TOMBS AND BURIALS in medieval religious buildings could appropriate these spaces for the memory of the dead and their families. This chapter aims to identify an internal topography of the cathedral of Mallorca using a unique document created to organize the religious services for the eternal care and memory of the dead there.

Introduction

Until now, research on the medieval cathedral of Mallorca has focused on its construction, especially the work of Joan Domenge using fabric records of the fourteenth century, and others on later stages in its building. A broad consensus exists on the cathedral and the structures of the main mosque, which were taken over by Christians after the reconquest of Mallorca, and became a Gothic cathedral in the early fourteenth century. From an initially austere structure the cathedral of Mallorca took on its current form with three naves, part of a major promotional campaign by the crown involving prestigious architectural structures across its territory, both insular and continental, trying to legitimize a kingdom that could hardly be considered independent of the Crown of Aragon.

To date we have few studies on funerary documentation or the socio-economic reasons prestigious families began to choose the Mallorcan cathedral as a place of eternal rest, instead of the prestigious cloisters or chapels of the nearby Franciscan and Dominican friaries. Fortunately, the cathedral archive conserves a number of wills that allow us to analyze how the deceased buried in the building managed their commemoration.

From the early fourteenth century different areas of the cathedral began to form a hierarchical funerary complex where celebrations dedicated to the memory of the deceased were carried out: countless anniversary masses, absolutions associated with these masses, or the ritual of sharing bread at the grave. The records of the anniversaries are detailed and identify the place where each tomb is located, so we can see how the thousands of burials were distributed around the cloister or the chapels of the cathedral by social origin or the size of their perpetual rents, turning the building into a monumental stone necrologium and mirror of Mallorcan medieval society.

A few privileged individuals secured their memories with ornate monumental tombs, linking a definite lineage to a particular liturgical space.