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Article NOTES UPON FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. Page 1 of 4 →
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Notes Upon Funeral Solemnities.
NOTES UPON FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES .
BY THE AUTHOR OF 11 THE SYMBOLICAL CHARACTER OF MEDI / EVAL HERALDRY AHD ITS CONNECTION WITH FREEMASONRY . " IN these utilitarian and economic days , what is usually
termed a " Highly respectable Funeral , " bears but few traces of the solemnities with which the Church in days of yore was wont to receive into her courts , and consign to the earth the mouldering remains of her " faithful soldiers and servants . " To the reflecting and observant mind which wanders from the beaten track , and sickened by the dull
commonplace and stern realities of the present day , gladly seeks refreshment and relaxation , in perusing , and realizing to itself , the ideal glories of the past , to such a mind the faint traces of holy ceremonies and time-honoured customs which have escaped the wreck of " powers and principalities" of ancient institutions and noble families are doubly and trebly dear . It is in such a progress from the present to the past , that the philosopher of the nineteenth century , discovers
that not only our laws and our public institutions belong to , and have been handed down to us by ages , ignorantly and falsely called " The Dark , " but that our most insignificant customs and conventionalities , so familiar , and so little thought of , are the shadows of holy ceremonies or hospitable rites condemned as obsolete , and doomed to survive only in
a degraded and transmuted state . The funeral ceremonies of the middle ages form indeed a most interesting subject for consideration , replete with facts more particularly valuable to the historian , the archaeologist , and the herald . It is in their connection with heraldry that we shall attempt to point out the most
remarkable features in the ceremonies attending the burial of the dead in the middle ages . Indeed , in our comparison between the funeral solemnities of the period to which we allude , and the present time , the only point of similarity between them which strikes the mind is this very fact , namely , the application of the rules
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Notes Upon Funeral Solemnities.
NOTES UPON FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES .
BY THE AUTHOR OF 11 THE SYMBOLICAL CHARACTER OF MEDI / EVAL HERALDRY AHD ITS CONNECTION WITH FREEMASONRY . " IN these utilitarian and economic days , what is usually
termed a " Highly respectable Funeral , " bears but few traces of the solemnities with which the Church in days of yore was wont to receive into her courts , and consign to the earth the mouldering remains of her " faithful soldiers and servants . " To the reflecting and observant mind which wanders from the beaten track , and sickened by the dull
commonplace and stern realities of the present day , gladly seeks refreshment and relaxation , in perusing , and realizing to itself , the ideal glories of the past , to such a mind the faint traces of holy ceremonies and time-honoured customs which have escaped the wreck of " powers and principalities" of ancient institutions and noble families are doubly and trebly dear . It is in such a progress from the present to the past , that the philosopher of the nineteenth century , discovers
that not only our laws and our public institutions belong to , and have been handed down to us by ages , ignorantly and falsely called " The Dark , " but that our most insignificant customs and conventionalities , so familiar , and so little thought of , are the shadows of holy ceremonies or hospitable rites condemned as obsolete , and doomed to survive only in
a degraded and transmuted state . The funeral ceremonies of the middle ages form indeed a most interesting subject for consideration , replete with facts more particularly valuable to the historian , the archaeologist , and the herald . It is in their connection with heraldry that we shall attempt to point out the most
remarkable features in the ceremonies attending the burial of the dead in the middle ages . Indeed , in our comparison between the funeral solemnities of the period to which we allude , and the present time , the only point of similarity between them which strikes the mind is this very fact , namely , the application of the rules