Observations on the Dead Emperor Collected from Annals and Laws

very many surrounding it, keeping watch by day and by night. And ch. 67: The leaders of the entire army, the counts, and the whole order of magistrates, to whom it was formerly the law to worship the Emperor, not changing their customary habit, entered at the appointed times and, kneeling, kissed the Emperor on the sarcophagus, just as if he were living even after death—he alone, the blessed one, reigned after death as a mortal, and things were done as usual, as if he were still alive. The following chapters deal with mourning, the funeral, and obsequies. Corippus, Book III, ch. 1, describes the exposition of Justinian the Great. Just as the Emperors of the West imitated other Byzantine rites, so they seem to have approved the funeral ones in part. The custom of the French also comes to my mind, by which, for a dead King whose image fashioned of wax is exhibited for the people to see, they set the table for a few days and accord him the same honor as if he were alive. Lünig, Theatrum Ceremoniale Theater of Ceremonies, Part II, ch. 18, no. 100. The Romans proposed a wax image of this kind at the consecration of Emperors in the vestibule of the palace. Herodian, Book IV, ch. 2; Dio Cassius, Book LXXIII, where the funeral of Pertinax is described more accurately.

And more recent.

As far as our own Emperors are concerned, Fugger, ch. 1 for the year 1493, teaches that the body of Frederick III, dressed in the habit of an Emperor and placed upon a throne, was shown to everyone in a spacious room at Linz. His son Maximilian ordered his remains to be shown with an open face for the duration of one day, as testified by the same Fugger for the year 1519. Khevenhüller, Annales Ferdinandei Annals of Ferdinand, Vol. VII, p. 440, indicates certain things about the funeral bed of Rudolph II, and adds: Above the bier was a crystalline glass, so that one could see the Imperial corpse through it.