The annual all Hallows lecture: ‘In the Hour of our Death: deathbed and funeral liturgies depicted on tomb carvings’ by Professor Madeleine Gray
When
Where
online
‘In the Hour of our Death: deathbed and funeral liturgies depicted on tomb carvings’
By Professor Madeleine Gray
Madeleine Gray is Professor Emerita of Ecclesiastical History at the University of South Wales. She has studied the material culture of religion in Wales in the late medieval and early modern periods and is currently working on a database of medieval tomb carvings in Wales. This lecture focuses on the kneeling figures on the Berkerolles tomb chests at St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. Hideously overpainted, they are nevertheless full of interest. They all have speech scrolls or books, suggesting they are actually performing some of the liturgies with which the medieval church surrounded deathbeds, funerals and the commemoration of the dead. This had to be done correctly: there are stories featuring ghosts and revenants who came back to complain that their rites had not been done properly!
The lecture is FREE but must be booked in advance: go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/annual-all-hallows-lecture-2025-church-monuments-society-tickets-1573674415539?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
BOOK NOW and the link to the Zoom lecture will be sent to you in due course.
Image: courtesy of Prof. Madeleine Gray.