Funérailles en temps d’épidémie

Abstract

Among the calamities of which past populations were victim, epidemics, especially plague, have long haunted popular imagination. The rear of contagion seems to have led to strange phantasms, in particular concerning the attitude of the people at the funerals of those dead from epidemics. Mass burials, exclusion and segregation are often characteristic of epidemic mortality crises described in the scarce textual and iconographic sources. The reality of funeral practices in such contexts has long been ignored but, in recent years, it has become a topic of debate thanks to dynamic interdisciplinary studies which take into account data from archaeology, anthropology and molecular biology. A first synthesis is offered in a comparative study of French rural and urban burial sites, containing graves related to the Black Death (1347-1352 AD). Comparison with other funerary sites related to epidemics at anterior and posterior historical periods and/or to other pathogens lead to debate about the variability of burial expressions during an epidemic from the roman to the modern period. Some aspects of the funeral process become more complex over time and then gradually show changes in practice that may be related, in large part, to the emergence of medical progress.

Keywords

• burials
• contagion
• epidemics
• funerary practices
• plague