medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Jane's point reminds me that one can view some entire churches/religious foundations as cenotaphs: in England one thinks of the little church of St Mary Magdalene at Battlefield, Shropshire, built as a memorial to those who died in the Battle of Shrewsbury. Which makes one think if Battle Abbey, founded by king William after the Conquest, counts in any sense, or indeed whether religious foundations directly associated with prayer for the departed, such as All Souls college Oxford and Corpus Christi college Cambridge, can join the list. Once again, our modern category 'cenotaph' doesn't really do justice to a series of phenomena which have medieval religious ideas about death and the fate of the soul as their driving explication.
 
> Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 16:42:28 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [M-R] cenotaphs
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> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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> Thinking about it - were the bodies of those who drowned when the White Ship sank, recovered? Is there a cenotaph or monument to William the prince, for example?
>
> Jane
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>
> -- Original Message --
> From: Jon Cannon <[log in to unmask]>
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> Send: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 09:52:15 +0000
> Subject: Re: [M-R] cenotaphs
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> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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> I concur with what Maddy says strongly. And I'd also counsel -- this may be obvious -- against making assumptions in any given case. Given their size, it is astonishing how many medieval tombs have demonstrably been moved around the church, or major parts of them -- entire effigies -- lost. This confuses the evidence for the true picture, ie the original relationship of effigy and burial --&nbsp;all the more. &nbsp;A couple more examples: The retrospective bishops of Wells are a celebrated example of a much more widespread phenomenon: there were programmes of 'heritage' monuments to past bishops at Hereford and York, too. &nbsp;The Bristol merchant William Canynges has two effigies in St Mary Redcliffe church, Bristol. One is a full-scale affair with a canopy in which he and his wife are depicted as a wealthy burgess-class couple; the other shows Canynges alone in alabaster, in his role as Dean of Westbury. They can't both be tombs! &nbsp;At Gloucester (Prince Osric) and Malm
> esbury (Athelstan) abbeys there are sixteenth-century monuments to Anglo-Saxon royal founders and benefactors. &nbsp;Jon
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