A Timeline for Taphophiles

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

1000	Aleut Indians embalm bodies by removal of fatty tissues and immersion in running water. The Church bans cremation.
1009	The destruction of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre by an overenthusiastic Muslim caliph leads to the Crusades.
1048	St. Odilo of Cluny institutes the first All Souls Day.
1066	The bones of St. Cuthbert are used to motivate the troops of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.
1080	Christian doctors trained at Salerno, Italy, learn anatomy from dissecting pigs.
1096	Japanese Emperor Shirakawa is so upset by the death of his daughter Teishi that he shaves his head and becomes a Buddhist monk. He retains control, however, of temporal affairs.
1098	King Henry I of England orders St. Edward the Confessor's coffin opened to satisfy his curiosity. Witnesses claim the century and a half old corpse to be still fresh and supple. Rochester's Bishop Gundulf steals a hair from Edward's beard, an act for which he is soundly scolded by Westminster's abbot.
1099	The First Crusade comes to an end as Crusaders massacre the inhabitants of Jerusalem, causing the streets to run with blood.
1100	St. Ivo of Chartres states that the dead can neither be tried nor denied burial.
1128	The Bishop of Saint-Brieuc forbids burial at the foot of crosses at the crossroads.
1135	Henry I is embalmed using "Egyptian" methods despite Church discouragement of the practice.
1142	Peter Abelard dies enroute to Rome. His beloved Heloise is entrusted with the body.
1150	Vikings robbing the great chamber tomb of Maes Howe in Orkney leave a Runic inventory of the goods they have plundered.
1163	The Council of Tours declares that clerical physicians should abstain from autopsies to avoid shedding blood. St. Edward the Confessor's remains are moved to a new shrine within Westminster Abbey by order of Henry II.
1164	Heloise dies and is entombed with her beloved Abelard.
1170	A feudal Japanese warrior establishes an unusual precedent for declaring one's loyalty by committing seppuku. Thomas á Beckett is murdered by Henry II's henchmen. His martyrdom later inspires Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Peter Glenville's film Becket.
1178	Monks from St. Albans dig in the Hills of the Banners near Redbourn to recover what they believe to be the bones of St. Amphibalus.
1186	Phillp the Fair rebuilds the wall around Paris's Cimitiere des SS. Innocents to discourage prostitution.
1191	England's Glastonbury Abbey burns, revealing an old burial ground. Within this the monks find a hollow log marked with a lead cross and the name of King Arthur. The skeleton of a blonde woman found in the same grave is identified by the monks as that of Guenivere. Donations for the rebuilding of the monastery consequently increase.
1199	Richard the Lion Heart dies. His lion-heart is removed and buried separately from his body. A barrow at Ludlow, England is opened and three human skeletons found therein are hailed as those of three Irish saints.
1207	King John objects to Pope Innocent III's choice for Archbishop of Canterbury. The Vatican places an interdict on England, during which no sacraments or masses can be said. Corpses pile up all over creating major health problems for the next six years.
1213	Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict after King John allows Stephen Langton to return to England as Archbishop of Canterbury.
1231	The Council of Rouen threatens those who dance in churches or cemeteries with excommunication.
1235	Human dissections are allowed at the University of Salerno.
1241	King Valdemar II of Denmark declares that "any silver or gold" found in a barrow belongs to the King.
1247	Chinese manual on autopsy, The Washing Away of Unjust Wrongs, describes how to determine cause of death by violence, burning, or drowning.
1255	Italian poet and monk Thomas of Celaeno dies, leaving behind the lyrics to the hymn Dies Irae.
1267	England's Bishop Quevil orders that cemeteries in his diocese be enclosed so that animals should not graze there.
1269	Henry III funds the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. The bones of St. Edward the Confessor get moved to a new, jewel-encrusted shrine.
1278	Edward I orders the remains of Arthur and Guenivere placed in a black marble tomb at Glastonbury Abbey. Their skulls are put on display and their bones wrapped in silk.
1294	Pope Boniface VIII prohibits the separate burial of the heart, but this is later withdrawn by Pope Benedict XI.
1313	The body of Gherado of Florence (d. 1250) is tried for heresy.
1315	Mondino de Luzzi performs the first public dissection of a human body for his students. His Anatomia becomes a key text.
1340	Pilgrims begin visiting a seventh century B.C. chamber tomb at Salamis, Cyprus, in the belief that it is the tomb or prison of Saint Catherine.
1348	The Black Death forces Venetians to abandon their usual custom of displaying the corpse. Instead, they bury the bodies almost immediately. Strasbourg's Christians hang 2000 Jews in retribution for their alledged spreading of the Black Death. The scaffolds are erected on a Jewish burial ground. Executions proceed despite two papal bulls exonerating the Jews.
1361	King Pedro of Portugal has the body of his Spanish lover, Inez de Castro exhumed and enthroned as his Queen. Castro was executed in 1355 by Pedro's father.
1367	The Council of York forbids "rousing the ghost" and other practical jokes on grieving relatives.
1405	The Council of Nantes forbids dancing, juggling, the playing of games, and many other entertainments in cemeteries.
1410	Physicians perform an autopsy on Pope Alexander V to determine if he was poisoned. (They find no evidence.)
1425	John Wycliff (d. 1384) is tried for heresy.
1435	The Sawney Beane clan of cannibals is caught and executed. The clan includes Beane, his wife, 14 children and 24 grandchildren.
1440	Florentine painter Andrea del Castagno paints a fresco on the façade of the Palazzo del Podesta showing men hanged as traitors. Andrea is thereafter known as Andreino degl’impiccati or "Andrew of the Hanged Men"
1457	The Scottish parliament mandates the use of churchyards for weekly archery practice.
1460	Roger van der Weyden paints The Seven Sacraments altarpiece. The last sacrament is, of course, extreme unction or the last rites.
1477	The duc de Lorraine builds a chapel on the site of the mass grave where Charles the Bold and his army are interred, outside Nancy.
1485	Workmen quarrying along the Appian Way find the perfectly preserved body of a beautiful Roman girl. Pope Innocent VIII orders "Julia, daughter of Claudius" to be buried in a secret place to prevent a neo-pagan cult from developing around her body.
1505	The Council of Edinburgh agrees to turn over one executed criminal each year for dissection.
1508	The remains of St. Dunstan are exhumed so that part of his crown can be serve as a holy relic.
1520	Denmark's King Christian II has the body of Swedish patriot Sten Sture dug up and burned along with that of Sture's small child.
1527	Some of Pizarro's men first observe the process of head-shrinking in Peru.
1529	Göttigen is stricken with a plague so devastating that corpses must be buried eight to a grave. The same "sweating sickness" also strikes London, Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Marburg, Augsburg, Vienna and Switzerland. The French are spared. The English Parliament sets a sliding scale of mortuary charges to be paid to the lord of the manor. Deceased persons owning less than 10 marks worth of property are exempted from all death tolls.
1533	First autopsy performed in the New World at Santo Domingo, Hispanola. Determines that Siamese twins have two separate souls. Father protests and pays for only one funeral.
1534	Michaeangelo finishes work on the Medici family tomb and moves to Rome.
1539	Soldiers of Henry VII pillage several famous churches and abbeys, destroying the tomb of King Arthur at Glastonbury and the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
1540	The bones of Thomas á Becket (d.1170) are exhumed and burned as punishment for high treason against the English king, Henry II.
1542	Swiss traveller Joseph de Meggen witnesses the pillaging of the Salamis necropolis and buys several mementoes from the tomb robbers.
1543	Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius publishes his De Corporis Humani Fabrica in defiance of the Church's ban against dissection.
1555	The Pieta, depicting the Virgin Mary holding the body of the dead Christ, is finished by Michaelangelo. The town of Chatelet, France, rejects the idea of building a cemetery on the island of Macquerelle because citizens fear that those taking bodies to the cemetery will throw them in the River Seine.
1556	Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abdicates and spends the last three weeks of his life undergoing daily enactments of his own funeral at a Yuste monastery.
1559	Inca mummies publically preside over their last major feast. Afterwards, they hide under the skirts of saints. Vicq d'Azyr claims that people living next to cemeteries are the first to be infected and the longest to suffer in times of contagion.
1562	Pieter Brueghel paints The Triumph of Death.
1563	The Scottish Parliament provides that all parishes shall have a bier which shall be used to transport the bodies of the poor.
1564	Andreas Vesalius, noted anatomist and physician to the Holy Roman Emperor, misdiagnoses a Spanish nobleman as dead, killing the patient during the autopsy.
1565	London's Royal College of Physicians receives permission to perform dissections.
1566	The Assembly of Scotland prohibits church burials and denies violators religious priveleges.
1572	Pope Gregory XIII celebrate the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre by orderng the lighting of bonfires. 50,000 Huguenots die at the instigation of Catherne de'Medici. Among the dead are Admiral de Coligny and the mathematician and logician Pierre de la Ramée.
1578	The Roman catacombs are rediscovered.
1580	The Port of Rye, England requires corpses to purchase a license if they are to be buried in coffins.
1581	The Council of Rouen allows church burial for monks, the clergy, the rich, and "those who by their nobility, their actions, and their merits have distinguished themselves in the service of God and of the common good."
1593	A mausoleum is a key feature of Spain's recently completed Escorial Palace. The Scottish Parliament mandates that begger's prisons and stocks be placed in churchyards.
1595	Matthew Wall of Braughing, England, finally dies, several years after nearly being buried alive.
1598	The Scottish Parliament decrees that a black mort-cloth shall be "laid on the corpse of the poor." In his Les Cimetiéres sacrez, Bishop Henri de Sponde argues against mixing Catholic and Protestant burials, lest they provoke "sedition and quarrels."

Photos come from the Detroit Publishing Archive of the Library of Congress American Memory Collection. 1 - Necropolis San Cristobal, Havana Cuba; 2 - Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina; 3 - Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan