Abstract
Visitors to western Brittany in the nineteenth century were impressed by three attributes of Breton culture: the Celtic language and traditions, Catholic piety and a remarkable veneration for the dead. A départemental administrator who toured Finistère in 1829–31, remarked ‘nothing is more sacred… than the veneration given to the dead, than the religion of the tomb’ (Badone, 1989, pp. 1–2).
A very strange practice takes place in Brittany. The kin of the deceased unearth the dead after several years, when they believe that the soil will have absorbed all of the decomposed flesh. The recovered bones are then placed in a small building constructed… near to the church, the ossuary. Often, great zeal does not allow time for the complete defleshing of the corpse and shreds of putrefying flesh attract dogs which no-one cares to chase away. (Mérimée, 1836, pp. 164–5)
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© 1997 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Musgrave, E. (1997). Memento Mori: The Function and Meaning of Breton Ossuaries 1450–1750. In: Jupp, P.C., Howarth, G. (eds) The Changing Face of Death. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25300-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25300-5_5
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