by A.V. Marraccini
“We were hinted by the occasion, not catched the opportunity to write of old things, or intrude upon the Antiquary. We are coldly drawn unto discourses of Antiquities, who have scarce time before us to comprehend new things, or make out learned Novelties. But seeing they arose as they lay, almost in silence among us, at least in short account suddenly passed over; we were very unwilling they should die again, and be buried twice among us.
Beside, to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep men out of their Urnes, and discourse of humane fragments in them, is not impertinent unto our profession; whose study is life and death, who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men least need artificial mementos, or coffins by our bed side, to minde us of our graves.
-- Thomas Browne, Hydrotaphia, or Urn Buriall. From the Epistle to the Reader.
1. The king has two bodies (Kantorwicz, 1957).
2. One is the body of the body, which is to say corruptible. One is the body of the state, which is to say, incorruptible. (ibid)
3. You have to dig down to the sixth definition of transeo in Lewis and Short (1879) to get to the later Latin that eventually inspires the Medieval French, transire to transir, which is from “to pass over” to “to die”.
4. The king in the transi tomb of medieval Europe is in reality, two stone-carved kings in a gothic bunk bed, with a rotting skeleton on the bottom, and an immortal, glorious body on the top.
5. “Adults and children 12 years of age and over – do not take more than 8 tablets in 24 hours” (Sudafed Packaging, Johnson and Johnson, 2026).
6. I have had more than eight tablets in twenty-four hours. I have a minor flu. I am floating from one body to the other.
7. My white kitten nestles on top of my intact ribcage. My split one is home to a makeshift dovecote between the ribs. The doves are as white as kittens, with red feet the color of FD&C Red 40 that coats each tablet.
8. Sinuses, I am told, enable human speech to be so wonderfully articulate. Homo erectus and Homo neaderthalis each show significant evolution in the sinuses (Balzeau et al, “Frontal sinuses and human evolution” 2022).
9. I want to call Balzeau et al and blame them for my sinuses. There is a number on the back of the Sudafed package for questions, 1-888-217-2117, but I doubt if they will answer whether speech makes closer to the angels (a point in Caxton’s introduction to Chaucer, paraphrased from memory, Auerbaching it), or indeed the pit of hell suffering that is mucus membrane pressure. Actually, I want to call Balzac, but I doubt even more he is on the Johnson & Johnson answer line tonight.
10. I would probably be unhappy as a Neanderthal because in addition to books, I also like textiles.
11. Apparently, Neanderthals did, to some degree, have textiles. There is wound string found in the Abri du Maras, in a valley near a tributary of the Rhône. (Hardy, Moncel et al, in Nature, 2020).
12. My bad, Neanderthals.
13. Notably, neither king on the gothic bunk bed of the transi tomb, neither the resplendent one, nor the skeleton, gets a blanket.
14. My preferred blankets are kantha quilts, usually vintage ones from Jaipur. I am wrapped in one now, the one I bought while I was living in Oxford. The new shopping mall there was delayed by years since they found a plague pit and had to excavate all the bodies.
15. This happens a lot in England, actually, they find some plague pit or burial mound and construction is halted. There were a lot of plague pits.
16. The Plague Pit mall was finished, ironically, right before the pandemic. It destroyed the little shops on Broad Street and then was itself rendered unprofitable by the new plague. Sic transit gloria mundi at the shops.
17. We are actually a generation that does not need … “coffins by our bed side, to minde us of our graves.” The vaccine I got for COVID was developed not too far from the Plague Pit Mall in Oxford, just down the Banbury Road.
18. I do not know, if like the printer William Caxton, I think speech renders us closer to angels. I do know that angels do not need Sudafed. Perhaps they lack sinuses. Perhaps they lack mucus.
19. On some level the theology suggests that being made in God’s image, both angels, and men, including men who are kings, then imply by a kind of back-figuration that perhaps God does have mucus, and indeed the vinegar sponge bit of the Crucfixtion affirms the need to wet Christ’s mucus membranes, so there you go (cf Matthew 27:48, Mark 15:36, and John 19:29). For a particularly touching painting of the vinegar sponge see Fra Angelico, The Crucifixion With The Sponge Bearer (1442).
20. Most people who are crucified do not die of blood loss, as you might imagine, but of asphyxia. So the wetted sponge may have only prolonged Christ’s suffering. Sorry.
21. It is a Big Theological Problem that the blood of Christ never touches the ground nor becomes any earthly relic.
22. As you probably know, the whole point with Christ, at least on Easter, which was recently, is that the tomb is empty. There is no urn; no burial.
23. Nonetheless various humane fragments persist. People like to kiss and stroke the five holy wounds of Christ as illuminations in manuscript (e.g. BL MS Egerton 1821, ca. 1480, which is famous for this).
24. I think about this as I take my nightly pseudoephedrine devotion; two more salvific red no. 40 tablets coated in what the box describes as “carnauba wax”.
25. Carnauba wax is derived from the palm Copernicia Cerifera, and is a popular wax for coatings that is safe for human consumption (description of FDA Cas. Reg. No. 8015-86-9).
26. A specimen of Copernicia Cerifera grows five minutes from where I grew up in Miami, Florida. There is probably also one in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, fifteen minutes from where I live now.
27. All flesh is grass.
28. Phylogenetically speaking, palms are not that far from grass. It is a long story why I know this without a citation. We all have these sorts of weird receptacles of side knowledge. We never want to bury them twice.
29. I think of a Neanderthal getting to touch a quilt for the first time, or a bishop’s chasuble, rich with gold. A candle!
30. A Neanderthal could only take the Catholic Host, which is to say the body of Christ, if deemed to have a “rational soul”. I cannot find a source on this right now, but I am sure there is a Jesuit somewhere working on it.
31. There is no ecclesiastical law that I can locate against Neanderthals taking Sudafed, or kissing red spots on pages, or lying on bunk beds and thinking about death.
32. I imagine a Neanderthal doing these things. We don’t know if they had metaphors, but they did have symbols (Neanderthal Language: Demystifying the Linguistic Powers of our Extinct Cousins, pp. 29 – 108).
33. I don’t think Neanderthals had citations. I collect them like the little bones of the ears and the fingers. It feels profoundly human.
34. My citations are in the top of the tomb, my body is in the bottom. They hand down tissues. I have metaphors. I would like to think in this, I am in a small way unto angels, whose many-eyed wings can read all the open tabs at once.
35. I kiss pages more than I normally like to admit.
36. Is not impertinent unto my profession, which dances somewhere between scholar and something else. Flesh-not-flesh. Footnote forever-ephemeral literary dare. Maybe I can be Thomas Browne. Is there a going appointment?
37. I am no King. Neither am I a Neanderthal, and certainly, no angel.
38. I therefore do not have two bodies; maybe therefore someday my oscillations will be forced to settle. They will be tied down with string first wound near a valley by a tributary of the Rhône.
39. For now I have only: “take two tablets every 4-6 hours” coated in the wax of a Brazilian palm. For now I only have this epistle to you, reader, written in the little hours. For now is now and minde us of our graves, timely.
______
A.V. Marraccini is an art historian, essayist, and critic. Her first book is We The Parasites (2023) and her next book is These New Fragilities (forthcoming 2028). Her white kitten is actually a calico, and named after Pliny the Elder.
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