390 BuoniCattolici
God of Truth, receive me.’’^43 The ritual then prescribed that the penitent
make a general confession of all the principal sins of her life. This probably
followed the forms found in the confessional manuals, since the priest had
brought his ‘‘penitential’’ with him. The priest could thus help the dying one
in her confession by again using a dialogue format. Sinners were to end their
confession with some formula acknowledging the misuse of the senses: ‘‘I
have sinned through my fault, Lord, before you and your saints, by my sight,
hearing, taste, smell, and touch, and I beseech you, priest of God, that you
pray for me to the Lord our God.’’^44 The priest then recited the absolution
prayers, reconciling the sinner to God. To these prayers, he suitably added
invocations asking the aid of the saints.
Confession and the preparation of a will allowed Christians to face declin-
ing health with a settled conscience. When they felt their strength declining,
but while they still retained their faculties, they were to call for the most
important rite of the deathbed, final Communion. In religious houses, this
ceremony had long been embellished and elaborated. The canons of Siena
made the rite even more impressive by holding their processions for viaticum
immediately following the solemn Mass of the day.^45 When Communion was
brought to a dying monk, a brother rang the bell of the chapter house.
Monks gathered in the choir for a procession to the sickroom, with the cele-
brant vested in a chasuble and carrying the Host in a chalice. The priest
would later cleanse his hands in that vessel after handling the Sacrament.
Candle-bearers led the procession, during which the brothers sang the psalm
‘‘Miserere Mei.’’ On arrival in the sickroom, the priest sprinkled it with
holy water. The dying brother begged the community for prayers, and after
recitation of the Confiteor and, in some places, the singing of the Agnus Dei,
the dying monk (or nun) received the sacred Host.^46
By the 1200 s, viaticum also had become a solemn rite for the laity. Unlike
the last confession, final Communion had a public nature and called on the
dying person’s neighbors to join the sacred drama. Taking viaticum to the
dying, as an official rite of the Church, was the pastor’s personal responsibil-
ity and could not be delegated to a layperson.^47 The parish priest donned
the surplice, covered in winter by a closed cape, and took up before his
- Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msPalat. 150 , fols. 35 r–v: ‘‘O Signore mio, in le tue mane
arecomando lo spirito mio; tu Signore, Dio della veritade, mi recomprasti.’’ There follows in this manu-
script a selection from the Latin commendation prayers for the dying from the Roman Ritual and the
famous prayer ‘‘Anima Christi.’’
44 .Rituale di Hugo [di Volterra], 286 – 87 : ‘‘Mea culpa peccavi Domine coram te et coram sanctis tuis
in visu, in auditu, in gustu, in ordoratu et tactu preterea deprecor te sacerdos Dei ut ores pro me ad
Dominum Deum nostrum.’’ - On Sienese rites, seeOrdo Senensis, 2. 87 – 92 , pp. 487 – 97 , esp. 2. 88 , pp. 490 – 93.
- Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msConv. Soppr. D. 8. 2851 , fols. 1 v– 3 r, a Florentine ex-
ample; Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare,ms dccxxxvi(latexiiicent.), fols. 8 r– 12 r, an example from Pisa. - Novara Synodii( 1298 ), 1. 2. 1. 4 , pp. 184 – 86. Nowhere is the observation of Arie`s,Western Attitudes,
12 – 14 , that premodern death was ‘‘public,’’ more evident than in the rites of viaticum.