One of the strongest indicators of the nature and coherence of “traditional
death” is the relatively stable view of a prototypical “good death.” The “good
death” is the ideal death that is prescriptively regulated through social and
religious norms. The rituals and practices surrounding artes moriendi, the art
of dying well, exemplify the kind of authoritative norms governing the “good
death” in Europe throughout this time period. A “bad death” is one that falls
outside of these norms. To use another illustrative example regarding the
significance of communal practice, some of the death rituals practiced in late
imperial China, as James Watson notes, are such that they do not require that
participants actually acknowledge the persistence of the spirit after life. What
matters is that the rites are performed according to accepted procedure regard-
less of ‘belief’ (Watson 1988:9–10). Such rituals are traditional in the sense of
falling under the auspices of cosmological and undifferentiated authority or
religious tradition. A death accompanied by the proper rituals is “good.” For
the most part, accidental deaths, suicides, or murders are viewed as “cursed”
or abnormal because they fall outside the norms prescribed by the cultural
good death ideal. The accursed death is a death not tamed by ritual.
Modern Death
In stark contrast to the communal nature of “traditional death,” modern death
is hidden, and dying takes place within established medical institutions. The
social context is marked by the separation of public and private spheres and
is mediated by medical professionals and legal experts. As opposed to ritu-
als of mourning and concern for the proper passage of the soul into the after-
life (e.g., purgatory or prolonged sleep prior to the resurrection), grief and
emotional privacy become guiding norms. The soul is viewed, more or less,
as the private property of the individual and not the responsibility of state
or medical officials who often remain relatively silent about religious issues.
Funeral experts often view the participation of religious experts as inconve-
nient or annoying. A Canadian funeral director writing with the pseudonym
Coriolis notes, “Any effort of a clergyman [sic] to influence a family regard-
ing anything from expenditure to service time are regarded as interference”
(Coriolis 1967:49). In the modern age, religious participation is also muted
by a dramatic decline in the belief in hell, a concept becoming virtually intol-
erable after WWI. Walter indicates, “No field chaplain could even so much
as hint that the brave lad he was burying might be going to the wrong place”
182 • Kenneth G. MacKendrick