The Funeral Cortege in the Peninsular Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The funeral cortege in the Peninsular Middle Ages was one of the most relevant and public moments of the ritual of the liturgy of the dead. In this article, we will analyze how the cortege occurred by describing its participants, the large audience by the secular mass, the liturgical objects carried ahead, the ambience created by sounds and odors and the expressions of pain and grieving. We used medieval sources in order to substance our thesis and, afterwards, we will analyze the depiction of corteges and scenes of grieving in funerary monuments.