392 BuoniCattolici
the head, hands, feet, and five senses. Nor did it presuppose the presence of
seven priests. Filippo of Ferrara wrote about visiting the sick a little after
- He included much medical advice and a little on prayer and Commun-
ion. But regarding extreme unction, he merely borrowed a description from
the patristic author Cesarius of Arles and otherwise said it could be adminis-
tered only once, during a terminal illness.^56 Although the saintly Dominican
Reginald of Orleans was French, not Italian, he showed a similar lack of
interest in extreme unction at the time of his death. On his deathbed, the
possibility of anointing seems to have slipped his mind. When his prior sug-
gested it, Reginald agreed, so that he ‘‘not seem to make little of the
Church’s anointing.’’^57 When diocesan statutes treated anointing, their con-
cern was to prevent profanation of the blessed oil, not to ensure its delivery
to the dying.^58 While anointing may well have had a vigorous life in some
monastic communities, the central death ritual for lay men and women was
Communion, the first taste of the banquet of heaven.^59
FinalHours
Reception of viaticum, which came as close to death as possible, began the
final drama. Sicardo of Cremona described the ideal death:
When the one dying reaches his last moment, let him be put down
on ashes and straw, just like Saint Martin, who died lying on ashes,
so showing that he was ashes and to ashes he would return. Before
this, the Passion of Christ is read, or at least a part, so that he might
be moved to greater sorrow for sin. A cross is also placed before his
feet, so that looking down he might gaze upon it in fear. And he
ought to lie with his face upward, so that he might look to heaven
and, before he expires, commend his soul to the Lord.^60Dying was the final liturgy, celebrated equally by clerics and laypeople. The
practice of lowering the dying onto sackcloth and ashes was known through-
out Europe.^61 These signs of penance and Sicardo’s formula of ‘‘ashes to
ashes’’ recalled Ash Wednesday and the penance of Lent; meditation on the
- Filippo of Ferrara,Liber de Introductione Loquendi, 4. 34 , in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms
1552 , fol. 21 v. The Franciscan Jean of La Rochelle, [Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus], in Florence, Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana,msConv. Soppr. 145 (xivcent.), fol. 147 r, shows the same limited focus.
57 .Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, 5. 2 , pp. 248 – 49 , Conway trans., 229. - E.g., Novara Synodii( 1298 ), 1. 2. 1. 5 ,p. 187.
- For a monastic rite of extreme unction, see Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msConv.
Soppr. D. 8. 2851 , fols. 4 r– 7 v. - Sicardo,Mitrale, 9. 50 , col. 427 : ‘‘Moriturus itaque dum laborat in extremis, super cinere et palea
deponatur, ad instar beati Martini, qui jacens in cinere vitam finivit, in quo innuitur quod cinis est et in
cinerem revertetur. Antequam passio Christi, vel pars ejus, legatur, ut ad majorem compunctionem
moveatur, crux etiam ante pedes ejus ponatur, ut mirens eam cernat, et magis conteratur, et debet recta
facie jacere, ut coelum respiciat, et antequam expiret, ejus anima Domino commendetur.’’
61 .Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, 5. 3 ,p. 250 , Conway trans., 249.