INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATION
OF FUNERAL
MUSEUMS
IAFM
Fédération Internationale des Associations de Thanatoloques
International Federation of Thanatologists Associations
THE WORLD ORGANIZATION OF FUNERAL OPERATIVES
Funeral Heritage
Report 2012
THE WORLD ORGANIZATION OF FUNERAL OPERATIVES
INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATION
OF FUNERAL
MUSEUMS
IAFM
Colofon
Biannual publication of FIAT-IFTA and IAFM
EDITORIAL OFFICE
FIAT-IFTA Secretariat
Melkpad 23
1217 KA Hilversum NL
info@thanos.org
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Mr. Albert van Vuure
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Copyright © 2012 FIAT-IFTA
FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Report
2012
1
Introduction
Page 2
Henry J. Keizer - Chair FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Steering Committee
2 Music for Death and Mourning
Page 4
Volker Kalish - Robert-Schumann-HochSchule, Düsseldorf, Germany
3 Held in Perpetual Memory
Page 8
Charlotte Stanford - Brigham Young University, Provo UT., USA
4 History of Cremation in France
Page 16
Muriel Perrin - Ghys, General Delegate of AFMN, Paris, France
5 Vienna Funeral Museum
Page 20
Wittigo Keller - Funeral Museum, Vienna, Austria
6 Rituals to Remember
Page 26
Teresa Saavedra - President of ALPAR, Colombia
7 Collection Horse-Drawn Hearses
Page 30
Fernando Sanchez Tulla - Museu de Carosses Fúnebres, Barcelona, Spain
8 Memorial Concerts Novosibirsk
Page 34
Sergey Jakushin - World Funeral Museum, Novosibirsk, Russia
9 Museum of Funerals
Page 38
Karóly Balogh - OTEI, Budapest, Hungary
10 Glasnevin Cemetery Museum
Page 42
Peter Harbison - Royal Institute of Architects, Dublin, Ireland
11 A Living Museum
Page 46
Barry Albin-Dyer - F.A. Albin & Sons Funeral Directors, London, UK
12 Jade Masks of the Mayas
Page 52
Pinacothèque, Paris, France
13 Charter
Page 54
FIAT-IFTA Charter of Global Funeral Heritage
14 Survey
Page 55
Funeral Museums and Collections
Table of Contents
FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Report
2012
FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Report
2012
The FIAT IFTA Heritage Committee is proud to present its second report to you.
Our Committee draws attention to the many impressive traditions, historical buildings and artifacts
that still exist today in relation to death, funerals and bereavement. They are worth preserving and
our Committee is very pleased that we have received so much support in the past year.
Our Expert Committee has made important progress in forming a relationship with the UNESCO.
Bringing the importance of our task to the attention of UNESCO has not been an easy task and
much paperwork and personal contacts are involved. Our Committee is extremely pleased that our
efforts are now bringing the necessary focus and attention within the international community of
governments.
Music has always been, and still is, connected to funeral traditions. Our traditions find their origin
in history, even dating back to the Middle Ages. Worldwide funeral museums present impressive
collections, with unique artifacts on display. Funeral traditions can vary widely on the different
continents and some countries have instituted a special day of remembrance. All these topics you
will find in this report. We are very grateful to the many members that have made a contribution.
Again in the past year we have been supported by many active FIAT IFTA members that have
dedicated much time and effort to the work of our Committee. Not in the least we are very
thankful for the support that has been provided to us by the FIAT IFTA Secretariat.
We hope that you will enjoy the content of this report. Our Committee is always available to
answer your questions or listen to your comments.
Henry J. Keizer,
Chairman FIAT IFTA Heritage Steering Committee
President International Association of Funeral Museums, Amsterdam
Dear reader,
FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Report
2012
Not a single memorial service without music; no funeral, burial, cremation without
musical accompaniment; no grieving by the bereaved who haven’t chosen their own
musical representation; no social gathering for the death of a loved one and often
even for the dying, but even more so music for remembrance that hasn’t been carefully
planned. And this holds true through all ages, worldwide! It is a rarity that people of all
cultures are or have been so united. Why?
Dying, death and burial of a human being are
challenging events for all involved. They expose
all participants and all bereaved to an existen
tial experience, expect of them very specific
“event concentration”, out of the ordinary
activities, a normal demeanor and all of this
combined with keeping difficult emotions
totally under control. But this is exactly what
the music is for.
Music reaches out for such challenges and situ
ations, embarks almost into the midst of such
existential experiences, but it is an important
trigger, guide and designer of emotions. Of
course, what is meant with emotions here are
those heavy emotional conflict situations that,
with a tremendous diversity, actually take pos
session of the people involved, and confront
them with their multi-faceted yet sometimes
contradictory, vagabond-like disguised as a
cluster of feelings such as pain, helplessness,
grief, despair, disappointment, anger, etc. All
these “feelings” certainly have their own right
and their own dynamics and, at the same time,
face such contradictory feelings like relief,
gentleness, comfort, gratitude or love. How can
you accept these emotions, how can you ex
perience them individually in their own right,
how can you deal with them?
The emotions of mourners are changing, some
times slower, sometimes faster, sometimes they
seem to build a wall around our own experi
ences and dominate our feelings completely.
When in this state of mind, only very few or at
times no other experiences can break through,
MUSIC FOR DEATH
AND MOURNING
MUSIC OF LIFE
FIAT-IFTA Funeral Heritage Report
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be it emotions of accompaniment, reinforce
ment, conflict, realization, etc. Music is an ex
ception. Music can break through those walls;
can reach for those inner emotions that we are
trying to hide behind our painful experiences
of grief. Such intrusions also carry certain risks.
And music has possibly entangled itself into
this risk as well and has become a “risk taker”.
The emotions that are released through music
need to go somewhere and they push for har
mony, for channels of release, thereby running
in unintended directions, or are perhaps even
directed. In extreme cases it can’t even be ruled
out that memorial services can “crash” because
of these misguided emotions. All these con
cerns put together are the strongest argument
for the need for awareness of the importance
of music in the context of grief. Even with the
right intentions – responsibility and respect -
we need to re-think the often random use of
music. Music is powerful and because of its
force, it possesses the power to channel emo
tions, break through those caught up emotions
in times of grievance, harmonise and guide you
in the right direction.
The use and selection of music for mourning
therefore needs to be considered carefully and
responsibly. That at least is the demand on
those who deal with dying, death and burials
as a profession. Although there are different
phases and transitions, anyone dealing with
music must ask themselves at least two key
questions:
What does a certain type of music have to do
with the life of the dying, the deceased, with
his survivors? What role does the selected mu
sic have on the topic “Death and Mourning”?
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Prof. Volker Kalisch
Robert-Schumann-Hochschule, Düsseldorf
The first question relates to the personality of
the deceased and puts the music into a specific
social context. It is less about aspects of indi
viduality or deliberately cultivated by the more
or less skillful placement of musical requests.
Rather, the main question is, what does the
selected music have to do with the life of the
deceased, what does the music say about the
deceased’s attitude to life. Certainly this has lit
tle to do with the conventional use at a funeral.
The second question refers to the contribu
tion the music can explicitly make on the
topic of “Death and Mourning”. This can
only be achieved if the answer to this ques
tion has found its way into an aesthetic form.
This doesn’t mean that music cannot be a
conventional “acoustic mourning,” but the
music should not be reduced to only that!
True “Death and Mourning” music will help to
find “answers” to all those questions and fears
related to grieving. At the same time these are
the questions of “sorrow and death” that the
living ask themselves. If music is perceived and
understood so true to life in the face of death
as a genuine effort to answer the essential
question, then music, over and above emotion
al experiences, can connect the issues of living
with the certainty of death. Music for death
and mourning then truly becomes “Music of
Life”, positioning itself to answer the question
of the sense and reason of life and death. Music
thus makes a crucial contribution towards see
ing death as a part of life, rather than just being
opposed and hostile towards death.
Therefore music steps back into our lives from
a different angle when dealing with death and
mourning, in a new relationship to life itself.
Music which was always linked to mourning
will remain that way. At the same time howev
er, this music should be seen as “Music of Life”
because in the hour of death and parting, the
music immediately reflects on the life of the
deceased and connects the deceased to their
bereaved. Music thereby once again shows how
much death is a part of life and how music is
unmistakably connected to life. Accepting fu
neral music as “Music of Life” therefore results
in not looking upon a funeral as an isolated
event. Moreover, music decisively represents
the experience of “Death and Mourning”, puts
music back into its normal role in all phases of
life and therefore, illustrates through its own
ways and means, what death means in our lives
and how the meaning of life does not end with
death.
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The late medieval period has been described as a time obsessed with death.
Images, literature, and liturgy all highlight the decay of the body and the necessity of
last things. From paintings of the Danse macabre, to transi tombs showing the skeletal
frame to which all bodies are reduced and the manuals of the Ars moriendi instructing
the faithful how to make a pious end, death and its aftermath was a vivid and forceful
part of medieval life. Perhaps no other period in the western tradition is so rich in the
spectacles of death and decay.
Key among these spectacles was that of the fu
neral and the attendant recreation of anniversary
ceremonies. These liturgical rituals were a part of
the medieval memoria that French historian Jean-
Claude Schmitt has recently described as a “form of
collective memory… [that forms] a social technique
of forgetting. Its function was “to ‘cool off’ the
memory under the guise of maintaining it”. Indeed,
as influential cultural historian Philippe Ariès
explains, most medieval funerary rituals involved
a flurry of heightened remembrance, including an
niversaries, in the period just after burial. Eventu
ally, Ariès notes, memory would subside, just as the
body of the deceased would decay into the earth
that held it, becoming part of the group of Christian
souls that lay in the churchyard, and that would be
disinterred after decomposition and integrated into
the charnels under the church eaves. The majority
of medieval burials conformed to this pattern of
anonymity, despite the anxiety voiced by numerous
people that they be remembered in perpetuity upon
their own demise. In this essay, I argue that an im
portant, indeed essential, strategy of the privileged
few who resisted this forgetting was the repetition
of funeral rites during anniversary services. I explore
the form and meaning of these funeral re-creations,
demonstrating that for the privileged few, resist
ing a forgetting of the dead was both desirable and
possible.
HELD IN PERPETUAL
MEMORY
FUNERALS AND COMMEMORATION
OF THE ELITE DEAD IN THE LATE
MIDDLE AGES
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Cathedral of Troyes, France
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Death in the Middle Ages was an inescapable part
of the fabric of everyday experience. Both urban
and country geography were defined by parish and
monastic boundaries and the churches within them.
Approaching a church meant passing by or through
the cemetery, marked by its wooden burial crosses,
and possibly even past open pits of common graves.
Once inside the church, worshipers would have
been surrounded by numerous monuments—me
morial tablets on the walls, brass tomb slabs under
foot, the large sepulchers of the very wealthy—clus
tered around altars and other favored sites just as
the living clustered to see the elevation of the Host.
The whole Christian community, dead and living,
was united quite literally within the structure of the
church. For the medieval churchgoers, the sights
and smells of death would have mingled inescapably
with the very air they breathed.
However, the inescapable presence of death in the
culture of the later Middle Ages does not indicate
necessarily the attitude of pessimism insisted
upon by the followers of the great medievalist
Johan Huizinga. This is far from the case. Instead,
medieval attitudes towards death exhibit a prag
matism mingled with intense sensibility. The
pragmatism was a result of close exposure to the
logistics of death, while the sensibility was based on
deeply-rooted religious convictions on the nature of
postmortem existence. Close exposure to death was
not, of course, a specifically medieval phenomenon.
Until the development of what Ariès has called “the
invisible death”—our contemporary model of death
that hides the horror of technology’s failure to save
us from annihilation— death was an accepted part
of social exchange. But the medieval approach to
death is sharply distinguished from the attitudes of
the Reformation and later eras. Understanding this
difference revolves around the crucial doctrine of
Purgatory.
Though medieval descriptions of Purgatory invoke
images of agonizing flames and great suffering,
Purgatory was ultimately a place of hope, as Jacques
Le Goff has pointed out in his seminal study on the
subject. Indeed, the message of hope was central to
the notion of Purgatory, as was its temporality. Pur
gatory was a sinner’s salvation: there the penance
owed on one’s debt of sin could be paid even after
death, thus allowing for escape from hell. Never
theless, medieval preachers’ and writers’ graphic
descriptions of Purgatory were designed to elicit
timely repentance and increased good works from
parishioners that would reduce the time they spent
there. The poet Dante’s famous exhortation “Do not
think of the torments: think, I say / of what comes
after them: think that at worst / they cannot last
beyond the Judgment Day” (Purgatory X 106—108)
is coupled with Dante’s description of the pleas that
the souls in Purgatory make, asking the aid of the
living to redeem them from their pains: “I beg … you
speak my need / most graciously in Fano, that they
to Heaven / send holy prayers to intercede for me; /
so may my great offenses be forgiven” (Purgatory V
75—78). Hopeful or not, souls clearly longed to be
set free of Purgatory.
Barring a life of extraordinary sanctity, however,
every medieval individual anticipated a stay of some
length in Purgatory. The most a person could hope
for was quick deliverance, and for this the dead had
to rely on the living. The relationship between the
quick and dead was therefore one of mutual reli
ance— albeit one laced with unease—for what if the
living forgot the dead too quickly? Moral exempla
abounded of forgetful heirs. These ranged from the
merely negligent to the greedy and disobedient who
did not carry out the will of the deceased, to the det
riment of both the living and the dead. John Mirk,
the early fifteenth century Austin monk, recounted
in his sermon for All Soul’s Day a typical tale from
the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine that il
lustrates this point:
A knight, as he rode toward a battle, he bade his
cousin, that if he died in the battle, that he should
sell his horse and give the money in alms for his
soul. Then, when this knight was dead, his cousin
liked well his horse and took him to his own use.
Then, soon after, this knight appeared to his cousin
and said: ‘Because thou hast not done by my horse
as I bade thee, thou hast made me to be in Purgatory
eight days. Wherefore God will take vengeance on
thee, for thy soul shall go to hell, and my soul shall
go to bliss.’ Then anon a horrible voice was heard in
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the air, of lions, and bears, and wolves, that caught
up this man bodily and bore him forth, that never
more after man heard of him. Cautionary tales like
this one provide evidence that no matter how care
fully medieval people planned for their postmortem
deliverance, the weakness of the living could betray
them. Therefore, it was not only necessary to refresh
the mind of the living toward the plight of the dead,
but also to arouse afresh in them the feelings of grief
and loss. This would drive the living to take pity on
and fulfill their duties to the dead. Many exhorta
tions and appeals to the memory of the living could
be found in the church. Every church held at least a
dozen tomb slabs on which the dead requested the
passersby: “Orate pro eo,” meaning pray for him.
These pious prompts aided in the task of refreshing
the churchgoer’s memory, but with many of these
reminders literally underfoot, people often must
have become numb to the mute appeal of brass
and stone—even supposing they knew how to read
the inscriptions. Images were likely to have better
success: the inclusion of small “weeper” figures in
English and Continental European tombs of the
late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries urged grief
on the beholder through the language of the eye.
These small ‘weepers” sometimes were replaced
by life-size mourning figures, as in the impressive
late fifteenth-century funeral effigy of Philippe Pot,
Grand Seneschal of Burgundy. Spoken language
could also urge the faithful to remember their
duty to the dead: Mirk’s All Souls’ sermon encour
aged folk to pray “for all Christian souls”, a blanket
injunction designed to cover all contingencies. But
the most vivid way to remind the living of the needs
of the dead was to heighten society’s recognition of
loss. This could most effectively be done through
spectacle, by recreating the most poignant moment
of social separation.
The funeral, not the actual moment of death, was
the moment which the living experienced supreme
loss. Though the medieval deathbed was normally
treated as a public occasion, the deathbed scene was
focused on the salvation of the soul and not on the
sustained memory of the living. Family, neighbors,
and clergy joined together to exhort the dying man
(or woman) to make a good end by focusing on the
things of God. In the Ars moriendi, the deathbed
is depicted as a battlefield, with demons beneath
the bed and angels hovering in the air above the
dying man’s head, all urging him to choose his last
allegiance. The priest actually interrogated the dying
individual, quite pointedly, on the state of his (or, of
course, her) faith: whether he abjured heresy, and
whether he put all his trust in Christ. Such rigor
was necessary, for it was better to stir up the sick to
“a ‘holsom fere and dred’ than to allow them to be
damned because of ‘flaterynge and false dissimila
cioun’ on the part of friends and relatives” who did
not want to trouble the person with thoughts of
death. If the dying individual did not confess all his
sins, the remaining offenses would be proclaimed
openly before the world on Judgment Day, unless of
course they damned the individual outright. Family
and neighbors were encouraged to help the dying
person focus on the cross held before him, and to
put all of his energies into prayer so that he did not
falter at the end. In one instance from late medieval
London, when the priest reached the deathbed of
Alice Gysbye too late to find her conscious, neigh
bors did cry and call many times to the said Alice
to look upon the sacrament then standing by her,
and knocked her on the breast … and called out
‘What, will you die like a hellhound and a beast, not
remembering your maker?” while another friend
pleaded, “Alice, I am here, I pray you speak to me
and remember the passion of Christ and speak for
your soul’s health”.
Deathbeds were often the occasion for making wills
as well. Part of the process of cleansing and prepar
ing the soul for death included final arrangements
for his or her body and property. The charge of these
lay with the executor to complete. Should a person
fail to make a will (either written or oral) the execu
tor’s first duty was to see that the individual had a
proper funeral, and then pay off any of the testator’s
debts, and finally to provide for the surviving spouse
and children, if any. The deathbed was a person’s
last chance to express his or her wishes before mat
ters were laid in the executor’s hands. As a result any
medieval people made the most of this opportunity,
spelling out their preferences in great detail, not
only as to who should inherit what possession, but
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also what sort of spectacle their funeral should pre
sent and how much of their estate should go toward
perpetuating their memory. The short gap between
the dates of medieval wills and their execution in
probate shows that many people did in fact wait
until they were dying to compose their wills. The
pressure to think on the next life and the looming
urgency of the need to be remembered had purely
practical repercussions for those who were dying.
In the panic of last moments, quite a few people left
all their worldly goods to a religious order such as
the Dominicans in exchange for prayers and masses,
much to the chagrin of their disinherited relations.
While mourning certainly played a part in these
scenes, the focus of the deathbed was on helping
the deceased make a good end—it was, for all its
public character, a private affair for the benefit of
the dying. The funeral, on the other hand, was a
spectacle made for the benefit of society, a spectacle
that allowed them to act as both participants and
witnesses to the transition of a community member
to his or her new place. The dead did not cease to
be a part of medieval society, but their new category
was a peculiar one, as it was poised on the verge of
anonymity. Once dead, the body was washed and
wrapped in a shroud. Ariès notes that the tradition
in Northern Europe and England was to cover the
face as well as the rest of the body, as if the veil of
anonymity had already fallen. The most promi
nent individuals—bishops, powerful nobles—were
sometimes laid out in their robes of state, or perhaps
embalmed. Ordinary folk, though, were simply
sewn or pinned into a winding sheet, as funerary
historian Christopher Daniell notes. The body was
usually placed in a coffin and remained in the house,
watched over by mourners, until it came time to
take it to church some two or three days later. The
time delay was probably to ensure that the person
was truly dead, but could be shortened, especially if
the body began to stink.
The funeral ceremony truly began with the removal
of the corpse from the house. Although groups of
friends and neighbors gathered around the death
bed and also shared the home wake, the procession
of the body to church was a ritual in which the
whole community could, and often did, participate.
French cultural historian Michel Mollat describes
how criers were paid to ride throughout the region,
in a circumference of five to ten miles (or more) to
announce the death of a wealthy individual, request
prayers on his behalf, and tell the poor to be ready to
assemble for the funeral. It was desirable to recruit
the poor as attendees, for their prayers were thought
to be especially beneficial, as they had little else to
offer. The poor for their part were no doubt anxious
to attend, for alms were usually given to them as
part of the funeral ceremony, thus providing a
chance for the deceased to demonstrate his or her
Christian charity one last time. These alms could
take the form of money, food, shoes, or clothing, the
latter sometimes specifically mourning garb. If the
deceased was someone of social importance, rela
tives would also be dressed in mourning. For nobles,
the whole household shared in this observance. In
1467, at the funeral of Philip the Good, Duke of Bur
gundy, fifteen hundred black cloths were ordered to
clothe the servants of his household, as well as the
household of the new Duke so that “one could see
nothing but black robes in Bruges”.
Once at the church, the body, whether coffined
or not, was laid before the high altar in a hearse,
which in medieval times referred to a metal stand
or framework, with stands for candles. This was
typically covered by a pall. For wealthy people,
individual palls could be made, but poorer folk must
have made use of the parish pall. These were often
provided as a gift from a deceased donor and could
even carry the initials or name of the donor. For in
stance, the Bristol widow Alice Chester gave a black
and gold hearse-cloth to be used at parish funer
als, on which were the words “Orate pro animabus
Henrici Chester et Aliciae uxoris eius” or pray for the
souls of Henry Chester and his wife Alice. As Eamon
Duffy points out in his study on traditional medieval
religion, this strategy allowed the fortunate donor to
benefit from the prayers of everyone in the parish at
every funeral held.
Once the body was thus arranged, the funeral liturgy
could commence. The obsequies normally took two
days. Daniell describes the format of the services as
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follows. On the first day, during the afternoon or
evening before the day of burial, an evensong service
(Placebo, or Vespers for the dead) was held. An
all-night vigil might be held by the clergy. Wealthy
individuals also hired poor mourners to keep vigil.
According to Paul Binski, the next morning Matins
and Lauds were celebrated together for the de
ceased, an office known as Dirige, from the opening
line of the psalm text, or antiphon used, and from
which the English word dirge is derived. Sometimes
a mass was then celebrated, but the solemn Requiem
Mass was usually celebrated a later in the day, after
a pause for breakfast. Clive Burgess notes that these
masses were usually sung, although they might
only be spoken; the prayers, however, set them
apart from the ordinary form of the mass. A sermon
might also be given at this time, and preserved for
repetition at anniversary celebrations, although, for
many, the sermon was probably a generic one such
as the homily offered by John Mirk that extolled
the “meekness” and obedience of the deceased and
explained the meaning behind the funeral rites.
Finally, after all of these services, the body was bur
ied. Little ceremony accompanied the actual inter
ment, and it is possible that many of the mourners,
even those of the immediate family, did not go to
the churchyard to witness it. Daniell notes that in
many instances, more emphasis seems to have been
given to the post-funeral meal than to the actual
grave. This lack of concern for where the bones
actually rested may seem odd from the perspective
of our culture accustomed to individual cemetery
plots, but no doubt the attitude stemmed from the
medieval pragmatism I have previously mentioned.
In any case, the decayed body would be dug up even
tually to make room for a new corpse, so sentiment
over the actual site of interment was extremely rare.
Even the privileged few who were fortunate enough
to be entombed inside the church were sometimes
moved to favor a later burial. Archbishop William
Courtney of Canterbury requested that he be buried
in the nave of the cathedral church of Exeter at
the place where there now lie three deans in a row
before the great cross … I wish that those three
deans who will be removed because of my burial be
interred at some other honourable place …”. Only a
few retained a permanent resting place or marker to
indicate where their remains might be.
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This then was the ideal pattern for a medieval fu
neral, though individual funerals obviously varied in
their adoption of the rites. The funeral functioned
as a transitory rite, beginning a period of heightened
remembrance of the deceased, who during this time
would dominate much of the thoughts and efforts of
those left living. It was during this period of mourn
ing that masses and prayers were most typically re
quested on behalf of the newly departed soul. Many
people considered this the most beneficial time for
such suffrage, as it would help the soul escape Pur
gatory so much the quicker. It was not uncommon
for medieval testators to request that numerous
masses be said simultaneously in different religious
establishments in order to concentrate all efforts at
this crucial period. The “trental of St. Gregory,” a
group of thirty masses said in thirty days (typically
just after death), was very popular and relatively
inexpensive as well. However, for those who could
afford it, requests for masses in the hundreds, even
thousands, were not unusual. In 1506, Henry Rudde
asked for one thousand masses to be celebrated for
his soul “as shortly as my executors can cause them
to be sung”. Looking at another instance, in 1494,
John Clopton appointed fifty marks to pay for two
thousand masses within a month after his death.
Many other examples could be cited.
While no absolute time limit existed for this period
of heightened memory, most of this activity took
place during the first thirty days after death, a period
sometimes called “the month’s mind”. At the close
of the month, a new funeral feast was frequently
celebrated, sometimes even more splendidly than
the first. The two funeral celebrations thus formed a
sort of bracket of remembrance, after which mourn
ing could cease and life could go on as normal. But
not all commemorations ceased. Many a medieval
person anxiously provided means for refreshing the
minds of the family and community they left behind
so that this gradual transition, from remembered
dead to anonymous member of the community,
would stop at the first and most poignant stage. An
niversary services, also called obits, were common.
As the name implies, they were held once a year on
the date of death (or funeral), although they could
be more flexible in the selection of date in order not
to conflict with major ecclesiastical holidays (such
as Easter or the Ascension) during which funeral
services were normally suspended. To prevent any
such conflicts, patrons could select a specific date.
For example, John Cropley of Bury St. Edmunds,
in his will of 1506, selected April 16 as his yearly
date of remembrance. Some anniversaries could
be celebrated more than once in a year. Many were
“perpetual.” That is, they were to be celebrated until
the end of time, or, more practically speaking, until
funds ran out.
The anniversary involved an exact replication of
the funeral prayers and masses held in the church
at the original funeral, frequently with the presence
of the hearse, pall, candles and mourners—in short,
everything but the body. However, as the body was
seldom a visible part of the funeral to begin with,
the form of the service was virtually indistinguish
able from a “real” funeral. The anniversary service
was made as poignant as possible: criers were hired
anew to announce the anniversary, alms were given
out again, bells were rung, and the clergy kept vigil.
One 1559 testator stated that his anniversary was to
be held “with no less ceremony, except that there
will only be six torches weighing a pound and a half
each”—an interesting touch of thrift. While many
testators simply left the matter in the hands of their
executors, specifying that anniversaries should be
continued from a general pool of funds until the
money ran out, others noted detail the amounts
of money to be paid for each item—the fee of the
clergy, the cost of the wax, and so on—and from
what portion of their estate these anniversary funer
als were to be paid and for how long. Time periods
ranged from one year to three or even forty, years,
while a few were “in perpetuity.”
Even the funeral procession could be duplicated,
at least in part. Clergy were enjoined to visit and
cense the tomb (at least when the burial site was
known) as part of the reenacted funeral service.
Here the tomb substituted for the body, as it was
common to place a pall over the tomb, light candles,
and sing a mass nearby. For the most privileged,
this substitute of tomb for body often included an
actual effigy. Indeed, effigies were used at the high
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est level of society even during wakes and funer
als for rulers. This occurred when the body itself
could not be displayed for fear of spoiling. It was
also done in order to show the image of rulership
publicly, a practice observed both in France and in
England from at least the fourteenth century on.
The substitution of an effigy for a corpse was also
well known to medieval audiences through Easter
dramas. From the mid-fourteenth century on, many
churches constructed physical Easter sepulchers, or
Holy Graves, in which an effigy of Christ’s body lay.
Both body and tomb were sculpted in stone, and
were surrounded with other images (sculpted in
relief or freestanding) of soldiers, angels, and holy
women. The sepulcher was typically located in the
nave of the church. On Good Friday a cross or the
Host was brought to this tomb, covered with a cloth
representing the burial cerements in which Christ’s
body was wrapped, and ritually “buried.” On Easter
Sunday before Matins, the cross was surreptitiously
removed so that the clerical actors could play their
part more convincingly, not only by announcing to
the gathered congregation that “He is not here,” but
by lifting the cloth to reveal the “empty” tomb. The
reenactment of Christ’s death and burial, with its
attendant message of resurrection, has its parallel
in the commemoration of contemporary laity. It
is probably no coincidence that the popularity of
Easter sepulchers—and the widespread adoption
of Easter sepulchers with effigies—rose at the same
time as did the frequency of anniversary rituals and
requests. Both were intensely dramatic expressions
of remembrance and hope. Indeed, some lay folk de
liberately combined the rituals of Easter with anni
versary rites, choosing an annual remembrance day
near Easter time. Others asked for burial near their
church’s Easter sepulcher, or even created a personal
tomb that served double duty as the church’s own
permanent sepulcher monument. To cite one
instance, in 1496, John Pympe of Nettlestead, Kent,
asked that he be buried before the image of our
blessed Lady where as the Sepulchre of Our Lord is
wont to stand at the feast of Easter, and my body is
to be laid there in a tomb of stone, made under such
form that the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Cross
may be laid upon the stone of the said tomb in man
ner of Sepulchre at the feast abovesaid”. In this in
stance, the conversion of the patron’s personal tomb
into an Easter sepulcher blends personal and public,
spectacle and art, liturgy and commemoration.
Pympe’s Easter sepulcher is but one instance of a
desire, common in medieval times, to connect the
dead with the community memory of the living.
Though anniversary services could be performed
by religious houses, especially the Franciscans and
Dominicans, burials and funerals were usually held
within one’s home parish. This was true even for
the wealthy urbanites who had their pick of burial
site. A very narrow percentage of the elite could, of
course, found a chantry, collegial church, or even
monastic institution to ensure that the grateful reli
gious would pray for them continually. Even among
monastics, however, the dead hazarded the risk of
being forgotten. Margaret, a widow in Strasbourg in
1323, left a testament indicating that one had to be
cautious. In her donation of money to the Domini
cans, given in exchange for prayers to be said for her
parents, she prudently adds, “should the prayers not
be said, then the money will be given instead to the
building fund for the cathedral”. Clearly, safeguards
were necessary, and a busy and popular order such
as the Dominicans was liable to forget a dead donor
or two.
On the other hand, though the neighbors and kin
who remembered the deceased from life had an
emotional investment in their deliverance from
Purgatory, these emotions needed stirring. Through
ritual and spectacle, grief could be reawakened in
order to spur the living into diligence on behalf of
the dead. Of all the techniques employed during the
Middle Ages to stave off the erosion of forgetfulness,
invoking the supreme moment of loss was perhaps
the most effective. The funeral recreation therefore
was much more than a macabre lingering on death.
On the contrary, it was an affirmation of continued
existence in memory.
Charlotte Stanford,
Brigham Young University,
Department of Humanities, Provo UT, USA
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Over the ages, Men have always been concerned by their own death. The funeral rites
were created to help crossing the step toward beyond. These rites are quite numerous;
they are based on the customs of the society, which are changing due to the mentalities,
the way of life, the culture and the beliefs that are changing with the society. What to
do with the body ? Would it be necessary to keep it in good condition to be able to reach
the resurrection? Like in the Catholic, Moslem or Jewish culture.Would it be better to
destroy the body to allow the soul to quit it and go free to heaven? Like for the Asian
religions.
Our European civilisation is issued of various
antiques civilisations: Egyptians, Greeks, Ro
mans and Gauls used to bury or to cremate the
bodies. Even some pottery vessels were found
in Neolithic graves.
In Roman times the practice of cremation
lasted until the first centuries AD, it was the
norm. The Roman urns were made of clay or
glass. The urns were put in funeral monu
ments, with jewels, offerings and value items
that the deceased owned. The famous funeral
monuments built along via Appia in Rome by
patrician families, used to contain urns. The
monuments’ architecture was quite significant;
they were decorated with various statues.
Those who couldn’t afford such a monument
were buried in columbaria. Regarding the
Greeks and the Romans, only the rich people
could afford buying enough wood for crema
tion. After 4th century the cremation was no
more used, the Romans preferring interments.
HISTORY OF
CREMATION
IN FRANCE
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Cemetery Père Lachaise
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The early ages in France
People living in this country at the early ages
were the Gauls. They used to choose either
cremation or interment. In a recently found
Gaul cemetery close to Paris (Bobigny), it was
possible to see graves with skeleton and some
other with urns. Talking with the archaeolo
gists, they said that, as of today, we don’t know
the reason why some of them where cremated,
was it a choice? was it a tribute to a warrior?
Was it only dedicated to noble families?
Urns fields were found in many places in
France, dated either the period of the Gauls, or
of the Roman time “ Gallo Romains”.
Cremation at the beginning of
the Christian era
Thinking that cremation was a pagan practice,
the Catholic Church recommended to prefer
interments, saying that Jesus Christ’s body
was laid in a grave. In 789, king Charlemagne
forbade cremation in his territories. Since that
time, cremation was banned for the Christians,
and over the centuries, the deceased people
who choose cremation were not allowed to
receive a funeral service at church; and were
neither allowed to be buried in a catholic
cemetery.
Then followed a long period of time without
any cremation.
Cremation in XIXth century.At the end of the
19th century, cremation went to a renewal,
with the development of freethinkers as well
as an anti religious trend. Then raised a strong
movement all over Europe or personalities ask
ing for cremation. In response to this increas
ing demand, the new cremator furnaces were
invented.
First of the French Revolutionary tried to
foster cremation, as well as all over Europe
many people were thinking about finding a
way to cremate the bodies. In Italy Professor
Brunetti presented a new cremator furnace at
the Vienna Exhibition in 1873. Sir Henry Henry
Thompson, Queen Victoria’s surgeon was
strongly interested in this practice, and in 1878
Woking crematorium opened close to Brook
wood cemetery the largest of Great Britain.
In France, in 1887 a new law on Liberty of
Funerals was voted which allowed to French
citizen to be cremated with 1889 decree.
The first crematorium was built in the Père-
Lachaise cemetery designed by the architect
Jean-Camille Formigé, opened January 1889.
This monument, now listed historical monu
ment, is well known of the Parisians, and for
many years they didn’t want to go to any other
crematorium, “Le Crématorium du Père-La
chaise”, was a reference.
At that time, The Catholic Church refused
funeral ceremony in church for those who
chose cremation. In consequence of this posi
tion, the cremation was asked and promoted
by freethinkers, free masons and those who
were against the Catholic religion. Cremation
was often chosen as a kind of rebellion against
the rule of the conformist society.“Well think
ing” people were reluctant to attend a funeral
ceremony in a crematorium. This state of mind
lasted until Council Vatican II in 1963.Before
Vatican II, the cremation rate in France was
therefore very low, (close to nil).
Growth of cremation in France
The Protestant Churches never forbade crema
tion; therefore this practice grew much quicker
in Protestant countries against Catholic ones
like France.After The Vatican II Council in 1963
Catholic Church reluctantly allowed crema
tion, but after so many years prohibition the