Medieval priests were often buried with their chalice and paten. At St Peter's Church Barton-upon-Humber A number of personal items had been interred with the deceased. Amongst the more interesting are a pewter chalice and paten placed in two priest's burials that lay alongside each other in the area of the South Porch. A medieval burial within the nave of the church of the Parish of Little Ilford included one east facing grave with chalice above the left shoulder. These are usually thought to have been buried merely as a symbol of the deceased's priestly office, but it may be that these objects also carried a specific religious symbolism as well. Two inscriptions, one on the paten buried at Canterbury with Archbishop Hubert Walter, d 1205, and the other on a 12th century portable altar from Cologne (in addition to a handful of manuscript references) indicate that the chalice symbolises Christ's tomb, and the paten the stone before the tomb. One manuscript, the Mitrale by Sicardus Bishop of Cremona (d 1215), records further that the `chalice [signifies] the body, because wine is in the chalice, blood is in the body', suggesting that wine may sometimes have been poured into the chalice before burial - an idea that archaeology may one day confirm. Also seen during this period is the continued differentiation of people in burial practice. The ordinary Christian people of the time were generally buried in the church yard attached to the church. However more important people, priests and bishops for example were routinely interred inside the church its self. Less important people often however would have a plaque or memorial inside the church but the body being laid to rest in the church yard. Bishops and archbishops were often buried in full ceremonial robes. |
The inclusion of grave goods for the Christian hierarchy is particularly interesting. It seems to suggest a somewhat disjointed view of the after live. For the mass of people, and I believe this to be standard teaching, there was no need, or indeed way, to take possessions into the after life. However the inclusion of clothing and tools of the trade for the Christian hierarchy would suggest that they thought that these were needed so that they could 'be ready to minister to their congregation, as soon as the dead were raised to live.
Not everybody in medieval Britain however had the privilege of a burial in the consecrated grounds of a church or church yard. People such as criminals would have been buried in un-consecrated ground. An interesting example of this is a crossroads between Dry Drayton and Oakington in Cambridgeshire during a rescue excavation in 1977. Their identification with executed criminals was suggested by medieval records showing that Crowland Abbey maintained a gallows there. The reasons why crossroads were used for the execution and burial of criminals have only begun to be investigated. They may derive from a belief that the roads would confuse the ghost of the deceased, preventing it returning to haunt its home. The use of communal boundaries may have emphasised the criminal's outcast nature, while signifying the boundary between life and death. This practice of burial in un-consecrated ground included not only criminals but catholics as has been found at Stroud Cemetery where one-third of the burials, (including fifty-four Roman Catholics) were in un-consecrated ground. We also see the relative importance in life being reflected in death. The priest being interred inside the church, the import people of the community, if not buried inside the church, having memorials erected inside the church and the 'ordinary people buried outside the church in the grave yeard. This split in belief structures seems to indicate the beginning of the larger split in the religion between the priestly class and the lay people. One traveling into the next world with none of their worldly goods the other able to take at least some and one assumes retain their privileged position. Of the final group, those buried in un-consecrated ground, we can only speculate as to whether they were even expected to make it into the next world with the others or would have been denied heaven and condemned to Hell by the very nature of their burial. |
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