Susan Boynton

A monastic death ritual from the Imperial Abbey of Farfa

Lengthy and complex rituals surrounding illness and death were an important part of the collective experience of medieval monastic communities. In manuscripts from as early as the eighth century, the texts for Christian death rituals consist of prayers, readings, and chants for the visitation of the sick, unction, communion, the funeral mass, and burial.1 Even though many of the early medieval formularies were copied in monastic scriptoria, the texts could be performed in secular or monastic settings.2 The earliest death rituals that are explicitly written for monastic communities and contain extensive prescriptions for the actions that accompanied a monk from his final hours of life to his grave are transmitted in monastic customaries of the eleventh century. The first fully developed Cluniac customary, the Liber tramitis, appears to contain one of the oldest preserved explicitly monastic death rituals.3

Les coutumiers clunisiens. Auxerre, 7-8 juin 2002

Le seminaire international qui s’est tenu les 7 et 8 juin 2002 au Centre d’etudes medievales d’Auxerre et reunissait une bonne vingtaine de chercheurs de France, d’Allemagne, d’Italie, d’Angleterre, des Etats-Unis et du Canada, portait sur les coutumiers clunisiens. L’objectif principal des discussions et presentations de cette rencontre etait de mieux cerner l’emploi de ces textes tant par les moines d’autrefois que par les medievistes d’aujourd’hui. Du fait de sa tres grande richesse, ses ...