A lovely subject, I know! Yes, in today's Claire Chats talk I'm discussing how the remains of the wealthier classes and royals were prepared for burial. I discuss the different types of embalming before moving on to the practice of heart and entrails burial. I also look at what we know from primary sources documents about how various Tudor royals were prepared for burial. You'll find all the links and further reading recommendations below the video.
Links and Further Readings
- Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550, book by Christopher Daniell
- Details of the preparation of Jane Seymour's remains and the burial of her entrails - http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol12/no2/pp370-386, Letters and Papers Volume XII: Part 2, 1060.
- "Heart burial in medieval and early post-medieval Central Europe" by Estella Weiss-Krejci http://homepage.univie.ac.at/estella.weiss-krejci/heartburial.pdf
- Interview with Joëlle Rollo-Koster, author of Death in Medieval Europe: Death Scripted and Death Choreographed, https://today.uri.edu/news/uri-history-professor-edits-book-about-death-in-medieval-europe/ - I also used Joelle's book.
- "Heart of Kings: Embalming of Noblemen in Medieval Europe" article - https://halfwayoak.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/heart-of-kings-embalming-of-noblemen-in-medieval-europe/
- "History of Embalming, and of Preparations in Anatomy, Pathology, and Natural History; Including an Account of a New Process for Embalming" - https://archive.org/stream/39002086313450.med.yale.edu#page/n5/mode/2up
- Catherine of Aragon's remains - Letters and Papers Volume X: 141.
- Arthur Tudor's remains - The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, edited by Gordon Kipling.
- "The Funeral of Queen Elizabeth of York, the First Tudor Queen of England" by Susan Abernethy - https://thefreelancehistorywriter.com/2014/04/03/the-funeral-of-queen-elizabeth-of-york-the-first-tudor-queen-of-england/
- Henry VIII's remains - Ecclesiastical Memorials, Volume 2 Part 2 by John Strype (in the section “A Repository of Divers Letters” which includes “The ceremonies and funeral solemnities paid to the corpse of King Henry VIII”) - https://archive.org/stream/ecclesiasticalme0202stry#page/288/mode/2up p. 289-290; Notes on Accounts Paid to the Royal Apothecaries in 1546 and 1547 by Howard Bayles - https://archive.org/stream/b19974760M2795#page/794/mode/2up, page 794 onwards
includes list of funeral spices for Henry VIII. - Mary I's remains - 'Appendix to Preface ', in Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 2, 1559-1560, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London, 1865), pp. cxv-cxxix. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/foreign/vol2/cxv-cxxix