Performing Death and Dying at Cluny in the High Middle Ages

Bibliographic Data

ID20054380
AuthorsFrederick S Paxton (0000-0002-3442-0746, corresponding author)
Year2006
Pages43-57
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenuePracticing Catholic (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9781403982964_3
OpenAlexW2488920196
ISBN9781403982964
LanguageEN
References cited18

The liturgy of death and dying at the great Benedictine abbey of Cluny first caught my attention over 25 years ago. Returning time and again to the textual remains of Cluniac death rituals: translating, teaching, and writing about them, considering them from various points of view—the history of monasticism, the cure of the body and care of the soul, relations between the living and the dead, the anthropology of ritual and religion, contemporary practice—has revealed not just some of the ideas and beliefs to which they gave expression, but also something of the gestures, choreographed movements, and musical forms of the people who performed them. In this chapter, I would like to address some of these performative aspects of the Cluniac death ritual. I would like to begin, though, with a brief account of the role these texts have played in the history of music-thanatology, a contemporary musical-medical practice that uses voice and harp in the palliative care of the dying. We will then turn to the spaces in the monastic complex where the monks performed the death rites, and as to how they evolved over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries when Cluny reached the peak of its development. Finally, we will follow the death and funeral of a monk at Cluny as it unfolded in the infirmary, chapter house, churches, and cemetery, attending to the possible meanings of the ritual performance, and the ways in which its performative aspects organized—and affected—the participants.KeywordsPalliative CareHoly WaterRitual PerformanceFuneral HomeIntercessionary PrayerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Literature · Liturgy · Musical · Performative utterance · Sociology · Soul · Thanatology · Theology · Anthropology · Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

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