Death and Memorial in Scotland
French historian, Philippe Ariès theorised about societal attitudes towards death in western culture. Yet Ariès’ idea of Western culture cannot be a single thing. There are many different cultures and religions across the west which provide very different backdrops. 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 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. 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 what if there is anything unique about my own culture’s attitudes towards death and how society responded 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 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 lead 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 lead to 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.
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.
[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)