Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- 1 Archaeology and the Life Course
- 2 Experiencing Age: the Medieval Body
- 3 Clothing the Body: Age, Sexuality and Transitional Rites
- 4 The Medieval Household: the Material Culture of Everyday Life
- 5 The Medieval Church and Cemetery: The Quick and the Dead
- 6 Medieval Lives: People and Things
- Appendix 1 The Medieval Ages of Man: natural, humoral, temporal and material associations of age
- Appendix 2 Excavated Medieval Cemeteries Discussed in the Text
- Appendix 3 Indicative Age Profiles Based on Excavated Medieval Cemeteries
- Appendix 4 Children's Clothing and Dress Accessories from Burial Contexts in Britain: infants to 15-year olds
- Appendix 5 Sexual Signs: medieval dress accessories incorporating sexual imagery
- Appendix 6 Dress Accessories Associated with May Festivities
- Appendix 7 Love Gifts: dress accessories associated with courting and betrothal
- Appendix 8 Apotropaic Materials: dress accessories, domestic and devotional objects
- Appendix 9 Charms: devotional inscriptions on excavated objects and dress accessories
- Appendix 10 Devotional Inscriptions on Medieval Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme
- Appendix 11 Priests' Burials from Medieval English Parish Churches and Hospitals
- Appendix 12 Grave Goods associated with Aged Skeletons from Medieval English Parish Churches and Hospitals
- Appendix 13 The Classification of Grave Goods from Medieval Burials
- Appendix 14 Infant Burials from Domestic Contexts in Medieval England
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Medieval Church and Cemetery: The Quick and the Dead
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- 1 Archaeology and the Life Course
- 2 Experiencing Age: the Medieval Body
- 3 Clothing the Body: Age, Sexuality and Transitional Rites
- 4 The Medieval Household: the Material Culture of Everyday Life
- 5 The Medieval Church and Cemetery: The Quick and the Dead
- 6 Medieval Lives: People and Things
- Appendix 1 The Medieval Ages of Man: natural, humoral, temporal and material associations of age
- Appendix 2 Excavated Medieval Cemeteries Discussed in the Text
- Appendix 3 Indicative Age Profiles Based on Excavated Medieval Cemeteries
- Appendix 4 Children's Clothing and Dress Accessories from Burial Contexts in Britain: infants to 15-year olds
- Appendix 5 Sexual Signs: medieval dress accessories incorporating sexual imagery
- Appendix 6 Dress Accessories Associated with May Festivities
- Appendix 7 Love Gifts: dress accessories associated with courting and betrothal
- Appendix 8 Apotropaic Materials: dress accessories, domestic and devotional objects
- Appendix 9 Charms: devotional inscriptions on excavated objects and dress accessories
- Appendix 10 Devotional Inscriptions on Medieval Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme
- Appendix 11 Priests' Burials from Medieval English Parish Churches and Hospitals
- Appendix 12 Grave Goods associated with Aged Skeletons from Medieval English Parish Churches and Hospitals
- Appendix 13 The Classification of Grave Goods from Medieval Burials
- Appendix 14 Infant Burials from Domestic Contexts in Medieval England
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Performing piety
The parish church was the touchstone of every community and it nourished the life experience of each medieval person. The key thresholds of the Christian life course were marked by the rituals of the sacraments, while the spatial geography of the parish church integrated the human body with the sacred scheme of the Christian cosmos. The spaces and rituals of the church were central to habitual learning and the individual sense of embodiment that was built up through the course of a lifetime. Multi-disciplinary sources permit the reconstruction of ritual action in the church: spatial movement and gestures, viewing and proximity to the eucharist and the ingestion of consecrated materials. The agency of parishioners was expressed through the commissioning of images and material culture for their church and through the performance of ‘pararituals’, material practices which complemented the formal liturgy. These sources of evidence allow us to search beyond what medieval people were doing to what these ritual actions may have ‘meant’, or signified (see Chapter 1.2).
The church was also the focal point for social interaction and exchange, providing the opportunity for regular meetings between friends, neighbours and courting couples, and bringing together interest groups united by factors such as age and occupation. It was the venue too for interactions between the living and the dead, through funerary and memorial practices, and by the perpetuation of beliefs surrounding the afterlife.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Medieval LifeArchaeology and the Life Course, pp. 169 - 215Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012