Eleanor Cross

The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with tall crosses, of which three survive nearly intact, in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I had the crosses erected between 1291 and 1294 in memory of his wife Eleanor of Castile, marking the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to London. Several artists worked on the crosses, as the "Expense Rolls" of the Crown show, with some of the work being divided between the main figures, sent from London, and the framework, made locally. "Alexander of Abingdon" and "William of Ireland", both of whom had worked at Westminster Abbey, were apparently the leading sculptors of figures.

Upon her death in 1290 at Harby, near the city of Lincoln, the body of Queen Eleanor was carried to Lincoln where she was embalmed, probably either at the Gilbertine priory of St. Catherine, Lincoln in the south of Lincoln, or at the priory of the Dominicans. Her viscera, less her heart, were sent to the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral for burial, where they still rest. Her body was then sent to London, taking 12 days to reach Westminster Abbey. The crosses were erected at the places where her funeral procession stopped overnight.

At Westminster she was buried at the feet of her father-in-law King Henry III. Her heart travelled with the body and was buried in the abbey church at the London Dominicans' priory at Blackfriars, along with that of her son Alphonso.

A similar event had taken place in France for the body of King Louis IX in 1271, although his memorial crosses, unlike Eleanor's, were erected in part as a manifesto for canonisation; Edward had probably seen similar memorial crosses in France and elsewhere in Europe during his travels. They were at least in part intended as cenotaphs to provoke prayers for her soul from passers-by and pilgrims

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