Publisher's Synopsis
The expression Writing on Tombs used in the title of this book refers to all kind of texts involved in the making of a tomb during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: not only the inscriptions engraved in stone or marble, a constituent of the tomb and never an accessory element, but also the documentary, narrative or poetical sources concerning its form and iconography, its spiritual, symbolic, or political meaning, its perception or its "historicization". Along with tombs of great prestige, such as those of Frederick II and Boniface VIII, the papers collected in this volume deal with a huge variety of little-known burials, for patrons belonging to different social status and cultures across many regions of Europe over more than a millennium. The authors analyse how texts contributed to shaping the object-tomb through the reading or the re-reading of medieval textual sources, the function of the epitaphs and their manuscript tradition, the written and material reuse of the past, the epigraphical practices of writing, and the funerary customs in Modern Europe.
