Heart burial

"Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries AD extracting the inner organs from dead bodies and burying the heart in a separate place was a hallmark of aristocratic mortuary behavior of Western Europe (present-day Great Britain and France). In the German-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire (parts of present-day Germany and Austria) only the prince-bishops of Würzburg practiced a similar custom. In other parts of the Empire body processing and separate burial of the inner organs remained predominantly functional until the end of the middle Ages.
A tradition of evisceration for non-practical reasons as well as burial of the heart only developed during the Catholic Reformation, a religious movement, which lasted from the last session of the Council of Trent until the end of the Thirty Years’ War. The spur of renovation and new foundation that accompanied this movement had a direct impact on the distribution of body parts. As of the 1580s heart and intestines of secular and religious leaders were buried in newly founded ceremonial buildings. Between 1610 and 1630 heart burial without intestines became very common and was almost exclusively associated with Jesuit churches. As of the 1630s hearts were buried at a variety of places and involved many different religious orders. From the middle of the seventeenth century on hearts turned into votive offerings at Marian shrines for several prominent families such as the Houses of Habsburg and Wittelsbach."

This paper was presented at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850,  Fort Worth, Texas, February 2013.  It was the result of a master's thesis research trip funded by the University of North Texas.  In October 2013, it was chosen for publication in the Selected Papers Collection. 

Heart burial is most often associated with the medieval period. Although there were periodic cessations, heart burial persisted in the royal houses of Europe through to the modern day.  The motivations for heart burial evolved over time to survive, though certain elements remain salient in the twenty-first century.

Heart burial is a funerary practice that has been performed since the early medieval period. However, relatively little scholarship has been published on it in English. Heart burial began as a pragmatic way to preserve a body, but it became a meaningful tradition in Western Europe during the medieval and early modern periods. In an anthropological context, the ritual served the needs of elites and the societies they governed. Elites used heart burial not only to preserve their bodies, but to express devotion, stabilize the social order and advocate legitimacy, and even gain heaven. Heart burial assisted the elite Christian, his or her family, and society pass through the liminal period of death. Over the centuries, heart burial evolved to remain relevant. The practice is extant to the present day, though the motivations behind it are very different from those of the medieval and early modern periods.