Chapter Ten
World Without End. Amen.
In communal Italy there was a proper way to die; everyone knew it.^1 The
chronicler Giovanni de’ Mussi described the pious end of Umberto Palavi-
cino in 1269. Umberto confessed, not just to one priest, but ‘‘many times to
Dominicans, Franciscans, and prelates of the Church’’; all absolved him of
his sins. He received the last rites—confession, Communion, and anoint-
ing—while still conscious and clearheaded. His friends and relatives could
certainly hope that his soul had ascended to heaven: ‘‘His was a good end.’’^2
In contrast, the Franciscan chronicler Salimbene described two ‘‘bad
deaths.’’ Giuliano de’ Sessi of Reggio, a persecutor of the Church, in 1249
‘‘passed from this world, wholly stinking, excommunicated, and cursed;
without confession, without Communion, and without making satisfaction,
on his way to the Devil.’’^3 Salimbene could imagine no greater horror than
the death of a sinner like the worldly Bishop Obizzo of Parma. He suppos-
edly refused deathbed Communion, saying he did not believe in it. But he
also said he liked being bishop for the money. Fra Salimbene had no doubt
he was rotting in hell.^4 The chroniclers observe good dying from a distance.
- On death and dying, see Philippe Arie`s’s classic lectures,Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the
Middle Ages to the Present,trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974 ). For
a summary of other French studies, see Gabriella Severino Polica, ‘‘Morte e cultura ecclesiastica nel
duecento,’’Studi storici 21 ( 1980 ), 909 – 14. On the anthropology of death, see Peter Metcalf and Richard
Huntington, eds.,Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, 2 d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991 ), esp. 24 – 37 , and Maurice Block and Jonathan Parry, eds.,Death and the Regeneration
of Life(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982 ), 5 – 6. I thank Prof. Aletta Biersack of the University
of Oregon for these references. - Giovanni de’ Mussi,Chronicon Placentinum( 1269 ), col. 476. See also Arie`s,Western Attitudes, 5 – 6 ,on
the survival of ideas on ‘‘proper ways to die.’’ - Salimbene,Cronica( 1249 ), 483 , Baird trans., 332 : ‘‘totus fetidus, excommunicatus et maledictus,
sine confessione, sine communione, sine satisfactione de hoc mundo recessit, vadens ad diabolum.’’ For
the links between decay, damnation, and ‘‘bad death,’’ see Block and Parry,Death and the Regeneration of
Life, 16 – 17 , and John Middleton, ‘‘Lugbara Death,’’ ibid., 144 – 45. - Salimbene,Cronica( 1233 ), 97 – 98 , Baird trans., 46.