"Cadaver tombs of the fifteenth-century, and what they reveal about the people who commissioned them." by Lauren Maloney

Cadaver tombs of the fifteenth-century, and what they reveal about the people who commissioned them. 

by Lauren Maloney 

Lauren Maloney has just received her BA in History from the University of Kent, where her dissertation focus assessed the impact of maternal influences on the reign of Elizabeth I. From the age of ten, after a school trip to Hampton Court Palace, she knew that she wanted to study Tudor history. To redefine the lives of underestimated Tudor women so that they could occupy a more dominant space within historiography. Next year she hopes to embark on a masters course focusing on medieval religious art and culture. 

Cadaver tombs reveal their commissioners as pious, sentimental, and anxious beings. They were incredibly receptive to the artistic and literary portrayals of death and the afterlife in social and religious contexts which continually saturated their understandings. This emerged in the cadaver tomb design. This research will focus on the cadaver tombs and brasses of fifteenth century England in order to present a more nuanced conclusion of the revelations made of commissioners who were stimulated by the same social, religious, and political contexts. Firstly, this article will argue that the commissioners of cadaver tombs were influenced by depictions of the cadaver in macabre imagery. This shaped understandings of death and the afterlife presenting the tomb as an expression of anxiety. Secondly, the extent of the entrenchment of eschatological beliefs within society reveals the importance for commissioners in cultivating bonds between the living and the dead. This had intercessory purposes. Finally, the necessity for commissioners in portraying their earthly status will be discussed as a promoter of commemoration and intercession. These factors reveal the cadaver tomb as a powerful pedagogic tool in conveying contemporary ideologies relating to death, salvation and the afterlife. Therefore, commissioners were educators, redeemers, and commemorators, for their own and their viewers' souls. 

The scholarship of cadaver tombs has been dominated by studies regarding their function as a moralising entity through the focus on the bodily representation of the cadaver effigy. This perspective portrays contemporary anxieties surrounding death through the macabre characterisation of the effigy. This is apparent in works by Binski and Gertsman, who underestimate the religious influence over the macabre motivated cadaver tomb design. This did direct the cadaver tomb commissioner, but in order to appreciate the power of the tomb in its representations we must regard the highly religious society this monument existed in. This piece will counter Binski’s conclusion that the cadaver tomb’s main concern was reconciling anxieties about the state of the body in death over the soul. While the tomb does explore this, it also importantly commemorates the commissioner’s soul while promoting their need for help in achieving salvation. This reveals the commissioner’s value in forming social relationships, even in death, which ties everyone together through bonds of duty and responsibility to achieve salvation. This has recently been a focus of study for Welch, Badham and Oosterwijk, who have explored the connections between the emaciated cadaver effigy, characteristic of contemporary Catholic religious culture and popular macabre imagery. This article will draw upon these connections to consider the place of religious doctrine and purgatory in shaping the representation of the cadaver effigy to inspire prayer for the salvation of the deceased. Despite this, the impact of macabre imagery to inspire the commissioning of the cadaver tomb through anxiety alone is fundamental to understanding the consistency in cadaver representation. Oosterwijk’s study of fifteenth century cadaver tombs reveals imagery reminiscent of the dance macabre which had disseminated widely in England at this time. The moralistic lesson absorbed from this imagery served as a focal point of interaction between the living and the dead cultivating a bond between them. This is a consideration of Đorđević and will also be considered in this essay. These historiographic considerations portray the commissioner of the cadaver tomb as an individual who was saturated with consistent depictions of death and the afterlife. This was consolidated by the anxieties perpetuated by religious doctrine to mediate the expression of religious behaviour in favour of the church, which became centralised at the cadaver tomb. 

Cadaver tombs reveal those who commissioned them as individuals stimulated by the macabre in art and literature. This influenced contemporary attitudes to the representation of death and the afterlife. The cadaver tomb, therefore, was an entity which conglomerated these beliefs as a single unit to demonstrate the commissioners understanding of death to reconcile the anxieties surrounding it, transforming the tomb into a memento mori. Oosterwijk’s conclusion that the understanding of the commissioning of cadaver tombs in the fifteenth century lies in exploring the macabre imagery of the period. This approach is vital to uncover the motivations behind such statement commissions, where ideas of death and religion intersect to produce a means of education in morality for a good death. Badham declares that the cadaver tomb was the vogue for the macabre in fifteenth century England. 

The macabre thirteenth century French poem, The Three Living and the Three Dead, captivated Europe with its depiction of death and the settling of earthly vanity. In England this was assumed as the model for depictions of the cadaver effigy. The fourteenth century illustrated manuscript, the De Lisle Psalter through The Three Living and the Three Dead story characterises the nature of the body in death and the reality of decay to the reader: ‘How ugly and strange they are/ Rotten and worm-eaten’. This would have confronted readers of the story with a stark and uncomfortable encounter with death. The ‘Rotten and worm-eaten’ imagery of literature and illustrations would have become part of a recognisable identification and understanding of bodily fates after death, and the fragility of one's one mortality. This is coupled with an illustration of the six figures, the first dead king is shown with worms within its abdomen as an expression of this decomposition. This imagery is consistent with later cadaver effigies which include worms as a symbol of bodily corruption and decomposition. This coincided with the emergence of the representation of the figure of death as a skeletal cadaver by the end of the thirteenth century. The Three Living and the Three Dead associated worms with bodily corruption in death, and this, as it circulated England inspired their addition to the cadaver tomb. 

The tomb epitaph of Archbishop Chichele finished by 1426 displays this: ‘now I am cut down and served up for worms… behold my grave… you who will be like me after you die: horrible in things, dust, worms, vile flesh’. This blunt inscription of bodily decomposition, poses as a tool for instruction and education, with the bold ‘behold my grave’. Similar macabre imager is identified in the Carthusian Miscellany, a manuscript of moralising literature of the late 1430s. A miniature illustration proceeding A Disputacioun Betwyx þe Body and Wormes poem features a transi tomb of a high-born woman. Her skeletal shrouded cadaver is infested with worms and vermin. Binski argues that this poem represents the contemporary death culture of the time and the interaction had with the cadaver tomb. The effect of marrying familiarly vivid death imagery, with a moralising tale serves to reinforce understandings of death inspiring anxiety. 

This is demonstrated by the cadaver tomb of John Baret of Bury St Edmunds completed by 1463 featuring a once fully coloured emaciated cadaver covered with a shroud. The choice of Baret to depict his cadaver in this way conveys his interaction with macabre imagery and its influence on his ideas of the representations of death. This is seen from an inscription from his tomb: ‘Ho that wil sadly beholde me with his ie/ May se his own merowr and lerne for to die’. The use of the mirror motif is reminiscent of John Lydgate’s 1426 Dance of Death poem inspired by the danse macabre mural in the Cemetery of Les Saints Innocents: ‘in this myrrowre/ eueri wight mai fynde that hym behoueth/ to go vpon this daunce’. Lydgate was a friend of Baret’s and so his interaction with this poem is highly probable and resonated with him so highly that he chose it for his own cadaver tomb. King explores the Lancastrian connections of Baret and concludes that their shared exposure to macabre imagery influenced the commissioning of cadaver tombs, which was popular within this group. 

The dance of death imagery began a contemporary stereotype in the resemblance of the corpse emerging as a cadaver effigy, this accelerated in the late fourteenth century but gained in popularity in the early fifteenth century. This influenced the variation of this imagery to the ‘powles dawnse’ in the 1440s and again in the 1490s. The development of this imagery coincided with the transi tomb of Archbishop Chichele erected in 1427 before his death in 1443, this representation of his cadaver addresses the contemporary dilemma between morality and bodily corruption. The state of his emaciated cadaver effigy is comparable to the imagery of the cadaver in the dance of death forming an intersection between imagery, theology, literature and performance presenting a moralising tale demonstrating the lesson of the transitoriness of earthly wealth to the subsequent resurrection of the body and soul. This indicates the need for commissioners to have visual reminders of this teaching and surmised the reality of death as part of everyday contemporary life.

 The macabre imagery of the cadaver tomb was a powerful component in shaping a reformed ideology to death and the afterlife, which explains its appearance in fifteenth century England. This for commissioners consolidated their anxieties surrounding death in a comprehensive way to resolve these fears through the choice to display this imagery in a moralising way on their cadaver tomb. The dance of death imagery was one characterisation of the macabre which inspired commissioners as it converged the visual and literary in one monument as a model for the interaction between the boundaries of life and death. Oosterwijk concludes that this accessibility of macabre imagery through its versatility had a powerful influence over commissioners in directing their imagining of death in the cadaver tomb. The circulation of this imagery, coinciding with cadaver tombs mirroring this very imagery could confirm these musings of historians confirming that cadaver tomb commissioners were highly influenced by the macabre imagery surrounding them.

Cadaver tombs reveal the importance for commissioners in establishing and consolidating bonds between the living and the dead. This took the form of inspiring intercessory exchanges through the tomb design, which worked for mutual benefit. This was a central tenet of Roman Catholicism and so a cornerstone of fifteenth century English society. This established bonds between all of its members, including the dead. This demonstrates the entrenchment of eschatological belief within this society. The similarity in cadaver tomb depictions at this time indicates this. There was power in this choice of tomb design as it conveys the commissioners aim in upholding the bond between the living and the deceased which had once moved them. This exchange meant that the living were obliged to care for their dead physically and spiritually aiding their salvation, and it was understood that the dead would repay them with their own salvation. The survival of this bond was only possible because of the commissioner’s ability to exploit religious teachings, and pair them with macabre imagery of the period. The Three Living and the Three Dead perpetuated this understanding through its teaching of the inevitability of death and its equalising nature. The viewer could see themselves reflected in the cadaver effigy consolidating bonds with the departed. Schmitt explores the cadaver tomb in this way as a gift of a warning to the individual to prepare for death and aid those who had reminded them of it. The commissioner had consolidated religious ideology with cultural imaginings of death and the afterlife into a single cadaver tomb to successfully serve the purpose of remembrance through the interaction of prayer. 

The image of the cadaver indicates the cultural background of the commissioner and indicates the values and beliefs such individuals had. For commissioners of the fifteenth century the ingrained eschatological beliefs regarding purgatory and salvation intertwined the body and soul in the cadaver tomb. The cadaver effigy symbolised the process leading to salvation through purification. This cleansed the body and purified the soul. Purgation was thought of as a physical endeavour, which had been demonstrated through the emaciated, pain-stricken cadaver effigy. The 1500 shroud brass commemorating the lives of a husband and wife show the souls of the cadavers being lifted to heaven by angels. This created a clear visual link for onlookers between mortality and resurrection. The choice of this by the commissioner conveys their pious nature through this imagery, which viewers would have identified and recalled the catholic doctrine related to it. This dynamic presents the power of the viewer in securing the departed’s ease in salvation, by inspiring them to recall their religious teachings. 

The cadaver tomb of John Baret of Bury St Edmunds similarly relied upon this religious teaching, coupled with visual imagery to inspire intercessory prayer. He established his status as a sinner through inscriptions adorning his tomb. The centre panel of his cadaver tomb depicts a banner of the Resurrection with the inscription, ‘god be kind to me, a sinner’ from Luke 18:13. This inscription inspires remembrance of the dead and assistance by the viewer in achieving salvation, Badham categorises this as the purpose of the cadaver tomb. This assured commissioners of the inevitability of their tomb provoking aid from the living through prayer because of the consistencies between doctrine and image. Job 19:26 perpetuates the realities of the physical consequences of death from purgatorial acts which instilled a message of the necessity in ensuring each individual was prepared for this endeavour while stressing their role and responsibility in aiding the deceased to achieve this too: ‘and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God’. Galpern characterises fifteenth century Catholicism as a service to the dead. This is understood through the main anxiety of these pious individuals, not the act of death but what followed, purgatory. 

The conviction of God’s power at the Resurrection is outlined in Job 19:25-26: ‘in the last day… I shall be clothed again with my skin: and in my flesh I shall see my God’, this doctrinal teaching formed part of the contemporary understandings of the afterlife. This was paired with macabre imagery familiar to contemporaries to consolidate bonds between the living and dead based upon prevalent theological understandings which were identifiable across social boundaries. Cadaver tombs were a passionate expression of devotion, and portrayed commissioners as extremely pious individuals consumed with radicalising the viewer to act religiously in aiding them in their salvation. This depiction prompted a response from the viewer through prayer, to end the suffering of the deceased and grant them salvation. This established a rigid bond of obligation between the viewer and the dead which had been modified by commissioners from the earlier use of chantry chapels. The emotive aspect of cadaver tombs for commissioners was a tool in constructing a means for the departed to achieve salvation. Schechner, Shepherd and Wallis categorise this performative aspect of the tomb as a mode to move the viewer to respond to the fate of the deceased to promote the living of a pious life to improve their own chances of salvation. The commissioner understood the power of cultivating an interaction between themselves and the viewer as the key to achieving salvation. This made use of and exploited eschatological theory through the cadaver tomb. 

Cadaver tombs reveal the importance of presenting the earthly status of the commissioners of the fifteenth century despite the materialistic connotations this could have triggered. This is indicated through the act of commemoration whose grisly magnificence attracted passers-by. This was vital in the inspiration of prayer for the salvation of their soul. The cadaver tomb was an important indicator of the commissioner’s social and political affiliations. King explored this connection in the commissioning of early fifteenth century tombs with those of the Lancastrian affinity. This was important in visually establishing the commissioner’s earthly status through the honouring of their well-regarded social connections. The cadaver tomb in this instance was also an honour to the social elite. John Baret is an example of this, whose cadaver tomb converged this concern with status and honour to religiosity with the salvation of the soul. He was awarded the Lancastrian Silver Collar of Esses by Henry VI as a marker of loyalty which featured on his cadaver tomb and commemorative ceiling. This also featured alongside depictions of his monograms and mirror fragments inviting self-reflection and awe. The will of Baret demonstrates the junction between a cadaver tomb being a marker of identity and also one of religion with the purpose of salvation: ‘May Christ bear witness that this tomb is placed here not to glorify the body but that the spirit may be remembered’. 

This is similarly witnessed from the cadaver tomb of Alice de la Pole in St Mary, Ewelme, Oxfordshire which commemorates her as an heiress with powerful connections to some of the great English houses including the Lancastrian throne. This is displayed through the choice of heraldry adorning her tomb which presented her identity and loyalties. Alice paired this commemorative imagery with religious ones including angels supporting the head of her upper effigy, and images of the Annunciation, Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist lining the ceiling of the tomb of which her shrouded and emaciated cadaver contemplates below. Despite her status as a mother and wife Alice’s cadaver tomb conveys her as a pious individual in her own right. The location of her tomb is linked with her father’s family. The commissioning of this cadaver tomb reveals that Alice placed significant emphasis on how her identity and status was presented and remembered after her death. She had autonomy in this decision but her personal and social connections through her father connected her with the Lancastrian throne and men who favoured the use of the cadaver effigy. This commission reveals that the choice of a cadaver tomb had personal, political, social and religious connotations and obligations to construct identity. Alice’s tomb has strong parallels to the illustration of the transi tomb depicted in the Carthusian Miscellany manuscript; both women fashion elaborate dresses with their hands piously directed towards their hearts as a gesture of genuineness and sincerity. This infers an intricateness by the commissioner through this pose and an indication of responsibility and pride in the monument which would go on to resonate with the viewer. 

The exhibition of the commissioner’s status for commemoration was a form of grief and indication of familial status; failure to factor this could bring a bad reputation to the deceased and their family. This is seen from a letter of Margaret Patson to her son in 1471: ‘it is a shame and a thing that is much spoken of this country that your father’s gravestone is not made’. Commissioners were forced to reconcile the portrayal of their image and status alongside the expression of their pious nature. Norris notes that the need for commissioners to convey their extravagant lineage created tension with their acquiring assistance from the living through prayers. Đorđević resolves this tension through his conclusion that the depiction of identity with the cadaver effigy worked to shock the viewer into recognising their own mortality. The complex design of the cadaver tomb sought to trigger a complex emotional response from the viewer, showing the multifaceted purpose of the monument. The shock, disgust, guilt, and reflection the tomb inspired invited a responsibility to the dead felt through prayer. The commissioner through their cadaver tomb cultivated a sophisticated monument which fulfilled their devotional needs beyond death. The shrouded brass monument of Joan Leventhorpe of Sawbridgeworth of 1448 included a Latin inscription: ‘Look! Here lies putrefiedly sinking dust and worm’s titbits… Here, brother, gaze at yourself, breathe prayers for me.’ This served as a means of commemoration but also as a memento mori. The cadaver tomb reveals in this instance that commissioners valued the ability of their earthly status to convey their humanity to the viewer which forced them to empathise with their current physical and spiritual state. This attracted attention and also welcomed redemptive prayers from them to shorten their purgatorial punishments which had been a cause of anxiety. 

Cadaver tombs reveal those who commissioned them as individuals whose lives were occupied with eschatological beliefs, manifesting in the bond and exchanges cultivated between the living and the dead in the fifteenth century. This preoccupation reflects itself in cadaver tomb design, where the influence of macabre imagery, concerns of personal status and salvation, and intercessory exchanges found themselves cultivated within the monument. The tomb reveals the versatility of the monument’s inspirations and the responses evoked from these depictions, to present the commissioners intelligence in navigating death imagery and religious doctrine of the fifteenth century to present something which was accessible to all. This was for personal redemptive means, but inspirational, nonetheless. The cadaver tomb for scholars reveals the merging of religious devotion with macabre imagery to convey the values and anxieties of the commissioner. This is fundamental as it indicates them as intelligent, pious, and social individuals who recognised the cadaver tomb as a powerful expression of these sentiments to secure their own salvation. 

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