In the Transcript of August 14, I notice an editorial criticism, upon the recent employment of the word catafalque. In primitive strictness, I believe that criticism to be perfectly correct; and that, in its original signification, catafalque cannot be understood to mean a funeral car.
In the grand Dictionaire, by Fleming & Tibbins, catafalque is thus defined—“decoration funebre qu’on eleve au milieu d’une église pour y placer le cercueil ou le representation d’un mort a qui l’on veut rendre les plus grands honneurs.”
Herse is defined, by the same lexicographers, “un cercueil, une biere, voiture pour porter un mort au tombeau, un char funebre, corbillard, pierre tumulaire provisoire.”
Thus, while catafalque seems to signify an ornamental structure, erected in the middle of a church, to support the coffin or the effigy of the dead, whom it is intended to honor—herse, at the present day, is understood to mean a coffin, a bier, a carriage to bear the dead to the tomb, a funeral car, a van, a temporary mausoleum or gravestone.
Herse, whose etymology, according to Johnson, is unknown, imported, three hundred years ago, a temporary structure, in honor of the dead; such also is the meaning of the word catafalque; of this, there cannot be the slightest doubt. In this sense, herse was employed by Shakspeare, in his Henry IV.:
“To add to your laments
Wherewith you now bedew King Henry’s herse,” &c.
Johnson furnishes two definitions of the word, herse—1. A carriage, in which the dead are conveyed to the grave. 2. A temporary monument, set over a grave. It is quite certain, however, that the herse, whether justly styled a monument, or not, was not usually “set over the grave,” but more frequently, like the catafalque, agreeably to the definition given above—au milieu d’une eglise.
No writer, probably, refers to the herse, so frequently, as old John Strype, in his Memorials; and, in no instance, I believe, in the sense of a car or vehicle, or as a structure, “set over the grave.”
Strype’s Memorials are the records of a Roman Catholic age, or of a period, during which, the usages of the Romish Church, in England, had not entirely worn out their welcome with the people—the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Bloody Mary, and Elizabeth. For, even during the reigns of Edward VI., and of Elizabeth, not a few of those pompous practices, which grew up, in the times of their respective predecessors, still clung upon the imaginations of the populace, and were reluctantly surrendered.
The church is the theatre of the Romish ecclesiastic. The service is an attractive spectacle. If the world were struck blind, who does not perceive, that the principal supports of Romanism would be instantly taken away! It has been the practice of all churches, that deal somewhat extensively, in forms and ceremonies, to demand of their members, with a greater or less degree of peremptoriness, that certain acts shall be publicly performed—au milieu d’une eglise. Thus the ceremony of marriage—the baptism of infants—the churching of women—and the burial of the dead furnish occasion, for throwing open the temple, and exhibiting its showy furniture to the multitude; and of verifying a pleasing saying of the late eminent, and excellent Archbishop of Bordeaux, while Bishop of Boston—“If we cannot catch them, in one way, we catch them in another.”