In medieval France, professional criers were paid to walk the streets, ringing bells and announcing deaths. Known as the “criers of the dead,” they gave voice to mourning, turning grief into a public performance.
By Lorris Chevalier
In the Middle Ages, mourning was as much a public performance as a private feeling. Cries and wails, the social “staging” of grief, lay at the heart of funeral rituals, echoing ancient gestures of lamentation such as tearing one’s hair, striking one’s chest, or wringing one’s hands. Christian moral teaching, however, condemned excess: death was to be approached as a passage to the hereafter, with restrained tears rather than wild outbursts. Municipal authorities sometimes echoed this discipline. In the late thirteenth century, for example, the town of Valréas banned shouting and lamentations at funerals on the grounds that they frightened the public, disrupted the divine office, and were “of no use.” Yet despite these prohibitions, the cry remained a vital element of late-medieval funeral ceremonies. Were these sounds spontaneous outpourings of grief or ritualised displays of pain? Were they sobs, shouts, or formal phrases? And alongside these expressions of sorrow stood another, less-studied figure: the Crieur des morts, the professional “crier of the dead” who gave voice, quite literally, to the passage from life to death.
From Wine to Wakes
Illumination from the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy (1477-1482) – Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1857, fol. 147
Long before printing presses or online obituaries, the spoken word carried official information. In France, from at least the early thirteenth century, the Crieurs du roi, or “king’s criers,” were paid to broadcast prices, official decrees, and missing-child notices at crossroads, markets, and taverns. In Paris, this service became known as Le Cri de Paris. Originally these men were “wine criers,” announcing the latest prices in front of taverns.
By the early fifteenth century, their duties expanded in a striking way. In 1415, under Charles VI, the Parisian wine crier also became the “crieur de corps”: the town’s official announcer of funerals. Dressed in black, ringing a bell—twice for nobles, once for commoners—and sometimes bearing the arms of the deceased, he would call out at each junction the name of the departed, the date and place of the funeral, and ask passers-by to pray for the soul of the dead.
As the thirteenth-century poem Les Crieries de Paris records:
“When a man or woman has died, you shall hear the crier: pray for his soul, as the little bell rings through these streets.”
These criers were formally established in Paris in 1220 by King Philippe Auguste, who granted to the city’s merchants the “crying and measuring” of wine. Their status was codified in Étienne Boileau’s Livre des métiers (c. 1268), which lists them as crieurs de corps et de vin. A royal ordinance of 1416 fixed their number at twenty-four. Outside Paris, towns such as Limoges also employed them to announce not only the official wine price but also deaths. Payment varied by status: “For crying the funeral of the greatest and richest, they should receive three sols; for each person of middling condition and for the poor, eighteen deniers.”
A Soundscape of Mourning
Funeral of Charles VII – BnF, ms. fr. 5054, fol. 245v
Such announcements were not unique to France. Bells or tolling knells signalled death across Europe. In Roman times, public heralds were employed to notify citizens of deaths and supply undertakers with equipment for funeral rites. Medieval criers continued this blend of messenger and organiser. They helped draw a crowd to the funeral, distributed small written notices in later centuries, and in rural areas were known as clocheteurs—literally “bell-men.”
They were more than mere messengers. Their dress, sound, and words were part of the ritual. Many had to rent their black robes and hoods for each occasion, and every proclamation ended with a call for prayers. During the funeral of Charles VII in 1461, twenty-four criers roamed Paris, repeating:
“Pray for the soul of the most high, most mighty, and most excellent prince King Charles the Seventh of that name (and they said it twice), and come to the great church of Our Lady of Paris.”
The cry itself was accompanied not by a trumpet, as for official acts, but by one or two hand-bells. The number of chimes reflected social rank. In Paris, a noble was entitled to “the cry with two little bells, together” rather than a single bell. Bells carried not only liturgical meaning but also an apotropaic function—they were believed to drive away evil influences from the soul of the departed.
The Cry and the Procession
Bell ringers can be seen in this funeral procession for Edward the Confessor, as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry
The criers’ role did not end with announcing a death. On the day of the funeral they preceded the cortège, near the clergy and torch-bearers, dressed in mourning and ringing their bells as they multiplied appeals for intercession. By creating this “sonic space,” they dramatised the procession and heightened its solemnity. The cry itself was perceived as a prayer for the deceased.
From Oral to Written Notices
By the seventeenth century, written invitations began to accompany, and then replace, the oral announcements. Printed notices were posted on church doors or distributed as billets d’enterrement. The public crier’s role waned as funerals became more intimate affairs and as literacy spread. By the time of the French Revolution, posting notices on public monuments was banned, and the practice of printed invitations spread even to popular classes. The habit of listing only the name, not the title, of the deceased originates in this period.
Today, obituaries in newspapers or online serve the same basic purpose as the medieval crier: to inform, to invite, and to frame the community’s response to death. The very word “necrology” comes from the Greek nekros, “dead body,” and medieval ecclesiastical communities often kept necrological lists that were read aloud at commemorative prayers.
Excessive Public Display of Sorrow
Although the bell-ringing “crier of bodies and wine” has vanished, his role reminds us that death was once proclaimed aloud in the same places where people drank, traded, and gathered. The combination of wine and mourning may seem incongruous today, but in a society where taverns were social hubs, it made practical and even spiritual sense: drawing people together to pray, remember, and, perhaps, to comfort themselves over a drink.
As one fifteenth-century chronicler noted of Charles the Bold’s grief on the death of his father:
“He cried, he wept, he wrung his hands and cast himself upon his bed, so that each marvelled at his excessive sorrow.”
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
D. Alexandre-Bidon, “Gestes et expressions du deuil,” dans D. Alexandre-Bidon et C. Treffort dir., À réveiller les morts. La mort au quotidien dans l’Occident médiéval, Lyon, 1993, p. 126.
In medieval France, professional criers were paid to walk the streets, ringing bells and announcing deaths. Known as the “criers of the dead,” they gave voice to mourning, turning grief into a public performance.
By Lorris Chevalier
In the Middle Ages, mourning was as much a public performance as a private feeling. Cries and wails, the social “staging” of grief, lay at the heart of funeral rituals, echoing ancient gestures of lamentation such as tearing one’s hair, striking one’s chest, or wringing one’s hands. Christian moral teaching, however, condemned excess: death was to be approached as a passage to the hereafter, with restrained tears rather than wild outbursts. Municipal authorities sometimes echoed this discipline. In the late thirteenth century, for example, the town of Valréas banned shouting and lamentations at funerals on the grounds that they frightened the public, disrupted the divine office, and were “of no use.” Yet despite these prohibitions, the cry remained a vital element of late-medieval funeral ceremonies. Were these sounds spontaneous outpourings of grief or ritualised displays of pain? Were they sobs, shouts, or formal phrases? And alongside these expressions of sorrow stood another, less-studied figure: the Crieur des morts, the professional “crier of the dead” who gave voice, quite literally, to the passage from life to death.
From Wine to Wakes
Long before printing presses or online obituaries, the spoken word carried official information. In France, from at least the early thirteenth century, the Crieurs du roi, or “king’s criers,” were paid to broadcast prices, official decrees, and missing-child notices at crossroads, markets, and taverns. In Paris, this service became known as Le Cri de Paris. Originally these men were “wine criers,” announcing the latest prices in front of taverns.
By the early fifteenth century, their duties expanded in a striking way. In 1415, under Charles VI, the Parisian wine crier also became the “crieur de corps”: the town’s official announcer of funerals. Dressed in black, ringing a bell—twice for nobles, once for commoners—and sometimes bearing the arms of the deceased, he would call out at each junction the name of the departed, the date and place of the funeral, and ask passers-by to pray for the soul of the dead.
As the thirteenth-century poem Les Crieries de Paris records:
“When a man or woman has died, you shall hear the crier: pray for his soul, as the little bell rings through these streets.”
These criers were formally established in Paris in 1220 by King Philippe Auguste, who granted to the city’s merchants the “crying and measuring” of wine. Their status was codified in Étienne Boileau’s Livre des métiers (c. 1268), which lists them as crieurs de corps et de vin. A royal ordinance of 1416 fixed their number at twenty-four. Outside Paris, towns such as Limoges also employed them to announce not only the official wine price but also deaths. Payment varied by status: “For crying the funeral of the greatest and richest, they should receive three sols; for each person of middling condition and for the poor, eighteen deniers.”
A Soundscape of Mourning
Such announcements were not unique to France. Bells or tolling knells signalled death across Europe. In Roman times, public heralds were employed to notify citizens of deaths and supply undertakers with equipment for funeral rites. Medieval criers continued this blend of messenger and organiser. They helped draw a crowd to the funeral, distributed small written notices in later centuries, and in rural areas were known as clocheteurs—literally “bell-men.”
They were more than mere messengers. Their dress, sound, and words were part of the ritual. Many had to rent their black robes and hoods for each occasion, and every proclamation ended with a call for prayers. During the funeral of Charles VII in 1461, twenty-four criers roamed Paris, repeating:
“Pray for the soul of the most high, most mighty, and most excellent prince King Charles the Seventh of that name (and they said it twice), and come to the great church of Our Lady of Paris.”
The cry itself was accompanied not by a trumpet, as for official acts, but by one or two hand-bells. The number of chimes reflected social rank. In Paris, a noble was entitled to “the cry with two little bells, together” rather than a single bell. Bells carried not only liturgical meaning but also an apotropaic function—they were believed to drive away evil influences from the soul of the departed.
The Cry and the Procession
The criers’ role did not end with announcing a death. On the day of the funeral they preceded the cortège, near the clergy and torch-bearers, dressed in mourning and ringing their bells as they multiplied appeals for intercession. By creating this “sonic space,” they dramatised the procession and heightened its solemnity. The cry itself was perceived as a prayer for the deceased.
From Oral to Written Notices
By the seventeenth century, written invitations began to accompany, and then replace, the oral announcements. Printed notices were posted on church doors or distributed as billets d’enterrement. The public crier’s role waned as funerals became more intimate affairs and as literacy spread. By the time of the French Revolution, posting notices on public monuments was banned, and the practice of printed invitations spread even to popular classes. The habit of listing only the name, not the title, of the deceased originates in this period.
Today, obituaries in newspapers or online serve the same basic purpose as the medieval crier: to inform, to invite, and to frame the community’s response to death. The very word “necrology” comes from the Greek nekros, “dead body,” and medieval ecclesiastical communities often kept necrological lists that were read aloud at commemorative prayers.
Excessive Public Display of Sorrow
Although the bell-ringing “crier of bodies and wine” has vanished, his role reminds us that death was once proclaimed aloud in the same places where people drank, traded, and gathered. The combination of wine and mourning may seem incongruous today, but in a society where taverns were social hubs, it made practical and even spiritual sense: drawing people together to pray, remember, and, perhaps, to comfort themselves over a drink.
As one fifteenth-century chronicler noted of Charles the Bold’s grief on the death of his father:
“He cried, he wept, he wrung his hands and cast himself upon his bed, so that each marvelled at his excessive sorrow.”
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
Click here to read more from Lorris Chevalier
Further Readings:
Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle, “Le cri dans le paysage sonore de la mort à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Haro ! Noël ! Oyé !, édité par Didier Lett et Nicolas Offenstadt, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2003.
D. Alexandre-Bidon, “Gestes et expressions du deuil,” dans D. Alexandre-Bidon et C. Treffort dir., À réveiller les morts. La mort au quotidien dans l’Occident médiéval, Lyon, 1993, p. 126.
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts