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

Description

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. Cover Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland Title Copyright Dedication Contents Figures Preface Chapter 1 Introduction Death The Sources for This Study The Body, and the Dead Body The Changing Self – Burkhardt’s Individual and the Early Modern Body The Modern Self Belief and the Early Modern Body Organisation of This Book Chapter 2 Religious Belief The World of Late Catholicism The Reformation The Disappearance of Purgatory The Despised Body The Actions of the Living upon the Body of the Dead The Resurrection of the Body Disposal of the Dead Body Ireland and the Burial of Catholics The Unbaptised The Death of Infants in Early Modern Protestantism Excommunicants, Recusants and Malefactors Low Church and Dissent Dissenters and the Dead Body Conclusions Chapter 3 Scientific Belief Anatomy: A Potent Cultural Metaphor Why Were Dead Bodies Cut? Cutting the Body before the Great Age of Anatomy Historians of Anatomy The Microcosm Dissection The Dissected Archaeological Evidence of Anatomy Anatomy Cuts Free of Moral Philosophy: Into Modernity Dying for a Reason: The Growing Significance of ‘Cause of Death’ The Pursuit of Knowledge The Coroner Body as Person to Body as Commodity Restoring the Body: Contradictory Beliefs? The Horror of Anatomy Embalming Anatomy and the Archaeology of Anxiety Chapter 4 Social Belief Ordinary Bodies, Ordinary Deaths Massacred, Murdered, Drowned: Disposal after a Bad Death Elite Burials The Elite Body: Oliver Cromwell Arms and the Early Modern Man Burial and the New Kind of Modern Individual Emotion: The Beloved and Beautiful Body The Undying Body Normal Preparation of the Corpse The Emotional Response to Bereavement Men and Women The Problem of Decay The Criminal Body Disintegrating the Criminal Body Anatomising Criminals Conclusions: The Body and the Body Politic: Metaphors of the Body Personal Status, the Decaying Body and the Desire for ‘Honesty’ Chapter 5 Folk Belief Folk Beliefs about the Dead Body The Touch of the Dead The Powerful Corpse The Hand of Glory Folk Beliefs about the Places of the Dead The Sensitive Corpse Fairies, Wraiths and Souls Folk Eschatology Folk Beliefs about the Afterlife Ghosts Other Funerary Customs Folk Practice, Religious Belief, Scientific Knowledge Chapter 6 Conclusions The Body as Curio Belief Ethical Implications References Index