Funerals and Commemoration

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer examines how far practices associated with funerals and commemoration changed in early modern England. The writer notes that by comparing practices surrounding death, both before and after the Reformation, the essay points to the need to differentiate between religious attitudes, on the one hand, and social and political necessity, on the other, as a way of arriving at a more precise and mutually-inclusive understanding of what constitutes change.

From the Paper:

"By implication, much of the reason why preparation for death, the Final Moments, and funeral arrangements proved so arduous as well extravagant was because all these were geared toward helping the dying and the deceased attain salvation. More specifically, the Catholic practice of preparing for death involved the profession of faith and the confession of sins; it saw the dying receive absolution and, if physically able, take part in the Holy Eucharist; it involved priests anointing eyes, ears, nose, lips, hands and feet with the sacraments which were accompanied by psalms and collects and the sprinkling of holy water; and it also bore witness to the dying express devotion to the crucifix. All of these were designed to prepare the dying for the trials and tribulations of a stint in purgatory where the fate of the deceased hung tantalizingly in the balance. Even after death, the dead were, in many ways, still very much "alive". By leaving behind wills, which provided endowments to family, church and poor, testators could oblige the living to intercede for them. For without the prayers of the living the deceased would not be able to withstand the rigours of purgatory."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Aries, Philippe, The hour of our death (Harmondsworth, 1991)
• Cressy, David, Birth, marriage and death. Ritual, religion and the life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997).
• Gittings, Claire, Death, burial and the individual in early modern England (London, 1984).
• Gordon, Bruce and Peter Marshall (eds.), The place of the dead: death and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000).
• Helt, J.S.W., 'Women, memory and willmaking in Elizabethan England', in Bruce Gordon, Bruce and Peter Marshall (eds), The place of the dead: death and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000).

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