The dying monk himself initiated the death ritual. Lanfranc in his Constitutions 120 describes how and when the death ritual should commence, writing that ‘if a sick man should seem to be tending towards death rather than towards recovery, and should ask to be anointed’ the community should move to provide the necessary ministrations and commence the death ritual. The Cluny initiation of the ritual occurred when ‘a 121 brother who in his growing weakness feels himself near to his departure from this world’ asked to make his confession. This confession was made to either the abbot or 122 his deputy, the monastic hierarchy being called into play at the advent of death. 123 Lanfranc is a little more regulated, more cautious in his written approach to the commencement of the death ritual than is Cluny, in that he has the brother in charge of the infirmary relaying the request for anointing to chapter, and while he allows the duty priest to prepare what he needs in order to perform the anointing, nonetheless chapter
Ridyard in The Royal Saints, pp. 6-7 and p. 251, writing about Lanfranc's supposed purging of the
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Anglo-Saxon saints from the liturgical calendar at Canterbury, opines that far from disregarding the traditions he found, Lanfranc, like other members of the Norman leadership, showed a shrewd judgement in choosing which Anglo-Saxon customs to accept and which to reject. This appears to be the case in his compilation of the death ritual in the Constitutions.
Foreknowledge of death was a familiar feature in the medieval world of hagiography. In the religious
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world, such foresight was considered a sign of sanctity and was reported in many medieval saints’ Lives. For example, at Canterbury in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the monk Eadmer wrote Lives of several saints. Three of the five men he wrote Lives for (Wilfred, Dunstan and Oswald), knew of their death in advance. The Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, ed. and trans. B. Muir and A.Turner (Oxford, 2006) and Eadmer’s Life of Saint Wilfred, ed. and trans. B. Muir and A.Turner (Exeter, 1998).
‘Si infirmus magis ad mortem quam ad salutem tendere videatur, et se petat inungui.’ MCL, 112, p.
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178.
‘Frater qui se infirmitate ingravescente senserit se in proximo ab hoc seculo migraturum.’ DRC, pp.
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56-57.
This ensured that the dying monk benefitted as fully as possible from the confessional ministrations of
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business will be completed first. Whether at Cluny or Canterbury though, the ritual is commenced by the dying monk himself requesting to receive one of the sacraments of the church in order to commence the rites of purification which will mark his pathway to death.
At Canterbury, the role of the infirmary staff in the request for anointing reveals a check in the system inherent in Lanfranc’s instruction. Although it is the brother himself who requests anointing, the experienced and knowledgeable infirmary staff presumably would not forward the request unless they believed that recovery was not possible and that the brother was truly dying. At Cluny, if the account is taken as written, there was no buffer between the dying monk and the abbot, for when the monk felt himself to be dying he moved directly to making his confession. Bernard says the monk can 124 request through either the prior or the infirmarian that he be taken to chapter to confess. The supposition behind relaying the request through the infirmarian is that in some instances the monk was already in the infirmary and therefore expert opinion would be available to guide him as to the state of his health and the likelihood of his imminent demise. Even though it was of the utmost importance that the death of a brother was managed properly, it would also have been essential to the smooth and orderly management of the monastery that daily life and office was not interrupted needlessly by anxious monks who upon feeling unwell erroneously believed themselves to be at death’s door.
In the earlier Regularis Concordia, while it is still the monk himself who initiates the death ritual, the wording used is markedly different from both Cluny and the Constitutions: ‘When a brother is called upon to pay the debt of our common weakness and feels himself to be weighed down with such exceeding sickness that he can no longer endure it …’. The language is redolent of obligation, of reciprocity. Death is 125 described as the debt of mankind, of every man, for his sinful nature. It is an articulation
‘Frater qui se infirmitate ingravescente senserit se in proximo ab hoc seculo migraturum de omni
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conscientia sua domni abbati.’ DRC, p. 56.
‘Dum ad debitum communis fragilitatis exsoluendum quis vocatus fuerit, dum senserit se nimia
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of a transactional theology of salvation which is overtly lacking in the Cluny and the Constitutions wording a century later.
Although there is a lack of urgency in the written instructions from both Canterbury and Cluny concerning the commencement of the death ritual, plainly the advent of death does not always follow an orderly route, and there will have been instances when sudden and unexpected death came upon a member of the community. There is no mention in the Constitutions or in the Cluny account about how this should be managed, although Lanfranc does acknowledge that it can happen and allows for it in general terms, writing ‘necessitas non habet legem.’ It seems likely then that in the 126 customaries the writers are describing an ideal death and ignoring the many possibilities offered by the general unpredictability and sometimes untidiness of sudden death. To litigate for every such or even most such eventualities would have been impractical and onerous in the extreme and counter to the orderliness of monastic scheduling.