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Violence against the Dead: The Negative Translation and damnatio memoriae in the Middle Ages

Soul and body; God and Satan; heaven and hell; salvation and damnation; sanctity and heresy. These are some of the familiar binaries throughwhichChristianity’s tacit dualism has traditionally been expressed—concepts that simultaneously mirror and construct one another. This study focuses on the binary of sanctity and heresy and the very concrete rituals throughwhich these two polarities were enacted in theMiddle Ages. The ultimate rite of recognition for the saint was the posthumous translation of relics, publicly acknowledging that the soul of the deceased was, indeed, already in heaven, and that, while the blessed bodywas still on earth, itmerited a better resting place. By the High Middle Ages, this ritual of saint making had spawned a dark counterpart for the treatment of Christians already deceased but believed to be damned. The cadavers of excommunicates and heretics were not only routinely exhumed from consecrated ground and relocated to ignoble places, but, in the case of heretics, destroyed. Hence, unlike its saintly analogue, destined for a better resting place, the damnable body was, in the terms ofMary Douglas, “matter out of place,” with all the pollution-laden connotations that this phrase implies. In what follows, I will examine the evolution of this punitive rite of desecration—a procedure to which I will refer as the negative translation. Intrinsic to both ritual and antiritual is the issue of memory. Medieval society demonstrated considerable virtuosity in its commemoration of the deserving dead. They were honored by extravagant funerals and elaborate displays of grief. They were remembered through prayers, Masses, and various suffrages. The obligation of remembrance was so deeply felt that specific groups were sometimes entrusted with this demanding task: Patrick Geary has demonstrated that it was women who were responsible for remembering family members in the early Middle Ages, only