HI789-90 Art of Death 14/12/2007

Essay 2: The Idea of Tamed Death

Picard Marion

Retrouver d'Homère à Tolstoi l'expression constante d'une même attitude globale devant la mort ne signifie pas qu'on lui reconnaisse une permanence structurale étrangère aux variations proprement historiques. Bien d'autres éléments ont surchargé ce fond élémentaire et immémorial. Mais il a résisté aux poussées évolutives pendant environ deux millénaires. Dans un monde soumis au changement, l'attitude traditionnelle devant la mort apparaît comme une môle d'inertie et de continuité. Elle est maintenant si effacée de nos moeurs que nous avons peine à l'imaginer et à l'apprendre. L'attitude ancienne où la mort est à la fois proche, familière, et diminuée, insensibilisé, s'oppose trop à la nôtre où elle si grand-peur que nous n'osons plus dire son nom. C'est pourquoi, quand nous appelons cette mort familière la mort apprivoisée, nous n'entendons pas par là qu'elle était autrefois sauvage et qu'elle a ensuite été domestiquée. Nous voulons dire au contraire qu'elle est aujourd'hui devenue sauvage alors qu'ele ne l'était pas auparavant. La mort la plus ancienne était apprivoisée.1

This model of the “Tamed Death” (mort apprivoisée) created by Philippe

Ariès can be summarized in the following way: “Tamed Death” is an attitude towards

death which consists in foreknowing, accepting and preparing one's death according

to a specific ritual, this attitude goes back to Antiquity and is starting to disappear

nowadays.2 The object of this essay is to question some points of the concept of

“Tamed Death” found in Ariès's work of course but also in the work of some other

supporters of this theory.

The structure of this essay is based on Philippe Ariès's structure in the first chapter of

“Tamed Death”, his book about Western attitudes towards death. Thus, the first part of

1

1 P. Ariès, L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977), p.36.

2 Kathy Charmaz give a useful review of the book L'homme devant la mort in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 3 (May, 1983), p. 308. This review is available on the JSTOR website thanks to the following link: http://uk.jstor.org.chain.kent.ac.uk/view/00943061/di973963/97p22462/0?currentResult=00943061%2bdi973963%2b97p22462%2b0%2c03&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fuk.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FBasicResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26gw%3Djtx%26jtxsi%3D1%26jcpsi%3D1%26artsi%3D1%26Query%3DKathy%2BCharmaz%2BContemporary%2BSociology%26wc%3Don

the essay deals with Ariès's first statement in this chapter according to which

medieval people were familiar with the idea of their own death. The second part is

about Ariès second assumption that medieval people were familiar with the idea of

death through the idea of the coexistence between the living and the dead.

According to Philippe Ariès, medieval people were familiar with the idea of

their own death. Georges Duby, who wrote the History of Private Life with Philippe

Ariès,1 is also a supporter of the idea of Tamed Death. This can be seen in his

description of the death of William Marshal:

And we, who no longer know the meaning of a sumptuous death, we who hide death away, who hush it up, who get rid of it as fast as we can-as an embarrassing business- we for whom a good death must be swift, discreet, solitary, let us take advantage of the fact that the greatness to which the earl has acceded puts him, for our eyes, in an exceptionally brilliant light. Let us follow step by step, in all the details of its unfolding, the ritual of death in the old style, which was not a evasion, a furtive exit, but a slow, orderly approach, a careful prelude, a solemn transfer from one condition to another, to a higher state, a transition as public as the weddings of the period, as majestic as the entrances of kings into their fine cities. The death that we have lost and that, it may well be, we miss ».2

To support this statement, these authors use literary sources such as Le Roman de la

Table Ronde,3 La chanson de Roland,4 and the life of William Marshal.5

Let us describe death in the Middle Ages according to these authors.

2

1 History of Private Life, G. Duby and P. Ariès ed. (London : Belknap, 1988). (Originally published in France as Histoire de la vie privée by Les Editions du Seuil)

2 G. Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (London : Faber, 1986), p.5. (Originally published in France as Guillaume Le Maréchal ou le meilleur chevalier du monde by Librairie Arthème Fayard)

3 “La mort d'Artus”, Les romans de la Table Ronde (Paris : ed. J. Boulenger, 1941).

4 La chanson de Roland (Paris : ed. J. Bédier, 1922).

5 G. Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (London : Faber, 1986).

First of all, the knights wanted to be forewarned and knew when his end was near

most of the time: At Roncevaux, Roland « feels that his time has come. ».1 Secondly,

they didn’t really fear death. They didn’t call death but they accepted it peacefully, in

a resigned way.

And finally, « Knowing that his end was near, the dying person prepared for death and

everything would be done very simply. ».2 When Lancelot, who was lost in a desert

forest, realized that he was about to die, he set down his weapons, lay down quietly on

the ground, his arms forming a cross, his head facing east and he started to pray.3

Philippe Aries describes the knight as following a precise ritual. He focuses on the

death of Roland: paix avec les hommes puis paix avec Dieu. Georges Duby depicts

the whole ritual of death in a touching manner: William was worried about his

testamentary arrangements (the division of the patrimonies between his sons, the

dowries for his unmarried daughters, the gifts for his knights) and the salvation of his

soul (on his death-bed, he was robed in the white cloak of the Templar). It was a

public death.

In short, according to these sources, death forewarned was accepted and prepared for.

The problem is that the two authors back this theory only with literary sources.

Yet, these sources raise three main problems.

First of all, these sources are stories. Yet, medieval authors knew that a person's death

revealed the way he had lived. In others words, if they didn't like somebody, they

insisted on the person's bad death.

The death of Simon of Montfort for instance was described by a writer who

supported Simon’s enemies.4 He wrote that Simon was killed with a stone thrown

thanks to a machine driven by women. That meant he died suddenly without receiving

any sacraments. The writer insisted on his “ridiculous and bad” death. By contrast, if

you wanted to praise somebody because your work was a commission for example-

3

1 P. Ariès, Western attitudes towards death: from the Middle Ages to the present (Johns Hopkins U.P., 1974), p.3.

2 Ibid, p.7.

3 P. Ariès, L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977), p. 20.

4 La chanson de la croisade albigeoise (Paris : Librairie générale française, 1989).

such was case for the Life of William Marshal- authors would describe a good death,

an ideal death.

During the Middle Ages, the ideal death was the death of the saint. How did saints

die according to hagiographers? They wanted “to make the death of the saint as close

as possible to the death of Christ. Following the example of Christ, the servants of

God controlled their death whose date and time they announced to their followers in

advance. Far from succumbing to rebellion or bitterness, they accepted the suffering

with humility. (...) The emphasis was laid on the joy they manifested.”1 The clerics

emphasized the public and spectacular nature of their end (with references to celestial

music, luminous phenomena which marked their entry into eternity). In other words,

these stories followed precise rules. It is clear if we read the Golden Legend with its

stereotyped, ready-made phrases that associate death with peace and sleep.2

Hagiographies influenced the gesta. The death of Roland revealed to us how the

death of the knight reproduced the death of saints and mirrored the apotheosis

included in the hagiographies « Dieu lui envoya son ange Chérubin et Saint Michel du

Péril; avec eux y vint Saint Gabriel. Ils portent l'âme du comte en paradis ».3

Sources like gesta are inspired by the aspirations of the clerics but also by the rules of

chivalry. It can be seen in La Chanson de Roland (Roland died facing his enemy

holding his sword Durendal and his olifant) but it is clear if we read the life of

William Marshal. The earl wanted to be seen as a good lord so he had to be generous

with the knight of his house “Let none of my people have to complain of me”.4 To

sum things up, these stories reveal to us that the good death of a knight mirrored death

of a saint and followed the rules of chivalry. Philippe Ariès points out that in every

story people died in the same way (the knight knowing he was at death's door,

4

1 A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.513. (Originally published in France as La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age by L'Ecole Française de Rome)

2 A. Boureau, Le système narratif de Jacques de Voragine (Paris : Le Cerf, 1984).

3 La chanson de Roland (Paris : Union Générale d’Éditions, 1968), p.185.

4 G. Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (London : Faber, 1986), p.19.

accepted it and then prepared for it) so we may draw a model of medieval death on

this basis.

One can think that if people died in the same way in all the stories it is because each

author followed the same literary rules with the same aspiration and the same aim ( to

create a perfect hero with a “perfect death”). That doesn’t mean that this model is

totally wrong but we have to be careful and ask this question: to what extent did this

model correspond to reality?

Secondly, the sources tell us about the saints and the nobility. Roland and Lancelot

were knights. William Marshal was a famous knight and a wealthy nobleman. Aries

also uses the example of a rich young girl belonging to the nobility. So we may

wonder if this model could be applied to the entire population. It would be wrong to

say that there were two completely different models of death: that of the noblemen

and that of the lower classes, because one can think that the nobility influenced the

latter's behaviour. However the sources used by Aries are not sufficient to prove that

this model can be applied to the rest of the population as well. In others words, it will

be wrong too to claim that this model of death can be that of the entire Christian

community.

The last problem raised by the literary sources is that some of them contradict this

idea of death. All the following examples come from Michel Vovelle's work.1 Courtly

romance challenged the “christianisation” of chivalrous death from the 12th century to

the 13th century. This can be seen in the novel Lay des deux amants written by Marie

de France. But the most striking example is found in the novel Tristan in which the

earthly love between Tristan and Iseult is more powerful than death while at the same

time closely related to it.

This can be seen in the following two extracts from the book. The first scene took

place when Iseult of the White Hands claimed that the sail of the ship was black id est

Iseult the Fair would not come to see him: “And Tristan turned to the wall, and said:

5

1 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), pp83-85.

“I cannot keep this life of mine any longer.” He said “Iseult, my friend.” three times.

On saying it the fourth time, he died.”1

The second interesting scene for us took place when Iseult the Fair saw her lover on

his death-bed; “And when she had turned to the east and prayed to God, she moved

the body a little and lay down by the dead man, beside her friend. She kissed his

mouth and his face, and clasped him closely; and so gave up her soul, and died beside

him out of grief for her lover.”.2 “La poésie, comme le roman courtois, introduit ainsi

une lecture tout a fait humaine de la mort, a la fois fascinante et vaincue.”3 In other

words, these novels show death as something more human with feelings like love,

despair and fascination.

Was this challenge of Christian death only found in the upper class? It does not seem

the case because this challenge can be seen in more popular novels such as Le Roman

de Renard where the author makes fun of the Christian funeral and of Christian

beliefs (by criticising Saint Patrick's purgatory). It is worth noting that even the death

of Roland is different from an ideal Christian death. Indeed, Roland put himself and

his friends in danger because of his pride. Roland's friend Oliver advised him to blow

his olifant to summon the rest of the army, but Roland refused to call for help. Due to

his pride, he and his companions died on the battle field.

In short, in my opinion Philippe Ariès supports his theory with insufficient evidence.

Nevertheless, his model is interesting. The question raised is: in what way did

people's real death compare with the ideal death they had dreamed of?

Thus far, we have criticized the sources on which Philippe Ariès and Georges

Duby based their concept of prepared death. We shall now touch upon other sources

and question whether they do contradict their theory.

Can we find sources that contradict the idea of prepared death like that of William

Marshal? To do so we will need to examine wills written at that period. The relevance

6

1 . Bédier, Romance of Tristan and Iseult, rendered into English by H. Belloc (Allen, 1913), p.180.

2 . Ibid, p.182.

3 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), p85.

of such sources is that they are numerous and enable us to gather information about a

large range of people. Writing wills became more popular during the Middle Ages. In

London, the wills registered by the Commissary Court at the end of the 14th century

were about fifty per year. The number of wills reached one hundred at the end of the

fifteenth century. But that figure only represented ten per cent of men and 2 per cent

of women in London. As for the social background of the testators, more than 33 per

cent were middle class people. One can see that a lot of them were not noblemen but

nevertheless the testators were often wealthy. Poor people did not feel the need to

prepare their inheritance since they had no goods and they could not afford a scribe. It

is also worth noting that only 15 per cent of the testators were women.1 That means

that most people died without leaving a will (importance de l’oralité et de la parole

donnée). What about the preparation for their afterlife then? Thanks to sources such as

reports from clerics or their well illustrated minutes, we know for sure that the

implication the Church, the clerics were more and more involve in the “ceremony of

death”, in the rituals of death. It was something new.

Viaticum and extreme unction seemed to spread but the funeral vigil still took place at

home most of the time instead of taking place within the Church.2 Although William

Marshall confessed each week since the beginning of his illness,3 it seems that not

everybody prepared their death so well.

Was death accepted peacefully by medieval people? One cans disagree. People were

afraid of death, afraid of The Final Judgement. The fear of Death was used to

encourage people to be more pious in the preachings and in the Ars Moriendi.4 The

7

1 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), p.150.

2 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), pp147-149.

3 « Since the begenning of his illness, he had confessed each week. In great pomp, which never spoils anything, the two abbots absolve him one last time. Some claim that they saw him nod and even raise his hands as to cross himself, worshipping the placed in front of his eyes. He gives up the ghosts. » in G. Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry (London: Faber, 1986), p.21.

4 J. Shinners, 'The art of dying well' in Medieval popular religion, 1000-1500: a reader (Peterborough, Ont., Canada : Broadview Press, c1997 [repr. 1999]). Some additional informations about the Ars Moriendi are given By M. Vovelle in La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), pp.142-146.

Ars Moriendi are all the more interesting since they show how crucial the stage of

agony was from the 12th century onwards. Under his bed, the dying man, and only

him, saw the struggle between an angel and a demon. If he truly believed in God and

followed the angel's advice, he was safe. But if he gave way, he could lose his body

and his soul id est and go straight to hell. The dying man risked a great deal. He

risked everything during death. It was a kind of ordeal. Thus, people were afraid at the

time of their death. The stage of agony was not peaceful. During the 12th century,

even some descriptions of the agony of saints included dread and pain. A monk

witnessed the lingering agony of Odilo of Cluny: “In the last five years of his life, he

suffered very terribly. (...) He begged his monks to pray for him, guilty in that he had

not paid enough attention to their spiritual guidance”.1 He tried to die in Rome to be

sure to go to heaven because it was a holy place. It was not a new feeling since the

fear of death was recognized by preachers from the very beginning of the Middle

Ages. Thus, Bertichrammus, bishop of Le Mans in the 6th century, admitted that he

was afraid of the tortures of Hell in his will. All these reports contradict Philippe

Ariès's assumption that men were not afraid of dying up to the 13th century.2

Finally, some sources show a failure to establish the model of the Christian death.

Firstly, it happened that people died suddenly, without receiving any sacraments,

without confessing as the Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the city of London shows.3

Secondly, some people did not follow the Christian faith. Heretics such as the

Catharses had specific last rites. Here, we must also look at the work of Emmanuel Le

Roy Ladurie on Montaillou.4 In this French village, there were heretics who did not

perform the last rites in the Christian way and did not believe in the afterlife.

Illustrating this, Raymond de l'Aire said, “There is nothing after death”.5 In the same

8

1 L. M. Smith, The early history of the monastery of Cluny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), pp.199-200.

2 P. Ariès, L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977).

3 R. R., Sharpe, ed., Calendar of the Coroners of the city of London, 1913.

4 E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976).

5 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), p.83.

way, some preachers complained about the lack of faith in the Christian community.

For instance, Giordano da Pisa (1260-1311) preacher in Santa Maria Novella de

Florence explained that some people did not believe in hell at all. According to him,

they were numerous which made the preachings (based on fear) useless.1 Those kinds

of accounts are scarce but we should not underestimate them, that means that some

people, whether heretics or unbelievers, did not perform the last rites in a Christian

way. (however ils peuvent tt de même correspondre au modèle de la mort apprivoisée

même si elle n’est pas chrétienne)

« We shall touch upon another aspect of the old familiarity with death: the

coexistence between the living and the dead ».2 This coexistence is revealed to us

through two elements: the proximity with the dead bodies and the close relationship

between a family, a community, and its dead individuals.

First of all, we shall answer this question: Were medieval people familiar with

dead bodies, the process of decay through contact with real dead bodies and images of

putrefaction? This proximity with corpses was reflected in the change that concerned

cemeteries according to Philippe Ariès.3 Basically, the graveyard became closer to the

Church, and closer to the population. This process is the topic of a book written by

Michel Lauwers.4 We shall summarize his main argument. During the early Middle

Ages, the dead were buried in the fields in the necropolis (literally “cities of the

dead”) separated from the cities of the living. From the 8th century to the 12th century,

tombs accumulated around the churches inside the towns, and the inside of the

churches. First, this trend of wanting to be buried ad sanctos was condemned by

clerics such as Saint John Chrysostom and then it was encouraged by clerics like

9

1 A. Vauchez, ‘Jésus, Marie, Satan... A quoi croyait-on vraiment ?’, L’Histoire, 305 (2006), p.30-35.

2 P. Ariès, Western attitudes towards death: from the Middle Ages to the present (Johns Hopkins U.P., 1974), p.14.

3 P. Ariès, 'Ad sanctos; apud ecclesiam' in L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977), pp.37-97.

4 M. Lauwers, Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans l'Occident médiéval, (Paris: Aubier, 2005).

Hincmar who explained that the church, the building, should be made in the image of

the Church id est with the living and the dead.1 From the 10th century, the cemetery

moved inside the city and next to the Church. Michel Lauwers called this process

inecclesiamento.2 Philippe Ariès explains that “the fact that the dead had entered the

church and its courtyard did not prevent both from becoming public places.”3 In other

words, people went to the cemetery “in order to carry on business, to dance and

gamble, or simply for the pleasure of being together.”4 Michel Lauwers devotes an

entire chapter to this subject explaining that the cemetery was a place where people

grazed their livestock. Yet the title of the chapter is “Un lieu désormais réservé aux

morts: le refus du profane et des pratiques coutumières” (A place henceforth reserved

for the dead: the rejection of the profane and of the lay habits). In other words, Michel

Lauwers focuses on the condemnation of such practices. Of course, Philippe Ariès

mentions it, but immediately after he explains that such condemnations were

ineffective and that for a long time people carried on living in the company of the

dead. To defend that, he only uses the example of the Cemetery of the Innocents.5 Yet,

it was not the only one and Michel Lauwers tempers Ariès's statement.6 Relying

documents for support, he tells us that in places where this practice was condemned,

living people no longer lived in cemeteries. It was not sufficient evidence so he also

explains that archaeologists have discovered that the burial sites became smaller.

According to Michel Lauwers it was because the livings were separated from the

10

1 “Le cimetière avait en somme la même vocation enracinante et englobante que l'Eglise, il est était une sorte d'image concrète.” in M. Lauwers, Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier, 2005), p.276.

2 ‘Edification de lieux de culte protégés, sacralisation des zones funéraires qui les jouxtaient, attraction et fixation des populations autour de ces pôles sacrés: davantage que le brusque incastellamento naguère décrit par les médiévistes –réaménagement de l'espace et des liens sociaux autour du château-, c'est un lent et progressif inecclesiamento qui semble avoir caractérisé l'occupation du sol et l'organisation sociale au cours du Moyen Age.” in M. Lauwers, Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier, 2005), p. 273.

3 P. Ariès, Western attitudes towards death: from the Middle Ages to the present (Johns Hopkins U.P., 1974), p.23.

4 Ibid, pp23-24.

5 P. Ariès, L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977), pp.71-76.

6 M. Lauwers, Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier, 2005), p.260.

dead. In some places, the cemetery was split in two areas, one for the burial, and one

for the activities of the community such as the market-place. In some places, the two

areas were separated by a wall. So when the sources talked about people carrying on

business, it can be in such areas but not in the cemetery itself. To sum things up,

during the Middle Ages the cemetery surly came closer to the population but the

Church tried and often succeed in turning the graveyard into a sacred place separated

from the living. “Le cimetière ne pouvait plus apparaître comme la demeure

quotidienne et ordinaire des vivants.”1 (théorie miasmatique les cimetières sont

dangereux)

In the cemetery and the church dead bodies and also representations of death were

found. (today we make fun of death, movie with very shocking representations) And it

could be argued that this proximity was also reflected in the omnipresence of images

of the dead. The Three livings and the Three dead, the Dance of Death were subjects

commonly found in paintings. Some treatments of these subjects were really realistic.

Another memento mori was the cadaver effigy also called transi. This is all the more

interesting since these images were display in public places, within the church or even

the cemetery. Thus, the earliest image of the Dance of Death is a mural in the

cemetery and charnel house of the Innocents in Paris.2 It was the same for the cadaver

tomb called transi displayed within the churches. In others words, almost everybody

was able to see them. Furthermore, some treatments of these subjects were really

shocking showing decay with a lot of lifelike details such as worms gnawing and

eating the body to the bone. Representations of decay were numerous in literature as

well. It could be argued that people became familiar with the process of decay

especially well represented in The Three Living and The Three Dead that showed

various stages of decomposition. Does it mean that medieval people were inured to

images of decay? Let us note that the purpose was to inspire them with contempt for

the worldly things such as the body (bodies of women describes as in order to turn

people from the sin of the flesh), to inspire them with pity. To serve this purpose, the

11

1 M. Lauwers, Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier, 2005), p.267.

2 P. Binski, Medieval death (London: British Museum Press, 1996), pp.153-154.

representation had to be shocking, revolting. If such images were widespread, that

means there were effective. So they were shocking. Medieval people were not inured

to the process of decay.

Secondly, we shall ask whether the relationship between a person and its dead

relatives were continuous. This idea is present in Geary's work.1 Patrick J. Geary

doesn't claim to take his inspiration from Ariès given that he doesn't mention him in

his bibliography. Nevertheless, his introduction contains one argument closely related

to Ariès's work: « the dead are banished from our society », « they simply no longer

exist » whereas in the Middle Ages death was « omnipresent ». One can see here the

idea of contemporary hidden death versus the medieval omnipresent death. To support

his argument in his introduction, he uses others topics like the ghosts and the

memoria: « The living continued to owe them (the dead) certain obligations, the most

important that of the memoria, remembrance. This meant not only liturgical

remembrance in the prayers and masses offered for the dead for weeks, months and

years,2 but also the preservation of the name, the family and the deeds of the departed.

(...) All the dead interacted with the living, continuing to aid them, to warn or to

admonish them, even to chastise them if the obligations of memoria were not

fulfilled. ».3 Concerning the preservation of the deeds and the name of the departed, I

partly agree with him. To be able to trace his ancestry was important among the

nobility. All this noblemen were seeking for glorious ancestors, in this way, it was one

of Lambert's preoccupations when he wrote the story of the counts of Guines.4

Nevertheless, the genealogical concerns remained limited to aristocratic circles. But I

12

1 P. J. Geary, Living with the dead in the middle Ages (London: Cornell University Press, 1994).

2 Thanks to yours prayers, you could shorten the stay of your dead relatives in purgatory. See J. Le Goff La naissance du purgatoire (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1981). If you didn't carry on this duty, one of your dead relatives could return from the grave to remind you your duties. See J. C. Schmitt, Ghosts in the middle Ages: the living and the dead in medieval society (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

3 J. P. Geary, Living with the dead in the middle Ages (London: Cornell University Press, 1994), p.2.

4 'Les comtes de Guines' in G. Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre (Paris: Hachette littératures, 198), pp. 269-305. See also the article written by Michel Lauwers related to the function of the deeds of the ancestors in Dictionnaire raisonné de l'Occident médiéval, Le Goff and Schmitt ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1990).

want to focus on the prayers and the ghosts. I'm going to use Jean-Claude Schmitt’s

book: Ghosts in the Middle Ages.1 First, let speak about the prayers. Most of the time

prayers lasted rarely longer than a month or a year even if prayers in perpetuity

existed.2 Furthermore, the frequency of prayers was more and more relaxed. Why

does that reveal to us? « This word remembrance is in fact misleading, for the goal of

the memoria was to help the living separate from the dead, to shorten the latter's stay

in purgatory, and finally, to enable the living to forget the deceased. ».3 As for the

apparition of ghosts, firstly, Jean-Claude Schmitt points out that they were not the

norm for relationships between the living and the dead. Indeed, dead returned from

the grave only if death happened suddenly or prematurely (death of a child, of a

mother during the delivery) or if the funeral and mourning rituals were not performed

in the right way (for instance if there's no corpse in the case of a drowning man).

Secondly, the livings didn't wish for seeing their dead relatives most of the time.

Some livings refused to enter in contact with the ghost. For instance, Adam de Lond

didn't wan to listen to his dead sister.4 Some contacts were really violent. Not only did

the living not want to see their dead once they saw them but they tried to avoid it

before too. A lot of rituals were performed in order to prevent the return of the dead.5

On one hand, people wanted to make the departure of the soul from the house easier.

In Brittany, one took a tile from the roof, under the bedroom. In Scotland, one opened

the doors. The Sicilians called the soul from the road to make her leave the house. On

the others hand, people wanted to tell the dead that he was no longer welcome here.

One burnt the bedding of the dead man in France, in Sicily or gave it to the poor in

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1 J. C. Schmitt, Ghosts in the middle Ages: the living and the dead in medieval society (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1998). (Originally published in France as Les revenants : les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale by Gallimard)

2 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), pp.168-169.

3 J. C. Schmitt, Ghosts in the middle Ages: the living and the dead in medieval society (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p.5.

4 Medieval ghosts stories: an anthology of miracles, marvels and prodigies, compiled and edited by A. Joyne (Woodbridge : Boydell Press, 2001 [repr. 2006]), p.125.

5 M. Vovelle, La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jour (Paris : Editions Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983), pp.44-49.

Portugal. Moreover, one tried to stabilize the dead in the cemetery. This can be seen

when one threw soil on the coffin or when one turned around the coffin several times

to lock the dead up in a kind of circle. These elements are contradicting with this

assumption of Ariès: “Les morts ont et pour longtemps cessé de faire peur”.1

Certainly, this criticism challenges the concept of Tamed Death -especially the

second part of the essay- but, for a large part, it deals with the sources used by the

authors to back this concept. Because the concept of Tamed Death is not of no value.

Indeed, despite the fact that one could understand Virginie Greene criticism of the

nostalgia of authors like Philippe Ariès or Georges Duby, some part of the concept

seems to me particularly relevant: The fact that the death was public and the religious

rituals could make the agony easier than today in European and North-American

countries. Moreover, The Hour of Our death is full of ideas and references to primary

sources that suggested new avenues of research.

Reader history of medicine children dying alone in hospital

Bibliography:

'Tamed Death' historiography

Ariès, P. L'homme devant la mort, (Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1977).

Ariès, P. Essais sur l'histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen Age à nos

jours, (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975).

Vovelle, M. La mort et l'occident de 1300 à nos jours, (Paris : Editions

Gallimard et Panthéon Books, 1983).

Greene, V., « Le sujet et la mort », in La mort Artu (Saint-Genouph : Librairie

Nizet, 2002).

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1 . Ariès, L'homme devant la mort (Paris : Le Seuil, 1977), p.43.

Examples of death

Bonnefoy, Y. Les mots et la parole dans la Chanson de Roland, (Paris: Union

Générale d’Éditions, 1968).

Smith, L. M. The early history of the monastery of Cluny, (Oxford University

Press, 1920).

Duby, G. Guillaume Le Maréchal ou le meilleur chevalier du monde, (Paris :

A. Fayard, 1984).

De Voragine, J., Legenda aurea, The Golden Legend or, Lives of the saints as

Englished by Willaim Caxton, (New York : AMS Press, 1973).

Bédier, J., Romance of Tristan and Iseult, rendered into English by H. Belloc,

(Allen, 1913).

Le Roy Ladurie, E., Montaillou: village occitan de 1294 à 1324, (Paris:

Gallimard, 1976).

People attitude towards death and dead people (books of general interest)

Geary P. J. Living with the dead in the middle Ages, (London: Cornell

University Press, 1994).

Le Goff, J. La naissance du purgatoire, (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1981).

Lawers, M. Naissance du cimetière. Lieux sacrés et terres des morts dans

l'Occident médiéval, (Paris: Aubier, 2005).

Schmitt, J. C. Ghosts in the middle Ages: the living and the dead in medieval

society. (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Binski, P. Medieval death, (London: British Museum Press, 1996).

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