Event Details

Lindy Grant (Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, University of Reading) will discuss: Blanche of Castile, St Louis and the Culture of Death.

This paper will focus on the burial practices of the Capetian royal family of France in the thirteenth century. Where were the royal family buried? What drove their choice of place of burial? What were their tombs like? Who commissioned their tombs? How did their burial practices compare with those of other royal families, of Castile, or England? How didtheir burial practices compare with those of the great French aristocracy –were the royal family setting trends, or following them? How far do burial practices reveal the Capetian’s sense of themselves as a dynasty – and as a family? For family and dynasty are not the same thing, and I will argue that Blanche of Castile, queen regent of France from 1226 to 1234, and her son,Louis IX, king from 1226 to 1270, held a strong line on dynastic burial, while also ensuring appropriate and often affecting commemoration of other members of the family, especially the young.