ABSTRACT

Conflicts concerning the appearance of churchyards are regularly understood within a framework of aesthetics but should instead be considered as religiously based. Because the Protestant norms that graveyards embody are often overlooked, it is not fully recognised how they repress non-prescribed forms of religion and with them connected understandings of consolation. Religious practices in connection with grave visiting in contemporary Europe have been under-researched, with Bailey as a prominent exception. Protestantism distanced itself at the outset from the material side of religion and contested Roman Catholic material culture. Violent iconoclasms, and intense theological debates about the sacrament of the Holy Communion, all centred on the view that the only thing that could make God present was the word of God. The transformation of the dead into ashes made it possible to place the remains of the dead in new ways without causing hygienic problems.