Embalming and Incineration of Bodies amongst the Ancients.—Interment brought into practice by Christianity.—The Wrapping of the Dead in Shrouds.—The Direction in which the Bodies were laid.—Absolution Crosses.—Funeral Furniture.—Coffins and Sarcophagi in the Middle Ages.—Funereal Sculpture and Architecture, from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century.—The Catacombs at Rome.—Charnel-houses in the Churches.—Public Cemeteries.—The Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris.—Lanterns for the Dead.—Funerals of the Kings and Queens of France.—The Rolls of the Dead.—Consoling Thought of the Resurrection and of Eternal Life.
In the most remote epoch of the world’s history we find that the dead were treated with respect, not to say worshipped; for a natural, sentiment leads savage as well as civilised man to pay the last tribute of affection to the bodies of those for whom he once felt affection, esteem, or fear. Such is the moral principle of the various modes of burial which have been successively practised, viz., embalming, incineration, and interment. Many ancient nations, and especially the Egyptians, who sought to preserve the human body for an indefinite length of time, embalmed their dead with extreme care, or rather, we should say, with wonderful art.
The Greeks generally burnt their dead and collected their ashes in urns; with the Romans the custom of burning was usual, at least amongst the rich, and lasted long after the establishment of Christianity, which dogmatically enjoined the interment of the dead, though this mode of sepulture had before been confined to slaves, suicides, and the poor.
The Christians introduced at the same time the old Jewish custom of swathing the dead body in a winding-sheet, which was bound up with long bands soaked in resinous and perfumed oil, after the fashion of the Egyptians. Embalming was, moreover, prescribed and authorised by divine legislation. It is said in Genesis that it took forty days to embalm the body of Jacob, and in the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark we read, “And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him.”
All the bas-reliefs of the fifth and sixth centuries, upon which figure bodies prepared for burial, represent a regular mummy swathed in bands; and this mode of wrapping the body, which seems to imply that it had first been embalmed, was still in use at the end of the eighth century. After this epoch we do not possess sufficiently accurate data to say what was the general practice. We know, however, that for a certain length of time the dead were sewn up in leather prepared from the skins of stags or oxen. The cervicorium, or stag-hide, was a kind of shroud specially used for warriors, if we may believe the war ballads. Precious tissues were used at that time for the winding-sheets of ecclesiastical persons; and in a tomb of the tenth century, in the vault of St. Germain des Prés, in Paris, a skeleton was found which was enveloped in a piece of cloth, tied at the neck and the feet with short narrow bands. The dead bodies of the lower classes were buried in shrouds made of some common material.
Before burial, the hands were always folded across the breast. This was customary in the East throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, and the doctors of the Greek Church attached so much importance to it that, according to an author of the thirteenth century, they made it a great reproach to the Latins that they neglected to observe this Christian law.
Fig. 344.—Christ victorious over Death; with the following Inscription:—
“Hic residens solio Christus jam victor in alto