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The Medieval Way of Death: Commemoration and the Afterlife in Pre-Reformation Cambridgeshire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
Aside from learned conjecture about the nature of the afterlife, the men and women of the late Middle Ages were as fearful as we are of what lies on the other side of death. They too were afraid of dying, afraid of what was beyond, of their own aloneness in facing death. They too had their euphemisms for the process of dying. Some went the way of all flesh: ‘Viam universe carnis ingredi’, while others migrated from this light, or from this age, to the Lord, ‘ab hac luce migraverit’, ‘ab hoc saeculo emigraverit’, ‘ad Dominum migraverit’. To comfort themselves they held up a mirror to their own society, which reflected the network of relationships which bound them in life to their lords, their tenants and servants, their families and benefactors, their fellow religious, their fellow gild brethren, townsmen, and parishioners. This image they projected into the void beyond the grave.
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- Part II: Death and Salvation
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994
References
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56 PRO C47/38/10.
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59 PRO C47/38/43.
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61 PRO C66/478, 32 Henry VI, membrane 23, patent roll licence to found a chantry.
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65 PRO C47/38/5.
66 PRO C47/38/32.
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68 PRO C47/38/4:C47/38/9.
69 PRO C47/38/4:C47/38/7.
70 PRO C47/38/9.
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76 Obit—commemorative services on the anniversary of a death.
77 I.e. college of the University.
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