Body Visitors
I would just like to share a quote I have just come across on a website about plagues. I felt it too good to keep to myself.
'When St. Thomas à Becket was prepared for burial in England in 1170, he was found to be wearing (from the outside in) (i) a large brown mantle, (ii) a white surplice, (iii) a coat of lambs' wool, (iv) a woolen pelisse, (v) another woolen pelisse, (vi) the black robe of the Benedictine order, (vii) a shirt, and (viii) a tight-fitting suit of coarse hair-cloth covered on the exterior with linen. During preparation for burial the cold English air stimulated so many of the critters occupying his hair suit that it "boiled over with them like water in a simmering cauldron."'
posted by Clare Dudman at 3:26 pm
10 Comments:
As if I needed another reason to be thankful that I didn't live in the Middle Ages, you have supplied a wonderful one here.
Heh, heh. Agreed! Particularly vivid image, I thought!
Love!
:-)
Suddenly I'm feeling particularly crawly. :)
Yikes! thanks for sharing, I think :-)
Fabulousa!! Now that's what I call dressing for the occasion!
Exactly what I felt, Mary! Which is why I just had to share :-)
My pleasure, Sue *evil grin*
Hi Pat! Heh. Yes, quite so....
Love that! Reminds me of the descriptions of the opening of eighteenth-century "heads," those towering peaks of hair: the bugs and mice would shoot away from air and light when the hairdresser "opened the head."
It also reminds me of a marvelous description in Leon Garfield's "Smith." If you have not read it, you should, Clare--I feel sure you would like it very much.
Thanks Marly - I've not read either of those. I shall add to the wishlist.
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