only the rich could afford the price of the costly dispensation needed to perform the ritual.44 Embalming represented a viable alternative that circumvented the papal prohibition. First the deceased’s body was disemboweled: entrails, heart, brain and eyes were removed – an operation that required some skill and at least some marginal anatomical expertise, and was therefore performed ideally by doctors, or in their absence monks, or even butchers or cooks. In this way, the putrefying and perishable parts of the body were discarded, in order to better preserve the skeleton, which truly represented the deceased’s identity.45 Then, the corpse was treated to retard decomposition during transport: the dead’s

42 43

44 45

Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 18. Boase, Death, 113; Ronald Finucane, “Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion: Social Ideals and Death Rituals in the Later Middle Ages,” in Mirrors of Mortality Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Joachim Whaley (London, 1980), 46; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse,” Viator 12 (1981), 221. Brown, “Death and the Human Body,” 221, 223, 265. Patrice Georges, “Mourir c’est pourrir un peu ... Intentions et techniques contre la corruption des cadavres à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Micrologus: Nature Sciences and Medieval Societies VII, Il Cadavere (The Corpse). Actes du Congrès de Lyon, octobre 1996, ed. Catherine Chene (Florence, 1999), 375-76. On embalming practices in the Middle Ages, see also Philippe Charlier and Patrice Georges, “Techniques de préparation du corps et d’embaumement à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Inhumations de prestige ou prestige de l’inhumation?: Expressions du pouvoir dans l’au-delà (IVe-XVe siècle), ed. Armelle Alduc-Le Bagousse (Caen, 2009), 405-38.

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remains were soaked in vinegar or wine, then covered with salt and aromatic herbs, and lastly sewn into animal hides.46 For the transportation of Marco Carelli’s remains, Martino della Croce, the Fabbrica official in Venice, contracted with the brothers Maffiolo and Luchino Mariani to escort the funeral craft up to Lodi, approximately twenty miles southeast of Milan (Fig. 8.3).47 The boatmen were paid ten gold florins for their service – a considerable amount, even greater than the monthly salary that the Fabbrica paid to the inzignere generale, the cathedral masterbuilder.48 Yet, the compensation fit the risk of engaging in the weeks-long transportation of a corpse, and the related danger of disease and infection. In the first weeks of spring 1395, inhabitants along the Po and the Adda River valleys witnessed the passage of a somber boat, covered in rich black cloth from end to end, embellished with twenty-four crosses and lit night and day by twenty-four perpetual torches – a number that perhaps symbolized the twelve tribes of Israel added to the twelve Apostles.49 Although their use was initially condemned by Christians as pagan ritual, torches came to be allusive symbols of life and faith; they were employed frequently in late medieval procession funerals for their evocative character and their festive atmosphere.50 Providing

46 47 48

49

50

Boase, Death, 113; Finucane, “Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion,” 46. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v; AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 119; ANNALI, 1: 133 (March 14, 1395). The comparison between salaries has been calculated comparing the two ferrymen’s salary, ten florins, with the monthly amount of the annual salary (sixteen lire correspond to his annual salary divided by the months of actual work) paid in 1388 to Simone Orsenigo, inzignere generale e maestro della Fabbrica [Fabbrica masterbuilder], in Liber Dati e Recepti (1388) transcr. ANNALI, Appendici, 1: 56 (1388). One florin in 1395 was worth thirty-three soldi: for the conversion florin/lira, see Tommaso Zerbi, Le origini della partita doppia: mastri e bilanci dei secoli XIV e XV (Milan, 1952). AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v; AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 119; ANNALI, 1: 133 (March 14, 1395); Maria Antonietta Visceglia, “Corpo e sepoltura nei testamenti della nobiltà napoletana: XVI-XVII secolo,” Quaderni Storici L (October 4, 2011): 591. In ancient rituals, it was customary to surround the deceased’s body with torches, forming a circle of light as a form of protection for the dead against attacks by evil spirits. The practice was later adopted in the Christian funeral rite, although with a different meaning: at the arrival of the procession at the church, the torches were placed around the coffin in front of the altar, and there they were left until the burial, forceful reminders of the light brought into the world with Christ’s Resurrection. Puckle, Funeral Customs, 76-77; Dinn, “Death and Rebirth,” 155.

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Figure 8.3 Itinerary of Marco Carelli’s corpse transport from Venice to Milan. Elaboration based on ANNALI.

a mysterious sense of transcendence to the scene, they transformed it into a powerful celebration of certainty in the resurrection.51 Requests for torches and torchbearers often appear in the wills of wealthy persons who desired to make of their funerals grandiose drama expressing their status and fame.52 Medieval and Renaissance chronicles of public funerals frequently enumerate rather hyperbolic quantities of torches and the employment of other apparatus. The number of torches, the quality and dimensions of the pall, and the estimate of mourners were considered indicators of the social status, rank and office of the deceased.53 Yet, this was not the 51

52 53

Paxton, Christianizing Death, 25; Alfred C. Rush, Death and Burial in Christian Antiquity (Washington DC, 1941), 224-28; Visceglia, “Corpo e sepoltura,” 591; Puckle, Funeral Customs, 76-78. Bertram Puckle recalls the ancient custom of burying the dead at night by torchlight, and proposes that the practice is related to the origin of the word “funeral” (funeralis, in Latin), literally “procession by torchlight,” from funis, torch – a suggestive etymological double entendre with the word funus, death. Dinn, “Death and Rebirth,” 155. Vitale, “Pratiche funerarie,” 393, 431; Peter Heath, “Urban Piety in the later Middle Ages: The Evidence of Hull Wills,” in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Barrie Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), 217; Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2002), 144; Chiffoleau, La comptabilite de l’au-dela, 130, 133.

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case with Marco Carelli. He asked for nothing, and despite the fact that the Fabbrica officials ordered lavish displays for his transport and funereal rites, which were meant to shower him with honor after his death, they did so judiciously. The source for the description of the merchant’s rituals are the minutes of the Council of the Fabbrica, which include deliberations over the expenses the Council needed to cover, backed up by the Fabbrica’s registers of expenses. Therefore, differently from many contemporary accounts, often hyperbolic in its description of funeral apparatuses as a literary convention utilized to underline the prestige of the deceased, in this case the account of expenditures for torches and crosses to surround Carelli’s coffin appears to be entirely reliable. After a month of navigation, the boat arrived in Lodi, where three clerics welcomed its arrival and from there transported the corpse with great pomp to Milan.54 The Lodi-Milan road began in Pavia and by the end of the fourteenth century had become suitable for carts. For this reason, it represented one of the principal land routes to the Lombard capital, which before the completion of the network of artificial canals in the fifteenth century lacked natural access to the Po River.55 In preparation for the arrival of the merchant’s body in Lodi, the Fabbrica appointed three men to provide an elaborate funeral wagon, richly covered with thirty-two braccia56 (over sixty-two feet) of bogazam (a black linen drape) and decorated with the Carelli family’s emblems. Four horses, also draped in black, pulled the coffin along a path marked by torches and lamps. In advance of the procession, three nuncios visited every city district and parish along the route to bring news of the pending arrival of the generous merchant’s body, and so, at its passage, townspeople hailed the coffin at every crossroads. While officials waited to receive the final permit to enter the city of Milan, they left the bier, covered with a rich black silk pall, outside the city walls at 54 55

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The funeral craft left Venice on or around March 20, 1395 and reached Lodi a month later, on April 20. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fol. 102v. Luciana Frangioni, “Milano e le vie del commercio internazionale (secoli XII-XV),” in Storia illustrata di Milano. Milano antica e medievale, ed. Francesco Della Peruta, II (Milan, 1993), 442, 450. In late medieval Milan, one braccio was equivalent to 0.5949 meters. Hence, 32 braccia = 19.0369 meters = 62 feet, 5.48 inches. See Martini, Manuale di metrologia, 350. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fol. 102v; AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 121; ANNALI, 1: 135 (April 14, 1395). The funeral cloth, or pall, was originally a cloak used to wrap the body for the procession to the burial; with the rise of the use of wooden coffins, the pall lost its functionality, but it was still used to drape the casket dramatically. Puckle, Funeral Customs, 115.

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Sant’ Erasmo friars’ Church. Two friars guarded it in turns while the locals were charged with sprinkling the body with perfumes and herbs. The operation had a very practical function: the Fabbrica deliberations specify that the reason was “to abate the corpse’s fetorem” [deadly smell].57 At the same time, the act held a deeper symbolic meaning: it commemorated the precious spices – one hundred libbre of myrrh and aloe – that, according to the Gospel, Nicodemus sprinkled on Jesus’ corpse after Joseph of Arimathea obtained it from Pontius Pilate.58 Treatment of the corpse with herbs was just one part of the lengthy and complex ritual in which the deceased was associated with Christ and made one with him. Such identification began at the deathbed, when the faithful heard readings of Gospel accounts of the Passion, which were meant to nurture a sense of living Christ’s part through one’s present sufferings.59 Afterwards, preparation of the deceased’s body followed closely the same Jewish burial customs recounted in the Gospels: the corpse was washed, to symbolize the purification of the soul, then anointed, and finally wrapped in a linen cloth, which was knotted at head and feet.60 Through this identification of the deceased with Christ, mourners were visually reminded of the bodily resurrection and life eternal that was promised to all believers. A note of joy and triumph entered into Christian funerals – as the massive use of torches and candles, symbols of the light of resurrection, powerfully attested.61 The next day – April 21, 1395 – the funeral entourage entered Milan, having been granted a ducal exemption. It moved solemnly from Porta Romana (see Figure 8.4, A), to the Church of Santa Tecla (D). A vast crowd followed the procession, including citizens whom the Fabbrica messengers had called from the countryside the previous day, together with the city authorities, nobles and clergy.62

57 58

59 60 61 62

AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v; AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 121. Jn 19:39; Georges, “Mourir c’est pourrir un peu,” 377; Patrice Georges, “Les aromates de l’embaumement médiéval: Entre efficacité et symbolisme,” in Le monde vegetal: Médecine, botanique, symbolique, ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Florence, 2009), 257-68; Puckle, Funeral Customs, 36. Binski, “Ways of Dying,” 53; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 42. Jn 19:38-42; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 21, 44; Boase, Death, 110; Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 2-3; Puckle, Funeral Customs, 34; Binski, “Ways of Dying,” 56. Rowell, Liturgy of Christian Burial, 52. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v; AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 121; ANNALI, 1: 135 (April 14, 1395).

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Figure 8.4 Map of Carelli’s funeral procession. A. Porta Romana; B. Carelli’s house near San Babila Church; C. Corsia dei Servi; D. Santa Tecla. Source: Elaboration on map by Antonio Lafreri. Milano, 1560. In Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572.

The funeral cortege was the pivotal rite in the obsequies, because this last journey marked the definitive incorporation of the deceased into the community of the dead.63 Indeed, as shown by the map (Fig. 8.4), the funeral cortege took neither the shortest nor the quickest route to the church where mass was to be sung. On the contrary, Fabbrica officials chose to process with a noisome and potentially plague-ridden body through the streets of the city along a route intended to touch all the places that marked stations in the merchant’s life: his house, his home district of Porta Orientale, and his parish, San Babila (B). From there the solemn funeral moved along the Corsia dei Servi (C) and Strada del Compito to arrive to the Church of Santa Tecla (D), where the coffin and its bier were placed in the side chapel of San Bassiano.64

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Jacques Chiffoleau, “Perché cambia la morte nella regione di Avignone alla fine del Medioevo,” Quaderni Storici 50 (1982), 452. On the incorporation phase, see also Van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 164; Paxton, Christianizing Death, 10-12. AFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, c. 24, f. 121; ANNALI, 1: 135 (April 14, 1395).

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The sumptuous cortege connected in this way the places of Marco Carelli’s life to those of his death: the cathedral where the funeral mass was celebrated, his first burial place, and the Church of San Babila, where his body was put to rest alongside the corpses of his ancestors, who had been entombed there for generations. Visually and physically, the funeral procession sanctioned before the eyes of thousands of mourners and curious onlookers his passage from the world of the living to the world of the dead, from the merchant’s house in Milan to his new home in heaven; all in all, it was a triumphal adventus into eternal life.65 An astonishing quantity of wax (two quintali, or over one hundred forty-four pounds) was burned, and the renowned Carmelite preacher magistro Bardo de Bononia [Bologna] delivered the funeral sermon over the merchant’s corpse.66 The second funeral rite mirrored the acts and gestures of the first one that had been celebrated in the cathedral seven months before, thereby magnifying its flamboyance even further.67 As Augustine had remarked centuries earlier, funerals were more for the living than the dead, and the months-long honors paid to Marco Carelli at his demise were no exception.68 Funeral rites assumed heightened importance in the late medieval period, when epidemics and wars threatened to subvert the social order. When Carelli died, the public rites staged through the streets of Milan in the presence of thousands of mourners reinforced the devotees’ faith in the destiny that awaited them all: their assimilation with Christ. While everything around them spoke of transience and death, the symbolic flamboyance of Carelli’s obsequies gave renewed strength to their belief in their personal redemption and resurrection.69 The ceremony and interment of Marco Carelli’s body at San Babila did not mark the conclusion of the funeral rite. Rather, the day’s events continued a 65

66

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Paxton, Christianizing Death, 42. On the symbolic importance of processional routes, see Trexler, “Ritual Behavior,” 127-28; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 235. AFD, Registri, r. 35, fo. 102v. In late medieval Milan, one quintale was equivalent to 32.6793 kilograms. Hence, two quintali = 65.3586 kilograms = 144.1 pounds. See Martini, Manuale di metrologia, 351. By way of comparison, consider the development in Avignon and Florence during the late medieval period of the new funerary style characterized by conspicuous consumption, defined as “the triumph of flamboyance,” Chiffoleau, La Comptabilite de l’au-dela, 101-4; Jacques Chiffoleau, “Pratiques funéraires et images de la mort à Marseilles, en Avignon, et dans le comtat Venaissin, vers 1280-vers 1350,” Cahiers de Fanjeaux 11 (1976), 271-303; Strocchia, Death and Ritual, 55-67. See Finucane, “Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion,” 40; Gittings, “Urban Funerals,” 181. See Binski, “Ways of Dying,” 50; Muir, Civic Ritual, 219.

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precise ritual of commemoration that began months before in the immediate aftermath of his death, and would continue long into the future, in fact until the nineteenth century.70 Scrupulously attending to the benefactor’s last wish, the Fabbrica celebrated a daily and annual mass in perpetuum for the merchant and his kin, as a way of aiding his soul’s incorporation into the other world. Marco Carelli had specified that the money to pay for these masses was to come from the emphyteutic lease on one of his many properties located in Arcagnago, just outside Milan.71 The priest was to be compensated with an annual remuneration of sixty-four lire: roughly three soldi and six denari per mass, obtained from the same property lease.72 The Fabbrica’s deputies took very seriously the request and the temporal specification of celebrating forever the mass for Carelli’s soul. Their commitment was not only before men, but also before God, and for this they must have felt morally obligated to fulfill their task even centuries after the merchant’s death, when with all probability no descendent from his family could have been there to protest against a cessation. This practice was quite expensive for the Fabbrica, since a priest was­ paid daily for saying a special mass exclusively with this intention. Even into the nineteenth century, the cathedral celebrated a mass for Marco Carelli’s soul every day, continuing until the limitations on Church wealth that came with the unification of Italy rendered the cathedral unable to maintain the perpetual mass obligations it accumulated for Marco Carelli and many others over the centuries.73

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Paxton, Christianizing Death, 7. AFD, Testamenti, c. 42, f. 13; cfr. Appendix, XXVII. Arcagnagno (today a frazione of Carpiano, province of Milan) in the fourteenth century was included in the Pieve di San Giuliano, as it appears in the statutes of the waters and the roads of the contado of Milan (1346). Archivio Storico Civico di Milano, Estimi del ducato di Milano del 1558, con aggiornamenti fino al XVII secolo, Località foresi, c. 1-52. Institution of perpetual masses supported by an annuity destined to pay for a priest who celebrated a mass daily took the name of cappellanie, or chantries. Claudio Bonanno, Metello Bonanno and Luciana Pellegrini, “I legati pro anima ed il problema della salvezza nei testamenti fiorentini della seconda metà del Trecento,” Ricerche Storiche 15 (1985), 213; Kathleen Louise Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries in Britain (Cambridge, 1965). It was imperative for churches and parishes that daily, monthly and annual masses be maintained: the non-observance of the testator’s request would have resulted in the confiscation of the endowment, as often specified in the will itself. Clive Burgess, “A Service for the Dead: The Form and Function of the Anniversary in Late Medieval Bristol.” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 105 (1987), 205.

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Today, visitors to the Cathedral of Milan can find Carelli’s marmoreal sarcophagus in the fourth bay wall along the right nave. Unlike his request for perpetual masses but consistent with the absence in his testament of any specifications about homage to his corpse, the sarcophagus represents another lavish tribute Carelli had not requested of the Fabbrica. Nonetheless, ten years after the sumptuous funeral rite celebrated in the Lombard capital on April 21, 1395 the Fabbrica decided to honor the memory of their great donor with the construction of a monumental marble sepulcher. Toward this end, the officials initiated a competition among Italy’s most renowned artists for a commission to design Carelli’s effigy on a sarcophagus. Filippo degli Organi da Modena won the contest with a sketch realized by drawing directly from the desiccated corpse, exhumed from its tomb and deposed before him on a wooden table.74 In the white marble of Candoglia, the artist sculpted the effigy of a man richly clothed with a capuzium, gently posed on a rich tasseled pillow, wearing gloves buttoned to the elbow, with a long broadsword in his hands, and his feet veiled, as was a customary sign of deference to the dead. And there, centuries after the week-long funeral procession from Venice to Milan, the body of the wealthy merchant was finally put to rest.75 74 75

ANNALI, t. 1, 278 (October 3, 1406). In 1406, the sepulcher was initially placed against the wall of the first chapel of the Camposanto, the graveyard built at the back of the cathedral with Carelli’s inheritance. Centuries later, the graveyard and its chapels were torn down. The marmoreal arca was then moved to a storage and there forgotten until the nineteenth century, when was finally transferred inside the main floor of the cathedral.

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Chapter 9

Live by the Sea, Die by the Sea: Confronting Death and the Dead in Medieval Liguria, 1140-1240 CE Nikki Malain

The people of medieval Liguria had a well-earned reputation for being skilled navigators, ferocious plunderers, and consummate merchants.1 Thousands of Ligurians left every year to ply the seas as sailors, diplomats, merchants, and warriors; most eventually returned, but not all, and the possibility of dying at sea or in a foreign land was an acute reality for the medieval traveler. The Genoese, in particular, were also remarkable record-keepers. The Republic of Genoa’s many vassal towns along the Riviera adopted this practice, and the cities of Genoa, Savona, and Albenga – all under the administrative purview of Genoa in the period under consideration – boast an impressive array of sources from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Accordingly, Genoese, and more broadly, Ligurian relationships to the dead and the threat of death in this period can be examined from both a business and legal perspective. These documents demonstrate that the risk of dying at sea or on foreign soil was a serious concern for traveling Ligurians; investment contracts, testamentary practices, and most strikingly, commercial treaties contracted between Genoa and other polities reflect this concern. Moreover, due to the fact that many Ligurians were involved in long-term investments described by written contracts, the dead continued to play active commercial and legal roles in society 1 Complaints about Ligurian pirates date back to at least the second century CE. H. A. Ormerod, Piracy in the Ancient World (New York, 1987), 63-4, 127-8. Even Muslim authors remarked upon the Genoeses’ reputation as skilled merchants, including the twelfth-century Andalusian geographer who ascribed them with the complimentary epithet, “the Quraysh of the Rum.” B. Z. Kedar, “Una nuova fonte per l’incursione musulmana del 934-5 e le sue implicazioni per la storia genovese,” in Oriente e Occidente tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna: studi in onore di Geo Pistarino, ed. Laura Balletto (Genoa, 1997), 614. An 1158 dispute with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa reflects general attitudes about Genoese prowess at naval warfare. The dispute regards Genoa’s imperial mandate to patrol the seas from Rome to Barcelona, keeping the waters clear from Barbary pirates. In this dispute, the Genoese were deemed (or deemed themselves) the only party up to the challenge. L. T. Belgrano, ed. Annali genovesi de Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori, dal MXCIX al MCCXCII, 5 vols., vol. I, Fonti per la storia d’Italia. Scrittori. Secoli XII e XIII. (Genoa, 1890), 50.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_011

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long after their deaths: they defined the identity of the living, they continued to “conduct” business until all of their outstanding accounts and investments were settled. Finally, at times, they were even called upon, by proxy, to defend themselves in judicial duels against their accused killers. The Ligurian way of life – with its focus on the sea and on long-distance trade – shaped how the Ligurians confronted the legal and commercial aspects of death, and how in the same way, the dead confronted the living. The economy of medieval Genoa was heavily focused on the sea. Ship­ building was, of course, a key industry, but the city also had a healthy manufacturing sector that produced an array of goods including dyestuffs, cloth – some woven in Genoa, and some imported to Genoa for dyeing and finishing – finished hides and leather goods, armor, weapons, and even sausages for export.2 Naval warfare and maritime plundering also represented a perennial, economically-driven activity, which must be considered an industry in its own right.3 The latter two activities however, fueled and propelled long-distance trade, the economic activity for which Genoa is most well-known, and for which it has received the most scholarly attention.4 Genoa’s neighbor, Savona, located about twenty miles to the southwest by sea, had a similar economy, although one analysis suggests that the Savonese may have been slightly more focused on agriculture, and less on maritime concerns than the Genoese in the late 2 On Genoese ship-building in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Furio Ciciliot, Le superbe navi: cantieri e tipologie navali liguri medievali (Savona, 2005). Hilmar C. Krueger, Navi e proprietà navale a Genova: seconda metà del sec. XII (Genoa, 1985), 28-9; and Eugene H. Byrne, Genoese Shipping in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA, 1930). For a discussion on the many contracts showing ships being sold in foreign ports, see pages Krueger, Navi e proprietà navale, 28-9. For examples of shipbuilding contracts, and a discussion thereof, see Nikki Malain, “Merchants and Marauders: Genoese Maritime Predation in the TwelfthCentury Mediterranean” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2016), 54-55. 3 For a discussion on the diversity of Genoese manufacturing and exports, with specific examples, see ibid., 54-4. For naval warfare as an industry in Genoa, see: Steven Epstein, “Labour in Thirteenth-Century Genoa,” Mediterranean Historical Review 3, no. 1 (1988). For an in-depth discussion on how this industry functioned, see Malain, “Merchants and Marauders,” 86-154. 4 Some examples of scholarship on Genoese trade include: Eugene H. Byrne, “Commercial Contracts of the Genoese in the Syrian Trade of the Twelfth Century,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 31, no. 1 (1916): 128-70; Byrne, Genoese Shipping; Hilmar C. Krueger, “The Wares of Exchange in the Genoese-African Traffic of the Twelfth Century,” Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies 12, no. 1 (1937): 57-71; Robert S. Lopez, “Le marchand genois. Un profil collectif,” The Economic History Review The Economic History Review 12, no. 2 (1959): 501-15; Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971). David Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977).

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twelfth century.5 Genoa’s diplomatic records, however, indicate that Savona was already highly involved in long-distance trade at that time, something that the Genoese wished to regulate – and presumably tax – from the middle of the century on.6 Moreover, the high volume of shipping-related contracts and legal disputes found in early-thirteenth century records from Savona, make it clear that if the Savonese were less focused on the sea than the Genoese, it was by a relatively small margin.7 5 Only 6.5% of the acts in Savona’s earliest surviving notarial cartulary, which contains records from 1178-88, were related to long-distance commerce, a smaller proportion than is found in the earliest Genoese cartularies. This may mean, as the editor of the volume suggests, that the Savonese were less involved in maritime affairs than the Genoese. Laura Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 1178-1188) (Rome, 1978), xxv-xxvi. 6 Genoese diplomatic records concerning Savona demonstrate that the Savonese were already heavily involved in maritime commerce in the twelfth century. Men from Savona accompanied the Genoese on the First Crusade expedition, and along with the men of Noli and Albenga, earned the same crusading privileges from the King of Jerusalem that were extended to the Genoese in 1104. Antonella Rovere, ed. I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/1 (Rome, 1992), 99-102. They again shared in the receipt of privileges from Bohemond II in Antioch in 1127. Dino Puncuh, I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/2 (Rome, 1996), 152-4. Treaties with Savona from the 1140s include the requirement that Savona assist Genoa in military and naval expeditions between Portovenere and Monaco. Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 172-3. Beginning in 1153, Genoa sought to gain some control over Savona’s long-distance trading efforts by forcing all ships departing Savona that were heading beyond Sardinia, or Barcelona to first stop in Genoa. (Ships traveling just along the Riviera to Provence, or to Sardinia and back were exempt.) Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 229-230. A 1202 treaty again includes the same requirement, but goes into considerably more detail. Dino Puncuh, I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/3 (Rome, 1998), 60-4. 7 For example, in the cartulary of the Savonese notary Uberto, which contains records from 1214-5, 14.2% of the entries are accomendatio contracts, one of several different types of shipping contract. Marco Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo Savona (1214-1215) (Savona, 2010), xx. This may reflect an economic shift towards an increased involvement in maritime trade in the interim decades, as one editor suggests. Antonella Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo Savona (1214-1215), 2 vols., vol. I (Savona, 2010), xxviii. It is also possible that the appearance of a shift is due to the spottiness of document survival. The cartulary of Uberto also includes a number of contracts pertaining to the construction, maintenance, and sale of ships. For example, ibid., 304-5, 413-4; Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo Savona (1214-1215), 320, 22. The cartulary of Martino of Savona, portions of which will be discussed at length below, contains numerous legal disputes pertaining to long-distance trade, including a lengthy inquiry regarding, among other things, the payment of a ship’s crew involved in a voyage to Alexandria. Dino Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino. Savona, 1203-1206 (Genoa,1974), 184-91.

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Due to the extended duration of commercial voyages in the Middle Ages – it could take years for the profits on an investment to return – and the collaborative nature of Ligurian trading ventures, in which dozens of men and women could participate as investors in a single voyage, the Genoese became meticulous record-keepers. Their documentary prowess is evident from the early twelfth century on, and the Savonese followed suit, just a few decades behind. As a result, an abundance of documentation survives from these communes that describe aspects of both life and death in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One notable source is Genoa’s civic chronicle, the Annali Genovesi, which for the discussion at hand, provides several narrative accounts of death and responses to it.8 There are also numerous diplomatic and legal texts originating from Genoa, edited in the Libri Iurium and elsewhere, which reveal legal concerns about death from the perspective of the commune.9 The most abundant and illuminating body of sources, however, is made up of dozens of notarial cartularies that date from the middle of the twelfth century onward. Genoa’s notarial culture emerged in the first decades of the

8 The Genoese annals are the official civic history of the commune, and among other things, include numerous descriptions of naval and terrestrial battles, murders, and so forth. They were started in 1154 by Caffaro di Rustico, and record the history of the commune dating back to 1099. A series of annalists continued the records after Caffaro’s death until 1293. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 3-4. For more on Caffaro and the history of the Genoese annals, see: John Dotson, “Caffaro, Crusade, and the Annales Januensis,” in Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor, ed. Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys (Burlington, VT, 2012), 273. For more on Caffaro and his annals, see Giovanna Petti Balbi, “La cultura storica in età medievale,” in Storia della culture ligure, 1, ed. Dino Puncuh, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, nuova serie (Genoa, 2004), 148-55; Giovanna Petti Balbi, Caffaro e la cronachistica genovese (Genoa, 1982); and Antonio Placanica, “L’opera storiografica di Caffaro,” Studi Medievali 36 (1995). 9 The Libri Iurium of Genoa is a collection of registers, the first of which was compiled in the thirteenth-century and from then on expanded upon and copied several times, which contains copies of important privileges, charters, treaties, and legislation, dated from 958 to 1392. A new edition of the Libri Iurium exists in eight volumes and an introduction: Dino Rovere Antonella Puncuh, I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, Introduzione (Rome, 1992); Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1; Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/2; Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/3; Sabina Dellacasa, ed. I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/4 (Rome, 1998); Elisabetta Madia, I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/5 (Rome, 1999); Maria Bibolini, ed. I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/6 (Rome, 2000); Eleonara Pallavicino, ed. I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/7 (Rome, 2001); Eleonara Pallavicino, ed. I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. I/8 (Rome, 2002).

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twelfth century, not long after the commune was formed.10 The cartulary of Genoese notary Giovanni Scriba is the oldest extant cartulary in Europe and contains records dating back to 1154; however, it was clearly not the first to be drafted in Genoa and references are made to even older cartularies inscribed by Giovanni’s master in the Libri Iurium and elsewhere.11 The second oldest extant cartulary in Europe was drafted by the Savonese notary Arnaldo Cumano, and includes acts drawn up both by Arnaldo and his successor, Giovanni di Donato, between 1178 and 1188.12 Like Giovanni Scriba’s work, it also references previous cartularies dating back to at least 1167.13 In total, four cartularies exist from Savona, dating from the period 1178 to 1217.14 Seven Genoese cartularies survive from the twelfth century, and dozens more span the thirteenth century. Many of the earliest Genoese cartularies have been edited and published; these have been used extensively in this study.15 10

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12 13 14 15

The precise dating of the birth of the Genoese commune has been a matter of considerable debate; the oath-sworn collective known as the compagna was in place by 1098, and the larger structures of the communal government crystalized over the next few decades. See Steven Epstein, Genoa & the Genoese, 958-1528 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 33-34; Renato Bordone, “Le origini del comune di Genova,” in Comuni e memoria storica. Alle origini del Comune di Genova, ed. Dino Puncuh, Atti della Società Ligure di storia patria (Genoa 2002, repr. Reti Medievali), 1, 9-13; Chris Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, NJ, 2015), 162-66. In 1157 Giovanni Scriba was ordered to locate and copy the cartularies of his master, who was also named Giovanni. Mario Chiaudano and Mattia Moresco, eds., Il cartolare di Giovanni Scriba, vol. I (Turin, 1935), 100, #CLXXXIX and #CXC. Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 1178-1188), ix. Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215), vii. Ibid., v. The published volumes consulted in preparation of this study include the cartularies of the following notaries; the years they cover are in parentheses: Giovanni Scriba (11551164), Oberto Scriba (1186 and 1190), Guglielmo Cassinese (1190-1192), Bonvillano (1198), Giovanni di Guiberto (1200-1211), Lanfranco (1202-1220) (coverage is sporadic), Arnaldo Cumano and Giovanni di Donato of Savona (1178-1188), Martino of Savona (1203-1206), and Uberto of Savona (1214-5). Chiaudano and Moresco, eds., Giovanni Scriba, I; Mario Chiaudano and Mattia Moresco, eds., Il cartolare di Giovanni Scriba, vol. II (Turin, 1935); Mario Chiaudano and Raimondo Morozzo della Rocca, eds., Oberto Scriba de Mercato (1190), Notai liguri dei secoli XII (Genoa, 1938); Mario Chiaudano, ed. Oberto Scriba de Mercato (1186), Notai liguri dei secoli XII (Genoa, 1940); Margaret Winslow Hall, Hilmar C. Krueger, and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Guglielmo Cassinese (1190-1192), vol. I, Notai liguri del sec. XII (Genoa, 1938); Margaret Winslow Hall, Hilmar C. Krueger, and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Guglielmo Cassinese (1190-1192), vol. II, Notai liguri del sec. XII (Genoa, 1938); J. E. Eierman, Hilmar C. Krueger, and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), Notai liguri del sec. XII (Genoa, 1939); Margaret Winslow Hall et al., eds.,

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Most of these cartularies contain a variety of documentation, including land sales, wills, dowry transactions, commercial investments, and loans. Interspersed with these are various documents pertaining to legal proceedings, including witness testimonies, arbitration settlements, and rulings made by consuls or judges. Generally, these legal documents appear in isolation, and give only hints about the larger legal proceedings of which they were a part. The cartulary of Martino of Savona, however, provides an exception to this rule: unlike the other cartularies that survive from this period, it was dedicated exclusively to judicial acts.16 This invaluable resource includes court records dating from 1203 to 1206 that in some instances document entire legal cases, from the initial denunciation, to depositions, to sentencing or settlement.17 This is something that no other cartulary from the period provides, and as a great deal of legal disputes in this period were related to matters of inheritance, many of the legal acts recorded were at least partially concerned with when, how, and where various individuals died. While Savonese laws and customs were not always in precise alignment with those of Genoa, they were similar in most cases, a fact that testimony recorded in Martino’s cartulary addressed on several occasions.18 Between the traditional cartularies, and

16 17 18

Giovanni di Guiberto (1200-1211), vol. I, Notai liguri del sec. XII (Genoa, 1939); Margaret Winslow Hall, ed. Giovanni di Guiberto (1200-1211), vol. II, Notai liguri del sec. XII (Genoa, 1940); Hilmar C. Krueger and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Lanfranco (1202-1226), vol. I, Notai Liguri dei secoli XII e XIII (Genoa, 1951); Hilmar C. Krueger and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Lanfranco (1202-1226), vol. II, Notai liguri dei secoli XII e XIII (Genoa, 1951); Hilmar C. Krueger and Robert Leonard Reynolds, eds., Lanfranco (1202-1226), vol. III, Notai liguri dei secoli XII e XIII (Genoa, 1953); Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206). Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215); Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 12141215). Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 11781188). Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), 5-6. On the arrangement of the cartulary and its contents, see: ibid., 14-22. Many of the people involved in legal disputes in Savona were from Genoa, or did a great deal of business in Genoa, and misunderstandings often arose over the differences between the two communes. In one case, for example, regarding the payment of shipwrights by a merchant, a witness is asked: “Item point quod homines de Sagona vivunt et reguntur secundum consuetudines Ianue.” [Item: It is said that the men of Savona live and are ruled according to the customs of Genoa]. The witness replies: “Respondet Balduinus: non credit de omnibus consuetudines.” [I don’t believe by all of the customs]. Ibid., 189. Another case speaks to the Genoese customs regarding prohibition (what should happen if an investor prohibits the person carrying an investment from going to a certain place, and then the factor goes there despite this prohibition) “secundum

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Martino’s cartulary that was dedicated to legal matters, it is possible to gain a great deal of insight into how death and the dead were dealt with in medieval Liguria. By the late twelfth century, the notarial act regulated many details of the lives and deaths of the people of Liguria. While birth and death certificates did not exist in this period, major life events were recorded if they changed a person’s legal status, or were contractual in nature. Childhood events that notaries were called upon to record included the placement of a child into apprenticeship or servitude, or the assignment of a guardian or tutor because of the death of a parent.19 The emancipation of a minor by his or her parents or the consuls of the commune also warranted official documentation.20 Marriages and engagements were generally not documented directly, but dowries were, and how they worked bears explaining, since the retrieval of dowries by widows often resulted in conflict. Ligurian dowries were two-part transactions: in the first exchange, the family of the bride made a payment of the dos (dowry) to the groom, and in the second, the groom returned a portion of this amount – called the antefactum – to the bride, which was to remain her property after his death or the dissolution of the marriage.21 Dowries generated an abundance of paperwork not only at the time they were transacted, but often later on, as disputes frequently arose over nonpayment, mismanagement, and the inheritance of dowries. When these disputes are documented, they often reveal intimate details about family dynamics and human behavior in medieval Liguria that most other notarial contracts cannot provide.

19

20 21

conuetudinem deveti Ianue, que observatur per Ianuam et Riveriam …” [which are observed through Genoa and the Riviera], ibid., 112. For example: A child is put into service with a bootmaker: Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 227. A child is apprenticed to a barrel-maker: ibid., 102-4. The presence of tutors was generally recorded tangentially, as they conducted business or spent money on behalf of their charges. For example, the tutor is granted usufruct in the use of a house and land for four years in order to provide for his charges: Chiaudano and Morozzo della Rocca, eds., Oberto Scriba, 1190, 26. A son is emancipated by his father in 1213: Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215), 329-30. For a brief overview of the Genoese dowry system, see: Epstein, Genoa & the Genoese, 45, and Diane Owen Hughes, “Urban Growth and Family Structure in Medieval Genoa,” Past & Present 66 (1975): 13-4. Medieval Italian dowries evolved from the Roman dowry system, with the key change being that the dowry comprised the bride’s entire share of her father’s patrimony: Stanley Chojnacki, “Dowries and Kinsmen in Early Renaissance Venice,” in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia, PA, 2012), 175.

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Similarly, the last event in any person’s life, his or her death, was not recorded directly by the notaries, but final testaments were, as were any transactions and disputes that resulted from carrying them out. The death of an adult, particularly one who owned property or investments, could be an extremely complicated affair that often generated a great deal of paperwork. A will had to be located and authenticated; if this was not possible, witnesses might be brought forward to testify as to the wishes of the deceased.22 Executors or guardians had to be chosen or assigned to manage the estate.23 The property of the deceased had to be catalogued and accounted for, and sometimes liquidated by auction before it could be distributed.24 Debts had to be settled, outstanding investments accounted for, and provisions made for the care of minor children and bereaved spouses. All these processes became vastly more complicated when the deceased in question died while at sea or abroad, or simply failed to return and was presumed dead. Of course, only a small fraction of the Genoese and Savonese who lived in this period turned up in the records generated by the above processes. Due to the paucity of record survival, most people passed away leaving little documentary trace, and the only way to know for sure that a person was dead at the time an act was drafted was if the notary identified that person as deceased, typically with the designation “quondam” or “olim.” In some cases, especially if the person in question was active in commerce or notable enough to appear in the Annali Genovesi or another dated source, the appearance of the designation “quondam” makes it possible to pinpoint the time of his or her death

22

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A father authenticates his daughter’s will: Hall, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Cassinese, II, #1835, 281.Witnesses attest to the final wishes of a woman who died without a written will: Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 104. Vincenzo Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” Miscellanea di storia italiana, Tomo XI Tomo XI (1870): 109-13. Only a few inventories survive from this period: Krueger and Reynolds, eds., Lanfranco 1, 199-200; Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215), 245, 403-4; Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 12141215), 312-5, 44-5; and Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 1178-1188), 156, 207-8, 338. However, references to the process of taking inventories and liquidating goods are considerably more numerous: References to inventories in Martino of Savona: Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), 35, 39, 233, 35. A legal document describes auctioning off a dead man’s goods in order to divide them among heirs: Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 119-20. Another decision of the consuls to auction an estate: Chiaudano and Morozzo della Rocca, eds., Oberto Scriba (1190), 26.

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within a few months or years.25 When notaries mentioned the dead in this way, they were doing far more than just leaving hints to document their passing; they were invoking the dead to define the identities of the living. The creation of any legally-binding and enforceable contract requires that all parties involved be clearly identifiable; this was as true in the Middle Ages as it is today. By the mid-twelfth century, early by European standards, some surnames were in use in Genoa, particularly by the upper classes.26 These were not universally applied or inherited, however, and even a century later when surnames had become more common, many people simply had the name given to them by their parents at birth, or a nickname adopted later in life.27 If a more precise identification was required, a person might be identified in a notarial act by his – and very rarely her – occupation.28 More commonly, however, the identity of a person was specified by his or her relationship to a well-known, male relative: often the individual’s father, but in many cases, a husband, brother, or even son. Very often, this identifying relative was deceased. An 1198 contract for the receipt of a dowry between two spouses, for example, is quite typical in that each party is identified in relationship to a deceased father: “Ego Iohannes caligarius filius quondam Giraudi de Genava confiteor me accipesse a te Verdelia uxore mea, filia quondam Oberti de PortuDolfino, lib. Den. Ian. x1/2 de tuis dotibus…” [I, Giovanni the bootmaker, 25

26 27

28

For example, the editor of the notary Bonvillano’s cartulary demonstrated that Bonvillano was involved in investment contracts in December 1200 and was noted by another notary as being dead in March of 1206, making it possible to pinpoint his death to a window of just over five years. Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), viii. Stephen Wilson, The Means of Naming: A Social History (London, 2003), 156-7. Steven Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150-1250 (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 38. Genoese nicknames were often extremely colorful, and even vulgar. Simone Collavini has argued that violent nicknames chosen by the military elite were intentionally selected to highlight a person’s ferocity in warfare. Simone Collavini, “Sviluppo signorile e nuove strategie onomastiche. Qualche riflessione sulla percezione e la rappresentazione della violenza in Toscana nel XII secolo,” in Studi di storia offerti a Michele Luzzati, ed. S. P. P. Scalfati (Pisa, 2009), 73-85. Some examples can be found, just in one cartulary: “Arduinus draperius” (Arduino the Draper), “Iacomus tintor” (Giacomo the Dyer), “Wilielmus peliparius” (Guglielmo the Pelterer), “Baerardus Barillarius” (Berardo the Barrelmaker,) etc. Hall et al., eds., Giovanni di Guiberto, I, 102, 49, 256. A rare example of a woman identified in a contract by her vocation/office: “Oca abatisa monasterii ecclesie sancti Andre de Porta” Oca, the abbess of the monastery of the church of St. Andree de Porta” Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 121. Another: “Ego Druda, priora Sancta Cecilie…” Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 1178-1188), 79. Steven Epstein further discusses the use of vocational names here: Epstein, Wills and Wealth, 43-4.

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son of the late Giraudo of Geneva acknowledge receiving from you, my wife Verdelia, daughter of the late Oberto of Porto Delfino, 10.5 £ of your dowry].29 Notaries used various conventions to denote that a person was dead. Giovanni Scriba, who produced Genoa’s oldest extant cartulary, for example, did not identify individuals in relationship to the deceased very frequently. When he did, he often just used the term “quondam” or its abbreviation without specifying the relationship between the living actor and the deceased – but one should assume it is a parental relationship.30 Later notaries used the practice far more consistently and frequently, although some preferred the term “olim” over “quondam,” and some used the two interchangeably.31 Women were frequently referred to as wives, daughters, and sometimes mothers or sisters of the dead.32 Men were commonly identified as sons, and sometimes brothers of deceased men who were presumably better known.33 Very rarely a person was identified in relation to a deceased female, but this seems to have only occurred when the deceased woman’s property or dowry was at stake in the document.34 To give an idea of the scope of the practice: in the cartulary of Bonvillano, which includes two hundred thirty-eight documents dated from September to December 1198, ninety-one of them include at least one individual who is identified in relationship to a deceased relation. Many of these identify two or more individuals in this manner. By the mid-thirteenth century, the practice was perhaps less common as surnames were becoming more popular, but it was far from extinct.35 This practice was not unique to the notarial cartularies or to Liguria; it was also used by notaries all over Europe, in treaties, 29 30

31

32

33 34 35

Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 49. For example, “Ego Palma quondam Gandulfi Rubei…” [I, Palma, [daughter of] Gandolfo Rubeo …] and “Nos Fulco Buferius et Beneca iugales accepimus a vobis Belengerio quondam Conradi Begalini…” [We Fulco Buferio and Beneca, spouses, accept from you, Belengario [son of] the late Conrado Begalino …] Chiaudano and Moresco, eds., Giovanni Scriba, I, 222, 63. Oberto Scriba, for example, used “olim” and “quondam” interchangeably, and sometimes alternated between the two within the same contract. For example, “Nos Iohannes Fracigena et Donexella filia olim Guilie filie quondam Iohannis de Caravei accepipi…” Chiaudano and Morozzo della Rocca, eds., Oberto Scriba (1190), 161. “Uxor quondam,” [wife of the late], was extremely common: Chiaudano, ed. Oberto Scriba (1186), 64, 116., Hall et al., eds., Giovanni di Guiberto, I, 253, 56, 338. “Matris quondam…” Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), #38. Epstein, Wills and Wealth, 42. For example: Hall, ed. Giovanni di Guiberto, II, 155-6. A multigenerational shipping contract from 1248, for example, was created between “Ansaldus mallonus filius quondam Wilielmi malloni et Wilielmus et Symon fratres filii dicti Ansaldi…” [Ansaldo Mallone, son of the late Guglielmo Mallone, and Guglielmo and

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land grants, and other documents that required the precise identification of an individual. What is unique is the precocious volume of documents that survive from Liguria that used this convention, which in many cases served as the only written record of an individual’s death. The identification of the living in terms of the dead created a large body of information on both the structure of Ligurian families, and the lives and deaths of the individuals named in this way. In addition to what can be learned about Ligurian lives and deaths from the quondam designations, a large volume of twelfth-and thirteenth-century wills also survive from both Genoa and Savona. These wills seem the most natural place to look for information on how involvement in long-term trade, and the increased risk of dying abroad might have affected medieval Ligurian relationships with death. Fortunately, Steven Epstein identifies and analyzes hundreds of Genoese in his 1984 monograph Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 11501250. In his analysis, Epstein demonstrates that these wills reveal a great deal about Genoese familial and social connections, attitudes towards charitable giving, and the varied ways that people of different classes and genders handled their estates.36 Giovanna Petti Balbi also examines Genoese and Savonese wills, including many drafted later than those Epstein studied, and comes to some similar conclusions; namely, that Genoese wills acted as both a testament of a person’s wishes, and in some ways, as an autobiography.37 Through the various familial relationships they described, the goods, investments, and loans that some mentioned, and the various bequeathals made, wills revealed much about the way the people who drafted them lived, about how their communities and families were structured, and about personal piety and charitable sentiments.38 Wills thus contain a great deal about how medieval Ligurians lived. However, since they were drafted while a person was still living, they do not usually reveal a lot about how or where people died. The majority of the Genoese wills in Steven Epstein’s study, for example, fail to mention what factors led to their being drafted at the time. Of the six hundred thirty-two testaments that he examined, only seventy-eight left an explicit reason (illness, travel, etc.) for making the will. Of these, only twenty-six of them expressed the intent of the

36 37 38

Simone Mallone, brothers, son of the mentioned Ansaldo …] in Byrne, Genoese Shipping, 81. See: Epstein, Wills and Wealth. Petti Balbi, p. 46 Giovanna Petti Balbi, Governare la città: pratiche sociali e linguaggi politici a Genova in età medievale (Florence, 2007). Ibid., 29-50.

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testator to travel, which would suggest some anxiety about dying abroad. Of the testators who mentioned travel, seventeen specified that they were going on pilgrimage, in some cases to overland destinations. 39 Drafting a will because one was going on pilgrimage suggests that the journey was a special occasion, and that this particular subset of testators was recreational, as opposed to professional, travelers. Considering that thousands of Ligurians went out to sea every year to make a living in one way or another, one might expect to find many more wills that explicitly referenced travel, or some concern about dying at sea. A small cluster of wills from Savona paints a slightly different picture. The cartulary of Arnaldo Cumano and Giovanni di Donato includes sixty-seven wills from the years 1178-1188. Sixty of these wills are silent regarding the circumstances in which they were drafted.40 In one will from 1181, the testator indicates that he is going to Santiago de Compostela.41 Six wills from 1179, however, specifically describe the testators’ intent to travel by sea – to Constantinople, in “the galleys” – and moreover mention the possibility of dying on this journey.42 One example states: “I, Pancino, am going in the galleys that are going to Constantinople. If I die on this journey, I discharge to my lady wife all my goods as long as she remains without a man, unless my daughter accepts a man…”43 The bequeathals found in the other five wills vary, but the language describing the voyage is similar in each case. Another contract in the same cartulary, dating from February 1179, appears to describe the voyage they were embarking on. In it, Gandolfo Amedei of Savona promises Anrico the Genoese that he will arm one galley with a captain, armed men, sailors, and all the other men needed for leading the vessel to Constantinople, for the sum of 400£.44 The contract does not specify the reason for sending a war galley to Constantinople in 1179, but the Genoese Annals provide an explanation. In that year, Agnes, the daughter of the King of France, was transported by a fleet 39 40

41 42 43

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Epstein, Wills and Wealth, 45-6. Balletto, ed. Il Cartulario di Arnaldo Cumano e Giovanni di Donato (Savona, 1178-1188), Documents 32, 109, 484, 500, 01, 02, 03, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 12, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 880, 81, 95, 933, 86, 1024, 26, 70, 77. Ibid., doc. 557, 289. Ibid., doc. 197, 504, 25, 26, 27, 31. “Ego pancinus vado in galeis, que vadunt Constantinopolim. Si decessero in hoc itinere, dimitto uxorem mean dominam omnium bonorum meorum donec stabit sine viro, excepto si filia mea acceperit virum . . .” ibid., 100. Ibid., 80.

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of armed Genoese galleys from Marseille to Constantinople, where she was married to Alexios, the son of the Emperor. The annalist indicates that there was a widespread fear that Emperor Manuel would die imminently, and that the mission was of great importance.45 Unfortunately, there is no surviving notarial cartulary from Genoa that covers the same span of time, so there is no way to know if the Genoese who went on this mission similarly felt the need to make special note of it in their wills. The concern displayed in the Savonese wills, however, suggests that the voyage would be unusually risky. The expedition of 1179 appears to have been a special case, and later wills from Savona do not reveal any specific concern about traveling. Thirty-nine additional testaments can be found in the cartulary of Uberto, dating from 1214-5. Among these, none mention impending travel. Five give no indication at all as to why they were drafted.46 The rest, however, all indicate that the testators were either “in adversa veltudine posita” [in poor health] or “egritudine mei corporis gravata” [in extremely poor health] at the time they were drafted.47 As noted previously, a comparison between Arnaldo and Uberto’s cartularies does show an increase in the relative volume of shipping contracts. This increase, however, does not appear to have resulted in increased anxiety over death related to travel. The fragmentary nature of the sources make this inconclusive; but in general, it appears that for the many Ligurians for whom long-distance travel was routine, the fear of death at sea did not usually warrant special testamentary procedures. While wills reveal a lot about how medieval Ligurians lived, they do not reveal much about how they expected to die. The existence of the notarial cartularies, which were created and preserved to meet the needs of a society heavily involved in long-distance trade, is itself a testament to how the maritime, mercantile lifestyle of the medieval Ligurians affected how their lives and deaths were recorded, and demonstrates some of the ways that the dead functioned in society as a result. Other types of documentation supplement this record, and reveal even more about what it meant 45

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L. T. Belgrano and Cesare Carlo Stefano Marco Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, eds., Annali Genovesi di Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori dal MCLXXIV al MCCXXIV, 5 vols., vol. II, Fonti per la storia d’Italia. Scrittori. Secoli XII e XIII (Genoa, 1901), 13-4. Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215), Documents 261, 62, 462. Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 12141215), Documents 12, 54. Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona, 1214-1215), Documents 42, 44, 49, 50, 72, 89, 96, 107, 08, 28, 31, 55, 78, 203, 26, 29, 32, 39, 65, 73, 88, 385, 445, 63, 66, 92, 597, 654, 72, 97, 718; Castiglia, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ II: Atti del notaio Guglielmo (Savona 1214-1215), Documents 8, 107, 339.

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to live and die by the sea in medieval Liguria. Despite the fact that the Ligurians’ involvement in long-distance trade is not particularly evident in the wills or in other notarial acts, it did have a profound impact on where and how people died, and on legislation surrounding death. The reasons for this are varied: a traveler who left home generally departed for an indeterminate and unpredictable amount of time, and many people departed from Genoa and Savona every year. Travel, particularly by sea, was a dangerous activity. This was especially true during times of war, and Genoa in particular was often at war, if not with the neighboring Pisans, then with the Provençals, the Venetians, the Catalans, and even the Savonese, on occasion, when their frustration with Genoese oversight boiled over into rebellion.48 These risky ventures of indeterminate duration were a natural cause of concern both for those who traveled, and for their families, friends, and business associates who remained at home. To make matters worse, over the course of a journey, a traveler could end up visiting, and possibly dying, just about anywhere. Sailors and merchants from both Genoa and Savona traveled far and wide. By land, Genoese merchants frequently ventured as far North as Arras for the Champagne Fairs.49 By sea, sailors, merchants, and soldiers from Genoa sailed throughout the Mediterranean, and by the second half of the thirteenth century, into the Black Sea region, as well. Genoese ships commonly frequented ports in Languedoc and Provence, Spain, Northwest Africa, Egypt, the Levantine

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Savona was generally on good terms with Genoa, functioning as a vassal state for much of the twelfth and early thirteenth century, and often fought with Genoa against the Pisans and other enemies during this period. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 191, 233. Savon even supplied the commune of Genoa with war galleys from time to time. Belgrano and Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, eds., Annali 2, 105. However, in 1226, the towns of Savona and Albenga rebelled against Genoa. They were subdued in the following year, but the rebellion resumed in 1238, this time with Ventimiglia involved as well; and this pattern continued throughout the century. Cesare Imperiale di Sant’Angelo, ed. Annali genovesi de Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori, dal MCCXXV al MCCL, 5 vols., vol. III, Fonti per la storia d’Italia. Scrittori. Secoli XIII (Rome, 1923), 12-16, 83-5, 99-100. On the prominence of Genoa’s textile industry, and specifically the heavy involvement of drapers and dyers in commerce, see Erik Bach, La cité de Gênes au XIIeme siècle (Copenhagen, 1955), 106-09. Robert Leonard Reynolds, “Merchants of Arras and the Overland Trade with Genoa Twelfth Century,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 9, no. 2 (1930); Robert Leonard Reynolds, “Genoese Trade in the Late Twelfth Century, Particularly in Cloth from the Fairs of Champagne,” Journal of Economic and Business History 3, no. 3 (1931); Phillip Jones, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford, 1997), 253.

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Ports, Sicily, and Constantinople.50 Contracts for voyages departing Savona were more likely to reference less remote destinations like Sardinia, Provence, and North Africa, which may mean the Savonese were less likely to venture East.51 However, this may also relate to the fact that Savonese ship captains that wished to travel further had to go to Genoa first, which may have changed where and how such voyages were documented, or made it more likely that a Savonese who wished to reach Egypt or the Levant would find it easier to travel to those regions on a Genoese vessel.52 From an administrative perspective, the potential dispersion of travelers made it very difficult to know if a person who did not return from a journey as expected was simply delayed, had run off and settled elsewhere, or had died. Both diplomatic records and legislation highlight the anxiety that this caused for the communal governments, the travelers, themselves, and their business associates and families. From the perspective of the commune, the dispersion of the Genoese raised a number of legal concerns, and diplomatic measures were taken to protect the safety of Genoese citizens and subjects – most treaties specified that they covered both the men of Genoa, and Genoa’s districts, which included the men of Savona – who traveled abroad. The hundreds of commercial treaties that the Genoese contracted with other cities and rulers during the Middle Ages, for example, frequently contained language that sought to ensure the safety of Genoese traveling in the entreating jurisdiction. An early example of this, an 50

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Ships departing from Genoa often took circuitous routes across the sea that lasted months, and sometimes years. Shipping contracts, in which merchants booked passage on a certain ship, rarely specified precise itineraries for the voyage, only general destinations, although they sometimes made exclusions about where the ship would not travel. For example: “Confitetur Enricus Gerundia se portare in accomendatione a Ionatha Cavarunco et ab Ogerio Scoto lib. .LV. Buzeam et quo voluerit et sibi videbitur, causa negotiandi, bona fide, preter Alexandriam, ad quartam proficui.” [I Enrocio Gerundia hand over 60£ to carry in acommendatio to Gionata Cavarunco and Ogerio Scoto, to Béjaïa or wherever they wish or see fit, except to Alexandria, for the purpose of doing business, in good faith, for a quarter of the profit]. Hall, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Cassinese, I, 174 #438. Rovere, ed. Il cartolare di ‘Uberto’ I: Atti del notaio Guglielmo Savona (1214-1215), xxx. From note 6 above: Treaties with Savona from the 1140s include the requirement that Savona assist Genoa in military and naval expeditions between Portovenere and Monaco. Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 172-3. Beginning in 1153, Genoa sought to gain some control over Savona’s long-distance trading efforts by forcing all ships departing Savona that were heading beyond Sardinia, or Barcelona to first stop in Genoa. (Ships traveling just along the Riviera to Provence, or to Sardinia and back were exempt.) See Rovere, 992 #225. A 1202 treaty again includes the same requirement, but goes into considerably more detail. Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/3, 60-4.

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1138 treaty with the city of Fos, states, “Nos homines de Fossis hac die in antea salvabimus lanuenses homines et eorum potentatus in mari et in terra et salvabimus homines ex amiciciis Ianuensium et peccuniam eorum.” [We, the men of Fos, will henceforth safeguard the men of Genoa and their rulers on the sea and on land, and as a result of friendship of the Genoese we will safeguard the men, and their money].53 Many treaties included reciprocal clauses, ensuring protection for both Genoese traveling abroad, and for citizens of the entreating polity traveling in the jurisdiction of Genoa.54 The verbiage of commercial treaties evolved over time, and many later treaties expanded to include language specifically protecting victims of shipwreck from having their persons or goods captured.55 Some treaties also included protections for those Genoese who did have the misfortune of dying abroad, and ensured that their goods would be catalogued, collected, and sent back to Genoa or handed over to Genoese consuls, rather than simply being seized by the local magistrates.56 In addition, many treaties went beyond general assurances of safeguarding, and specified actions that would be taken if Genoese traveling in a region were harmed or killed. An 1140 treaty with Pavia, for example, specifies a number of actions that could be taken if a Genoese was harmed in that region. In the case of robbery, the people of Pavia had forty days after receiving an official complaint to find the malefactor and make him repay what was taken; if repayment was not possible, he was banished. If a Genoese was murdered, the city sent 7.5£ of the local currency, and the person was punished according to local customs. Finally, if the Genoese were offended by people outside of Pavia proper, but within the jurisdiction of the city, Pavia helped the Genoese make war on them.57 Genoa made the same agreement reflexively to safeguard the people of Pavia.58 A series of treaties with the French port towns Montpellier, Marseille, and Saint-Gilles (accessible via the Petit Camargue) add some interesting caveats to how a citizen who molested a traveler would be dealt with. In 53 54 55

56

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Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 22. For similar examples, see Ibid., 24, 26, 27, 29, 36, etc. See, for example: Ibid., 121, 23, 237, etc. For some of many examples, see an 1155 treaty with Arles, in which the Archbishop renounces the right of plundering shipwreck victims: Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/2, 258, an 1184 treaty with Narbonne: Ibid., 253, and a 1219 treaty with Acre: Ibid., 266. Some examples of treaties containing this kind of stipulation include three treaties with Marseille and Arles, dating from 1229 and 1232; Ibid., 252, 76, 78, 95, treaties with the Iudices of Arborea and Torres (Sardinia) dated 1192 and 1216; Ibid., 344, 68, 87-8, a 1261 treaty with Acerra (Malta) Dellacasa, ed. Libri Iurium I/6, 431, and a 1240 treaty with Borghetto; Ibid., 70. Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 54. Ibid., 55-6.

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the case of murder, the offender would be tried according to Roman and municipal laws, unless the death occurred during battle, or while the Genoese was defending himself in a judicial “pugna” [duel].59 As in other cases, the treaty contained a reciprocal agreement to similarly prosecute murders against the men of Saint-Gilles.60 This suggests that the two eventualities – being killed in a battle, or in a judicial duel – were likely scenarios that a traveler might face in Provence. These are not the only treaties that demonstrate concern about the actions of lawless travelers, and a number of documents include protocols for handling Genoese who might commit crimes while abroad. Treaties such as the 1143 treaty between Genoa and Pisa, on the one hand, and Count Alfonso and the men of Saint-Gilles, on the other hand, evince a clear concern that the Genoese and Pisans might cause trouble within the territory of Saint-Gilles. If this were to happen, and any among the Pisans or Genoese were to commit homicide, adultery, or robbery, then the men of Saint-Gilles claimed the right to try and punish them according to local customs. However, the treaty does make it clear that only the individual responsible would be punished, and that the entire community would not be subject to retribution. The treaty also includes a clause indicating that should a man of Saint-Gilles offend the Genoese, the people of Saint-Gilles will deal with him “reasonably” and make amends within forty days of receiving a nuncio or official letter, detailing the complaint.61 A reciprocal agreement was made by the Genoese concerning the people of Saint-Gilles.62 Treaties that granted the Genoese their own quarters or fondaci, particularly in the Crusader kingdoms, frequently gave the Genoese the right to their own court and jurisprudence, but specified that certain crimes – typically rape, murder, theft, and sometimes treason – would be tried by local authorities.63

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“et si homicidium fecisset aliquis homo ville Sancti Egidii et districtus in Ianua et districtu in hominem Ianuensem vel districtus, possit ibi conveniri et puniri secundum leges Romanas et municipales si ibi reperiretur, excepto si in prelium ipsum interfecisset, quod tunc non cogatur se inde defendere per pugnam,” (From a 1232 treaty with Saint-Gilles. Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/2, 247). There is a similar treaty with Marseille from 1225: Ibid., 281,83. Montpellier, 1225; Ibid., 286; Montpellier, 1252; Dellacasa, ed. Libri Iurium I/6, 266-7. Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/2, 250. Rovere, ed. Libri Iurium I/1, 109. Ibid., 110. Puncuh, Libri Iurium I/2, Tyre (1190), 138; Acre (1192), 147; Acre (1195), 150; Tyre (1189),161; Tripoli (1205), 167; Armenia (1215), 169; Antioch (1216), 171; Cyprus (1218), 173, Cyprus (1232), 180.

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Of course, treaties only provided limited protection to travelers, and only in certain regions. Although Genoa maintained a wide array of diplomatic relationships around the Mediterranean, there were many places to which (or through which) Genoese people traveled and where no treaty relations were in effect, or worse yet, that were overtly hostile to Genoa. A treaty only protected a Genoese ship at sea, for example, when it was met by an ally. If enemy galleys appeared, even off the coast of “friendly” territory, they were likely to attack and either plunder or capture the ship. In these instances, the people on board the ship might be killed if they fought back. They were more often captured, or simply looted and allowed to go on their way.64 When war galleys met in battle, however, many people were often killed, and the remainder were usually captured and taken back to the enemy city as captives. The Genoese Annals are replete with tales of casualties in such battles, and in mass captive-taking.65 In some instances, captives had the opportunity to send notifications to their loved ones, generally to seek a ransom.66 Other times, however, they were simply imprisoned or sold into slavery. When ships were taken in battle, there were often witnesses who survived and could eventually report back as to the fates of their compatriots. When ships were wrecked, however, particularly by storms on the high sea, they could simply disappear without a trace. In short, there were many ways a Genoese might die or disappear while traveling abroad, many of which might go unnoticed and unreported. The effects of these disappearances can occasionally be seen in legal testimonies and notarial documents. From a legal perspective, a mechanism was needed to declare a person dead who left Liguria for an extended period of time and never returned. Considering how well-documented other aspects of Genoese 64

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It was very common for plunderers to simply take part of the cargo from a captured ship, and then release it. This often led to after-the-fact disputes with investors over whether all or part of the cargo was stolen, and so forth, which is demonstrated in several legal cases in Martino of Savona’s cartulary: Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), 134, 376. Examples of naval battles in which it was noted that many were killed: Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 22, 39, 67, and 69. Taking captives was an integral part of the wars conducted between the Genoese and Pisans that was celebrated in the Annali Genovesi. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 208, 09, 27, 28, and 34. Generally, it must simply be inferred that these notifications were sent because people were responding to them, as in an 1156 contract from Genoa, in which several people make arrangements to redeem a partner being held for ransom in Tunisia: Chiaudano and Moresco, eds., Giovanni Scriba, I, 41-2. A rare contract from 1201, however, shows the process by which four men from Barcelona who were being held hostage in Genoa make arrangements to secure their ransom. Hall et al., eds., Giovanni di Guiberto, I, 134-5.

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life were, it is somewhat surprising that the survival of the commune’s legal statutes is less robust. The earliest legal statutes on record for the commune appear in the 1143 Brief of the Consuls, which focuses primarily on the legal powers that the consuls of the commune exercised, and listed various crimes they could prosecute, punishments, and so forth.67 The earliest copy of this document, however, dates to the seventeenth century.68 An 1157 Brief of the Compagna also survives, which outlined various rules that members of the Genoese compagna were to follow, most of which concerned trade and commerce.69 Neither of these documents, however, discusses the problem of Genoese that disappeared; the first extant legislation on the subject can be found not in Genoa, but in the statutes of the Genoese colony at Pera, which date to around 1316. These statutes, however, are very clearly copied from older Genoese laws that simply do not survive in the Genoese archive, and are presumed to date to the mid-thirteenth century, or perhaps even earlier. Scholars have widely accepted their utility for describing the legal climate of Genoa, proper, in the thirteenth century.70 Moreover, there was a lot of continuity in the content of legislation of Liguria, in general.71 While local variations did occur, it can generally be assumed that the laws of Savona in particular were very similar in most regards to the laws of Genoa. Some court testimony gives further evidence supporting this assumption. There are several pieces of legislation found in the Statutes of Pera that address the possibility of Genoese dying abroad or going missing at sea. The first, Statute CCXIII: On those who die away from Genoa, states that if any person carrying money or an investment belonging to someone from the jurisdiction of Genoa should happen to die outside of Genoa, with or without a will, a complaint should be made on his behalf to the consuls, who would then make a public inquiry.72 If they found that the person died carrying outstanding debts or investments, a complex process began, in which business partners and investors came forward to make claims on the deceased’s estate, providing 67

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69 70 71 72

Cesare Carlo Stefano Marco Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, ed. Codice diplomatico della Republica di Genova dal DCCCCLVIII al MCLXIII, 3 vols., vol. I, Fonti per la storia d’Italia (Rome, 1936), 153-66. Cesare Carlo Stefano Marco Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, ed. Codice diplomatico della Republica di Genova dal DCCCCLVIII al MCLXIII, 3 vols., vol. I, Fonti per la storia d’Italia (Rome, 1936), 153. Ibid., 153 Epstein, Genoa & the Genoese, 68. Vito Piergiovanni, “La normativa comunale in Italia in età fredericiana,” in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, nuova serie (Genoa, 2012), 353-6. Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 195.

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they had adequate documentation; the outstanding debts were then prorated and distributed proportionally. Moreover, anyone who owed money to the deceased (or was carrying investments for him) was to hand it over to the consuls for redistribution. While the statute is primarily concerned with the administrative aspects of death, and meeting the needs of commerce, it also shows some compassion for the deceased’s heirs. While it makes no provision for wives, it orders caution in cases where the deceased had minor children. Before the deceased’s partners and creditors received compensation, tutors or guardians were appointed for the children, and the cost of the tutors or guardians was paid out of the total value of the estate. Finally, if it was feasible and there were no obstacles, any goods and merchandise the deceased was carrying were shipped back to Genoa.73 Due to the distances involved, carrying out the process described in the statute could take months or even years to complete, during which time, the presumably dead man continued to “live on,” and remain an active lender, debtor, property-owner, etc. A legal protocol from Savona helps provide some idea of the time-frame that could be involved. In legal cases that required the testimony of witnesses who were abroad at the time of the proceedings, trials were routinely delayed for a set period of time to allow for them to be summoned and make the journey: three months were allowed for witnesses to come from Provence, six months, if they were coming from North Africa or Sicily, and nine months if they were coming from Ultramare.74 Thus, if a Genoese merchant carrying an investment died in Morocco, it might take over a month for initial word to reach the consuls in Genoa. Presuming there were witnesses present in Genoa, it might take another few weeks for the consuls to interview them and verify the death. If all the people for whom the deceased was carrying money were in Genoa at the time, it might only take a few weeks for them to come forward and make their claims. But if some of them were also traveling merchants, as was often the case, it could take many months before everyone with claims on the estate returned to Genoa. If any part of this process was contested, or if there was also a will to complicate the process, the resolution could take even longer. Potential heirs contested the execution of wills frequently in medieval Liguria. In most instances, the records of the dispute are fragmentary, and all that survives are the final decisions made by the consuls, arbiters, or judges

73 74

Ibid., 195. Some examples: Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), docu­ ments 101,02, 244, 45, 49, 50, 71, 72, 84.

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who heard the case.75 These decisions rarely include much detail about the specifics of the case, or give an indication of the time frame that passed between the death of the individual, and the resolution of the will. Frequently, however, they do reveal interesting details about the complexities of family life, and the precarious legal position of women in particular. One suit from Genoa in 1205, for example, found a daughter trying to sue her step-father for the return of her late mother’s dowry and patrimony. Her mother had willed the return of the dowry to her in the eventuality that her step-sister died first without heirs, which she did. The step-father resisted handing it over, arbiters were brought in to rule on the case, and it was ultimately decided that he did not owe his step-daughter anything. The rationale for this decision was that the girl’s grandfather was still alive at the time her mother wrote the will, and he had not given his daughter permission to bequeath her patrimony.76 Had the grandfather died before the mother, the bequeathal likely would have happened. The relative order in which people died, both in relationship to their heirs and their parents, could matter a great deal when inheritances were on the line. When someone died abroad, establishing this order could become very difficult. The legal cases found in the register of Martino of Savona are more complete, and some highlight further the need in some instances to establish with some precision when an individual has died. One example that stands out is a lawsuit brought by a woman named Giovanna against another woman Richelda, the wife of her deceased ex-husband Buongiovanni.77 In the suit, Giovanna claimed that Richelda was in possession of a house that belonged rightfully to Giovanna. Giovanna testified that she purchased the house about sixteen years prior, while she was still married to Buongiovanni. She also testified that she and Buongiovanni had a son together, Simon, to whom she gave the house, and the donation charter included a clause stating that if Simon died “sine filio herede,” [without a male heir], the house would revert to Giovanna. Giovanna was apparently able to provide a document supporting her testimony.78

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For some examples, see Hall et al., eds., Giovanni di Guiberto, I, doc 133, 343; Hall, ed. Giovanni di Guiberto, II, doc. 1468, 90, 98; Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 13, 166, 71. Hall, ed. Giovanni di Guiberto, II, doc 1468, 156-7. Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), documents 246, 48, 49, 57, 831, 34. Ibid., 356.

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Then the testimony turned to the tragedy that brought about the suit. Buongiovanni and Simon, it turns out, were both killed on the same sea voyage, apparently in a shipwreck. Which one died first appears to have been a matter of contention regarding the order of inheritance, as there were a number of questions raised about the relative health and swimming ability of the two men. Giovanna was asked, for example, about their ages at the time of the voyage. She said that Buongiovanni was around forty, and Simon was fifteen. She was then asked to respond to the statement that while Buongiovanni was an excellent sailor and swimmer, Simon was an even better sailor and even stronger swimmer than his father was. To this Giovanna replied that when they went on the voyage, Buongiovanni was the better swimmer and mariner, and stronger than his son.79 The case is unfortunately incomplete and no resolution was recorded, so it is not clear exactly where this line of questioning was going, but it appears that the lawyer was attempting to assert that Buongiovanni died before his son, which would have presumably altered the order of inheritance. The remainder of the testimony, however, demonstrates that there was even more going on in this case than contention over a mere shipwreck. It was next established that Giovanna and Buongiovanni were no longer married, and that the archbishop had separated them five years previously. It was also a matter of dispute whether Giovanna had paid for the house with her antefactum, with her own money gotten elsewhere, or with Buongiovanni’s money. All of this may have been moot, however, as it was revealed that Buongiovanni had been in some major legal trouble with the podestà of Genoa five years previously; and with the cooperation of the podestà of Savona, the destruction of the house in question had been ordered as part of the judgement against Buongiovanni’s goods. The remainder of the testimony was heavily disputed and thus inconclusive, but it appears that the father of Richelda (Buongiovanni’s second wife) may have rescued the house from this fate using his own money. Moreover, it appears that Richelda had been living in the house for the last four years.80 In the end, it is unclear how much it mattered if the son, Simon, died in the shipwreck before or after his father; but the fact that it was brought up at all shows how convoluted and unpleasant inheritance disputes could be. That, coupled with the fact that Buongiovanni’s mercantile activities and apparent criminal behavior in Genoa affected his estate further, demonstrate some of the extreme legal complexities that the life and death of a traveling Ligurian could create. 79 80

Ibid., 357. Ibid., 358-9.

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The above legal dispute and its related statute concerned travelers who were known to have died outside of Liguria, but what of travelers who left and simply never returned? Another statue from Pera that speaks to these concerns is CCXXI: Regarding a Ship Enduring Shipwreck. It states that if someone left Genoa in a ship, and that ship or another ship that he was known to have later sailed in, was destroyed or was rumored in Genoa to have been destroyed, and the traveler did not return to Genoa within five years, he would be declared dead. That is, unless reliable witnesses could demonstrate that he was still alive somewhere. Rumor was not enough to keep someone alive forever, though, and the statute goes on to say that after a ten-year absence, even if “publica fama” [public rumor] still contradicted the person’s death, the death would be certified unless the person proved that he was living.81 Shipwrecks were common in the Middle Ages. Occasionally ships were caught by storms and sunk on the open sea; in these cases, the chance of  anyone surviving was very low.82 In most cases, however, ships wrecked in coastal waters and it was not uncommon for at least some of the people involved to survive.83 Many instances of survivors walking away from shipwrecks can be found in the Annali Genovesi and other contemporary sources.84 81

82

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Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 299. Publica fama was far more than mere rumor, and carried a great deal of legal weight in medieval Italy. For an overview, and an interesting discussion of how publica fama was used in medieval Italian courts: Chris Wickham, “Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany,” in Fama: The Politics of Talk in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca, NY, 2003), 16-7. This must have occurred with some frequency, but witnesses would have been rare. One particularly tragic incident of this occurred in 1165, in which a fleet of Pisan galleys took flight towards the open sea to escape a fleet of Genoese galleys, when a squall hit, and thirteen of the Pisan vessels were sunk. The event was notable enough that it was recorded in both the Genoese and Pisan annals, and the Genoese felt moved both to send con­ dolences to the Pisans, and cease all hostilities for a time. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 186-7. Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, ed. Archivio storico italiano: ossia raccolta di opere e documenti finora inedite o divenuti rarissimi riguardanti la storia d’Italia, vol. VI, Part ii (Florence, 1845), 42-3. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab world as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Volume I: Economic Foundations (Berkeley, CA, 1999), 319. Many examples of shipwrecks are recorded in the Annali Genovesi. In many of these cases, the existence of survivors is suggested by the fact that details of the wreck were known, however some also explicitly discuss survivors and their fate. For instance, the 1165 wreck of a Genoese ship in Sardinia left many survivors. They were unfortunately discovered by Pisans, however, who took the surviving Genoese and their goods back to Pisan despite a truce, causing a lengthy diplomatic incident and the resumption of hostilities. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 170-5. Another example comes from 1207 when a terrible storm hit, and many

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This provides some context for the treaty language discussed above, which was designed to safeguard the survivors of wrecks and their goods. However, even under the best of circumstances, when a wreck was not completely devastating and occurred near a friendly port, it would have been difficult to reliably document all the victims and survivors. A merchant or sailor who survived a wreck might see no reason to return to Genoa prematurely or send a message home, and might simply find another ship and carry on with his journey. He also faced the risk of being taken captive, in which case he might remain alive but imprisoned somewhere. Depending on where a wreck occurred and the political climate at the time, shipwreck victims risked being held for ransom, enslaved, or if they were captured by citizens of a warring state, killed or kept as prisoners of war.85 The statute does not enumerate the possibilities, but the five-year threshold for declaring a person dead suggests that a protracted absence was not unheard of for a person involved in a shipwreck, and that this was the point at which he was deemed “gone too long” and unlikely to return. The statute also demonstrates a pronounced anxiety that a person might use a shipwreck as an excuse to disappear.86 In the aftermath of an accident, it would have been relatively easy for someone wishing to escape outstanding debts, criminal prosecution, or other unwanted entanglements to simply vanish.

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ships were lost or damaged. One was noted as having been lost except for two boats, another ship was lost, but one of its galleys made it to shore unharmed. Belgrano and Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, eds., Annali 2, 107. Ibn Jubayr, a Muslim traveler from Spain, who traversed the Mediterranean in the late twelfth century, also described surviving a shipwreck near Messina. Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. and trans. Ronald J. C. Broadhurst (New Delhi, 2007), 332. When Ibn Jubayr’s ship was wrecked, he and other Muslims aboard were ultimately rescued by King William of Sicily; he stated that had the King not been present, they would have been enslaved, per local custom. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, 337-8. Byzantine law (the Rhodion Sea Law) insisted that shipwreck victims pay their rescuers for saving them, and if they could not, their freedom might be forfeit. Khalilieh, Admiralty and Maritime Law, 205-6. Islamic jurists, however, insisted that victims should not be captured or enslaved if they could provide proof of their identity within one year’s time. This being the case, that might meant they were detained for that year, while they waited for proof to arrive of their identity. Khalilieh, Admiralty and Maritime Law, 207, n. 5. An unfortunate part of the English contingent of the Third Crusade survived a shipwreck along the coast of Cyprus, only to be captured, robbed, and imprisoned. Helen J. Nicholson, The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregri­ norum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (Farnham, 1997), 180. Other statutes from Pera express a similar concern about people going into hiding or fleeing the commune. See, for instance: Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 109-12.

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Of course, the individual would have to avoid being identified by acquaintances, which may not have been easy, but the anxiety exhibited in the statute suggests that it was far from impossible. The effect of this statute on the families and business associates of a missing person could be profound. Until a husband was officially declared dead, for example, his wife was unable to marry again legally. If the wife had a secure home and some assets at her disposal, or if the husband had made specific provisions for her care before departure, this scenario may have been acceptable and even worked to her advantage in some cases, as the fate of a Genoese widow could be uncertain.87 If a Genoese husband did not leave a will specifying otherwise, all that was legally owed to his widow was the return of a portion of her dowry. Prior to 1143, widows in Genoa also had claim to one third of their dead husband’s estate, but in that year, the Genoese consuls took that right, the “tercie,” away.88 This is one instance in which the customs of Savona differed significantly from those in Genoa. Testimony offered in Savonese court documents indicates that sometime around 1174, the consuls of Savona publicly decreed that widows there were entitled to one quarter of their husband’s goods, if the husband died without a living heir.89 The Genoese practice significantly reduced the security of widows, which could be quite precarious to begin with. According the Statutes of Pera, the relatives of a deceased husband were supposed to provide support (food and clothing) for his widow so long as she did not remarry or move in with her own relatives; but if his will did not specify otherwise, they had the ability to assign new guardians to the children and relocate them and turn her out of the home, so long as she was reasonably compensated.90 Many Ligurian husbands sought to prevent this plight by making careful provisions for their widows in their wills, often naming them as the guardians of their shared children and

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In 1198, for example, a man promises his brother, who is about to embark on his journey, that he will take care of the brother’s belongings and wife while he is away, and that he will be reimbursed for any necessary expenses to do so, up to 3 £ per year to cover. Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 60. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 31. See discussion in Epstein, Genoa & the Genoese, 45-6, and Hughes, “Urban Growth and Family Structure in Medieval Genoa,” 14-5. Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), 46-7, 168. Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 124-5. For example, in 1198, the children of Anna, wife of the late Giovanni Maraxino, were removed from her home and given over to their uncle, Maraxino. From his estate, she received a number of pieces of land that were purchased from her dowry. Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds., Bonvillano (1198), 116-18.

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estates, so long as they did not remarry.91 Both Diane Hughes and Giovanna Petti Balbi have demonstrated that such provisions were far more likely to be made in artisan-class, rather than elite wills, both in Genoa and Savona.92 The existence of hundreds of contracts in the notarial cartularies in which widows were active investors and participants in business indicate that at least some Genoese widows were able to achieve financial stability, but it is likely that they were the lucky ones who had substantial dowries to begin with, and husbands with the foresight and willingness to protect them.93 At least widows had the luxury, such as it was, of knowing that their husbands were dead. The wives of missing husbands remained in a state of legal limbo for many years, and for those women who did not have adequate resources to sustain themselves, this prolonged period of uncertainty could be devastating. A woman in this circumstance – especially if she had reason to believe that her husband was dead or was sure to die – might go ahead and marry another man before this five years was up. However, doing so could be risky. A 1204 case from Savona illustrates this scenario in poignant detail. Over the course of many months, a story played out in court documents in which a woman named Benevenuta sues Ansaldo, the brother of her late husband Balduino, in an attempt to retrieve the heritable portion of her dowry from Balduino’s estate, the sum of 25£. Balduino, it turns out, had been captured in “Saracen lands” nine to twelve years prior – sometime during the Third Crusade – and was placed in captivity from which there was no hope of release.94 91

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Some husbands made very generous provisions for their wives. Simone Buferio’s 1206 will, for example, specifies that his wife retain substantial control of his estate, be allowed to stay in their shared home, and retain guardianship of their numerous offspring, several of which were to be given to the church in service. Hall, ed. Giovanni di Guiberto, II, 334-6. Oberto di Costa’s will from 1203 allows his wife and his father to remain as the guardians of his children, and the right to manage his estate in the children’s best interests, but only so long as the wife wishes to remain without a husband. Should she remarry, the children would remain with Oberto’s father. Krueger and Reynolds, eds., Lanfranco 1, 198. Diane Owen Hughes, “Domestic Ideals and Social Behavior: Evidence from Medieval Genoa,” in Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household, and Children, ed. Carol Neel (Toronto, 2004), 134, Petti Balbi, Governare la città: pratiche sociali e linguaggi politici a Genova in età medievale, 28. For a selection of the many examples, see: Chiaudano, ed. Oberto Scriba, 1186, 53, 56, 59, 62, 63, 68, 75, 117, 19. Eierman, Krueger, and Reynolds, eds. (Bonvillano, 1198), 126., Hall et al., eds., Giovanni di Guiberto, I, 253, 54, 56, 89, 95, 323, 29, 39, 46, 401, 25, 37-8, 38, 39, 42, 54, 90, 92, 536. Diane Hughes points out that all the women found making large investments in extant thirteenth-century contracts were widows. Hughes, “Domestic Ideals and Social Behavior: Evidence from Medieval Genoa,” 146. Puncuh, ed. Il cartulario del notaio Martino (Savona, 1203-1206), 158-59.

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At some point, Balduino was allowed to send a message to Benevenuta: he told her that he was certainly going to die in captivity, and that she was free to accept another man, whomever she wished. Both Benevenuta and Ansaldo agreed that this was true.95 Ansaldo, however, insisted that Benevenuta had taken another man four years prior, but Balduino continued to live for another two years. Because of her infidelity, he argued, she should get nothing from his brother’s estate. Benevenuta, on the other hand, contested the dates, but did agree that she had taken her new husband a few months before it turned out that Balduino had actually died. She maintained, however, that she did not know this, or have any reason to believe that he was still alive at the time.96 Due to the complexities of the case, an arbiter was assigned to resolve it. The arbiter ultimately concluded that Benevenuta had been incontinent and reckless by taking a new husband, and was therefore entitled to only 10£ of her dowry, and had to forfeit the remaining 15£ because of her misbehavior.97 This did not resolve the case, however, and new actions were taken a few months later that shed more light on Benevenuta’s plight. First, Ansaldo complained that Benevenuta had been holding back some property that should be part to the estate.98 A few days later, Benevenuta returned to court suing Ansaldo for an additional 20£ because she alleged that Ansaldo had wrongly been holding onto her 25£ dowry for six years: the period of time between Balduino’s entrance into captivity and her second marriage. This had forced her to rely on others for her food and clothing, which should have been provided by Balduino and his heirs during that period on account of their marriage, and thus should be restored to her.99 As the register is incomplete, there is unfortunately no way to know how either of these motions was resolved, but the latter, in particular, shows that Benevenuta was very vulnerable during her husband’s extended absence, and her well-being subject to the disposition of her brother-in-law. One last statute from Pera indicates that Benevenuta’s situation was not, unfortunately unique, and that many men besides Balduino faced being kept captive until they died. Statute CXXXII, “Regarding Women Who Accept Another Husband while their Spouse is Living,” was specifically drafted to address the wives of men who were doomed to never return. It states that any woman whose husband is being held “in captivitate de cetero,” [in perpetual 95 96 97 98 99

Puncuh, 213 Ibid., 156-7. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 44-45. Ibid., 63.

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captivity], who takes a new spouse while her husband is still living – specifically, before his death has been certified, or a public mourning or grieving has taken place – will forfeit the entirety of her antefactum and patrimony from his estate.100 There appears to be some room for her to inherit something, if the husband specifically left an additional gift to her in his will, but all of the inheritance that a widow would expect to receive by default was to be denied to her in this unfortunate scenario.101 A man who left Liguria and died abroad without witnesses could continue to “live on” as a husband, father, and business partner for at least five years, and possibly up to ten. Depending on the provisions he made for his wife before departure and the disposition of his family, his wife might be left during this time without any resources at her personal disposal, and be forced to live in poverty, rely on her own family’s support, or take another man, which could leave her at risk to lose her inheritance from her father’s estate, and possibly the control of her children. The wife of a man who was placed in perpetual captivity was in an even worse position. Until official notification of his death arrived, his estate was tied up and she was not free to remarry. From the perspective of their spouses, these captives were worse than dead. In the above examples, culpability for the death of the traveler was never called into question; the cause of the death or disappearance was either undisputed or unknown. But what happened if a person’s disappearance was the result of foul play? Not only did sea travel provide the opportunity for a person to stage his own disappearance, it could also be a chance to make someone else disappear. Without witnesses and without a body, murdering someone at sea could be the perfect crime, but it was a crime that medieval Ligurians were prepared to address. An unusual entry in the Genoese annals shows how suspected murders were handled in Liguria, and how the victims themselves could be given an opportunity to confront, by proxy, their own killers. In a tabloid-worthy tale, the annalist explains that in 1232, two men – Ottobono Helye, and Iacobo Grillo 100

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“et de eius morte certificata non fuerit et de ipso luctum vel plantum non celebraverit,” Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 130. The luctum and planctum refer to rituals of formal mourning or lamentation. Carol Lansing, Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes: Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past (Ithaca, NY, 2008), 56-7. In her study on the legislation of funerary practices in medieval Italy, Carol Lansing has shown that these public rituals were often extremely elaborate and costly, involving hundreds of participants and great expense. She shows that over the course of the thirteenth century, these displays were increasingly regulated, and those who grieved too much or too loudly faced substantial fines. Ibid., 48-72. Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 130.

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de Campo – were together on a voyage. The two men had a heated argument and afterwards, while the ship was at sea, Ottobono disappeared and could not be found on the ship or anywhere else. Because of their argument, Iacobo was accused of Ottobono’s murder, and the podestà, Pagano de Petrasancta of Milan, ordered him to defend himself of the charge in a judicial duel. Champions were chosen for each man – one named “Pestellus de Cumis” [The Plague of Como] and another called “Caçia de Florentia” [The Hunt of Florence], names that suggest they might have been professional champions. The battle was fought in the Piazza di Sarzano. Ottobono’s champion defeated the champion of Iacobo, thus providing proof (per the laws of trial by combat) that Iacobo was guilty of Ottobono’s murder. In response, the podestà had Iacobo beheaded on the beach of Sarzano that very day. The annalist includes the detail that the battle was fought on Friday, the third of December.102 This story is remarkable in large part because it is the first and only description of a judicial duel that appears in the Genoese Annals. At first glance, it appears that the event may have been some kind of anomaly, as judicial duels are not normally associated with medieval Genoa. It was not unusual for the Genoese annalists to include descriptions of major crimes that occurred in the city, or of punishments that were issued in a given year. However, this was usually when the events in question were particularly egregious or unusual, or had far-reaching consequences for the commune, such as when the murder of a noble triggered an outbreak of factional warfare in the city.103 Both the men involved in the 1232 case were members of elite families in Genoa, so it is possible that some kind of factional violence was at play. Was this the reason for the inclusion of the story, or was it because the duel itself was unusual? Judicial duels were common in the early medieval Germanic kingdoms; they remained a tradition in many of the affected regions for centuries afterwards, and it appears that Liguria was no exception.104 The 1143 Brief of the Consuls of Genoa, for example, made an allowance for the use of the duel in cases of “homicidium occultum” [concealed murder]. Of course, the brief 102 103

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Imperiale di Sant’Angelo, ed. Annali 3, 66-7. In 1163, for example, Caffaro recorded an unusual crackdown on crime in the commune. Belgrano, ed. Annali 1, 74. In 1180, war broke out between two factions. The consuls stepped in to make peace, and ruled one party responsible. His goods were ordered destroyed. Belgrano and Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, eds., Annali 2, 15. In 1196, the podestà ordered a man’s house destroyed and all of his goods seized because he unlawfully stole cargo from a ship. Ibid., 61-2. In 1230, the podestà attempted to sentence some Genoese pirates to hang, but the effort was met with a violent protest carried out by the men, and notably, women, of the city. Imperiale di Sant’Angelo, ed. Annali 3, 55-6. Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1988), 105-6.

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clearly stated that the punishment for someone found guilty in this way was to be banishment, not beheading.105 A similar piece of legislation exists in the Statutes of Pera; this statute does allow for the use of champions, but does not specify a punishment.106 No legislation exists in the Genoese Libri Iurium that describes the execution of judicial duels; however, a series of treaties with the cities of Provence from this period all note that if a traveler died abroad (either a Genoese traveling in Provence, or a Provençal traveling in Genoa) while defending himself in a “pugna,” [duel] the local government would not prosecute the killer.107 This suggests that such duels were a fairly common occurrence along the French Riviera. James F. Powers has moreover demonstrated that the duel was in wide use in medieval Spain, which can be demonstrated in the twelfth-and thirteenth-century fueros, and in widespread artistic depictions.108 Finally, a 1216 set of statutes from Milan – the city where the podestà who ordered the duel was from – includes a detailed set of guidelines on the judicial duel that describes in great detail when it should be employed, the use of champions, how they should be selected, what weapons were to be used, and so forth.109 It is possible that the judicial duel had not been routinely used in Genoa prior to 1232, and that the podestà imported the practice for the occasion. It seems more likely, however, that the duel was common throughout Liguria and the surrounding regions, and that this instance was noted by the annalist for some other factor, such as the severity of the punishment, the celebrity of the champions, or because it was related to larger issues of factional violence. The 1288 Statutes of Albenga also included a section on hidden or covered-up murder that allowed for the use of the judicial duel, which further supports that there was widespread use of the duel in Liguria and beyond.110

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Imperiale di Sant’ Angelo, ed. Codice diplomatico, vol. I, 156. Promis, “Statuti della colonia genovese di Pera,” 152. See note 59 above. James F. Powers, “Judicial Combat in Medieval Iberia During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Evidence in Law and Image,” Viator 46, no. 3 (2015): 123-54. Kenneth Pennington, “Roman and Secular Law,” in Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. Frank Anthony Carl Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Washington, DC, 1996), 258-9; Francesco Berlan and C. Stabilimento tipografico Grimaldo e, Le due edizioni milanese e torinese delle Consuetudini di Milano dell’anno 1216: cenni ed appunti; giuntovi il testo delle Consuetudini ridotto a buona lezione (Venice, 1872), 248-50. Josepha Costa Restagno, ed. Gli Statui di Albenga del 1288, vol. MCMXCV, Fonti per la storia della Liguria (Genoa, 1995), 325-6.

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The judicial duel served a necessary function in a society that was both plagued by factional violence, and peopled by professional travelers, who often found themselves in remote reaches at risk of being killed without witnesses. While the duel cannot be considered fair or just by modern standards, the medieval theory behind it was to provide an opportunity for the dead to defend himself via proxy, and to allow divine oversight to steer the course of the battle and make the truth known through its outcome. On a more practical level, it allowed the friends and family of the deceased to intervene for the fallen by providing the best champion that could be found.111 The duel expanded the sphere of influence generated by the victim’s death, both by creating a public spectacle that garnered a large audience, and by placing the lives of the champions involved in the battle at risk, not to mention that of the defendant.112 A single judicial duel thus linked the fate and focus of many medieval Ligur­ ians – defendant, champions, magistrates, audience – around the death of a single individual, and thus provided one more opportunity for the dead to hold sway over the living. Death was a complicated matter in medieval Liguria, regardless of where a person died. Part of this was due to the intricacies of testamentary practice and inheritance laws. This, of course, was not a problem unique to the people of Genoa or Savona, or even to the Middle Ages. What is unusual is how welldocumented such matters were in twelfth-and thirteenth-century Liguria, and how much this documentation reveals about the lives of those involved. Death was further complicated by the fact that many Ligurians were involved as both merchants and investors in long-distance trade. Investments and other transactions were recorded in notarial acts that survived the deaths of those involved and as a result, the dead continued to function as commercial actors until all their investments, loans, and goods had been accounted for and appropriately resolved. The dead also continued to function as actors in newly drafted notarial acts for many years after they died, as a means of identifying their living progeny. The possibility of a traveler dying abroad further affected how death and the dead were treated in medieval Liguria. While personal fear of this possibility was not explicit in many wills at the time, it was clearly a concern at the communal level. Legislation was created to manage some of the 111 112

Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 112. The specifics of how trials by battle were conducted varied by region, and time-period. In general, they were not usually meant to be fought to the death, but both death and maiming were serious risks for the participants. Ibid., 110-1, and Powers, “Judicial Combat in Medieval Iberia During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Evidence in Law and Image,” 131-3.

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after-effects of the death or disappearance of a traveler. Efforts were made through diplomacy to safeguard travelers as much as possible, and to ensure that those who did perish received justice. Those who died without witness, however, might not be declared legally dead for many years, thus leaving surviving family members, in particular, their wives and minor children, to face difficult legal challenges and economic hardships. Finally, judicial duels made justice available to the dead who were murdered at sea and in other remote locations; these duels gave victims the opportunity to challenge their accused murderers by proxy. The Ligurian way of life – with its emphasis on the sea, on long-distance trade, and on documentary culture – intimately shaped how the Ligurians confronted the legal and commercial aspects of death, and how in the same way, the dead confronted the living.

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Chapter 10

The Medieval Cemetery as Ecclesiastical Community: Regulation, Conflict, and Expulsion 1000-1215 Anthony Perron Cemeteries were an integral part of medieval ecclesiastical society at all levels from the parish to houses of the regular religious to major cathedrals. As JeanClaude Schmitt notes, the graveyard was a “village of the dead.” “The inseparable couple of church and cemetery” bound the living and the departed together in a single community, one delineated by a complex and evolving set of conventions.1 A widespread analogy in the Middle Ages linked the welcoming of the soul into the church through baptism with the reception of the body into the graveyard upon burial.2 Ecclesia and coemeterium (or atrium) were regularly spoken of in the same breath, and as a pair they enjoyed similar rights of sanctuary, backed by a flood of papal and episcopal privileges and other legal protections. For the vast majority of medieval people, the graveyard was their final resting place; burial in the church proper was frowned upon, and even those who merited it might virtuously choose the cemetery instead.3 Reverence 1 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago, 1998), 4, 126. I would like to thank the Academy of Catholic Thought and Imagination at Loyola Marymount University for a fellowship that supported my work on this project. 2 See, for instance, Honorius of Autun, Gemma animae, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXII, col. 590. 3 Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres, for instance, include earlier canons from Meaux and Nantes that frowned on burial in churches. See Burchard’s Decretum, bk. 3, cc. 151, 159 (in Patrologia latina, vol. CXL, coll. 702-3, 705), and Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, Pars 3, cc. 213, 222 (in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXI, coll. 249, 252). For an example of choosing the cemetery over the church, see Hériman of Tournai’s Narratio restaurationis abbatiae Sancti Martini Tornacensis, ch. 102 (Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXX, col. 119). The author tells the story of a pious supporter of the monastery named Radulf and his wife, whose sons wanted their parents buried in the cemetery despite the abbot’s insistence that they be interred in the church, since the sons “believed that the bodies of good people were buried there and that, on account of the company of these people, it would be better for them than if they were buried apart.” On the question of burial in the church over against burial in the cemetery, see Christian Sapin, “Dans l’église ou hors l’église, quel choix pour l’inhumé?” in Archéologie du cimetière chrétien, Supplément à la Revue archéologique du centre de la France 11 (Tours, 1996), 65-78.

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for churchyards defined a Christian identity over against pagans and heretics, and, among the orthodox faithful, providing for proper burial in the cemetery was considered a virtuous deed, even perhaps a mark of sanctity.4 Modern scholarship on medieval graveyards has been dominated by studies of liturgy, which have shown how cemeteries were governed by a precise ritual order; and also by archaeological research on the messy reality of managing burial grounds.5 Though cemeteries figured in many works on dying and the afterlife, there has been little attention directed to the history of churchyards in their own right, central though they were to notions of community.6 Yet 4

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From the period under consideration in this chapter, see the so-called “Břetislav Decrees,” composed in the wake of Bohemia’s conversion, which forbid the burial of corpses “in agris sive in silvis” [in fields or woods] and require instead the use of a cemetery (in the Chronicle of Cosmas of Prague, ed. Bertold Bretholz, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Nova Series, vol. II [Berlin, 1923], 88. For a recent discussion, see Lisa Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), 27, 115, 131-2. Otto of Bamberg, in his mission to Pomerania, similarly enjoined that Christians were to bury their dead in cemeteries, not “in silvis aut in campis” [in woods or in fields] (from Ekkehard of Aura’s chronicle ed. G. Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. VI [Hannover, 1844], 264). On the association between heresy and heterodox beliefs regarding cemeteries, see Guibert of Nogent, Autobiographie, ed. Edmond-René Labande (Paris, 1981), 428-30 (bk. 3, ch. 17), which treats the heresy of Evrard of Soissons, among whose teachings was that cemetery land was no different than any other type of land. In reconciling the Bosnian heretics to the Church in 1203, moreover, Innocent III made the sect’s leaders promise to establish cemeteries (see Innocent’s Regesta, bk. 6, no. 141, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIV, coll. 1535). Caroline Walker Bynum has discussed the heretical rejection of cemeteries in Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995), 217. Regarding proper burial as a charitable act, see Petrus Cantor, Verbum abbreuiatum (textus alter), ed. Monique Boutry, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 196 (Turnhout, 2012), 460-1 (ch. 96); Peter lamented that such a laudable practice had fallen into desuetude in his own day. Among the ranks of the saints, Hugh of Lincoln was especially associated with cemeteries and burial. See Adam of Eynsham’s Magna vita Sancti Hugonis, ed. Decima L. Douie and Hugh Farmer, vol. II (London, 1962), especially 77-83 (bk. 5, chs. 1-2). On the liturgical rites of consecrating and reconciling cemeteries, see especially Derek A. Rivard, Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington, DC, 2009), 89-131. For the archaeology of medieval cemeteries, see, among many other works, Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (London, 2005); Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Suffolk, 2012), 169-215; Deirdre O’Sullivan, “Burial of the Christian Dead in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz (Oxford, 2013), 259-80; and the essays contained in the volume Archéologie du cimetière chrétien, cited above. See, for example, Lucien Musset, “Le cimetière dans la vie paroissiale en Basse-Normandie (XIe-XIIIe siècles),” Cahiers Léopold Delisle 12 (1963): 7-27; and Christopher Daniell, Death

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cemeteries played a critical role in what Dominique Iogna-Prat has seen as the sociological transformation of the High Middle Ages, the forging of a new sense of Christian order through the exclusion of “deviants,” in keeping with R. I. Moore’s classic depiction of the period as a time of intolerance and persecution.7 For the living, this meant imposing a set of clerical values on the churchyard. At the same time, the dead themselves were subjected to ever more repressive policing as church authorities closed cemeteries to all manner of the unworthy and, more to the point, purged the consecrated ground of impious and disobedient souls through exhumation, which, by the later twelfth century, assumed an increasingly juridical character. As places of metaphor, cemeteries elicited moving images from high-medieval writers. Reflecting in 1135 or 1136 on his own mother’s death and burial among the nuns of Marcigny, Peter the Venerable described the graveyard as an orchard, seeded with the bodies of the dead which, though dormant in the winter, would sprout in the vernal sun of the Resurrection.8 A generation later, Herbert of Clairvaux used similarly horticultural imagery; for the Cistercian prelate, the souls in the cemetery were lilies in a garden, plucked by angels and carried to heaven.9 Such metaphors of course elide the natural and the supernatural, and while people of the High Middle Ages were well aware of the cemetery as the site of a biological process of decomposition, they also saw the graveyard as a locus of numinous experience.10 In England, the townspeople of Beverley were said to have proudly shown off the miraculous

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and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550 (London and New York, 1997), 145-208. The legal history of cemeteries has also lagged. Antoine Bernard’s 1933 thesis (La sépulture en droit canonique du Décret de Gratien au Concile de Trente [Paris, 1933]) has yet to be superseded, though it is now outdated. Dominique Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion: Cluny and Christendom Face Heresy, Judaism, and Islam (1000-1150), trans. Graham Robert Edwards (Ithaca, NY, 2002). Iogna-Prat only mentions cemeteries fleetingly (see particularly 163-4). Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, vol. I (Cambridge, 1967), 153-73 (no. 53). Herbert of Clairvaux, De miraculis, bk. 1, no. 10, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXXV, coll. 12867. Decomposition features prominently, for instance, in two Norman-Saxon poems on death and burial. The first, “The Grave,” is edited and translated in J. J. Conybeare, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London, 1826), 270-3, and dated to the twelfth century (see Louise Dudley, “The Grave,” Modern Philology 11 [1914]: 429). This short poem stands in an uncertain relationship to a longer work called “The Soul’s Address to the Body,” possibly as a fragment of it (though Dudley rejects this idea) or as its source. The “Address” was published and translated by S. W. Singer, The Departing Soul’s Address to the Body (London, 1845). See also Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Early-Modern Times (Oxford, 1987), 48-9.

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properties of their cemetery, made holy by the tomb of the saintly archbishop, John of York. When “most ferocious bulls,” wont to charge at anything in their way “with horns and hooves,” were dragged into the sacred confines, they became docile as lambs and, with their fetters loosened, would romp “per atrium” [throughout the churchyard].11 Reports of healings in cemeteries are too numerous to detail.12 No less significant are tales of punitive miracles in graveyards. The wicked who dared to transgress cemetery boundaries might find themselves subject to retribution, as in the story of the cursed son of one Lantpert, said by an early-eleventh-century chronicler to have been struck by blindness every time he entered the churchyard of St. Emmeran in Regensburg.13 Likewise, according to William of Malmesbury, it was believed that anyone who brought hunting birds or livestock into the cemetery of Glastonbury would suffer harm to themselves or their goods.14 No wonder one had to be a saint in order to walk alone through a churchyard at night without fear.15 Notwithstanding their reputation for transcendent power, cemeteries often served as communal spaces for quite mundane purposes, as many scholars have noted.16 People gathered there to share news, while children used graveyards to play.17 Cemeteries also hosted settlers, either temporarily in times of 11 12

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The story is related by William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2007), 244-5 (bk. 3, ch. 110). To cite just one illustrative example, the Life of St. William of Æbelholt, from an Augustinian canonry in Denmark, describes a pregnant woman who was cured of her blindness in the cloister cemetery in the early years of the thirteenth century. See M. C. Gertz, ed., Vitae Sanctorum Danorum (Copenhagen, 1908-12), 352-3 (ch. 42). Arnold of St. Emmeran, Libri duo de miraculis, ch. 19, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXLI, col. 1176. See William’s De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXIX, col. 1692. As was reported by William of Malmesbury about St. Wulfstan in the Life of Wulfstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002), 26-28 (bk. 1, ch. 4). Note also the trope in thirteenth-century French literature of the cemetery as a place of supernatural danger, most famously in the romance L’Atre périlleux. See The Perilous Cemetery (L’Atre Périlleux), ed. and trans. Nancy B. Black (New York and London, 1994); and Anne-Marie Cadot, “Le Motif de l’Aître périlleux: la christianisation du surnaturel dans quelques romans du XIIIe siècle,” Marche romane 13 (1980): 27-35. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York, 1981), 62. See also Daniell, Death and Burial, 99-105. Orderic Vitalis noted, for example, that “frightening visions” presaging the death of William II in 1100 led to rumors spread by people “in markets and cemeteries.” See The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, vol. V (Oxford, 1975), 284 (bk. 10, ch. 15). On children playing in graveyards, see Petrus Cantor, Verbum abbreuiatum

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war or, in some cases, more permanently.18 And unsurprisingly, given the centrality of graveyards to the life of a medieval community, they were often a venue for unrest. According to Peter the Chanter, priests were required by a customary oath to report incidents of brawling in cemeteries, suggesting this was a common occurrence.19 While the targets of mayhem in churchyards were on occasion laymen, and the perpetrators of cemetery violence could themselves be clerics, disorder involving burial grounds more often struck a decidedly anticlerical tone.20 When the townsfolk of Rouen formed a commune in the 1190s, for instance, they not only lashed out at priests, but they also destroyed the wall of the city’s cemetery.21 A few years later, to the great dismay of Innocent III, the people of Bergamo, rebelling against their church and attempting “to bring shame upon it … placed public toilets in the cemetery beside the cathedral walls in order to empty their bladders and bowels.”22

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19 20

21 22

(textus alter), 326 (ch. 63). In this case, the consequences were tragic: one boy mortally wounded his friend while the two were shooting arrows in the cemetery. On habitation in cemeteries, see the very thorough study of Pierre Duparc, “Le cimetière, séjour des vivants (XIe – XIIe siècle),” Bulletin philologique et historique jusq’à 1610 du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1964): 483-504. See also Musset, “La cimetière dans la vie paroissiale,” 16-20. A case in point is Duke William’s reference to settlement in Norman cemeteries, made among his statutes at Lillebonne (1080) as handed down in The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, vol. III, 28-30 (bk. 5, ch. 5). Petrus Cantor, Verbum abbreuiatum (textus prior), ed. Monique Boutry, Corpus Chris­ tianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 196A (Turnhout, 2012), 448 (ch. 72). Regarding lay victims of violence in a cemetery (at the hands of other laymen), Bishop Gilbert Foliot handled a case in which knights of Gilbert de Lacy fled for protection into a cemetery as they were being pursued by men of Earl Roger, only to be apprehended and held for ransom. See Gilbert Foliot, Letters and Charters, ed. Z. N. Brooke, Adrian Morey, and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), 130-5 (nos. 94-6). Matthew Strickland discussed the case briefly in War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066-1217 (Cambridge, 1996), 80. For an example of the clergy perpetrating violence in a cemetery, see the case of one Thomas, a cleric of the bishop of Waterford. As part of an ongoing dispute in the early thirteenth century, Thomas was sent to behead the bishop of Lismore in a cemetery and steal a letter from the judge-delegate in the case that might prove prejudicial to the claims of Waterford. See the Regesta of Innocent III, bk. 15, no. 141 (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXVI, col. 655). See the letters of Pope Celestine III, nos. 229 and 230, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCVI, coll. 1116-8. Innocent III, Regesta, bk. 6, no. 184, in Patrologia latina, vol. 215, coll. 201-202. For more on this case, see Edward Coleman, “Sicard of Cremona as Legate of Innocent III in Lombardy,” in Innocenzo III: Urbs et Orbis, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, vol. II (Rome, 2003), 929-53 (especially 934).

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The sentiment unleashed against cemeteries in Rouen and Bergamo reflects the fact that the graveyard was, like the space of the church itself, increasingly a battleground between the clergy and the laity.23 Ecclesiastical elites thus sought to regulate what they saw as inappropriate forms of secular behavior in the cemetery. Reformers were especially dismayed at the prospect of noise and vanity on consecrated soil. The Council of Seligenstadt (1023) tried to halt the “wicked custom” whereby people held “colloquia” in cemeteries.24 In his treatise on penance, Burchard of Worms, himself a participant at Seligen­stadt, addressed the problem of parishioners who spoke frivolously and idly while walking through the churchyard.25 For similar reasons, St. Wulfstan of Wor­ cester later in the eleventh century banned horseback riding in cemeteries.26 Church authorities also tried to crack down on lay habitation within graveyards. In 1150, the monastery of Corvey procured an imperial decree condemning various transgressions by ministerials, including one Rabano who arrogated a “hereditary dwelling” within the confines of the cemetery of Corvey. Ac­ cording to the proclamation, seculars were to have no “beneficium” (presumably here meaning any income-generating property or right) in the cemetery of the monks.27 Corvey also enjoyed immunity from another activity in cemeteries that the monks considered profane, the holding of judicial proceedings by lay officials, a protection extended in 1147 by Conrad to two female houses, Wisbeke and Kemnade, associated with Corvey.28 The prohibition of certain forms of conduct within cemeteries, particularly those associated with the laity, helps explain the considerable emphasis placed on enclosing cemeteries with walls in the twelfth century, to demarcate churchyards as special zones. In the view of Adam of Dryburgh from around 1180, “in our time now,” it was considered normal for a cemetery to be encircled by a wall on all sides.29 Indeed, providing a churchyard with walls was a notable act

23 24 25 26 27

28 29

See Dawn Marie Hayes, Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1389 (New York and London, 2003), 53-69. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XIX, col. 397. See book 19 of Burchard’s Decretum, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXL, col. 976. William of Malmesbury, The Life of Wulfstan, 124 (bk. 3, ch. 11). The document is published as an appendix to the letters of Wibald of Stavelot, Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXXIX, coll. 1497-1500 (dipl. 30), reissued by Frederick Barbarossa two years later (coll. 1502-5 [Dipl. 32]). See the appendix to the letters of Wibald of Stavelot, Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXXIX, coll. 1489-90 (Dipl. 25). Adam of Dryburgh, De tripartito tabernaculo, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXCVIII, col. 690 (pars 2, cap. 5.85).

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of charity.30 Perhaps the most famous example of a cemetery being fenced in comes from Philip Augustus. In 1186 or 1187, the king had the Cimetière des Innocents in Paris surrounded by a “murus lapideus” in order to “cleanse” the sacred place, also known as the “Campelli” (“Champeaux”). Relying on Guillaume le Breton’s epic poem in praise of the king, Philippe Ariès made much of the claim that the cemetery had become a den of prostitution.31 There is reason to doubt the poet’s assertion, however, which would appear to be a creative embellishment. After all, Guillaume himself made no mention of prostitution in his other, prose, account of the king’s restoration of the cemetery, while according to Guillaume’s presumed source, Rigord, the problems in the Champeaux were to be ascribed to merchants hawking their wares. In response, Philip ordered a wall to be built with gates so that the cemetery could be closed at night “on account of the snares of those who descend upon it,” hinting further that crime was a chief concern.32 Yet, while Guillaume le Breton’s association of the Cimetière des Innocents with illicit sex may have been a fiction, it nevertheless echoed a growing concern at the time over the promiscuous behavior of those gathered in graveyards. Around 1123, William of Malmesbury related a cautionary story, apparently originating from Germany, regarding a group of villagers who disturbed the parish priest in the midst of mass by dancing and singing in the adjacent cemetery. The priest asked them to be silent, but they persisted. In retaliation, he called on the church’s patron saint, Magnus the Martyr, to punish the troupe by forcing them to dance and sing for a whole year, unaffected by all sorts of weather, by hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. They ground themselves into the earth up to their knees and thighs. After the bishop of Cologne absolved the dancers and released them from their spell, a number of them perished immediately, while the others slept for three straight days. Some performed miracles 30

31 32

See, for instance, Laurent de Liège’s description (in the Gesta episcoporum Virdunensium) of Abbot Segard of Saint Vannes, who “cimiterium fratrum muro cinxit” [surrounded the brothers’ cemetery with a wall] (Patrologia latina, vol. CCIV, col, 967) and Bernard of Clairvaux’s story about Malachy of Armagh’s construction of a church at Cairngarroch in Scotland, which the saint enclosed by a wall and blessed the space in between as a cemetery, one that subsequently produced miracles. See the abbot’s Vita Sancti Malachiae, ed. J. LeClercq and H. M. Rochais, Sancti Bernardi opera, vol. III (Rome, 1963), 346 (ch. 17 [40]). Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, 70. For the prose histories of Rigord and Guillaume le Breton, see Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, ed. H. François Delaborde, vol. I (Paris, 1882), 70-1, 184-5; for Guillaume’s Philippide, see Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. Delaborde, vol. II (Paris, 1885), 25 (lib. 1, vv. 436-52).

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after death, while the rest were apparently afflicted with a lifelong palsy.33 Near the end of the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales related a similar (if less tragic and more humorous) tale of a priest driven sleepless by revelers outside his church, on which account the priest later erred in chanting the mass. Gerald concluded from the story that “people ought not to devote time to song and dance around churches and cemeteries on the feast days of saints” and cited the seventh-century Council of Toledo, via Gratian, as an authority, though in fact the original canon made no mention of cemeteries, a detail that Gerald would seem to have added on his own.34 Such concerns were soon reflected by Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, whose decree that “dances or shameful and disreputable games, which encourage lewdness, are not to be performed in cemeteries or churches” harked back to much earlier canons against “shameful and wanton songs around churches and cemeteries” transmitted in the collections of Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres.35 Gerald and Stephen did not specifically refer to gender, but for other clerical elites, the presence of women in such performances was seen as especially troubling. Reiner of Liège (d. 1182) lashed out at “choros puellares” [dances of maidens] conducted “penes cimiteria seu corpora defunctorum” [at cemeteries or in the presence of the bodies of the dead].36 A generation later, the statutes of Cardinal Robert of Courson, issued at his legatine councils in Paris (1213) and Rouen (1214) forbade “dances of women” to be conducted “in cemeteries …

33 34

35

36

William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), 294-6 (bk. 2, ch. 174). Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma ecclesiastica, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1862) 119-20 (Dist. 1, c. 43). The text in Gratian is De consecr. D 3, c. 2 (in Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Emil Friedberg, vol. II [Lepizig, 1879], col. 1353). Burchard (Decretum, bk. 3, c. 87, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXL, col. 691) and Ivo of Chartres (Decretum, pars 3, c. 77, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXI, col. 215) both repeat a canon, variously attributed to the Council of Carthage and the Council of Mainz forbidding “canticum turpe atque luxuriosum circa ecclesias atque in atriis ecclesiae” [shameful and wanton song around churches or churchyards]. On Stephen Langton’s statute, see Councils and Synods, vol. II, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964), 35-6 (Canterbury I, c. 60). Reiner claimed to have treated the matter in a now-lost work “De reverentia sacrorum locorum,” mentioned in book two of his De ineptiis cuiusdam idiotae ad amicum, ed. Wilhelm Arndt, Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. XX (Hannover, 1868), 602. Nancy Mandeville Caciola discussed the phenomenon of dancing in cemeteries, its purported connection to demons, and attempts to regulate such activity in “Wraiths, Revenants, and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past and Present 152 (1996): 37-44.

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under cover of any custom.”37 Not only was the cemetery, like the church, becoming a more clerical space, or at least a zone dominated by rules emanating from the clergy, it was also becoming an increasingly male space. If graveyards, as sites of interaction among the living, demanded social control, regulations were also imposed on the cemetery as a collective of the dead. For one, entry into burial grounds was subject to supervision and rules. In theory, sepulture beside one’s parish church was the norm, and some writers trenchantly asserted the virtues of this tradition. Stephen of Muret in the early twelfth century, for example, railed against “the arrogance of those who abandon their proper cemetery.”38 The early Decretists devoted considerable attention to the balance between the rights of traditional sites of burial (an individual’s “parental church”) and the desire of some to be interred elsewhere.39 Over the course of the twelfth century, the consensus swung in favor of choice. Innocent II, for example, voided a decree made by three northern Italian prelates, including the venerable archbishop of Milan, limiting burials in monastic cemeteries; the pope asserted that people were free to choose their place of rest.40 Following this lead, Clement III in 1188 cracked down on the chapter of Marseille, which was attempting to prevent those whose ancestors had been buried in the canons’ church from being laid to rest instead at the monastery of St. Victor.41 In particular, two groups (by no means mutually exclusive) were apt to choose sepulture outside their parental church: patrons and pilgrims. To cite but one example of the former, in his remarkable account of the foundation and early history of the Augustinian house at Chaumousey, Abbot Seher profiled a donor named Leucard, who begged her relatives and made them swear to bury her in the canons’ cemetery after her death, as indeed

37

38 39

40

41

Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXII, col. 843 (Paris, 4.18) and col. 920 (Rouen, 3.19). On Robert and his legations, see especially M. Dickson and C. Dickson, “Le Cardinal Robert de Courson: Sa vie,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen-âge 9 (1934): 53-142. See Stephen’s Sententiarum liber, ch. 50, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCIV, coll. 1108-9. In particular, see the glosses and commentaries on Decretum, C. 13, Q. 1, c .1, including the Summa Magistri Rolandi, ed. Friedrich Thaner (Innsbruck, 1874), 28; Rufinus, Summa decretorum, ed. Heinrich Singer (Aalen, 1963; repr. of Paderborn, 1902), 334-5; the Summa parisiensis, ed. Terence P. McLaughlin (Toronto, 1952), 166; and Stephen of Tournai, Summa, ed. Johann Friedrich von Schulte (Aalen, 1965; repr. of Giessen, 1891), 218. Innocent II, Epistolae et privilegia, no. 506, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXIX, col. 570. For more discussion of choice in burial, its development, theory, and reality, see Megan McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1994), 110-32. See also Bernard, La sepulture, 85-111. Clement III, Epistolae et privilegia, no. 78, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCIV, col. 1378.

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they did.42 Concerning pilgrims, hospital churches were above all granted the privilege of interring those who sought them out. As Innocent III asserted in a letter to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Maguelone (S. France), pilgrims “ought to have free burial everywhere.”43 If inclusion in the cemetery was a matter of frequent controversy and intervention on the part of ecclesiastical authorities, a corresponding (and still more pressing) question was who should be excluded from the congregation of the dead in the churchyard.44 In fact, the twelfth century witnessed considerable discussion (and, one must assume, worry and uncertainty) over who belonged in the cemetery and what sins and crimes might disqualify people from consecrated soil. Gilbert of Limerick, for instance, referred to “other places” near cemeteries where the victims of drowning or homicide were to be disposed of, endorsing, it would seem, a popular prejudice, noted by Christopher Daniell, against sudden death.45 Others, such as Honorius of Autun, disagreed, noting that the manner of one’s passing was itself of no concern, though certain causes of mortality continued to be seen as inherently sinful. Works of pastoral theology like those of John Beleth in the early 1160s and Sicard of Cremona some thirty years later closed cemeteries to the victims of suicide, along with any who were killed in evil-doing such as adultery, unjust war, legerdemain, or “the games of the gentiles.”46 A particular concern (no doubt because of its shock value and utility in scholastic disputation, though the scenario must have been all too frequent in real life) was the macabre 42 43 44

45 46

Seher of Chaumousey, Primordia Calmosiacensia, ed. L. Duhamel, Documents rares ou inédits de l’histoire des Vosges, vol. XII (Paris, 1869), 57 (bk. 2, ch. 1). Innocent III, Regesta, bk. 6, no. 107, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXV, col. 113. On hospital cemeteries in particular, see Musset, “La cimetière dans la vie paroissiale,” 14-5. See partial discussion in Bernard, La sepulture, 113-35, which nonetheless contains very little on the exclusion of excommunicates. The subject has been dealt with more recently by R. C. Finucane, “Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion: Social Ideals and Death Rituals in the Later Middle Ages,” in Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Joachim Whaley (New York, 1981), 54-8. Gilbert of Limerick, De statu ecclesiae, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLIX, col. 1001. Daniell, Death and Burial, 65-70. John Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. Heriberto Douteil, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 41A (Turnhout, 1976), 303-310 (ch. 159); Sicard of Cremona, Mitrale, bk. 9, ch. 50, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIII, coll. 429-430. By “games of the gentiles” John Beleth appears to mean jousting; at the same point in his text, Sicard refers to the scenario of a knight who died “in hastiludio” [in a tournament] being denied cemetery burial. As if to dispel anxiety and confusion, John and Sicard both made clear that those who died in more traditional games or ball playing, however, were to be allowed Christian sepulture.

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question of stillborn babies: lacking baptism, they were, theologians agreed, not to be allowed into consecrated ground. But what about when the mother and baby both died in childbirth? Should the fetus be cut from the mother’s corpse and the two buried separately? Robert Pullen, in the 1140s, argued that while this might appear necessary, for the sake of humanity it is better not to “open the secrets of nature that wish to remain hidden,” but his view was rejected by subsequent thinkers like John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona, who insisted that the baby be removed from the mother’s belly.47 The cemetery was of course particularly off-limits to anyone under ecclesiastical sentence, most notably excommunication. The prohibition of burial for those who transgressed the church’s authority has a long history, and it is reflected in several texts from the eleventh and early twelfth century. Robert of Arbrissel, in his rule for Fontevrault, mandated that the nuns’ graveyard was to be closed to excommunicates, while Pope Eugenius III suspended from orders any priest who knowingly buried the corpses of the excommunicated in the church cemetery at Barjols in Provence.48 Neither were unusual rules. As Gilbert of Limerick noted, echoing a widely-held view, those with whom the church did not communicate in life should likewise be segregated in death and their bodies cast apart from those of the faithful.49 Examples of people under ecclesiastical sentence who were excluded from cemetery burial notoriously included the murderers of Charles the Good. “Excommunicated and not absolved by the bishop,” they were said by Galbert of Bruges to “lie buried outside the cemetery in fields and at crossroads.”50 Some prelates took a harder line, arguing that excommunicates should not be buried at all. The bishops and abbots who took part in the Council of Limoges in 1031 thus not only barred excommunicates from cemetery ground, but also demanded that breakers of the peace were not to be moved from the place where they died, nor covered 47

48 49 50

Robertus Pullus, Sententiae, bk. 3, ch. 3, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXXVI, col. 767. Cf. John Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, 309; Sicard of Cremona, Mitrale, bk. 9, ch. 50, Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIII, col. 430. Regulae sanctimonialium Fontis Ebraldi, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXII, col. 1082; for Eugenius III, see Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXX, col. 1085. Gilbert of Limerick, De statu ecclesiae, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLIX, coll. 1001-2. See Galbert of Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, ed. Henri Pirenne (Paris, 1891), 128 (ch. 84): “quia statim post facinus peractum excommunicati sunt traditores illi, propter rigorem justitiae non sunt ante perditionem nec post ab episcopo absoluti, et ideo in triviis et locis campestribus extra cemiterium sepulti jacent [because those treacherous men were excommunicated immediately after the deed was done, in accordance with the rigor of justice, they were not absolved by the bishop before or after their death, and therefore they lie buried at forks in the road and fields].

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by any “wood, stone, or other protection.”51 A century later, Bishop William of Winchester similarly decreed that the bodies of the excommunicated were to remain “insepulta” [unburied], while those who placed them “within a cemetery either in stone or in wood” were themselves to be sentenced.52 While punitive burials outside the cemetery might take place without any apparent canonical procedure, the exclusion of excommunicates from proper sepulture was generally subject to juridical controls that might, in fact, incline toward leniency.53 Alexander III expressed alarm when he learned that the monks of Tours-sur-Marne, along with a local priest, had excommunicated the lepers of the town and forced them to bury three of their brethren outside the cemetery despite their appeal to Rome.54 More famously, Innocent III elaborated a legal justification for why those who died in a state of excommunication, but with a will to repent, should still be laid to rest in the churchyard.55 Restrictions on ecclesiastical burial also accompanied conditions of interdict, though some churches (particularly those of the regular religious) might selectively be given the privilege of interring their dead despite being under sanction.56 Indeed, the prohibition of sepulture could remain in place even as other rites were permitted to those living within the boundaries of an interdict, as Innocent III explained in his letter allowing the Leónese, subject to sentence 51 52 53

54 55

56

Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XIX, col. 540-2. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, eds., Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, vol. I, part 1 (Oxford, 1981), 801 (c. 6). For an apparently extrajudicial burial outside consecrated ground, see the case of Richard Silvanus, a robber baron in the Avranchin, who was killed and entombed “along the road outside the cemetery” (Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, vol. VI [Oxford, 1978], 490-2 [bk. 13, ch. 32]). Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, no. 1081, in Patrologia latina, vol. CC, col. 949. See Innocent’s decision in favor of an excommunicated “iudex” in Turris (Sardinia) who apparently summoned his archbishop and bishop in order to confess and showed “poenitentiae signa” before he died (Regesta Innocentii III, bk. 6, no. 27, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXV, col. 30). See also Innocent’s ruling in the case of a knight who was excommunicated for attacking a priest and who died, himself the victim of murder, after agreeing to go to Rome for absolution but before he could set out (the letter is found in the collection of Rainer of Pomposa, Q. 94 (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXVI, coll. 1247-9). To cite but two examples from many, see Lucius III’s privilege for the monks of St. Remigius in Reims to bury their own brethren in a time of interdict (Epistolae et privilegia, no. 80, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCI, coll. 1168-1169), and Celestine III’s similar terms for the chapter of Rouen (Epistolae et Privilegia, no. 71 [reissued in no.122], in Patrologia latina, vol. CCVI, coll. 930-931, 996-997). The subject of burial in relation to the use of interdict has been thoroughly treated by Peter D. Clarke, The Interdict in the Thirteenth Century: A Question of Collective Guilt (Oxford, 2007), see especially 160-6.

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owing to the improper marriage between their king and the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile, to celebrate divine services but not to be handed over to ecclesiastical burial.57 Innocent was well aware of the spectacle that would be created as the dead were disposed of outside the cemetery. Indeed, that was precisely the point: in placing England under interdict, the pope specifically commanded that the “bodies of the dead, both clergy and laity, are to be placed especially where passersby might be moved” by the sight.58 The fate of those who died under an explicit sentence of excommunication or interdict was shared, moreover, by others guilty of various wrongdoings. The Second Lateran Council famously refused Christian burial to knights who died in tournament, though Innocent II had issued the same statute earlier at Clermont and Reims.59 Arsonists were liable to a similar punishment in death, as codified in synods held by Innocent II and Eugenius III.60 Confirming that such punishments were indeed carried out, Peter the Venerable told of a wayward Cluniac monk who died in a fire that he himself had started; when the other brethren miraculously discovered his guilt, they cast the suspected arsonist “from the company of the holy bodies and far outside the Christian cemetery.”61 To the list of those barred from sacramental burial can also be added officials who imposed unjust exactions on the church and even nuns and canonesses who failed to live up to the demands of their rule, mostly notably in standards of dress, the observance of strict claustration, and the adoption of the common life, not to mention the eschewing of private property.62 Usury too was, not surprisingly, grounds for ostracizing one from consecrated soil. 57 58 59 60

61 62

Innocent III, Regesta, bk. 2, no. 75, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIV, coll. 610-5. Ad Innocentii III regesta supplementum, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCXVII, col. 191. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXI, 439 (Clermont [1130], c. 9) and 460 (Reims [1131], c. 12). Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXI, 440 (Clermont [1130], c. 13), 461-462 (Reims [1131], c. 17), and 717 (Reims [1143], c. 15). See also the canons of Second Lateran (c. 18) (Alberigo, Conciliorum oecmenicorum, 201). Peter the Venerable, De miraculis libri duo, ed. Dyonisia Bouthillier, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 83 (Turnhout, 1988), 140-2 (c. 24). See especially the statutes of Reims (1143), issued by Eugenius III (Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXI, coll. 714-715 [c. 4 and c. 6]). The peculiar crime of the regular religious holding property can be found in decrees such as those of Lanfranc at London (1074-1075) (see the Vita Lanfranci, ed. Margaret Gibson, in Lanfranco di Pavia e l’Europa del seculo XI, ed. Giulio d’Onofrio [Rome, 1993], 706 [ch. 12]), which references the Rule of Benedict and the teachings of Gregory the Great, and, from a century later, c. 10 of the Third Lateran Council (Giuseppe Alberigo et al., eds., Conciliorum oecmenicorum decreta [Instituto per le Scienze Religiose, 1973], 217), reiterated by Clement III (Decreta, no. 28, in Patrologia latina, vol. CCIV, col. 1492).

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Indeed, Robert of Courson thundered that dogs should eat the flesh of moneylenders and demons carry away their souls.63 Some might even withdraw themselves from the churchyard for perceived sins. The chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny relates the story of a cleric named Peter from William II’s chapel, who was reportedly “impregnated by other men.” After his horrific death (which came as he labored to deliver a “monstrous fetus”), Peter was, in deference to his own orders, buried outside the cemetery “like an ass” because of his shameful life and death.64 The seriousness with which people took sanctions of this manner can be seen in the lengths to which the families of the guilty, especially the rich and powerful, would go to get their deceased relatives into the earth of the graveyard. In 1104 or 1105, for example, Geoffrey of Vendôme complained that Bishop Ranulf of Saintes had accepted a bribe from the wife of Aimeric of Rançon to bury her husband despite his sentence of excommunication.65 Radulf (or Raoul) of Zähringen, bishop of Liège from 1167 to 1191, later cautioned against those who would use force to bury an excommunicate in the churchyard, a problem that Bishop Niels of Schleswig also lamented in a 1213 letter to Innocent III.66 On occasion, the use of exclusion might serve as an incentive to reconciliation between ecclesiastical houses and hostile secular elites. The cartulary of St. Pierre de Bèze contains a lengthy document on the “grove of Rothart,” property of the monastery claimed in part by the family of Hugh “Prepositus.” Only after one of the family members, Brutinus, died in an accident and was denied a Christian burial did the “Prepositales” clan seek peace with the monks of Bèze; in return for surrendering their stake in the grove, the late Brutinus was absolved.67 A similar case is found among the letters of Wibald of Stavelot, who agreed to a settlement with the family of Winand of Lemburch, a lord excommunicated by the abbot for plundering churches and eventually buried outside the cemetery. Following his relatives’ change of

63 64 65 66

67

See the additio (pars 5, c. 5) to the cardinal’s Paris statutes (Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXII, coll. 850-851). Patrologia latina, vol. CLIV, col. 391. This remarkable episode is discussed in more detail by Robert Mills in Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2015), 84. In Geoffroy de Vendôme, Œuvres, ed. Geneviève Giordanengo (Paris, 1996), 106-8 (no. 60). For Raoul’s statutes, see Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXII, col. 7, especially c. 5. Niels’s original letter does not survive; see Innocent’s reply in Regesta, bk. 16, no. 26 (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXVI, col. 815). See the edition of E. Bougaud and Joseph Garnier, Chronique de l’Abbaye de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon suivie de la Chronique de Saint-Pierre de Bèze (Dijon, 1875), 498-500.

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heart, Winand was given proper sepulture.68 At times, prelates could overplay their advantage. In the early 1170s, the bishop of Chalons, Guy de Joinville, was suspected by Pope Alexander III of trying to extort payment from a woman, formerly excommunicated and absolved, by threatening to deny her burial in the cemetery.69 The church, for its part, resorted to still more draconian measures to police the cemetery community. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the frequent recourse to exhumation as a post-mortem punishment. Eleventhcentury examples of guilty corpses being dug up and cast from the graveyard are certainly not unknown. According to the Gesta episcoporum cameracensium, Bishop Albaldus of Cambrai (1010-1027) once exhumed a notorious bully and drunkard from a Frisian village who refused to take communion at Easter, leading his neighbors instead to the local tavern. Though dead for fifteen days already when the prelate took action, the corpse vomited up fresh beer as it was dragged for over a mile by Albaldus.70 Adémar of Chabannes’s account of the canons of Orléans suspected of heresy includes a passage about one Theobald whose complicity was only discovered after his death; once his crime was proved by “men of good character,” Theobald was cast out of the cemetery upon the orders of Bishop Odolric.71 Later in the eleventh century, Lanfranc of Canterbury (1070-1089) ordered that a deceased adulteress named “Lifgiva” be “thrown from the cemetery” until justice was done for her.72 Nor were such exhumations carried out solely through human hands. Supernatural intervention could also expel the sinful from consecrated ground in the eleventh century. According to another story in the Gesta episcoporum cameracensium from 1015 or 1018, when the grave of a thief named Aldo, who plundered the monastery of Saint Ghislain, was opened to bury another body, Aldo’s own corpse was revealed to be entirely gone, proof of the damnation thought to await the impious in hell.73 Not long after this episode, a knight who had preyed upon the church of Saint Pierre in Cahors was buried contrary to the wishes of the local bishop. In the morning, his body was found thrown out of the cemetery. After the body was reinterred, the scene was repeated once again 68 69 70 71 72 73

Wibald of Stavelot, Diplomata varia, no. 27, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXXIX, col. 14931494. Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, no. 891, in Patrologia latina, vol. CC, col. 796. See the edition of L. C. Bethmann, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. 7 (Hannover, 1846), 472-473 (ch. 22). See the Historiarum libri tres, bk. 3, ch. 59, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXLI, coll. 71-72. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, eds., The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford, 1979), 176, no. 60. The story of Aldo is contained in ch. 20 of the Gesta (see note 70 above).

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the following day. Only when he was laid to rest far from the churchyard did the disturbance cease; it was proof of divine affirmation, in the bishop’s eye, that “the excommunicated are justly separated from Christian burial by bishops.”74 Such reports no doubt lay behind the observation of Honorius of Autun that “we read of many [wicked people] who were unearthed, often by demons, and cast far from holy places.”75 Over the course of the twelfth century, the church became emphatic that exclusion from holy ground should be accompanied by the literal ejection of corpses out of the churchyard. This can be seen in the rephrasing of older texts to highlight the act of expulsion itself from the graveyard. In the matter of monks and canons found to have died with hidden property, while Lanfranc had in the 1070s prescribed simply that the guilty “nec in cymiterio sepeliatur” [ought not be buried in the cemetery], Pope Clement III more than a century later stated that one caught in such a crime “not only is to be deprived of Christian burial, but, if it can be done without the greatest scandal, ought to be cast out from it too.”76 Also important was Godfrey of Viterbo’s retelling of a by-then old story, the death and burial of Emperor Henry IV. Whereas an earlier account contained in the Chronicle of St. André de Castres (c. 1133) mentioned only that Henry was “not buried in the cemetery because of the aforementioned excommunication,” Godfrey, writing around 1190, added the detail that the emperor was “a cimiterio eicitur” [cast from the cemetery].77 From the 1140s onward, exhumation, sporadic throughout the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth, steadily gained legal purchase.78 Synodal statutes, beginning with those issued at London (by the papal legate Bishop William of Winchester) and Reims (under the auspices of Pope Eugenius III himself) ordered that the bodies of those excommunicated and illicitly buried were to be cast out of consecrated soil; both William and Eugenius cautioned further against schemes whereby innocent corpses might be fraudulently 74 75 76 77

78

In the proceedings of the Council of Limoges (1031). See Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XIX, col. 541. Elucidarium, pars 4, c. 32, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXII, col. 1156. For Lanfranc, see above note 62. Clement’s decree is contained in his Decreta, no. 28 (Patrologia latina, vol. CCIV, col. 1492). The earlier account can be found in bk. 3, ch. 24 of the Chronicon S. Andreae, ed. L. C. Bethmann, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. 7 (Hannover, 1846), 545. For Godfrey, see his Pantheon, ed. G. Waitz, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. XXII (Hannover, 1872), 255 (ch. 41). By the second half of the thirteenth century, notably, legal formulas would be drafted to demand exhumation. See the example provided by Guillaume Durand (included, without further discussion, in Bernard, La sepulture, 134).

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ejected in lieu of the guilty.79 In his statutes for Toul, Bishop Odo in 1192 commanded that the dead who had been interred “violenter” [by force] in the cemetery during a time of interdict were to be thrown out.80 Starting in the 1170s, exhumation as a judicial penalty appears regularly in papal decretals. Alexander III twice dealt with cases where excommunicates were improperly buried (by the nuns of Saint-Michel outside Arras and, in England, by the Templars and Hospitallers), and in each case the pope ordered the unworthy dead to be disinterred.81 Again, exhumation was subject to due process and, as such, might be challenged. Alexander III thus received a complaint from the Templars that they had been compelled by fear of the pope’s ally (and King Louis VII’s brother), Archbishop Henri of Reims, to unearth a knight suspected of having died under sentence of excommunication, even though, in the view of the Templars, the charge was baseless. If this was true, Alexander wrote, then Henri was to have the knight’s body placed back in the cemetery where he had originally been laid to rest.82 A generation later, Innocent III was similarly free in prescribing exhumation, whether for those buried under sentence of excommunication, convicted of arson, or suspected of heresy. Finally, proving once more that cemeteries could be a stage for the drama of ecclesiastical resistance and reconciliation, particularly between the clergy and the laity, Innocent III heard litigation involving the townspeople of Tortosa in Spain who, defying their bishop’s sentence of excommunication, had buried some one hundred bodies in the cemetery, only to disinter them upon receiving the bishop’s absolution.83 79

80 81 82

83

For William’s statutes, see London, c. 17, in Councils and Synods, vol. I, pt. 1, 803-4. Eugenius III’s similar law is in Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, vol. XXI, col. 720 (c. 16, only found in the “collectio auctior,” [alternate version], of the canons of Reims). For Odo’s statutes, see the edition of Johann Friedrich Schannat and Joseph Hartzheim, Concilia Germaniae, vol. III (Cologne, 1760) 456 (c. 4). Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, nos. 816 and 1173, in Patrologia latina, vol. CC, coll. 747, 1017. Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, no. 753, in Patrologia latina, vol. CC, coll. 690-1. On Alexander’s relationship with Henri, see Myriam Soria, “Alexander III and France: Exile, Diplomacy, and the New Order,” in Pope Alexander III (1159-1181): The Art of Survival, ed. Peter D. Clarke and Anne J. Duggan (Farnham, 2012), 193-5. For cases involving exhumation from Innocent’s pontificate, see the Regesta, bk. 2, no. 14 (arsonists) (Patrologia latina, vol. 214, coll. 546-7); bk. 6, no. 109 (excommunicates) (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIV, coll. 114-21); bk. 9, no. 213 (heresy) (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXV, coll. 1057-8); bk. 10, no. 158 (involving the bishop and people of Tortosa) (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXV, col. 1251); and bk. 13, no. 61 (in which the bishop of Burgos asks for Innocent’s approval to exhume clerics of the church of Santa Maria de Castro Soris who had been buried despite episcopal sentence) (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXVI, coll. 252-4).

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Expulsion of a cadaver from the cemetery was of course a horrifying act. A pair of letters from Hildegard of Bingen disclosed the profound distress that exhumation might inflict upon the living. Around 1178/1179 the renowned abbess poignantly took up the cause of a knight who had been buried in the cemetery of her cloister despite having been excommunicated and, it was charged, never absolved of his sins. Even when her community was placed under interdict, Hildegard, following a vision that she and her fellow nuns would be enshrouded in a dark cloud, refused the order to have the body dug up, fearing it would bring danger on her house.84 The revulsion generated by exhumation might even be marshaled as a form of punishment in its own right, as those convicted of improper sepulture (burying the excommunicated in consecrated ground or, conversely, wrongly denying the righteous their spot in the cemetery) might be sentenced to uncover the rotting corpse and personally carry it to its due place.85 But if exclusion and exhumation were terrifying to the living, what were the implications for the dead themselves? On the one hand, Christian teaching, repeated abundantly in the High Middle Ages, held that the geography of one’s burial was, in effect, irrelevant. As the “magister” reassured his “discipulus” in Honorius of Autun’s Elucidarium, no resting place was a disadvantage to the good, for the whole world is God’s temple and the church pervades it. Yet, Honorius also implied that cemeteries were more favorable places to be buried insofar as the dead “amid [their] torments” might there be more readily aided by the prayers of the living.86 For similar reasons, Peter Abelard insisted on 84 85

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See letters 23 and 24 of Hildegard’s Epistolarium, in Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio mediaeualis 91.1, ed. L. Van Acker (Turnhout, 1991), 61-68. Two cases stand out: according to Adam of Eynsham, Hugh of Lincoln issued a particularly gruesome sentence for the henchmen of a lord who illegally snatched a thief from the church where he sought refuge, hanged the man, and buried him in unconsecrated ground. As bishop, Hugh ordered the guilty to strip to the waist, dig up the body, and carry it a mile to the proper cemetery (see Adam’s Magna vita Sancti Hugonis, ed. Decima L. Douie and Hugh Farmer, vol. II [London, 1962], 157-9 [bk. 5, ch. 13]; shortly after 1200, moreover, the bishop of Auxerre ordered a local count to exhume and carry “on his own shoulders” (“propriis humeris”) a corpse buried in the count’s own courtyard, which he had tried to “turn into a cemetery” because the bishop had placed the magnate’s lands under interdict. See Innocent III, Regesta, bk. 6, nos. 149, 150, and 236 (Patrologia latina, vol. CCXV, coll. 160-4, 266-9). Cf. Honorius’s Elucidarium, ch. 32 (Patrologia latina, vol. CLXXII, col. 1156). Honorius’s views on the efficacy of prayers for the dead associated with cemeteries are echoed by others across the twelfth century. See, for instance, Gilbert of Limerick, De statu ecclesiae, in Patrologia latina, vol. CLIX, col. 1001; and Sicard of Cremona, Mitrale, bk. 9, ch. 50, Patrologia latina, vol. CCXIII, coll. 424-6.

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being laid down in the cemetery of the Paraclete, where Heloise’s nuns “seeing my grave frequently, might be encouraged more fully to pour forth prayers to the Lord on my behalf.”87 It is worth remembering that the intense emphasis on cemeteries seen with particular clarity in the twelfth century came just as ideas of Purgatory solidified their hold on the religious imagination of the Latin West.88 While the torment of souls in the afterlife was not necessarily tied to the fate of bodies in the graveyard, cemeteries were nonetheless associated with purgation. Peter the Venerable told of a vision in which a young monk at Charlieu imagined his uncle, the recently deceased prior of the monastery, summoned into the graveyard, where he was placed before a tribunal and judged in the presence of white-clad men. At the conclusion of the process, the men all exited the cemetery through a large fire; some passed easily, while others lingered for a time.89 Perhaps more strikingly even, the so-called “Purgatory of St. Patrick,” an entrance to the realm of penitence in the underworld, was physically located in a cemetery.90 At the same time, cemeteries were seen increasingly as places where the quick could assist the dead, reflecting subtle changes in how the condition of the deceased, and indeed the purpose of the cemetery, were conceived. The liturgical inheritance of the early Middle Ages emphasized the cemetery as a place of repose where the dead rotted passively and quiescently awaited resurrection. Accordingly, the graveyard might be understood chiefly as an aide-mémoire for the living, calling to mind their own mortality and encouraging sinners to improve their moral conduct. Peter Damian referred to such a heuristic use of cemeteries when applauding a monk of great discipline who, whenever he had a lustful thought, imagined himself walking through a churchyard, witnessing the worms and putrescence consuming the people interred there, and meditating grimly that, when alive, they too had been subject to the same temptations as 87 88

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See The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. David Luscombe and Betty Radice (Oxford, 2013), 154 (ep. 3). The classic treatment is, of course, that of Jacques LeGoff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1984), 130-234 especially. LeGoff argued that a doctrine of Purgatory did not coalesce until around 1170. This has been challenged by, among others, Alan Bernstein, who would push the development of notions of “purgatorial fire” back to before 1100. See his review of LeGoff in Speculum 59 (1984): 179-83. See also McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints, 17-19. Peter the Venerable, De Miraculis, 158-61 (c. 31). See the edition of Eduard Mall, “Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium der heiligen Patricius,” Romanische Forschungen 6.2 (1889): 149. The text is described at length by LeGoff, The Birth of Purgatory, 193-201, though he does not mention the link with a cemetery.

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he, and that he, after death, would decay like they did.91 Similarly, Petrus Alfonsi recounted the story of “a certain philosopher” who, in walking through a cemetery, came upon a tomb inscription reminding viewers of death and dissolution. After reading the epitaph, the philosopher reportedly abandoned the world to become a hermit.92 In accounts such as those of Peter Damian and Petrus Alfonsi, the dead housed in the cemetery were fundamentally inert. Yet starting by the turn of the twelfth century, a different view of the graveyard can be glimpsed, one in which the dead actively responded to the living who came to their aid and even reciprocated with assistance of their own. Around 1100, Raoul of Saint Sépulcre related a story about Bishop Lietbert of Cambrai (d. 1076). The prelate was said to have made a habit of visiting churches at night, in the course of which vigils he once entered a cemetery, where he silently commended the souls of the dead to God. As if on cue, the “spirits of the buried” responded with an audible “Amen.”93 Nowhere were the dead more engaged, however, than in the Cistercian Exordium magnum. Among the miracles cataloged by Conrad of Eberbach are several in which the departed express gratitude to those praying for them in the graveyard and even offer aid to the living. In one story, the text describes a “certain man of the world” who nevertheless always said a “devout prayer for the souls of the faithful” when passing through a cemetery. When he himself was on the verge of death, and his parish priest was too lazy to come perform last rites, the nearby dead rose from their tombs to “praise the Lord with sweet melody together and chant the office of commendation solemnly” for their loyal friend. Still more tangible succor was rendered to a knight who never failed to recite the Lord’s Prayer when walking through a churchyard. The warrior later found himself chased by rivals into a cemetery. Holding true to his practice, he paused for the Pater Noster, knowing that this would probably allow his pursuers to catch up with and kill him. The knight was saved, however, by the souls of the cemetery’s inhabitants, appearing as an armed

91 92 93

Peter Damian, De perfecta monachi informatione, ch. 3, in Patrologia latina, vol. CXLV, coll. 723-4. Petrus Alfonsi, Die Disciplina Clericalis des Petrus Alfonsi, ed. Alfons Hilka and Werner Söderhjelm (Heidelberg, 1911), 48 (ex. 32). See Raoul of Saint-Sépulcre, Vita Sancti Lietberti, ed. Adolph Hofmeister, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, vol. XXX.ii Leipzig, 1934), 859 (ch. 45). Scattered stories of the “lively” dead in graveyards can be found in the earlier eleventh century and before. See, for instance, Nancy Mandeville Caciola’s discussion of Thietmar of Merseburg in Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2016), 117-56.

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band to protect him.94 Exclusion and expulsion from consecrated soil thus mattered a great deal in the High Middle Ages because the cemetery came to be understood as a place where the living and the dead formed one society bound together by ties of mutual obligation. 94

Exordium Magnum Cisterciense, ed. Bruno Griesser, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaeualis 138 (Turnhout, 1994), 405-12 (dist. 6, cc. 5-6). See also dist. 6, c. 7, about a Cluniac monk-priest who prayed for the dead in the cemetery, in response to whose “requiscant in pace” [may they rest in peace] the inhabitants of the churchyard replied “Amen.”

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Chapter 11

The Corpse as Testimony: Judgment, Verdict, and the Elizabethan Stage* Thea Tomaini

Fascination with death and the dead in Early Modern England is rooted in a myriad of earlier attitudes toward the role of the corpse in society, especially concerning folkloric beliefs, local traditions, and literary sources. But after the crisis of the King’s Great Matter and the establishment of the Church of England changes in ecclesiastical policy demanded an adaptation of attitudes toward the corpse. Henrician ecclesiastical policies discouraged belief in the visitation of revenants or ghosts, whose pleas for prayers were meant to secure their release from Purgatory. Seeing ghosts or animated dead men, says Ludwig Lavater throughout his book on the subject, was likely either a trick of the devil or that of a corrupt priest – or perhaps a sign of madness or melancholy.1 Other Protestant theologians agreed: without a Purgatory to hold them, dead men could not revisit the living, nor could they relay messages to the living, as it was abominable to think that spirits could wander the cosmos freely.2 Despite these warnings from theologians and self-proclaimed demon hunters, Medieval ghost, revenant, and corpse beliefs persisted among all classes of people, but especially among the Commons, for whom local traditions and folkloric beliefs were very strong. Amid the changes in official policy regarding the dead, ancient corpse beliefs offered stability and comfort, even about such a discomforting thought as the dead communicating from beyond the grave. One such belief concerned the ancient tradition that a corpse could retain a certain level of sensibility, especially in the days immediately following the person’s death.3 The sensibility of the corpse was believed to have a purpose: it was meant to protect the dead from the injustice of the living in cases of * Many thanks to the staff of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, and the Doheny Library at the University of Southern California. 1 Ludwig Lavater, Of Ghosts and Spirits That Walk by Night…, trans. Robert Harrison (London, 1596). 2 See John Frith, A Disputacyon Of Purgatorye... (London, 1537); also James I. Daemonologie (1597) (London, 2002); and Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584). 3 Sarah Tarlow, Ritual, Belief, and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2011), 128-29.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_013

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murder. The “bier-rite,” as it was called, held that a corpse would bleed in the presence of its murderer, or otherwise identify the murderer via an immediate material reaction.4 A similar belief rooted in the Medieval folklore of the West Country and Welsh border lands (and that migrated to urban areas like London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) held that no grass would grow over the grave of a person who was murdered or where a person has been hanged.5 Beliefs about the sensibility of the corpse were long part of a poetic and artistic tradition of tales of revenants bearing didactic messages for the living, such as the many variations on the theme of The Three Living and The Three Dead.6 These beliefs were also a strong part of the exempla tradition in sermons that relied on stories of visits from grotesque revenants to emphasize the fact that murder would not go unseen or unpunished. These literary traditions worked their way onto the Elizabethan stage, where the sensibility of the corpse became a favorite device of London’s playwrights. The bier-rite and the belief that the corpse of a murdered person would mark its burial site was used often by Shakespeare, Middleton, Webster, Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson, and many others. Two Elizabethan plays employ this device in particular: The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd (1587-88), and the Anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592). In each play the corpse of a murdered person is given the opportunity to “speak” to its condition and identify the murderer or murderers; but in each of these examples the playwright adapts the well-known device of the bier-rite, adding variations to the circumstances of the crime, adding intricacies of character type to the perpetrators of the crime, and thus adding levels of meaning that serve to modernize an ancient folk tradition and make it relevant to late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century life in London. These playwrights are motivated in part by the complexities of the Reformation and its aftermath, as changes in ecclesiastical policy demand the revision of traditional beliefs about the relationship between a society and its dead. They are also motivated by changes in the legal system in England during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Although these changes did not refer specifically to the bier-rite or to the sensibility of the corpse, they did in effect “rewrite” the relationship between the dead – namely murder victims – and the living by way of the development of the jury trial during the sixteenth century.

4 Subha Mukherji, Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2006). 5 Jaqueline Simpson, Folklore of the Welsh Border (New Jersey, 1967), 52; also, Cora Lynn Daniels and C. M. Stevans, Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences (London, 1903), facs. repr. Honolulu, 2003. 3 vols., vol III, 1241 and 1299. 6 See especially BL MSS Arundel 83 f.127, Harley 2917, f. 119r, and Harley 2953, f. 19v.

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According to the bier-rite and similar beliefs about the condition and/or location of the body of a murder victim, the corpse employs its limited but critical sensibility to identify its murderer. The interpretations of the bier-rite on the Early Modern stage include various corporeal ways in which a corpse might identify its murderer or insist upon justice for the victim by way of its condition. The corpse bleeds in the murderer’s presence in The Spanish Tragedy to identify the murderers of Horatio. The same thing happens in Arden of Faversham, but in Arden the playwright goes further: no grass will grow on the spot where Arden’s body is buried and the stain of Arden’s blood will not wash from the floor. In these plays the corpse rather than a ghost or revenant “speaks” truth to justice (or attempts to).7 The testimony of the corpse brings the audience of the play as close to the voice of the murder victim as possible apart from total reanimation of the body. This relationship on the stage functions as an allegory for the process of murder trials in the Elizabethan criminal courts. As Subha Mukherji points out in her study of law in Early Modern drama, the bier-rite was an acceptable, albeit symbolic, form of testimony in the minds of most people and was believed to be a viable form of proof in the courts. She says, “Clearly, the bier-rite was thought effective as evidence in bringing the guilty party to confession, affliction of the conscience being often inseparable from a psychologically strategic use of the discourse of providential discovery.”8 The bier-rite was presumed to provoke a confession on the part of the murderer, thereby replacing the nonvocal testimony of the corpse with the more legally sound voice of the perpetrator in confession. The testimony of the corpse communicates with the court in a Providential sense, from which can only proceed the truth. As Sarah Tarlow states in her study of death and ritual in Early Modern Britain, the proper ordering of society could be formulated through the dead body itself in this way; social order could be maintained via the corpse.9 The visibility of guilt was of extreme importance to Early Modern criminal law: as Mukherji points out, brandings, slittings or cuttings of the ears or nostrils, or the wearing of certain items of clothing in public cooperate with the idea that the body of the accused should be made to speak his or her guilt apart from his or her actual voice.10 Although there are no records of the bier-rite actually performing the witnessing of corpses, Mukherji shows that Diocesan Records in Ely, for example, 7 8 9 10

The ghost of Andrea in The Spanish Tragedy speaks truth to justice, but on his own behalf rather than on behalf of Horatio, a secondary victim. Mukherji, 115. Tarlow, 104. Mukherji, 122.

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demonstrate that the courts both allowed and anticipated Providential interference of this type.11 Thomas Beard, in The Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597), claims that the bier-rite has been used and remains effective in court.12 Moreover, Beard claims that the crimes of the accused will be apparent on the body even if no court case is brought: adulterers will be marked with the pox, for example; and should the accused die unrepentant, his or her corpse will turn black and stink.13 Beard was influenced by Calvin himself, who wrote that God ordained that secret, hidden, or suppressed evidence of serious crimes should be made visible to human agents of His law, so that justice might be done.14 There were also stories of precedent cases that thrilled and captivated the public at the time: the legend of Pope Formosus was well known, for example. Hauled out of his grave by his later successor Pope Steven VI, Formosus was tried posthumously in a spectacle that came to be known as The Cadaver Trial. Steven VI demanded that the corpse of Formosus be brought to the Vatican court and sit as defendant for his crimes of unworthiness to the Papal seat.15 The Reformer John Bale made much of the incident in his work The Image of Both Churches.16 Another well-known incident involved the exhumation and burning of the bones of the Lollard John Wycliffe in 1415. Although Bale and his protégé John Foxe wrote about the incident from a Reformist perspective against Catholic clergy (with Foxe providing a dramatic woodcut depicting the event),17 the Catholic Church also documented similar incidents for heresy trials. The Inquisition in Spain and Portugal also tried and burned suspected heretics posthumously via the spectacle of the Auto da Fe.18 Such incidents demonstrated that God was concerned about the entire process of justice. A corpse could stand as the accused, be defended by a lawyer, and be judged by a jury. Its condition might even act as testimony – in the case of Pope Formosus, the desiccated and grotesque condition of his corpse “proved” his unworthiness for the Papal office because it showed corruptibility of the flesh. Another rumor swirled around the corpse of Thomas Becket: it 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

Mukherji, 115; also, Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records E9/6/5v. Thomas Beard, Theatre of God’s Judgements (London, 1597), 303-304. Later, John Rainolds would make a similar claim in The Triumphs of God’s Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sinne of (Willful and Premeditated) Murder (London, 1621). Beard, 64 and 369. John Calvin, Treatise Concerning Offenses, trans. Arthur Golding (London, 1567), 227. Wendy Reardon, The Deaths of the Popes (Jefferson NC, 2010), 67. John Bale, The Image of Both Churches, ed. Gretchen Minton (London, 2013), 187. Bale, 187 and John Foxe, Acts and Monuments. 5 Books (London, 1563), Book V, 157. For an overview of role of the corpse in the Auto da Fe, see Luis Corteguera, Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition (Pennsylvania, 2012).

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held that Thomas Cromwell’s revision of the Becket legend included a posthumous trial, for which Becket was required to appear to stand trial for charges of treason and rebellion. According to the story (first chronicled and largely invented by Chrysostom Henriquez in the seventeenth century), Becket was called upon by the Pope to defend himself from beyond the grave. If he failed to appear within thirty days, judgment would be given against him. The thirty days allegedly came and went; Becket did not appear in court, and Cromwell went ahead with the dissolution of the Canterbury shrine, on the orders of Henry VIII.19 This sensational story is almost pure rumor; what little bearing it has in fact is based on a misinterpretation of Henriquez’s Latin in the most popular printed edition chronicling the purported event.20 Still, the rumor was known to Elizabethans, who as Peter Roberts suggests, appreciated at the very least the theatricality of the idea. Peter Roberts suggests that the “trial” was part of an actual stage drama rather than court theatrics. He discusses the possibility of a lost Becket play in his article “Politics, Drama, and the Cult of Thomas Becket.”21 Alternately, D. R. Woolf suggests that some form of judicial procedure did indeed take place. He cites a letter from Thomas Knight, writing from Valencia, to Thomas Cromwell in which he reports that everyone wanting news from England wishes to know about what has become of “the Saint of Canterbury.”22 In either case (or in the case of both events), the dramatic value of the rumor was precisely the point. These stories, rumors, and claims that illustrate the legend of the bier-rite and its many variations have little to do with whether a corpse brought into the assize courts would really bleed in the presence of its murderer, whether the 19 20

21 22

David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Brittaniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), 3 vols., vol. III, 83536. The passage, which is very ambiguous, appears in Wilkins, 835-36: “Sanctum citandum in region concilio esse, ubi ejus causa juridice erat decidenda, ut eam val defenderet, vel defendi cerneter, sub poena, quod contra illum per contumaciam procederetur.” Those who chose to do so interpreted it thus: The Pope and his Councilors will proceed with their sentence (i.e., that Becket’s shrine is to be broken up and the proceeds given to the king) unless he can either defend himself or have someone else defend him. Here, Wilkins records Henriquez’s misinterpretation of the Latin. Henriquez took literally what was intended as an ironic metaphor within the “legalese.” Peter Roberts, Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), 216. D. R. Woolf, “The Power of the Past: History, Ritual, and Political Authority in Tudor England,” in Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth: Deep Structure, Discourse, and Disguise, ed. Paul Fideler and T. F. Meyer (London, 1992), 42, n. 24; Thomas Knight, “Letter to Thomas Cromwell”, 5 October 1538. L&P, XIII. ii. 542.

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condition of a corpse would really speak to the moral character of the deceased, or whether anyone, even a saint, would return from the dead to defend his honor. The legend of the bier-rite has to do with public expectations of Providential influence on the justice system. Justice was possible because God willed it, and it was therefore up to the courts to bring the truth to light. Elizabethan playwrights like Kyd and the author of Arden understood that their audiences appreciated the dramatic elements of the bier-rite and the stage violence that accompanied it. They knew that audiences looked to the stage for the performance of fantasies concerning the ideals of contemporary life. In the case of the murder of Arden of Faversham, Holinshed’s Chronicle23 made much of the legend that Arden’s corpse marked the spot where his murderers dumped it. Even if such information was not used to produce confessions on the part of the conspirators, many believed that it could have done so, that Providence was ready to show the way to the truth. Publications like Beard’s and Calvin’s appropriate the textuality of God’s law in holy scripture and inscribe it onto the body of the accused or, as in the bier-rite, of his or her victim. On the stage, the bier-rite and related phenomenal or uncanny events accompany scenes in which the accusation of murder is either imminent or in progress. The corpse gives its testimony at a critical time to reflect the playwright’s desire to demonstrate the role of Providence in bringing issues of justice or revenge in the play to fruition. This is not the same situation as when a ghost appears on the stage to demand justice or accuse its murderer. Early Modern plays are rife with ghosts, and in The Spanish Tragedy the play’s first murder victim, Andrea, oversees the play’s events. But Andrea is not an agent for justice, or even for revenge, as the character Revenge reminds him in III.xv. The ghost of Andrea must watch and wait for justice to unfold by way of the corpse of Horatio, the play’s “material” witness. This focus on materiality and witnessing when it comes to the testimony of the corpse reflects the awareness of Elizabethan playwrights and their audiences of the developments of criminal law during the latter half of the sixteenth century. This is especially true because the testimony of the corpse is directed at the audience as well as at the characters on the stage. The audience functions as a jury of special circumstance, and their judgments of the actions onstage help produce the play’s reconciliation with justice – at least, if all goes well. Such a subtle, but consequential inclusion of the audience in this way would not have surprised anyone 23

Raphael Holinshed, An Historical Description of The Land of Britain, with a Briefe Rehearsal of the Nature and Qualities of the People of England [Holinshed’s Chronicle] (London, 1587).

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living in London in the late sixteenth century: there had been recent developments in the jury trial system that made such an enfranchisement of the audience seem familiar. As John Langbein states in his study of criminal law in Renaissance Europe, there was a latent, but real desire in the sixteenth century for trials to reflect God’s immediate judgment.24 This latency was due to the gap left by the elimination of the ordeal system from criminal trials. After the ordeal was eliminated in 1222, there developed a cultural yearning for the kind of security once offered by the ordeal system – it guaranteed that justice was instantly verifiable. There is a very wide gap between the thirteenth century and the sixteenth; but as Langbein points out, during the sixteenth century the huge changes in belief, church and state leadership, and ecclesiastical policy brought old issues to light concerning people’s trust in their system of justice and governance. Old fears about the persistence of heresy and the instability of the justice system were “clad in the garb of a different era and set of attendant issues,”25 but nonetheless proved resilient in the sixteenth century. Over time, the cultural yearning for the security provided by rituals like the ordeal system followed the gradual modernization of the ancient belief of the bier-rite. This belief combined with revenant legend to produce a strong folkloric tradition that was well-cited as exempla in sermons. The biggest problem in the wake of the ban on ordeals, Langbein says, is that there was no longer a priest who stood as a figure representing God’s justice. From the thirteenth century to the early sixteenth, criminal trials developed the use of the jury to determine the validity of testimony.26 Says Langbein, “This development caused a crisis in secular legal systems; namely, the courts were used to affirmation by the Church and/or its agents that Providence had a voice in the pursuit of justice. Upon the abolition of ordeals the courts still desired alternatives that provided a similar assurance.”27 The Inquisitional process of the later Middle Ages, with its questionnaires and proofs, provided one alternative that was considered rational and stable. It derived some of its authority from the Roman-canon system and it had a strong focus on professional judges examining the case, and the accused, in secret;28 but by the sixteenth century the Church of 24 25 26 27 28

John H. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, and France (Cambridge MA, 1974), 134. Langbein, 137. Langbein, 134-36. Langbein, 135. Lorna Hutson, “Rethinking the Spectacle of the Scaffold: Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy.” Representations 89, No. 1 (Winter 2005): 34.

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England was no longer connected to the traditional Inquisitional process of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Juries in England were developing a model that had a closer relationship to the bench than before.29 Crimes like homicide and manslaughter were not tried in the same manner or spirit as those of heresy or witchcraft.30 Still, the public desired the same emotional gratification that the Inquisitorial system guaranteed – evidence of God’s immediate judgment. The assizes became increasingly secularized during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and by the late sixteenth century juries were no longer self-informing, but based their verdicts on evidence and testimony. Though guided by the bench, the jurors were allowed to weigh all the evidence they received from the prosecution and the testimony they received from the witnesses.31 The development of the prosecution is therefore one of the most important developments of the era. Despite the focus on evidence, juries were nonetheless exposed to information of various quality once they were sworn. They took much of this information, including rumors, gossip, common fame testimony, and even stories of uncanny events like the bier-rite, from pretrial activity that was not presented by the prosecution.32 Juries took judicial instruction, but jurors often took it upon themselves to set an example for the community. As Thomas Andrew Green states, Medieval juries had two overlapping and presumably complementary duties: to state what they knew, and to render a verdict. They were not under a duty to know all the facts. They might, and often did, say they did not know the truth of the matter, but they were not to suppress what they did know or to avoid the opportunity to become better informed.33 Green speaks of confrontations between juries and defendants, of juries’ assessments of the defendants’ intent, and of juries’ frequent desire to overlook some aspects of a crime because of a deeper concern with other behaviors on the part of the defendant.34 29

30 31 32 33 34

Langbein, 135; also, Hutson, 35. This paper focuses on the assize courts, and not on Crown cases. It also focuses on the relationship between juries and defendants who did not claim benefit of clergy or sanctuary. Langbein, 137. Thomas Andrew Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800 (Chicago, 1985), 105-106. Green, 109. Green, 138. Green, 121-122.

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These developments in the jury system are connected to the efforts of the Tudor monarchs to refine the legal process not for the purposes of any sort of accuracy or fact-based correctness, but for the purposes of promoting their legal system, and their fledgling dynasty, as ideal. Ronald Broude notes that Tudor theory of self-government focused strongly on the government’s singular ability to create a legal institution apart from the Inquisitorial model; the Tudors sought to produce a sophisticated operation of statute justice.35 As Green states, these refinements of the legal process “… have the deceptive look and feel of carefully planned Tudor governmental machinery.”36 Indeed, it does look that way – and more so, it looks like drama. The legal profession in Elizabethan England was well-represented in the theatre, with lawyers, justices of the peace, mediators, and law students popping up in dozens of plays by every major playwright. Law students, lawyers, and potential jurors attended performances often; ironically, the theaters were often in trouble with the law and were regularly accused of trying to subvert it. As Dennis Kezar states, theater and law were relevant to each other and participated with each other to the extent that they can be considered an institutional co-presence.37 He says, “There are no stable epistemological boundaries between theatrical and legal performance, between dramatic and legal representation, between audiences and juries.”38 One is therefore the theory and practice of the other at the same time under certain circumstances. In The Spanish Tragedy and Arden of Faversham, the testimony of the corpse is a performance of the theatricality of the trial system. It provides a dialogue between drama and the law via the narrative of the corpse. A similar type of dialogue takes place between drama and the law via the body of an actor in a speaking role; but in the case of the narrative of the corpse the murder victim provides the audience with hidden evidence for which there are few or no reliable witnesses. The corpse itself determines the nature of the crime – in this case murder – and presents it to the audience who, jury-like, are invited to make an appropriate judgment. There is no effort on the part of any of the playwrights discussed here to call for legal reform outright, nor do their plays provide direct commentary on the legal system. Their plays reflect an awareness of deep cultural issues regarding the role of Providence in the justice 35 36 37 38

Ronald Broude, “Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England.” Renaissance Quarterly 28, No. 1 (Spring, 1975): 42-5. Green, 111. Solon and Thepsis: Law and Theatre in the English Renaissance, ed. Dennis Kezar (South Bend, IN, 2007), 2. Kezar, 6.

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system, and they reflect an understanding of changes in society that were known to their audiences. The playwrights discussed here are aware of the changing times, and their use of the testimony of the corpse reflects their acknowledgment of the difficulty of bringing justice in cases of murder, especially when, as each play shows, the authorities charged with prosecuting murder are either corrupt, as in The Spanish Tragedy, or inadequate, as in Arden of Faversham. In this sense also Elizabethan playwrights had a precedent: as Green notes, prosecutorial authorities lacked a coherent strategy for dealing with serious crimes like murder and responded in various and inconsistent ways.39 As Ronald Broude explains, “Responsibility for investigating most acts of violence fell to the constables and justices of the peace, who, already overburdened with duties, and often unequal to the tasks entailed by their offices, had neither training, time, nor inclination sufficient to render them effective in this capacity.”40 Worse, the integrity of justices of the peace and bailiffs was often suspect. A lucky or clever criminal such as Black Will of Arden of Faversham might well be able to escape capture, as indeed he nearly does. In such a case, the audience must compensate for a lack of prosecutorial efficiency in the play with their judgment as an impromptu jury. Moreover, a corrupt member of the aristocracy like Lorenzo might be able to keep a murder, even of a prominent member of society like Horatio, secret. In this case, the audience is permitted to imagine itself as enfranchised in the arcane inner workings of aristocratic power to bring about justice where it is hidden by its own members. As each play resolves its issues with revenge, with other forms of retribution, or with long-awaited prosecutorial action, it rewards the audience members/jurors for their juridical participation with the emotional gratification of poetic justice they desire. They receive the assurance that their verdict of “guilty” is correct, and that revenge, retribution, or prosecutorial action is supported by Providence. Broude states that this is one reason why English audiences were so attracted to elaborate themes of revenge, retribution and Providential justice on the stage – and he reminds his reader that acts of retaliation had long been considered an inalienable right, saying, “The ancient principles of the blood feud, instituted by the Normans, were still on the books in Elizabethan England, especially the system of appeals by which prosecution of the offender could be initiated by the victim or his kin.”41 Tudor political theory in fact reflected the values of the developing Protestant

39 40 41

Green, 148. Broude, 52. Broude, 46-7 and 53.

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theology that emphasized Divine wrath and avengement, and the violence that was necessary to its implementation.42 The basis for such an examination of violence, justice, and the Elizabethan stage is generally Foucaultian,43 but with important exceptions. Foucault’s theory of the spectacle of violence in Renaissance tragedy applies only partly where the testimony of the corpse and the juridical audience is concerned. Although Foucault’s ideas regarding spectacular violence and law on the stage refer appropriately to the awareness of playwrights and audiences of the Tudor regime’s desire to construct truths that are reflected throughout society, Foucault downplays the role of the community in this construction and does not recognize the importance of the role played by the audience as a jury. Foucault does not take into consideration the empowerment of the audience in this regard, and he does not include the juridical role of the audience in the spectacle of avengement, punishment, and justice. Instead, he places nearly all the power to create meaning via the spectacle of violence onto the State. But his view is only partly satisfactory, not only in terms of the role played by the audience as a jury but in terms of the ability of the corpse to communicate with the audience on that basis. The spectacle of the corpse functioning as a form of testimony relies on the enfranchisement of the audience in the system of justice to which it refers. This refutation of Foucault’s theory based on the audience’s view of justice is corroborated by Lorna Hutson, who provides a detailed refutation of Foucault on this subject. She states that Foucault’s analysis of law and order, especially as it concerns stage violence for avengement and punishment “misleadingly overlooks the lay participation that was characteristic of English criminal justice.”44 She argues – as does this chapter – that there are important epistemological differences between an analysis of spectacular stage violence that take into consideration the developments of the jury trial in the sixteenth century and an analysis that limits itself to a focus on the power of the Crown.45 There is an additional connection between the audience and the corpse as a testimonial witness in its own right. Foucault’s understanding of Tudor monarchic power is related to that of Kantorowicz:46 Foucault posits that the State controls theological claims to 42 43 44 45 46

Broude, 48. Especially concerning Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977). Lorna Hutson, “Rethinking the Spectacle of the Scaffold: Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy,” Representations 89, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 30-58. Hutson, 30-58, esp. 31-2. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1957) (Princeton, NJ, 1981).

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truth via methods based on adaptations of the Continental Inquisitorial model, and that this power structure is reflected in violence on the stage. But Hutson is correct in her assertion that in Foucault’s view there is no room for the relationship between early modern English theatre and early modern penal culture concerning lay participation in judgment.47 She says, “We should not overlook the possibility that the detection of criminality and the right to judge it may have figured in popular English consciousness as, at least in part, the responsibility of the people.”48 This is not a complete denial of Foucault’s view – Foucault does relate stage violence (including the presence of corpses) to a system of evidentiary logic – but it is a call for a reassessment of the role of the audience and its relationship to the spectacularized violence on the stage, and the corpse produced by that violence. Specifically, audiences made up of commoners (some of whom qualified for jury service) often had different ideas of what constituted evidence than the State did. In Foucault’s argument, says Hutson, the system of evidence related to violence on the stage “bears no relation to the English understanding of evidence or of what constitutes or who decides the ‘truth’ of what happened in a criminal case.”49 There is an important connection between these “truths” and the corpse as the bearer of testimony apart from other (living) characters who may be witnesses. Through what Hutson calls “the forensic rhetoric of plot,”50 the corpse on the stage testifies for jurors ready and willing to form opinions and make their judgments. This relationship is informed by the monarchic power of the State, but it operates within its own unique rhetorical milieu; namely, that the testimony is located in the corpse itself rather than in a living witness.51 The corpse 47 48 49

50

51

Hutson, 31. Ibid. Hutson, 33-4. Hutson convincingly refutes the work of J. S. Cockburn regarding jury trials. Cockburn downplays the importance of juries and their evaluation of evidence, arguing instead that juries were not very capable of weighing evidence or facts, and that their relationship with the bench was one of deference and intimidation. See Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Jury in England, 1200-1800, ed. J. S. Cockburn and Thomas A. Green (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 158-81. Hutson, 32. This theory does not automatically lean toward the classical model. There is much difference between the legal issues in Greco-Roman drama and that of the assize courts in sixteenth-century England. Still, the connection between the corpse as testimony and the “forensic rhetoric of plot” is derived from issues found in Senecan drama, which is well known to have formed the basis of the dramatic education of the Elizabethan playwrights. See Hutson, 32-3. See Cicero and Quintillian regarding the argumentorum loci. Cicero, De Inventione, trans. Harry Mortimer Hubbel (Cambridge, MA, 2006); and Quintillian, Insitutio Oratoria (Cambridge, MA, 1988).

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represents the voice of Providence because the murder victim is dead and is now party to irrefutable truths of the case unknown to the living. This rhetorical milieu is part of an important public symbolism that serves as a reminder that spectacular violence on the early modern stage is not purely gratuitous. As Huston Diehl remarks in his study of iconography in Renaissance tragedy, audience members were, variously, “emblem readers, impress makers, church goers, pageant watchers, and masque participants,” who understood that violence on the stage indicated broad ethical and moral concepts. 52 Many of them were also lawyers, clerks, and jurors (even Thomas Kyd himself was once a legal scrivener). Elizabethan plays that depict the crime of murder permit the audience to play out a wish-fulfillment fantasy that is closely related to a real-life experience for much of the audience: the opportunity to serve on a jury and participate in the justice system. Men who owned property or who had a trade or career could serve on juries, and could therefore connect strongly with the experience of being an audience member/juror weighing the testimony of the corpse at a play. But this experience was also important for those who could not serve: namely women, and those men who were excluded because of their class or station. The employment of the audience as jury via the testimony of the corpse provides audience members with the opportunity to participate in ways they otherwise could not. They could have access to the evidence, they could see a reenactment of the crime, and they could witness the exposure of hidden or secret information by Providence. Although their “cases” were dramatized for the stage, audiences functioning as jurors for the murders depicted onstage had the same basic freedom as jurors serving in the assize courts: they could accept or reject testimony and reach a verdict based on their assessment of the facts as they knew them. Their “verdict” had no bearing in reality, but it served to benefit public attitudes toward crime, punishment, and the judicial system and to make people feel enfranchised in the course of justice much the way news networks, social media, and blogs incite audiences to come to ersatz verdicts for high profile criminal cases in the twenty-first century.53 Indeed, some Elizabethan audience members no doubt experienced more satisfaction 52 53

Huston Diehl, “The Iconography of Violence in English Renaissance Tragedy.” Renaissance Drama 11, Tragedy (1980): 28. Note especially the murder trials of O. J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, Jodie Arias, George Zimmerman, Scott Peterson, and Amanda Knox, in which dramatic coverage and reenactments of the crime on news networks, blogs, social media, and made-for-TV films produced ersatz verdicts based on the deliberations of the public apart from court proceedings. In some cases, people arrived at their verdicts before the court trials began.

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regarding this wish-fulfillment and taste of freedom than others, especially those who wished to serve but could not because of their social standing. These audience members also stood to gain satisfaction from their theatrical experience knowing that some who were entitled to serve had no desire to do so. Green reports various problems with jurors who were ambitious members of the middle class and who, upon reaching a higher social standing, dodged their duty, as it was no longer considered fashionable.54 These issues argue against the idea that stage violence in the Elizabethan era was merely gratuitous, or that it served the elite purpose of producing allegories that ignored the everyday experiences and social values of the audience. Although stage violence did, as Huston Diehl argues, create iconographic representations of Tudor state violence in a wide moral and ethical sense,55 it nevertheless remains that the symbolism of Elizabethan stage violence can be judged by a second type of moral criteria – particularly that of everyday people. In the case of The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd challenges his audience’s ambivalence toward the practice of public hanging by using the spectacle as a precursor to the testimony of the corpse later in the play. As Molly Smith states in her discussion of Kyd’s use of the scaffold, Kyd weakens the framework of ambivalence that separated spectators from the common spectacle of hanging.56 In Act II, Pedringano and Serberine hang Horatio on Lorenzo’s orders while Balthazar leads Bel-Imperia away. Lorenzo then stabs Horatio as he hangs in the arbor outside his father’s house.57 Horatio’s murder parallels public execution by hanging in a disturbing way – Horatio is guilty of nothing, and the posse that murders him has no legitimate vendetta.58 Although BelImperia calls out, “Murder! Murder!”59 Lorenzo orders Balthazar to stop her mouth so she cannot declare the crime and thereby validate it. It will be up to the corpse of Horatio to renew the cry of “murder” during Hieronimo’s playlet with the non-vocal speech act of the bier-rite as Kyd interprets it. With Horatio’s murder, Kyd forces his audience to step away from the culture of pseudo-entertainment that accompanied hangings and proposes a different context for the spectacle (seats for hangings were available for purchase at Tyburn, while at other execution sites spectators stood in a semi-circle 54 55 56 57 58 59

Green, 114. Diehl, 29. Molly Smith, “The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 32, No. 2 (Spring 1992): 217-232. II.iv.50-55. II.v.9-14. II.iv.62.

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around the scaffold in a convenient parallel of the arrangement of an Elizabethan theatre). After discovering his son’s body, Hieronimo vows not to bury Horatio until he has found the murderer; his wife Isabella concurs that murder cannot be hidden, and therefore neither shall their son’s body.60 Horatio’s body will remain unburied as a literal testament to his family’s belief that murder must be exposed for justice to take place. To bury the body is to hide the crime, or worse, to deny it. Kyd produces a chorographical interpretation of the bier-rite with Isabella’s behavior in the wake of her son’s death. In a nod by Kyd to an older tradition that holds no grass will grow under the place where a man has hanged, Isabella cuts down the arbor where her son has died, and she lays a curse on whosoever should replant and fertilize it.61 She marks, or perhaps maps, the location of her son’s murder, even though the corpse of Horatio is quickly removed: the barrenness of the arbor indicates the lifelessness of Horatio’s body and “speaks” murder. Horatio’s hanged corpse represents a travesty of justice, one which Hie­ ronimo vows to remedy the only way he can – by way of what Molly Smith calls “a spectacular coup de theatre” in which Horatio’s corpse is exposed before the community as evidence of murder in the course of a dramatic playlet in Act IV. In constructing his playlet, Hieronimo at first tempts his audience (and Kyd’s) with the spectacle of entertainment, and then destroys the entertainment value as stage violence becomes real violence with the deadly stabbings of Balthazar and Lorenzo. In Kyd’s adaptation of the phenomenon of the bierrite, the exposed corpse of Horatio “speaks” one line: “murder.” The corpse thus exposed is persuasive in its testimony because of the shock of its horrible appearance. One cannot look upon Horatio’s corpse and say the words, “accident,” or “suicide.” One can only say “murder;” and thus the voice of the corpse is admitted into the record of the audience’s public opinion. Despite Hieronimo’s insistence upon his son’s murder and his appeals for justice, and despite Bel-Imperia’s accusatory letter against the conspirators, the corpse of Horatio is the primary accuser of Lorenzo and Balthazar.62 Hieronimo’s accusations and Bel-Imperia’s letter are not enough, even if BelImperia’s letter is written in blood in a foreshadowing of the violence of the playlet. The corpse itself must testify. Via the testimony of the corpse the horror of the crime is superimposed onto the reactive faces of Hieronimo’s audience, and also onto the bodies of the dead murderers who lie near Horatio. Their grotesque bodies plead “guilty” in accordance with the corpse’s accusa60 61 62

II.v.53-59. IV.ii.10-16. See Hieronimo’s revelation of the corpse of Horatio in IV.iv.89-97.

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tion. Here, Kyd uses the horrific appearance of the corpse and its murderers to disfigure the faces of Hieronimo’s audience with horror and disgust to make a convincing argument that what has happened is itself monstrous. Equally ugly is the travesty of justice that has brought Hieronimo to this point in his relationship to his community. From the play’s beginning and the establishment of Hieronimo’s status as Knight Marshal, Kyd maintains a focus on Hieronimo’s view of himself as an important member of the Spanish court. As Jordi Coral Escolá states, for Hieronimo “service of king and country expresses the natural law that regulates personal, familial, and social life.”63 In The Spanish Tragedy, community identity is supported by a complex system of relationships that are defined by what people do and say; external demonstrations of community obligations and loyalties are paramount. The injustice of Horatio’s murder forces Hieronimo to internalize his suffering, at first because he does not know who murdered his son, and later because he discovers that the murderers are among the elite members of society who determine the course of law and order for the community. Hieronimo cannot take his complaint to the proper authorities, but he cannot continue to internalize his suffering, either. Hieronimo’s suffering represents Kyd’s examination of the ideals of Tudor inwardness, as Hieronimo engages in a reevaluation of his role in the community and his ability to represent order within it. He alone cannot reestablish order, nor can he use Bel-Imperia’s letter as his sole piece of evidence. Although the letter is written in blood, it is not enough to accuse Lorenzo and Balthazar, who are protected by their high degree and esteem in the community. The exposed corpse “outs” the murder and the murderers amid a bloodbath of stage – but not staged – violence. Like a lawyer in court, Hieronimo makes his argument to his jury – the audience of his playlet – and to Kyd’s – the audience in the theatre. As he does, he continually points to and refers to his dead son as his star witness, and asks his jury for its judgment.64 He balances his lengthy speech with the corpse’s non-vocal, single-word testimony: “murder.” As Escolá explains, to describe Hieronimo’s actions as “revenge” oversimplifies the issue. The issue is one of justice as well as revenge, and it speaks directly to Kyd’s ability to turn the theatre into a court of public opinion, complete with a key witness and a jury. Ronald Broude provides an important reminder in his article on revenge in Renaissance drama, saying that the word “revenge” during the sixteenth century

63 64

Jordi Coral Escolà, “Vengeance Is Yours: Reclaiming the Social Bond in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus.” Atlantis 29, No. 2 (December 2007): 59-74, at 62. IV.iv.89-152.

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… had a more extended meaning than the modern one, a meaning more nearly equivalent to today’s “retribution.” Significantly, the various concepts and customs subsumed under the Renaissance word were the objects of searching reevaluation during the sixteenth century as the Tudor and Stuart dynasties sought to adapt Medieval English socio-legal institutions to the needs of a Renaissance state.65 Retribution, payback, or vengeance speak to offenses against the community and permits a response by the outraged party. They could be exacted without the intervention of a civil authority.66 In The Spanish Tragedy Hieronimo is aware of the disinterest on the part of the civil authorities regarding his son’s murder and he takes the law into his own hands in order to attract the law to his cause rather than to defy it or act apart from his responsibilities to his community. The letter may be evidence, but the corpse of his son is his best witness; not only because it testifies to murder but because it testifies to the negligence of the civil authorities who had the power to make things right. In Act III, Hieronimo rips apart his lawsuits with his teeth in frustration that the courts can only offer empty rhetoric that cannot satisfy a grieving father.67 Escolá points out that Hieronimo has no choice: his is an inescapable bond with his community, and so his desire for revenge, even if it is perverted by a bizarre playlet and more murder, does not represent a simple subversive appropriation of civil power.68 Rather than rebelling against authority, Hieronimo complements authority by way of his actions because no action will be taken by the civil authorities to assure his right. The testimony of the corpse speaks to justice in an act that reinforces Hieronimo’s relationship to the community rather than causing him to stand out from it. Were he to take his revenge in the same way (by murder within the playlet) but without the corpse of Horatio, the act would be subversive to the community. The corpse in this sense is the key element in Hieronimo’s effort to obtain justice, get revenge, and hold the community together. The testimony of the corpse against Balthazar and Lorenzo validates Hieronimo’s dedication to his duty; and although that duty is perverted by more murders, the playlet is still the only way Hieronimo can reestablish the bond between himself and his community. Kyd’s audience is invited to sit in deliberation of the evidence of the letter, of Hieronimo’s right to take revenge 65 66 67 68

Broude, 40. Broude, 41. III.xiii.122-23. Escolá, 70-71.

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against his son’s murderers, and of the testimony of the corpse to make the case. As Hieronimo points out to Bazulto in Act III, a grieving man is like a corpse, not figuratively but literally.69 A grieving father looks like death because his countenance parallels the physical state of his murdered son. Without justice, the living and the dead resemble each other as Providence makes injustice visible. This scene represents another aspect of Kyd’s interpretation of the bier-rite. If Hieronimo does not obtain retribution for his son’s death, he too will look like a living corpse. Without the display of the corpse to make the accusation of murder, Hieronimo cannot overcome the inwardness of his predicament. He must externalize his suffering to restore the order of his community, the order that dictates that the identity of its members is determined by what they do and say rather than what they think or feel.70 Hieronimo’s inwardness only takes him so far – his revenge must speak not only to the public law of the realm, but to his commitment to the divine, and it must be witnessed by those who can right the wrongs done to him. This group includes the “audience” of Hieronimo’s playlet, and the audience of Kyd’s play. In this way, Horatio remains an invested figure in his society even after his death, as Kyd forgoes traditional ghost legend or revenant belief in order to make a modern point about the relationship between the dead, the community, and Providence. The corpse of Horatio, combined with Hieronimo’s accusations, Bel-Imperia’s letter, and their subsequent acts of murder and suicide, produce a complete case, or a “whole body” of evidence. Because of the negligence of the authorities, and the absence of evidence that would have been deemed reliable, Hieronimo must literally expose his son’s corpse, and then produce a pile of other corpses to form the “body” of evidence and yield the executions that will bring justice. This situation reminds the audience that the body of Andrea (the play’s first murder victim) is buried, the true nature of his death unknown, the issues of his murder hidden. Unlike Horatio’s corpse, which is hanged and mutilated, and then exposed before the audience, Andrea’s funeral rites are conducted offstage and in private (ironically, by Horatio). His death is narrated, not witnessed.71 Andrea’s ghost remains frustrated that the allegorical character Revenge forces him to wait for satisfaction. As Thelma Greenfield points out, Hieronimo’s plot divests the ghost of Andrea of the uncanny quality typical of

69 70 71

III.xiii.159ff. Escolá, 62. Smith, 225.

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ghosts in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century plays.72 The ghost is no longer human, but the accusing corpse is, and it can therefore testify to the living on behalf of Providence better than the ghost can. Via Kyd’s inversion of ghost lore, Horatio’s corpse appropriates the uncanny power traditionally held by the ghost to bring the concerns of the dead to the world of the living. Unlike other plays, such as Shakespeare’s Richard III or Hamlet, the ghost in The Spanish Tragedy does not function as an extension of Providence to accuse its murderer(s). The ghost of Andrea must watch and wait until the testimonial voice of the corpse makes the accusation of murder by way of its exposure and grotesque appearance. This situation represents an inversion of the necromantic tradition: Hieronimo is the agent of the corpse that produces the voice of his dead son without summoning his spirit. Greenfield states that a play’s “noisiest claimant” is the one most likely to produce justice (if by way of revenge), and that such a person is usually the play’s hero; in this case Hieronimo. But in the case of The Spanish Tragedy the corpse of Horatio is a noisy claimant in its own right. The “noise” derives from the grotesque appearance of the unburied dead man. Although the corpse is silent literally, its testimonial voice speaks on behalf of Providence via Kyd’s interpretation of the bier-rite. This non-verbal testimony is “noisier” than the plaints of the ghost of Andrea, which are not answered until, as Greenfield states, the “matters of ambiguity and form” are resolved by “the dreadful bloodbath of [Hieronimo’s] tragic playlet.”73 Kyd’s interpretation of the bier-rite in The Spanish Tragedy does not overlook the secondary plot or minor characters. The secondary plot involving the Portuguese nobleman Alexandro also utilizes elements of the corpse as testimony that support the issues of the primary plot. Villippo falsely accuses Alexandro of murdering Balthazar, son of the Viceroy of Portugal.74 Balthazar, for his part, is very much alive and in Spain, where he intends to marry Bel-Imperia now that Horatio is conveniently out of the way. The Viceroy of Portugal, thinking that Balthazar is dead, sentences Alexandro to death. He is outraged at the fact that his son’s body is not present; the absence of Bathazar’s body does not complete the course of justice. The Viceroy demands, “Where then became the carcass of my son?”75 Here, the absence of Balthazar’s corpse warrants its replacement with the corpse of Alexandro as evidence that the 72 73 74 75

Thelma N. Greenfield, “The Spanish Tragedy: Revenge’s and Andrea’s Kindred.” Pacific Coast Philology 16, No. 2 (Nov. 1981): 33-43. Greenfield, 43. I.iii.65-70. I.iii.74.

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crime has taken place and that justice has been done. The corpse of the executed murderer must be seen in public to reinforce the power of the Portuguese king to make justice “visible,” as the corpse of Alexandro is made to say, “murder.” This represents Kyd’s parallel with the traditional format of execution. Luckily for Alexandro, Balthazar is alive (for the moment). Upon making his discovery of the treachery against Alexandro, the Viceroy of Portugal orders the execution of Villippo. Although Villippo has not actually murdered anyone, justice still demands the visibility of a corpse to ensure that the social order remains intact. No act will do, such as an act of atonement or service, and no text will do, such as an apology or retraction. The corpse of Villippo provides the testimonial proof that the accusation against Alexandro is false, and it provides the evidence that justice is done. When Villippo confesses that he tried to frame Alexandro out of jealousy, Kyd’s point becomes more clear: kings cannot rely solely on what they are told by ambitious courtiers. Monarchic authority must employ public display and exteriority in its interactions with the community. Words are not sufficient because they are not adequately visible. The face of treachery must be as monstrous as the crime in order to describe it adequately. Villippo’s executed corpse represents his public admission of guilt. This construction supports and clarifies Kyd’s use of the corpse as testimony in Horatio’s case. A similar case can be made for the execution of Pedringano for the murder of Serberine in act III.76 The deputy instructs that Pedringano’s body be left on the gallows so that it might be seen by all. In a scene quite familiar to Kyd’s audience, a hanged man exposes the horrific nature of his crime by way of the horrific sight of his exposed corpse. The deputy remarks that Pedringano’s body should not be allowed to choke the earth or infect it with his monstrosity.77 The visibility of the hanged body performs the guilt of the perpetrator. Yet, the exteriority of Pedringano’s execution withholds one key bit of testimony: Pedringano is dead because of Lorenzo’s villainy. The presence of Pedringano’s body speaks of Lorenzo’s double-cross, but only to the audience. Like Bel-Imperia’s letter dropped from her window, Pedringano’s body dropped from the gallows is incomplete evidence without the revelations of the key witness: the corpse of Horatio. The anonymous author of Arden of Faversham also adapts the bier-rite so that his audience can function in a juridical capacity. Unlike The Spanish Tragedy, Arden of Faversham is based on a real crime, a murder that shocked the public forty years before the performance of the play. Alice Arden, along 76 77

III.vi.108-110. III.vi.109-110.

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with her lover, Richard Mosby, conspired to murder her husband, Thomas Arden. Aided by several co-conspirators (and over a course of several attempts), Alice Arden and Richard Mosby succeeded in killing Thomas Arden in his home on St. Valentine’s Day, 1551. The murder of Thomas Arden was a sensational crime that was documented with much detail (albeit apologetically) by Raphael Holinshed.78 He sets the story forth, as he says, because of its pure “horribleness,” acknowledging that the story otherwise would be “but a private matter” and irrelevant to his history of the nation.79 Via his account, Holinshed acknowledges that sensational cases call for a public record and invite public scrutiny even after justice has been done in official channels. Holinshed records the course of the capture, trial, and execution of the murderers and conspirators, but in addition to the facts of the case, Holinshed includes an adaptation of the uncanny bier-rite that was attached to the case by way of common lore as the case became legendary among members of the public: he claims that the ground upon which Arden’s corpse was laid refused to grow any grass for two years at least.80 He ends his account of the murder with that eerie detail: This one thing séemeth verie strange and notable, touching maister Arden, that in the place where he was laid, being dead, all the proportion of his bodie might be séene two yeares after and more, so plaine as could be, for the grasse did not grow where his bodie had touched: but betwéene his legs, betweene his armes, and about the hollownesse of his necke, and round about his bodie, and where his legs, armes, head, or anie other part of his bodie had touched, no grasse growed at all of all that time. So that manie strangers came in that meane time, beside the townesmen, to see the print of his bodie there on the ground in that field.81 The author of the play utilizes this element of Providential justice as a dramatic end to his play. He attaches it to a traditional use of the bier-rite, as Arden’s stab wounds are made to bleed in Alice’s presence once his corpse is discovered. In Scene XVI, as the authorities bring Arden’s corpse back to the house from Reede’s field and lay it out, Alice experiences a moment of remorse. She cries, “Arden, sweet husband, what shall I say?/The more I sound his name, 78 79 80 81

Holinshed, Chronicle, VI. 1062-1065. Holinshed, Chronicle, VI. 1062. Holinshed, Chronicle, VI. 1065. Holinshed, Chronicle, VI. 1065.

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the more he bleeds./This blood condemns me and in gushing forth,/Speaks as it falls and asks me why I did it.”82 The addition of the traditional use of the bier-rite contextualizes the uncanny chorography of the corpse of Arden and creates an opportunity for the playwright to invite his audience to sit in judgment of the case. It is long after the fact; but like other sensational murders throughout history that were good material for chroniclers and plays, such as the assassination of Julius Caesar and the putative death of Prince Arthur at the hands of King John (both of which were examined by Shakespeare), the murder of Arden of Faversham was a case that people enjoyed rehearsing as a sensational story and deliberating as a compelling case, even though the outcome was known to all involved. Even though Alice Arden and Richard Mosby had been executed long before (along with several conspirators, including the career criminals Black Will and Shakebag), audiences were attracted to the idea of “sitting the case” by way of dramatic reenactment. It was a story that in the present day might be called a “ripped-from-the-headlines” plot.83 As Leanore Lieblein states, Arden of Faversham is one of several plays based on actual murders that were documented not only in Chronicles and court records but also in ballads and popular narratives and were widely known among audiences.84 These sources formed a literary genre of their own, which reflected a great deal of the public sentiment that revolved around each crime.85 Elizabethan England did not have anything that resembled news per se, but they did have discourses that 82 83

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XVI.3-6. In the present day, TV programs such as 48 Hours (CBS) and 20/20 (ABC) depict high profile murder cases and trials in a manner similar to that of Holinshed’s Chronicle: they narrate the facts of the case and then pepper the facts with rumors related to the case and evidence and testimony that did not enter into evidence in court. Law and Order (NBC) and its several spinoffs dramatize high profile murder cases in a manner similar to that of Arden of Faversham: the show presents an emotionally charged narrative of the case. Television personalities like Nancy Grace (CNN/HLN) host chat shows that dramatize similar crimes. In the case of each program the audience is aware that it is being appealed to for its judgment apart from that of the jury (or potential jury). The audience is aware of the ironic juxtaposition of ersatz civic duty and entertainment presented by each program. Leanore Lieblein, “The Context of Murder in English Domestic Plays 1590-1610.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 23, No. 2 (Spring, 1983): 181-196. Other plays of this type include A Warning for Fair Women (1599), A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1606), and The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1606). Martin J. Weiner, “Alice Arden to Bill Sikes: Changing Nightmares of Intimate Violence in England, 1558-1869.” Journal of British Studies 40, No. 2 (Apr. 2001): 184-212, at 187. See also John Rainolds, God’s Revenge Against Murder and Adultery (London, 1620).

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employed combinations of fact, commentary, and conjecture that accompanied high profile crimes. Of particular interest was any information that suggested Providence had a stake in the outcome. As Barbara Shapiro states in her study of the subject of popular crime narratives, exceptional murder cases were often accompanied by stories of apparitions, prophecies, and other strange occurrences like the bier-rite and its adaptations. She says, “The strange, the wondrous, or the consequential event adequately evidenced by witnesses or suitable documentation constituted “the news.”86 These wonders injected popular beliefs and lore into the legalism of the cases and produced a great deal of attraction for the public. Like The Spanish Tragedy, Arden of Faversham asks its audience to function in a juridical manner and to include, in their judgment of the crime of murder, a consideration of the bier-rite as evidence, of the corpse as a witness. Arden’s murder is connected to popular legalism in a manner similar to that of Kyd’s play: Arden’s enemies Mosby, Greene, and Reede feel they cannot appeal their cases through regular legal channels because Arden possesses the letters patent. This issue allows the audience to become invested in the Arden murder in the same way as they are in Kyd’s play: they feel empowered to make their judgment because the case is denied other, more conventional legal channels. Like The Spanish Tragedy, the law in Arden is practically absent, existing at the play’s perimeters until the crime of murder is finally exposed. There are, however, some important differences. Arden’s focus on murder among commoners presents a set of issues different from those of The Spanish Tragedy, in which people of the highest echelons of society become involved in treachery and murder. Although Arden’s characters represent the ambitious bourgeoisie, the play nonetheless depicts murder among people on whom classical tragedies were not usually based. This does not mean that the primary motivation of the Arden playwright is pure sensationalism of the middle class; on the contrary, the playwright maintains an emphasis on the same type of unequivocal judgment on the part of the audience as Kyd does. Arden does not change much of its source material from Holinshed’s Chronicle, but it does add the traditional depiction of the bier-rite as well as a secondary adaptation: Arden’s blood stains the floor of the murder scene and will not wash out or scrape off. Although Susan wonders at the persistence of the blood, asking, “What’s the reason, mistress, can you tell?” 87 Alice knows exactly what is happening. She says, “Because I blush not at my husband’s death.”88 These adaptations of the 86 87 88

Barbara Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England 1550-1720 (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 86. XIV.254-260. XIV.254-260.

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bier-rite accompany the uncanny chorography of the field in which Arden’s body is dumped. In making these adaptations the Arden playwright elevates the Providential issues of the play and thereby elaborates the social context of the murder present in Holinshed’s Chronicle to include popular lore. He therefore keeps his audience engaged as a force of conventional morality in the face of an outrageous act of betrayal by everyday people. Documentation and the law are important aspects of the play, and they foreshadow the fact that the corpse of Arden himself will be important later on in producing the Providential justice of the confession and capture of Alice Arden and her co-conspirators. Thomas Arden’s relationships to other people are defined by his legal obligations to them, and those obligations in turn are manifested in the violence done to his body. The hatred of Mosby, Greene, and Reede for Arden is related to the legal documents they use to claim land held by Arden: Mosby hates Arden because Arden’s letters impede his social climbing, and Greene hates Arden for much the same reason, as Arden’s letters cut off the former grants to the Abbey of Faversham; Arden dispossesses Reede from a plot of land that Reede claims is his by legal right. Mosby wishes to displace Arden’s body in Alice Arden’s bed, and Greene becomes a ready conspirator in the murder. Eventually, Arden’s body is dumped onto Reede’s plot of land, which produces the play’s adaptation of the bier-rite. Issues of the corpse also define the relationships of Mosby, Greene, and Reede to Black Will and Shakebag. One of the things that frightens Michael about Black Will is the fact that he seems to have death written upon his face. He says in Scene V, “The wrinkles in his foul death-threatening face/Gapes open wide, like graves, to swallow men.”89 Black Will literally has a face like a graveyard: it is a confession of corpses wherein each wrinkle is a grave in which lies one of his murder victims. In this sense, the use of the uncanny in this play is not merely superstitious, nor is it merely rhetorical, either; it is pragmatic because it produces providential evidence for the audience to examine.90 It is forensic, even though it is symbolic. It allows the audience to be entertained but also informed. This experience allows the audience of the play to replicate the experience of hearing popular and sensational “news,” and also to emulate the responsibilities of a jury weighing evidence. The bier-rite and its chorographical adaptation in Arden of Faverhsam is more than a series of uncanny events reflective of Providential influence upon human systems of justice. They are juxtaposed with material evidence that contextualizes them literally within a “body of evidence” that maps the crime. 89 90

V.82-83. Mukherji, Law and Representation, 115.

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The footprints of Mosby, Greene, and Susan remain in the snow and lead directly to Arden’s body in the field; the bloody knife and towel are soon uncovered, and rushes from the floor of the home are stuck to Arden’s slipper.91 These facts of the case do not represent uncanny events or Providential messages – they are pieces of evidence that inform the Mayor of the facts of the crime. The evidence piles up, and it is then combined with the traditional representation of the bier-rite, which takes place in scene XV as Alice is presented with her husband’s corpse after it has been brought back to the house. The bleeding of the corpse in the presence of Alice and Mosby provokes their confessions to the Mayor.92 This event is combined with the adaptation of the bier-rite in which the outline of Arden’s body in the field persists and marks the landscape, to produce a “whole body” of evidence. In this sense, the bierrite represents the Providential ability of the corpse to speak to a whole justice that incorporates both material and uncanny elements. Just as in Kyd’s play, justice is performed when the “whole body” of evidence is finally made visible to the play’s characters, and to the audience. The chorographical adaptation of the bier-rite in particular is contextualized to those parts of the “body of evidence” that concern the relationships between landowners, tenants, and estate managers in Elizabethan England. Arden’s relationships to others are linked to his body via his land. His status as a landowner connects the public and private spheres through Alice’s infidelity with Mosby, and through Greene’s and Reede’s deep resentments. It is no accident, for example, that early in the play love letters that pass between Alice and Mosby are juxtaposed with the mention of letters from the king granting Arden ownership of the Abbey lands.93 Arden’s body is inextricably connected to his land to the extent that ultimately the land is marked by the murdered corpse of its owner. The manor is an essential part of the natural milieu of the land that surrounds it, the household an extension of its owner’s body. As Alice Friedman points out, there was little separation between “inside” and “outside” where the Elizabethan manor, its lands, and its owner were concerned.94 Estate cartography textualized that relationship and created a new relationship between the lord of the manor and his tenants: one that was defined by the texts of surveys and maps. The reduction of lands, owners, and tenants to their cartographic and written representations therefore took on the 91 92 93 94

XIV. 358-59, XIV. 386, and XIV. 400. XVI. 1-22. I. 1-15; also, Garrett A. Sullivan, The Drama of Landscape: Land, Property, and Social Relations on the Early Modern Stage (Stanford, CA, 1998), 48. Alice T. Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England (Chicago, 1989), 46-47.

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status of truth, both in an evidentiary sense and in a larger moral sense regarding the public good.95 The chorographic representation of Arden’s corpse is therefore a metaphor for a rising problem in English society concerning the redistribution of lands and wealth (especially Abbey lands) in the wake of the Dissolution of the Monasteries: that of difficult relationships between those granted lands because of their political expedience, corruption, luck, or combination of the three, and petitioners who believed that those lands were their due. In this sense, Arden’s estate is an extension of his body as part of a set of what Alice Friedman calls “hierarchized social relations.”96 The outline of Arden’s corpse on the plot of land claimed by Reede functions as an adaptation of the bier-rite to identify his murderers and expose the crime; but this adaptation of the bier-rite also functions to mark the land as Arden’s in the face of Reede’s claim of ownership of the field. It is a twofold justice: one indicates the crime of murder, the other indicates Arden’s rights in the face of Reede’s civil suit. Despite Reede’s claim that Arden has cheated him, the imprint of the body that does not allow grass to grow upon it for two years following indicates Arden’s legal right. As Garret Sullivan points out, “The epilogue reminds us that in the late sixteenth century land is not solely thought of in terms of its utility or its fungibility, its status as a commodity; here the land speaks an ethics of ownership that has its origins in feudalism.” 97 Arden depicts the collapse of feudal social relations that had been strained since the onset of enclosure laws.98 The chorographical bier-rite, in which Arden’s body is inscribed on his land, represents a text of the corpse that outlines, literally, changes in landlord-tenant relationships and the increase in textual representations of ownership, like written records of landholdings, maps, and surveys. Sullivan notes, however, that the outline of Arden’s body also represents a marking of the land by the force and violence with which Arden withheld the plot from Reede; that it is a metaphor for Arden’s social irresponsibility as a “new man.”99 The theory that the land cries out against Arden as much as for his sake is rooted in the fact that Thomas Arden is a complex character who has placed himself in a series of difficult situations. Throughout the play Arden behaves heartlessly, refusing to consider the effect his ambition has on others. 95

96 97 98 99

Sullivan, Drama of Landscape, 46; also see Peter Eden, “Three Elizabethan Estate Sur­ veyors: Peter Kempe, Thomas Clerke, and Thomas Langdon,” in English Map-Making 15001650, ed. Sarah Tyacke (London, 1983), 68; and Beresford, Maurice. History on the Ground (London, 1957), 66. Friedman, House and Household, 245. Sullivan, Drama of Landscape, 31. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 55.

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He also has little respect for his wife’s noble ancestry and has driven her into the arms of another man. Arden functions as the sort of “new man” who was often the fodder of derisive stereotyping during the Elizabethan era: the ambitious, newly wealthy landlord who preferred to gossip, shop, and socialize in London rather than stay at home on his estate and manage it – and his household – properly.100 In this sense, the outline of Arden’s corpse on a disputed plot of land testifies also to his wrongdoing as a negligent landlord and head of household. He has been selfish, greedy, and now his wife commits adultery, his servants run the estate, and his land disputes have become so contentious they are cause for murder. In this sense, Sullivan’s theory of the testimony of Arden’s corpse is pertinent: Arden’s plot of land bears the mark of his body to show the consequences of his shortcomings as a landlord.101 Indeed, this interpretation of the bier-rite speaks to the survey issue as well: the outline of the body can indeed be seen as a macabre survey of the boundaries of Arden’s authority.102 Still, Arden is hardly the villain of the play: he is quick to believe Alice’s excuses and pledges, and to forgive her misconduct; although in I.23 he states that he would like to dismember Mosby for attempting to seduce his wife, he retracts the threat and behaves more tolerantly toward Mosby in subsequent scenes; although he threatens to evict Susan in III.29-30, he soon dismisses the idea. Arden is a negligent landlord and husband, but he is also naïve and, for much of the play, genuinely likeable. In fact, one of his biggest weaknesses is his failure to take seriously the threat coming from his own home. He simply does not think that badly of people – not even those whom he treats badly. Sullivan admits that the play presents a dualistic portrayal of Arden that balances (albeit uncomfortably) Arden’s failures as a responsible husband and governor of his estate with his affable personality and healthy social and personal relations with other characters.103 The chorographical adaptation of the bier-rite by the Arden playwright therefore has an important twofold meaning, both of which amount to testimony by the corpse both in favor of and against the murder victim. Both plays end with the deaths of the conspirators, whether at the hands of Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia in The Spanish Tragedy, or agents of the State, in Arden of Faversham.104 They each become testaments to their respective 100 101 102 103 104

Sullivan, “Arden Lay Murdered,” 52. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 52. Ibid., “Arden Lay Murdered,” 52. XVII. 10-13. These conspirators include the character of Clark the Painter, who specializes in creating religious icons that kill upon sight by way of pneumatic poison paint. Here the

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crimes by way of public execution or by way of the privilege of sanctioned retribution on behalf of Providence – metaphors that Elizabethan audiences knew very well. Both plays also end with an examination of natural spaces as “unnatural” locations for murder victims. Horatio’s arbor and Arden’s field do not represent consecrated ground, and this facet of the idea that “natural” space can be “unnatural” when it comes to the dead was also well known to Elizabethan audiences. Both plays innovate concerning this idea in their examination of natural space as an affront to the body apart from the rites of Christian burial. Isabella curses the arbor where Horatio’s body is found, and Providence marks the field where Arden’s body is dumped in order to emphasize the role of the super-natural in the pursuit of justice. As Martin Weiner states, this issue addresses a part of the cultural imagination that attaches itself to great crimes, in which hidden, intimate killings are “worked through” publicly.105 The point of such effort is to put the crime, and its victim, to rest; the testimony of the corpse “speaks” to public anxieties about justice, retribution, and the role of Providence, and the ability of a society to reappropriate burial space. The testimony of the corpse in these two plays via the adaptations of the bier-rite speak to the idea that a murder victim’s voice carries with it an uncanny, but natural manifestation of truth in a society where people accepted, and indeed expected, that both things should coexist.

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Arden playwright manages to include a connection between neo-Platonic pneumatic communication and anti-Catholicism amid the other issues of his play. Interestingly, at the play’s end there is no dramatic death for Clark; he simply disappears and is never heard from again. The suggestion is that he persists, incognito, and spreads the poison iconographic gaze of Catholicism throughout Britain. Weiner, 185.

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Part 3 Funerary Art and Mementi Mori

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Funerary Art of the Kingdom of León and Castile

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Chapter 12

Reappropiated Antiquity in the Funerary Art of the Kingdom of León and Castile in the High Middle Ages* Sonsoles García González The Renaissance has been described in the past as an idyllic era when, after a thousand years of darkness, Italian artists and humanists, such as Petrarch,1 rediscovered and resurrected Antiquity. However, this point of view started to change in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when researchers began to pay attention to the survival of spolia as well as to the aesthetic and literary influence of Antiquity in medieval art. Scholars like Anton Springer,2 Erwin Panofsky3 and Jean Adhèmar4 have demonstrated the medieval awareness of Ancient times and of the survival of classical legends and traditions into the Christian era. During the High Middle Ages, the kingdoms of León and Castile preserved Antiquity through various means, some of which are related to funerary art and customs, such as the reuse of ancient sarcophagi, the emergence of figures from classical literature in epitaphs, and the survival of pagan practices in funerary rituals. Throughout the High Middle Ages, ancient sarcophagi were used as altar pieces, lintels, walls, and luxury coffins for the princes and saints of Christen­ dom.5 The first question historians sometimes ask about such reuses concerns the reason for the practice; is it possible to understand the mentality of people * I would like to express my gratitude to my PhD advisor Raquel Alonso for her enlightening comments; Adrián Piñán for helping me with the photographs of the sarcophagus of Ithacius, and Thea Tomaini, for her suggestions and help with the translation to English. I would also like to thank the Museo Arqueológico Nacional and Benito Gallego, dean of the cathedral of Oviedo, for their kind permission for using the images that illustrate this paper. 1 Conrad Rudolph, “Introduction. A Sense of Loss: An Overview of the Historiography of Romanesque and Gothic Art,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford, 2006), 3-4. 2 Anton Springer, Bilder aus der Neuern Kunstgeschichte (Bonn, 1886), 3-40. 3 Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York, 1960); Tomb Sculpture. Four Lectures on its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (New York, 1964). 4 Jean Adhèmar, Influences Antiques dans l’Art du Moyen Âge Français (Paris, 2005). 5 Adhèmar, Influences, 78.

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who, according to a purported decree by Emperor Constans (d. 350), threw out the original owners of the sarcophagus while they were still rotting? 6 Examples of these funerary reappropriations are found throughout Western Europe, and their study belongs to a wider field of research into spolia, a field which has seen a considerable rise in historiographical research in the last few decades.7 Some researchers consider the main motive for the use of spolia to be economic; but the existence of countless examples of reuses that required huge economic investment reveals ideological factors that took an active role in the use of spolia. 8 In the kingdoms of León and Castile, these ideological factors were the main reasons for the reuse of sarcophagi and other remains. They allowed medieval monarchs and aristocrats to depict themselves as the truthful inheritors of the classical tradition and to distinguish themselves from others (Map 12.1). These reuses of ancient sarcophagi can be traced across Europe: it is especially remarkable in the case of the royal Carolingian family, which is linked with similar funerary practices through several generations. The first was Carloman (d. 771), who was buried in an ancient sarcophagus decorated with a 6 Adhèmar, Influences, 78. There were several decrees against the sacking of antique monuments. Jean-Charles Balty, “De l’art Romain à l’art Roman: les Spolia, Mémoire de l’antique,” Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, 39 (2008): 236. 7 One of the first texts in this field of studies was the unpublished master’s thesis of Isa Ragusa, “The Re-Use and Public Exhibition of Roman Sarcophagi during the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance” (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, New York University, 1951), cited in Balty, “Spolia,” 236. Another text was the publication of the proceedings of a colloquium that took place in Pisa during the 1980s about the reuse of ancient sarcophagi in medieval buildings, Bernard Andreae and Salvatore Settis, eds., Colloquio sul Reimpiego dei Sarcofagi Romani nel Medievo (Pisa 5-12 September 1982) (Marburg, 1984). In the last years of the twentieth century research in this field increased rapidly, with collections of studies made by different authors, which spread both geographically and chronologically: Lucia de Lachenal, Spolia. Uso e Reimpiego dell’antico dal III al XIV secolo (Milan, 1995); Joachim Poeschke, ed., Antike Spolien in der Architektur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Munich, 1996); Ideologie e Pratiche del Reimpiego nell’alto Medioevo (Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo), 16-21 April 1998 (Spoleto, 1999); Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, coord., Medioevo: Il Tempo degli Antichi (Milan, 2006); Pierre Toubert and Pierra Moret, eds., Remploi, Citation, Plagiat. Conduites et Pratiques Médiévales (Xe-XIIe) (Madrid, 2009); Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, eds., Reuse Value. Spolia and Appropiation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine (Surrey, 2011). 8 For a status of the issue see Bente Kiilerich, “Antiquus et Modernus: Spolia in Medieval ArtWestern, Byzantine and Islamic,” in Medioevo: il Tempo degli Antichi, coord. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2006), 137-138.

Funerary Art of the Kingdom of León and Castile

 1. Sarcophagus of Carloman (†771) – Saint-Remi, Reims.  2. Sarcophagus of Charles the Great (†814) – Palatine Chapel, Aachen.  3. Sarcophagus of Louis I (†840) – Saint-Arnoul, Metz.  4. Sarcophagus of Charles the Bald (†877) – Saint-Denis.  5. Cathedral of Palermo, sarcophagi of Roger II (†1154), Henry IV (†1197), Constance (†1198) and Frederick II (†1250).  6. Rome, sarcophagi of the Popes: Damascus II (†1048) – San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. Antipope Anacletus II (†1128) – Santa Maria in Trastevere. Innocent II (†1143); Anastasius IV (†1154) – San Giovanni in Laterano. Adrian IV (†1159); Urban VI (†1389) – San Pietro in Vaticano. Honorius III (†1227) – Santa Maria Maggiore.  7. Sarcophagus of Pope Clement IV (†1268) – Santa Maria in Gradi, Viterbo.  8. Sarcophagus of Ithacius – San Salvador de Oviedo.  9. Sarcophagus of Astorga – Santa María de Astorga. 10. Sarcophagi of Fernán González (†970) and Sancha (†959) – San Pedro de Arlanza. 11. Sarcophagus of Husillos – Santa María de Defesa-Brava. 12. Sarcophagus of Count Osorio – Santa María de Lourenzá. 13. Sarcophagus of Ramiro II (†1157) – San Pedro el Viejo, Huesca. 14. Sarcophagi of Ramon Borrel (†1017) and Sancha (†1026) – Santa Eulalia de Barcelona.

Map 12.1 Map of Western Europe – Location of reused sarcophagi.

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scene of beast combat, which had been used previously by the consul Jovinus.9 Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard (d. 840) records that the Emperor was buried under a golden arch bearing a Latin inscription in the palatine chapel in Aachen,10 but he said nothing about the sarcophagus that has been traditionally attributed to Charles, which was carved with an image of the abduction of Persephone. According to Janet Nelson, the sarcophagus is thought to have been brought from Italy specifically for the Emperor, probably in one of the several documented trips in which he brought other kinds of spolia, such as columns, from Ravenna to his foundations in Aachen in the context of the Carolingian Renaissance.11 His son Louis I (d. 840), also reused an ancient sarcophagus, which included the Christian iconography of the parting of the Red Sea;12 later, a porphyry bathtub was reused for the burial of Charles the Bald (d. 877), which was recovered in the surroundings of the abbey of Saint-Denis on the occasion of the opening and reburying of the kings of France as a result of the French Revolution.13 The reason for these reuses of ancient sarcophagi by the Carolingian line was to encourage aesthetic continuity for the new ruling dynasty, which promoted itself as an extension of the Roman Empire. Another royal family that employed spolia in funerary contexts was the Hauteville dynasty in Sicily, during the twelfth century. The cathedral of Palermo accommodated the porphyry tombs of Roger II (d. 1154), Henry VI (d. 1197), Constance (d. 1198) and Frederick II (d. 1250), which were located under the aediculae.14 After the Arabian conquest of Egypt the trade of porphyry was interrupted, thereby increasing the economic and ritual value of a material that was already exclusive.15 Deers explains that the use of porphyry tombs 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Janet L. Nelson, “Carolingian Royal Funerals,” in Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages, ed. Frans Theuws and Janet L. Nelson (Boston, MA, 2000), 143-145. Einhard, Two Lives of Charlemange (London, 1969) 84. Nelson, “Carolingian,” 150-153. Nelson, “Carolingian,” 155. Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Le Roi est Mort: Étude sur les Funérailles, les Sépultures et les Tombeaux des Rois de France jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Géneve, 1975), 39. Josef Deers, The Dynastic Porphyry Tombs of the Norman Period in Sicily (Cambridge, 1959), 25. Since porphyry was an important material in church symbolism, and since it had become impossible to obtain it from the famous quarry of Mons Porphyriticus, acquiring it became highly valued, so the original purpose of porphyry objects was often disregarded. This also happened with bathtubs. There are several examples of such types of valuation in this period: the columns that Charlemagne carried to Aachen were made of porphyry, as were the ones bought by Desiderio in Rome for the renovation of the monastery of Montecassino, which was destroyed by the Norman invasions; other examples include some of the pieces brought to Winchester by Henry of Blois. Deer, Porphyry, 117; Herbert

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was meant to legitimize a dynasty that had achieved power by force: such types of burials suggest certain influences and contacts with the Byzantine Empire, and they also indicate an attempt to imitate the ancient Emperors. These burials also demonstrated resistance to the papacy, which was trying to subdue the Norman kings of Sicily into feudal homage.16 The reuse of ancient sarcophagi by popes was understood by Balty as an evident imitatio imperii,17 and lasted until the fourteenth century. These Popes include: Damasus II (d. 1048), antipope Anacletus II (d. 1128), Innocent II (d. 1143),18 Anastasius IV (d. 1154),19 Adrian IV (d. 1159), Honorius III (d. 1227), Clement IV (d. 1268) and Urban VI (d. 1389). In the kingdoms of León and Castile the main reason for the use of ancient sarcophagi stemmed from the desire of the monarchy to appear as heirs of the classical tradition prior to the Muslim invasion. They also desired to strengthen the aesthetic power of these new realms.20 Such is the case of Alfonso III (d. 910), king of Asturias, who used different methods to depict his dynasty as the genuine heirs of Visigoth power and as guardians of the Christian tradition. One of these methods was to use different kinds of spolia in the Asturian buildings, such as some petras marmoreas for the rebuilding of the locus of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, c.899.21 Alfonso III picked the spolia from lands that had been conquered by Muslims, not as loot, but as a recovery of items that belonged to him, the inheritor of the Visigothic kingdom.22

16 17 18 19

20 21

22

Bloch, “The New Fascination with Ancient Rome,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Oxford, 1982), 615-618; Adhè­ mar, Influences, 97. Deers, Porphyry, 149-150. Both factions made use of the same means for similar claims concerning the legitimacy of their rule. Balty, “Spolia,” 238. He reused the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian, brought from the castle of Sant’ Angelo. Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine, had been buried in Rome in a porphyry tomb. By the ninth century most of her remains had been transferred as relics to Reims, and in the twelfth century, Pope Innocent II removed the last of her remains to the church of Santa María Aracoeli, leaving the sarcophagus empty and ready for its reuse by Anastasius IV. Jan W. Drijvers, Helena Augusta. The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of her Finding of the True Cross (Brill, 1992), 75-76. Thomas Deswarte, De la Destruction à la Restauration: l’Idéologie du Royaume d’OviedoLeon (VIIIe-XIe siècles) (Brepols, 2003), 111-157. This information appears in the act of consecration of the church in 899, published in Antonio López, Historia de la S.A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela (Santiago de Compostelal, 1899), vol. II, Appendix 25, 50-53. Serafín Moralejo, “La Reutilización e Influencia de los Sarcófagos Antiguos en la España Medieval,” in Colloquio, 189-191.

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Two ancient sarcophagi have been linked to Alfonso III historically, but it is impossible to prove that either of them was deliberately chosen by him as his own sepulcher, or if either was part of his overall conception of neo-Visigothism. One lid has been preserved in the chapel of Santa María del Rey Casto in Oviedo’s Cathedral, without its corresponding coffin (Fig. 12.1).23 It is a roofshaped lid, made of marble and decorated with foliage, with the Alpha and Omega, as well as with birds, vases, grapevines, and a Latin epitaph (Fig. 12.2).24 Its dating has been discussed by different scholars: Moralejo dates it back to the fifth century, while Noack-Haley and Tilo Ulbert connects it to those of other sarcophagi originating from the South of France around 500 to 550, based on its decoration.25 It was located in the royal pantheon of the kings of Asturias at least since the sixteenth century,26 when the historian Tirso de Avilés described it for the first time. It is likely that the lid was there for some time, and it is unknown who brought the lid, when it was placed in the pantheon, or whether it was reused as the covering for some other royal tomb.27 The same problems are posed by the paleo-Christian sarcophagus of Astorga, dated to the fourth century and presumably imported from Rome; it has been associated traditionally

23

24

25

26

27

About the transformations of this chapel, founded as a church and later added to the cathedral, see Vidal de la Madrid, “La Construcción de la Capilla de Nuestra Señora del Rey Casto y Panteón Real de la Catedral de Oviedo,” Liño 9 (1990): 77-108. The epitaphs belonging to the kingdoms of León and Castile have been included in the Appendix, with translation to English. See note 105 for details concerning adjustments made in the dating system used for the epitaphs. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 188; Fortunato de Selgas, “La Primitiva Basílica de Santa María del rey Casto de Oviedo y su Real Panteón,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 16 (1890), 291-312. Eduardo Carrero, “La Ciudad Santa de Oviedo, un Conjunto de Iglesias para la Memoria del Rey,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 13/2 (2007): 375-389. Raquel Alonso, “Los Enterra­ mientos de los Reyes de León y Castilla hasta Sancho IV,” E-Spania 3 (2007), accessed September 13, 2014, ; “El Panteón de los Reyes de Asturias: Modelos Ideológicos” in Modelos, Intercambios y Recepción Artística (de las Rutas Marí­ timas a la Navegación en Red), ed. Catalina Cantarellas (Palma de Mallorca, 2008): 37-47 Ulbert and Noack-Haley mention that old documents locate the complete sarcophagus of Ithacius in the royal pantheon, but they do not quote the source of such information: “Ancient documents relate that the entire sarcophagus originally stood in the pantheon, or tomb chapel, of the Asturian kings in Oviedo. Even then it must have been reused as spolia.” Tilo Ulbert and Sabine Noack-Haley, “Lid for the Sarcophagus of Ithacius,” in The Art of Medieval Spain (AD. 500-1200) (New York, 1993), 45.

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Figure 12.1 Sarcophagus of Ithiacus. Photo courtesy of Cathedral of Oviedo.

Figure 12.2 The lateral of the sarcophagus of Ithacius. Photo courtesy of Cathedral of Oviedo.

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with the burial of Alfonso III. 28 The Historia Silense is the first document that refers to the death of Alfonso III in Zamora, to his burial in Astorga and later to his translation to Oviedo in 997.29 In this case the box of the sarcophagus has been preserved, but not the lid: when Ambrosio de Morales visited Astorga, it was kept in the cloister chapel of San Cosme, where it was covered with a new lid, and given a contemporary inscription.30 In the nineteenth century, the sarcophagus was moved to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional;31 Aureliano Fernández-Guerra has suggested that it was found in the town of San Justo de la Vega, close to the Roman city of Astorga, in the ninth century (Fig. 12.3).32 As it happened with the sarcophagus of Ithacius, there is no real proof of the use of this sepulcher for the temporary burial of Alfonso III; Moralejo considers that it was not a reuse with memorial and ideological functions, like the Carolingian examples, but that its reuse had an imaginary function.33 Such deliberate creation of tombs are common in the kingdoms of León and Castile from the twelfth century onwards, and it is a field of study that has recently started to gain relevance.34 Despite the fact that it is not possible to link Asturian kings and the reuse of sarcophagi with certainty, the use of other types of spolia is certain; these are visual symbols of the Visigoth kingdom, such as the cross pattee and the adaptation of the motto of the Emperor

28

29 30

31 32 33 34

Aureliano Fernández-Guerra, “Sarcófago Cristiano de la Catedral de Astorga hoy depositado en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional,” Museo Español de Antigüedades, ed. Juan de Dios (Madrid, 1875), vol. VI, 587-601. Benito Sánchez, Crónica del Obispo don Pelayo (Madrid, 1924), 67-68; Justo Pérez and Atilano González, Historia Silense (Edición Crítica e Introducción) (Madrid, 1959), 152. Morales, Viage, 178. Morales realized that the date could not belong to Alfonso II, and thought that it was a mistake made by the writers of the inscription, and that the sarcophagus might have belonged to Alfonso III until his removal in 997. The original lid was reused once more in the burial of the bishop Sancho de Aceves (d. 1515), but as of the seventeenth century did not have any kind of inscription or adornment. Mauro Castellá, Historia del Apostol Iesus Christo Sanctiago Zebedeo Patrón y Capitán General de las Españas (Madrid, 1610), fols. 481-482. Ana Calderón, “Curiosidades sobre el Sarcófago de Astorga,” Argutorio 15 (November 1998): 15-16. Fernández-Guerra, “Sarcófago,” 588. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 188-189. One of the best-known examples was studied by Rocío Sánchez, “The Eventful Life of the Royal Tombs of San Isidoro de León,” in Church, State, Vellum and Stone. Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, ed. Therese Martin and Julie A. Harris (Boston, MA, 2005), 479-520.

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Figure 12.3 Sarcophagus of Astorga. Photo courtesy of Museo Arqueológico Nacional.

Constantine (d. 337) as the motto of the Asturian monarchy.35 It is probable that the idea of the Asturian kings as the heirs of Antiquity survived in the collective imagination of the old realm, so that ancient artifacts were linked to them without any historical proof. Something similar likely happened with Alfonso X (d. 1284) and the use of his legacy in the later rebuilding of some ancient royal pantheons: his legend was employed in some renovations where he did not appear previously, because the idea of Alfonso as a wise king ran deep in the collective mentality, to the extent that he became associated with its ancient history.36 The case of two sepulchers preserved in the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, Burgos, is much clearer, and their use at the end of the tenth century probably had the function of legitimizing the Countal authority. The abbey was rebuilt by Fernán González, count of Castile (d. 970), on the site where

35

36

Sonsoles Garcia, “La laudadel obispo Teodomiro en la catedral de Santiago de Compostela”, in Los reyes de Asturias y los orígenes del culto a la tumba del apóstol Santiago, ed. Javier Fernández Conde y Raquel Alonso Álvarez (Oviedo, Trea, 2017), 73-92. The first study about the reorganizations made by Alfonso X, Ricardo Izquierdo, “Alfonso X el Sabio, ¿Primer Arqueólogo Medievalista?” Historia, Instituciones, Documentos 28 (2001): 231-240. About the attribution to Alfonso X of renewals that are not linked to him, see Sonsoles García, Espacios Funerarios y Liturgia de Difuntos en el Antiguo Reino de Asturias y León, Unpublished PhD thesis, 275-293.

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there once had been a Visigothic religious community.37 Fernán González and his wife, Sancha Sánchez (d. 959), were buried in some unknown place of the Benedictine abbey, both in ancient sarcophagi, probably in some kind of western pantheon similar to other known examples.38 The tombs experienced several changes of location through the centuries,39 and apparently received the remains of other members of the dynasty originally buried in Santa María de Lara in 1369.40 The original sarcophagi were not only moved several times, but also received the addition of gothic lions as supports, along with contemporary epitaphs.41 As Moralejo theorizes, the successive interventions and removal of the tombs form the basis for the creation of a national Castilian myth, strengthening the idea of the royal pantheon, and locating it in the monastery of Arlanza, as the birthplace of Castile.42 Moralejo analyzed the examples from Arlanza in connection with two other sarcophagi: that of Husillos and that of count Osorio. He argues that these form a group of reappropriations related to a fashion favored among the counts

37 38

39

40 41

42

Victoria Herráez y Dolores Teijeira, “El Cuerpo Occidental de la Iglesia de San Pedro de Arlanza. Propuesta de Reconstrucción Histórica,” De Arte 2 (2003): 8. It would be impossible here to discuss the whole situation of the western porches as funerary spaces; about this subject see Isidro Bango, “El Espacio para Enterramientos privilegiados en la Arquitectura Medieval Española,” Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, IV (1992): 93-132; Jose Luis Senra, “Aproximación a los Espacios Litúrgico-Funerarios en Castilla y León: Pórticos y Galileas,” Gesta, 36/2 (1997):122-144; “En torno a las Estructuras Occidentales de las Iglesias Románicas: Formulación Arquitectónica y Funcional de las Galileas (c. 1030-1150),” in Espacios y Estructuras Singulares del Edificio Románico ed. Pedro Luis Huerta (Aguilar de Campo, 2008), 123-155. Yepes, Cronica, vol. I, 378; Luciano Huidobro, “El Monasterio de San pedro de Arlanza y su Primer Compendio Historial,” Boletín de la Comisión Provincial de Monumentos HistóricoArtísticos de Burgos 6/20 (1927): 211-214; José Alberto Morais, “La Construcción del Pasado a través de la Memoria de los Muertos: los Sarcófagos Antiguos de Fernán González y doña Sancha,” in Preactas del CEHA XVII. Art i memoria (Barcelona, 2008): 95-98. Herraez y Teijeira, “Arlanza,” 13. It is thanks to Francisco de Berganza (d. 1738), that the medieval epitaphs, written well after the death of the counts as a form of memory, were preserved. Francisco de Berganza, Antigüedades de España (Madrid, 1721), 260 and 264. In 1841, as a result of the State expropiation of church properties, the monastery was abandoned and the sarcophagi removed to the collegiate church of Covarrubias. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 189-190. He suggests that centuries after their deaths, the monks could have understood the Roman portrait in the sarcophagus with strigila, where Sancha lay, as a real image of the Count.

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of the realms of León and Castile.43 But in fact, it is unknown who was buried in the sarcophagus associated with Husillos. It was preserved until the nineteenth century in the collegiate church of Santa María de Defesa-Brava,44 and was especially celebrated for the influence that it had in the creation of Romanesque sculpture in that area.45 The piece, dated to the middle of the second century, is decorated with the legend of Orestes (Fig. 12.4). Since the tomb did not have any kind of epitaph, it was used for the first abbot of the collegiate church, Raimundo, who arrived at Palencia with an ensemble of relics for the foundation of the temple. Another possible occupant is Fernando Ansúrez (d. 929),46 the founder of the collegiate church and part of the aristocracy of the region. This suggestion corresponds to the pattern that Moralejo proposes, but it is impossible to certify it.47 In the case of count Osorio Gutiérrez (died c.950), buried in the monastery of San Salvador de Lourenzá (which he founded), it is unknown if the ancient sarcophagus was reused in the tenth century or later. According to the legend transmitted by Antonio de Yepes at the beginning of the seventeenth century, after the death of his wife Osorio Gutierrez became a monk and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; in Jaffa he bought the sarcophagus that arrived miraculously in Galicia by sea.48 It is an unusual example. As Moralejo suggests, this kind of sarcophagus became iconographically related to saints perhaps because a man like the Count was canonized by way of popular devotion after being buried in it.49 The reuse of ancient sarcophagi was associated both with aristocratic contexts and with devotional contexts: for example, Saint Felix in Gerona was buried in the tenth century in a paleo-Christian sarcophagus;50 there are also 43 44

45

46 47 48

49 50

Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 189. In the nineteenth century it was moved to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional: Aureliano Fernández-Guerra, “Sarcófago Pagano en la Colegiata de Husillos, Recién Traído al M.A.N.” in Museo Español de Antigüedades, ed. Juan de Dios (Madrid, 1875), vol. I, 41-48. Serafín Moralejo, “San Martín de Fromista, en los Orígenes de la Escultura Románica Europea” in Jornadas sobre el Románico en la Provincia de Palencia, 5-10 de agosto de 1985, ed. Jesús Manueco (Palencia, 1986), 28-37. About the position of the Ansúrez family, see Simon Barton, The Aristocracy in TwelfthCentury León and Castile (Cambridge, 2002), 275-277. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 189. Antonio de Yepes, Crónica General de la Orden de San Benito (Madrid, 1960), 350-360; Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 189; Fernando López y Marcos Mailoc, Memorial de la Casa de Lemavia (Lemavia, 2011), 70-71. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 189. Miguel Morán, La Memoria de las Piedras. Anticuarios, Arqueólogos y Coleccionistas de Antigüedades en la España de los Austrias (Madrid, 2010), 33.

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Figure 12.4 Sarcophagus of Husillos. Photo courtesy of Museo Arqueológico Nacional.

decorative contexts, such as the façade of the cathedral of Tarragona (c.1200) or the crypt of Saint Engracia in Zaragoza.51 These reuses of ancient sarcophagi for the repose of saints appeared also in France and England; John Crook points out some of them, such as Saint Quitterie at Aire-sur-Adour, Saint Lusor at Saint-Étienne of Déols, Saint Aethelthryth at Ely, Saint William of York, Saint Radegund of Poiters and Saint Eanswyth of Folkestone (†c.640).52 Taking these examples into account, it seems that the legitimation of power might not have been the primary reason for the reuse of ancient sarcophagi: in the majority of cases it is unknown when exactly these tombs appeared and were placed inside the churches. Some of them appear as later attributions, although the appearance of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture on the tombs suggests that they were reused around the tenth century, as Moralejo points out.53 Indeed, most of the examples of sarcophagi of this type have been lost: some of them were probably reused as masonry (as happened with the Romanesque lids in the gothic cloisters); others were likely decorated with new epitaphs and iconography, and many simply were lost in the course of renovation and translations to new tombs. In the eastern Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, the reuse of ancient sarcophagi also concerns the social standing of kings and counts. There is a single known reappropriation of a sarcophagus in the kingdom of Aragón, currently located in the chapel of San Bartolomé in the monastery of 51 52 53

Morán, Memoria, 35. John Crook, English Medieval Shrines (Suffolk, 2011), 31-32. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” passim.

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San Pedro el Viejo de Huesca. Dating back to the third century, it was used for the burial of king Ramiro II (d. 1157), and is decorated with an imago clipeata, held by two genii.54 Moralejo explains its uniqueness by saying it is an example of the decrease of reuses of sarcophagi, due to the systematic looting of ancient necropolises.55 In the county of Barcelona, the first known reused sarcophagus is currently preserved in the Museo Arqueológico de Barcelona: it is decorated with a hunting scene and is thought to have been used for the burial of Sancha, countess of Barcelona (d. 1026) in the galilee of the cathedral of the same city. In the same church was the marble sarcophagus of Ramon Borrell (d. 1017), which was lost after its removal to Alella.56 In contrast to the rest of the Iberian kingdoms, this area continued the use of ancient spolia as sepulchers over the fourteenth century with the burial of Pedro III (d. 1285), in the monastery of Santes Creus, in a porphyry bathtub dating back to the fourth century. The bathtub had been brought from Sicily, a realm Pedro III had acquired through his marriage with Constanza Hohenstaufen (d. 1302), revealing an important influence of the Norman funerary ensemble located in the cathedral of Palermo.57 All over Europe the elite chose to be buried in ancient sarcophagi as a way of legitimating their power and distinguishing themselves from the lower classes. In some cases, these sarcophagi were originally placed close to their later spaces of reuse, but most of them seem to have traveled over large distances, implying a distinct purpose in the reuse. This purpose can be linked to the motives of their new owners as they prepared their own burials, as it seems to have happened with Charles the Great, who brought his sarcophagus to Aachen after one of his journeys to Rome. He also did so for his descendants. The inheritances and legacies received by the living had to be extended to the dead somehow, and this tradition was observed mainly by the 54 55

56 57

Daniel Rico, “El Claustro de San Pedro el Viejo de Huesca: Pascua, Bautismo y Reconquista,” Locvs Amoenvs 7 (2004): 73-97. Moralejo, “Reutilización,” 191; Morán, Memoria, 38. Morán mentions that it is documented in a necropolis located in Tarragona, and discusses the sale of complete sarcophagi as well as scrapped parts for redecoration. Francesca Español, Els Escenaris del Rei. Art i Monarquia a la Corona d’Aragó (Barcelona, 2001), 174. Francesca Español, “Sicut ut decet. Sepulcro y Espacio funerario en la Cataluña Bajomedieval,” in Ante la Muerte. Actitudes, Espacios y Formas en la España Medieval, ed. Jaume Aurell y Julia Pavón (Navarra, 2002), 95-102; Tom Nickson, “The Royal Tombs of Santes Creus: Negotiating the Royal Image in Medieval Iberia,” in Zeitschrift für Kunst­ geschichte, 72 (2009): 1-14.

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commemoration of anniversaries in memory of the deceased, and also by the construction of tombs. In a notable number of examples these reuses demonstrate legitimacy and power: the exploitation of this idea benefits the living, since being the heir to legitimate power is always desirable. But in other cases, it suggests an esteem or regard for ancient objects and thematic ideas. The renaissances that took place in the ninth and twelfth centuries involved attention to ancient literature regarding the portrayals of pagan characters on the tombs. Other evidence for the medieval interest in Antiquity concerns epigraphy. The reuse of sarcophagi was especially popular in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but in the following decades the aristocracy preferred other methods to confer ancient qualities to the recent dead, especially a comparison of the dead to Greco-Roman heroes and personalities. Specifically, epitaphs compared medieval knights and churchmen with the Trojan heroes, ancient philosophers, pagan gods and Roman Emperors. In other cases, the verses show the inspiration of Latin poems, demonstrating the existence of an epigraphic corpus which traveled through Europe. The most admired pagan god in medieval epigraphy was Mars, the Roman god of war. He is present in several inscriptions belonging to knights. This is the case of the tomb of García, last Count of Castile (d. 1028), buried in the monastery of San Salvador de Oña: in his epitaph, preserved thanks to Francisco de Berganza who copied it from a book in the eighteenth century,58 he was considered another Absalon, a Castilian Mars who was assassinated because of a fateful decision.59 Close to the monastery of Oña, in the abbey of San Pedro de Cardeña, is buried the greatest Castilian hero: Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid (d. 1099), whose tomb includes three epitaphs. One of them, attributed to king Alfonso X (d. 1284) and currently preserved under the modern effigy,60 describes

58

59

60

Francisco de Berganza, Antigüedades, 314-315; John Williams, “San Salvador de Oña: Bib­ lias y Beatos,” in Oña. Un Milenio: Actas del Congreso Internacional sobre el Monasterio de Oña (1011-2011), ed. Rafael Sánchez (Oña, 2012), 350-361. In the thirteenth century, the Leonese pantheon of San Isidoro established two new tombs in the context of renovation: that of Infante García (d. 1028) and of Sancho III Garcés (d. 1035). This happened as the Leonese line of the royalty was losing its place in favor of the Castilian. The creation of these tombs was studied by Rocío Sánchez, “Eventful,” 495-496. Gonzalo Martínez studies the different renovations of the tomb in El Cid Histórico (Barcelona, 1999), 408-411; he thinks that the renovation of the sepulcher by Alfonso X was made up by Francisco de Berganza. Several reformations of royal pantheons were carried

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El Cid as unconquered, and more famous than Mars in his triumphs.61 Mars also appears as an intermediary of death, and ends the life of Henry I, Count of Champagne (d. 1181), who is buried in the foundation of Saint-Etienne of Troyes.62 The most prevalent theme in medieval epigraphy concerning Antiquity is the comparison of the recently deceased with the Trojan heroes, whose stories were well- known across Europe. According to Juan Casas, the Trojan legends,63 including the Trojan war and Aeneas’ journey, were well-known in Roman Hispania: they appeared repeatedly throughout the Etymologies of Saint Isidore of Seville, and they became popular in the Middle Ages because of the success of the Roman de Troie by Benoît de Saint-Maure. In the epigraphy, medieval knights were compared to the different heroes in connection to their typical features; for example, Hector praises deeds in arms, Ulysses appears as the image of sense and cleverness, and Paris appears as a vision of beauty. These connections are also present in chronicles such as the Carmen Campi­ doctoris, the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris and the Poema de Almería, where the knight Ponce de Cabrera (d. 1162) is depicted as equal to Ajax and Hector.64 Hector also appears in the sarcophagus of Gonzalo,65 which is buried in the monastery of San Miguel de Escalada of León; Gonzalo was a soldier who, according to his epitaph, had surpassed the fame of Hector. In epigraphy, the Trojan heroes usually come in pairs, like Ajax and Ulysses in the epitaph of Robert III (d. 1223) count of Dreux, in the church of Saint-Yved de Braine;66 he

61

62

63 64

65 66

out by both Alfonso X (d. 1284) and his son Sancho IV (d. 1295). Fernando Gutiérrez studies them in Las Empresas Artísticas de Sancho IV el Bravo (Burgos, 1997) and Izquierdo, “Alfonso,” 231-240. “BELLIGER INVICTUS, FAMOSUS MARTE TRIUMPHIS / CLAUDITUR HOC TUMULO MAGNUS DIDACI RODERICUS” [In this tomb is enclosed the Count Rodrigo Díaz, undefeated warrior, and more famous than Mars in the triumphs]. CUM MEDIUS MAR OS CLAVSIT MORIENTIS [[...] when Mars, the mediator, silenced him, dying]. Anne Mcgee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship (University Park, PA, 2000), 10-11. Juan Casas, La Materia de Troya en las Letras Romances del siglo XIII Hispano (Santiago de Compostela, 1999), 31. Juan Casas, Troya, 31; José Luis Senra, “Entre la santidad y la epopeya: rastreando el desaparecido claustro románico del monasterio de San Salvador de Oña,” in Oña. Un milenio: Actas del congreso internacional sobre el monasterio de Oña (1011-2011), ed. Rafael Sánchez (Oña, 2012), 398-421. Vicente García, Las inscripciones de San Miguel de Escalada. Estudio crítico (Barcelona, 1982), 49-55. “†HIC.IACET ⁝ ILLUSTRIS ⁝ EX ⁝ REGU ⁝ SEMINE ⁝ NATUS:DROCARUM ⁝ BRANE ⁝ Q’COMES ⁝ ROBERTUS ⁝ HUMATUS:HIC ⁝ IN ⁝ AMICCA ⁝ THESEUS ⁝ FUIT ⁝ AET:IN ⁝ ARMIS ⁝ AJAX ⁝ CONSILIO

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is accompanied by the Greek hero Theseus. The same praises are written for Guillermo (d. 1060), buried at Saint-Miquel de Fai in the county of Catalonia,67 who is described as another Paris and another Achilles; the knight Diego López de Haro (d. 1214) who is considered to be another Homer at his tomb in the cloister of Santa María de Najera;68 and finally, the king of Castile, Sancho II (d. 1072), tragically murdered in Zamora,69 is, according to his epitaph in San Salvador de Oña, as beautiful as Paris and as brave in arms as Hector.70 Ingelannus,71 founder of the abbey of Ham in Artois, is compared to a whole ensemble of heroes at the end of the eleventh century: Paris, Ulysses, Aeneas, and Hector; his eulogy was copied for Richard de Clare (d. 1262), earl of Gloucester and Hereford, who is buried in the abbey of Tewkesbury.72 Such reappropiation of epigrams demonstrates the use of an epigraphic corpus that traveled between monasteries and cathedrals as guides for the composition of epitaphs. This explains the relations between distant examples. Such is the case of the epitaph of Esteban de Britto, presbyter of San Miguel de Escalada, wherein appears the verse sine felle columba, a classical ⁝ POLLENS ⁝ FUIT ⁝ ALTER ⁝ ULIXES ⁝ :LETAROUS:ME:FECIT:ANNO:DOMINI: M:CºCº.XXXº:III ⁝ .”

67

68 69 70

71

72

Stanislas Prioux, Monographie de l’ancienne abbaye royale Saint-Yved de Braine avec la description des tombes royales et seigneuriales renfermées dans cette église (Paris, 1859), 59. Juan Casas suggested that the date could be delayed until the thirteenth century. Juan Casas, Materia de Troya, 31; Javier de Santiago, La epigrafía latina medieval de los condados catalanes (815c.-1150) (Madrid, 2003), 325-326. “†HIC WIELME IACES PARIS ALTER ET ALTER ACHILLES / NON IMPAR SPETIE NO PBITATE MINOR / TE TVA NOBILITAS PBITAS TVA GLA FORMA / INVIDIOSA TVOS SUSTVLIT ANTE DIES / GO DEC TVMVLO PIA SOLVERE VOTA SEPULTO / O IUVENES QVORV GLA LAVSQVE FUI” [Here lies Guillermo, the other Paris and the other Achilles, no less handsome or honest. The envious death took away your courtesy, honesty and glory time before; then is fair to honour the pious vows before the tumulus where you are buried, me who was glory and praise of the youth]. Valentín Carderera, Iconografía Española (Madrid, 1855), VIII. Sánchez, Pelayo, 78. This epitaph, as well as the one belonging to count García (d. 1028), was preserved until the eighteenth century in a book now lost. They are supposed to have been placed on the original Romanesque tombs, but of that there is no material proof. Senra dated these epitaphs in the second half of the twelfth century, Senra, “Santidad,” 408. “Hic flos militiae, Paridis gena, sensus Ulyssis,/ Aeneae pietas, Hectoris ira jacet.” [Flower of the army, Paris cheek, sense of Ulysses, piety of Aeneas and rage of Hector lies here]. Dionysii Sammarthani, Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa; qua series et historia archiepiscoporum, episcoporum et abbatum Franciae vicinarumque ditionum ab origine Ecclesiarum ad nostra tempora deducitur, et probatur ex authenticis Instrumentis ad calcem appositis, tomo III (París, 1725), col. 508. Robert Favreau, “Les Inscriptions Médiévales. Reflet d’une Culture et d’une Foi,” in Études d’Épigraphie Médiévale, ed. Robert Favreau (Limoges, 1995), 281-282.

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formula used in the epitaph of Pope Libere (d. 356). It was reproduced as medieval epigraphy through the texts of Angilbert (d. 814),73 an abbot of Saint-Riquier who travelled to Rome and copied several epitaphs, forming a corpus. He used the verse of the fourth-century epitaph in a sylloge he dedicated to his abbey, which spread throughout the continent;74 according to Robert Favreau, there are twenty-one examples of the reuse of the verse. In the Iberian Peninsula it appears at least four times: in the epitaphs of abbot Diego (d. 1110) and abbot Pedro (d. 1202) of Sahagún, of canon Miguel (d. 1162) in the cathedral of León, and of abbot Álvaro (d. 1276) in the monastery of San Juan Bautista de Corias.75 Another example of epigraphy from Antiquity is used in San Miguel de Escalada, in the epitaph of canon Rodrigo (d. 1161): placed in the wall of the porch, it evokes the ancient god Apollo; specifically, it is an adaptation of the maxims of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, reading, “Nosce te ipsum.” Javier del Hoyo and Pablo Rettschlag explain the appearance of two reappropiations of ancient epigraphic formulas alongside the figure of Hector in the epitaph of Gonzalo in the monastery of San Miguel de Escalada.76 The examples appear in connection with the donation of the monastery to the canons of Saint Rufus in 1156:77 Del Hoyo and Rettschlag propose that one of the monks was perfectly aware of the classical texts and the pagan epigraphy explaining this reappropiation of ancient verses.78 Even though it is quite possible this was the main reason for the examples located in Escalada, it is obvious that some of the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Asturias and Leon were aware of ancient formulas and their use of pagan heroes, since they were used in the area some time before the arrival of the French canons. Finally, an ancient term appears in several epitaphs across the kingdoms of León and Castile: Hesperia. It was the name given to the Iberian Peninsula by the Greeks, and used by the Romans; according to Senra, the term was recovered after the conquest of Toledo in 1085 by Alfonso VI (d. 1108), and it was used

73 74 75 76 77

78

Robert Favreau, “Sine Felle Columba. Sources et Formation d’une Formule Epigraphique,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 32/126 (1989): 105-113. Ibid., 108. José María Quadrado y Francisco J. Parcerisa, Recuerdos y Bellezas de España. Asturias y León (Salinas, 1977): 394; Robert Favreau, “Columba,” 112-113. Javier del Hoyo and Pablo K. Rettschlag, “Carmina Latina Epigraphica Medievalia de San Miguel de Escalada (León),” Studia Philologica Valentina 11/8(2008): 213. About the donation of the monastery and its context, see Carlos M. Reglero, Cluny en España. Los Prioratos de la Provincia y sus Redes Sociales (1073-c.1270) (León, 2008), 167-168; Lucía García, Doña Sancha, Hermana del Emperador (León, 1972), 162-164. Del Hoyo y Rettschlag, “Carmina Latina...,” 213.

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especially during the reign of Alfonso VII (d. 1157).79 The first epitaph where the concept appears belongs to Fernán González (d. 970). It was placed onto his reused sarcophagus according to Francisco de Berganza, but the tomb does not have any trace of it today, and the date is unknown. The epitaph uses the words “Hesperia regum” in the last verse, which refers to the origins of the blood of this virtuous man as originating from Gaul, England and the Goths. These mixed to form the kingdom of Hesperia.80 In 1090, Alfonso VI doubled the annual donation that his father had given to Cluny, and in this document his kingdom, which included León, Galicia and Castile, is called “Hespe­ ridum.”81 The next three appearances of the concept are part of the funerary ensemble of San Isidoro de León, a monastery which belonged to the Infantado until the second half of the twelfth century (as happened in San Miguel de Escalada), when it was given to French canons by the infanta Sancha (d. 1159). In the royal pantheon of San Isidoro, the tombs of the infantas Elvira (d. 1100), Urraca (d. 1101) and Sancha (d. 1159) and the queen Urraca I (d. 1126) received new epitaphs before 1200.82 The inscriptions of the three women included similar names for the kingdom: Esperia decus was used for Elvira, Esperiaque for Urraca and Esperia Especulum for Sancha. To the same period belong another two epitaphs including this expression, according to Senra;83 they are related to the counts of La Bureba in the monastery of San Salvador de Oña: the one belonging to Gómez González (d. 1110), who “defended the coasts of Hesperia as Hector protected Troy.” Rodrigo Gómez (d. 1146) had such fame as a ruler that it “filled the boundaries of Hesperia.” Two other epitaphs of this ensemble include references to good rulers of Antiquity, such as Cato, Scipio and Themistocles. Similar comparisons are found in the rest of Europe: for example Louis d’Outremer (d. 954) is called Caesar in his epitaph,84 and Suger 79 80 81 82

83

84

Senra, “Santidad,” 409. Berganza, Antigüedades, 260. Alexandre Bruel, Reccueil des Chartes de l’Abbaye de Cluny. Tome IV: 1027-1090 (Paris, 1787), 809-810. For the epitaphs and their translation in English, as well as their context and the renovations that took place in the royal burials in the second half of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, see Sánchez, “Eventful,” 486-489. The epitaphs currently preserved date back to the sixteenth century, when the cloister of the monastery and the tombs of the counts were rebuilt in the new style. Senra proposes, taking into account the epitaphs of García (d. 1028) and Sancho II (d. 1072), that the Renaissance epitaphs were composed in the twelfth century and transferred to the parchments in the modern renovation. Senra, “Santidad,” 410-411. The tomb was destroyed, but the epitaph was preserved in the psalter of Queen Emma (d. 986?), wife of his son Lothair (d. 986), where he was said to have the sublime blood of

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de Saint-Denis (d. 1151) is equated with Tullius and Cato.85 The good sense of Cato was a desirable quality for several French abbots, such as Simon of Déols (d. 1100) and Hugo of Saint-Benigne de Dijon (d. 1300).86 It is possible to confirm several facts through the use of different characters and concepts of Antiquity during the High Middle Ages. It is apparent, through the study of epigraphy, that certain inhabitants of twelfth-century Europe knew some things about ancient times: they recognized the characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey (probably thanks to the Romance versions), and the different qualities of each one’s personality, as well as the pagan gods and their attributes. Also, throughout Europe there existed epigraphic compilations that circulated, allowing for adaptations in composition between distant lands. This in turn allowed the spreading of the so-called twelfth-century Renaissance and the use of similar concepts in different parts of the Continent. The inclusion in the epitaphs of great characters of Antiquity in comparison to the recent dead allowed the dead to provide good examples to the living; the ideals portrayed by the Trojan heroes survived in works of chivalry and it was desirable to be compared to Hector, Achilles and Ulysses – but of course, not to the despised characters of the epic stories. The survival of funerary practices originating from pagan communities can be traced through canon law of the Middle Ages and occasionally also in art via archaeological findings. Law is an important source of information, since ecclesiastical laws are both critical and conscious of the survival of pagan practices, but at the same time the survival of pagan regulations through the centuries demonstrate that medieval communities continued ancient practices without paying much attention to law, and that the Catholic Church was not very severe on the subject until the Council of Trent (1545-1563). There are mainly three topics that relate to that survival: the first of them is associated with the Christian borders of newly-conquered territories. It was necessary to eradicate some customs; the Council of Tours in 566 ordered the expulsion from the Church those who celebrated the first of January in honor of Janus and who on St. Peter’s day held funerary feasts and worshipped stones, trees and springs.87 In 742 every pagan practice was forbidden; 88 shortly after, in 780, the Capitulatio de Partibus Saxoniae, called for the prosecution of those

85 86 87 88

Caesar. Francis Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of England (London, 1857), 623. Adhèmar, Influences, 22. “Tullius ore, Cato meritis, et pectore Cesar,” [the mouth of Tullius (Cicero), the merits of Cato, and the breast of Caesar]. Favreau, “Inscriptions,” 281-282. MGH Leges. Concilia Aevi Merovingici, vol. I, 133. MGH, Leges. Capitularia Regum Francorum, vol. I, 25.

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who celebrated pagan funerals with cremation. The Church ordered the Saxons to use Christian graveyards and leave pagan burial mounds.89 As Christendom was established throughout the Continent, very specific religious laws of that type disappeared, and surviving pagan observances became more subtle, like the use of pagan ways of viaticum. According to Frederick Paxton, the Latin word viaticum corresponded with epodion, the Greek word for the coin placed on the eyes or in the mouth of the deceased as payment for Charon, the boatman of the river Styx.90 After the Christianization of the custom, sometimes people still placed coins on the eyes or the mouth, as Gilchrist and Sloane have found in monastic cemeteries;91 while on other occasions they would place the host on the eyes or mouth, which was forbidden as early as 585 in the Council of Auxerre.92 The funerary feasts that took place in cemeteries were already regulated in 572, during the Second Council of Braga, which banned the custom of taking food to the tombs and using it as sacrifices for the dead,93 while in 1050, per the Council of Coyac it was allowed and even recommended to hold a feast after the funeral.94 Occasionally, archaeology brings to light the remains of these funerary feasts, such as those found in the cemetery of Lugo de Llanera, close to Oviedo: here were found the remains of fire structures in the surroundings of the tombs. The tombs contained fragments of ceramics, which archaeologists interpreted to be the remains of the funerary banquets that took place there between the tenth and twelfth centuries.95 The Church partly appropriated these practices, encouraging Christians to donate to the poor the food they would have eaten at the feasts; but at the same time they were eager to accept the establishment of pitanças or funerary feasts for monastic communities where the donor was commemorated.96 The connection between burials and anniversaries with food was typical of the Greco-Roman world, and it sur89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Ibid., 69. Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1990), 33. Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane, Requiem. The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (London, 2005), 101-102. MGH Leges. Concilia Aevi Merovingici, vol. I, 181. José Vives, Concilios Visigóticos e Hispanorromanos (Madrid, 1963), 102. J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Amplissima Collectio (Venecia, 1774), col. 788. Carmen Fernández y Paloma García, “Excavaciones en Santa María de Lugo de Llanera (Asturias),” Excavaciones Arqueológicas en Asturias. 1995-1998 (1999), 163-173. One of the best-known examples is that of Alfonso VI (d. 1109), in the abbey of Cluny. Charles Julian Bishko, “Liturgical intercession at Cluny for the King-Emperors of Leon,” Studia Monastica III (1961), 53-76.

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vived for a long time. The banning of such practices was so relaxed that as late as the sixteenth century, in the dioceses of Mondoñedo, it was customary to eat and drink inside the churches during the celebration of All Souls’ Day, with people installing tables and using the altars as cupboards.97 On the same feast day, in the cathedral of Oviedo, the women of the city placed bread and wine in the sepulchers as offerings to the cathedral.98 The third form of pagan survival is mourning at funerals, which was regulated for the first time in 589, by the Third Council of Toledo, which commanded mourners to take the corpse to burial singing psalms and not other funerary songs, and forbade the making of gestures, such as hitting their chests.99 According to descriptions and iconography, during the High Middle Ages funerary rituals became theatrical, and processions were full of sounds both from people and animals: such elaborate processions characterized by the sound of music and mourning were typical of ancient times and had been restricted by Solon since the sixth century BC.100 After the restrictions by the Third Council of Toledo, there was no explicit reference to funerals in the ecclesiastical legislation until 1326 in the council of Marsiac, when the official position of the Church was to encourage modest funerals, and discourage disturbing exhibitions of any kind.101 This was the stance of the Hispanic Church during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, when several synods banned exaggerated mourning and especially the self-inflicted injuries during the funerals.102 Such processions and exorbitant manifestations of grief were intended to be a tribute to the dead, and in the last centuries of the Middle Ages were generally provided for in the wills by the deceased, but those observances implied a boundary between the dead and the living that was renewed each time someone died in the community, even though they were probably unaware of its pagan origins. When the Middle Ages are examined in depth, the physical remains of Antiquity are copious, and therefore should not be ignored or dismissed as the relics of dark times, of a bygone world. The cases examined here are linked to the funerary world; they show different kinds of taste for Antiquity and diverse 97 98

99 100 101 102

Antonio García (dir.), Synodicon Hispanum. Tomo I. Galicia (Madrid, 1981), 73-74. Sonsoles García, “La Liturgia Funeraria en la Catedral de Oviedo. El Libro de los Estatutos y Constituciones de la Sancta Iglesia de Oviedo, con el Ceremonial y Kalendario de sus Fiestas Antiguas,” De arte 12 (2014), 117-134. Vives, Concilios, 132-133. Roger Labrousse, Cicerón. Las Leyes (Madrid, 1989), 222-225. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorumm, vol. XXV, col. 783-786. VVAA, Synodicum Hyspanum, Tomo III. Astorga, León y Oviedo (Madrid, 1984), 446-447; 453454; and 526-527.

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reasons for the reuse of ancient artifacts. Concerning the reappropiation of ancient sarcophagi for the newly dead, in many examples the main motive was the legitimation of new powers through the use of elements from the old order; in other cases, such legitimation was more difficult to demonstrate, suggesting that some kind of fashion could have been involved. Concerning epigraphy, the use of figures from Antiquity, such as philosophers, gods, and especially Trojan heroes is recorded through all Europe, confirming the idea posed by Panofsky of a pan-Mediterranean Renaissance that took place in the twelfth century.103 The epitaphs display the knowledge that medieval writers had, not only of the names of the ancient characters, but also about their stories and typical features, which were applied as attributes for the recent dead. Finally, the similarity between ancient funerary customs and those described by canon law in the Middle Ages, display the continuity of pagan practices in Christianity. Some of them were seen as non-Christian and therefore banned and eradicated, like burials in pagan mounds; while others, like exaggerated mourning and funeral processions that had been legislated since the government of Solon, were probably an inherent part of funerary practices apart from organized religion; and even though they were forbidden by the early Christian Church, they were commonplace for the most part of the Middle Ages. The reappropiation of both material and immaterial elements of Antiquity suggest that the perception of Antiquity in medieval times was not casual or spontaneous, but common and deliberate, at least in the elite culture. The reappropriation of Antiquity must be considered as a vehicle for memory and commemoration: through the use of ancient spolia and the incorporation of characters of Greco-Roman literature in epigraphy, the living established close relations with the dead and their legacy. As Patrick Geary points out, the celebration of liturgical commemoration and the making of important tombs was the reflection of the relation between two different categories of social rank, the living and the dead.104 Via commemoration, the living paid for the legacy of the dead, a legacy that was constantly renewed by the celebration of anniversaries and masses for the dead, and also through sepulchers and epigraphy that belonged to people’s forefathers. In the case of spolia the relation goes even further than in other cases, since the link provided by the ancient 103

104

Panofsky, Renacimiento, 60. A complete status of the issue about the twelfth-century Renaissance in Stephen. C. Ferruolo, “The Twelfth-Century Renaissance,” in Renaissances before the Renaissance: Cultural Revivals of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Stanford, CA, 1984), 114-143. Patrick Geary, “Interaction Between the Living and the Dead,” in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (New York, 1994), 77-92.

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pieces connects the living to the relatively immediate dead and also to the remotely dead, who practiced other religions.

Appendix: Epitaphs105

1

Sarcophagus of Ithacius

“INCLVSI TENERVM PRAETIOSO MARMORE CORPVS / AETERNAM IN SEDEM NOMINIS ITHACII” [Under precious marble I hold within for eternal rest the body of the youthful Ithacius].106

2

Sarcophagus of Astorga

“SEPVLCRVM · REGIS · DON · AL · FONSI · FERDINANDI · II · OBIIT · ANNO · DNI · DE · 882 · ” [Sepulcher of king Alfonso Fernando II died in the year 882]107

3

Countess Sancha (d. 959)

“ILLUSTRIS SANCTIA INDOLIS FRANCORUM, PROSAPIAQUE GOTHORUM, / REGIA CANTABRICA, CENTRUM, ET ORIGO REGUM CASTELLAE / DUX, ET GLORIA CASTELLANORUM, FAMA, LAUS, HNOR, FORTITUDO, / VIRTUTESQUE CUNCTAE IN EA CLARUERUNT. BIS VINCTUM COMITEM / E CARCERE EDUXIT: COELICAS SEDIS BEATAQUE POSSIDET” [The illustrious Sancha was of honest nature, of gothic lineage and royal Cantabrian blood, center and origin of the kings of Castile, guide and glory of the Castilians. The fame, the praise, the honor, the strength and all the virtues gleamed in her. Two times she took the Count out of prison. Now they are in the blessed heavenly mansions]108

105

106 107 108

The dating system in the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula up until the fourteenth century conform to that of the Spanish Era; this means that thirty-eight years must be subtracted in order to establish the appropriate correlation to the Anno Domini system. The author has made these adjustments in the translation of the epitaphs to English, above. Tilo Ulbert y Sabine Noack-Haley, “Lid,” 45. Morales, Viage, 178 Berganza, Antigüedades, 260.

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Fernan González (d. 970)

“VNICUS FORTISSIMUS, MAGNANIMUSQUE COMES, / BELLIGER INVICTUS, DUCTUS AD ASTRA FUIT. / LIVIAM, HISPANIAM DOMUIT, ANGELICIS CHORIS ADDUCTUS: / VIRTUTE, VI, ET ARMIS VINDICAVIT SIBI CASTELLAM. / AUSTRORUM GALLIAE, ANGLIAE, GOTHORUM SANGUINE VENIT; / GENUS VNDE REDUNDAT, HESPERIAE REGNUM.” [Uniquely strong and brave count, undefeated warring, generalship of the stars. Conqueror of Hispania, was taken by choirs of angels: Virtuous, man with arms claimed Castile. South of Gaul, Anglian, with gothic blood; many from the kingdom of Hesperiae kneeled before him].109

5

Esteban de Britto

“†ST^EFA^NVS ⁝ E^N ⁝ BRIT^TO ⁝ MORS ⁝ / SIT ⁝ SV^A ⁝ VIV^E^RE ⁝ XP(IST)O ⁝ DORMI^T ⁝ / IN ⁝ HAC ⁝ T^V^M^BA ⁝ SIMPLEX ⁝ SIN^E ⁝ / F^ELL^E ⁝ COLV^M^BA ⁝ P(RE)SBIT^ ER ⁝ CA^NONICV^S ⁝ / S(AN)C(T)I ⁝ RU^FI ⁝ OB(II)T ⁝ XVII ⁝ K(ALENDAS) ⁝ IVNII ⁝ alpha omega ⁝ ”110 [Here lies Esteban, native from Brittany – may his death be life for Christ -. [He] sleeps in this tomb, [a] simple pigeon without bile. [A] priest, [a] canon of Saint Rufus, [he] died [the] seventeenth day before the kalends of June.]

6

Canon Rodrigo (d. 1161)

“VT SE NOSCAT HOMO DIVINVS/ MANDAT APOLLO MAII · OBIT · RODRICVS · CANO / NICVS · SCI · RVFI POSTMILLESIMA ⁝ ”111

⁝

KALENDAS / PETRI MILES / ERA · CA · LXL / VIIIIa ·

⁝

[Know thyself commands divine Apollo. In the kalends of May died Rodrigo, witness of Pedro, canon of Saint Rufus in the era of 1199 = 1161.]

7

Gonzalo

“†MAGNVS DE MAGNIS  ·  EST  ·  NATVS  ·  FINIBVS  ·  ISTIS ⁝ DORM[I]T  ·  GONSALDVS  ·  SUB PONDERE LAPIDIS  ·  HVIVS ⁝ / HIC  ·  SVB  ·  MIL^ICIA  ·  FAMAM  ·  SORTITVS  ·  HON^ESTAM ⁝ QVINTO  ·  NONAS  ·  MAII  ·  P(ER)SOLVIT  ·  DEBIT(stella)A  ·  MORTI ⁝ / MILES  ·  FORMOSVS GONSA^LDVS N(O)M(IN)E  ·  DICT^VS ⁝ HECTOREOS  ·  A^CT^VS  ·  109 110

111

Berganza, Antigüedades, 264. Del Hoyo and Rettschlag, “Carmina Latina”: 211-213. The current plaque dates to the fourteenth century, but according to these authors it copied the epitaph from the twelfth century. Del Hoyo y Rettschlag, “Carmina Latina...,” 213.

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A^RMIS  ·  SVP(ER)A^VIT  ·  ET HICT^VS / MORIBVS ET VIT^A MIRABILIS HIC HEREMIT^ A ⁝ PREMIA I^VST(A)” 112. [Noble and born of noble lineage in this land. Here sleeps Gonzalo under the weight of this stone. Having reached in the army honorable fame, the fifth day before the nones of May, he cleared his debts with Death. Graceful soldier, named Gonzalo, he surpassed with weapons the deeds and blows of Hector. Praiseworthy for his life and behaviors, here as an hermitage, fair awards [...]].

8

Count García (d. 1028)

“HIC AETATE PUER GARSIAS ABSALON ALTER, FIT FINIS: / ILLUD ERIT, QUI GAUDIA MUNDI QUAERIT. / MARS ALTER, DURUS BELLIS, ERAT IPSE FUTURUS; / SED FATI SERIE TUNC PRIUS OCCUBUIT. / Hic filius fuit sanctii istius comitis, qui inter fectus est proditione à Gundisalvo Munione, et à Munzione Gustios, et à Munione Rodriz, et à multis aliis apud Legionem civitatem, ERA M.L.XVI.”113 [Here becomes dust the young Infant García, as another Absalom; this is what will become of the one who looks for the pleasures of the world. He would have been a Castilian Mars, but he died as a youth by the decision of Fate. He was son of Count Sancho, and was murdered by Gundisalvo Munione, Munzione Gustios, Munione Rodriz and some others in the city of León. It was the year 1066=1028].

9

Sancho II (d. 1072)

“SANCTIUS FORMA PARIS, ET FEROX HECTOR IN ARMIS, / CLAUDITUR HAC TUMBA, IAM FACTUS PULVIS ET VMBRA; / FEMINA MENTE DIRA, SOROR, HVNC VITA EXPOLIAVIT. / IURE QUIDEM DEMPTO, NON FLEVIT, FRATRE PEREMPTO. / Rex iste occisus est proditore consilio sororis suae Vrraca apud Numantiam civitatem per manum Belliti Adelfis magni traditoris, in Era M.C.X. Nonis Octobris, rapuit me cursus ab horis.”114 [Sancho, comparable in his beauty to Paris and in his courage with arms to Hector, is imprisoned in this tomb, reduced to dust and a shadow. His sister, heartless woman, took his life away and against law, she did not cry for her murdered brother. This king was killed by the treason of his sister Urraca in the city of Numancia [and] by Bellito Adolfo, the great traitor. The seventh of October of 1072 they carried me away from the path of time.]

112 113 114

Ibid., 206-211. Berganza, Antigüedades, 314-315. Berganza, Antigüedades, 310, 435.

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García González

Alvar Salvadórez (d. before 1087)

“ALVAR(us) ⁝ VRBE ⁝ CATO ⁝ BELLOQ ⁝ SECVD(us) ⁝ ACHILLES ⁝ FILI(us) ⁝ ATQ. ⁝ SVVS ⁝ SALVATOR ⁝ PYRRH(us) ⁝ I ⁝ ARMIS ⁝ BVREBE ⁝ COMITES ⁝ ET ⁝ QVOS ⁝ HABET ⁝ ASTFER ⁝ ORBIS ⁝ HAC ⁝ MODO ⁝ SVB ⁝ GELIDI ⁝ REQVIESCVT ⁝ MARMORIS ⁝ VMBRA”115 [Under the shadow of this frozen marble rests Don Alvaro, who was a second Cato in the government and a second Achilles in war. His son Salvador, second Pyrrhus in arms, was Count of Bureba and maintained them, yet supported the world]

11

Gonzalo Salvadórez (d. 1082)

“NON ⁝ EST ⁝ HIC ⁝ FALLAX ⁝ NIMIVQ. ⁝ PROTERVVS ⁝ VLYSSES ⁝ SED ⁝ DVE ⁝ SCIPIADE ⁝ CRVDI ⁝ DVO ⁝ FVLMINIA ⁝ BELLI ⁝ FRATRES ⁝ QVADRIMANVS ⁝ GONSALVUS ⁝ NUNNIVS ⁝ ATQ. ⁝ QVOS ⁝ DOMVS ⁝ ALTA ⁝ TONET ⁝ QVIS ⁝ DE ⁝ TERRA ⁝ MAVRA ⁝ CECIDIT ⁝ ” [He is not here the deceitful and arrogant Ulysses, but the two Scipios, two thunders of war, Gonzalo Fourhands and Munio who live in the heavenly dwelling after the Muslims killed them]

12

Gómez González (d. 1110)

“GVMIVS ⁝ HESPERIAS ⁝ QVIS ⁝ SIC ⁝ DEFENDERAT ⁝ ORAS ⁝ HECTOR ⁝ VT ⁝ ILIACAS ⁝ CONIVN(ge)Q ⁝ VRRACA ⁝ FIDELIS ⁝ HIC ⁝ GELIDAS ⁝ HIEMES ⁝ HIC ⁝ GRATI ⁝ TEMPORA ⁝ VERIS ⁝ IRE ⁝ VIDENT ⁝ CELIQ ⁝ NIHIL ⁝ CONSTARE ⁝ SVB ⁝ ANIMAS ⁝ ”116 [Gómez, who defended the coasts of Hesperia as Hector protected Troy, and his loyal wife Urraca, here they see how the cold winters and the pleasant weather of spring pass by and how there is nothing everlasting under the sky.]

13

Rodrigo Gómez (d. 1146)

“CLARA ⁝ THEMISTOCLIS ⁝ DOCTA ⁝ SUBVENIT ⁝ ATHENAS ⁝ GLORIA ⁝ TOTIVS ⁝ RODERICI ⁝ FAMA ⁝ REPLEVIT ⁝ HESPERIA ⁝ FINES ⁝ IACET ⁝ HIC ⁝ ELVIRAQ. ⁝ CONIVNS ⁝ QVI ⁝ SVPER ⁝ AST ⁝ GERI ⁝ LETANITVR ⁝ CVLMINA ⁝ CELI ⁝ ” [Illustrious Themistocles governed the erudite Athens, the fame of Rodrigo filled the boundaries of Hesperia. Here he lies with his wife Elvira, and they rejoice in the high regions of the starry sky.]

115 116

Rodrigo Amador de los Ríos, Burgos (Barcelona, 1888), 1031. The last word is cited as animas by De los Ríos and as axe by Senra, who translated it as “sky”: De los Ríos, Burgos, 1032 and Senra, “Oña”, 407.

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Chapter 13

Exploring Late-Medieval English Memento Mori Carved Cadaver Sculptures Christina Welch

This chapter explores the extant carved cadaver sculptures of the English religious and secular “elite”1 in the context of late-medieval Roman Catholic communal conceptions of the afterlife. To date forty of these English carved cadaver sculptures (hereafter ECCSs) have been located. The sculptures, dating from c. 1420/25 to c. 1558, present three-dimensional images of wealthy landowners, prosperous merchants, and the members of the high clergy, lying naked and emaciated in open burial shrouds (Fig. 13.1). There was a short pause in their manufacture during the reign of the Protestant King Edward VI (15471553), and as such, ECCSs appear to be situated firmly within a Roman Catholic context. A few ECCSs represent the commemorated individual as clearly dead, either showing the figure with an open abdomen or chest cavity (three are carved in this manner), or as a laid-out corpse (one shows the memorialized man with his chin tied to the top of the head in a manner consistent with the practice of laying out a corpse). The vast majority of ECCSs however, represent the commemorated person in a liminal state between life and death, with his or her muscles carved in tension as if still alive, yet lain in the burial shroud as if already dead. This liminal appearance seems to represent the figures as if gasping a last breath; yet with their heads carved tilted back, and with open (or slitted) eyes, they represent an artistic reflection on mortality. Consequently, these memento mori sculptures largely reject any notion of resting in peace. ECCSs are best described and contextualized with reference to the individual whom they commemorate, especially when placed in relation to theological and vernacular perceptions of the afterlife in late-medieval England, specifically, Purgatory. They are also considered in the context of the history of anatomy, which helps to frame their realistic, often-remarkable representations of frail and wasted human bodies. Further, the viscerality of these singular memorials draws upon the concept of iconicity, and the importance of the visual avant-garde. This suggests that in their day, they acted as potent symbols 1 Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, Family Life in the Middle Ages (Westport, CT, 2007), 113.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_015

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Figure 13.1 The now-anonymous carved cadaver at St. Andrew’s Church, Feniton, Devon, as exemplar carved cadaver. © Welch 2012.

of the pains of post-mortem purgation, and as such went beyond the usual memento mori reminder of death’s continued presence. This viscerality, however, appears to have outlasted the shock of the new, and almost five hundred years on, despite a substantial shift in England’s religious landscape, so powerful are they in speaking to contemporary concerns about human mortality, that the sculptures are largely marginalized in academic discourse, and in their ecclesiastical settings. ECCSs are part of a Northern European genre of mortuary art called transi (meaning passed over), which includes incised brasses, carved skeletons, carved rotting corpses, and carved intact corpses.2 Examples of transi can be

2 See Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Berkeley, CA, 1973).

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found in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and the Lowlands,3 but this study refers only to the sub-genre of transi that are ECCSs. In England, ECCSs are typically life-size, with an average length of approximately one hundred and seventy centimeters (a corresponding height of approximately five feet, seven inches).4 Of the forty extant ECCSs, thirty-eight are carved in stone with the other two carved in wood. Ten memorial sculptures are classified as tiered in design, with an upper effigy “en vie” [as if in life], and a related emaciated cadaver lying beneath. The remaining thirty sculptures are isolated carved cadavers, although of these one memorial is known to have originally been tiered; the en vie effigy and surrounding tomb have vanished, leaving just the carved cadaver and a late eighteenth-century engraving of the monument as evidence.5 Further, one carved cadaver from an originally tiered memorial was destroyed in 1784;6 a 1641 illustration and en vie effigy are all that remain.7 Only one of the extant ECCSs represents a female. This sculpture is of Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk (d. 1475). It depicts her in both en vie and cadaver form, and was commissioned by Alice shortly before her death. Interestingly, the sculpted cadaver shows Alice as an aged woman, whereas the upper effigy 3 Cohen’s Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol (1973) provides a list of extant transi, although it is not comprehensive. 4 Only two of the forty ECCSs are sculpted smaller than life-size (both depict clerics) and only two are larger than life-size (both non-clerics). Of the forty, only two are un-measurable; one is headless (although the length can be estimated), and the other is so badly damaged that only a torso remains. 5 The ECCS of Dean Thomas Heywood, Lichfield Cathedral in its original form can be seen here: Staffordshire County Council, “Lichfield Cathedral – Monument to Dean Heywood; engraving,” Staffordshire Past Track (2015) 6 Julian M. Luxford, “The Collegiate Church as Mausoleum,” The Late Medieval Church and its Contexts, ed. Clive Burgess and Martin Heele (Woodbridge, 2008), 126-27; and Sydney Race, “Note on an Old Painting of Southwell Minster, and Archbishop Booth’s Chapel,” Transactions of the Thoroton Society 22 (1918) 7 The originally tiered memorial attributed to Archbishop Laurence Booth (d. 1480) in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Southwell, Nottingham, appears in Pamela King, Contexts of the Cadaver Tomb in Fifteenth-Century England (PhD thesis, University of York, October 1987), 8, 107, 1480. . The memorial and chapel were destroyed in 1784 in re- construction work; see Julian M. Luxford, “The Collegiate Church as Mausoleum,” 126-27, and Sydney Race, “Note on an Old painting of Southwell Minster, and Archbishop Booth’s Chapel,” . As this chapter includes only the extant ECCSs, the Booth sculpture is not included in the analysis.

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represents her in her prime; it is the only ECCS to show such a dramatic age difference, and as far as can be established, the only sculpture of its time to show a nude elderly female. Of the thirty-nine male ECCSs, twenty-two are carved with tonsures identifying them as clerics,8 and sixteen comprise identified members of the landed gentry and merchants, or individuals without a tonsure but wealthy enough to afford such a costly memorial. One further unidentified male ECCS is now headless, and another’s design means the crown of the head is not visible;9 as such it is not possible to classify either as clerical or lay. The vast majority of the ECCSs are carved as intact bodies, and most of these are largely anatomically accurate, depicting muscles, ligaments, and skeletal structures below the skin. They typically have detailed facial features, and several are sculpted with raised veins on the hands, arms, legs and feet. However, despite their realistic depictions of the nude body, Cohen argues they were not intended to be a “literal portrayal of the body of the deceased,”10 and indeed studies suggest the wealthy were more likely to die of obesity-related diseases than emaciation.11 Although symbolic rather than veristic, then, the anatomical aspects of ECCSs are noteworthy. As most pre-date the publication of De

8

9

10 11

There is a carved cadaver sculpture at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, North Curry, that appears to be of a cleric. However, on close inspection, the head (with tonsure) is not part of the original sculpture, and is clearly a later addition and of much poorer quality than the body. As other small churches have clerical ECCSs there is no reason to suppose the commemorated individual was not a cleric. As such this sculpture is currently included in this chapter as clerical despite the head being not part of the original sculpture. Notably, the ECCS is not included in the description of the church in John Collinson, The History of Somerset vol. II (Bath, 1840). The ECCS of Bishop John Alcock (d. 1500) is missing his head but the lappets of his miter are evident, confirming the memorial as clerical in design. The headless ECCS is at the Church of St. James in Dursley, and the ECCS that does not show the crown of the head is in the church of St. Michael’s and All Saints, Hughenden. This later ECCS has a small sculptured homunculus carved in a recess on the chest, possibly representing the man’s soul. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 2. See, Gundala Muldner, and Michael P. Richards, “Fast or Feast: Reconstructing Diet in Later Medieval England by Stable Isotope Analysis,” Journal of Archaeological Science 32 (2005), Pip Patrick, The “Obese Medieval Monk:” An Interdisciplinary Study of a Stereotype (Oxford, 2014), and Christina Welch, “Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials,” in Death and the Culture of Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time; the Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Medieval and Early Modern Culture of Death, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin, 2016), 396.

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Humani Corporis Fabrica (1564) by Andreas Vesalius (d. 1564),12 a work which marked a revolution in anatomical knowledge and especially in the visual representation of human anatomy, ECCSs are significant in shedding light on pre-Vesalian anatomical awareness. But also, it is their realistic three-dimensional portrayal of the naked, emaciated human form that gives ECCSs their unusual status within mortuary art as a genre. The unique appearance of ECCSs should not be underestimated. Their exposed and vulnerable look stands in stark contrast to the usual clothed mortuary memorials, which reflect the status of those prosperous enough to afford such a commemorative piece. ECCSs are also uncharacteristic in their foregrounding of post-mortem discomfort; as noted, few appear to be resting in peace. Given their peculiarities one must therefore question why someone of social standing would choose to be memorialized in this manner, with only a drape of a burial shroud, or strategically positioned hand, to protect his or her modesty. In seeking to answer this question, and to establish the deep-rooted connection of ECCSs to late-medieval English Roman Catholic beliefs about death, it is important to examine the background of those commemorated by an ECCS. However, before starting this exploration it is worth briefly noting that no records survive concerning the commissioning or manufacture of ECCSs, and as such, attempts to determine who carved them is purely speculative, and reliant on broader historical sources. The closest extant record relating to an ECCS concerns the commissioning of a marble slab with inlaid brasses by Richard Willoughby (d. 1471) that covers a carved cadaver in St. Leonard’s Church, Wollaton.13 However, no mention is made of the cadaver sculpture in the contract, indicating that it was commissioned elsewhere and manufactured by a different artist and/or workshop.14 But sculptors were not the only people working on ECCSs as polychroming was typical,15 and many retain evidence that this process occurred (Fig. 13.2). Due to the cost of the polychroming materials and, “because of the painstaking 12

13 14

15

Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) can be viewed electronically via the British Library at . Nigel Saul, “The Contract for the Brass of Richard Willoughby (d. 1471) at Wollaton (Notts.),” Nottingham Medieval Studies, 50 (2006). Christina Welch, “Chopping and Changing”: Exploring the Willoughby Carved Cadaver Memorials at St. Leonard’s Church, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire,” Church Monuments 17 (2016), 65. The ECCS of Bishop Stephen Gardiner (d. 1555) at Winchester Cathedral, has no poly­ chroming evident at all, while that of Bishop Paul Bush (d. 1558) at Bristol Cathedral has a polychromed miter but no evidence of polychroming on the body.

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labour required … [polychroming] sometimes cost as much as twice the cost of the carving.”16 Given that sculpting an ECCS took at least three months by a highly skilled craftsman, and that it was carved from a single block of stone, or a large piece of seasoned timber, the materials and the skills involved in creating an ECCS makes it a hugely expensive item. Indeed, estimates suggest that they cost the equivalent in today’s money, as a top-of-the-range luxury sports car.17 The juxtaposition between the high price and the impoverished appearance adds to the symbolism of these sculptures that simultaneously display vast wealth and depravation. Henry Chichele (1362-1443), can reasonably be credited with originating the ECCS fashion in England by commissioning his memorial in c. 1420/25.18 He was lowly born but had a successful diplomatic career, and rose to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. Having attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, he was aware of the importance of a good education, and founded All Souls College, Oxford, as well as at least two other colleges.19 A man of great wealth and prestige, he commissioned a breviary containing all the liturgical texts for the set of prayers required in the Roman Catholic tradition, from a prominent illustrator. It is said to contain, “a greater number and quality of images than any other breviary from the same period.”20 His elaborate tiered memorial was in place by 1424, eighteen years before his death, and he prayed daily beside the twin images of his en vie body dressed in his clerical splendor, and that of his cadaver, naked and emaciated in an open burial shroud.21 16 17 18

19 20 21

Kim Woods, Imported Images: Netherlandish Late Gothic Sculpture in England, c.1400-c.1550 (Donington, 2007), 100. Welch, “Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials,” 394. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 15.; Peter Sherlock, “Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55, no. 4 (2004): 675. However, Pamela King argues that the now anonymous ECCS found in York Minster may predate the Chichele memorial but only by a few years. She suggests it may commemorate John Newton, the treasurer of the Minster who died in 1414; see “The Treasurer’s Cadaver in York Minster Reconsidered,” in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson: proceedings of the 1999 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline, M. Barron and Jenny Stratford. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 11 (Donnington, 2003). If Chichele did not erect the first ECCS then he erected the first tiered ECCS. Jeremy Catto, “Chichele, Henry (c.1362-1443),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) >http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5271?docPos=1>. Lambeth Palace Library, “Featured Image; Chichele Breviary,” . Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 15-16.

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Figure 13.2 Detail of the carved cadaver of Bishop John Carpenter (d. 1476) at Holy Trinity Church, Westbury on Tyrm, Bristol, showing evidence of polychromy. © Welch 2012.

Interestingly, given that Chichele not only commissioned his ECCS, but spent almost two decades contemplating it, there are significant differences between his en vie effigy and that of his wasted corpse. Perhaps most telling is the sculpting of the hands, which on the upper effigy are very masculine-looking, being broad with thick fingers (although it must be noted that these are replacements dating to 1663/64 following Civil War damage),22 whilst on the cadaver the hands are more stereotypically feminine, being slender with long tapered fingers (Fig. 13.3). But it is not only the hands of the cadaver that suggest a female model. The shrunken abdomen has a large bowl shape with what appears to be the flared ilium of a female pelvis.23 This may suggest the use of female prostitutes as models for the more personal areas of the sculpture, and give an indication that Southwark may have been the place of manufacture. 22 23

Christopher Wilson, “The Medieval Monuments,” A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks (Canterbury, 2002), 477 n.118. I would like to thank Dr. Wendy Birch, Forensic Anatomist at University College London, for her expertise on human anatomy.

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Figure 13.3 Detail of the hands of Henry Chichele’s carved cadaver (left), and effigy (right) at Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, showing difference in sculpted hands. © Welch 2016.

The area was known for its highly-skilled artisans,24 and also for its prostitutes.25 The face of the cadaver however, is masculine in appearance, with a strong jaw, and a prominent brow and cheekbones, all of which correspond with the en vie effigy. Although prominent art historians dispute the notion of verism at this time,26 it is unrealistic to assume the upper effigy of Chichele’s ECCS would not present some degree of realism. Chichele commissioned the memorial long before he died, and as a costly and prestigious memorial, some degree of portraiture can reasonably be expected in the en vie effigy. This would ensure that those looking at the memorial during Chichele’s lifetime could identify it as commemorating him. However, the tomb was indeed commissioned with Chichele’s death in mind, for its Latin inscription notes he was born poor and became a primate, and is about to be worm food.27 The text also reflects on the vileness of the human flesh, but given that in medieval England, the general populace, including the country’s nobility, understood very little, if any, writ24 25 26 27

Jean Wilson, The Archaeology of Shakespeare: The Material Legacy of Shakespeare’s Theatre (Sutton, 1995), 85. Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford, 1996), 37-60. Stephen Perkinson, “Sculpting Identity,” Set in Stone; the Face in Medieval Culture, ed. Charles T. Little (New York, 2006), 123. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 16.

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ten Latin,28 the twin sculptures can be understood to depict the same for the illiterate. There is also a strong physical resemblance between the effigy and cadaver on the magnificent tiered ECCS that memorializes John FitzAlan (1408-1435).29 Whilst records suggest FitzAlan had specified his place of eternal rest in his will, the monument is not in the specified location,30 and thus was probably commissioned after his death. As a man of social status and funds, FitzAlan is marked out as famous in his day by his worldly achievements. An earl and baron who held the prestigious Order of the Garter for his services to the King, FitzAlan had a notable military career. He served in many campaigns with and for King Henry VI, attended the king’s coronation, and was subsequently applauded by the ladies for being the best tilter at the celebratory jousting tournament. Known for his dashing military attacks and daring ambushes, the French called him the “English Achilles,”31 although a surprise attack brought FitzAlan’s military career, and life, to an end.32 Like Chichele, FitzAlan’s memorial shows him in his prime, flaunting his wealth and social standing,33 and wearing lavish fighting armor.34 This representation is juxtaposed with an exquisitely carved cadaver portraying him humbled. Alice de la Pole (1401-1475) is also commemorated by an elaborate, tiered ECCS that contrasts affluence with poverty. Granddaughter to the celebrated poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and a duchess, de la Pole was a well-connected and wealthy noblewoman who at her death owned estates in twenty-two counties. A literary patron and friend to Queen Margaret of Anjou, together with her last husband (she was widowed twice), she licensed an almshouse with a grammar school at the village of Ewelme where her alabaster tiered memorial lies. It was

28 29 30 31

32 33 34

Pierre Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (London, 2003), 129. Welch, Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials, 396-97. Mark A. Tierney, The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel: Including the Biographies of its Earls, from Conquest to the Present Time Vol. I (London, 1834): 302. Anne Curry, “Fitzalan, John (VI), seventh earl of Arundel (1408-1435), soldier,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), . John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague and Death in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 2001), 254-5. Arthur Gardner, Alabaster Tombs of the Pre-Reformation Period in England (Cambridge, 1940), 59. I would like to thank Dr. Robert Marcoux, Professor adjoint, in Département des sciences historiques at Université Laval, Canada, for alerting me to the differences between jousting and battle armor.

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in place shortly before her death,35 and therefore it is certain that de la Pole commissioned the monument herself. The upper effigy of de la Pole’s memorial shows her in the prime of life, and although her clothing is modest, it displays her elevated standing in society as a Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. The effigy is notably much longer than the sculptured carved cadaver that lies beneath it, and depicts her as a naked old woman with shrunken breasts. The nakedness of this particular ECCS is highly significant as the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky, in his description of carved cadaver sculptures, argues that they “reveal as much of [their] nude form as was compatible with modesty.”36 Yet this is not the case with the de la Pole ECCS, for no respectable woman would commonly appear topless regardless of her age. Further, both Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s and The Merchant’s tales37 demonstrate that the elderly were typically reviled.38 This extraordinary memorial therefore acts as more than just a memento mori [remember death] showing, like the Chichele and FitzAlan memorials, the change from living to dying/life to death, and the transience and futility of vanitas [material things] and voluptas [ambition, pleasure and lust]. It also clearly depicts the shift from youth and fecundity, to age and wastedness; and by largely concealing the cadaver sculpture (which is visible only through small arches in the chest tomb), is resonant of the social acceptability of the former, and the social unacceptability of the later. All the tiered ECCSs represent dualities (clothed/naked, life/death, rich/ poor), but the most important is the sharp contrast between what is important in this life, and what should be important for the next. In Ecclesiastes 12: 7-8, Solomon the author, informs that not only are all earthly things just expressions of hollow and ephemeral vanity (such as ego, pride, and arrogance) that return to dust, but that it is the spirit that returns to God, and therefore should be attended to. Further, Matthew 19:24 informs that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, whilst Luke 16: 19-31 notifies that it is the poor rather than the rich that go to Heaven. The tiered ECCSs can be understood to represent these teachings visually. They unmistakably distinguish between the earthly and the spiritual, through the materiality of the en vie effigy, and the poverty inherent in the 35

36 37 38

Rowena E. Archer, “Chaucer, Alice, duchess of Suffolk (C.1401-1475),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2011), ; and see John A. A. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme (New Haven, CT, 2011). Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculptures: Four Lectures to its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (New York, 1964), 64. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Sinan Kökbugur, 1997. . Robert Stevick, One Hundred Middle English Lyrics (Chicago, 1994).

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carved cadavers. As such, the ECCSs represent the inner spiritual being of the commemorated person that will eventually return to God (once purged of one’s venial sins), with the isolated examples foregoing the earthly en vie depiction, but retaining their highly theological symbolic meaning. The theological significance of ECCSs is further exemplified in one of the isolated ECCSs. The sculpture in Tewksbury Abbey, allegedly of Abbot John Wakeman (d. 1540), includes two snakes symbolizing the sin of disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which brought death and lust into the world (Gen 3:1-7). It also features a toad or frog squatting in Wakeman’s shroud beside his left ear. Frogs and toads represent sin and death in the medieval mindset,39 and it is on the left that Jesus, sitting in Glory, places the damned (non-believers) in Matthew 25:33. To add to the symbolic element of this sculpture, carved on the belly of the man is a small mouse (Fig. 13.4). The mouse, at this time, was understood to be an allegory for the soul, and if it were polychromed red, then Wakeman’s soul was depicted as good, whereas if it were polychromed black, his soul was depicted as bad;40 sadly, the polychroming has worn away. As such, the symbolism of ECCSs was not just Biblical, but was also embedded in vernacular theology, most notably in relation to Purgatory. The connection between ECCSs and Purgatory is evident in the memorial to John Denston (d. 1473/74) of Denston Hall; a memorial that also commemorates his wife Katharine. The memorial lies at the Church of St. Nicholas, a church rebuilt by the Denstons in the 1460s. John Denston was a man of some considerable importance, a local Lord of the Manor, and the founder of a college with a perpetual chantry (granted through his executors by King Edward IV in 1474) that specifically included prayers to “the souls of John Denston and Katharine his wife.” 41 The Denston memorial, an open cage tomb with a marble slab top, once displayed incised brasses that included a male and female en vie figure, and six shields; these are now all missing. Inside the open cage tomb lie the stone sculptures of a man and a woman. Her figure is completely shrouded showing only her hands (cross on her chest), and her face and neck. It is fairly worn but does not appear to have closed eyes and a closed mouth (very possibly closed 39 40 41

Mary Robbins, “The Truculent Toad in the Middle Ages,” in Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Nora Flores (New York, 2000), 36. Hope B. Werness, Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art (New York, 2006), 285. Samuel Moore “Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk, c.1450 II,” Modern Language Association 28, no. 1(1913): 83.

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Figure 13.4 Detail of a mouse on the belly of the carved cadaver attributed to Abbot John Wakeman (d. 1530) at Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire. © Welch 2012.

with a chin strap), and is represented as dead. The sculpture of John Denston however, conforms to the typical ECCS. His figure is naked, emaciated,42 and he protects his modesty with a drape of his burial shroud. Further, with muscle tension in his limbs and clearly defined veins, John Denston resides in the liminal space between life and death; a liminal space that is reminiscent of Purgatory, of the space betwixt and between this-life on earth, and the final afterlife in Heaven. The attention to anatomical detail is very high on the Denston ECCS with finely carved veins on his arms, hands, legs and feet (Fig. 13.5). Yet, close inspection indicates that the sculptures were carved as a pair. Whereas the symbolism of John Denston is that of the next-life (Purgatory), the symbolism of Katharine Denston is that of female modesty, something that was not a concern for Alice de la Pole. The sculptured difference between the post-mortem imagery of the two women is significant as de la Pole had agency in the commissioning of her ECCS (due to her status as an independent and wealthy widow), whereas 42

John Denston’s ECCS is unusual in its emaciated state as it is carved with a small rounded belly reminiscent of the bloated abdomen that occurs through malnutrition.

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Figure 13.5 Detail of the carved cadaver of John Denston (d. 1473/74) in the Church of St. Nicholas, Denston, Suffolk, showing veining on the feet. © Welch 2012.

Katharine was not in this position. The role of agency is important, then, in the commissioning of mortuary memorials, and evidences the gendered expectations of everyday society, placing these above spiritual concerns. The same can be seen in the memorial commissioned by Richard Willoughby (d. 1471), which features incised brass effigies of both himself and his wife Anne, yet the ECCS is only of Richard. Agency is also crucial in examining the “why” of ECCSs. As noted previously, several were commissioned by the person commemorated, and given the cost, it can be assumed that the remaining sculptures were either self-commissioned, or commissioned by a descendant or executor keen to ensure only the best for the deceased person; and this meant showing the person at their spiritual best. During the period of history in which the ECCSs were commissioned and sculpted, death was something to be feared;43 the average life expectancy was forty-five years,44 and disease, including the plague, the English sweating sickness, and dysentery, was rife.45 Unsurprisingly, Ariés, the medievalist and social historian of death, notes a potent connection between carved cadaver 43 44 45

Phillipe Ariés, Western Attitudes Towards Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M, Ranum (Baltimore, MD, 1974), 13. Henry Lancaster, Expectations of Life: A Study in the Demography, Statistics, and History of World Mortality (London, 1990), 8. Alan Baker, “Changes in the Later Middle Ages,” in A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, ed. Henry Derby (Cambridge, 1973), 188. See also, J. Doe, “A History of Epidemics in Britain,” Mongenes (2014), .

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sculptures and the appearance of the publications such as the ars moriendi in 1415,46 on how to die well, and how to ensure the best possible outcome for the afterlife.47 Cohen too argues for an association between the cadaver sculptures and afterlife anxiety, noting compelling resonances with memento mori art such as the Three Living/Three Dead illustrations, and the Dance of Death murals, which reminded people of the transience of life. 48 However, she additionally argues that the carved cadaver sculptures went beyond the common memento mori didactic artistic warnings of “remember you will die” and “I am as you will be,” to specifically petition prayers for the commemorated individual.49 This shift from the general to the particular strongly suggests that ECCSs need to be contextualized within late-medieval perceptions of death and the afterlife on an individual basis. During the late medieval period, death and the afterlife were central concerns.50 Duffy argues, “the overwhelming preoccupation of clergy and laity alike … was the safe transition of their souls from this world to the next, [and] above all with shortening their stay in Purgatory.”51 Purgatory was the place where all bar the sainted and the damned went after death.52 It was considered a place of painful suffering where one was cleansed of venial (forgivable) sins before unification with God in Heaven. However, as Le Goff has argued, although belief in purgation was popular, the vernacular theology of Purgatory was complex, and in essence produced “a liturgical chain…. binding the dead to the living.”53 Formulated in the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and confirmed in the Council of Florence (1438-1443), “Purgatory ... [was] a halfway stage between earth and heaven, where the sinful but repentant … could, through purgatorial cleansing punishment, complete the process of making satisfaction for sin and so be rendered fit for heaven.”54 An intricate economy 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Ariés, Western Attitudes Towards Death, 39, 41. See, Simon Thomas, “Ars Moriendi-the Art of Dying,” Polonosky Foundation Digitization Project (Oxford, 2103) . Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 12, 28. Ibid., 44. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago, 1996), 200. Eammon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c1400 to c1580 (London, 1992), 301-02. Eleanor Townsend, Death and Art: Europe 1200-1530 (London, 2009), 11. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago, 1984), 152-53. Rosemary Horrox, “Purgatory, Prayer and Plague: 1150-1380,” in Death in England: An Illustrated History, ed. Peter Jupp and Clare Gittings (Manchester, 2000), 90.

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evolved around Purgatory and the notion that one could lessen the pains, and shorten the time spent purging one’s venial sins there. To achieve this, one could perform certain acts during one’s lifetime: go on pilgrimage, give alms to the poor, and/or buy indulgences, which worked as remittances against time spent there. These acts also worked toward incorporating into daily life the crucially important corporeal and spiritual Works of Mercy.55 One of the spiritual Works of Mercy was to pray for the living and the dead, and the notion of interceding for the deceased in Purgatory was fundamental in medieval Roman Catholicism. The utility and success of intercessory prayers for the dead were embedded in the Eucharist, in Masses, and in prayer fraternities, as well as in the creation of Chantries,56 almshouses, and colleges. Many of those commemorated by an ECCS established Chantries (i.e. Baret, d. 1467, and Fox, d. 1528), and some endowed almshouses (de la Pole, d. 1475), and colleges (Chichele, d. 1443). On the exterior north wall of St. Leonard’s Church in Wollaton is what remains of an inscribed dedication to Richard Willoughby (d. 1471), which mirrors the location of his Easter Sepulcher memorial inside the church on the north side of the chancel. Currently retaining just his name, “the lower wording has been carefully cut away [and most] likely petitioned prayers for Richard, a request that would have been standard for the time.”57 The removal of the Roman Catholic intercessory wording is most likely due to iconoclast destruction during the Protestant Reformation, but the inscription demonstrates that villagers need not set foot inside the church to be reminded to pray for Richard.58 So prevalent and powerful was the vernacular notion that intercessory prayer 55

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The seven corporal works of mercy were to feed the hungry, give drink to the poor, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit prisoners, and bury the dead. The seven spiritual works of mercy were to instruct the ignorant, counsel doubters, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offences willingly, comfort the afflicted, and pray for the living and the dead. See, Ayanna Sheree Brown, “That Peace Shall Always Dwell Among them and True Love be Upheld: Charity, the Seven Works of Mercy, and Lay Fellowship in Late Medieval and Early Reformation England. Unpublished PhD, University of Mich­ igan (2014), . Arnold Angenendt, Thomas Braucks, Rolf Busch, and Hubertus Lutterbach, “Counting Peity in the Early and High Middle Ages,” in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes ed. Bernhard Jussen, trans. Pamela Selwyn (Philadelphia, PA, 2001). Welch “Chopping and Changing,” 65. The memorial inside St. Leonard’s Church, Wollaton, commemorates Richard and his wife Anne; however, only Richard has a carved cadaver sculpture and a prayer petition.

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could aid in lessoning one’s stay, and/or help to relieve the pains in Purgatory that in parts of England, even during Edward VI’s reign when Purgatory had been abolished, wills often retained a “belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead.”59 Theologically, Purgatory was a place where the soul did penance for venial sins, but visual and verbal testimony described it as a place where the body suffered also. The anonymous 1422 English text, A Revelation of Purgatory, describes a nun’s vision of a fellow nun experiencing purgatorial pains, with “her skin rent and burning, [and] fire leaping from her mouth.”60 Further, the Doctrinal of Sapience, an anonymous clerical text from the fourteenth century, warned that the torments of this world were nothing compared to the boiling fires of Purgatory;61 and Dante’s Divine Comedy described the sufferings in Purgatory as corresponding to one’s earthly sins. Here the greedy would be forced to eat dust, whilst the proud had heavy rocks on their backs to ensure they looked at nothing but the ground.62 Dante, whose work was lavishly and graphically illustrated in all its medieval versions,63 believed that “abstract thoughts ... [needed to] be clothed in words or images to achieve actuality,”64 and although scarce, extant visual representations of Purgatory showed bodies suffering.65 The tale of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory makes clear that the souls in Purgatory are “equipped with a body of sorts that enables them to experience physical suffering,”66 and Sir Owain, the protagonist of the story, sees souls “hanging by various body parts.”67 Thus, working alongside the principle of 59 60 61 62 63

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Lorraine C. Attreed, “Preparation for Death in Sixteenth Century Northern England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 no. 3 (1982); 44, 48. Edward, L. Risden, “‘A Revelation of Purgatory’ and Chaucer’s The Prioress,” Fifteenth Century Studies 35 (2010): 107. Joseph E. Gallagher, The Doctrinal of Sapience Heidelberg Universitätsverlag (Winter 1993): 214. Sergio Samek-Ludovici, and Nino Ravenna, Dante’s Divine Comedy: 15th Century Manu­ script, trans. Peter J. Tallon (Barcelona, 1979). For a selection of medieval illustrations see Matt Collins, “Dante’s Divine Comedy in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Art,” Renaissance and Reformation in Europe (The Khan Academy, 2016) Dante in Trisha Olson, “The Medieval Blood Sanction and the Divine Beneficence of Pain: 1100- 1450,” Journal of Religion and Law, 22 no. 1 (2006): 99. Takami Matsuda, Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry (Cambridge, 1997), 107. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 88-89. Edward E. Foster (ed.), “Sir Owain,” Three Purgatory Poems: The Gast of Gy, Sir Owain, The Vision of Tunsdale (2004),

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purgatorial punishment was the notion of post-mortem sentience; a belief that although a corpse was dead, the soul and consciousness had yet to fully depart the body, and that suffering could be experienced physically. The concept of a post-mortem sentience in medieval England can be seen in the belief that that the boundaries between the living and dead were distinctly blurred. Graveyards hosted burials, business meetings, and lovers’ trysts,68 and because there was no “infallible test for diagnosing when death actually occurred,”69 occasionally people came back to life. This return from the grave accorded with the Biblical “Raising of Lazarus” story in John’s Gospel (11:38-44), and linked with the notion of revenants (the dead who reappear in the land of the living with a specific purpose), notably to give a warning to the living, or to plead for intercessory prayers.70 Although belief in revenants was heterodox, the dead and buried who returned as revenants were, “often given a theological overlay by the English church and acted as an aid to instruct the living how to avoid such a fearful fate post-mortem.”71 Paintings in cemeteries and churches also supported the idea that a corpse may have some sort of life, and that these living dead could serve a pedagogical purpose.72 This idea was supported by many vernacular texts of the day,73 including the writings of the English priest and poet John Audelay (d. c.1426) who often drew on the Biblical tale of Lazarus to add extra weight to his pedagogical stories which included The Gast of Gy, The Book of Conscience and The Revelation of Purgatory.74 Audelay’s work also graphically emphasized the “torment of the revenant” suffering in Purgatory, whilst underscoring the role that intercessory prayer, and Works of Mercy play in one’s “eventual release” from this effective prison. Furthering the notion of post-mortem sentience in England, the ringing of church bells at the annual festival of All Souls/All Saints75 and the daily 68 69 70 71

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Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995), 591. Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2005), 13. Nancy Mandeville Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past & Present, 152 no. 1 (1996). Christina Welch, “For Prayers and Pedagogy: Contextualising English Carved Cadaver Monuments of the Late-Medieval Religious and Social Elite,” Fieldwork in Religion 8 no. 2 (2013); 146. Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” 24. Matsuda, Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry, 62. Takami Matsuda, “John Audelay’s Poems,” in Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture, ed. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Cambridge, 2015), 134. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1994), 45.

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Masses for the Dead were both popularly believed to comfort and help the departed in Purgatory. However, some form of life, at least in the immediate period after death, appears to have been prevalent across Northern Europe. Here it was popularly believed that souls lingered in the vicinity of their graves during the most dangerous period of decomposition, lasting up to a year after death.76 This period, using the terminology of anthropologist Robert Hertz, can be labeled the “wet stage” of death. In 1960, Hertz published a seminal paper on mortuary rituals in the Pacific region. Here he identified the transition between the “wet medium of the body” (the corpse), which removes the dead person from daily social life, and the “dry medium” (the bony remains) which places the individual into the supernatural world of their ancestors.77 This theory can usefully be applied to late-medieval England, where during the wet stage of death (bodily decomposition), the deceased can be understood as being in a liminal state; a state betwixt and between, where the person is neither fully alive nor fully dead. Nancy Caciola discusses this liminal wet stage in her work, stating that during the Medieval period, for Northern Europeans such as the English, only when the body was fully skeletal was it “fully defunct;” only then did the “psychic death and physical death” coincide.78 Medical Historian Katharine Park argues that it was common during the Medieval era for the “flesh-and-blood-body” to be integral to the self, with corpses during this wet decomposition stage of death understood to be “active, sensitive, or semi-animate, possessed of a gradually fading life.”79 She notes that this selfhood could persist for a year or more after burial; not a surprising concept given, “exposure to rotting corpses would not have been infrequent, for medieval graves were not deep, coffins still relatively rare and urban cemeteries so crowded that the cutting into existing graves (intercutting) was common.”80 Notably, Park asserts that, “belief in the continued animation of the corpse could be found at all levels of society and culture, it was analyzed, debated, and defended, with copious erudite references, by learned northern writers on theology, medicine, and law.”81 76 77

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Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, 14. Robert Hertz, “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death,” in Death, Mourning and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, ed. Antonuis C. G. M. Robben (Oxford, 2004). Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” 45. Katharine Park, “The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe,” The History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995), 115, 119. Welch, “For Prayers and Pedagogy,” 148. Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” 117.

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The late-medieval theological and vernacular notions of post-mortem sentience then, allow the ECCSs to be understood as expressions of everyday lived religion. They draw on typical memento mori tradition, reminding all who looked at them that one day they would die; and that therefore one should lead as good a life as possible.82 But ECCSs also extended this idea to provide a deeper didactic, visually reinforcing the concept of physical suffering in Purgatory. They achieved this through their highly novel depiction of the human form; viscerally representing in three dimensions, a naked and emaciated individual that was both realistic in appearance and deeply symbolic in nature. The next section therefore explores this viscerality, focusing on the anatomical element of ECCSs; the element that gives them their potent pedagogical power. Carved cadaver memorials (often termed transi tombs or transi figures) originated in the late-fourteenth century,83 with one of the earliest commemorating Guillaume de Harcigny (d. 1393),84 court physician to Charles V of France and a notable French doctor.85 The de Harcigny memorial is constructed from a single piece of stone and shows him lying naked on a mortuary slab, with his eyes slightly open, mouth ajar, and hands crossed over his genitals. De Harcigny has a very shrunken visage and emaciated body, but muscles are evident on his limbs, and his legs and feet appear in tension. There is no evidence of veining on the carved corpse, and the metasternum is not shown, but the sculpture does have the correct number of ribs, and overall the anatomy is executed excellently by a sculptor well-versed in carving the human form. This sculpture predates by almost one hundred and fifty years Vesalius’s Fabrica (1543), one of the most influential works of human anatomy; indeed, most of the ECCSs also predate this seminal text, thus adding weight to their importance in terms of their anatomical depiction, and thereby cementing the ECCSs as crucial in determining the history of anatomical knowledge in England.

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Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, “Post-Mortem Care of the Soul; Mechtild of Hakeborn’s ‘The Booke of Gostlye Grace,’” in Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture, ed. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Cambridge, 2015), 162. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 1. For a photograph of the sculpture of de Harcigny see, Musée de laon, Laon, Picardy, France – Gisant de Guillaume de Harcigny, . Sophie Oosterwijk, Monument of the Month; October 2010 – the cadaver monument of Guilaume de Harcigny (d. 1393), formerly at the Franciscan church now Museé de Laon (France) (église des Cordeliers) on a slab, 1.84m in length, Church Monuments Society, October 2010, .

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However, whilst carved cadaver sculptures were a Northern European phenomenon, the history of anatomy is firmly located in Southern Europe, notably Italy. Dissections in Italy are known to date from at least as early as the 1280s, although these were largely religious and/or legal affairs,86 with university dissections following on some years later. De Luzzi’s Anatomy appeared in 1316 and mentioned practical dissection for surgical training purposes.87 Public dissections in Italy date to at least 1405,88 but some individuals, such as artists, may have had access to unclaimed cadavers from hospitals for private dissections.89 In Northern Europe, despite a public dissection in Vienna in the early 1400s,90 in Germany, France, and England where the majority of carved cadavers are located91 there are few references to anatomical dissection before the late fifteenth century.92 Thus, whilst eviscerations for bodily preservation prior to burial, and division of royal and saintly bodies for veneration purposes did pre-date anatomization, much of Northern Europe was fairly late to adopt the anatomical dissection of the human form.93 In terms of attempting to determine the nationality of the sculptors with the high level of anatomical knowledge to carve the detailed ECCSs, the most likely candidates are Italian, or Italian-apprenticed. However, Italian sculpture has tended toward the idealized form of the human body, and carved cadavers display little of this form; indeed they faithfully represent an emaciated corpse/ dying individual.94 Further, artists came to England from all over Europe,95 with many establishing themselves in the Southwark area of greater London, due to it being outside the restrictive Guild system that operated in the City of London. Southwark was notable during this (and later) periods for its highquality artisanal work. Examinations of two-dimensional representations of 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

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Katharine Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renais­ sance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1994). Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, 1990), 86. Giovanna Ferrari, “Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna,” Past and Present 117 (1987): 53-54. Martin Clayton and Ron Philo, Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomist (Seattle, WA, 2012), 22. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 88. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 189-194. Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” 114. Park, “The Life of the Corpse,” 114. The Hebrew tem gossess, meaning a person in the process of dying, may be a more appropriate term for the vast majority of ECCSs than transi, meaning passed over. The term resonates with the liminal state that many depict. Woods, Imported Images, 106.

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Figure 13.6 Detail of the eviscerated now-anonymous carved cadaver in the Church of St. John the Baptist, Cambridgeshire, showing the backbone inside the rib cage. © Welch 2016.

the human anatomy dating from the period in which ECCSs were sculpted, illustrates the quite extraordinary knowledge and skill level of the sculptors. The crude illustrations in Pseudo-Galen, Anatomia in English (1491) stand as a stark example here.96 The skeleton illustration (front) is largely accurate, although there are at least fourteen pairs of ribs, and the metasternum (xiphoid process) at the case of the sternum is missing. The back view of the skeleton has the correct twelve pairs of ribs, but the pelvic bones look more like shoulder blades (although possibly not human ones), and the clavicles do not come low enough down the back of the body. The illustrator appears not to have had a skeleton to work from, as the drawings are not detailed enough to suggest a meticulous examination. Most ECCSs, however, although only depicting the front of the body, do include the metasternum, and as previously noted, include muscles, ligaments and skeletal features in the correct locations, and suggest a close scrutiny of the human body. One ECCS in Keyston, portrays an anatomically accurate eviscerated corpse presenting the backbone of this now anonymous cleric in his abdomen (Fig. 13.6). Evisceration was a form of body preservation that, by removing the viscera from the torso, ensured the slowing of the decomposition process whilst the body was transported from the place of death to the place of burial. A depiction of the procedure appears in the de Lisle Psalter (c.1308-40) from East

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Illustrations from Psedudo-Galen, Anatomia in English (1491) can be accessed via Well­ come Images – L0045187-195. The text is MS.290 at the Wellcome Collection.

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Anglia.97 Although the ECCS is also located in East Anglia, close inspection of the Psalter image against the extant sculpture does not suggest the ECCS was carved from, or inspired by, the illustration, which is much cruder in terms of overall anatomy than the sculpted eviscerated priest. The Psalter image is also earlier than the sculpture, as recent Radiocarbon dating has concluded with 95.4% accuracy that the wood for the Keyston carved cadaver was felled in 1400;98 given seasoning time, this would date the carved cadaver to around 1415. Not only then, is this sculpture one of the earliest examples, but it provides solid evidence that at least one sculptor had access to human anatomy. Another ECCS, that of Sir Roger Rockley (d. 1522 or 1534)99 in Worsborough, also depicts an open abdomen. Part of a handsome wooden tiered memorial, the upper section depicts Rockley en vie in armor praying with hands together over his chest, and eyes open in expectation of the resurrection. The lower section meanwhile represents Rockley deceased with an open chest cavity. The head of the ECCS is skull-like, although the body is carved to indicate the presence of intact flesh. Peculiarly, his intestines are carved vertically rather than horizontally, and as such the anatomical accuracy of this piece is unusually poor, although the metasternum is present (Fig. 13.7). Further, the carved skulllike head strongly suggests it comprises the robust mandible of a male, but the smooth cranium of a female (Fig. 13.8). This cranial anomaly implies the carver of the Rockley ECCS had little anatomical knowledge, and probably visited a cemetery to locate the required body-parts from which to sculpt their commission; archaeological evidence suggests bones and parts of corpses were a fairly common sight in medieval England, as intercutting between graves was a not-uncommon practice.100 Rockley’s unusual abdominal anatomy demonstrates that the sculptor was 97

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See Sarah J. Biggs, “The Three Living and the Three Dead,” British Library: Medieval Manuscripts Blog, January 16, 2014, . SUERC Laboratory report on the Keyston wooden carved cadaver dated 22 November 2016. The exact dates of Sir Roger Rockley are unknown and have been given as 1534, by Philip Morgan, “Of Worms and War; 1380-1558,” in, Death in England: An Illustrated History, ed. Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings (Manchester, 1999), 119, and as 1522 by Frank E. Howard and Frederick H. Crossley, English Church Woodwork: A Study in Craftsmanship During the Medieval Period, A.D. 1250-1550 (London, 1927), 354. Duncan Sayer, “The organization of Post-Medieval Churchyards, Cemeteries and Grave Plots: variation and religious identity as seen in Protestant burial provision,” in The Archaeology of Post-Medieval Religion, ed. Chris King and Duncan Sayer (Woodbridge, 2011), 202.

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Figure 13.7 Detail of the abdomen on the carved cadaver of Roger Rockley (d. 1522 or 1534) in St. Mary’s Church, Worsborough, Yorkshire, showing incorrect anatomy of intestines. © Welch 2015.

Figure 13.8 Detail of the skull-like head on the carved cadaver of Roger Rockley (d. 1522 or 1534) in St. Mary’s Church, Worsborough, Yorkshire. © Welch 2015.

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aware of the presence of intestinal tubes, and of the metasternum, but sculpted them incorrectly. It is highly unlikely this information was gleaned from a contemporary medical textbook, as illustrations of the body’s interior available in England during this period tend to focus on the skeletal, or circulatory system, and the position of the major internal organs.101 A very small number of contemporary illustrations do depict an open chest cavity,102 such as the dissection scene from de Mondino de Luzzi’s Anatomy (c.1493); but the intestines are positioned correctly (horizontally), and no xiphoid is depicted.103 In addition to not gleaning the information from contemporary illustrations, it would also appear that the sculptor had not seen first-hand the body’s internal anatomy, nor had he seen the internal layout of domestic farm animals, either in situ or on a butcher’s block, unless the example had been grossly pathological.104 Rockley’s strange mid-sixteenth century ECCS, with its gender-mixed skull and novel abdominal make-up, stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of ECCSs, and as such adds meaningfulness to the anatomical accuracy of many of the other ECCSs, especially those from the early fifteenth century, and notably to the Keyston eviscerated priest. Another aspect of the sculptures’ iconicity and avant-garde quality is the inclusion of the burial shroud as part of the overall design; only the sculpture commemorating Bishop Paul Bush (d. 1558) at Bristol Cathedral does not include this feature. The burial shroud is sculpted to resemble cloth, and the more expertly-carved examples also feature finely worked shroud-knot ties, often with a different pattern of carving to suggest an alternate material. The shape and placement of the shroud-knots that top and tail the carved cadavers tends to vary, with again the more expertly sculpted figures featuring more elaborate designs. Typically, it is the draping of the carved shroud that ensures the commemorated person retains some degree of modesty. The usual style of this modesty-carving involves part of the shroud draped over the genital area with a hand carved to hold the material fold firmly in place, or with the material drawn up through the legs to achieve the same end (Fig. 13.9). A few ECCSs however, have a strategically placed hand instead, and the Bush memorial depicts him wearing a loincloth, which achieves the same genital obscuration. The near-nakedness of the sculptured individuals is a particularly interesting feature given the context, and disgrace, of public nakedness at this time. 101 102 103 104

Gérald d’Andiran, Early Medicine, from the Body to the Stars (Basel, 2010), Figs. 158.1; 186.1; 204.1. d’Andiran, Early Medicine, Figs. 202.1; 203.1. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 87 (see Fig. 13.14). I would like to thank Mr. Andrew Crook, Head of Anatomy Services and the Royal Veterinary College, for his expertise in matters concerning animal intestines.

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Figure 13.9 Detail of the carved cadaver of Sir John FitzAlan (d. 1435) in the FitzAlan Chapel, Arundel Castle, West Sussex, showing modesty with hand over the genital area and shroud cloth drawn up between the legs. © Welch 2014.

The public exposure of a living naked body would have been considered shameful, especially for the religious and social elite. Medieval understandings of nakedness were complex and multi-variant,105 but essentially clothing indicated one’s social status, and an unclothed body connoted an extreme state, such as extreme poverty or extreme piousness. The former category would not apply to those commemorated with an extravagant ECCS, and whilst the sculptured body may have been indicative of a hoped-for spiritual condition, as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales makes clear, the prosperous and the clerical were figures of social ridicule for their hypocrisy; the wealthy Wife of Bath is portrayed as vain and shallow, and the lord of the manor is financially outsmarted by his Reeve, whilst the clerical figures are portrayed as disreputable, greedy and fraudulent (the Pardoner and the Friar), lecherous, pompous and drunk (the Summoner).106 105 106

Sherry C. M. Lindquist, “The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art: An Introduction,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. Sherry C. M. Lindquist (Farnham, 2012), 1. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales.

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It is almost certain that none of the forty individuals represented by an ECCS would have exhibited themselves naked to the general populace during their lifetimes. Yet nakedness, or near nakedness, would not have been uncommon, as images of Christ’s Passion featured him regularly in nothing more than a loincloth. His suffering body however, typically stood in contrast to the fleshiness of other available imagery; the nude figures in the richly illustrated French illuminated manuscript, Belle Heures (1408-09)107 stand as examples, albeit ones that were the preserve of the wealthy. In churches and cathedrals, depictions of nakedness, beyond that of Christ, would have been highly unusual. Thus, to be exhibited in such a state, especially for someone of high social status, would have been a potent symbol, and one intimately related to death and the afterlife. There are very few nude medieval illustrations of a dead individual of high social standing, but the Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis (from 1270 to 1380) does depict the naked corpse of King Ferdinand of Castile; his modesty is protected by a strategically positioned hand from the many onlookers of both sexes.108 Images of naked figures feature regularly in illustrations of the afterlife, as in death all are meant to be equal before God. However, resurrection effigies in churches and cathedrals suggest otherwise, depicting individuals en vie in all their earthly materiality. Archaeological evidence has also demonstrated that it was not unusual for high status individuals to be buried clothed, with bishops, for instance, interred in their ecclesiastical garb. This particular post-mortem dress code followed the vision of St. Anselm, who saw a monk in Heaven dressed in his “full pontifical robes;”109 and for those who could afford it, burial in a monk’s cowl was not untypical.110 It seems that whilst preaching about an afterlife in Heaven may have focused on individuals being naked and sexless, everyday imagery such as stained glass, wall paintings, and memorials, showed a hierarchy where clothing was highly significant. Given the wealth of those depicted by an ECCS, it must be assumed that the individuals commemorated were not likely placed naked into their burial shrouds; indeed, this was the fate of the poor, the criminal, and the outcast. As such the nakedness of the

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108 109 110

Martha Easton, “Uncovering the Meaning of Nudity in the Belle Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. Sherry C. M. Linquist (Farnham, 2012). British Library MS Royal 20 C VII f.11. Southern in Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550 (London, 1997), 154. Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 154-156.

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ECCSs is highly symbolic, and strongly suggests a connection to post-mortem piety in the period in which they were fashionable. Therefore, these ECCSs are highly symbolic, and that symbolism is enhanced by the typical liminal look of the suffering carved cadaver that speaks to postmortem physical punishments in Purgatory. However, much scholarly discourse has described ECCSs as rotting corpses,111 despite none of the sculptures showing signs of natural physical decomposition, and no presence on ECCS in Tewkesbury of creepy-crawlie vermin coming out of the body as if it were putrefying. Some European transis do, however, show bodily decay, with graphically-carved corpses showing snakes and worms crawling out of disintegrating flesh; for example, the relief sculpture memorializing Bernhard Beham (d. 1507) in Halle-in-Tyrol.112 Some also feature creatures that were associated with the process of corrosion, such as toads, as exemplified in the relief sculpture of Peter Niderwirt (d. 1522) at Eggenfelden.113 The symbolism of these creatures must be read as both naturalistic and symbolic; worms, like snakes, were creatures that slid and ate dust (Gen 3:14) and thus in the medieval mindset they were related to mortality and moral corruption through the Fall narrative that brought death and sin into the world (Gen 3: 19). Toads and frogs, meanwhile, were associated Biblically with impure spirits (Rev 16:13) and the devil.114 The carved cadaver of Francois I de la Sarra (d. 1363) from La Sarraz, Vaud, shows toads or frogs covering his eyes, mouth, and genitals, whilst worms or snakes erupt from his arms and legs.115 It is not known why ECCSs were more restrained in their gruesomeness than some of their European counterparts; however, it is clear that few scholarly interpretations of ECCSs are accurate. The most precise account of ECCSs would conform to Kathleen Cohen’s description of the figures in her seminal work, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle 111

112 113 114

115

See: Panofsky, Tomb Sculptures, 64; Morgan, “Of Worms and War; 1380-1558,” 119; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 306; Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 184; Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (Oxford, 2004), 153; Sophie Oosterwijk, “‘This Worlde is but a Pilgrimage’: Mental Attitudes in/to the Medieval Danse Macabre,” in Mental (Dis)Order in Later Medieval Europe, ed. Sari Katajala-Peltmaa and Susanna Niiranen (Leiden, 2014), 201. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, Fig. 41. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, Figs. 42 and 43. Helga Neuman, “Symbolism of Animals,” in, The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. V Si-Z, ed. Erwin Fahibusch, Jan Milič Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, Lukas Vischer, Geoffrey Bromiley and David Barrett (Leiden, 2008), 263. See photography by KL19: 9 August 2014 at .

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Ages and the Renaissance, as wasted and gaunt.116 This wasted and gaunt look gives them their iconicity; for they are relatable, and by viewing them one can imagine dying without having to imagine one’s own decomposition.117 The visceral likeness of the ECCSs to the living appears to have saved the sculptures from English Reformation and Civil War iconoclasm. The second isolated ECCS that functions as an Easter Sepulcher, that of John Careway (d. 1443) located at St. Vigor’s Church, Fulbourne, resides in an area visited by fervent Civil War iconoclast, William Dowsing (1596-1668). Whilst St. Vigor’s Church does not feature in his journal, “the balance of evidence” is that he visited the church as part of his work to demolish “superstitious picture and ornaments in churches.”118 Further, the tiered memorial to Hugh Ashton, in St. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge, was left unscathed by the zealous Protestant Reformist James Pilkington, who had Ashton’s Chantry Chapel, along with the High Altar, torn down in 1560.119 120 That ECCSs survived the iconoclasms of the Protestant Reformation in England and the English Civil War suggests that, barring any figures lost to the Great Fire of London, and barring the carved cadaver to Archbishop Laurence Booth (d. 1480) at Southwell Minster,121 Nottingham, which was destroyed in 1784,122 the extant forty English examples may well be the total sum of ECCSs produced in England.123 The last three of the ECCSs, those dating to the reign of Queen Mary, indicate that this specific genre of mortuary art was particularly important to high-ranking clerics. The first ECCS to be commissioned during Queen Mary’s reign was to commemorate Thomas Bennet (d. 1558), the Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral. Although described by Cohen as “crudely 116 117

118 119 120 121 122 123

Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 2. The Buddhist Mahasatipatthana Sutra provides monks with meditations on bodily decomposition, whereas other religious traditions, including Medieval Christianity avoid contemplating this process. The Satipatthana Suttra comprises nine cemetery con­tem­ plations encouraging monks to consider the various stages of the decomposing corpse. Trevor Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War (Woodbridge, 2001), 43. Richard Rex, “The Sixteenth Century,” in St. John’s College, Cambridge: A History, ed. Peter Linehan (Woodbridge, 2011), 61. Robert Forsyth Scott, St. John’s College, Cambridge (London, 1907), . King, Contexts of the Cadaver Tomb in Fifteenth-Century England, 8. Julian M. Luxford, “The Collegiate Church as Mausoleum,” The Late Medieval Church and its Contexts eds. Clive Burgess and Martin Heele (Woodbridge, 2008), 126. There are an additional three now anonymous carved cadavers in South Wales. See Welch, “Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials.”

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carved”124 it is in fact a handsome sculpture with well-observed anatomical accuracy. Behind the ECCS was once a wall painting which included an image of Bennet kneeling, “accompanied by an inscription which expressed hope;”125 the scene requested prayers for the commemorated person.126 The inscription on the wall painting behind the ECCS to Bennet in Salisbury Cathedral, dated 1554,127 strongly suggests that the memorial was erected four years before Bennet died. Several further individuals (Archbishop Chichele, Duchess de la Pole, Bishop Fox, and Baret, a prosperous wool merchant) took great pains to commission their carved cadavers before their deaths, and so certainly these memorials were crucially important to these wealthy clerics, and to the members of the well-heeled social elite and mercantile classes. Contemporary reports indicate that Bennet was a supporter of relics128 and thus held Roman Catholic beliefs in regard to their intercessionary efficacy, so he may well have sought to erect his ECCS as soon into Queen Mary’s reign as possible to lessen any chance of the opportunity disappearing with the reemergence of a future Protestant monarch. Paul Bush, Bishop of Bristol (d. 1558), is also commemorated by an ECCS. He died a few days before Queen Mary, but during the reign of Edward VI he had taken advantage of the new laws that permitted him to marry. Although his wife died a few months into Mary’s reign, he was deprived of his Bishopric, yet “was apparently in sympathy with the restoration of Catholicism … [defending] the Mass against ‘the reasshe fantastycall myndes of the blynd and ignorantes.’” His will, drawn up sixteen days before his death, requests a freestone tomb to be erected “in the manner of the time.”129 The phrasing of Bush’s request is interesting, as the sculpture is not representative of the ECCS genre, nor is it “in the manner of the time,” which typically meant a resurrection-style effigy. Sixteen days would not have been enough time for the carved cadaver to be sculpted, but it would be surprising if he had not at least sanctioned the design. 124 125 126 127 128

129

Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol, 111. Ibid. Nigel Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge, 2000), 105. John Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (London, 1814), 99. R. B. Pugh and Elizabeth Crittall, eds. “The Cathedral of Salisbury: From the Reformation to the Restoration,” in A History of the County of Wiltshire, Vol. III (London, 1956), . Joseph, H Bettey, “Paul Bush, the First Bishop of Bristol,” The Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 106 (1988): 171-72.

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The ECCS that depicts Bush depicts him as a corpse lying naked on a rush mat with his hands at his sides and his modesty protected by a loincloth. It is crudely carved and anatomically incorrect, with only seven pairs of ribs instead of the usual twelve (Fig. 13.10). The sculpting suggests a local carver rather than a skilled expert, and although the miter on which his head lies was polychromed, it appears his body was left as bare stone. Bush’s sculpture was one of the last of the extant ECCSs to be commissioned and may well be indicative of the shift in mortuary art that speaks in part to the death beliefs of Roman Catholicism which included Purgatory. This indication is apparent through its nod to typical ECCSs, as well as to the Protestant rejection of Purgatory under Queen Elizabeth I (who reigned when the memorial was erected) by limiting the polychroming. The final of the Marian ECCSs is a sculpture commemorating Stephen Gardiner (c.1493/5-1555), Bishop of Winchester Cathedral. He was a statesman who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I and King Philip, whom he married in the Cathedral. He was well-educated, a notable canon lawyer, theologian, politician, and diplomat, favored by King Henry VIII, and by Queen Mary. Despite a humble birth, by his mid-thirties he was Bishop of the wealthiest See in the county: Winchester.130 After his death, his executors commissioned a chapel in the Cathedral to his memory,131 which contained a niche to house his ECCS. Like Bush’s ECCS, Gardiner’s was never polychromed. It has several unfinished aspects, which are likely due to its installation being early in the reign of the Queen Elizabeth I. Gardiner’s sculpture, unlike Bush’s, conforms to the ECCS genre with him lying naked and emaciated in his burial shroud. Notably, his neck has been deliberately removed so that the sculpture fits its niche, with the shroud cloth carefully lined up to ensure it remains as close to the piece as possible (Fig. 13.11). Because sculptures such as this were routinely polychromed, this alteration normally would have been almost invisible. However, Gardiner’s ECCS was left as carved, leaving the deliberate removal of the neck section clearly visible. The Bush and Gardiner ECCSs, being erected early into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, reflect the uncertainty of the times, and may have been left deliberately plain to avoid undue notice during the outbreak of tomb destruction that plagued the early years of her rule.132

130 131 132

Colin D. C. Armstrong, “Gardiner, Stephen (c.1495x8-1555),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) . Frederick Bussby, Winchester Cathedral, 1079-1979 (Southampton, 1979); 202. Kenelm Henry Digby, Mores Catholici: or Ages of Faith, vol. II (Cincinnati, OH, 1841), 320.

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Figure 13.10 Detail of the body of the carved cadaver of Bishop Paul Bush showing paucity of ribs (d. 1558) at Bristol Cathedral, Bristol. © Welch 2012.

Figure 13.11 Detail of the carved cadaver of Bishop Stephen Gardiner (d. 1555) at Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, showing the missing neck, and carefully aligned shroud cloth folds between the head section and torso section of the sculpture. © Welch 2015.

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Communications theories can help shed further light on these unusual mortuary sculptures and their symbolic power, with their aesthetic innovation understood to highlight the central concerns of the era,133 especially the vernacular theological perceptions of post-mortem suffering in Purgatory. By accentuating the concept of purgatorial physical pain, ECCSs reinforce the complexities of the medieval mindset, and underscore the fuzzy interrelations between the body and soul after death, in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century England.134 ECCSs provide a three-dimensional take on the trope demonstrated by body-and-soul texts of the period, and also by contemporary illustrations detailing physical suffering in Purgatory, which blur the notion that at death sentience is extinguished. Notably, all except for a handful of the forty sculptures display a body inhabiting the liminal space between life and death. The betwixt-and-between status they show appears to be symbolic of both the last painful gasps of life before death and the painful period between this-life, and the final afterlife (between earth and Heaven); here, Purgatory acts as the liminal cleansing space between one’s inherently sinful existence on earth as a descendant of the disobedient Adam and Eve (Gen. 3), and the Holy realm of God. Thus, in England, as well as commemorating a specific member of the religious and/or social elite, the sculptures represent the late-medieval fear of purgation, and therefore can be understood to act as visceral visual didactics reinforcing the concept of post-mortem pain in Purgatory during the “wet stage” of death. ECCSs were therefore able to reinforce the liminal message of post-mortem purgation in a potent manner, for they were designed to provoke what Messaris has termed, “iconicity:” a persuasive and powerful “emotional response to the visual image presented.”135 With ECCSs typically depicting naked, emaciated cadavers clearly not resting in peace, and polychromed to give a life-like look, yet laying helpless in open burial shrouds, their desired iconicity is evident and strengthened by their visual avant-garde. ECCSs depict graphically the motto of the memento mori in related texts: “remember you will die and be as I am, therefore pray for me, and remember you should lead a good life, for at death you too will purge your earthly sins.”

133 134

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Dan Browne, “Objects of Vision: The Polymorphic Cinema of Michael Snow,” Brno Studies in English 39, no. 2 (2013): 18. Phillippa Maddern, “Murdering Souls and Killing Bodies: Understanding Spiritual and Physical Sin in Late-Medieval English Devotional Works,” Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment, ed. Danijela Kambaskovic (New York, 2014), 39. Paul Messaris, Visual persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising (London, 1997), viii-xv.

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Because seeing is socially contextualized, the iconicity and message of ECCSs rest in the ability to act, “as extended forms of human embodiment to provide the touch and hold of what they (re)present.”136 However, mortuary memorials alter to reflect changes in religion; and with Purgatory abolished under Protestantism, ECCSs became redundant. Wealthy recusant Roman Catholics doubtless thought better than to display publically their outlawed religion, given the “national ideology” of anti-Catholicism in a staunchly Protestant country,137 thereby producing the temporary disappearance of ECCSs during the reign of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547-1553). Under Protestantism, where the concept of Purgatory held no theological currency, ECCSs became increasingly marginalized. Nevertheless, they survived the iconoclasms of the Reformation and Civil War, and they survived even the Victorian heavy-handed renovation of churches and cathedrals, where many were relocated but none destroyed.138 Currently they can be found mislabeled (such as the anonymous cleric in the Church of St. John the Baptist in Keyston, who is labeled as the church roofer), hidden away (the anonymous ECCS in St. James’ Church, Dursley, is on a window-ledge, as is the badly damaged ECCS to Bishop Alcock (d. 1500) in Ely Cathedral) and de-contextualized. Indeed, none of the churches and cathedrals that house ECCSs place them in their Roman Catholic context. In general, ECCSs are now described in these places as exemplifying the medieval concept of memento mori (if they are mentioned at all), despite the fact that several bear inscriptions requesting prayers for the deceased. Indeed, ECCSs appear largely to be inconvenient memorials from a long-past age. ECCSs are not only marginalized in their home contexts, they are also largely absent from academic writing, which tends to focus on the gruesome European carved cadavers.139 Such writings mention ECCSs only in terms of rotting or putrefying corpses, despite their intact skin.140 Only the art historian Pamela

136 137 138 139 140

David Morgan, The Embodied Eye (Berkeley, 2012), 3-6, 33. Carol Z. Wiener, “The Beleaguered Isle: A study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean AntiCatholicism,” Past and Present 51 (May 1971): 27. Welch, “Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials,” 399, 400. See Panofsky, Tomb Sculptures, and Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol. See Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 306; Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 184; Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone, 153; Oosterwijk, “This Worlde is but a Pilgrim­ age,” 201, and Sophie Oosterwijk, “Food for Worms – Food for Thought: The Appearance and Interpretation of the ‘Verminous’ Cadaver in Britain and Europe,” Church Monuments 20 (2005): 52.

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King has explored their historical context,141 but even then, the theological and vernacular connections with the afterlife of the ECCSs are largely absent. Perhaps the lack of concern for their spiritual framing is unsurprising, given that religious concerns per se are no longer a priority in contemporary English society. Recent studies that draw on census data and broader belief surveys have noted that traditional church attendance is in decline, that those declaring they hold no religious beliefs are on the increase,142 and that few people today consider a good death to include having one’s religious or spiritual needs met.143 England has become a far more secular country in terms of traditional Christian practice and belief since the period in which ECCSs were sculpted.144 ECCSs, then, no longer reflect religious afterlife beliefs, with even the contemporary Roman Catholic Church shying away from the notion of painful Purgatorial suffering.145 Further, ECCSs have also lost their admonitory value concerning the perils of vanitas and voluptas, for England today largely has a 141

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Pamela King, “The English Cadaver Tomb in the Late Fifteenth Century: Some Indications of a Lancastrian Connection,” Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 1983 Manchester Colloquium, ed. Jane H. M Taylor (Liverpool, 1984); and “The Cadaver Tomb in England: Novel Manifestation of an Old Idea,” Church Monuments 5 (1990); and “The Treasurers Cadaver in York Minster Reconsidered.” Alice Donald (with Karen Bennett and Philip Leach), Religion or Belief, Equality and Human Rights in England and Wales (Equality and Human Rights Commission Report 84, 2012) . Fewer than 5% of people asked about what would consist a good death for them, selected having their religious or spiritual needs met. See, National Council for Palliative Care, Public Opinion on Death and Dying (ComRes, 2015). However, in contemporary England there does remain a relatively robust belief in a personal God or a higher spiritual power, and a resilient belief in an afterlife with 59% of people surveyed believing in a personal God or a higher spiritual power, whilst 15% of non-believers in God, and 28% of people unsure about the existence of God, stated they believed in an afterlife. See Alice Sullivan, David Voas and Matt Brown, The Art of Asking Questions about Religion (London, 2012). . An example of current Roman Catholic teaching on Purgatory can be found on the website of the Catholic Education Resource Centre by Curtis Martin (1999). .

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hedonistic and youth-focused culture captivated by consumerist materialism; and thus the notion that vanitas and voluptas are sins no longer holds sway.146 Yet, ECCSs continue to force passers-by to confront the reality that regardless of one’s religious convictions, or beliefs about the afterlife, one day all people will die. And perhaps this fact is why ECCSs are unsettling in their ecclesiastical locations and marginalized in academic discourse. It is easier to confront the iconicity of European sculptured rotting corpses, for science confirms that putrefying cadavers feel nothing. But, the liminal state between life and death that the ECCSs depict generates a potent message that speaks to everyone, for all will experience that liminal state, and one day gasp a final breath. Therefore, the very viscerality of the sculptures presents the modern viewer with an uncomfortable, unsettling, and candid eternal message: “Whoever you may be who passes by, … remember, you will be like me…” 146

Christina Welch, “Death and the Erotic Woman: The European Gendering of Mortality in Time of Religious Change,” Journal of Gender Studies 24 no. 4 (2015), 15.

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Chapter 14

Holbein’s Mementi Mori Libby Karlinger Escobedo Art historians have long speculated on the meaning of Hans Holbein the Younger’s famous double portrait of the French Ambassadors, painted in England in 1533 (Fig. 14.1). The portrait is notable for its remarkably detailed depiction of two nearly life-size figures flanking a table strewn with astrological, scientific, and musical objects, and for the distorted skull in the foreground. Intended to be seen from a particular angle or through a special lens, the anamorphic skull is simultaneously revealed and concealed, a sort of visual trick referencing Death. The trickster skull, in combination with the specific visual identifiers of the two men shown, is instrumental in evaluating the picture’s meaning. As the two ambassadors stand, with the evidence of their worldly accomplishments arrayed on the table between them, Death sneaks in unnoticed. Without a doubt, the painting was meant to be “read,” with the many objects and details constituting a visual “text” which viewers were meant to decipher. The unique combination of elements composed by Holbein transforms the portrait into a Dance of Death. Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543) is perhaps best known for his royal portraits, executed during his years as court painter to Henry VIII of England. However, Holbein’s tenure as a salaried artist to the court was relatively brief, lasting only the last five years of his life, 1538-1543. Prior to this period, Holbein worked in Basel and in England, first in 1526-1528, and then, primarily among members of the Henrician court, from 1532 onwards.1 In addition to portraiture, Holbein executed religious paintings (though none after 1526), and book illustrations, such as those destined to be the woodcuts of the Dance of Death series, published in 1538. Holbein’s life spanned the tumultuous decades of the Reformation, and his involvement with leading humanists of the early sixteenth century, both on the Continent and in England, influenced his work as an artist in direct and indirect ways. The Ambassadors, now in the National Gallery in London, is a full-length double portrait of two French ambassadors, Jean de Dinteville (1504-1557) and

1 For Holbein’s English portraits, refer to Susan Foister, Holbein in England (London, 2006).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_016

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Figure 14.1 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (“The Ambassadors”), 1533. Oil on oak, 207 × 209.5 cm. Bought, 1890 (NG1314). National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.

Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur (1509-1542).2 The painting originated from the hectic diplomatic activity of 1532-1533, the years directly preceding Henry VIII’s break with the Church in Rome. In the spring of 1527, the possibility of an annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was first raised on the basis of dynastic and personal considerations. In October 1532, Francis I agreed 2 Properly titled the Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve. The National Gallery acquired the painting in 1890 from the Earl of Radnor, in whose collection at Longford Castle the painting had been since early in the nineteenth century. For a complete provenance, refer to Mary Hervey, Holbein’s “Ambassadors” (London, 1900) and John North, The Ambassadors’ Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance (London, 2002), 5-9.

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to support Henry in his dispute with the pope, Clement VII. To facilitate the increased diplomatic activity between London and Paris and likely also as an overt symbolic gesture of solidarity, Francis appointed Jean de Dinteville, who was Sieur de Polisy, Bailly de Troyes, and Maitre d’Hotel to the French court, to act as French ambassador in London. De Dinteville was from a well-established, favored family, and took a moderate, sympathetic stance on religious matters. Both he and his brother, the Bishop of Auxerre, were part of the reforming humanist faction of the French intelligentsia. They were close to Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples (second only to Erasmus as a famed international scholar), who had translated the Bible into French in 1530 and who openly asserted the supremacy of scripture over tradition, a key point among reformers.3 De Dinteville endured his difficult assignment, though he suffered with illness and melancholy during his months in England. Prior to de Dinteville’s arrival in England, Henry had defied the pope by seeking to divorce Catherine of Aragon. In April of 1532, the English Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals, preventing Catherine from referring the decision to Rome, and ending papal judicial power in England altogether. Henry married Anne Boleyn in 1533, for which he was excommunicated soon afterward. De Dinteville’s friend Georges de Selve arrived in England in the spring of 1533, perhaps with a message from Francis I regarding Anne Boleyn’s coronation on June 1 and her public recognition as queen. The exact reason for his visit is unknown, but he seems to have left England again by the end of May. Jean de Dinteville, though probably not Georges de Selve, was present as the official representative of Francis I at the coronation of Anne Boleyn.4 The portrait of the ambassadors was commissioned at the time of de Selve’s visit in the spring of 1533, most probably by de Dinteville, who ultimately returned to France with the painting.5 The portrait commemorated the visit, and made reference to contemporary events and concerns. Beyond the documented chronology of that spring, certain details depicted in the portrait itself likewise indicate both its date and its larger context. The Ambassadors is a monumental work, with the two figures depicted roughly life-size and standing, like the supporters of a coat of arms, to either side of a table on which are displayed various humanist accouterments. With 3 John Rowlands, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger (Oxford, 1985), 85-86. 4 E. W. Ives, “The Queen and the Painters: Anne Boleyn, Holbein, and Tudor Royal Portraits,” Apollo 140 (1994), 39. For a more detailed history of the period refer to Neville Williams, Henry VIII and his Court (New York, 1971). 5 Hervey, Holbein’s “Ambassadors,” 77.

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the skull between them, they function as two types of figures commonly depicted in the Dance of Death: the aristocratic humanist and the politicized bishop. Jean de Dinteville stands on the left, his figure occupying nearly half the portrait, in a pose of relaxed self-assurance. His fur-lined coat, the medallion of the French chivalric Order of St. Michael, and the ornate dagger inscribed with his age at the date of the painting, twenty-nine years, all lend his figure an aura of worldly power. On his cap, de Dinteville wears a badge with a skull. It was first suggested by Mary Hervey that this badge was de Dinteville’s emblem or device, and that his personal motto was “Memento Mori,” the most popular caution against the vanities of human life.6 On the right, set slightly further back in the picture plane, stands de Selve. Just as de Dinteville’s age is noted on his dagger, de Selve’s age of twenty-five is inscribed on the book on the table on which his elbow rests. He likewise wears a luxurious coat, but in a patterned dark purplish-brown color, and he stands more compactly, grasping his gloves in his right hand, a conventional symbol of gentility. The very concept of a double portrait of two unrelated sitters is itself unusual. While Holbein did execute other double portraits, those paintings all represent members of the same family. As Susan Foister writes, there was no known tradition at this time for portraits of diplomats, nor of friends. Portraits of friends are produced in sixteenth-century Italy, but they do not appear in the North until later, meaning that Holbein had no clear precedent.7 Since the basic function of portraiture in the sixteenth century was commemorative, the circumstances that resulted in this joint representation are relevant and potentially revealing. The full-length view of the Ambassadors is also unusual for sixteenth-century England. While there are precedents for this type of representation in German art, the full-length portrait was reserved for rulers or married or betrothed couples. Such portraits often depicted the couple in life on one side and as corpses on the other, thus requiring the viewer to change position, either of themselves or the picture, to see the entire work. The visual analogy with married couples, and with the corpse representations replaced by the anamorphic skull, leads Hagi Kenaan to postulate an intimate relationship between Jean de Dinteville, who commissioned the portrait for his home, and Georges de Selve. As a result, the entire portrait relies on a model of pictorial representation normally associated with married couples.8 6 Oskar Batschmann and Pascal Greiner, Hans Holbein (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 188. 7 Susan Foister, “Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve: The French Embassay of 1533,” in Making and Meaning: Holbein’s Ambassadors, Foister, Roy, and Wyld, eds. (London, 1997), 18. 8 Hagi Keenan, “The ‘Unusual Character’ of Holbein’s ‘Ambassadors’,” Artibus et Historiae 23, no. 46 (2002): 71-80.

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Previous studies of the Ambassadors agree on the commemorative nature of the portrait, drawing upon various visual details to elucidate the meaning of the painting. For example, the floor on which the figures stand is a cosmati pavement, which can be identified as that of the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. This pavement, executed in 1268 by the Roman artist Odoricus, was the only one of its kind in England in this period. John Rowlands writes that the presence of the floor in the portrait is meant to emphasize the religious concerns that were ultimately a factor in de Selve and de Dinteville being present in London in the spring of 1533.9 Derek Wilson concurs that the inclusion of the Westminster floor “makes a direct reference to the religious life of England.”10 Other scholars take a different view of the cosmati floor, ascribing to it different meanings. E. W. Ives notes that Holbein was working on the double portrait around the time of the coronation of Anne Boleyn. This ceremony was the reason for de Selve’s visit, and a culminating event for de Dinteville’s mission to England. Ives sees the inclusion of the floor, that upon which Anne Boleyn would have stood when she was anointed as queen by Archbishop Cranmer, as anything but coincidental. Furthermore, like the ambassadors, Anne Boleyn was a reformer, with a deep respect for Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples. Anne’s coronation was a major event in European reform, and it is wholly appropriate that the painting, which marked an embassy by two prominent “evangelicals,” should contain a reference to this anointing. Considering the nature of the ambassadors’ presence at Henry’s court in the spring of 1533, which was essentially to demonstrate French support of the English monarch and his new wife, the depiction of this unique floor in England would likely have had, as Ives suggests, a specific and meaningful referent. This symbolic meaning extends beyond a mere reference to the religious life of England, especially since Holbein himself was active among Anne Boleyn’s circle in this period, before becoming official painter to Henry VIII several years later. Ives cites a final link with the coronation of Anne Boleyn that is found on a pillar dial among the objects on the table. This device determines dates by the sun and is set to show April 11, 1533, the date on which the court received instructions that Anne was to receive full royal honors as Queen of England. 11 John North, however, suggests a different explanation for the floor, as well as for the pillar dial. North states emphatically that the floor in the Ambassadors is not the floor of Westminster Abbey. Though similar, it is on a smaller scale 9 10 11

Rowlands, Holbein, 86. Derek Wilson, Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man (London, 1996), 198. Ives, “The Queen,” 38-45.

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and may in fact represent a painted wooden floor, such as one recorded at Greenwich, rather than the stone floor of the church. More important for North, however, is the cosmological design incorporated into the floor, which fits with North’s detailed discussion of the overall geometry of the painting. While North concurs that the pillar dial reads April 11, 1533, he identifies this date as Good Friday. For North, the many details in the painting point not to the commemoration of a state event but rather to a commemoration of the first Good Friday. Thus, North casts the Ambassadors as a sort of cryptic religious painting, affirming Christian faith in God’s saving grace.12 However, the Ambassadors has generally been characterized as a celebration of Renaissance scholarship and culture. This is due in large part to the collection of astronomical instruments, globes, musical instruments, and books arranged on the two shelves of the central table. The inclusion of what is essentially a still-life arises out of the painting tradition of the Low Countries in the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries. The painters of this tradition, like Holbein, exulted in recreating the paraphernalia of everyday life and giving it an enhanced realism. When Robert Campin executed an interior scene of the Virgin and Child, he surrounded the holy figures with familiar objects – a laundry basket, fire irons, a candle, a bowl of water warming by the fire. These ordinary objects, depicted in such precise and vivid detail, are simultaneously mundane and precious. The manner of their representation imbues them with spiritual significance, or even as Erwin Panofsky famously argues, symbolic meaning.13 This enhanced realism also works within the secular realm, where objects in a portrait can act as symbols of the ideas, beliefs, or situation of the sitter. Jurgis Baltrusaitis even places the figures themselves, enveloped as they are in the same silence, in the nature morte of their emblems.14 In this case, the assembled objects read as demonstrations of the sitters’ knowledge of the arts, sciences, and religion. The pillar dial, for instance, refers to a specific date, one on which a notable event occurred at court. The dial is located on the upper shelf with a number of other astronomical and chronographic instruments. Some of these were used to determine perspectives or to measure shadows. In other words, they measured phenomena without real form or mass; abstractions. Upon close examination, the celestial globe shows a constellation of a hen attacking a bird of prey, a reversal of the natural order. The terrestrial globe on the lower shelf

12 13 14

North, The Ambassadors’ Secret, 72-79. Refer to Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, MA, 1953). Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, Anamorphosis, ou perpectives curieuses (Paris, n.d.), 61.

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is turned to display France, including the place names Paris, Lyon, and de Dinteville’s home of Polisy. The remaining objects on the lower shelf are generally assigned a religious theme. The open book is a hymnal by Johannes Walther, published in Wittenburg in 1524, containing devotional lyrics by Martin Luther. Two hymns are clearly visible: Luther’s translation into German of “Veni Creator Spiritus” (Come Holy Ghost) and an exaltation of the Ten Commandments. Derek Wilson interprets these elements to be a reference to Luther’s emphasis on core Christian beliefs deriving directly from scripture.15 Helen Langdon speculates that the hymn book, along with the broken-stringed lute, present an appeal for spiritual guidance in resolving religious and diplomatic tangles; and the Westminster floor, the only such floor in England, likewise relates to nationalism and religion effectively combined.16 De Selve was deeply concerned with the healing of the schism in the Catholic Church, as well as with the need for reform via guidance from above. According to Mary Hervey, the two chosen hymns emphasize this point. Had a Latin text of “Veni Creator” and the Com­ mandments been chosen in accordance with the use of the Roman Catholic Church, they would have conveyed nothing to the spectator of the Lutheran schism and the efforts towards accommodation. The German version provides the emphasis on the desired point.17 The lute has been traced to an emblem from Alciati’s Emblems of 1531, where it is a symbol of peace and unity. Here, the broken string seems to indicate the opposite: discord. Text accompanying Alciati’s emblem even states that with one string snapped or out of tune, all is lost, a sentiment directed at the confederation of Italian princes, of which Alciati’s patron was a part.18 The presence of the lute, here with a broken string, indicates disharmony and in this way, relates to the other themes implied symbolically in the portrait – most notably that of religious discord. The broken-stringed lute can also be interpreted as an emblem of death;19 nor is it the only one present in the Ambassadors. The badge on de Dinteville’s cap bears a skull, a second skull occupies the foreground, and at the far left of the painting, half-obscured by the green draperies of the background, is a silver 15 16 17 18 19

Wilson, Hans Holbein, 199. Helen Langdon, Holbein (London, 1993), 62. Hervey, Holbein’s “Ambassadors,” 221. Maria Victoria Cardaso, “La clave de ‘Los embajadores’ de Holbein el Joven,” Goya 187-8 (July-Oct 1985): 88-91. Fernand Hallyn, “La mort en abyme,” Gentse Bijdragen Tot De Kunstgeschiednis XXV (197980): 4.

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crucifix. This could symbolize the religious life of de Selve, or, as Rowlands and others suggest, salvation and delivery from death through the Christian promise of resurrection.20 Wilson argues that the crucifix suggests that the ancient and orthodox faith, the faith of Christ crucified, is under threat, i.e. nearly covered by the curtain.21 De Dinteville and de Selve were both moderate and conciliatory in religious matters, and had strong humanist ties. If the crucifix were intended merely to convey de Selve’s status as a member of clergy or to indicate the promise of resurrection, it makes little sense for it to be almost completely hidden by the curtain. Susan Foister suggests that the composition is designed to lead viewers to the half-hidden crucifix last; the viewer first perceives the ambassadors and the still-life between them, then the anamorphic skull symbolizing death, and finally the crucifix, the hope for life after death.22 There are two other possibilities, based again on the unusual placement of the crucifix. If part of one’s individual identity is defined by having things and receiving honors, then the promise of an afterlife is in a sense a false promise. After death, even if the soul lives on, the accouterments of identity are gone, as are any human achievements. The crucifix is placed nearly outside the picture, in contrast with the objects of humanism and the figures which occupy the center, because science and the development of the individual man of achievement can overshadow religion. A second possibility concerning the placement could be that it is meant to indicate the loss of religious faith and devotion in the face of political concerns. The worldliness of the Renaissance Catholic hierarchy was a major complaint of the reformers, who complained that they were more like princes than churchmen. However, all commentators on the Ambassadors must ultimately deal with the anamorphic skull that occupies the foreground and in some ways dominates the composition. Skulls are a relatively common feature of sixteenthcentury portraits, acting as a general reminder of mortality and therefore having a moralizing character. Where the skull in the Ambassadors differs is that it is an anamorphosis. An anamorphosis is a distorted image which can only be seen properly from a special angle or with the aid of a lens.23 This kind 20 21 22 23

Rowlands, Holbein, 87. Wilson, Hans Holbein, 199. Susan Foister, “Death and Distortion,” Making and Meaning: Holbein’s Ambassadors, ed. Foister, Roy, and Wyld (London, 1997), 50. Edgar Samuel, “Death in the Glass – a New View of Holbein’s ‘Ambassador’,” Burlington Magazine 105 (1963), 436. Samuel writes: “The notion that the distorted skull is designed to be seen from the side of the picture is open to the following objections: first, the parietal part of the cranium is too greatly distended; second, no allowance has been made for the perspective; and third, even when seen at the most oblique angle, the residual

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of artist’s parlor trick was popular in the early sixteenth century. For instance, a distorted portrait of Edward VI, when seen through a hole cut in its original frame, is seen in true perspective. The generally accepted view of the anamorphic skull is that it is meant to be seen from a position below and to the right of the painting. From this oblique angle, the distortion is reduced and the features of the skull become clear. Nevertheless, understanding a good viewing angle does not address the questions of why the distorted skull is there at all. Is this a memento mori or a vanitas image? Baltrusaitis writes that this is in fact its fundamental purpose. The skull is shown along with a still-life of humanist learning. The painting is a double vanity, with scientific vanity on the one hand; and on the other, the vanity of earthly power, both secular and ecclesiastical, represented by the two men, at once knowing and dignified, with the skull, in a third register, underneath. Baltrusaitis sees a possible reference to The Praise of Folly, first published in Paris in 1511.24 Erasmus reflects on the fragility of knowledge; Folly says that the philosophers are respectable with their beards and mantels, taking pleasure in creating a universe with diverse worlds, measuring the grandeur of the sun exactly with their instruments. They know nothing, those who boast to know all.25 Fundamentally, then, this is about the vanity of humanist scholarship. Elements in a vanitas image serve as a reminder of death and of the futility of achievement. However, seeing the painting as a vanitas does not account for the skull being depicted as an anamorphosis.

24 25

distortion is still substantial.” Samuel proposes instead that the skull was designed to be seen through a trick optic glass. A German youth visiting London in 1602 remarked on a portrait of Henry VIII at Whitehall, which was painted in such a way that the face, when looked at via a particular optic, seemed longer than the whole body. This portrait, dating roughly from Holbein’s time, was clearly designed for use with a special trick lens. This “immediately suggests the possibility that the distorted skull in the Ambassadors might likewise have been designed for use with a trick lens. If so, the observer would look at the skull from a standpoint directly in front of the picture and not from the extreme righthand edge of the frame.” Such an effect could be produced with a thick-walled tube of polished glass, like the neck of the vase shown in the portrait of Georg Gisze. Viewing the skull through such a “lens” held at arm’s length, the skull appears in correct size and unmistakably clear of distortion, and the shadows then fall in the same direction as the rest of the picture. It then forms part of the composition, since the rest is not distorted by the lens. “Given a suitable glass tube, the solution to the problem of the distorted skull is characteristic of the artist who painted it. It is direct; though symbolical it is devoid of mysticism, and it has been achieved with an uncanny degree of ingenuity and crafts­ manship,” (46). Baltrusaitis, Anamorphosis, 61. Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (London, 1989), 73.

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The distortion of the skull can function in several ways. First, it is displaced from the rest of the composition. It cannot be seen clearly when looking directly at the image, but only from a certain viewpoint, from which the rest of the painting becomes illegible. Thus, the image is constructed according to two separate perspectival systems, one organizing the living figures and the world around them, the other containing the skull, a metaphor of death. As Batschmann and Greiner write, “These two systems coexist in one painting but are at the same time mutually exclusive: to comprehend fully one of them the viewer has to lose sight of the other. This idea is reinforced by the fact that some of the instruments depicted were made to measure shadows, that is, forms without consistency.”26 In this way, the anamorphic skull is both a display of technical virtuosity and cleverness of the kind favored in the sixteenth century; it is also a means of ordering the living and dead, not completely unlike a dance of death. Furthermore, the illegibility of the skull when looking directly at the portrait indicates the ability to put death out of everyday thought. If one trains oneself to think differently, i.e. of only the day or life at hand, one can be tricked into not seeing death looming on the horizon. Mind triumphs over matter. The distortion could then function in the same manner as other sixteenth-century portraits in which the skull or a decaying corpse was depicted on the back, so that one could only see it when the picture was flipped over. For example, Barthel Bruyn the Elder’s Portrait of a Man, painted between 1533 and 1555 and now in the Richard Harris Collection, has a lifelike portrait on one side, and a skull depicted on the reverse. A Latin text about the inevitability of death accompanies the skull. From a technical standpoint, the skull forms a diagonal line, that along with the lines of the bottom shelf, de Dinteville’s dagger, and the lute, directs the eye to de Selve’s gown. Why emphasize this garment? Wilson speculates that it is part of an elaborate pun of the type favored in humanist circles. The gown is a color called “murrey,” or mulberry-color; it may also be that the pattern of the fabric is intended to represent mulberry fruit. The Latin for “mulberry” is morus. Much to the delight of his humanist friends, Thomas More Latinized his name as Morus, meaning “folly.” More was a councilor to Henry VIII, was author of the Utopia, and was a staunch Catholic loyal to Rome. Arriving in England for the first time in 1526 with Erasmus’ introduction, Holbein had lived at the home of Erasmus’ great friend Thomas More in Chelsea. Wilson writes that in de Selve’s gown, Holbein is making a visual pun on his friend and patron’s name, one that is reinforced by the anamorphic skull. This memento mori can be an admonition to remember death, but also to remember More. 26

Batschmann and Greiner, Hans Holbein, 188.

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De Dinteville had been present at the coronation of Anne Boleyn; More, however, having resigned his post at court in opposition, was conspicuously absent. The ambassador would have been aware that More had shunned the event and that his absence had been noted by the king. More considered it immoral on his own part to participate in something to which he was morally opposed, even if his life were forfeit; ultimately it was. Wilson concludes that the color of De Selve’s gown speaks to his concern about the implications of [More’s] fate for the wider world of Christian thought and piety, and indeed for More’s own possible fate after his falling out with King Henry. Nor is this the only pun that has been suggested by scholars of the painting; others have put forth the idea that the empty skull, crane mere, is a pun on the name of Archbishop Cranmer; or that hollow bone, hohl bein, is a pun on Holbein’s own name. Given the intellectual climate in which Holbein was working, any or all these puns seem possible.27 These puns also raise the interesting possibility that Holbein and Cranmer are oblique references to yet two more types for the Dance of Death: the artist and the archbishop. Both vanitas and the notion of cleverness fit within the larger context of sixteenth-century portraiture. The Ambassadors is not the only one of Holbein’s portraits to contain an elaborate pun or demonstration of cleverness. Holbein’s portrait of Thomas More, painted during his first stay in England in 1527 contains a memento mori in the guise of a discreet Latin pun. More sits before a green curtain in subdued, yet luxurious clothing and wears a pendant Tudor Rose indicating his high position at court. There is no religious symbol in this portrait of a very religious man. The only suggestion of a moralizing content is the rope draped across the top and right. This rope, in Latin funis, is a pun on funus, meaning funereal or deathly. This esoteric reference to mortality would have been appreciated by members of More’s scholarly circle and was far more clever than the conventional skull, clock, or hourglass.28 Even earlier, in his 1523 portrait of Erasmus, Holbein, likely under the direction of the scholar, constructed an elaborate program, not about death, but about envy, according to William Heckscher. The portrait was sent as a gift from Erasmus to his friend William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, so that, as Erasmus wrote to him, “should God summon me from here, you might have a bit of Erasmus.”29 In fact, Holbein depicts Erasmus standing behind a parapet, a symbol of the idea of Remembrance triumphing over Death that is 27 28 29

Wilson, Hans Holbein, 200-01. Wilson, Hans Holbein, 133-34. William Heckscher, “Reflections on Seeing Holbein’s Portrait of Erasmus at Longford Castle,” Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolph Wittkower (London, 1967), 128.

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particularly prevalent in Holbein’s Steelyard portraits of the 1530s.30 Erasmus proffers a book inscribed with his name and the Greek for “The Labors of Hercules.” The image refers to an essay in the Adagia of 1508 called “Herculean Labors,” in which Erasmus describes the task of bringing ancient letters to light again as Herculean – essentially likening himself to the hero – and in which he discusses the Lernean Hydra, a symbol used by the ancients to express Envy. The theme of envy is also found in Holbein’s signature: “That one am I, Johannes Holbein; no one will ever be my imitator as easily as he will be my denigrator.” This Latin verse phrase was likely Erasmus’ idea, since it relates to a passage in Pliny’s Natural History about the artist Zeuxis, who took such pleasure in his painting of an athlete that he inscribed beneath it that it is easier to envy someone than to imitate him. Erasmus complains of his jealous Roman critics in a letter to Warham regarding the portrait, in further documentary evidence of the encoded theme of the painting.31 Obviously, one unfamiliar with classical literature and the works of Erasmus himself would not have appreciated the elaborate cleverness of the representation. The vanitas image is likewise of great importance to sixteenth-century portraiture and springs from similar roots as moralizing imagery like the Dance of Death. Church teaching had long inhibited the development of portraiture as an end in itself. The inclusion of patrons in religious painting had a devotional quality that mitigated the negative aspects of portraiture: vanity and pride. Portraiture developed rapidly in the early sixteenth century as humanism encouraged the exploration of the individual, though the frequent incorporation of memento mori in the paintings indicated a lingering awareness of the dangers of hubris. This is analogous to the fifteenth-and sixteenth-century practice of placing a reminder of death wherever one would be likely to look while engaged in the business of living; for instance, on a finger ring or pendant, over a fireplace, or on objects for daily use. In portraiture, sitters and artists created a number of symbols and marks, such as the skull or extinguished candle, whose aim was to inscribe, within the portrait itself, its own self-criticism as a source of false pride and illusion.

30

31

Deborah Markow, “Hans Holbein’s Steelyard Portraits, Reconsidered,” Wallraf-RichartzJahrbuch XL (1978), 41. The most consistent compositional feature of the portraits is the parapet between the sitter and the viewer, invariably concerned with the powers of remembrance over death. Markow argues that these portraits were intended for family members’ homes in Germany, since nearly all make obvious reference to the sitter’s presence in London, usually in the form of a letter addressed to the Stalhoff, London. Heckscher, “Reflections,” 134-38.

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Baltrusaitis argues that the anamorphosis in the Ambassadors is analogous to images, either saints or portraits, in which a death’s-head or other memento mori is depicted on the verso side. Holbein himself likely painted such images earlier in his career. Rather than such an image on the reverse, the skull of the Ambassadors is instead displaced from the normal space of the picture.32 The skull (or other memento mori) functions as a future portrait, deprived of all its glorious, individual features, and reduced to a universal skull. Some later portraits, like those referred to in Shakespeare’s Richard II as “turning pictures,” combined clever representation with the vanitas image. A 1587 portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, by an unknown English artist, takes the form of a pleated picture. These were designed accordion style to show two separate images depending on whether they were viewed from the left or right. Looked at directly, both images would be incomprehensible. The portrait of Mary can be seen from the left, but when the portrait is viewed from the right, the image is of a death’s-head.33 The common feature of all these trick images is that the viewer must literally shift perspective to see them; and in shifting perspective to see the skull, the rest of the picture becomes unintelligible and essentially un-seen. Taken together, these various interpretations of Holbein’s Ambassadors agree on the portrait’s unusual character and composition, complex and layered meanings, and upon its overall memento mori themes. Taking the visual evidence and Holbein’s past work fully into account, the Ambassadors actually functions as a Dance of Death, not as a simple memento mori, nor is the Ambassadors Holbein’s first exploration of the theme, which has a long visual and literary history. While a memento mori functions as a reminder that one must prepare for death during life, the Dance of Death questions the very meaning of human accomplishment. Both types of imagery speak to death’s inevitability, but the concept of death as the great equalizer, and humbler, of humanity is unique to the Dance of Death. Though Holbein certainly includes memento mori themes in many of his portraits, in the Ambassadors he takes the idea further, presenting viewers with two more types for the Dance of Death. The two diplomats in The Ambassadors are the worldly humanist and reformist Bishop, with the trickster, Death, coming in the disguise of the anamorphic skull, to lead them away. Holbein’s initial exploration of the Dance of Death dates to 1526, when he produced a series of drawings intended to become woodcuts. Properly titled 32 33

Baltrusaitis, Anamorphosis, 65. Refer to Allan Shickman, “’Turning Pictures’ in Shakespeare’s England,” Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 68-70.

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Les simulachres et historiés faces de la mort in the first edition of 1538, when the woodcuts were finally published, the author of the accompanying moralizing essays, Jean de Vauzele, Prior of Montrosier, explains the use of the word “simulachre.” He says that since no one has ever seen death, which is not a physical thing, the artist must present an image of it, an embodiment of an abstract idea. Forty-one individual scenes depict the stylized figure of Death, in which lessons of morality (especially humility), submission to divine judgment, and the need to be prepared for death, are given to people of all social levels.34 Both the moralizing essays and the Biblical quotations and quatrains that accompany each vignette serve to reinforce the transitory nature of mankind, in effect making Holbein’s woodcuts a traditional Dance of Death. In fact, Elina Gertsman argues that the linking of text and image was a fundamental feature of the Dance of Death, though the images were also meant to be legible even to illiterate viewers.35 It is useful first, however, to look at the precedents for this type of imagery. The Dance of Death, or danse macabre, is an eternal round in which the dead alternate with the living, leading them in a processional sort of dance. Literary forerunners are found as early as the twelfth century. An early English morality play, known from a fragment as The Pride of Life and dating to c.1400, has the coming of Death as its dominant theme. The King of Life lives “in pride and likinge” with his faithful supporters, the knights Strength and Health, and his messenger, Mirth. His queen warns him that he must think upon the end of his life, that Death comes to all and he must live well in order to die well. The king refuses to listen, and instead sends his messenger to proclaim that he will fight anyone, even Death. Death accepts the challenge, and in the fight, he deals the King of Life a mortal blow. As the king’s soul leaves his body, it knows great sorrow and is caught by fiends, but the story ends with a promise that Our Lady will pray to her son for the soul’s release.36 Judgment of the dead man is immediate, and he is to be punished. Death as retribution, as a punishment or admonition to mend one’s ways, continues in later morality plays, such as Everyman (c. 1500), a translation of the Dutch Elckerlijk. The play begins with God perceiving that man is sunk in worldly prosperity and has not asked for

34 35 36

As paraphrased by Werner Gundersheimer in his introduction to the Dover facsimile of Holbein’s Dance of Death (New York, 1971), xi. Elina Gertsman, “The Dance of Death in Reval (Tallnin): The Preacher and His Audience,” Gesta 42 (2003): 150. Williard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (Berkeley, CA, 1936), 181-82.

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the mercy He has offered. Now He must do justice, so He commands Death to bring Everyman to a sure reckoning.37 The visual representation of Death as a rotting corpse, death’s-head, or skeleton became popular in the early fifteenth century, and with it, the Dance of Death. In general, early Death figures were corpse-like, with some hair or flesh left intact. This is apparent in the story of the “Three Living and the Three Dead,” in which three young men encounter their future selves as corpses. The dancing figures of death coming to lead away the living did not originally represent Death itself, but a corpse: the living man as he will be. The corpse was itself a potent memento mori, one which fit within what Paul Binski characterizes as a highly-developed guilt culture in late medieval Europe. The individual moved and responded to this culture, within which hedonism and love of earthly delights was framed, but also condemned.38 The idea that a king today is food for worms tomorrow is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition. Ecclesiastes chapter ten reads, “For when a man dies he shall inherit creeping things, beasts, and worms.” The heirs of Christian Platonic thinking, the Cistercians and later the Franciscans, developed this penitential mode of thinking to the fullest. As early as the twelfth century, monasticism developed a powerful contempt for the world, and advocated withdrawal from it into the religious life; monks were in some ways a form of living dead. The popularity of transi tombs, in which an effigy of the deceased is accompanied by a rotting double eaten by worms, is another manifestation of this idea. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the representation of the corpse became a hollow and fleshless body – a skeleton, as Holbein depicts it. The dancing skeleton is no longer the future self; rather, it is Death itself. Muriel Ingham attributes this visual change to a change in the function and tone of the Dance of Death. It gained social emphasis, and satire crept into both text and image, demanding a figure which suggested more than mere gruesomeness. Of the death figure she writes: “He seems less hideous than factitious. One must agree ... that those grinning skeletons, tugging at their wretched victims with fiendish glee, playing on hornpipes, throwing their bony legs in the air with a wild kind of delight, do not reflect the quieter and more spiritual teachings of the church.”39 These figures may reflect such ideas as satisfaction in the leveling power of death, the demand for clerical reform, class criticism, and the tendency of ecclesiastical and lay writers to mock vice, rather than 37 38 39

Farnham, Medieval Heritage, 201-02. See also Muriel Ingham, Some Fifteenth-Century Images of Death and their Background (Dissertation, English, UC Riverside, 1967). Paul Binski, Medieval Death (London, 1996), 131-32. Ingham, Fifteenth Century Images, 131.

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condemn it. Elina Gertsman suggests that the jesting skeletons embodied the grotesque and devilish, associating the dancers with sinners and indicating that the devil works through those with too much worldly ambition.40 Not until after the Reformation did some of the dances become openly anti-Catholic in tone. The Dance of Death retained its moralizing tone, however. Philippe Ariés points out that it is frequently only the death figures that are dancing, while the living must be pulled along; the art lies in the contrast between Death and life, but the consistency with which the living reluctantly enter the dance speaks to the uncertainty of death’s arrival and equality of all people in the face of it.41 In the Dance of Death, Holbein replaces the processional dance with scenes of individual confrontation between the living and Death himself, but the underlying themes, though joined by an added dimension of social commentary, remain much the same as in earlier examples. The woodcuts were executed in Basel between the years 1524 and 1526 by Hans Lutzelburger, following designs by Hans Holbein. The series begins with scenes of Creation and the Fall, the entrance of death into human existence. A jubilant chorus of death figures then announces the universal fate of mankind: “Death will visit all alike.” Then follow thirty-four scenes of Death encountering people from all walks of life, from the Pope to the Peddler. In some scenes, such as The Child, The Old Woman, The Ploughman, and The Old Man, Death is not a menacing or mocking figure, but one that simply leads the victim away. The Old Man and Woman in fact welcome his arrival. In contrast, some of the scenes are laden with thinly-veiled criticism and satire. In these scenes, Death is a sort of trickster, mocking or deceiving his intended victims. The Pope appears at the height of his temporal power as he crowns an emperor, who kisses his foot (Fig. 14.2). At the same time, one Death figure lurks among the assembled cardinals on the left, disguised as one of their number, while a second figure seems to whisper in The Pope’s ear. The woodcut also shows two demons or fiends; one above the papal throne, and the other hovering in the air holding an indulgence. Batschmann and Griener liken this scene to a woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder that illustrates the kissing of the foot in the Passional Christi und Antichristi, which was published in 1521 in Wittenburg. Martin Luther described the kissing of the foot as a typical example of the Antichrist’s behavior, as a perversion of the washing of the feet undertaken by Christ. The Pope figure is likewise very similar to a papal figure in Holbein’s Sale of Indulgences engraving. Batschmann and Griener further 40 41

Gertsman, “Dance of Death,” 152. Philippe Ariés, The Hour of Our Death (New York, 1981), 116.

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Figure 14.2 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Pope” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Holbein’s Mementi Mori

Figure 14.3 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Monk” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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suggest that the indulgence-type document shown is instead a papal bull, the Exurge Domine, issued June 15, 1520, and denouncing forty-one heretical propositions in Luther’s work.42 Little is known of Holbein’s stance concerning the Reformation. He worked among the humanists, in reformist scholarly circles of Basel, and illustrated a number of reformers’ texts, but until 1526, he was also executing large-scale religious paintings. A 1522 woodcut attributed to Holbein, Martin Luther as Hercules Germanicus, is clearly pro-Luther propaganda, showing the pope dangling from Luther’s nose.43 None of Holbein’s letters or journals survive, and he seems to have sought to avoid involvement in the religious controversy around him. When called to testify as to his religious beliefs in 1530, Holbein responded that he could not state his exact religious convictions without more precise information.44 The Pope of the Dance of Death, based on the visual evidence in the woodcut, certainly seems critical of the Papacy. The details of the picture, most notably The Pope’s elaborate throne and tiara, emphasize the hubris of Christ’s vicar, and the document, whether indulgence or papal bull, highlights the top-down, hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church. Nor is The Pope the only scene to mock those pledged to the religious life. The Monk, ostensibly committed to poverty, tries to flee from Death with his money box (Fig. 14.3). The Nun is distracted from her prayers by her lover. Death apes The Preacher’s gesticulations. The Abbess is dragged protesting from her convent by her habit, the accompanying verse admonishing her for devoting her prayers to the dead, rather than to the living. And The Cardinal, like The Pope, is associated with the selling of indulgences. The commentary is not limited only to those with ecclesiastical associations and power. Holbein likewise censures The Senator, The Judge, The Advocate, and The Count. The image of The Senator or The Councilor would not have pleased the rulers of Basel (Fig. 14.4). The richly dressed Senator sits in conversation with a nobleman, his back turned to a ragged man. On The Senator’s shoulder sits a devil.45 Death hovers at The Senator’s feet, as though about to trip him. Both scenes containing The Judge and The Advocate show Death to be a manipulator of these officials, and fundamentally depict the corruption and partiality of the law.

42 43 44 45

Batschmann and Greiner, Hans Holbein, 58-61. Refer to David Whitford, “The Papal Antichrist: Martin Luther and the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla,” Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008): 26-52. Batschmann and Greiner, Hans Holbein, 118. Wilson, Hans Holbein, 107.

Holbein’s Mementi Mori

Figure 14.4 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Senator” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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Like The Pope, The Count makes a reference to specific current events (Fig. 14.5). The Count tramples a farm implement while Death, dressed in the guise of a peasant, prepares to bludgeon him with his own arms. In 1526, Holbein’s German audience was still reeling from the effects of the Peasants’ War of 15241525. Supported by the Protestant clergy, the peasants revolted against their masters, only to have their rebellion brutally crushed by the German nobility. Holbein presents us with a reversal; the traditional weapons of the feudal lord will be the weapons of his destruction. The symbolism was not lost on those who had been sympathetic to the peasants’ cause and horrified by news of the massacres. This context makes The Count perhaps the most politically charged image in the series. The Astrologer is an interesting counterpoint to the Ambassadors (Fig. 14.6). The well-dressed Astrologer is shown seated at a table, upon which are books and instruments. His attention is upon an orrey suspended above him, to which he points. Death stands on the opposite side of the table, seemingly unnoticed, pushing a skull toward the Astrologer. In common with the Ambassadors is the still-life arrangement on the table, The Astrologer’s lack of awareness of Death’s arrival, and the prominent placement of the skull. The Dance of Death series is not known to have been commissioned; it represents, according to Derek Wilson, Holbein’s vision, combining satire with observation, understanding and passion. It is a commentary on the vanity of human wishes. “The ubiquity of death is emphatically not the message of the drawings. At most the memento mori is a subterfuge, a loose camouflage thrown over the canon of Holbein’s militant wit.”46 Along with the mortality theme, Holbein also parades the offenses of the clergy in a series of tableaux. Nor does he restrict himself to the religious, and the influence of Erasmus is seen here. Where the humanist Erasmus uses the figure of Folly, in The Praise of Folly, to deride the pomp and vanity of this world, Holbein uses Death to emphasize their futility. In this interpretation, Holbein’s Dance of Death needs the context of the time and place in which it was created. The delay in the publication of the woodcuts was due not only to the 1526 death of Lutzelburger, who was in possession the blocks, but also to the situation in Basel in the 1520s. The city fathers of Basel banned the publication of all controversial matter in 1524, in response to social unrest that was disturbing the city’s calm. The year 1526 was witness to a movement towards iconoclasm, meant to purify churches and eliminate the works of art which were seen to be the focus of Catholic idolatry. This resulted in mob destruction.47 Considering the critical 46 47

Wilson, Hans Holbein, 103. Rowlands, Holbein, 60.

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Figure 14.5 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Count” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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Figure 14.6 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Astrologer” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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nature of some of Holbein’s designs, it is unlikely that the work would have been published in Basel in the 1520s, even if Lutzelburger had not died. Despite its publication a decade later, it was still controversial in some quarters. The book was banned by the chief inquisitor of France in 1540, and the 1542 edition was banned by the Sorbonne. Though the book was seen as controversial, the lack of overt partisanship in Holbein’s drawings invited viewers to reflect on their meaning and draw their own conclusions. As Jeanne Neuchterlein notes, this is not because Holbein necessarily lacked religious conviction, but because he likely was pragmatic; in this period when images could and did incite controversy, it was important to think about how pictures conveyed meaning. It was also good strategy for a painter like Holbein working for a variety of patrons on both sides of the Reformation.48 Even if the Dance of Death is foremost a commentary on contemporary events, its very format speaks to its relationship with the imagery that preceded it, and with the intended meaning of that imagery. It can be both. Death appears as a mocker of humanity, thus addressing the idea of the vanity of human accomplishment that is at the root of memento mori and moralizing imagery. The final woodcut, the Escutcheon of Death, sums up this function of the Dance of Death (Fig. 14.7). This is Death’s coat of arms, a skull on a shield, flanked by two figures, a composition that has been compared with Holbein’s Ambassadors. Interestingly, a stone hangs above the hourglass and a worm creeps from the skull, suggesting that not even Death will escape final judgment. Holbein’s coat of arms of Death expresses a hope in the triumph over death. It is interesting to note that Death is not present in the first scenes of God creating man in paradise, nor in the scene of the Last Judgment at the Second Coming. Death is a creature of the mortal world: he might evoke dread and terror in life, but he is of no account beyond it. Death, just like his figure in the coat of arms, in which he takes the place of the body gone to the worms, dies. Sixteenth-century portraiture sought to be a faithful observation of nature, to show invention, and to describe the sitter as an individual member of a social category. There was also a temporal dimension; the artist was expected to convey the moment of the portrait, as in the inclusion of various details in the Ambassadors. These point to a specific time and place. However, a portrait, by its very definition, is a depiction of an individual or individuals, specific people with unique histories and identities. The characters of the Dance of Death, by contrast, are types; and this is a fundamental difference, one which 48

Jeanne Neuchterlein, Translating Nature into Art: Holbein, the Reformation, and Renais­ sance Rhetoric (University Park, PA, 2011), 36.

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Figure 14.7 Hans Holbein the Younger, “Escutcheon of Death” from the Dance of Death Series, 1526. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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occupies much of Philippe Ariés’ endeavor in The Hour of Our Death. Portraiture as an art form is a Renaissance development that relates to the change in perception between the individual and the collective. In the medieval romances and chansons de geste, like the Song of Roland, the dying man knows when the end is near and arranges himself accordingly: he lies down and prays. After death, he waits until the Second Coming to be judged for all eternity. Beginning in the fifteenth century, there was no longer any time between death and judgment in such poems: the fate of the dying man, for instance the king in the Pride of Life is argued over on his deathbed, whatever his position in this world. The delay is eliminated, giving rise to the ars moriendi, the art of dying well. This peaceful reconciliation is supremely the death of the individual as opposed to the community.49 This subject is also related, according to Ariés, to the moral purpose of the Dance of Death. It serves to remind the viewer both of the uncertainty of the hour of death – and therefore the need to be prepared – and of the equality of all people in the face of death. This same purpose suffuses the memento mori in portraiture, though on an individual level. The idea that everyone possesses a personal biography appears in the early twelfth century. This biography consists of actions, either good or bad, that define what a person is, according to Aries. Later, that biography came to include what qualities a person had, and by the end of the Middle Ages those qualities included a love of life. Therefore, death was not only an end of being but a separation from having. 50 Ariés’ model of understanding death, also applicable to the representation of the macabre, centers upon the relationship of the individual to the collective; the individual in the course of the late Middle Ages emerges from, and then defines himself in relation to, the collective. In later macabre representations, the images of death are both present and remote, whether the stylized trickster of the Dance of Death or the anamorphic skull of the Ambassadors. These images replaced the decomposing corpse or transi, the ghosts of a future self. Still, one faces death; and facing death is at least in part about the virtue of courage. Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve face, or at least acknowledge, death via the inclusion of the death’s-head in their double portrait. Holbein likewise makes a statement about how to die well, to go peacefully and with dignity, in the Dance of Death, whatever one’s station in life might be. The message remains largely the same, however. Erasmus asks, “What does Christ do but invite us to live watchfully, as if we were about to die any moment, and to

49 50

Ariés, Hour of Our Death, 107-10. Ibid., 138-41.

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adhere to the practice of virtue, as if we were destined to live forever?” 51 One must not think about death or the presence of death only at the moment of death; it must be remembered throughout life. As in the texts by Jean de Vau­ zeles that accompanied the 1538 publication of the Dance of Death, earthly life is lived in preparation for eternal life, just as the nine months of gestation are a preparation for this life. The art of dying was replaced by the art of living. Therefore, the Ambassadors and the Dance of Death are fundamentally about the same idea. Both intimate that all pomp and dignity, and all intellectual attainments are transitory. Even when displaced from normal space and time, hidden by cleverness and accomplishment, as in the anamorphosis, death remains present. Death is still ubiquitous. In other words, the Am­bas­ sadors, through its imagery and clever anamorphic skull, is a return to the theme of the Dance of Death series. In both works, Death appears in clever form, as either a distorted (and therefore not easily read) trick of perspective, or as a shrewd player in a series of scenes, deceiving and coercing his victims. Death is either a trick or a trickster. Furthermore, both works contain a subtext of imagery directly relevant to the period in which they were produced; the subtext of the Ambassadors through its elaborate symbolic content and the Dance of Death through its specific references to current events, secular and ecclesiastical. It is a testament to the consummate skill and perception of Hans Holbein that these works, different though they may be, still convey a sense of his times, his contemporaries, and his modes of representation after nearly five hundred years. In the end, viewers are left with that most general and unambiguous signal of death: the skull, which without the traces of the individual, is like any other. 51

Ariés, Hour of Our Death, 300.

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Afterword

A Few Thoughts on the Dead, the Living, and Liminal Existence Wendy J. Turner

Even before the Black Plague, death was a common motif in medieval psalters, churches, and graveyards, with the danse macabre (dance of death), ars mo­ riendi (the art of dying), and other images of death and decay becoming dominant after the plague. Yet, throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, artworks depicting the afterlife served as reminders for believers that the body and earthly possessions were temporary, and that salvation or damnation was waiting in the “next life.” Life after death haunted the medieval imagination and drove much of people’s day-to-day existence.1 The group of essays in the present volume brings together medieval and early modern thoughts from art, literature, and history about the afterlife and interactions between the living and their dead relatives and friends – good and bad, frightening and pleasant, selfish and generous – with an eye to understanding the centrality of the churchyard in medieval society and how belief in life after death illuminated medieval culture. Many medieval individuals, as part of their preparation for the afterlife, left gifts to their local church or other ecclesiastical foundation, as did Marco Carelli in Venice.2 Sermon literature encouraged inspiration of the living to give to the Church and to concentrate less on earthly desires and more on

1 For example, The Three Living and the Three Dead, Robert de Lisle Psalter, c. 1300-10, British Library, BL Arundel 83, fol. 127; pictured on the cover of Death in England: An Illustrated History, ed. Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings (New Brunswick, NY, 2000); and Thomas R. Cole, Nathan S. Carlin, and Ronald A. Carson, Medical Humanities: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2014), 107. For other images of worm-laden bodies, see: A Carthusian Miscellany of Poems, Chronicles and Treatises in Northern England, etc., c. 1400-99, British Library, Additional MS 37049. Another example is Resurrectio Mortuorum (The Resurrection of the Dead), Vatican, MS lat. 9820, which shows Christ leading a man out of the fires of hell and is pictured on the cover of Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages: Vol. I, The Violent against Themselves (Oxford, 1998). 2 Martina Saltamacchia, Chapter Eight, 232-255.

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heavenly goals.3 Cadaver tombs – with an image of the person as he or she was in life over an image of his or her decaying corpse – offered this contrast in sculpture: of the worm-eaten body and the hope of resurrection.4 Yet life and death were only two parts of the potential cycle. The “afterlife,” in heaven or hell, was one type of “other” life – the hope or bane of medieval saints and sinners – and another was a liminal existence as one of the undead: ghosts,5 revenants,6 vampires,7 or other not-quite-living creatures. The other aspect of “liminality” taken up in this volume is that of the actual burial location.8 Individuals without proper observance to baptism or other sacraments – such as stillborn infants – were buried outside or on the periphery of the churchyard. Their marginal positioning singled them out as not quite acceptable and yet not quite rejected by God or the Church.9 Those guilty of mortal sins – such as suicide – were also often buried just outside the churchyard on unconsecrated ground, almost as if looking on from their position beyond forgiveness.10 Quite the opposite, the graves of saints offered hope and healing for the living that visited these sites.11 Graveyards within medieval and early modern communities became spaces where the living and the dead could meet; the living talking over current crises of life with their dead relatives as much as meeting and visiting with living neighbors. Graveyards, then, became in daylight walled or open spaces in towns where neighbors gathered for news and children played. These spaces were kept free of livestock and other animals, and, at night, were visited at the individual’s own risk for fear of mobile spirits. Some of this conviction in the walking dead came from medieval folk beliefs in bier-rites – ideas that a dead person who was murdered or wronged in life would not rest easily until avenged, and who therefore marked their passing 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Sachi Shimomura, Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature, The New Middle Ages (New York, 2006), 55. Welch, Chapter Thirteen, 382-419; and Philip Morgan, “Of Worms and War: 1380-1558,” 119146, Death in England, 119-20. Tomaini, Chapter Eleven, 315-352. Gordon, Chapter Four 113-147; Fox, Chapter One, 20-41; Maude, Chapter Five, 148-172. Gordon, ibid. Perron, Chapter 10, 292-314. Paul Binski, Medieval Death (London, 1996). For more on Suicide, see Murray; and Sara Butler, Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England (New York, 2015), 220-223. Carole Rawcliffe, “Curing Bodies and Healing Souls: Pilgrimage and the Sick in Medieval East Anglia,” in Colin Morris and Peter Roberts, eds., Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan (Cambridge, 1999).

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with blood from their corpses, dead grass on their graves, or other such signals.12 Other times local beliefs led to tales of unnatural deaths, leaving the dead in a sort-of half-life, an existence in limbo between life and death. These socio-cultural aspects of being not-quite dead within medieval and early modern society speak to the implications and misunderstandings of how an individual died, the time it took someone to die, the type of death and possible connection to sin, and also to the occasional anti-Semitic view of particular types of death.13 Blame was sometimes placed on so-called “evil spirits”14 for a death. There was also a continuing belief in sprites and elf-shot as not only causes of death but also of illness or madness.15 At times even the character of “Death” was portrayed as a waifish, elf-like (albeit larger) black figure with little skin if any, carrying a sword.16 While “Death” at times seemed frightening in medieval art and literature, death and the dead were not necessarily so when pictured as saints or penitent souls in heaven. When the living interacted with their dead relatives and friends in medieval society, whether in passing the churchyard or visiting a particular grave or barrow mound, they were not unduly afraid; quite the opposite, many write of finding solace and comfort from visiting or praying near the dead.17 Marriage on the doorstep of the church in sight of the graveyard – the dead, again, watching over the living – gave couples the opportunity to have their deceased family members “present” for such a joyous occasion. Early medieval communities wanted the dead to be comfortable in the afterlife, gifting each with her favorite things to take with her to the grave.18 And, each succeeding generation marked the locations of their loved-ones with barrow mounds, gravestones, or other funerary markers. Even after death, the dead continued to have a hold over the living via requests in the form of letters and wills. The living listened because they were, as yet, still invested in the life of the dead person, and the dead individual, often, continued to psychologically direct the actions and thoughts of their relatives, friends, and neighbors from the grave.19 The living remembered the 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19

Tomaini, ibid. Leech, Chapter Six, 173-199. Clements, Chapter Two, 42-76. Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996); and Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England, Cursor Mundi 16 (Turnhout, 2013), Chapter One. For example, Book of Hours, Use of Rome, c. 1500, British Library, Harley MS 2936. Rawcliffe. Herman, Chapter Three, 77-112. Maude, ibid.

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rules and wishes of the dead and wanted to remain close to the now-dead relative or friend by upholding his requests. A sudden death could take away the medieval person’s ability to end life in an orderly fashion. This type of death, with its quick end, spoke of possible sin in life to some onlookers.20 In the end, the study of death in the Middle Ages and Renaissance is both an investigation into the foundations of many post-modern “monsters,” including revenants, ghosts, and vampires, as well as an exploration of life and the interplay between religion and society. This culture of death in medieval and early modern Europe was, perhaps, healthier in many ways than that of today. Many people now push death antiseptically away from society, to be dealt with in private – not as a community or in public and certainly not in the workplace. Nevertheless, death is difficult. The sense of loss, both for the medieval family and for the post-modern one, is palpable at both ends of the historic timeline. The authors’ studies here discover the humble death and the elaborate deathritual as well as some of the more quixotic avenues of medieval and early modern thinking pertaining to the undead, the half-dead, and the dead. These early communities understood how religious ideas – heaven and hell particularly – might affect their afterlives, and they worked to understand how that life after death might alter the recently dead person in the ground before, during, and after the hoped-for resurrection. 20

Clements, ibid.

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Index

Index

Index Ælfgifu, Abbess of Wilton 37 n. 7; 134, 137, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147 Æthelthryth, Saint 316 Alnwick [Anant] revenant 109 Aachen 18, 307, 308, 308 n. 15; 318 Abbeys see also Monasteries 9, 10, 33, 44, 45, 122, 103, 104, 117, 120, 122, 129-147, 166 n. 75; 204, 211 n. 40; 229, 253 n. 3; 258, 261, 266, 267, 271, 297, 298, 299, 308, 308 n. 15; 313, 314 n. 41; 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 321 n. 77, 96; 322, 322 n. 83; 341, 370 Abelard, Peter 270, 271 n. 87 Absolution scrolls 100, 128 Act in Restraint of Appeals 368 Adda River 211, 213 Adrian IV, Pope 307, 309 Adultery 237, 262, 295, 300 Aeneas 319, 320, 320 n. 71 Ailments 38, 62, 171 Albenga 221, 223 n. 6; 234 n. 48; 250 Alciati, Andrea (Alciato) 372 Alcock, John, Archbishop of Canterbury 334 n. 8; 363 Alella 317 Alexander III, Pope 264, 267, 269 Alfonso III, King of Asturias 309, 310, 312, 312 n. 30 Alfonso VII, King of León and Castile 322 Alfonso VIII, King of Castile 265 Alfonso X, King of Castile 313, 313 n. 36; 318, 318 n. 60; 319 n. 60 Alfred the Great, King of Wessex 29 Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk 333, 339, 342 Alighieri, Dante 346 Aliprandi, Flora 209 All Souls’Day 325 Ambrose, Saint 202 Anacletus II (antipope) 307, 309 Anamorphosis 373, 374, 378, 392 Anamorphic skull 366, 369, 373, 374, 375, 378, 391, 392 Anastasius IV, Pope 307, 309, 309 n. 19 Anglo-Saxons 18, 27, 30, 69, 73, 74, 77, 78, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94

Animals 98, 186, 213, 354 Annals 224, 224 n. 8; 232, 238, 243, 243 n. 82; 248 Genoese 224, 224 n. 8; 232, 238, 248, Pisan 243 n. 82 Anselm, Saint 356 Anti-Semitism/Anti-Judaism 10, 148, 155, 155 n. 30, 157, 161 n. 56; 164 Antefactum 227, 242, 248 Antiquity 12, 13, 305, 313, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326 Aquinas, Thomas 153 Arcagnago 219 Archaeology 5, 11, 18, 68-96, 97-128, 254, 323, 324, 352 Arden of Faversham (Arden, Thomas of Faversham) 12, 274- 302 Ariés, Philippe 259, 343, 381, 391 Aristocracy 7, 11, 13, 283, 315, 318, 369 Armor 222, 339, 352 Arras 234, 269 Ars moriendi 391, 393 Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales 295 Ashton, Hugh 358 Astorga 307, 310, 312, 327 Astronomical instruments 371 Asturian kings 309, 310, 312, 313 Athelwine, Bishop of Durham 151, 166 Audelay, John 347 Audiences 11, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 26 n. 17; 33, 42, 68, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 151, 156, 168, 182, 251, 274-301, 386 Augustine of Hippo, Saint 29, 151, 208, 211, 218 Auto da Fe 277, 277 n. 18 Auxerre 270 Bishop of 270, 368 Council of 324 Avant-garde 331, 354, 362 “Bad death” 43, 110, 117, 119, 128 Bale, John, Bishop of Ossory 277 Baptism 108, 120, 253, 263, 394 Barcelona 221, n.1; 223 n. 6; 235 n. 52; 238 n. 66; 307, 317

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004358331_019

Index Bardo de Bononia 218 Barking 130, 136, 136 n. 17, Barrows 27, 74, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 93 n. 101; 94, 95, 121 Basel 366, 381, 384, 386, 389 Battle see also War 53, 54, 63, 66, 80, 81, 82, 93, 94 n. 101; 96, 182, 183, 232, 234, 234 n. 48; 236, 237, 238, 244, 249, 249 n. 103; 251, 251 n. 112 257, 262, 318, 319, 330, 337, 339 n. 34; 358, 363 English Civil War 337, 358, 363 Peasants’ War of 1524-25 Trojan War 319 Bay of Skaill, Orkney 119, 120 Becket, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 158 n. 41; 277, 278 Bede the Venerable 31, 40 n. 18; 41, 41 n. 19; 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 150 Beer 267 Beham, Bernhard 357 Belgrade 10 Beneficium 258 Bennet, Thomas, Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral 358, 359 Beowulf 73, 80, 81, 85, 89, 92, 93, 95, 146 n. 27; 183 n. 27 Bereavement see also Mourning 11, 17, 33 n. 37; 53, 56, 57, 59, 64, 64 n. 95; 68-96, 132, 204, 205 n. 15; 206, 207, 207 n. 24; 210, 214, 216, 218, 228, 248, 248 n. 100; 325, 326 Bergamo 257, 258 Berwick 97, 99, 128 Bier-rite 109 Bingen 270 Blindness 52, 54, 57, 62, 256, 256 n. 12 Blood 64 n. 98, 82, 98, 105, 108, 109, 113, 149 n. 4; 150, 151, 155 n. 31; 157, Boleyn, Anne, Queen Consort of England 368, 370, 376 Bones 17-34, 35, 36, 65, 66, 67, 107, 123, 128, 139, 211, 212, 277, 351, 352 Boniface III, Pope 31 Borderlands/borders 94 n. 101; 176, 191 n. 58; 275 Bourgeoisie 296 Boy-martyr cults see also Martyrdom 148, 149 n. 4

439 Brandon, Suffolk 107 Brennu-Njals saga 194, 197, 198 Breslau (Wrocław) 104 Brihtwold of Malmesbury 121, 122, 126 Bristol Cathedral 354, 355 n. 15 Bronze Age 13 n. 29; 87, 90, 91, 94 Bruyn, Barthel the Elder 375 Burchard of Worms 108, 123, 253 n. 3; 258, 260 Burials see also Funerals 6, 11, 27, 29, 35, 68-96, 100, 142, 167, 179, 181, 187, 196, 201-220, 291, 324, 325, 326 Anglo-Saxon 29 Boats 68, 85 Boiling 212 Bog disposals 126 Candles, use of 206, 207, 216 Cremation/burning 80, 103, 128, 186, 277 Deviant 11, 27, 94, 94 n. 104; 100-128, 179, 180 Icelandic 178, 187 Jewish 205, 216 Mounds 68-96, 101, 106, 177, 395 Prehistoric 92 Unconsecrated ground 120, 161, 270 n. 85; 394 Weights 112, 116 Bury St. Edmunds 149 n. 5, 150 Bush, Paul, Bishop of Bristol 335 n. 15; 354, 359 Byland Abbey 103 n. 30; 117 Byzantine Empire 309 Law 244 n. 85 Cadaver sculptures 9, 13, 331, 340, 344, 350 Cadaver tombs 394 Caesarius of Arles 19, 37 n. 6 Campin, Robert 371 Canonici decumani 205, 205 n. 16 Captives/captivity 238, 238 n. 65; 246, 247, 248 Carelli, Marco 11, 201-220, 393 Careway, John 358 Carloman, King of the Franks 306, 307 Carolingians 306, 308, 312 Carrowkeel, Co. Galway 122 Cartularies 223 n. 5, 224, 225, 225 n. 10; 15

440 Catharine of Aragon, Queen Consort of England 367, 368 Cathedral of Milan 201, 205, 220 Cathedral of Santa Tecla 205, 205 n. 16; 216, 217 Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela 232, 309 Cathedral of Tarragona 316, 317 n. 55 Cemeteries see also Churchyards and Graveyards 7, 8, 12, 120, 253-273, 324, 347, 348, 393, 394 Execution cemeteries 100, 119 Champagne Fairs 234 Chanting 37, 260 Chantries 219, 345 Chapel of Santa Maria del Rey Casto 310 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor 118, 308, 308 n. 15 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 109 Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor 307, 308 Chaucer, Geoffrey 162 n. 58; 167, 339, 340, 355 Canterbury Tales 355 Chichele, Henry, Archbishop of Canterbury 336, 336 n. 18; 337, 338, 339, 340, 345, 359 Children 34, 34 n. 40; 39, 57, 58, 59, 112, 155, 170, 228, 240, 245, 245 n. 90; 246 n. 91; 248, 252, 256, 256 n. 17; 394 Chorography 295, 297 Christianity 2, 154, 155, 157, 165, 254, 326, 358 n. 117 Christopher, Saint 38 Chroniclers 295 Church of St. John the Baptist, Keyston, Cambridgeshire 363 Church of St. Nicholas, Denston, Suffolk 341 Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, North Curry 334 n. 8 Churchyards see also Cemeteries and Graveyards 7, 8, 12, 120, 253-273, 324, 347, 348, 393, 394 Civic authorities 11, 210 Classical Heroes 13, 320, 323, 339 Classical tradition 5, 13, 199 n. 88; 285, 296, 305-330, 337, 339 Clement III, Pope 261, 265, 268

Index Clement IV, Pope 307, 309 Clement VII, Pope 368 Clergy 11, 12, 116, 205, 216, 257 n. 20, 258, 261, 265, 269, 277, 281 n. 29; 331, 344, 373, 386 Clothing/dress 13, 25, 26, 28, 51, 71, 83, 87, 181, 245, 247, 265, 276, 336, 340, 355, 356, 365, 376, 384, 386 Coffins 11, 103, 105, 109, 112, 113, 146, 167, 168, 181, 201, 202, 204 n. 8; 209, 210, 210 n. 35; 211, 213 n. 50; 215, 215 n. 56; 217, 305, 310, 348, 375 Colleges 336, 345 Collegiate church of Santa Maria de Defesa-Brava 307, 315 Communes 224, 224 n. 8; 225, 225 n. 10; 227, 234 n. 48; 235, 239, 244 n. 86; 249, 249 n. 103; 257 Compagna 225, 239 Confession 4, 37, 41, 45, 45 n. 37, 48, 61, 179, 276, 279, 297 Constans, Emperor of Rome 306 Constance, Queen of Sicily 308 Constantine, Emperor of Rome 309 n. 19, 313 Constantinople 232, 233, 235 Contagion 108 n. 52; 109, 128, 180, 186, 187, 211 Conversion 2, n. 6; 27, 29, 43, 54 n. 68; 155 n. 30; 187 n. 41; 213 n. 48; 254 n. 4; Coronation 339, 368, 370, 376 Coroners 39 n. 11 Corteges see also Processions 4, 11, 201-220, 325, 326, 379, 381 Corvey, Monastery of 258 Cosmati pavement 370 Council of Coyac 324 Council of Seligenstadt 258 Council of Toledo 260, 325 Council of Tours 323 Council of Trent 323 County Roscommon, Ireland 115 Cranach, Lucas the Elder 381 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 370, 376 Cremation 11, 68, 73, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 89, 102, 104, 109, 119, 324

Index Crime 9, 12, 163, 170, 237, 239, 248, 249, 249 n. 103; 259, 262, 265 n. 62; 267, 268, 274-303 Criminal courts 4, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281 n. 29, 285 n. 50; 286, 290 Criminals/criminality 27, 63 n. 94; 107 n. 46, 117, 285, 295 Crossroads 121, 123, 123 n. 112; 215, 263 Crucifix/Cross 27, 28, 28 n. 22; 38, 46, 103, 103 n. 31; 128, 157, 160, 204, 206, 213, 215, 312, 373 Cuthbert, Saint 150, 150 n. 7, 11; 151, 151 n. 13; 163, 163 n. 74, 75; 166, 166 n. 75, 77; 170 n. 90 d’Etaples, Jacques Lefevre 368, 370 Damasus II, Pope 309 Dance of Death/Dans Macabre 9, 13, 344, 366-392, 393 Dancing 259, 260 n. 36; 380, 381 de Dinteville, Jean 9, 366-392 de Selve, Georges, Bishop of Lavaur 9, 366-392 de Vauzele, Jean, Priot of Montrosier 379, 392 Debt 20, 156 n. 32, 207, 209, 210, 228, 239, 240, 244, 329 Decapitation 11, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 107 n. 46, 117 Decretists 261 Defendants 251, 277, 281, 281 n. 29 Demons 44, 112, 113, 117, 121, 176, 180, 187, 188, 260, 266, 268, 274, 381 Denston, John 341, 342 Denston, Katherine 341, 342, 343 Deulesalt 156 n. 32 Dissection 350, 354 Dissolution of the monasteries 299 Domesday Book, The 133, 133 n. 10 Dogs 97, 105, 266 Doles to the poor 206, 207, 207 n. 24; 208, 208 n. 27 Dowry 226, 227, 227 n. 21; 229, 230, 241, 245, 245 n. 90; 246, 247 Dowsing, William 358 Dragons 89, 187 n. 42 Drakelow, Burton-upon-Kent 104, 108 n. 52; 113, 117

441 Drapery, funerary 202, 206, 207, 215, 215 n. 56 Of shrouds see also Shrouds; 335, 342, 354 Draugr/draugur 8, 12, 98, 105, 127, 175-200 Drunkenness/alcoholism 54, 64, 64 n. 97; 65 “Dry bones” 18-35, 65, 66, 67 Dryhthelm 31, 32, 40, 41, 43, 45 n. 37 Duels/dueling 222, 237, 249, 250, 251, 252 Durandus 153 Durham 150, 150 n. 7, 11; 151, 166 n. 75 Dysentery 143, 343 Eadulph, Bishop of Devon 29 Ealdgyth 138, 139, 140 Eanswyth of Folkestone, Saint 316 Easter 22 n. 7; 143, 149 n. 4; 156, 159, 169, 170, 170 n. 87, 88; 267, 345, 358 Eborard, Bishop of Norwich 164, 165 Edgar, King of England 43 n. 28 Edmund, King of England 149 n. 5; 150 Edward IV, King of England 341 Edward VI, King of England 331, 359, 363, 374 Eggenfelden 357 Egypt 234, 235, 308 Elckerlijk 379 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 360 Elizabethan period 1, 9, 12, 274-302 Ely 276, 316, 363 Emancipation of minors 277 Embalmers/embalming 211, 211 n. 40; 212, 212 n. 45 Emma, Queen of Normandy 132, 133, 322 English Civil War 337, 358, 363 Engracia, Saint 316 Epilepsy 39 n. 11 Epitaphs/tomb inscriptions 28, 31, 34, 35, 305, 310 n. 24; 314, 314 n. 41; 316, 318, 320, 320 n. 70; 321, 322, 322 n. 82, 83; 323, 326, 327, 327 n. 105; 363 Epodion 324 Erasmus, Desiderius 368, 374, 375, 376, 377, 386, 391 Eschatology 20, 29 Estate cartography 298 Étienne of Déols, Saint 316 Étienne of Troyes, Saint 316, 319 Eucharist 37, 345

442 Eugenius III, Pope 263, 263 n. 48, 265, 265 n. 62, 268, 269 Everyman 379, 380 Evil spirits 42, 114, 117, 213, 395 Excommunication 263, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269 Execution 63, 63 n. 94; 93, 94, 100, 107, 119, 152, 155, 189, 190, 240, 250, 287, 293, 294, 301 Executors 343 Exempla 133, 275, 280 Exhumation 97, 99, 103, 108, 109, 113, 123, 167, 180, 204, 220, 255, 267, 268, 268 n. 78; 269, 269 n. 83, 270, 270 n. 85; 277 Exile 9, 52, 54, 57 n. 78; 63, 75, 76, 78, 100, 121, 123, 188, 189, 190, 192, 194, 197, 198, 200 Eyrbyggja saga 12, 124, 175, 181, 182, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199 Fabbrica 201, 202, 205, 210, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220 Feast days 204, 207, 208, 260, 325 Feasts/banquets 4, 87, 133, 176, 207, 208, 323, 324 Felix, Saint 315 Ferelanda 132 Feuds/feuding 176, 176 n. 5; 185, 189, 190, 193, 196, 197, 198, 283 Feudalism 299, 309, 386 Fighting/brawling 54, 257 Filippo degli Organi da Modena 220 Fillingham, Lincolnshire 116, 127 FitzAlan, John 339, 340 Floamanna saga 184 Florence 211, 218, 249 344 Foliot, Gilbert, Bishop of Hereford 105, 257 Folklore 1, 2, 6, 8, 101, 115, 181, 192, 275 Icelandic 8, 127, 176, 179, 185, 187, 192 n. 59 Fairy lore 39, 178 West Country and Welsh border lands 275 Fondaci 237 Fontevrault 263 Food 8, 50, 62, 80, 97, 180, 181, 190, 206, 207, 207 n. 24; 209, 245, 247, 324, 338, 380 Formosus, Pope 277 Fortune/fate/Providence see also Misfortune 9, 10, 23, 32, 36-67, 77, 77 n. 36; 99, 112,

Index 131, 134, 168, 185, 186, 192, 194, 207, 211, 236, 238, 242, 243 n. 84; 245, 251, 265, 271, 274-303, 18, 329, 347, 356, 376, 381, 391 Fos, city of 236, Foxe, John 277, Francis I, King of France 367, 368 Francois I de la Sarra 357 Franks 19 Fraternal guilds 11 Frederick II 307, 308 French Revolution 308 Funerals see also Burials 6, 11, 27, 29, 35, 68-96, 100, 142, 167, 179, 181, 187, 196, 201-220, 291, 324, 325, 326 Anglo-Saxon 29 Boats 68, 85 Boiling 212 Bog disposals 126 Candles, use of 206, 207, 216 Cremation/burning 80, 103, 128, 186, 277 Deviant 11, 27, 94, 94 n. 104; 100-128, 179, 180 Icelandic 178, 187 Jewish 205, 216 Mounds 68-96, 101, 106, 177, 395 “Multiple” 7, 8 Prehistoric 92 Punitive 264 Pyres 11, 33 n. 37; 63 n. 95; 73, 73 n. 21; 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 93, 104, 108 Unconsecrated ground 120, 161, 270 n. 85; 394 Weights 112, 116 Funerary art 2, 12, 13, 305 Galen/Pseudo-Galen 167 n. 79; 351 Galicia 315, 322 Galilee (architectural) 317 Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Chancellor 335, 360 Gaul 322, 328, Geitlandsjökul glacier 190 Genii 317 Genoa 221-252 Germanic empires/kingdoms 127 n. 128, 249 Germanic law/tradition 49, 62, 86, 108, Germanic warriors 73

Index Gestures 218, 325, 368 Ghosts see also Revenants 9, 97-128, 175- 200, 274, 276, 276 n. 7; 279, 291, 292, 372, 391, 394, 396 Gisli, Sursson 12, 179, 197, 198, 199 Gisze, George 374 Gliwice, Poland 102, 107 Globes 371 Godfrey, Bishop of Chichester 103 Godfrey of Viterbo 268 “Good death” 37, 62, 110, 364, 364 n. 143 Good Friday 170, 371 Goscelin of St. Bertin 10, 129-147 Goths 314, 316, 322, 327 Grágás 194 Grass 190, 275, 276, 288, 294, 299, 395 Grave goods 5, 11, 74, 79, 83, 84, 88, 89, 100, 126 Grave markers/gravestones 27, 28, 31, 94, 395 Gravediggers 202 n. 4; 211 Graves/gravesites 5, 8, 11, 20, 23, 24, 24 n. 13; 26, 27, 28, 31, 36, 37, 45, 46, 48, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103, 103 n. 31; 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 110 n. 59; 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 163, 178, 267, 271, 274, 275, 277, 278, 297, 347, 348, 352, 394, 395 Graveyards see also Churchyards and Cemeteries 7, 8, 12, 120, 253-273, 324, 347, 348, 393, 394 Great Fire of London 358 Gregory the Great, Pope 18, 26, 29, 30, 32 n. 35; 33 n. 37; 36, 46, 47 n. 45; 195 n. 73; 265 n. 62 Grettir Ásmundarsson 12, 105, 177, 182, 183, 183 n. 27; 184, 185, 186, 187, 187 n. 42; 190, 191, 191 n. 57; 192, 192 n. 62; 193, 194, 197, 198 Grettis saga 99, 105, 112, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 183 n. 26, 27; 184, 192 Guild System 11, 350 Guillaume de Harcigny 259, 349 Guy de Joinville, Bishop of Chalons 267 Habsburg Empire 99

443 Hadrian, Emperor of Rome 309 Hagiography 2, 7, 10, 43 n. 28; 105, 129, 148-171 Halle-in-Tyrol 357 Hanging 54, 63, 63 n. 94, 95; 66, 270, 275, 287, 288, 291, 293, 346 Harold of Gloucester 140 n. 4; 149, Haugbúi/haugbúar 177, 177 n. 8 Hauteville Dynasty 308 Hávamál 185 Haverhill, Suffolk 110 Heaven 31, 32, 42, 60, 61, 76, 121, 135, 137, 139, 145, 146, 151, 160, 162 n. 58; 169 n. 86; 202,204, 209, 218, 255, 327, 330, 340, 342, 344, 356, 362, 394, 395, 396 Hell 23, 31, 33, 33 n. 37; 36, 43 n. 28; 45, 121, 178, 179, 207, 267, 393 n. 1; 394, 396 Helskór (hell-shoes) 179 Henges 87 Henri, Archbishop of Rheims 269, 269 n. 82; Henriquez, Chrysostom 278, 278 n. 20 Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor 268, 307, Henry VI, King of England 278, 308, 339 Henry VIII, King of England 360, 366, 370, 374, 375 Herbs 213, 216 Hercules 377 Heresy 254, 254 n. 4, 267, 269, 269 n. 83; 277, 280, 281 Heretics 27, 254, 254 n. 4; 277, 384 Heroes 12, 13, 25, 74, 80, 81, 105, 177, 183, 183 n. 27; 185, 187, 187 n. 42; 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 292, 318, 319, 320, 321, 323, 326, 377 Hesperia 321, 322, 328, 330 Hildegard of Bingen 270, 270 n. 84 Hill forts 87 Hinterlands see also Outerlands 123, 187 Holbein, Hans the Younger 9, 13, 366-392 The Ambassadors 366-392 The Pride of Life 379 Homicide 237, 262, 281 Homilies 9, 10, 17-35, 36-67, 79, 121, 122 Honorius III, Pope 307, 309 Hospital of St. Giles, Brompton Bridge, North Yorkshire 124 Hospitallers 269 Hrafnkels saga Freysgođa 197 Hugh of Avalon, Saint, Bishop of Lincoln 10

444 Hugh of Lincoln 148, 148 n. 1; 254 n. 4; 270 n. 85 Humanism 305, 366, 368, 369, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 384, 386 Hymns 38 n. 10; 372 Iberian Peninsula 316, 321, 327 n. 105 Iceland 8, 12, 24, 98 n. 4; 99, 123, 127, 175-200 Folklore 8, 127, 176, 179, 185, 187, 192 n. 59 Íslendingasögur 12 Law 194, 196 Iconicity 331, 354, 358, 362, 363, 365 Iliad 323 Illness 12, 38 n. 10; 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 99, 127, 137, 138, 231, 368, 395 Impalement 98, 108, 109, 110 Imprisonment see also Prisons 122, 126, 207, 238, 244, 244 n. 85; 327, 329, 345, 347 Inhumation 68, 73, 79, 83, 86, 88, 89, 107, 116, 119, 120, 124, 179 Injury 50, 53, 108, 109, 124, 325 Innocent II, Pope 261, 265, 307, 309, 309 n. 19 Innocent III, Pope 254 n. 4; 257, 257 n. 20; 262, 264, 266, 269 Inquisition 277, 280, 281 Intercession 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 129, 131, 132, 133, 142, 147, 156, 207, 359 Iron 82, 110, 111, 112, 166 n. 72, 371 Iron Age 126 Isidore of Seville 30, 110 n. 59, 60 Islam 244 Isle of Drangey 192 Janus 323 Judaism 155, 156 Anti-Judaism see also Anti-Semitism 10, 155, 155 n. 30, 157, 161 n. 56; 164 Jewish burials 114, 216 Jewish communities 10, 148, 155, 156 n. 32, 158, 161 n. 55, 170 Jews of Norwich 149 Jewish tradition 155 n. 31, 161, 205, 205 n. 15 John FitzAlan 339, 340 John of Paris 153 John the Baptist, Saint 202, 363 Church of 363

Index John, King of England 295 Judicial proceedings 258 Julian of Toledo 18, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32 Julius Caesar, Emperor of Rome 295 Juries 194, 274-302 Justices of the peace 282 King Ferdinand of Castile 356, 327 Kingdoms of Leon and Castile 305, 306, 309, 310, 312, 315, 321 Kyd, Thomas 275, 279, 286-298 Lameness 63 Land grants 231, 297 Landhreinsun (land-cleansing) 187 Landowners 298, 331 Landvœttir (land-wights) 178 Languedoc 234 Last rites 37, 37 n. 5; 45, 272 Laurence Booth, Archbishop of York 333 n. 7; 358 Law 4, 11, 24 n. 13; 43, 50, 64 n. 98; 82, 117, 121, 123, 128, 176-200, 207, 210 n. 35, 221-252, 269, 274-302, 323, 324, 326, 329, 348, 359, 360, 384 Law students 282 Lawsuits 241, 290 Lawyers 32, 242, 277, 282, 286, 289, 290, 360 Legal reform 282 Lazarus 20, 347 Legacies see also Wills 4, 8, 31, 39, 44 n. 30; 84, 214, 221-252, 317, 325, 346, 395 Legacy (of the deceased) 77, 78, 79, 88, 90, 92, 93, 96, 156, 313, 326 Legend of Edith 10, 129-147 Lent 22, 22 n. 7; 22 n. 9 Lepers/leprosy 137, 264 Levant 234, 235 Lewin (Levin) 97, 98, 108, 114, 128 Libere, Pope 321 Liguria 12, 221-252 Lilleshall Abbey 122 Liminality 177, 394 Lindisfarne 46, 150, 166, 166 n. 75; 167 n. 77 Lintels 305 Liturgy 4, 4 n. 16; 254 Lodi 213, 215, 215 n. 54

445

Index London 8, 107, 110, 156 n. 32; 265, 268, 269, 275, 280, 300, 337, 350, 358, 366, 368, 370, 374 n. 23; 377 n. 30; City of London 350 Louis I, King of France 307, 308 Lusor, Saint 316 Luther, Martin 372, 381, 384 Lutzelburger, Hans 381, 386, 389 Magnus the Martyr, Saint 259 Manslaughter 281 Map, Walter 98, 103, 103 n. 31; 105, 107, 108 Mapping/maps 7, 39, 40, 55, 74, 95, 217, 288, 297, 298, 299, 306 Margaret of Anjou 339 Marriage 227, 247, 265, 317, 367, 395 Mars 318, 319, 319 n. 61, 62; 329 Marseille 233, 236, 236 n. 56; 237 n. 59; 261 Martyrdom 43, 43 n. 28, 148-172, 259 Boy-martyr cults 148, 149 n. 4 Mary I, Queen of England 360 Mary, Queen of Scots 378 Masonry 316 Masses for the Dead see also Office of the Dead 4, 31, 37, 45, 45 n. 37; 46, 201, 205, 205 n. 15, 16; 206, 219, 219 n. 73, 74; 220, 326, 345, 348 Mastication 113, 114 Maundy Thursday 170 Mead 49, 54, 76 Mediators 135 n. 16; 282, 319 Medvegia 109 Memento Mori 5, 9, 13, 331-365, 366-392 Memory 5, 8, 9, 11, 26, 27, 28 n. 22; 35, 46, 48 n. 50; 68, 70, 70 n. 7, 8; 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 138, 142, 142 n. 22; 154, 194, 220, 314, 318, 326, 360 Mercia 26 Milan 8, 11, 201-220, 249, 250, 261 Miracles 10, 114, 122, 129, 130, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 160, 161, 162, 162 n. 58; 163, 163 n. 61; 166 n. 72; 166 n. 75; 168, 169, 170, 170 n. 90; 255, 256, 259, 259 n. 30; 265, 272, 315 Misfortune 38 n. 9; 49, 52, 53, 54, 54 n. 68; 63, 186, 236 Mitcham, Surrey 106

Monasteries see also Abbeys 9, 10, 33, 44, 45, 122, 103, 104, 117, 120, 122, 129-147, 166 n. 75; 204, 211 n. 40; 229, 253 n. 3; 258, 261, 266, 267, 271, 297, 298, 299, 308, 308 n. 15; 313, 314 n. 41; 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 321 n. 77, 96; 322, 322 n. 83; 341, 370 Monasticism/monks 8, 23, 24, 31, 34, 34 n. 40; 37 n. 5; 44, 45, 46, 48, 100, 117, 122, 123, 129, 133, 135, 140, 141, 144, 150, 157, 158, 158 n. 42; 161 n. 51; 167, 167 n. 77; 168, 204, 212, 258, 261, 264, 264 n. 56; 265, 266, 268, 271, 273 n. 94; 314 n. 42; 315, 321, 324, 356, 358, 358 n. 117; 380, 384 Money 156 n. 32; 189, 211, 219, 227 n. 19; 236, 239, 240, 242, 336, 384 Moneylenders 266 Monsters/the monstrous 12, 13, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 183 n. 27; 184, 185, 186, 187,188, 189, 190, 191, 191 n. 58; 192, 192 n. 59; 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 199 n. 88; 200, 266, 289, 293, 396 Montpellier 236 Monuments see also Tombs 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 28, 28 n. 22, 34, 68-97, 183, 220, 306 n. 6; 333, 339, 340 Morality 13, 20, 28, 63, 64, 65, 67, 94, 105, 123, 219, 271, 279, 286, 287, 297, 299, 357, 373, 376, 377, 379, 381, 389, 391 Morality Plays 379 More, Henry 99 More, Thomas 375, 376 Morocco 240 Mourning see also Bereavement 11, 17, 33 n. 37; 53, 56, 57, 59, 64, 64 n. 95; 70, 70 n. 7; 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 90, 95, 96, 132, 204, 205 n. 15; 206, 207, 207 n. 24; 210, 214, 216, 218, 228, 248, 248 n. 100; 325, 326 Murder 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 148-172, 176, 179, 182, 186, 189, 195, 196, 224 n. 8; 236, 237, 248, 249, 250, 252, 263, 264 n. 55; 275-302, 320, 329, 394 Music 325, 366, 371 Muslims 211, 221, 244 n. 84; 309, 330 Neo-Platonism 301

446 Neolithic 91, 93 News 107, 163, 201, 205, 211, 215, 256, 278, 286, 286 n. 53; 295, 296, 297, 386, 394 Nicodemus 216 Niderwirt, Peter 357 Nobility 2, 7, 8, 11, 44, 82, 138, 170 n. 90; 210, 212, 213, 216, 249, 292, 300, 320, 338, 339, 340, 384, 386 Nonzolo 202 n. 4 Normans 130 n. 5; 166, 283 Norway 175, 187 n. 42; 190, 199 Norwich 10, 116, 148-172 Nosebleeds 167 n. 79; 168 n. 79 Notaries 223 n. 5, 7; 224, 225, 225 n. 15; 227, 228, 229, 229 n. 25; 230, 233, 234, 238, 246, 251 Odo, Bishop of Toul 269 Odoricus 370 Odyssey 323 Office of the Dead see also Masses for the Dead 4, 31, 37, 45, 45 n. 37; 46, 201, 205, 205 n. 15, 16; 206, 219, 219 n. 73, 74; 220, 326, 345, 348 Optic glass/lens 366, 373, 374, 374 n. 23 Ordeal system 163, 280 Order of St. Michel 269 Order of the Garter 339, 340 Outerlands see also Hinterlands 123, 187 Outlaws/outlawry 9, 12, 175-200 Oviedo Cathedral 305, 307, 310, 310 n. 27; 312, 324, 325 Paganism 24, 26, 27, 43, 44, 49, 73, 84, 121, 152, 178, 182, 206, 207 n. 24; 208, 211, 213, 254, 305, 318, 321, 323, 324, 325, 326 Paleochristian 205, 310, 316 Palermo 307, 308, 317 Palls/pallbearers 181, 196, 214, 215, 215 n. 56 Parenthood 50 n. 58; 57 n. 78 Pater Noster/Lord’s Prayer 209, 272 Pavia 215, 236 Peat bogs 126 Penance see also Repentance 40 n. 18; 41, 43, 45, 65, 258, 346 Pepin, Holy Roman Emperor 118 Perfumes 216

Index Pilgrimage 7, 149 n. 6; 162 n. 58; 166, 232, 315, 345 Pilkington, James 358 Pillar 175, 175 n. 2; 192, 370, 371 Pillar dial 370, 371 Pillow stones 110, 110 n. 59, 116 Pisa 12, 234, 234 n. 48; 237, 238, 243 n. 82, 84; 306 Plague 44 n. 32; 108, 115, 191, 204, 210, 211, 217, 249, 343, 393 Playlet 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292 Pliny 377 Po River 211, 213, 215 Podestá 242, 249, 249 n. 103; 250 Polychroming technique 335, 335 n. 15; 336, 341, 360 Porphyry 308, 308 n.15, 18; 317 Praise of Folly 374, 386 Prayer 3, 4, 17, 19, 25, 26, 27 n. 19; 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38 n. 9, 10; 44, 44 n. 32; 45 n. 37; 46, 46 n. 41; 47, 48, 159, 160, 161 n. 51; 162, 205 n. 16; 206, 270, 270 n. 86; 271, 272, 274, 336, 341, 344, 345, 345 n. 58; 346, 347, 359, 363, 384 Prioress’ Tale 148 Prisons see also Imprisonment 122, 126, 207, 238, 244, 244 n. 85; 327, 329, 345, 347 Processions see also Cortgeges 4, 11, 201-221, 325, 326, 379, 381 Property 6, 132, 152, 183, 189, 219, 227, 228, 230, 240, 247, 258, 265, 265 n. 62; 266, 268, 286 Prostitution 259, 337, 338, Protestant Reformation The 3, 275, 345, 358, 363, 366, 381, 384, 389 Provence 223 n. 6; 234, 235, 235 n. 52; 237, 240, 250, 263 Psalms 37, 43 n. 28; 45, 325 Public opinion 10, 288, 289 Pugna 237, 237 n. 59; 250 Punishment 20, 25, 31, 43, 46, 63, 93 n. 101; 94, 119, 121, 239, 249, 250, 265, 267, 270, 284, 286, 344, 347, 357, 379 Purgatory 271, 271 n. 88; 274, 331, 341, 342, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 360, 362, 363, 364 n. 145 Quitterie, Saint 316

Index Radegund of Poitiers, Saint 316 Ransom 238, 238 n. 66; 244, 257 Ranulf, Bishop of Saintes 266 Rape 36, 237 Raunds, Northamptonshire 110 Regularis Concordia 143, 144, 144 n. 23, 25 Reims 264, 265, 268, 269, 269 n. 79, 307, 309 n. 19 Relics 7, 130, 135, 146, 149, 150, 151, 151 n. 14; 154, 160, 163 n. 61; 165 Repentance see also Penance 40 n. 18; 41, 43, 45, 65, 258, 346 Revenants see also Ghosts 9, 97-128, 175- 200, 274, 276, 276 n. 7; 279, 291, 292, 372, 391, 394, 396 Revenge see also Vengeance 8, 9, 156 n. 32; 176, 178 n. 10; 279, 283, 289, 290, 291, 292 Rhodian Sea Law, see also Byzantine Empire 244 n. 85 River Deben 88 Rockley, Sir Roger 352, 352 n. 99 Rogationtide 21, 22 n. 9; 44 n. 32 Roger II 307, 308 Roger de Poitevin 104 Romans/ Roman Empire 308, 312, 318, 321, 324 Customs 208 Dowries 227 Drama 285 Gods 318 Heroes 318 Inscriptions 29 Law 37 n.6; 237; 280 Literature 326 Roads 88, 90 Roman Britain 88, 152 Roman Hispania 319 Sarcophagi 314 Villas 87 Romanesque sculpture 315, 316, 320 n. 70 Roman Catholic Church 331, 335, 336, 345, 359, 360, 363, 364, 364 n. 145, 372, 377 Ross and Cromarty, Scotland 112 Rouen 257, 258, 260, 264 Royalty 7, 13, 26, 27, 129, 134, 139, 150, 306, 308, 310, 310 n. 27; 313, 314, 318, 322, 322 n. 82; 327, 350, 354, 366, 370

447 Saint Francis’s feast 208 Saint-Gilles 236 Saint Patrick’s Purgatory 346 Saint veneration 1, 3, 7 San Justo de la Vega Santa Maria Gloriosa, Church of 202, 203 n. 8 Santiago de Compostela 232 Sarcophagi 6, 13, 112, 168, 220, 305-330 Sardinia 223 n. 6; 235, 235 n. 52; 236 n. 56; 243 n. 84; 264 n. 55 Savona 221-253 Saxons 324 Scaffold 287, 288 Scandinavia 24 n. 13; 64, 85, 128 Sculpture 9, 13, 27, 220, 315, 316, 331-366, 394 Scuola dei Milanesi 202, 203 n. 8; 204 n. 11 Second Council of Braga 324 Second Council of Lyons 344 Second Lateran Council 265 Settimo masses 205, 205 n. 15; 209 Shakespeare, William 200, 275, 292, 295, 378 Richard II 378 Richard III 292 Hamlet 292 Shipwreck 12, 236, 236 n. 55; 242, 243, 243 n. 84; 244, 244 n. 84, 85 Shrouds 26, 98, 113, 114, 117, 331, 335, 336, 341, 342, 354, 356, 360, 362 Sicily 235, 240, 244 n. 85; 308, 309, 317 Silesian law codes 123 Simon de Novers 156 n. 32; 157, 165 n. 67 Skinners 158, 159, 161, 161 n. 55; 166 n. 72 Slavery 238, 244, 244 n. 85 Slittings 276 Snorri 193, 196, 197, 198 Song of Roland 391 Songs 4, 260, 260 n. 35; 325 Sorbonne 389 Southwark 337, 350 Southwell Minster, Nottingham 358 Spaghnum moss 126 Sphagnan 126 Spolia 13, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 317, 326 Sprowston 159, 159 n. 43; 162 St. James’ Priory, Bristol 103 St. James’ Church, Dursley 363

448

Index

St. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge 358 St. Leonard’s Church, Wollaton 335, 345, 345 n. 58 St. Margaret Fybriggate, Norwich 117 St. Martin’s Churchyard, Wallingford 110 St. Mary Spital, London 107, 119, 120 St. Mary’s Church, Worsborough 352 St. Modwenna 104 St. Nicholas Shambles 110, 116 St. Pancras 165 St. Peter’s Church, Barton-Upon-Humber 103 St. Peter’s Church Leicester 112, 117, 119, 124, 127 St. Vigor’s Church, Fulborne 358 Stabbings 288, 294 Stapenhill Abbey 104 Starving 54, 66 Statues of Pera 239, 243, 244, 245, 247, 250 Steven VI, Pope 277 Storms 53, 54, 63, 238, 243, 243 n. 84 Sudden death 4, 10, 36-67; 104, 262, 396 Suicide 27, 54, 64, 122, 123, 124, 126, 262, 288, 291, 394, 394 n. 10 Sumptuary laws 207, 210 n. 35 Surveys 100, 298, 299, 300, 364, 144 Sutton Hoo 68 n. 1; 73, 85, 88, 89, 89 n. 82 Sweating sickness 343 Sweet odor 162, 163 Swords 54, 64, 106, 192, 220, 395 Synodal statutes 268

Third Council of Toledo 325 Third Crusade, The 244 n. 85; 246 Thomas of Monmouth 10, 148, 154, 155 n. 28; 157 Thor 175 Tombs see also Monuments 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 28, 28 n. 22, 34, 68-97, 183, 220, 306 n. 6; 333, 339, 340 Transi tombs 332, 333, 333 n. 3; 349, 350 n. 94; 380, 391 Torches 204, 207, 213, 213 n. 50; 214, 214 n. 51; 215, 216 Tours-sur-Marne 264 Translation Of the corpse 129, 137, 150, 151, 157, 158, 161, 162, 162 n. 60; 163 n. 61; 166, 166 n. 73, 75; 167, 168, 168 n. 81; 169, 170, 312, 316 Of sacred space 175 Treaties 221, 223, 223 n. 6; 224 n. 9; 230, 235, 235 n. 52; 236, 236 n. 55, 56; 237, 237 n. 59; 238, 244, 250 Troy 318, 319, 322, 323, 326, 330 Trolls 176, 177, 178, 178 n. 9, 179, 180, 182, 190, 192 n. 59 Tuberculosis 117, 117 n. 86 Tumbeagh 126 Tyburn 287

Tangleha’, Kincardineshire 124 Teazle 161, 161 n. 51 Tefillin 161 n. 51, 55 Templars 269 Temples 87, 175, 177, 187 n. 41; 199, 211, 270, 315, 321 Tercie 245 Testators 219 n. 74; 232, 233 Testimony 4, 9, 12, 99, 103, 114, 130, 131, 194, 226, 228, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 274-302, 346, 384 Tewksbury Abbey 341 Thames Valley 87, 88 Three Living and the Three Dead 275, 344, 380 Thieves 134, 181, 267, 270

Vampires 98, 99, 101, 102, 107, 107 n. 46; 108, 109, 110; 114, 127, 127 n. 128; 187 n. 40; 394, 396 Kilteasheen vampires 115 “Venice Vampire” 115 Vanitas 340, 364, 365, 374, 376, 377, 378 Vengeance see also Revenge 8, 9, 156 n. 32; 176, 178 n. 10; 279, 283, 289, 290, 291, 292 Venice 11, 114, 115, 201-220, 393 Verdicts 12, 281, 283, 286, 296 n. 53 Verism 338 Vienna 350 Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Washington DC 95 Vígr-Hrappr 178 Vikings 101, 175, 176, 195, 196

Urban VI, Pope 307, 309 Urns 79, 81, 86, 89

449

Index Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, Duke of Milan 211 Visigoths 309, 310, 312, 314 Visions 9, 26, 31, 32, 32 n. 35; 33, 33 n. 37; 40, 40 n. 18; 41, 42, 43, 45, 45 n. 37; 70, 129-147, 157, 159, 160, 164, 168, 168 n. 81; 256 n. 17; 270, 271, 346, 356 Vocality 1, 3, 5 Voluptas 20, 340, 364, 365 Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester 29, 32 n. 35 Wakeman, John Abbot of Tewkesbury 341, 342 Wales 105, 109 n. 52; 260, 275, 358 n. 123 War see also Battle 53, 54, 63, 66, 80, 81, 82, 93, 94 n. 101; 96, 182, 183, 232, 234, 234 n. 48; 236, 237, 238, 244, 249, 249 n. 103; 251, 251 n. 112; 257, 262, 318, 319, 330, 337, 339 n. 34; 358, 363 English Civil War 337, 358, 363 Peasants’ War of 1524-25 Trojan War 319 Washing of the body 48 West Country 275

Westminster Abbey 9, 370 Wet stage of death 348, 362 Wilderness 9, 12, 48, 183, 189, 191, 199 William the Conqueror 151 William of Norwich 10, 148-172 William of St. Calais 151, 166 n. 75; William of York, Saint 316 Willoughby, Richard 335, 343, 345 Wills see also Legacies 4, 8, 31, 39, 44 n. 30; 84, 214, 221-252, 317, 325, 346, 395 Wilton Abbey 10, 37 n. 7; 76 n. 32; 129-147 Wisbeke 258 Witchcraft/witches 112, 196, 281 Witch of Berkeley 112, 113 Witnessing 68, 79, 82, 86, 226, 226 n. 18; 252, 274-302, 328, 386 Wolves 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 58, 64 Wulfstan, Saint, Bishop of Worcester 47, 121, 256, 258 Wycliffe, John 277 Wyrd 40, 77, 77 n. 36; 78 Zaragoza 316