1884 The cremation of Jesus Christ
Every society has taboos surrounding the treatment of the bodies of the dead. Herodotus, in making his point on the strength of national customs, spoke of an experiment by Persian king Darius:
He called together some Greeks who were present and asked them how much money they would wish to be paid to devour the corpses of their fathers – to which the Greeks replied that no amount of money would suffice for that. Next, Darius summoned some Indians called Callantians, who do eat their parents, and asked them in the presence of the Greeks (who were able to follow what was being said by means of an interpreter) how much money it would take to buy their consent to the cremation of their dead fathers – at which the Callantians cried out in horror and told him that his words were a desecration of silence.
For centuries, the predominant custom in Christian lands was the interment of the dead. The Catholic Church had opposed the practice of cremation as being offensive to the notion of the physical resurrection and this belief was maintained by most Protestant denominations. In 1884 the eccentric Welsh physician and neo-Druid William Price (1800-1893) cremated the body of his son Jesus Christ Price and was arrested for this shocking deed. He was acquitted after showing that there was no law banning the practice, a decision that led to the 1902 Cremation Act.