Citation

Harte J. Time Mind 2011; 4(3): 263-282.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Berg Publishers)

DOI

10.2752/175169711X13046099195438

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The ignominious burial of suicides at crossroads, including the desecration of their bodies, was required by law in England until 1823. Such inhumane treatment has been seen as evidence for the survival of a primitive superstitious mentality, trying to exorcise a potentially harmful ghost. This interpretation of suicide burial as an essentially archaic practice, lingering unchanged into later and more merciful times, is drawn from the similarity between these interments and the outcast burials found in North European tradition and Anglo-Saxon boundary cemeteries. But a closer reading of the historical evidence shows that this apparent continuity is an illusion. Outcast burial was not a response to suicide in itself, but a way of pillorying exceptional offenders against the moral code. In the Middle Ages it was extremely rare, and the degrading burial of suicides only became routine in the 1570s, when it expressed Tudor ideologies of moral control through the physical humiliation of deviants. The meaning of suicide burial is to be found, not in ancient survivals, but in the need of an increasingly punitive society for scapegoats. © Berg 2011.

Language: en

Keywords

Suicide; Punishment; Boundaries; Burial; Crossroads; Scapegoats