Many medieval Christian burials are described as including "scripta," which
probably means indulgences like the one that was discovered on the breast of
the fourteenth-century Hainaudian knight Sir Walter de Mauny, founder of the
London Charterhouse, when that site was excavated and his coffin discovered
and opened in the 1950s. A similar document was found in the coffin of
Cecily Neville, duchess of York, when that family's tombs in the collegiate
church at Fotheringhay were ransacked during the Reformation.
Even for the medieval aristocracy, I'd think that books might be another
matter. They were not cheap items. I have read accounts of several
episcopal tombs in England that have been opened in this century and none
of them, as far as I can recollect, contained books, only pastoral staves
and in some cases chalices not of the highest standard of manufacture--similar
to the gilt-copper grave crowns that were commonly used in royal burials.
John Parsons
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