Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Abstract

Drawing on archaeological, historical, theological, scientific and folkloric sources, Sarah Tarlow's interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland. From the theological discussion of bodily resurrection to the folkloric use of body parts as remedies, and from the judicial punishment of the corpse to the ceremonial interment of the social elite, this book discusses how seemingly incompatible beliefs about the dead body existed in parallel through this tumultuous period. This study, which is the first to incorporate archaeological evidence of early modern death and burial from across Britain and Ireland, addresses new questions about the materiality of death: what the dead body means, and how its physical substance could be attributed with sentience and even agency. It provides a sophisticated original interpretive framework for the growing quantities of archaeological and historical evidence about mortuary beliefs and practices in early modernity.

Fragments from a medieval archive: the life and death of Sir Robert Constable

“…106 Public display of a corpse functioned as ritual humiliation of the traitor and his family as well as a signal of the king's power to ensure the bodily and political destruction of his enemies and thus a deterrent to anyone plotting further treasons. 107 This was both a very public and importantly a local execution for a local man, no doubt reflecting Constable's previous involvement both in county administration and in the local disputes discussed in this paper.…”

“A Candidate for Immortality”: Martyrdom, Memory, and the Marquis of Montrose

“…These included: debates about when a person was medically dead; debates about the religious importance, or power of corpses; and beliefs about the potency of the dead and the healing properties of certain body parts. 30 Popular ideas about dead bodies were frequently noted at public executions, where people showed a desire to possess mementos, such as the blood, hair, clothing, and personal possessions of the executed person. Indeed, at the execution of Charles I, the monarch gave friends pieces of his clothing as relics, while after his death, his silk shirt and gloves became coveted curios.…”

Attitudes towards cremation in contemporary Romania

“…We should not forget that the connections between the living and the dead are much stronger in the teachings of the Romanian Orthodox Church than in other denominations (see recently for the issues of the body as the social agent Howarth, Hockey, & Hallam, 1999;Tarlow, 2011). That is why after death, a series of memorial services for the deceased are organised, to be repeated at regular intervals (three days, nine days, 40 days, three months, six months, nine months, one year and seven years) (Drȃgoi, 2002).…”