Cenotaph

“ At the end of the third year I waxed aweary of this longsome mourning, and one day I happened to enter the cenotaph when vexed and angry with some matter which had thwarted me, and suddenly I heard her say:—O my lord, I never hear thee vouch safe a single word to me! Why dost thou not answer me, O my master? and she began reciting:—
O thou tomb! O, thou tomb! be his beauty set in shade? * Hast thou darkened that countenance all sheeny as the noon?
O thou tomb! neither earth nor yet heaven art to me * Then how cometh it in thee are conjoined my sun and moon? ”

“ Tear up the weeds that are incessantly growing there, ere he who was placed little lower than the angels, becomes an empty cenotaph—a stranger’s grave—mouldering and mingling with his mother earth unheeded and unknown. ”

“ MAUSOLEUM, the term given to a monument erected to receive the remains of a deceased person, which may sometimes take the form of a sepulchral chapel. The term cenotaph (κενός, empty, τάφος, tomb) is employed for a similar monument where the body is not buried in the structure. ”

“ The tomb is thus no mere passage through which the soul goes on its way to another region of the world; it is a lasting residence. “This,” says an inscription, “is our certain dwelling, the one which we must inhabit.” [109] In the Aeneid, a cenotaph is raised to Polydorus, whose body had been lost, and his “soul” is installed there by a funeral ceremony, [110] for the shade which has no sepulchre wanders, as we shall see, about the earth. But when a fine monument is given to a dead man, he is happy to be able to offer hospitality there to passers-by and invites them to stay on their way. ”

“ On the 6th of February 1841 the coffin was taken from the imperial cenotaph and placed in the chapel of St. Jerome, in the Church of the Invalides where it was to remain till the completion of the mausoleum some years later. ”

“ People now learned that the spirits of the dead, which had always been accredited with divine influence, might be present in their midst in some unrecognisable form. The ancestor before whose cenotaph a man burned incense might be watching him from the eyes of the ox that had drawn him to the temple, and the baying of a dog at the fall of the moon might be a voice from the grave of an honoured relative. ”

“ The cenotaphs and funeral monuments fall next to be noticed. Of these the most splendid is the monument to the Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, consisting of nine figures. Besides the two for the Roman pontiffs already mentioned, there is one for Alfieri, another for Emo, a Venetian admiral, and a small model of a cenotaph for Nelson, besides a great variety of monumental rilievos. ”

“ It is true that all the more serious evils of want of burial were obviated by an inhumation of a merely formal character. The dead man who in the ode of Horace [1] begs the passer-by to give him formal or ceremonial burial, tells him that it will be quite sufficient if he casts over the body three handfuls of dry earth. If the body of a man was lost at sea, or otherwise had become undiscoverable, an empty tomb or cenotaph was erected, and his spirit laid with ceremonies. ”

“ When the people are poor and cannot afford to buy gold for the above purpose, a piece of yellow cloth is considered as the most suitable substitute. The body, thus attired, is laid in a very massive coffin, made, not with planks, but of a single piece of timber hollowed in the middle for receiving the earthly frame of the deceased. A splendid cenotaph, raised in the centre of a large building erected for the purpose, is prepared to support a large chest wherein the coffin is deposited. ”

“ Many buildings of the more simple kind erected in honour of saints, and some of the larger description, are mere cenotaphs, or cover only some relic of the person to whom they are dedicated. The tombs and cenotaphs or shrines of saints are visited by numerous persons, and on frequent occasions ”

“ The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties, in time, manner, places. The variety of Monuments hath often obscured true graves: and Cenotaphs confounded Sepulchres. For beside their real Tombs, many have found honorary and empty Sepulchres. ”

“ But after forty years, when I have built my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting there—no, not for such a life as we once pictured—you call me to the altar. At your summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed your life. What is there for me but your decay and death? And therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the sexton’s deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and enter it together. ”

“ The one buried that day I had known, or she had known me in my boyhood, and it was expected that I would attend. My mother sent the wreath that belongs,—there is both sense and sentiment in flowers at a funeral when they are wreathed by the hands of those who loved the dead, as is still the custom here; none where they are bought at a florist's and paid for with a growl,—and we stood around the coffin and sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we passed through the gate. ”

“ They make between them one of the solemn places of Rome--although indeed when funereal things are so interfused it seems ungrateful to call them sad. Here is a mixture of tears and smiles, of stones and flowers, of mourning cypresses and radiant sky, which gives us the impression of our looking back at death from the brighter side of the grave. The cemetery nestles in an angle of the city wall, and the older graves are sheltered by a mass of ancient brickwork, through whose narrow loopholes you peep at the wide purple of the Campagna. ”

“ Every circumstance of the funeral is meant to force joy upon the mourners. The child, dressed in white garments, and crowned with a wreath of flowers, is followed by the officiating priest in silk robes of the same colour; and the clergymen who attend him to the house from whence the funeral proceeds to the church, sing in joyful strains the psalm Laudate, pueri, Dominum, while the bells are heard ringing a lively peal. The coffin, without a lid, exposes to the view the little corpse covered with flowers, as four well-dressed children bear it, amidst the lighted tapers of the clergy. ”

“ At present we have considered only the different modes of burial during the Middle Ages, but we may now proceed to speak of the coffin and the tomb. No work of art is more curious, or fuller of historical and picturesque information, than the funeral monuments of all ages. But it must be remembered that there is a marked distinction between the coffin and the tomb, one being the receptacle of the dead, the other only a monument raised to mark the spot of ground in which the coffin has been interred. ”

“ My dear brothers and sisters, in accordance with our usual custom, we visit to-day our beautiful cemetery, not to mourn for our dead, but to rejoice that our Lord has risen from the grave to give us eternal life; for with Him shall rise all those who follow in His holy footsteps here below. Therefore, as we put not on the garb of mourning, let us not grieve in our hearts when we think of our loved ones who have gone home before us, but clasp each other's hands and be glad together, that through the blessed Redeemer such happiness has been vouchsafed to them. ”

“ Most powerful of all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one—sentiment. It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed, shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than does the crematory. ”

“ When a public funeral took place it is true that an oration was delivered at the grave; we have record of orations pronounced by Pericles and Demosthenes over those who had fallen in battle on various occasions. Sometimes also there was a funeral feast at the tomb. But in ordinary cases the mourners seem to have returned immediately after the burial to partake of the funeral feast at the house of a near relative or heir of the deceased, who was himself regarded as the host on the occasion. By thus eating and drinking with the dead, the survivors entered into a kind of sacred communion with him ”

“ When I returned to the cathedral, a man was digging a grave; in the church, they were finishing a service around a bier, and a young woman was having a child's cap blessed at an altar: she placed it, with a visible expression of joy, in a basket which she carried on her arm, and went away laden with her treasure. The next day, I found the grave in the cemetery closed up, a vessel of holy water placed on the fresh earth, and some fennel-seed sprinkled for the little birds: already they were alone, beside that corpse of a night. ”

“ At the cemetery the graves are almost buried beneath the offerings of yellow papers, which are blown about by the winds until they form in drifts, like the snow in the streets of the cities of the Atlantic coast. Red candles', of vegetable wax, are lighted and stuck in the ground by thousands; and a cloth being spread upon the ground at the foot of each grave by its particular visitor, the feast is arranged upon it, the cups filled with sam-shoo, tea, etc., and then the living friend, bowing with solemn politeness, invites the disembodied spirit or spirits to come and help themselves. ”

“ Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, The gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses. The coffin is pass'd out, lower'd and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel'd in, The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence, A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done, He is decently put away—is there anything more? ”

“ Thus, all the coffins which contained the bodies of martyrs, nobles, prelates, or kings, were exposed to the view of the faithful, and served for tombs, so that these illustrious persons were not, in the true sense of the term, interred. The stone chest in which the body was placed being both a coffin and a funeral monument, was not hidden beneath a tombstone, but remained visible in a church—not in a sepulchral cave, but above ground, often, indeed, raised upon columns. ”

“ Beyond the park through the green foliage could be seen the white palace of the king.
While rambling through the streets we saw a funeral procession. First came many banners and symbols of the Greek Church, carried by church officials; then followed the casket borne by men, the casket open and the pale face of the dead exposed to the gaze of the onlookers; a man came next carrying the lid of the coffin filled with flowers; then priests in black robes, men and [Pg 124] women in black, and girls in white holding wreaths and flowers. ”

“ Presently someone said:
“There’s the Devil.”
I looked up and saw a priest standing in the shade of the tree by the cemetery gate.
The hearse was drawn up and the tail-boards were opened. The funeral extinguished its right ear with its hat as four men lifted the coffin out and laid it over the grave. The priest—a pale, quiet young fellow—stood under the shade of a sapling which grew at the head of the grave. He took off his hat, dropped it carelessly on the ground, and proceeded to business. I noticed that one or two heathens winced slightly when the holy water was sprinkled on the coffin. ”

“ The day is fine and a ride to the out-of-town cemetery pleasant, and (to them) inexpensive; they whose eyes scarce rested with interest on the living form, gaze ceremoniously and curiously on the dead; the widow’s tears are counted, the mourning dresses of herself and children scrutinized; the prayer that always falls so immeasurably short of what critical ears demand, is said; a great silence—then a rustling—bustling—whispering—then the coffin is borne past the widow, who sees it through a mist of tears ”

“ Their burial-ground was a cemetery, that is, a sleeping-place; they regarded the dead as put there to await the awakening; the body was depositus, that is, intrusted to the grave, while the heathen was situs or sepultus, interred or buried,—the words implying a final and definitive position. And as the Christian dormit or quiescit, sleeps or rests in death, so the heathen is described as abreptus, or defunctus, snatched away or departed from life.
Again, the contrast between the inscriptions is marked, and in a sadder way, by the difference of the expressions of mourning and grief. ”

“ All that must now be thought of, is how to deceive the commander of the believers; and I am of opinion, that you should immediately cause a wooden image resembling a dead body to be carved. We will shroud it up in linen, and when shut up in a coffin, it shall be buried in some part of the palace; you shall then immediately cause a marble mausoleum to be built, in the form of a dome, over the burial place, and erect a tomb, which shall be covered with embroidered cloth, and set about with great candlesticks and large wax tapers. ”

“ A lucky place and day have then to be fixed, by fortune-tellers, for the burial, and should these not be forthcoming, the coffin would be placed on a hill till they can be found. Burial is considered of so much importance, that should a man be drowned his spirit would be called back into a figure of wood or paper, and buried with pomp. Before the grave-diggers begin their work, members of the family worship the genii of the mountain, and write letters to these gods, asking them to be so kind as to allow the funeral to take place. ”