How does being buried in a church building work?

[Nava]

Ah, so it’s a tomb but not a sarcophagus. Thanks, APB.

[Floater]

@Nava

The sarcophagi of the lovers of Teruel and of Sancho VII and his second wife have holes (I can’t find a pic where the holes in Sancho’s can be seen), you can see the bones inside.

That’s the idea with a sarcophagus, which actually means flesh-eater. The soft parts of the body will decompose and get drained away through the holes, leaving the bones behind.

[xnylder]

This thread gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite creepy-but-(probably)-true stories. The Notre-Dame-de-Quebec Cathedral dates back to the early days of New France. At the time, it was just a parish church built by the colonists. Being French, they decided to continue the French tradition of burying their dearly departed under the church floor. Problem is, Quebec’s weather is far more severe than that of France, with thawing and freezing cycles… In spring, parishoners were greeted by the grasping hands and other body parts of their ancestors breaking through the floor. That’s what the guides told me, so feel free to ask them if you visit.

[GreasyJack]

@Nava

In the sarcophagus, given its size.

The sarcophagi of the lovers of Teruel and of Sancho VII and his second wife have holes (I can’t find a pic where the holes in Sancho’s can be seen), you can see the bones inside.

That’s pretty spiffy, but it appears that in the case of the lovers, those bodies had been buried in a more conventional manner for 300 years before they were discovered (in remarkably good shape) and put on display. Using pre-decomposed bodies probably reduces most of the above ground burial issues!

They’re below the floor level in a sealed vault. Their case illustrates one of the advantages of that arrangement. The proposed layout of the chapel was altered after Elizabeth and later Henry had already been buried, after the plan to build a shrine to Henry VI was abandoned. It was only then that their son, Henry VIII, commissioned Torrigiano to build the tomb.

I found a book on google books that might be of interest to this thread. It was written by one of the Victorian era deans of Westminster Abbey, during the time that they got serious about inventorying all the older burials and opened many of the royal burial chambers. On page 4, there’s a sketch of the Henry VII tomb with the hole they dug into the burial chamber (I find the shovel in the foreground somehow hilarious):

The actual text of the book seems pretty dry and lacking in salacious details, but the appendix at the end is pretty interesting. It describes the search for James I’s body, the wherabouts of which had been a mystery ever since it wasn’t found where it was supposed to be when they went in and disinterred all the interregnum figures after the restoration. In the process, they ended up opening up most of the Tudor/Stuart era burial vaults and describing the contents. It gives a pretty good idea of what’s under the floors, or at least was in the late 1800’s. This cross-section of Charles II’s vault I think shows the pretty typical arrangement of a vault (although he doesn’t have a big tomb up top) with a bricked up and dirt-filled diagonal entry.

Turns out James was…

in with Henry VII under his big tomb, even though they’d mostly ruled it out with the documentary evidence. Things are always in the last spot you look!

[APB]

@GreasyJack

I found a book on google books that might be of interest to this thread. It was written by one of the Victorian era deans of Westminster Abbey, during the time that they got serious about inventorying all the older burials and opened many of the royal burial chambers. On page 4, there’s a sketch of the Henry VII tomb with the hole they dug into the burial chamber (I find the shovel in the foreground somehow hilarious):

The actual text of the book seems pretty dry and lacking in salacious details, but the appendix at the end is pretty interesting. It describes the search for James I’s body, the wherabouts of which had been a mystery ever since it wasn’t found where it was supposed to be when they went in and disinterred all the interregnum figures after the restoration. In the process, they ended up opening up most of the Tudor/Stuart era burial vaults and describing the contents. It gives a pretty good idea of what’s under the floors, or at least was in the late 1800’s. This cross-section of Charles II’s vault I think shows the pretty typical arrangement of a vault (although he doesn’t have a big tomb up top) with a bricked up and dirt-filled diagonal entry.

Turns out James was…

in with Henry VII under his big tomb, even though they’d mostly ruled it out with the documentary evidence. Things are always in the last spot you look!

Yes. I spent far too much time yesterday trying to track down images of the drawings made when Dean Stanley had the vault opened. But there are lots of different editions of his Historical Memorials and those I looked at didn’t have them. Also I had a nagging doubt that they were instead published in one of the many other histories of the Abbey. What I was looking for was this.

Historical memorials of Westminster abbey : Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 1815-1881...

[si_blakely]

@clairobscur

I would mention that during the middle-ages for instance, a cemetery wasn’t off-limit for most activities, so many people would hang up there for various reasons, including for instance prostitution.

And not just in the middle ages. :smack:

Si

[carlotta]

Thanks for the pictures GreasyJack and APB. Those really help me visualize how it works.

So odd they stuck James I in with Henry VII and his wife! How did they know it was him?

[APB]

@carlotta

So odd they stuck James I in with Henry VII and his wife! How did they know it was him?

Because there is a name plate on the coffin - Stanley gives the text of the inscription. Which is the main reason why coffins of that period sometimes have name plates. If they were going to be buried along with other coffins in vaults of that sort, it might not otherwise be clear who was buried in which coffin.

[Maastricht]

You know the smoking incense burnersthe priests wave around during Mass? One of the explanations I’ve heard for that tradition is taht they were supposed to mask bad smells, be it from unwashed church goers to decomposing bodies beneath the floor.

ETA: in Dutch churches, there is no etiquette of not walking on grave stones in the floor. They are just part of the floor. Often the stone is so worn down due to the thousands of feet that you can’t even read anymore who lies there.

[Leo_Bloom]

@si_blakely

And not just in the middle ages. :smack:

Si

But now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

[Quintas]

@Nava

In the sarcophagus, given its size.

The sarcophagi of the lovers of Teruel and of Sancho VII and his second wife have holes (I can’t find a pic where the holes in Sancho’s can be seen), you can see the bones inside.

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/2060/momias1.jpg

[alphaboi867]

@APB

Because there is a name plate on the coffin - Stanley gives the text of the inscription. Which is the main reason why coffins of that period sometimes have name plates. If they were going to be buried along with other coffins in vaults of that sort, it might not otherwise be clear who was buried in which coffin.

Don’t funeral directors (at least in the US) still put name plates on coffins in case they float up out of the ground during a flood?

[Nava]

@Quintas

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/2060/momias1.jpg

But that’s not how they usually stand, that’s from when they were disinterred to perform an autopsy.