Death and dying in the Middle Ages: proceedings of the 2022 Harlaxton Symposium

Abstract

"The essays in this volume explore some of the many ways in which death in its practical and devotional aspects impinged on the lives of medieval people, men and women, rich and poor, both in England and in continental Europe. Underlying and linking the papers is the medieval preoccupation with the transitory nature of life and the fear of sudden death. A study of the text and illumination of the famous 11th-century Tiberius Psalter in the British Library begins the book. Two essays follow about sudden death, mainly murder, in London and Bologna. In the first of three literary papers, purgatory is discussed in the context of the Compileison, an influential but little-known prose treatise; the second concentrates on the diverse ways death is treated in late-medieval English verse, and the third on 'Laments', verse elegies for eminent people in manuscript and print. In his last Harlaxton paper, the late Clive Burgess proposed a new perspective on English parish chantries, suggesting that as well as caring for the salvation of individual souls, chantries meant extra priests, vessels and vestments, benefitting the Church as a whole. On a different scale, written and visual sources allow for a close look at the richly endowed perpetual chantries established by Isabella of Portugal, third wife of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in Cartusian houses. Funerals and wills are illustrated by the state funeral in Florence of the condottiere, Niccolò da Tolentino, by the funeral palls of Henry VII, and by the complex and exceptionally well-documented story of the execution of the will of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote in Warwickshire, who died in 1525. Monuments commemorating the medieval dead are represented by a splendid but now lost tomb in Bruges, and by a chantry chapel in Hexham Abbey."-- Details from back cover.