Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066-1550, Christopher Daniell

good on the logic of burial locations. not my cup of tea, though a great source for surprising medieval death facts (Richard Boyle, the suicide saint; St Bees man; burial under the eaves of church so as to be continually cleansed by the church’s blessed rain run off; Romuald, the saint who nearly became the Swamp Thing; the existence of several relatively well-preserved medieval human brains; members of Christian hierarchy buried with elaborate grave goods, particularly shoes, or monastic cowls, giving lie to notion that ‘grave goods’ were a pagan practice exclusively [and note that Vikings seem to have thrown the swords of their dead into rivers]. key argument is that changing burial practices in England due to spread of importance of purgatory. Location and treatment of corpse mattered a great deal, in order to attract prayers to speeds souls on to heaven. Smaller arguments include notion that in narrative, only non-Christians drown or die by falling.

Calls Christine de Pisan [sic] an “authoress.”
and despite something like 95% mortality from disease in the New World, calls “The Black Death…possibly the worst catastrophe that the human population has ever suffered.” Not even close.