Cómo resolver problemas

Dying was a public event and the monk was familiar with the role he was expected to take, serving both as principal and director in his own drama of death. All gathered to 182 support the dying monk and surround, sustain and solace him through their presence and prayers during the time of his death. At every stage of the monastic death ritual, from the moment it was instigated until the time of burial, the dying monk was the centre of all activity, and his community both as individuals and as a collective, provided the counterpoint. Even as his weakness grew, the monk remained at the 183 physical centre of activity with his bodily placement representing his status and significance as the hub of the ritual. When he became confined to bed, the Cluny ritual directed that the bed be positioned so that ‘the brothers can stand around on all sides’. 184 This instruction regarding the placement of the bed is seen in the Constitutions too, as Lanfranc requires that the community should ‘stand around him in order so far as the place where he lies may permit.’ At Cluny, the monk’s bed is placed on the floor and 185 the dying monk lies on his back, facing upwards, his brothers around him, funnelling his attention heavenwards, surrounding him with prayer. This foreshadows the scene later in the cemetery when the shrouded body is consigned to the grave, facing heavenwards, feet to the east, the sides of the grave rising above the corpse in the same

P. Ariès, notes that this was common to both lay and religious deaths of the eleventh and twelfth

182

centuries; death was a public ceremony, organised and directed by the dying person. Western Attitudes

Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans., P. Ranum (London: Marion Boyars, 1976), p.

11. Originally published as: Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en occident du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1977).

Monastic practice here echoes usual lay domestic arrangements. In medieval thought the best place to

183

die was at home; in a religious house the home was replaced by the infirmary, or sometimes the dormitory, and the family by the monastic community. R. Gilchrist and B. Sloane, Requiem: the Medieval

Monastic Cemetery in Britain (MOLAS, 2005), pp. 21-22.

‘Ubi fratres possint undique circumstare.’ DRC, pp. 56-57.

184

‘Ordinate circumstent, sicut locus in quo iacet fieri permittit.’ MCL, 112, pp. 178-179.

way that earlier the bodies of the brethren in the infirmary had stood above the dying monk. 186

The central position of the monk endured beyond his death and burial into the intensive period of remembrance and alms giving which was seen in the month following his death, and even further onwards with the recording and marking of his anniversaries. Interpreting this through the lens of sociological anthropology, the centrality of the dying monk is only to be expected, for as the main protagonist in the transformative process of the death ritual, he was the subject, not the object of what was happening. 187

It is a remarkable fact, and one that shows how important dying was, that in the ordered and tightly scheduled monastic world, the cloistered calm and predictability could at any time be shattered by a monk, any monk, every monk, who feeling himself to be dying, could instigate the death ritual. Once in train, the ritual required the attention and presence of the entire community, taking them away from all their other monastic duties, and disrupting the daily liturgy. 188

The importance of death and the requirement for the community to be present for it, is seen in the injunction that the monks were to drop everything and run, literally to run, straight to the bedside when summoned. Lanfranc writes that ‘Wheresoever else they may be [if not at office] and whatsoever they are doing when the alarm reaches them, they shall make no pretext for delay but run to the sick man, chanting the Credo.’ The 189 action of running was not one which was considered suitable and seemly for a monk, and the only other eventuality which allowed for a dispensation on the no-running rule

DRC, p. 180.

186

As explicated by J. P. Mitchell in, ‘Performance’ in Tilley, Keane, Huchler, Rowlands, Spyer (eds.),

187

Handbook of Material Culture (London, 2006) pp. 384-401.

The hierarchy of the offices had to be maintained in that the mass, regular hours and some processions

188

had to go ahead irrespective of death, but could be flexed when needed to fit in the community’s responsibility for, and response to their dying brother. Paxton describes the ‘elasticity’ of time in the Middle Ages, and how this was utilised to enable the usual daily programme of the monastery to adjust in the event of a death. DRC, p. 201.

‘Ubicunque vero alias, vel quocunque alia negotio occupados predictus sonus invenerit, sine aliqua

189

excusatione vel mora similiter currentes, et Credo in unum Deum canates, ad egrum veniant.’ MCL, 112, p. 182.

was in the case of fire. Udalrich in his customary sums up the need for both the 190 running and the constant recitation of the Creed while doing so, writing that this was so that, ‘brotherly faith might bring aid to one about to depart from this world.’ 191

Bernard of Cluny’s customary directs the brother whose job it is to signal the hours to check on the dying man before calling the congregation to divine office. This was to ensure that if the death was imminent they were not called to the church at that particular moment and so found themselves at prayer and therefore unable to attend their brother at the moment of his death, but also to make certain that the office was not neglected. Bernard articulated on many occasions how the breaks to the daily office 192 and activities, must be managed, and then resumed in the event of their disruption by a death. Despite the scheduling difficulties involved, death remained a community 193 event and responsibility, and Bernard emphasised this, writing that ‘a brother ought not to die without everyone present.’ 194