Ralph E. Giesey (Institute for Advanced Study) is at present revising for publication his doctoral dissertation entitled The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (University of California, 1954). Following is a summary of the study:

The funeral ceremony of the French kings during the Renaissance was compared by contemporary writers to that of the ancient Roman emperors, and modern historians have believed that the French were copying the Roman customs described by ancient historians. However, the history of French royal funerals from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries shows that the elaborate ceremonial which developed had its own rationale. Of primary importance was the rise of the abbey of Saint-Denis as the royal necropolis. In the thirteenth century it became the custom to display the body of the dead king during the funerary ceremony, which lasted only a few days, because the crude methods of embalming would not allow a longer display of the deceased.