If the Knight depicted in effigy on a tomb died in battle in another land ,the body would not have been buried there, only the bones as knights had as part of their equipment a large cauldron in which the body was boiled because otherwise there would inevitably be natural decay and only the clean bones (and the heart which would have been preserved in some substance, possibly frankincense) returned to their family. At the site of the battle of Agincourt the museum there gives ,or gave last time we visited ,a detailed account of this. Tombs were below floor level, smallish vaults, and what you see is all above the coffin. In Bruges the tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary of Burgundy are partly opened to show the highly decorative paintings on the walls of the small underground chambers where the coffins or caskets lie. Cor, this is getting ghoulish!Viktoria.
