ABSTRACT
The continuity between the world of the living and the world of the dead is a well-known trope in Christianity. It is a theme that fits in particularly well in the medieval period, an eminently religious time when the link between the living and the dead was governed by invisible powers and the frontier between the two remained blurred. Once a person died, the community had a duty to look after the body and the soul of the deceased. There were three categories of commemorative rites: short-, medium-, and long-term. The present study aims to present the succession of after-death rituals performed by families, close communities, guilds, and fraternities, as well as the more extended community of the faithful, in Transylvanian medieval towns. The key sources for this exploration include: testaments, the records of guilds and fraternities, and codices.
