Le « sépulcre des pères » et les « ancêtres ». Notes sur le culte des défunts à l'âge seigneurial

Abstract

The Sepulchre of the Fathers and the Ancestors. Notes on the Cult of the Dead in the Feudal Age - Although judged useless as regards faith, funeral rites and the burials of the deceased were part of the Church office and became incorporated, especially since the Carolingian period, in an extensive and complex ritual founded on « memory ». During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the converging of ideas asserted both in the ancient culture and in the Bible, uses particular to customary societies, and practices linked to the assertion of feudal powers gave rise to a veritable « ancestors cult », as well as the constitution of familial sepulchres. Indissociable from some forms of exchange, funeral and commemorative rites of the feudal age are testimonies to the existence of a kind of social « covenant » between the two sides - lay and ecclesiastical - of the ruling class.