Why the English Buried Suicides at Crossroads
The history of profane burial practices
Source-Public Domain
Human history has witnessed different burial practices and customs with regard to different cultures. From the ancient Egyptian mummification procedures to sky burial in Tibet (where a human corpse is placed on the mountain to be eaten by scavenging animals), the burial practices have differed from conventional ones to profane customs.
A ‘profane’ burial was the one where the body of the deceased was desecrated and not given the same burial respects required when the person died and the soul left for heavenly abode.
In Europe, from the 16th century to the pre-modern era, profane burial practices were observed, where the bodies of the suicide victims were buried across the crossroads, and suicide was considered an act of felony and unholiness.
Suicide was considered a crime
In ancient Greek and Roman societies, “self-death” was treated with ambivalent feelings. The people had more liberal notions and free will to understand that if a person had a miserable life it is better to depart from the world in peace rather than sustaining a painful one. Theodore of Tarsus, the seventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury, pardoned suicide cases and treated them as an act of desperation by the…
