Caring for Body and Soul
Subtitle: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: September 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9780271021966
Subjects: Death & Dying; European history: c 500 to c 1500; Social history; c 500 CE to c 1000 CE; Social Science; Archaeology / Anthropology; Sociology; Europe; Ethnic Studies - General; Spirituality - General; Funeral customs and rites; Funeral rites and ceremonies; Gaul; History; Merovingians
Description: "The relationship between the living and the dead was especially significant in defining community identity and spiritual belief in the early medieval world. Peter Brown has called it the "joining of Heaven and Earth." For clerics and laypersons alike, funerals and burial sites were important means for establishing or extending power over rival families and monasteries and commemorating ancestors.

In Caring for Body and Soul, Bonnie Effros reveals the social significance of burial rites in early medieval Europe during the time of the Merovingian, or so-called "Long-Haired" Kings from 500 to 800 C.E."--BOOK JACKET.