Traditions of Death and Burial

 Traditions of Death and Burial

By Helen Frisby

Shire Publications,  2019

Despite the cover, this is not a macabre book at all, but instead an excellent introduction into the whole panoply of traditions and beliefs surrounding death and burial in English society from 1066 onwards.

For me, the most interesting chapter covered how the doctrine of Purgatory influenced church art, decorations, stories, documents, pious customs and works of mercy to free those souls believed to be in Purgatory, right up to the architectural development of Chantry Chapels in larger churches and cathedrals where Masses could be paid for in perpetuity for the repose of someone's soul...or at least until Henry VIII put paid to that with the Reformation.

Depictions of death and the afterlife in churches, manuscripts and books provide lots of welcome visual details; the book is profusely illustrated and the author has provided many excellent examples of death traditions from popular narrative poems and stories as well as the expected practical details of laying out of corpses, embalming, burial services and grave monuments.

Deaths during epidemics make for sobering reading, but it was not just medieval plagues such as the Black Death which people had to worry about... smallpox, cholera, measles, typhoid and diptheria could cause huge numbers of deaths during outbreaks right up to the twentieth century. War, of course always produced horrifying numbers of deaths for virtually every generation to deal with, and looking at photographs of the Commonwealth War Graves remains very sobering indeed.

Celebrity funerals past and present, death cafes, hospices, euthanasia and suicide clinics are also touched upon in the chapter on modern times, and it is quite staggering to look at how society's views of death and burial have changed dramatically over the course of a millennium. Whether for better or for worse is a moot point!

A thoroughly absorbing book, surprisingly fascinating. Well worth a read.

Many thanks to the publisher for making a copy of this book available for me to read and review via NetGalley.

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