The ancient cemeteries of the French provinces also contain coffins moulded in plaster; and the Cluny Museum has some interesting specimens of these coffins, which were in use from the ninth to the fourteenth century. Their sides are roughly decorated with very primitive ornaments, round, lozenge-shaped, and convoluted, with emblems which enable us to ascertain approximatively their date of execution. Thus, when a plaster coffin is decorated with the fleur-de-lis, we may be sure that it cannot be of earlier origin than the thirteenth century.
In the last few years of the twelfth century was invented a kind of stone coffin, hewn outside in such a way as to produce the shape of the head, and to represent the whole body as enveloped in its shroud, just like a mummy.
In the early part of the fourteenth century personages of rank were buried in stone coffins lined with lead. In the time of Charles V. stone was altogether replaced by wood and lead, even in the burials of the rich. The coffins of that epoch resemble boxes made in a great hurry by joining together sheets of lead of various thicknesses.
Fig. 354.—Raised Stone, near Poitiers.—After a Plate in the great work of Count de Laborde, “Les Monuments de la France:” in folio, 1816.
Square stone troughs, about twelve or fourteen inches in length by from eight to ten inches in breadth, are also to be met with in considerable numbers; and they were employed to receive the bones that had fallen from disused burial-places, and from the vaults beneath churches when, in the course of repairs, unknown or forgotten graves were disturbed. When these repairs led to the disinterment of the coffins appertaining to some personages of note buried in the church of which they had been the parishioners and the benefactors, it sometimes happened that in moving them they were burst open, and, in this case, the remnants of the broken coffins were placed in these small troughs, which took up less room. The tombs, that is to say the visible monuments of burial, were of nearly the same shape as the coffins, from the earliest ages down to the close of the ninth century, the only distinction being that they were made of choicer materials and decorated with more or less magnificence. Thus, all the coffins which contained the bodies of martyrs, nobles, prelates, or kings, were exposed to the view of the faithful, and served for tombs, so that these illustrious persons were not, in the true sense of the term, interred. The stone chest in which the body was placed being both a coffin and a funeral monument, was not hidden beneath a tombstone, but remained visible in a church—not in a sepulchral cave, but above ground, often, indeed, raised upon columns. The early Christians of Gaul, those at least who were distinguished for their achievements or their virtues, were interred in this fashion in sarcophagi ornamented with allegorical subjects, very like those in which pagans were buried. A case in point is the sarcophagus at Rheims of Jovinus the patrician, master of the cavalry under Julian, and, it is said, founder of the Church of St. Agricole, since called St. Nicaise. This monument, removed from this ancient church to the cathedral and afterwards to the museum, is of white marble, sculptured upon three sides. The front represents various hunting scenes, in which Jovinus is taking part, with a spear in his hand, accompanied by a spirit which has the attributes of Minerva. It is very probable that this sarcophagus, which had been previously used for the burial of some pagan, was used for its fresh occupant without any change being made in its artistic features. An exactly similar one was made for the King of Austrasia, Carloman, the brother of Charlemagne; an analogous subject was also sculptured upon it, and it was elevated upon four columns near the tomb of St. Remigius.
The sarcophagi were sometimes made of a more costly material than stone; that of St. Cassianus, at Autun, for instance, was of alabaster. But these were only exceptional cases; and Maurice, Archbishop of Rouen, prohibited these funeral extravagances in 1231. It is curious, however, to note the representation of scenes in profane history upon Christian coffins. Sauval describes one that was discovered in the Church of St. Geneviève, Paris, in 1620, which contained a box full of gold and silver medals representing the boar-hunt of Meleager. Christian and pagan emblems are sometimes found side by side: upon the sarcophagus of St. Andoche was represented a wheel, a bird, vine-foliage and grapes, a hatchet, and, amidst all these ornaments, a cross.
After the reign of Theodosius, there were in use throughout Gaul sarcophagi the emblems of which were exclusively borrowed from the Christian religion. As a general rule, the front surface is divided by arcades of raised architecture, and between each of them is represented a subject taken from the Old or the New Testament. Arles, in fact, appears to have been the centre of a special manufacture which executed this kind of work for all the south of France, until the middle of the sixteenth century. There were also manufactories of stone sarcophagi at St. Pierre l’Etrier, St. Emelion, and, more notably, at Quarrée-les-Tombes.
During the reigns of the first rois fainéants, the successors of Clovis, the decoration of the sarcophagi was affected by the barbarian style of art. There were no longer any figures in relief—nothing but the monogram of Christ, XP, with a circular or oval border. At that period the sarcophagus took the exact shape of the coffin, being narrower at the feet than at the head. The lid was a large stone of the same character as the coffin, generally decorated with concentric circles or the scales of fish, in memory of Christ’s monogram, ΙΧΘΥΣ (ὶχθὺς, fish).
Funeral sculptures did not flourish during the time of Charlemagne; the bodies of the kings were placed in ancient tombs, which were everywhere very plentiful. Thus, the sarcophagus in which the body of Charlemagne himself was placed represented the abduction of Proserpine. It is true that upon that of Louis the Pious was represented the Passage of the Red Sea, but this was manufactured at Arles. The churches in course of time became so full of tombs that the councils were obliged to prohibit interment in them, and this order, though only partially observed, effected a change in the mode of burial. People preferred to have the coffins placed in the ground, especially as they were better protected in this way from the robbers who violated the sanctity of the grave. Thus, from the ninth to the beginning of the tenth century, sarcophagi gradually fell into disuse.