ABSTRACT
In one of the most impressive (albeit strange) funerary customs ever to have evolved at medieval European courts, the deceased but soon-to-be-buried prince appeared suddenly in full armor, mounted on his best horse, processing in his own funeral train. At least this was the distinct impression left to the astonished mourners following the rider, whose face could not be distinguished because of the closed helmet visor but whose stature resembled strongly that of the deceased, and whose suit of armor, weapons and steed identified the departed. When the knight also displayed the symbols of death – his coat of arms upturned, his weapons often disordered or broken – he must have looked even more weird and ghostly. The mysterious rider appeared not on his own, but only as one element of a
specific and rather complex funeral protocol. These new rites culminated now in a solemn procession of mourners coming to the church where the knight was to be buried carrying offerings for the repose of his soul, donations certainly of money but (perhaps of greater literal and symbolic value) the armor and horses that had formerly been the property of the deceased. Neither any specific geographic pointof-origin nor any distinct paths of diffusion for this funerary ritual have been identified to date. Historians can follow generally the beginnings of this custom from roughly 1300, although it might have emerged at least half a century earlier. By the time that this eerie rite is definitely attested in our sources – from about the mid-fourteenth century – the practice had spread widely and quite rapidly, reaching across the continent to the most influential courts of Central and Western Europe in just a few decades.
