A death in public
For most medieval Christians, death was neither hidden nor handled by specialists. It took place at home, among family and neighbors, and the community expected to take part. The church encouraged people to prepare for death throughout their lives, and the idea of a “good death,” with time to confess and settle one’s affairs, was widely held. A sudden death without those rites was feared.
The deathbed
When someone was seriously ill, a priest was called to hear confession, bring the Eucharist and anoint the dying person with oil. These rites were intended to prepare the soul for judgment. Relatives gathered, prayers were said, and a candle might be lit. Many people hoped to die with a priest present, and they sometimes asked that a crucifix or holy image be held before them. How people understood the fate of the soul afterward was shaped by teaching on the medieval afterlife and, from the twelfth century onward, increasingly on purgatory.
Making a will
Many people who owned anything of value made a will, ideally while still able to speak and think clearly. A will was often spoken to a priest or a notary and then recorded. It named an executor, divided property, and usually included gifts to the church, to the poor and to relatives and servants. Legal rules varied by place. In England, for example, the church courts dealt with wills and movable property, while land often followed different customary rules. Married women often needed their husbands’ consent to make a will, though practice differed.
Wills show how much people cared about the afterlife. Testators frequently asked for masses to be said for their souls, left money for candles, or endowed a chantry, a priest paid to pray for the dead. They also left small gifts to the parish church. Because of this, wills are one of the best sources we have for the values and relationships of ordinary people, although those who made them were generally better off than the poorest villagers.
Another customary payment in some regions was a gift to the church on death, often the deceased’s best animal or belonging. This is usually called a mortuary, and it was sometimes resented.
Preparing the body
After death, the body was washed and wrapped in a linen shroud. Family members or neighbors, often women, commonly performed this task. For wealthier people, the body might be dressed in fine clothing, or a leading figure might be embalmed or have the heart or entrails buried separately, as occurred with some kings and nobles. For the poor, a simple shroud was typical, and the body was often carried to the grave on a bier, which might be a wooden frame owned by the parish and lent out. A full wooden coffin was not universal, especially for ordinary people.
The wake and the funeral
Mourners kept watch over the body, usually overnight, praying and sometimes sharing food and drink. This wake allowed neighbors to pay respects and gave comfort to the family. The parish bell might be rung to announce the death, and the number of strokes could signal the person’s rank or sex in some places. Local custom governed these details.
The funeral itself was centered on the church. A procession carried the body to the parish church, where the priest said a requiem mass and prayers for the dead. Candles, torches, and poor people paid to attend as mourners could add to the occasion at a rich person’s funeral. Afterward, the body was taken to the churchyard for burial. A feast or distribution of alms to the poor might follow, and special masses were often held a month after death and on its anniversary.
Where people were buried
Most people were buried in the churchyard, in ground consecrated by the church. Graves were often not marked with durable stones, and many were unmarked or marked with wooden crosses that have since decayed. Inside the church, burial near the altar or in a chapel was a privilege, generally reserved for clergy, nobles, patrons and wealthy townspeople. Monks and nuns were typically buried in monastery cemeteries.
Churchyards were not always quiet. They could serve as places for markets, meetings and games, a use church authorities sometimes tried to discourage. In busy towns, space ran short, so older bones were dug up and moved to a charnel house, a building or chamber where remains were stored, to make room. Excavations of medieval cemeteries often reveal bodies laid out in rows, usually lying on their backs with heads to the west, although practice varies.
Who was excluded
Church teaching restricted burial in consecrated ground for some people, including those who had not been baptized and those excommunicated. People who died by suicide were also usually barred, though attitudes and practices differed, and some communities did not strictly follow the rules. Executed criminals were often buried separately. Jews and Muslims had their own burial grounds in lands where they lived. Medieval Jewish communities, for instance, kept cemeteries apart from Christian ones.
Epidemics and mass burial
Large outbreaks strained all of these customs. During the Black Death, the number of dead overwhelmed some parishes, and many were buried in mass graves or in emergency burial grounds outside towns. Accounts describe priests dying alongside their parishioners and rites being shortened. Even so, evidence from excavations suggests that people often tried to maintain order and respect, laying bodies in rows and using shrouds where they could.
Remembering the dead
The dead were not forgotten after burial. Prayers continued in the form of masses, and guilds and fraternities often organized funerals for members and prayed for them afterward. Parishioners were encouraged to remember the dead on All Souls’ Day on November 2, a feast widely observed in the later Middle Ages. Tombs, brasses and inscriptions kept the names of the wealthy before the living, and plain wooden markers did the same for those who could not afford more. The aim, at every level of wealth, was the same: to be remembered and to be prayed for.