The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

by Bruce Gordon, Peter Marshall

Overview

Although much has been published on the social history of death, this is the first book to give a comprehensive account of attitudes toward the dead—above all the "placing" of the dead, in physical, spiritual and social terms—in order to reveal the social and religious outlook of past societies. The contributions range widely geographically, from Scotland to Transylvania, and address a spectrum of themes: attitudes toward the corpse, patterns of burial, forms of commemoration, the treatment of dead infants, the nature of the afterlife, and ghosts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521642569
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/10/2000
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Preface; 1. Introduction: placing the dead in late medieval and early modern Europe Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall; 2. The place of the dead in Flanders and Tuscany: towards a comparative history of the Black Death Samuel K. Cohn Jr; 3. 'Longing to be prayed for': death and commemoration in an English parish in the later Middle Ages Clive Burgess; 4. Spirits seeking bodies: death, posession and communal memory in the Middle Ages Nancy Caciola; 5. Malevolent ghosts and ministering angels: apparitions and pastoral care in the Swiss Reformation Bruce Gordon; 6. 'The map of God's word': geographies of the afterlife in Tudor and early Stuart England Peter Marshall; 7. Contesting sacred space: burial disputes in sixteenth-century France Penny Roberts; 8. 'Defyle not Christ's kirk with your carrion': burial and the development of burial aisles in post-Reformation Scotland Andrew Spicer; 9. Whose body? A study of attitudes towards the dead body in early modern Paris Vanessa Harding; 10. Women, memory and will-making in Elizabethan England J. S. W. Helt; 11. Death, prophecy and judgement in Transylvania Graeme Murdock; 12. Funeral sermons and orations as religious propaganda in sixteenth-century France Larissa Juliet Taylor; 13. The worst death becomes a good death: the passion of Don Rodrigo Calderón James M. Boyden; 14. Tokens of innocence: infant baptism, death and burial in early modern England Will Coster; 15. The afterlives of monstrous infants in Reformation Germany Philip M. Soergel; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Linked by an interest in ghosts from long ago, historians from England, Scotland, and the US look at how the dead remained integral to the communities of late medieval and early modern Europe." Reference & Research Book News

"The Place of the Dead contains path-breaking essays that illuminate important themes in social, religious, and family history. Undergraduates will find them accessible and well worth reading for lively class discussions." Philip F. Riley, History

"an especially useful introduction to pre-modern European culture and society" Comitatus Vol 32 2001

From the Publisher