Medieval Europe and the Anonymous Grave: A Mini-Essay

     Prior to the empire’s fall in the fifth century, Roman tombs were considered a monumentum to the dead, with lengthy epitaphs chronicling their accomplishments and portraits completing the memoria process; however, after Rome’s collapse, a cultural and literate ineptitude dominated the region and birthed anonymous graves - free of inscriptions and likenesses of the deceased - for everyone except religious saints.[1] By the twelfth century, the affluent and powerful upper class began to eradicate this anonymity through the erection of mausoleums and sarcophagi which rivaled those seen within ancient Rome, but obscurity remained the fate of the lower classes until roughly the eighteenth century as the poor were often sown into cheap shrouds and buried in common graves.[2] Despite this seven-century lapse, the epitaph, chiefly for tombs of the saints, remained relatively similar to its Roman counterpart, with the first half identifying the departed by listing their accomplishments, date of death, name, and profession.[3] With the Christian faith and the rise of Norman influence, though, these inscriptions were written primarily in Old French rather than Latin and contained a second portion, which became standard during the fourteenth century and offered a prayer for the deceased’s soul.[4] For example, the 1387 mural epitaph of a Montmorency in Taverny concludes with the lines: “Good people who pass this way, / To God unceasingly please pray / For the soul of the body that lies below.”[5] Yet, between the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, this final prayer began to fade from the structure as the space became primarily dedicated to a praise of the individual’s life and endeavors.[6] Also, during the middle of the fourteenth century, the death portrait experienced a revival, beginning “with the royal and episcopal art and gradually extend[ing] to the categories of powerful lords and educated dignitaries.”[7]

 Works Referenced 

Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years. 1977. Trans. Helen Weaver. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2000.

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[1] Ariès, 202-205.

[2] Ariès, 207-209.

[3] Ariès, 217-221.

[4] Ariès, 218-221.

[5] Ariès, 219.

[6] Ariès, 223.

[7] Ariès, 260.