By England Howlett, f.s.a.
The burial of the dead furnishes many instances of curious customs, some of which, with modifications, survive to our own day, while a large number have become entirely obsolete, or meaningless. In the middle ages especially, it naturally followed that a great deal of superstition should be attached to death and burial, and superstition often originated a custom which survived long after any importance was attached to the origin.
The Egyptians made futile attempts to preserve the body by embalming—this practice originated no doubt in the opinion which it was said they held, that so long as a body remained uncorrupted, so long the soul continued in it. The Greeks usually, but not universally, burnt their dead, and interred their ashes in urns. The actual origin of cremation is lost in obscurity, most probably the primary idea was the purification of the body by fire. It is supposed the early practice of the Romans was to bury, but their later practice was to burn, and cremation was held by them in honour, the bodies of suicides and young children not being allowed to be burnt.
In ancient times burial was always without the walls of the cities and towns; indeed before the time of Christianity it was not lawful to bury the dead within the cities, but they used to be carried out into the fields, and there deposited. About the end of the sixth century, St. Augustine obtained of King Ethelbert a Temple of Idols (used by the King before his conversion), and made a burying place of it; and Saint Cuthbert afterwards obtained (A.D. 752) leave from the Pope to have yards made to the churches, suitable for the burial of the dead.
In the ordinary funerals of Christian Anglo-Saxons, the corpse was simply wrapped in linen, and carried to the grave by two persons, one holding the head, and the other the feet; the priest then censed the body, and whilst it was being deposited in the grave, offered up prayers and benedictions. At the obsequies of persons of distinction, hymns were sung by the attendant priests, who accompanied the body in procession. At this period the body of a deceased person was always watched by the relatives and friends from the moment of death to the time of burial; the “wake” of the present day being the survival of this custom.
It was a common practice, when the body was embalmed, to take out the heart and bowels, and inter them in a different church to that in which the body was buried; testators sometimes made a request in their wills for this to be done. The custom appears to have prevailed from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. The heart of Richard the First was buried at Rouen, his bowels at Chaluz, and his body at Fontevand. In 1838, the King’s heart was discovered under the pavement of the sanctuary in Rouen Cathedral, enclosed in a leaden case, with the inscription:—
Richard Cœur de Lion.
Duc de Normandie. Roi D’Angleterre.
Coeval with the introduction of church bells has been the appropriation of one of them to the service of the dying; originally this bell was tolled when one was yielding up life in order that all who heard it might offer up prayer for the departing spirit, and after death another bell was rung, called the “soul bell.” The “Passing Bell,” as it is now most inappropriately called, is not rung until some hours after death, and corresponds more nearly to the original “soul bell.” In some districts it is always rung exactly twenty-four hours after death, the tenor bell being used for an adult, and the treble for a child; the big bell is generally reserved for funerals. In rural districts after the “passing bell” has tolled, the sex of the deceased is indicated most generally by tolling twice for a woman and thrice for a man, to this is often added the age by giving one toll for each year.
In the middle ages it was customary at the funeral of any great person to have his horse led, and armour borne, before his corpse, the horse being afterwards claimed as a mortuary due to the church at which the burial took place; the armour was either reserved for the next of kin of the deceased, or else was hung up in the church. No doubt much of the armour suspended over tombs is mere “undertaker’s trappings,” although often considered genuine and of antiquity.
Over the tombs of bishops, the Episcopal mitre and pastoral staff was sometimes suspended, as in the case of those in Winchester Cathedral hanging over the tomb of Bishop Morley, who died in 1696; and of those in Bromsgrove Church, Worcestershire, suspended over the Monument of Dr. Hall, Bishop of Bristol, who died in 1710.