Death is a topic that is rarely discussed, yet clearly crucial to forming a more complete understanding of the Middle Ages and the people living during this time.  For these people, death was as much a part of everyday life then as technology is now.  The goal of this series of brief pieces is to touch on some surprising aspects of death during the Middle Ages that you may not have known.— Lady Beatrice de Winter 

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For people living in the Middle Ages, there was often nothing final about their final resting place.  In many cases, graves were often disturbed by later burials, the bones from the initial burial sometimes carefully  arranged around the new corpse.  In cemeteries where space was at a premium, bodies were intentionally buried only temporarily.  Once the process of putrefaction was complete, the skeletal remains were retrieved and placed in an ossuary.  An ossuary is simply a final resting place for the bones of the dead.  However, the ossuaries of the time were frequently used to showcase these bones in an artistic manner.   Even the corpses of nobility were exhumed and buried into other locations for political or status reasons.

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Cemeteries in the Middle Ages were places where the living and the dead frequently commingled.  Some cemeteries were not just places to bury the dead, but also public meeting places where the living socialized, ate, drank, played games, danced, sang and carried on love affairs oblivious to the proximity of the dead in their midst.  Period documentation indicates the presence of a communal oven in one cemetery as well as the regular occurrence of merchants and tradesmen in cemeteries, despite attempts by the church council to limit secular activities.

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The recent discovery of the bones of Richard III resulted in a battle over his ultimate burial location.  His decedents argued that he should be buried in York, where he spent over a third of his life.  However, officials from the University of Leicester, the institution responsible for this great discovery, claim that they own the rights to bury him in Leicester Cathedral, which is not far from the parking lot in which the late ruler was discovered.   At stake is both deference to his familial heritage and a potentially significant economic impact in the area selected.  Remarkably, this conflict mirrors frequent disagreements that occurred over burial locations of the nobility during the Middle Ages.  At a time when conventional practices included burial in the traditional family resting place, which was often affiliated with a particular parish, it was not uncommon for an individual to instead wish be buried at a beloved parish of his or her own choosing.  This desire gave rise to the aforementioned parallel struggle of both familial strife and, as the institution interring the body was generally paid a tithe for the privilege, economic impact.  The controversial practice of bodily division was invented as a means to resolve this dilemma.  For example, the head, considered the “official” burial site of the individual, was often buried at the family resting place while the heart would be interred with the individual’s seat of piety instead.

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Mechanical decapitation machines were used in capital punishment during the Middle Ages.  Although the guillotine itself was invented in 1792, long after the end of the Middle Ages, its predecessors were certainly used for capital punishment in pre-17^th century Europe.  The Halifax Gibbet, which likely dates back to at least the 13^th or 14^th century, was located in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England and was used on market days to execute thieves caught with stolen goods to the value of 13½d or more, or who confessed to having stolen goods of at least that value.  The Scottish Maiden was introduced in 1564 during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots by Regent James Douglas, 4^th Earl of Morton for similar purposes.  In a twist of fate, Douglas was eventually executed by it himself in 1581.