Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

When Charles V. began to construct his château of the Louvre, in 1363, Raimond Dutemple, the builder, purchased from the churchwardens of the parish of the Innocents ten ancient tombs, each of which cost him fourteen sous parisis, for the purpose of using the stones for his masonry work—a proof that funeral monuments were not treated with much respect at that epoch. At this same period, the clergy of the Innocents’ parish sold part of the cemetery, already too small, to the chapter of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, who built thereon houses and stalls for the markets. It is estimated that more than two million persons were buried in the Innocents’ cemetery in the course of six centuries. In it were accumulated masses of stones, crosses, human remains, and filth; the grass was growing in the midst of heaps of skulls; the floors of the charnel-houses bent beneath piles of decomposed bones; graves had been dug in every available space of ground, and the smell of the corpses was unbearable. Notwithstanding, this was the most celebrated cemetery of the Middle Ages, and the charnel-house which enclosed it upon three sides served as a model for all those constructed for other Christian churches and cemeteries, in accordance with a custom dating back, it is reported, to the fifth or sixth century. Still, no traces can be found of any such constructions around the Gallo-Roman cemeteries, unless it be a rudely built boundary-wall. At a later date, the cemeteries contiguous to parish churches or to the chapels of hospitals were surrounded with cloister-like galleries, between the roof and ceiling of which was the charnel-house, where the bones dug up when fresh graves were made found a last resting-place.

Inside the cemeteries there were other erections never omitted, as, for instance, a large stone cross with florid decoration and varying in design, many of which date back to the eleventh century. After this period came into vogue a small lantern, built in the shape of a very narrow tower, like a hollow column, from twenty-six to forty feet high, the summit of which was surmounted by arcades, through which glimmered the faint light of a suspended lamp. This small building was called “the lantern of the dead” (Figs. 394–396); it was also termed a beacon (fanal), a lighthouse (phare), and a little tower (tourniele). These beacon-towers, intended to indicate from afar during night-time the presence of a cemetery, generally had a door somewhat above the ground, which was reached by a ladder or flight of steps.

Upon the side opposite to the door, an altar jutted out at the base of the tower. This altar was never consecrated, as the canons forbid any celebration to be held upon those which were in the open air (sub dio). There are many monuments of this kind in Maine, Berry, Angoumois, and Gascony; they are all of Roman architecture, or of Gothic bordering upon Roman, and, consequently, do not date back further than the eleventh century.

There was a tower of this kind in the Cemetery of the Innocents, at Paris (Fig. 397), but of larger dimensions than any of those alluded to above. It was a kind of octagon chapel, about forty feet high, and Gilbert de Metz, who speaks of it, says that he was told it was the tomb of a rich nobleman who had given orders that he himself should be buried beneath it in order to save his remains from being profaned by dogs and vagabonds.

In the fourteenth century the lanterns of the dead, instead of being isolated and inaccessible columns, were built in the form of open chapels, in which a lamp was kept constantly burning. Previous to the erection of these chapels in the cemeteries, there existed others which have often been taken for pagan temples. We know, through writings of the ninth century, that in the cemeteries of the Carlovingian abbeys there were chapels of this kind, with two stories and a crypt; that these funeral chapels were of the same shape as the ancient baptisteries, without the surroundings. They were octagonal buildings, the vaults of which rested upon the boundary-walls of the cemetery. There are still extant two belonging to the Roman epoch, one at Montmorillon, in Poitou; the other, enclosed in the citadel of Metz, was a dependency of the Abbey of St. Arnold.

Having treated of the burial-places and the funeral monuments of the different epochs of the Middle Ages, we may now go on to speak of the funeral ceremonies.

As soon as a king or a queen had breathed their last, the face was covered with wax, in order to take an impression of the features and reproduce them upon their effigies. Pending the completion of this likeness, the body was laid by the chamberlains and the gentlemen of the chamber in a leaden coffin, lined with wood and black velvet, covered with a white satin cross, and was carried by the archers of the body-guard into a richly-decorated chamber, and placed upon a bed trimmed with black cloth hangings which reached to the ground. An altar was erected in the middle of the chamber for celebrating mass while the body remained there.

Fig. 393.—The Torments of Hell.—The Latin inscriptions in this engraving may be translated as follows: At the top, “The worm which feeds on the ungodly man shall never die, and the fire that devours him shall never be quenched;” in the centre, “Jews; Men of war;” beneath, “Monk; Lucifer, or Satan.”—Fac-simile of a Miniature from the “Hortus Deliciarum,” a celebrated Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, executed at the Convent of Hohemburg in the time of the Abbess Herrade de Landsberg; destroyed in the fire of the Strasburg Library during the Prussian bombardment, Sept. 24th, 1870. Reprinted from Count de Bastard’s great work.

When the effigy was completed it was placed in another chamber as richly decorated as the first, and around it were placed seats, or formettes, covered with striped cloth of gold, upon which the prelates, lords, gentlemen, and officers took their places. The state bed, upon which the effigy was laid, was furnished with a covering of cloth of gold reaching to the ground, and decorated with a bordering of ermine spotted with black, which overlapped by about two feet the covering, and was itself trimmed with Hungarian point-lace.