Talk:Mos Teutonicus

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 5 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sarag720. Peer reviewers: Sofialr3931.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Relics

There should be clarification on whose bones were venerated as relics and why. The current phrasing may lead one to believe that anyone whose corpse was so treated ran a high chance of being venerated. Although there was a brisk trade in false relics (vid. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), and several individuals whose bodies were macerated were venerated in their own right, there needs to be more substance to support not only who were so venerated but for what reasons. MoggieBleu (talk) 20:21, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Definition

There needs to be greater clarification, here. The act of macerating the flesh from the bones was not an integral part of the Mos Teutonicus practice. Although the papal bull Detestande feritatis (1299, 1300) decried the "mos horrible," the primary point of disgruntlement that Boniface had with the mos teutonicus interments was the separation of the body into parts for multiple burials (despite the Church's long history of translating relics and the fact that Augustine of Hippo indicated that separated bodies would be put to rights on Judgment Day), particularly by nobles so as to garner greater prayers for their souls. Even so, exemptions were often made, and the entire French royal family was exempt from the bull by 1351. Also, the distinction needs to be made between between mos teutonicus for convenience, for ritual/tradition, and for spiritual gain. Some useful sources not listed at this time:

• Bertelli, Sergio. The King’s Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. English edition, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park: 2001.
• Geary, Patrick J. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press: Ithaca: 1994.
• Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Burying and Unburying the Kings of France,” Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Richard Trexler, ed. (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985).

Should there be no objections, I shall edit this article to reflect this, as well as begin to link to certain individuals for whom such burials are documented. MoggieBleu (talk) 20:45, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Specific burial places

Hello!

The opening sentence of the sentence "Background" read "Nobles during the Middle Ages often had specific burial locations that were far away from their place of death." That sentence reads like their place of death was already determined when the burial location was selected. In order to avoid that, I corrected "were far away" to "might be far away". The user @Moist hammer reverted that on the grounds that the "might be" was already covered by the word "often". However, as the sentence stands, the word "often" clearly governs the selection of a specific burial site rather than it being far away from the place of death; otherwise it should have read: "Nobles during the Middle Ages had specific burial locations that were often far away from their place of death".

I only have access to the abstract of the work that is cited, but judging by that, the latter wording might indeed be what is meant. I have rewritten the sentence to conform to that. Nikolaj1905 (talk) 11:20, 22 June 2024 (UTC)