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The Church Monuments Society’s & the Ecclesiological Society’s “Last Rites” conference: 1/10/22

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At the Church Monuments Society’s and the Ecclesiological Society’s joint conference on 1 October about funerals and funeral monuments in the medieval, early modern, and Victorian periods Sally Badham will be talking about heraldic funerals. Their purpose was the symbolic transfer of rights, obligations and social position from the deceased to the heir, investing him with his predecessor’s dignitaries. Yet by the fourteenth century it had already become the practice at funerals of royalty and the nobility to have a prominent display of heraldry. Their heyday was in Elizabethan England, by which time their organisation was the perquisite of the College of Arms and they were characterised by lengthy and spectacular processions to the church involving official male mourners. Book here