Suicide in the Middle Ages: Volume ii: The Curse on Self-Murder
Alexander Murray
Abstract
A group of men dig a tunnel under the threshold of a house. Then they go and fetch a heavy, sagging object from inside the house, pull it out through the tunnel, and put it on a cow-hide to be dragged off and thrown into the offal-pit. Why should the corpse of a suicide—for that is what it is—have earned this unusual treatment? This book explores the origin of the condemnation of suicide, in a quest which leads along the most unexpected byways of medieval theology, law, mythology, and folklore—and, indeed, in some instances beyond them. In an epoch when there might be plenty of ostensible reas ... More
Keywords: suicide, condemnation of suicide, medieval theology, law, mythology, folklore, medieval religion
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2000 | Print ISBN-13: 9780198207313 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207313.001.0001 |
