Burial
Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows and with special assistance of Mrs. Frederick B. Adams, Sr., Mrs. Robert Charles, Mr. Laurens M. Hamilton, The Heineman Foundation, Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, Mrs. Jacob M. Kaplan
While the priest offers a final blessing of holy water, the man's body, in a wood coffin decorated with a black cross, is lowered into the grave. During the Middle Ages, however, most people were not buried in coffins; they were put in the ground protected only by a shroud. (Most graves were not permanent but a temporary place of rest until one's bones were cleansed of their rotten flesh.) The depiction of a coffin burial in this miniature might have been in keeping with Catherine's own funerary expectations.