medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I am a graduate student in Southern California who is currently working on
death in the later medieval period. From what I have read and seen this
statement of Camille's is not supported. Although there was an obsession
about the state of the body after death that was well represented in the art
and literature of the day, the soul was believed to leave the body at the
instant of death. There is a ton of surviving artwork that depicts the soul
leaving the body in the shape of a small person, usually through the mouth.
A couple of helpful books are Paul Binski's 'Medieval Death' and 'The Place
of the Dead' ed. Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall.
Unfortunately I know nothing about 'ubi sunt'.
Stacy Kerr
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Dear List Members,
>
> I'm working on Siôn Cent, a 15th century Welsh poet whose poetry frequently
> includes (among other things ...) extended references to the *ubi sunt*
> topos and detailed descriptions of the condition of the body after death. In
> `The image and the self', *Framing Medieval Bodies*, edd. Sarah Kay and Miri
> Rubin (Manchester and New York, 1994) pp. 84–5, Michael Camille states
> `[...] the body was not thought to be truly dead, its spirit separated from
> the body, until a year after burial. Only when all the flesh had left it
> and it was nothing, nobody, was it `Death''.
>
> He does not give a source for this belief - can anyone help? Who is doing
> Death at the moment?! And can anyone suggest a good summary of the
> development of the *ubi sunt* thing in medieval literature?
>
> Ever in your debt,
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> M.P. Bryant-Quinn
> Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd
> Aberystwyth
>
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