Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

Suicide in the Middle Ages

Murray, Alexander

PSYCHIATRIC WRITING WORTH READING, volume 18 • number 5 • fall/Winter (2012)

Abstract

“Suicide in the Middle Ages” sounds strange. Did anyone really commit suicide then? Didn’t they all believe suicides would go to Hell if they did it? And how can we know, anyway? Let me start with the last question. Treating the “Middle Ages” as running from 500 to 1500, it is almost true to say that records on this topic are non-existent until around the year 1000. But only “almost”; and from the year 1000 records gradually multiply, with up- ward step-changes around 1100 and 1300.

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Be still my beating heart ;)…

Heart burial in medieval and early post-medieval Central Europe

Weiss-Krejci, Estella

Body Parts and Bodies Whole, pp. 119-134 (2010)

Abstract

Born out of the idea of resurrection of the dead with their own bodies, until the 19th century the ideal burial mode in Christianised Europe was the deposition of the whole, fleshed body. Yet there were also alternative ways of thinking about and treating the human corpse: already Augustine had criticised the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh (Frederiksen 1991) and practical interactions with the dead also stood in contrast to popular sensibilities regarding the integrity of the corpse. For instance, it was quite common practice to remove bones from the graveyards and redeposit them in charnel houses (Legner 1989: 33–42), while embalming and the extraction of the inner organs were also common forms of mortuary behaviour among the upper strata of society (Brown 1981; Owens 2005: 204).

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