Alexander
Murray.
Suicide in the Middle Ages, Volume II: The Curse on
Self-Murder.
Oxford University
Press, 2000.
xxiv,620pp, 17 plates,
5 figures, 3
maps.
Hardback, ISBN
019820731X.
Publisher's
recommended price £30.00
A group
of men dig
a tunnel under the threshold of a house. Then they go and fetch a
heavy,
sagging object from inside the house, pull it out through the tunnel,
and
put it on a cow-hide to be dragged off and thrown into the offal-pit.
Why
should the corpse of a suicide - for that is what it is - have earned
this
unusual treatment? In The Curse on Self-Murder, the second
volume
of his three-part Suicide in the Middle Ages, Alexander Murray
explores
the origin of the condemnation of suicide, in a quest which leads along
the most unexpected byways of medieval theology, law, mythology, and
folklore
- indeed, in some instances far beyond them. At an epoch when there
might
be plenty of ostensible reasons for not wanting to live, the
ways
used to block the suicidal escape route give a unique perspective on
medieval
religion.
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