TRANSFORMING MEDIEVAL BELIEFS
The Significance of Bodily Resurrection to Medieval Burial Rituals
The most significant changes in Medieval burial practices developed in response to the conversion to Christianity. This paper focuses on the transitional period of the 9th to the 11th centuries in England, when distinctively Christian burial rites emerged that placed a new emphasis on the treatment of the corpse and the structure of the grave. Recent interpretations have emphasised economic and political factors in prompting the demise of the furnished inhumation rite. In contrast, it is argued here that Christian eschatology played a central role in shifting emphasis to maintaining the material continuity of the body, to allow its literal resurrection at Judgement Day. Christian burial rites of this period exhibit three broad tendencies: the marking of graves with distinct materials, the containment of the body, and the dressing of religious corpses. It is proposed that these traits relate to Christian beliefs about the bodily resurrection, the embodied experience of the afterlife, and the perceived reality of corporeal transformation in death. Investigation of funerary rites at the junctures of the boundaries between Early and later Medieval Periods also reveals long-term continuities and the reworking of older traditions, such as the placement of amulets with the dead.
Keywords: amulets, body, Christian eschatology, conversion, England, resurrection, transformation.
Introduction: material continuity and the Medieval body
The Medieval Period witnessed stark changes in death rituals: the practice of cremation ceased and the rite of furnished inhumation declined dramatically. However, comprehensive evaluation of this major transition has been lacking, perhaps prevented by the rigid periodisation of the discipline of Medieval archaeology into early and later phases. The resulting tendency is for later Medieval archaeologists to chronicle subtle variations in established modes of Christian burial (11th–15th centuries CE), while their Early Medieval colleagues explore more diverse pagan funerary customs as expressions of social identities in life (5th–8th centuries CE). The most significant watersheds occur at the junctures and limits of these period boundaries, when distinctively Christian burial rites developed from the 8th–11th centuries, and much later, when Medieval Catholic rites were reinterpreted by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century (Gilchrist 2003).
Traditionally, Early Medieval burials were studied in terms of race and religion, with patterns in grave goods used as indices of migration and conversion. Over the past three decades, in contrast, Early Medieval archaeologists have emphasised more symbolic and ideological elements in mortuary ritual (Williams 2005: 195). In particular, they have interpreted the demise of the furnished burial rite as being linked to economic and political factors, rather than stemming from any intrinsic connection to Christian belief (Hadley 2001: 92–93). To the contrary, I will argue that Christian eschatology played a central role in redefining the meaning of the grave and the treatment of the corpse. Of primary importance was the Christian premise of the material continuity of the body for its resurrection at Judgement Day.
I will focus particularly on the transitional period of the 9th to the 11th centuries in England, when distinctively Christian burial rites emerged that placed a new emphasis on the corpse and the structure of the grave. These innovations continued to be used in later Medieval churchyards and monastic cemeteries from the 11th century up to at least c. 1300. Many of these rites were prevalent across western and northern Europe, with the precise chronology and diversity of practice varying in each locality according to the dates of Christianisation. My interpretative approach uses mortuary evidence to explore changing beliefs about the body in life and death, drawing on the premise that burials actively represent social theories of the body (after Joyce 1998; Lacquer 1990). My reassertion of the centrality of religious belief to the meaning of Medieval graves is consistent with a wider movement in interpretative archaeology that calls for the reintegration of ritual with other aspects of social life (Brück 1999; Insoll 2004; Bradley 2005).
To many today, the belief in bodily resurrection seems entirely implausible. Did Medieval people truly accept that at the end of time God would reassemble their fragmented remains, granting eternal life to these reanimated bones? The historian Caroline Bynum has traced the doctrine of bodily resurrection from its development between the 2nd and the 5th centuries up to its formalisation in the later Middle Ages. Theological treatises leave little doubt that Medieval belief was deeply material (Bynum 1991; 1995). Theologians debated the smallest details of the embodied afterlife: What age and sex would the resurrected be? Would they wear clothes? Would they smell, eat or taste? These concerns are expressed, for example, by the 10th-century English homilist Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955–1010): ‘Each person yet shall have his own height in the size that he was before as a person, or that he should have had, had he become fully-grown, those that departed in childhood or adolescence’ (quoted in Thompson 2002: 237). In 1215, the doctrine was confirmed by the 4th Lateran Council: ‘all rise again with their own individual bodies, that is, the bodies which they now wear’ (Bynum 1991: 240).
The doctrine of purgatory was also formalised by the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, with the Medieval concept evolving from much earlier roots. The central tenet of purification in the afterlife is based in Judaism, while the idea that sins should be expurgated by trial emerged as early as the 3rd or 4th century. The Medieval construction of purgatory also drew upon classical traditions of the otherworld and European folkloric associations of fire with rejuvenation and rebirth (Le Goff 1984: 1–14). Purgatory was not conceived as a distinct physical space until the 12th century, but the premise was long established of a preliminary stage of the afterlife in which sins were cleansed. Did Medieval people perceive a material connection between the corpse in the grave and the soul that was physically purged in the afterlife? In his classic study of Medieval purgatory, Jacques Le Goff dismisses this question as unproblematic: ‘Once separated from the body, the soul was endowed with a materiality sui generis, and punishment could then be inflicted upon it in Purgatory as though it were corporeal’ (Le Goff 1984: 6). In contrast, Bynum identifies the question of bodily continuity as a persistent challenge for Medieval theologians, who pondered how personal identity could endure the ravages of death and decay and the miraculous resurrection of the body (Bynum 1991: 254). But to what extent did these theological tenets permeate popular practice? Archaeological evidence for Medieval funerary rites provides additional insight to social theories of the body, and in particular, to changing concerns over the integrity of the Christian body in death.
Anglo-Saxon burial rites in transition
Recent interpretations of the richly furnished Anglo-Saxon burials of the 5th to 7th centuries have assessed them as ‘theatrical tableaux’. The setting of the corpse was staged as a funerary performance for the living to express their social memory of the dead. Spectacular burials such as Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) or Prittlewell (Essex) have been compared by Martin Carver to ‘a theatre, in which each burial is a composition, offering, with greater or lesser authority, a metaphor for its age’ (Carver 1998: 139). It is commonly argued that lesser burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries were also laid out with the emphasis on the viewing of the tableau, with weapons, jewellery, and other grave furnishings selected and arranged to display the identity of the deceased during life (Geake 2003: 260; Devlin 2007: 33). There was broad consistency within the Germanic burial tradition that was shared by the Franks, Burgundians, Alamans, Bavarians, Saxons and Anglo-Saxons: jewellery, amulets, and chatelaines accompanied female burials; and weapons, tools, and horse-equipment were provided for men; both sexes were associated with knives, buckles, coins, and food vessels and offerings (Marzinzik 2000: 149).
From the 8th century onwards, only the most modest artefacts were deposited in graves, items such as beads, rings, coins, small knives, and dress fasteners, perhaps reflecting the continued practice of clothed burial (Hadley 2001: 96). As grave furnishings declined in importance, greater significance was placed on the location of the interment. Seventh and 8th century rites included burial in barrows and on the boundaries of ancestral territories. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that some 8th century cemeteries remained independent of churches and maintained the traditional use of grave goods to at least some degree. There was a gradual shift toward row-cemeteries on sites that were either associated with churches or pre-dated their development on the same site, such as Barrow-upon-Humber (Lincolnshire) (Hadley 2002: 221); churchyard burial seems to have been the usual practice by the 10th century (Hadley & Buckberry 2005: 125–26).
The impact of the Christian conversion is usually assessed with reference to the disappearance of grave goods, but there is no evidence that the early church was either prescriptive or consistent in its views on burial practice. Numerous early churchyards have yielded graves containing single artefacts such as coins, combs, bracelets, and knives (Morris 1983: 50, 60–61). While most categories of grave good declined in variety and occurrence, one type actually increased during this transitional period. The range and frequency of amulets expanded to include fossils, the teeth of wild animals (such as boar and beaver), antique Roman coins, and waist bags, which may have held herbal charms or even Christian relics (Geake 1997; Meaney 1981). These amulets were almost exclusive to the graves of women and perhaps reflect the role of women as religious or funerary specialists (Geake 2003). Throughout Early Medieval Europe, the association is repeated of amulets with the graves of women and children. Their frequency increases during the conversion period in respective regions, for example in the later 10th century in Denmark (Zeiten 1997: 45). John Blair has proposed that this use of amulets may have been consistent with Christian practice and integral to the mortuary display of religious affiliation by newly converted women (Blair 2005: 174). Others have argued precisely the opposite: that the increased use of amulets indicates resistance to Christianity, even that the distinctive change in amulet use may represent the development of paganism as a more cohesive and political theology (Zeiten 1997: 49; Geake 1997: 98). The relationship between Christianity and amulets may be clarified with reference to both earlier and later practice, and I will return to discuss the meaning of their occurrence in later Medieval graves.
Christian burial rites: marking, containing and dressing the body
A range of Christian mortuary practices had emerged by the 9th century that focused more closely on the corpse and its framing within the grave. Some of these were variations on the furnished burial rite, but greater emphasis was now placed on the cadaver itself. Three themes can be identified among the diverse range of rites that are evidenced in urban, rural and ecclesiastical sites of the period.
1. The marking of graves with distinct materials
Grave constructions were used to distinguish the corpse from the surrounding soil, making it both visually and physically discrete (Thompson 2002: 231). These included grave linings of stone and tile, the framing of the head and body with stones, and the addition of distinctive materials to the grave. The practice of elaborating the grave with stones is well illustrated by excavations at the 9th to 12th century church of Raunds (Northamptonshire). Stones were represented in approximately half of the excavated graves: they occurred singly or in clusters, lining the entire grave or placed more strategically, under the head or either side of it, along the body, or at the feet (Boddington 1996: 38–42). A similar pattern is repeated at Worcester Cathedral (Worcestershire), where a late Saxon cemetery sealed by the Norman chapter house contained 180 interments of men, women and children (Fig. 13.1). Stones were used to mark approximately 30% of burials, associated particularly with the head: as ‘earmuffs’ to support the head on either side, or as ‘pillow stones’ placed beneath the head (Guy 2010). In the Worcester cemetery, stones were sometimes used in conjunction with coffins. Stone and tile grave linings continued into the later Middle Ages, but the use of ‘ear-muff’ stones became less common after the 11th century (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 138).
The addition of charcoal to graves is well attested and linked especially with religious settlements of the 9th–12th centuries, where it is often interpreted as a penitential rite (Thompson 2004: 118–22). But foreign substances such as clay, chalk and lime were also used to line graves, mixed with grave soils or used to pack coffins. For example, at the parish church of Barton-on-Humber (Lincolnshire), two distinct groups of 37 burials (dated c. 950–1150) had liquid mud poured into the coffins (Rodwell 2007: 26). The use of visually distinctive base linings continued into the later Middle Ages, with chalk, mortar, and plaster commonly used to create plain white floors for graves, and more localised traditions of using crushed or chipped stone, sand and gravel (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005: 142–44)
Victoria Thompson (2002: 240) has argued that this range of mortuary innovations aimed to provide a ‘clean burial’, both spiritually and materially, to display humility and to protect the body from decay. The concept of the cemetery as sacred space was fully developed by the 10th century (Gittos 2002), resulting in significant pressure to reuse burial space within consecrated churchyards. Demarcation of the grave may also have protected it from disturbance by subsequent grave-digging. At the 10th century church of St Mark’s, Lincoln, attempts to minimise disturbance involved the use of flat and upright grave markers, stone slabs, and wooden markers held in post-holes, all used alongside timber coffins and stone cists (Gilmour & Stocker 1986). At Barton-on-Humber there is clear evidence that efforts were made to carefully remove and translate burials when the church was rebuilt. A group of 29 early burials at Barton were meticulously exhumed and removed before the erection of the late Saxon church (Rodwell 2007: 30). At Addingham (West Yorkshire), which fell out of use by the 11th or 12th century, bodies were deliberately exhumed from the western part of the cemetery for re-interment within new graves in the eastern cemetery: the disinterred remains were placed neatly in a pile at one end of the new grave (Adams 1996: 186).
Fig. 13.1. Plan of late Saxon burials excavated within the chapter house at Worcester Cathedral; stones were used in c. 30% of graves (shown shaded) (plan by Christopher Guy, Worcester Cathedral Archaeologist; reproduced with the kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral).
Occasionally, we recover discrete, secondary inhumations of translated remains. ‘Translated’ burials are the disarticulated bones of a single individual that have been repackaged for reburial. Translated remains at Raunds were inhumed in sacks or pits (Boddington 1996: 28–29), while later Medieval practice favoured the use of chests or caskets (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005: 116–17). For example, a small wooden casket excavated from St Oswald’s, Gloucester, contained the neatly packed bones of an adult male, including the tiny bones of the hands and feet (Heighway & Bryant 1999: 205–6).
2. Containment of the body
Within the grave, the corpse was enveloped by a winding sheet or enclosed within a coffin. The white linen shroud indicated that the Christian body had been shriven, denoting a ‘good death’ that followed the deathbed rites of confession, communion and the sacrament of extreme unction (Woolgar 2006: 50). The white shroud was symbolic of spiritual purity: St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (d. 687) ordered that he should be buried only in a precious white cloth (although his monastic community actually buried him in rich vestments and with grave goods of a golden pectoral cross, a gold chalice, an ivory comb, scissors and a book of Gospels (Bonner et al. 1989). White shrouds may have been in regular use by the 11th century, as suggested by the depiction of the funeral of Edward the Confessor on the Bayeux Tapestry (Hadley & Buckberry 2005: 123). The late Saxon cemetery at Worcester Cathedral produced nine fragments of woolen textile that may be remnants of shrouds; however, these examples derive from coffined burials and could alternatively represent clothing (Guy 2010).
The common use of coffins can be demonstrated at sites where water-logged conditions have facilitated their survival. At Barton-on-Humber, radiocarbon and dendrochronology dates have confirmed that use of timber coffins was the norm by the 10th century. These were oak coffins, lightly-constructed with few nails or metal components, and occasionally incorporating bases woven from wattles (Rodwell 2007: 29, 22). At Worcester Cathedral, late Saxon timber coffins survived due to the very dry conditions beneath the chapter house: 106 coffins were identified in association with 180 burials (Guy 2010). The difficulties in detecting coffins archaeologically may have led to under-estimates of their use, particularly if wooden dowels rather than iron nails were typically used for fastening. The incidence of coffin use at later Medieval monastic cemeteries has been estimated to range from between 4% and 34% (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005). However, the 60% rate of coffin use at late Saxon Worcester Cathedral may call this estimate into question.
Other receptacles were sometimes employed to contain the corpse for burial. Occasionally domestic chests were used, complete with locks and hinges, a practice known in Scandinavia in the 10th century, and occurring in England from the 8th up to the 12th century (Fig. 13.2). Four chest-burials from York Minster were dated to the 9th or 10th centuries, so close together that they were intercutting: they contained one elderly male, a middle-aged female, a young adult male, and an adolescent of unknown sex (Kjølbye-Biddle 1995: 517). The close proximity of the chests suggests that these individuals may have formed a distinctive social group in life. Other chest-burials are known principally from the north of England, including Repton (Derbyshire), Ripon (Yorkshire), Flixborough (Lincolnshire), Partney (Lincolnshire) and Fishergate (York), but isolated examples have also been recorded from Winchester and Hereford (Kjølbye-Biddle 1995: 517; Hall & Whyman 1996: 113). This practice appears to have been reserved for burials occurring within a discrete area of a monastic or cathedral cemetery, and the rite perhaps denoted a particular religious status. The latest dated example is the burial of a ‘possible’ male in a locked chest or coffin at the hospital of Partney (Lincolnshire), radiocarbon dated AD 1080–1160 (Atkins & Shepherd Popescu 2010).
Fig. 13.2. Locks and straps from timber chests used for burial at the monastic cemetery of Ailcy Hill, Ripon, North Yorkshire, c. 7th–10th century (reproduced with the kind permission of York Archaeological Trust from Hall & Whyman 1996, 107: fig. 25).
Fig. 13.3. A barrel padlock and key were placed between the knees of a young adult female buried in a coffin at Worcester Cathedral (photograph by Christopher Guy, Worcester Cathedral Archaeologist; reproduced with kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral).
The chest-burials seem to convey a deliberate symbolism of locks and containment. The locking metaphor may also be pertinent to barrel padlocks, which were occasionally deposited deliberately with Medieval burials. They were first used as grave goods during the conversion period: of six known examples dating from the late 7th to 8th centuries, five occurred with women (Geake 1997: 82). A young adult female from the late Saxon cemetery at Worcester Cathedral was interred in a coffin with a barrel padlock placed between her knees (Fig. 13.3). Analysis of the padlock showed that it was locked and intact, with the key in place; remains of pupa cases were incorporated in the corrosion crust of the lock, confirming that the object was in contact with the corpse during decomposition (Guy 2010). In later Medieval contexts, padlocks were also associated principally with women. Two 11th century padlocks from graves in Hereford retained textile impressions, confirming that they were contained within the shroud: the padlocks were placed on the respective pelvic areas of an adolescent and an adult female. Two later Medieval examples from the Cistercian monastery of St Mary Graces in London (1350–1538) were also associated with women, one adjacent to the pelvic area (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005: 178). The gender correlation is uncertain in some cases: a barrel padlock recovered from the chapter house of Benedictine Sandwell Priory (Staffordshire; dated 1250–1450) was deposited with an adult of unknown sex (Hodder 1991: 91).
The social context of the chest and padlock burials suggests that this particular treatment may represent some distinct religious status, rather than a general effort to contain and protect the body, or even to imprison the ‘dangerous’ dead. The position of the padlocks in association with the pelvic region may indicate the signaling of chastity, the sexual purity of the body. Virginal bodies were believed to remain incorrupt in death, as indicated by contemporary hagiography (Thompson 2002: 235–36). The symbolism of chests and locks may have been used to represent the integrity of the virginal body, while barrel padlocks seem to have been reserved especially for deposition with the female corpse. Incorruptibility of the body after burial was regarded as the definitive miracle for proving sanctity, particularly in the case of female saints (Bynum 1991: 266).
3. Dressing religious corpses
Christian burials show an increased emphasis on the marking and containment of the body, and small numbers of associated artefacts imply that the practice of clothed burial continued to some extent. But the use of grave goods and funerary costume was deliberately enhanced for one category of the Christian dead: religious personnel were given special treatment to denote the consecrated status of their bodies. Bishops, abbots, and priests were accompanied by religious grave goods that signaled their ranking in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: mortuary crosses and plaques, crosiers, and the chalice and paten that were symbolic of the office of the priest (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005). Perhaps most significantly, religious corpses were fully dressed in their monastic habits or consecration robes. This clothing did not merely represent the identity or status of the deceased, it was perceived to protect the physical body of the corpse in purgatory.
This belief is vividly expressed in the story of a lay-brother of the Cistercian monastery of Stratford Langthorne (Essex), recounted in Peter of Cornwall’s Liber revelationum of 1200–6 (Holdsworth 1962: 196–97; Woolgar 2006: 180). This particular lay-brother had demonstrated some uncertainty in his vocation: on one occasion he fled the abbey to resume his secular life as a shepherd, only to return subsequently to his calling. He was allowed re-entry to the abbey, but as punishment the lay-brother was permitted to wear only the black tunic that represented his position, and not the customary black hood. When the lay-brother eventually died he was buried in his tunic, but without the hood. Both the abbot and the prior of Stratford Langthorne reported oneiric visions of the dead lay-brother, who told them that he needed his full habit in order for his soul to be saved. The apparition was singed and scarred because he had lacked the protection of the lay-brothers’ hood during the purgation of his sins. His hair, head and shoulders had been burnt by drips of burning pitch, sulphur and lead from a cauldron that the lay-brother had passed under during his judgement. The impact of the vision was immediate: the next day the monks exhumed the lay-brother’s body and redressed it in the full habit. The symbolism of the lay-brother’s hood is consistent with the metaphoric use of clothing in oneiric literature. In his study of Medieval ghost stories, Jean-Claude Schmitt emphasises the dual role of clothing to represent the identity of the deceased and to convey the fate of their soul in the afterlife; clothing also provides a concrete medium through which exchanges are made between the worlds of the Medieval living and the dead (Schmitt 1998: 201–5). The significance of the cape or hood is a recurring theme particularly of monastic apparitions and ghost stories. Schmitt connects this motif with folkloric attributions of the hood providing supernatural protection in the afterlife; in common with traditional grave goods, the monastic hood was perceived to hold amuletic properties.
The monastic cemetery of Stratford Langthorne has been partially excavated, providing an opportunity to examine the actual burial practices among the community associated with the lay-brother of the vision recounted by Peter of Cornwall. The cemetery to the northeast of the church was excavated by Museum of London Archaeology and 651 burials were recovered (Barber et al. 2004) (Fig. 13.4). These were predominantly male and are likely to represent the graves of the monastic community: only eleven burials were associated with dress accessories, and two corpses were interred with medical poultice discs that were used to promote healing of leg injuries (Fig. 13.5). The absence of preserved textiles at the site prevents full understanding of burial rites that may have involved monastic dress. However, the poultice discs are indicative of a broader practice of inhuming Medieval corpses with therapeutic devices such as metal plates and supports, crutches, and even hernia trusses (Gilchrist & Sloane 2005: 103–5).
The lay-brother’s tale underlines the emphatic materiality of Medieval beliefs surrounding the dead: the condition of the corpse in the grave was consonant with that of the soul in purgatory (Bynum 1995: 206). Through preparation and dressing of the dead body for the grave, the living were empowered to assist the progress of the soul through purgatory.
Transforming the body in death
Victoria Thompson (2002: 232) has interpreted these new modes of burial as increasingly elaborate means of controlling and confining the Christian body. But what prompted these innovations in funerary rites? The belief in bodily resurrection must have heightened anxieties surrounding the decay and fragmentation of the corpse. Efforts to mark, contain and protect the cadaver in the grave may be interpreted as strategies to preserve continuity of the body for its resurrection. Further efforts were sometimes made to transform the body, as if to heal or enhance its physical form in anticipation of it rising again.
Fig. 13.4. Typical earthen graves from the north-east cemetery at the Cistercian abbey of St Mary Stratford Langthorne, Essex (reproduced with kind permission of Museum of London Archaeology).
Fig. 13.5. Copper alloy plate (medical poultice disc) from the burial of a man at the Cistercian abbey of St Mary Stratford Langthorne, Essex (diam. 58 mm) (reproduced with kind permission of Museum of London Archaeology).
In addition to the medical items that were left adhering to corpses, a considerable number of amulets were placed with the Medieval dead (Gilchrist 2008). The ancient practice of placing apotropaic objects in graves reached a peak during the conversion period, and continued right up to the 15th century. Many of the same artefact types and natural materials were selected for deposition with conversion period and later Medieval corpses: fossils, animal teeth, white stones, antique coins, rings and bracelets, and single beads. For example, boar tusks were included in adult graves at the monastic sites of Wearmouth (county Durham) and St Oswald’s, Gloucester (Cramp 2005: 80). The example at St Oswald’s dates to the 11th century: the tusk was placed near the right shoulder of a female who was buried in a charred coffin (Heighway & Bryant 1999: 202, 214) (Fig. 13.6). At Barton-on-Humber, the coffined burial of a 3-year old child contained an amulet fashioned from a worn pig canine; the date bracket of the grave spanned the 10th–13th centuries (Waldron 2007: 158). Boar tusks were used as amulets in Early Medieval graves (Meaney 1981: 131) and are also well known from prehistoric burial contexts. Tusks may have been retained initially as hunting trophies, but some appear to have been handed down as heirlooms: for example, a radiocarbon-dated tusk from the Bronze Age barrow at Irthlingborough (Cambridgeshire) was hundreds of years old when it was deposited (Woodward et al. 2005: 45). We may postulate a common tradition of ‘curating’ selected objects such as boar tusks for amuletic use, a practice that was familiar to many prehistoric and historic communities across Europe. The deposition of ancient, fragmented and worn items in graves suggests that the resulting heirlooms were occasionally placed with the dead for apotropaic motives (Woodward 2002).
While Early Medieval amulet use was almost exclusively associated with female graves, amulets in later Medieval burials were also linked with those of infants and children. Some limited correlation can also be demonstrated for the placement of amulets with inhumations of physically disabled individuals, particularly those with impaired mobility (Gilchrist 2008). Perhaps amulets were intended to transform the immature or disabled body: was special assistance given to those deemed too young or impaired to rise at Doomsday? If this interpretation seems far-fetched, we should return to the contemporary commentary offered by Ælfric of Eynsham: ‘Nor shall the holy ones who are to enter heaven have any blemish or ill-health, or be one-eyed, although he was lame in his life, but his limbs shall be all sound to him, in shining brightness, and tangible in his spiritual body’ (quoted in Thompson 2002: 237).
Fig. 13.6. Burial 383 from St Oswald, Gloucester, displays many of the late Saxon mortuary rites discussed in the text. This 11th century burial of a woman was placed in a nailed timber coffin on a thick layer of oak charcoal. Two stones were placed within the coffin to support the head, and to the right of the shoulder was placed a very large, left canine tusk of wild boar (Sus scrofa) (Heighway & Bryant 1999: 202, 214) (drawing by Wayne Loughlin, reproduced with the kind permission of Carolyn Heighway).
The increased use of amulets during the conversion period has been interpreted previously as evidence of deliberate pagan resistance to Christianity (Geake 1997: 98; Zeiten 1997: 49). To the contrary, I would argue that the tradition of amulet use was adopted and developed as a Christian strategy to transform the body in readiness for the resurrection. The general concept of corporeal transformation is entirely consistent with Christian rites: during the mass, the consecrated materials of the wafer and wine were believed to transform miraculously into the body and blood of Christ. These same apotropaic materials accompanied the burials of priests, contained in the chalice and paten that were placed with the priest’s corpse, to protect his soul on its journey through purgatory.
Concluding remarks: the materiality of the Christian afterlife
For the past three decades, the study of Early Medieval burial practice has been dominated by questions of social identity: how furnished burials were constructed to convey aspects of an individual’s identity during life. With noteworthy exceptions (Marzinzik 2000; Effros 2002; Thompson 2002, 2004; Crawford 2004; Blair 2005; Hadley 2009), even burials of the transitional and Early Christian Periods have been discussed in terms of lifetime identity, neglecting the potential impact of Christian eschatology on burial rites. The emerging funerary practices of the 9th–11th centuries reveal the fundamental significance and shared comprehension of three Christian beliefs about the afterlife: bodily resurrection, continuity of embodied experience, and the reality of corporeal transformation in death. But alongside these new tenets, some long-held traditions persisted. Investigation of funerary rites at the junctures between the Early and later Medieval Period boundaries reveals the extent of this syncretism. Consideration of longer-term trends also promotes the recognition of important continuities and the reworking of older traditions, such as the placement of amulets with the dead.
Widespread acceptance of the belief in the resurrection seems to have prompted efforts to preserve the integrity of the body in the grave. This was expressed by marking of the grave through the use of linings, stones, and visually distinctive materials, that both created a symbolic boundary for the burial and helped to protect it from subsequent disturbance in consecrated cemeteries that were subject to regular reuse. Some human remains were ‘curated’ by the Christian community, including the careful exhumation of graves that were to be disturbed by new buildings, and the translation of disinterred bones for reburial. The corpse was contained in a shroud or coffin as a practical intervention to impede decay, while serving simultaneously as an act of ritual enclosure or containment of the cadaver. More unusual rites seem to have represented the symbolic integrity of the body, with the use of locking chests and barrel padlocks for some members of religious communities, perhaps to convey the incorruptibility of the chaste Christian body (and particularly that of the pious female cadaver). This example emphasises that the meaning of Christian grave goods can be highly nuanced, with ordinary domestic chests and padlocks holding the potential to convey aspects of gendered embodiment in specific contexts.
From the 11th and 12th centuries, the developing concept of purgatory heightened anxiety surrounding the continuity of the body: the progress of the soul in judgement was directly affected by the condition of the corpse in the grave (Bynum 1995). The tale of the lay-brother of Stratford Langthorne confirms the popular perception that items of dress could provide amuletic protection on the soul’s journey, while the distinctive garb of religious personnel could hasten their salvation. The experience of the dead in purgatory was embodied and sensory, and the living could alleviate their suffering by undertaking the appropriate preparations of the corpse and the grave.
Finally, the Christian belief in corporeal transformation impacted on burial rites. The transformation and resurrection of Christ’s body represented the salvation of humanity, through its transubstantiation during the sacrament of the mass, and through its resurrection at the Sepulchre. The transformative materials of the mass were deposited in priests’ burials, with the sacrificial wine held in the chalice and the Eucharistic wafer placed on the paten; these were symbolic of the priest’s office and offered powerful protection on the journey through purgatory (Gilchrist 2009). Amulets and medical devices were sometimes placed with the most vulnerable of the dead: those perceived to require special assistance in achieving the transformation from withered bones to ‘shining brightness’, to rise from their graves whole.
Current scholarship characterises Medieval Christian funerary practices in sharp opposition to those of the preceding Anglo-Saxons. ‘Theatrical tableaux’ of pagan corpses were replaced by Christian rites that emphasised the integrity and continuity of the physical body. Motives of display, and celebration of the individual in life, were transplanted by themes of transformation for benefit in the afterlife. But perhaps some continuities can be discerned, some elements of pagan belief that were selected and developed for incorporation into Christian funerary practice? Many of the objects deposited in Anglo-Saxon furnished burials were used in the protection or modification of the body, including weapons, grooming implements and amulets (Devlin 2007: 33). Howard Williams (2006) has argued that the lavishly staged funerary tableaux represent the transformation of the Anglo-Saxon dead, emphasising the emotive force of grief, rather than the static display of their identity in life.
The theme of corporeal transformation was further elaborated by the processes of syncretism that connected Medieval pagan and Christian funerary rites. The materiality of death was developed in relation to the emerging tenets of purgatory and the bodily resurrection: judgement and the afterlife were imagined as fully embodied, introducing an imperative to protect the integrity of the dead body. The perceived continuity between the corpse in the grave and the soul in the afterlife sustained the centrality of the mortuary sphere to social life. Christian burial rites continued to channel the emotive force of grief, in an epoch when humble shrouds and modest coffins were the most efficacious gifts from the living to the dead.1
Note
1 The manuscript for this article was submitted in July 2008. Since the timing of writing, Dawn Hadley has published an article addressing the possible amuletic qualities of objects deposited in Anglo-Saxon burials dating from the 7th–11th centuries (Hadley 2009).
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