The Black Death

I've just finished reading a book I would recommend to all: John Hatcher's The Black Death: The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-1350 (London: Phoenix, 2009).

It is a very sympathetic account, written as if by a near-contemporary, of what the village of Walsham in Suffolk faced as the Black Death approached, then raged, and then passed. I found it excellent particularly in its depiction of the religious beliefs and practices of the priests and people, their liturgical and devotional life, and how they dealt with the unanswerable question of why a just and merciful God would permit so terrible a plague to befall them, and with their guilt over how in fear of death they shrank back from ministering to their loved ones in the chaos of the plague.

Apart from three minor slips that I with my interest in liturgy detected (e.g. the author has a priest wearing a chasuble under a cope - I think he meant to write "stole"), the detail is very believable, and tells an important tale. All Catholics would appreciate the characters, particularly the good parish priest, Master John (whom the author gave many of the qualities of the ideal clergyman as delineated by Chaucer and others).

Hatcher also mentions the very interesting and very controversial advice that bishops tendered to their flocks on the eve of the pestilence: that if a priest could not be found to come to the dying victims, they could make confession even to a layman or laywoman! (See this translation of the letter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, 10th January 1349.) Note that this was intended as a substitute for the sacrament of penance: the dying person, by admitting their sins and having contrition, would, if perfectly contrite, obtain full forgiveness of the Lord, and the process of having to do so would aid them in this. It was not a question of those not priests absolving of course.

Who knows when the next really terrible pandemic will strike? Would we lax irreligious moderns cope any better than, or even as well as, those mediæval villagers? Media vita in morte sumus...

Pray St Benedict for a Happy Death

The Bona Mors devotion is an important one, indeed the most important, in a certain sense: there's little point in so mismanaging one's affairs as to spurn God's grace and die the death of the wicked, after all.

Saints of God, come to our aid!  Luckily enough, Miss Medieval-Liturgy-Mystic, St Gertrude the Great, had a revelation (see her Revelations, IV, 11) from St Benedict, the glorious Patriarch of Monks, that whoso would frequently invoke him, devoutly recalling and reminding him of his most blessed death (undergone while he stood praying in his monastery's oratory – see St Gregory the Great's account in his Dialogues, II, 37), would obtain his assistance at the hour of death and defence against Satan's final attacks: tit for tat.  Some monasteries therefore used the following prayer in his honour after Compline (the anthem is from St Gregory's account, the collect alludes to St Gertrude's vision), and when I get around to it so do I.  Ye ne'er can tell...

Aña.  Stans in Oratorio dilectus Domini Benedictus, Corpore et Sanguine dominico munitus, inter discipulorum manus imbecillia membra sustentans, erectis in cælum manibus, inter verba orationis spiritum efflavit; qui per viam stratam palliis et innumeris coruscam lampadibus, cælum ascendere visus est.

V.  Gloriosus apparuisti in conspectu Domini.

R.  Propterea decorem induit te Dominus.

Oremus.

Deus, qui pretiosam mortem sanctissimi Patris nostri Benedicti tot, tantisque privilegiis decorasti; concede quæsumus nobis: ut cujus memoriam recolimus, ejus in obitu nostro beata præsentia ab hostium muniamur insidiis.  Per Christum Dominum nostrum.  R.  Amen.

(Anthem.  Standing in the place of Prayer, Benedict, beloved of the Lord, 'his soul' [–] strengthened by the Body and Blood of the Lord, his failing limbs upheld upon the arms of his disciples, lifted up his hands to heaven, and, while prayer was actually being offered, yielded up his soul, which 'took' [was seen to take] its heavenward course along a way all strewn with mantles and aglow with countless lights.

(V.  Renowned hast thou appeared before the Lord.

(R.  Wherefore the Lord hath surrounded thee with glory.

(Let us pray.

(O God, Who hast enriched the precious death of our most holy Father Benedict with favours so many and so great; grant us, we beseech Thee, that he, whose memory we now recall, may protect us from all the wiles of our enemies by his blest presence in the hour of death.  Through Christ our Lord.  R/.  Amen.)