Description: This volume presents a complete reconstruction of the ritual response to terminal illness and death at the monastic community of Cluny at the height of its development in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Based on the best manuscript of the customary of Bernard, the only account of the abbey's customs written at and for
Brief description: Frederick S. Paxton is Brigida Pacchiani Ardenghi Professor of History at Connecticut College, in New London, CT, USA. He is the author of Christianizing Death: The Making of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (1990), Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony: the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim (2009) and numerous articles and essays on sickness, death, dying and the dead in medieval Europe.
Review Quotes: "This is a volume that has much to offer everyone from to beginning students of religion, interested in ritual performance, to advanced scholars of liturgical life at Cluny. Paxton is to be commended for finding a way to speak to both extremes of his audience without losing either. [...] In this way, he is able to make the death liturgy of Cluny live for the modern reader." -- Lucy K. Pick, The Medieval Review "As Paxton points out, 'the Cluniac death ritual is about as close to a perfect expression of Benedictine spirituality in the central Middle Ages as one could imagine' (177). We are all indebted to him for writing this book." --Barbara H. Rosenwein, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, January 2015, Vol. 90, No. 1