Criteria for inclusion

Because the inventory formed part of a doctoral thesis its parameters were dictated by the scope of that thesis. Consequently, the definitions of what constitutes a 'memorial' for the purposes of the inventory are rather narrower than those employed elsewhere in the MeMO project.

The thesis was primarily concerned with those memorials which were installed on walls or piers above graves to commemorate the deceased interred below and to elicit prayers for their souls. Often called 'epitaphs', they took the form of sculpted stone tablets, panel paintings or engraved brass plates and would have been a common sight in the churches and cloisters of the Low Countries. They include inscriptions naming the deceased and recording their dates of death, typically accompanied by imagery showing the deceased kneeling in prayer together with their patron saints before some holy personage.

Since the thesis focused on the wall-mounted memorial as a category of funerary monument, only those memorials which had a definite, unambiguous relationship to a nearby grave are included in the inventory. However, tombs themselves, along with grave slabs and other monuments that housed or covered bodily remains, are excluded from the inventory. Other potentially commemorative artworks, including altarpieces, plate, textiles, and stained glass, are also excluded from the inventory. Memorials that commemorate pious or charitable foundations are only inventoried if they include a significant degree of imagery and were displayed in proximity to a grave.

In addition, please note the following:
  • Only extant memorials (or lost memorials known from photographs or rubbings), are included in the inventory.
  • Severely damaged and fragmentary memorials are only included where a significant degree of their imagery and / or inscription remains.



Previous: Introduction: Wall-mounted memorials in the Southern Netherlands
Next: Organisation of the inventory


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Last updated on: 11 September, 2012.