French historian Philippe Ariès theorised about societal attitudes towards death in Western culture. I should explain what is meant by western culture. These are the values, traditions and religious beliefs which originated in the ancient world dominated by the Greeks, Romans and Hebrew ideas. An example of this is that the Roman idea of worship of many gods gave way to the monotheism of the Hebrews (Richard, 2010, pp. xi–xiii) This form of religion moved with explorers and settlers to the Americas and East Indies. This brings me to question whether Ariès was speaking of the ancients of modern people. His book Western Attitudes Towards Death is subtitled “From the Middle Ages to the Present so the obvious answer seems to be that he is indeed generalising about modern Western culture. Yet Ariès’ idea of Western culture cannot be a single thing. There are many different cultures and religions or sects across the Western world which provide very different backdrops. In my own experience of living in Scotland, the culture dictates how funerals are traditionally run and how those who take part as the minister, those giving readings or the audience or congregation should behave. Move a few hundred miles north to The Hebrides, and different expectations apply, different forms with regards to funerary rites and even a different language might be used, that of Scots Gaelic. My tutor comes from Greece, so if I shift the focus 2,000 miles south, the culture changes again. Ariès speaks of the “embarrassingly graceless dying” when explaining death which is acceptable and can be tolerated by the living. (Ariès, 1975, p. 89) Is this sense of tolerable death a universal concept in all Western cultures? Is the self-conscious attitude to grief which claims that the act of grieving is solitary and somehow shameful (Gorer, 1965, p. 111) (Ariès, 1975, p. 90) common across many cultures including my own?
The history, culture, customs, folklore and religion of any country or part of a country are not always the same as a neighbouring place. If death practices and funerary rites can be influenced by culture, tradition, and history, it follows then that societal attitudes towards death cannot be a single thing spread across ‘Western culture’.
I am interested in geographical or cultural differences between different countries and peoples to try and answer whether there is anything unique about my own culture’s attitudes towards death and how society responds to grief. Professor Elaine McFarland of Glasgow Caledonian University writes of the differences which impact attitudes to death in Scotland. She says that foremost amongst these differences is the Reformation which resulted in the monopoly held by the church on death rites being eroded by secular forces [1] (Mcfarland, 2004) Writer Joyce Miller echoes this point by speaking of a “clampdown on a range of customs that the new church condemned as ‘ignorant superstition’ and profane past times.” (Miller, 2010, p. 242) Stewart Brown from Edinburgh University explains that the introduction of the ‘Westminster Directory’ which was a liturgical manual to replace the Book of Common Prayer written in 1644 provided a background to the church stepping back from funerals The manual stated, “that there should be no special religious services or prayers for the dead.”(Brown, 2010, p. 126) [2] McFarland tells us that the split between the catholic and protestant churches led to the church in Scotland withdrawing from the graveside. “The reformed religion in effect treated funerals and burials as civil acts, maintaining that burial. unlike baptism or marriage, was not a part of ministerial work.” (Mcfarland, 2004) [3] This withdrawal from the graveside also meant that graveyards were un-consecrated spaces
McFarland mentions wider reasons in Scotland for differing attitudes towards death other than those as a result of the Reformation. These include the Industrial Revolution, which led to the growth of population in cities and of leisure time and commercialisation.
In all of this, I wonder what is unique about Scotland; the reformation took place in countries other than Scotland, as did industrialisation. McFarland herself leaves her paper with an open-ended conclusion, “sketched a century’ of change in which death in Scotland was individualised, sentimentalised, rationalised and ultimately commercialised. These processes were complex and uneven, but together they had a decisive impact on burial practice and funeral observance The discussion has also suggested that there remains a huge agenda for death research, offering a unique vantage point for the study of Scottish history. The substantive issues explored here, including the development of the garden cemetery and the rise of the funeral trades require fuller investigation”.(Mcfarland, 2004)
References
Ariès, P. (1975) Western Attitudes towards Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present: 3 (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Compative History). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Brown, S. J. (2010) ‘Beliefs and Religions’, in Morton, G. and Griffiths, T. (eds) A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 336.
Edgar, A. (1885) Old church life in Scotland : lectures on kirk-session and presbytery records. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. Available at: https://archive.org/details/oldchurchlifeins00edga (Accessed: 27 March 2023).
Gorer, G. (1965) Death, Grief, and Mourning in Contemporary Britain. London: The Cresset Press. Available at: https://archive.org/details/deathgriefmourni0000gore/page/n9/mode/2up.
Mcfarland, E. (2004) ‘Researching Death, Mourning and Commemoration in Modern Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 24(1), pp. 20–44. doi: 10.3366/jshs.2004.24.1.20.
Miller, J. (2010) ‘Beliefs, Religions, Fears and Neuoses’, in Foyster, E. and Whatley, C. A. (eds) A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 to 1800. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 352.
Richard, C. J. (2010) Why We’re All Romans: The Roman Contribution to the Western World. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
[1] The rituals and conventions surrounding death, mourning and commemoration were by no means exempt from this process. Furthermore, as a country where the Reformation had a particularly comprehensive impact on culture and society, Scotland presents a stark example of a phenomenon that has fascinated death historians – the process through which the church’s monopoly on death rites was increasingly eroded by secular forces.
[2] The Westminster Directory was insistent that there be no special religious services or prayers for the dead. The seventeenth-century framers of the Directory had feared that funeral services would promote the delusion that prayers for the dead could influence their eternal fate.
[3] Both the First Book of Discipline (1560) and the Westminster Directory (1645) discountenanced religious ceremonies at funerals, dreading the Popish practices, such as prayers for the dead, which attempted to secure the salvation of the deceased through the efforts of the living. Christ’s sacrifice, the Kirk proclaimed, had vanquished death for the believer. Thus, the grave became an exemplar to the living, and the dead were to be buried, ‘with such gravity and sobriety as those be present may seeme to fear the judgement of God, and to hate sin, which is the cause of death’ (Edgar, 1885, pp. 230–231)