"A History of Mourning" Richard Davey, 1890

“The body of Inez was lifted from the grave, placed on a magnificent throne, and crowned Queen of Portugal. The clergy, the nobility, and the people did homage to her corpse, and kissed the bones of her hands. There sat the dead Queen, with her yellow hair hanging like a veil round her ghastly form. One fleshless hand held the sceptre, and the other the orb of royalty. At night, after the coronation ceremony, a procession was formed of all the clergy and nobility, the religious orders and confraternities which extended over many miles each person holding a flaring torch in his hand, and thus walked from Coimbra to Alcobaga, escorting the crowned corpse to that royal abbey for interment. The dead Queen lay in her rich robes upon a chariot drawn by black mules and lighted up by hundreds of lights.”

Text and images drawn from A History of Mourning, by Richard Davey, 1890, as found on the wonderful Public Domain Review website.

Click on images to larger, more detailed images. Click here to peruse the entire book. And thanks so very much to Aaron Beebe for sending this along.