For Eternal Remembrance and Mortal Preparation : Death, Grief and Consolation in Early Modern Swedish Funeral Sermons over Children

In the seventeenth century, it was common for the Swedish upper class and nobility to commission funeral sermons in honour of their children. The purpose of this essay is to shed light on practices and expressions regarding the death of children in commemorative and obituary literature in seventeenth-century Sweden. With a thematic content analysis, this essay analyses descriptions of death and emotions, more specifically, how the death of 24 children, of which 17 belong to the nobility, as well as how parents' grief and consolation are described in two funerary poems and 20 funeral sermons from 1618 to 1699. Out of these, nine of the children were boys and fifteen girls. The death of a child is described with variation, in which some descriptions of death are brief, whereas others are detailed. The concise and vague descriptions of death concern four children, who all died in infancy and early childhood, which most likely is the contributing factor as to why their undetailed death is described with such reverence. Other cases when the child's death is both concise and lengthy are if they died of an illness, which concerns ten children. Their death is described in the following words: difficulty, struggle, hardness, fierceness, and heat. Some funeral sermons describe a longer battle against disease, including dates, what the child has said, and naming the illnesses, such as fever, measles, tendonitis and heart attack. The children are described as brave as they fought until illness finally took their lives, and no matter how difficult the death was, it was always blessed. The child was taken from the miserable world and brought to eternal joy. These fourteen children were between four months and seven years old. In other funeral sermons and poetry, children's death is described in somewhat more detail. Five children aged three to eleven died unexpectedly and hastily. As tragic as the death may be, it brought the children eternal peace. The results of this study correlates with previous research, that the death of children is much less ritualised than the death of adults, for example, not including preparations. Nonetheless, this essay has found ritualistic elements regarding young children's death, since some children committed their souls to God before dying. However, this essay has found that the detailed death of five older children (ages 14–17) are as ritualistic as the death of adults. They all fought courageously against death and prepared themselves for it, such as describing how much they wanted to die and how they, by dying, complied with God’s will. These descriptions are therefore extensive and much longer than those regarding young children, which is most likely a result of the fact that these children were almost adults. These descriptions of death correspond with previous research regarding preparations for death that adults followed to obtain a perfect death. These adolescents died as prepared as possible, all to guarantee their place in heaven. Thus, this essay has identified differences in how the death of young versus older children is portrayed; absolved from preparing for their death, whereas older children, prepared, take responsibility for dying, and that a child’s death can be less ritualised or as ritualised as the death of an adult. Regarding parents' grief and comfort, certain differences are also identified here. The father's grief is absent in the material, either because of his premature death or because the parents are referred to as one. The parents are described as distraught and in despair over the child’s death. This essay has also not found any differences in grief depending on the child's age. In this study, two themes of comfort have been found: religion and the child’s preparedness for death. At death, 17th-century people were comforted by religion; that it was God’s will, and that God took these God-fearing and innocent children to prevent the world’s contamination of their pure souls. The children have all died prepared and have therefore left a cruel and wailing life and found eternal peace with God. There is no doubt that parents mourn their children who have died. But love has a price; in death, it is transformed into grief, and this has been immortalised in the source material.