Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England. by Clare GittingsReview by: Robert TittlerThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), p. 570Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2541264 .

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570 The Sixteenth Century Journal

Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England, by Clare Gittings, London & Sydney: Croom Helm, 1984, 269 pp. $34.50.

In Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England Clare Gittings sets out to chronicle and explain the popular attitudes toward death which unfolded between the end of the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century. In primitive societies generally, including medieval England, the fact of death was both closer at hand and much more readily assimilated into the normal course of social activity. In Europe, the Christian doctrine of salvation and the just reward often made it a happy occasion, and the doc- trine of Purgatory largely determined attendant ceremonies. Funerals provided both an eschatological service for the soul of the departed and a social function for the commu- nity of survivors.

With the official abolition of purgatorial doctrine following the English Refor- mation, traditional ritual ceased to benefit the soul of the departed, and the celebratory emphasis shifted to the needs of the bereaved. Disposition of the corpse, especially among the Puritans, became an entirely more expeditious operation. Yet because the social and psychological needs of the bereaved developed more fully at the same time, funeral practices themselves grew more costly and elaborate, and even the destitute were treated beyond pragmatic expectations. Ceremonies for the socially prominent-and Ms. Gittings deals with princes as well as paupers-could be extremely lavish, and this was even more apparent and more formalized when the College of Her- alds held its greatest power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By 1700, first in London and then elsewhere, these ritualistic needs became commercialized through the emergence of professional undertakers. Costs consequently and perhaps character- istically then shifted from the provision of refreshments and charity for the mourners-in which the undertakers played no part-to the provision of commercially contrived funeral paraphernalia, in which they most certainly did.

Much of the value of Gittings's presentation lies in its broad scope. She draws fre- quently on the literature of mentalitis and anthropology and on comparisons with non- English and even non-Western practice, all of which places this naturally interdisciplinary subject in its appropriate perspective. Of equal value is the literary accessibility. Almost more of a layman's survey than a pathbreaking monograph, Gittings illustrates her points well, sets out clearly the main approaches of her predeces- sors in the field, and labels carefully her regard for their views.

Yet there are drawbacks, running from an unchronological and sometimes ques- tionable sequence of chapters to the omission of some important works and the careless use of others. While, for example, neither of the two scholarly treatments of Nicholas Bacon are cited, the year of his death is rendered (thrice) at 1578 rather than 1579, the total of his funeral expenses is rendered (from Ashmolean ms. 836) at ?910 rather than ?9 19 1 2s 1 d, and an important, finely itemized executor's account of his funeral, iden- tified and discussed in the standard (1976) biography, has passed unnoticed. Even these lapses pale beside the placing of Mary Tudor's funeral in 1553: five years before her death (p. 222)! Though we may hope that these are uncharacteristic discrepancies, they do little to strengthen one's confidence in the whole. While Death, Burial and the Indi- vidual will prove a convenient summary of a complex subject, one must read the fine print with care.

Robert Tittler Concordia University

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