Fig. 350.—Absolution Cross of the Eleventh Century, in lead, found in a coffin in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s (1855).
From “Les Sépultures Gauloises, Romaines, et Franques,” by the Abbé Cochet.
After the ceremony, these vases were placed, while still alight, in the coffin. And this brings us to another Christian usage, which has been ascertained to have existed in France and England from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. During this period, a cross was placed upon the breast of the deceased person. This cross, in wood or in lead, sometimes in silver, was called an absolution cross (Fig. 350), because the formula of absolution given to the dead man was generally engraved upon it—and even his name was stated in the formula. A fact related by Mabillon, in his “Annals of the Order of St. Benedict,” sufficiently proves the importance and universal extent of this custom. In 1142, after the death of Abelard, Eloisa, Abbess of the Paraclete, asked Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, for a formula of absolution to place upon the tomb of the illustrious theologian. This absolution was placed, as is related by a Benedictine writer, upon Abelard’s breast. The text is so interesting that it is worth quoting, though written in Latin. Peter the Venerable, alluding therein to the unwillingness of the monks of St. Marcel to give up the body of Abelard, says, “Ego Petrus, Cluniacensis abbas, qui Petrum Abaëlardum, in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, et corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloïsæ, abbatissæ et monialibus Paracliti concessi, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei et omnium sanctorum absolvo eum pro officio ab omnibus peccatis suis.” Ancient burying-places are sometimes discovered with bodies which have been bound in chains, or, at all events, are loaded with iron and brass fetters. Thus at Couvert, near Bayeux, a skeleton was discovered a few years back laid upon the face (ad dentes), upon a wooden cross, with a small chain round the neck. This is a peculiarity having its origin in certain rules of penance which were in force from the eighth to the tenth, and probably to the eleventh, century.
The pagan rite prescribed that a piece of money should be placed in the urn or coffin; and many antiquaries have suggested that this must have been the obolus for Charon. This custom was perpetuated by the Christians, for, throughout the Middle Ages, a coin was always placed on the bier; and this practice still prevails in Poitou, Alsace, and other places.
The interments of the barbarians, even after their conversion to Christianity, are specially characteristic, because, no matter to what nation they belonged, they adhered to their own particular manner of burial. They were interred in their finest clothes, with their weapons, and, in some cases, with their war-horse. The women and children, whose burial-place is easily discoverable, wore jewels, necklaces, rings, fibulæ, girdles, buckles, &c., to which are still found adhering bits of tissue, the remains of some splendid costume.
Researches and excavations made in France of late years have led to the discovery of numerous barbarian cemeteries, and have enabled us to ascertain what were the Merovingian, or, as it would perhaps be more accurate to say, the Germanic funeral customs. These customs evidently were replaced by others when the barbarian finally settled in Gaul, that is, about the middle of the ninth century. The habit of placing in the coffin various pieces of black, red, or white pottery (Fig. 351), together with small vases which seem to have been intended for the same purpose as those used in Christian burials, existed during this period. These vases, often very numerous, no doubt contained food; they were frequently accompanied by a small wooden jar, the handle of which was very richly mounted, and which the savans at one time took to be a Merovingian diadem. But a chemical analysis of the solid residue found in one of these jars, led to the discovery that they were filled with an alimentary substance which gave out a strong odour of fermented beer.
Fig. 351.—Gallic or Gallo-Roman Pottery, dug up in Paris and in the neighbourhood.
Subsequently to the period when the barbarians were no longer interred with their weapons of war, there still remained some traces of this primitive custom in Christian society, both in France and Germany; thus, kings were buried in their royal robes, with sceptre and crown. This continued to be the case throughout the Middle Ages; but, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sceptres and crowns deposited in the coffins were made of brass or tin, in order that thieves might not be tempted to steal them. Such was also the case with bishops and abbots, as is shown by Gregory of Tours, when he speaks of Saint Gall, the Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, of the Abbot Mars, of the hermits Marian, Leobard, and Lupicin, being buried in their robes of ceremony. They were covered at their death with the most brilliant insignia of their dignity; but after a certain epoch nothing was placed beside them in the coffin but a wooden crozier, a chalice, and a tin paten. They were always dressed, however, in their pontifical vestments, the gold lace and embroidery of which has, when these tombs have come to be opened, often been found undecayed, while the vestments themselves have crumbled into dust.
In the monasteries and communities, the old barbarian rite was observed after the tenth century, and the monks were buried with all their clothing on them; but as the woollen material of which they were made was consumed by age, it is impossible for the archæologist to reconstruct on opening these coffins the monastic dress as it must have been when the body contained in it was buried.