The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Of Pride (Pt 1)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own as [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

Of Pride (Pt 1)

Now sith I have somewhat laid afore thy face the bodily pains of death, the troubles and vexations spiritual that come therewith by thy ghostly enemy the devil, the unrestful encumbrance of thy fleshly friends, the uncertainty of thyself how soon this dreadful time shall come, that thou art ever sick of that incurable sickness, by which, if none other come, thou shalt yet in few years undoubtedly die, and yet moreover that thou art already dying, and ever hast been since thou first begannest to live, let us now make some proof of this one part of our medicine, how the remembrance of death in this fashion considered in his kind will work with us to the preservation of our souls from every kind of sin, beginning at the sin that is the very head and root or all sins, that is to wit pride, the mischievous mother of all manner of vice. 

The children of pride

I have seen many vices ere this that at the first seemed far from pride, and yet, well considered to the uttermost, it would well appear that of that root they sprang. As for wrath and envy, [they] be the known children of pride, as rising of a high estimation of our self. But [what would] seem farther from pride than drunken gluttony ? And yet shall ye find more that drink themselves sow drunk[1] of pride to be called good fellows than for lust of the drink itself. 

Hypocrites. Spiritual pride.

So spreadeth this cursed root of pride his branches into all other kinds, besides his proper malice for his own part, not only in high mind[2] of fortune, rule and authority, beauty, wit, strength, learning, or such other gifts of God, but also the false pride of hypocrites that fain to have the virtues that they lack, and the perilous pride of them that for their few spotted[3] virtues, not without the mixture of other mortal vices, take themselves for quick[4] saints on earth, proudly judging the lives of their even[5] Christians, disdaining other men’s virtue, envying other men’s praise, bearing implacable anger where they perceive themselves not accepted and set by[6] after the worthiness of their own estimation. 

Which kind of spiritual pride, and thereupon following envy and wrath, is so much the more pestilent in that it carrieth with it a blindness almost incurable save God’s great mercy. For the lecher knoweth he doth naught[7], and hath remorse thereof; the glutton perceiveth his own fault and sometime thinketh it beastly; the slothful body misliketh his dulness[8], and thereby is moved to mend ; but this kind of pride, that in his own opinion taketh himself for holy, is farthest from all recovery. For how can he mend his fault that taketh it for none, that weeneth[9] all is well that he doth himself, and nothing that any man doth else ? that covereth his purpose with the pretext of some holy purpose that he will never begin while he liveth ? taketh his envy for an holy desire to get before his neighbour in virtue, and taketh his wrath and anger for an holy zeal of justice ? And thus, while he proudly liketh his vices, he is out all the way to mend them[10]. 

In so far forth that I surely think there be some who had in good faith made the best merchandise[11] that ever they made in their lives for their own souls, if they had changed those spiritual vices of pride, wrath and envy, for the beastly carnal sins of gluttony, sloth and lechery. Not that these three were good, which be undoubtedly damnable, but for the like as God said in the Apocalypse unto the Church of Laodicea, “Thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm ; I would thou were cold, that thou mightest wax warm,”[12] signifying that if he were in open and manifest sins he would have more occasion to call fervently for grace and help ; so if these folk had these carnal sins they could not be ignorant of their own faults. 

God alway knocking

For, as St Paul saith[13], the fleshly sins be eth[14] to perceive, and so should they have occasion to call for grace and wax good, where now by their pride, taking themselves for good where they be naught[15], they be far from all occasion of amendment, saving the knocking of our Lord, which always standeth at the door of man’s heart and knocketh[16], whom I pray God we may give ear unto and let him in. And one of His good and gracious knockings is the putting us in remembrance of death, which remembrance, as I have said, let us see what stead it may stand us in against this cursed sin of pride. And surely against this last branch of pride, of such as repute themselves for holy with the disdain of others, and an inward liking of all their spiritual vices, which they commend unto themselves under the cloak and shadow of some kind of virtue, most hard it is to take remedy by the remembrance of death, forasmuch as they reckon themselves thereby ready to go straight to heaven. But yet if they consider the labour and solicitation of our ghostly enemy, the devil, that shall at the time of their death be busy to destroy the merits and good works of all their life before, and that his subtlest craft and most venomous dart, and the most for them to avoid, shall be under the colour of a faithful hope of heaven, as a thing more than due to their own holiness, to send them wretchedly to the fire of hell for their sinful and wilful blind presumption. I say the remembrance and consideration of this perilous point and fearful jeopardy likely to fall on them at the time of their death is a right effectual ointment long before in their life to wear away the web that covereth the eyes of their souls in such wise as they cannot with a sure sight look upon their own conscience.

Footnotes

[1] sow drunk : Certain sources suggest that in the Middle Ages there were four distinct phases of intoxication. A man was ‘sheep drunk’ when he was merry and easily handled; then ‘lion drunk’ when he was aggressive and boastful; ‘ape drunk’ when he behaved in a silly, irresponsible manner and finally ‘sow drunk’ when he fell to the ground in an alcoholic stupor. See e.g., Sow-drunk or Sheep-drunk.

[2] conceitedness.

[3] i.e., corrupted.

[4] i.e., living.

[5] i.e., consistent fellow Christians.

[6] i.e., esteemed.

[7] i.e., evil.

[8] Sluggishness, inertness, inactivity.

[9] i.e., thinketh.

[10] he has no way to amend them.

[11] merchandise: here the action or business of buying and selling goods or commodities (obsolete).

[12] Apoc. iii. 15.

[13] Gal. v. 19-21.

[14] i.e., easy.

[15] bad.

[16] Apoc. iii. 20.

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 5 of 5)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own as [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Remembrance of Death (Pt 5 of 5)

Now, if thou thinkest this reason but a sophistical subtlety, and thinkest while thou art a young man thou mayest for all this think thy death far off, that is to wit as far as thou hast by likelihood of nature many years to live, then will I put thee an homely example, not very pleasant, but nathless very true and very fit for the matter. 

If there were two, both condemned to death, both carried out at once toward execution, of which two the one were sure that the place of his execution were within one mile, the other twenty miles off – yea, an hundred, an ye will – he that were in the cart to be carried a hundred miles would not take much more pleasure than his fellow in the length of his way, notwithstanding that it were a hundred times as long as his fellow's, and that he had thereby a hundred times as long to live, being sure and out of all question to die at the end.

Reckon me now yourself a young man in your best lust[1] – twenty years of age if ye will. Let there be another, ninety. Both must ye die, both be ye in the cart carrying forward. His gallows and death standeth within ten mile at the farthest, and yours within eighty. I see not why ye should reckon much less of your death than he, though your way be longer, since ye be sure ye shall never cease riding till ye come at it.

And this is true, although ye were sure that the place of your execution stood so far beyond his.

But what if there were to the place of your execution two ways, of which the one were four score mile farther about than your fellow’s, the other nearer by five mile than his ; and when ye were put in the cart ye had warning of both, and though ye were shewed that it were likely that ye should be carried the longer way, yet it might hap ye should go the shorter, and whether ye were carried the one or the other ye should never know till ye come to the place ; I trow ye could not in this case make much longer of your life than of your fellow’s.

Now in this case are we all, for our Lord hath not indented[2] with us of the time. He hath appointed what we may not pass, but not how soon we shall go, nor where, nor in what wise. And therefore if thou wilt consider how little cause thou hast to reckon thy death so far off by reason of thy youth, reckon how many as young as thou have been slain in the selfsame ways in which thou ridest, how many have been drowned in the self-same waters in which thou rowest. And thus shalt thou well see that thou hast no cause to look upon thy death as a thing far off, but a thing undoubtedly nigh thee and ever walking with thee. By which – not a false imagination, but a very true contemplation – thou shalt behold him and advise him such as he is, and thereby take occasion to flee vain pleasures of the flesh that keep out the very[3] pleasures of the soul.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., vigour.

[2] i.e., made a contract.  Cf. The days of man are short, and the number of his months is with thee: thou hast appointed his bounds which cannot be passed. Job xiv. 5

[3] i.e., true.

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 4)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own as [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Remembrance of Death (Pt 4)

But now consider if it were so that one whole country were born all lepers, which is a sickness rather foul and perilous than painful, or all an whole country born with the falling sickness, so that never any of them had ever in their lives known or heard of either themselves or any other void of those diseases, trow ye that then that they would ever have reckoned them for sickness ? Nay surely, but they would have counted for sickness the colic and the stone, and such other like as come and go. But as for their leprosy and falling evil, they would never account it other than we account hunger or sleep. For as for that that (sic) thy hunger doth thee pleasure when it is fed, so doth some time the itch of a sore leg when thou clawest about the brinks[1].

Our life a continual sicknesses

And thus mayest thou surely see that all our whole life is but a sickness never curable, but as one incurable canker, with continual swaddling and plastering botched up to live as long as we may, and in conclusion, undoubtedly, to die of the same sickness and though there never came other.

Death a nigh neighbour

So that, if thou consider this well, thou mayest look upon death not as a stranger, but as a nigh neighbour. For as the flame is next the smoke, so is death next an incurable sickness, and such is all our life. 

And yet, if this move you little, but that ye think for all this that death is far from you, I will go somewhat near you. Thou reckonest every man near his death when he is dying. Then if thyself be now already dying, how canst thou reckon thyself far from death ? 

Some man saith merrily to his fellow : “Be merry, man ; thou shalt never die as long as thou livest.” And albeit he seemeth to say true, yet saith he more than he can make good. For if that were true, I could make him much merrier, for that he should never die. 

Ye will peradventure marvel of this, but it is ethe[2] to prove. For I think ye will grant me that there is no time after that a man hath once life, but he is either alive or dead. Then will there no man say that one can die, either before he get life or after that he hath lost it, and so hath he no time left to die in, but while he hath life. Wherefore, if we neither die before our life, nor when we be dead already, needs must it follow that we never die but while we live.

We die all the while we live

It is not all one to die and to be dead. Truth it is that we be never dead while we live. And it is, me seemeth, as true not only that we die while we live, but that we die all the while we live. What thmg is dying? Is it any other thing than the passage and going out of this present life ? 

Now tell me then, if thou wert going out of an house, whether art thou going out only when thy foot is on the uttermost inch of the threshold, thy body half out of the door, or else when thou beginnest to set the first foot forward to go out, in what place of the house soever ye stand when ye buskle[3] forward? I would say that ye he going out of the house from the first foot ye set forward to go forth. No man will think other, as I suppose, but all is one reason in going hence and coming hither. Now if one were coming hither to this town, he were not only coming hither while he were entering in at the gate, but all the way also from whence he came hitherward. Nor in likewise in going hence from this town, a man is not only going from this town while he hath his body in the gate going outward, but also while he setteth his foot out of his host's house to go forward. And therefore, if a man met him by the way, far yet within the town, and asked him whither he were going, he should truly answer that he were going out of the town, all[4] were the town so long that he had ten miles to go ere he came at the gate.

And surely me thinketh that in likewise a man is not only dying, that is to say, going in his way out of this life, while he lieth drawing on, but also all the while that he is going toward his end, which is by all the whole time of his life, since the first moment to the last finished, that is, to wit, sith the first moment in which he began to live until the last moment of his life, or rather the first in which he is full dead.

Now if this he thus, as me seemeth that reason proveth, a man is always dying from afore his birth ; and every hour of our age, as it passeth by, cutteth his own length out of our life, and maketh it shorter by so much, and our death so much the nearer. Which measuring of time and minishing of life, with approaching toward death, is nothing else but, from our beginning to our ending, one continual dying ; so that wake we, sleep we, eat we, drink we, mourn we, sing we, in what wise soever live we, all the same while die we.

So that we never ought to look toward death as a thing far off, considering that although he made no haste toward us, yet we never cease ourselves to make haste toward him.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., when thou scratchest near the precipice.

[2] i.e., easy.

[3] Bustle.

[4] i.e., although.

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 3)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own by [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Remembrance of Death (Pt 3)

Remembrance of death by sickness

Thou wouldst somewhat remember death the more effectually, and look upon him somewhat the more nearly, if thou knewest thyself sick, and especially of any perilous sickness that would make an end of thee, though thou feltest yet little pain. For commonly when we be sick then begin we to know ourselves, then pain bringeth us home, then we think how merry a thing it were to be praying in health, which we cannot now do for grief[1]. Then care we little for our gay gear, then desire we no delicate dainties, and as for Lady Lechery, then abhor we to think on [it]. And then we think in ourselves that if ever we recover and mend in body we will amend in soul, leave all vices and be virtuously occupied the remnant of our life. Insomuch that very true we find the words of the epistle that the well-learned man, Plinius Secundus, after his sickness,wrote unto his friend, wherein, after the description of men’s fantasies in their disease, he closeth up his letter in this wise : “Look,” saith he, “all the good counsel and precepts that all the philosophers and wise men in this world give us for instruction of virtuous living, all that I can compendiously give to myself and thee in few words ; no more, lo ! but let us be such when we be whole as we think we will be when we be sick.”

Ever sick.

Now then, if thou be ever sick, and ever sick of a perilous sickness, wouldst thou not, if thou knewest thyself in such  case, have better remembrance of death than thou hast ? It would be hard peradventure to make thee believe thyself sick while thou feelest no harm, and yet is that no sure knowledge of health. Trow ye not that many a man is infect with the great sickness a good while ere he perceive it, and the body sore corrupt within ere he feel the grief? How many men have there been that have gone about with God’s marks on their body never perceiving themselves to be sick, but as merry as ever they were in their lives, till other men gave them warning how near they were their deaths ? And therefore never reckon thyself whole, though thou feel no grief.

But thou wilt haply say : “Be it that I cannot surely reckon myself whole, yet ye show me not why I should reckon myself sick.” Thou sayest right well, and that shall I show thee now. Tell me, if one were in case that he must be fain once or twice a day to swaddle and plaster his leg, and else he could not keep his life, wouldst thou reckon his leg sick or whole ? I ween ye will agree that his leg is is not well at ease, nor the owner neither. Now if ye felt your belly in such case that ye must be fain all day to tend it with warm clothes, or else ye were not able to abide the pain, would ye reckon your belly sick or whole ? I ween ye would reckon your belly not in good quart[2]. If thou shouldst see one in such case that he could not hold up his head, that he could not stand on his feet, that he should be fain to lie down along and there lie speechless as a dead stock an hour or two every day, wouldst thou not say that he were perilously sick, and had good cause to remember death, when he lieth every day in such case as though he were dead already ?

Now then, I pray thee consider me, that all our bodies be ever in such case, so tender of themselves that except we lapped them continually with warm clothes we were not able to live one winter week. Consider that our bodies have so sore a sickness and such a continual consumption in themselves that the strongest were not able to endure and continue ten days together, were it not that once or twice a day we be fain to take medicines inward, to clout[3] them up withal, and keep them as long as we can. For what is our meat and drink but medicines against hunger and thirst, that give us warning of that we daily lose by our inward consumption ? And of that consumption shall we die in conclusion, for all the medicines that we use, though never other sickness came at us.

Consider also that all our swaddling and tending with warm clothes and daily medicines, yet can our bodies not bear themselves, but that almost half our time ever in twenty-four hours, we be fain to fall in a swoon which we call sleep, and there lie like dead stocks[4] by a long space ere we come to ourselves again ; insomuch that among all wise men of old it is agreed that sleep is the very image of death.

Now thou wilt, peradventure, say that this is but a fantasy. For, though we call this hunger sickness and meat a medicine, yet men know well enough what very sickness is, and what very medicines be ; and thereby we know well enough that they be none.

Sickness

If thou think this, then would I wit[5] of thee what thou callest a sickness. Is not that a sickness that will make an end of thee if it be not holpen[6] ? If that be so, then I suppose thou bearest ever thy sickness with thee. For very sure art thou that it will make an end of thee if thou be not holpen.

Medicine

What callest thou then a medicine? Is it not such a thing as, either applied outwardly to thy body or received inward, shall preserve thee against that sore or sickness that else would put thee or some part of thee in peril ? What can be more properly and more verily a medicine than is our meat and drink, by which is resisted the peril and undoubted death that else should in so few days follow by the inward sickness of our own nature continually consuming us within ? For as for that ye reckon that we know which be sicknesses, that is but a custom of calling by which we call no sickness by that name but such as be casual and come and go. For that that is common to all men and never from any man, because we reckon it natural, we give it not the name of sickness ; but we name sickness a passion that cometh seldomer and, as we reckon, against nature, whereas the conflict of the divers qualified elements tempered in our body, continually labouring each to vanquish other and thereby to dissolve the whole, though it be as sore against the continuance of our nature, and as sore laboureth to the dissolution of the whole body as other sickness do, yet we neither call it sickness nor the meat that resisteth it we call no medicine, and that for none other cause but for the continual familiarity that we have therewith.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., pain or sickness.

[2] i.e., health.

[3] i.e., to patch.

[4] stock: Old English– A tree-trunk deprived of its branches; the lower part of a tree-trunk left standing, a stump. 

[5] i.e., know.

[6] helped.

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 2)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own by [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Remembrance of Death (Pt 2)

Other things are there which will peradventure seem no great matter to them that feel them not. But unto him that shall lie in that case they shall be tedious out of all measure. 

Troubles in death

The Four Last Things.Maarten van Heemskerck (1565). Royal Collection.

Have ye not ere this in a sore sickness felt it very grievous to have folk babble to you, and namely such things as ye should make answer to when it was a pain to speak? Think ye not now that it will be a gentle pleasure when we lie dying, all our body in pain, all our mind in trouble, our soul in sorrow, our heart all in dread, while our life walketh awayward, while our death draweth toward, while the devil is busy about us, while we lack stomach and strength to bear any one of so manifold heinous troubles ; will it not be, as I was about to say, a pleasant thing to see before thine eyes and hear at thine ears a rabble of fleshly friends, or rather of flesh-flies, skipping about thy bed and thy sick body, like ravens about thy corpse, now almost carrion, crying to thee on every side : “What shall I have? What shall I have?” 

Children. Wife. Executors.

Then shall come thy children and cry for their parts. Then shall come thy sweet wife and where in thine health haply she spake thee not one sweet word in six weeks, now shall she call thee sweet husband, and weep with much work, and ask thee what shall she have. Then shall thine executors ask for the keys, and ask what money is owing thee, ask what substance thou hast, and ask where thy money lieth. And while thou liest in that case, their words shall be so tedious that thou wilt wish all that they ask for upon a red fire, so thou mightest lie one half hour in rest.

The devil.

Now is there one thing which a little I touched before, I wot not whether more painful or more perilous – the marvellous intentive business and solicitation of our ghostly enemy the devil, not only in one fashion present but surely never absent from him that draweth towards death. For sith that of his pestilent envy conceived from the beginning of man’s creation, by which he lay in await to take our first mother Eve in a train[1], and thereby drawing our former father Adam into the breach of God’s behest, found the means, not without the grievous increase of his own damnation, to deprive us of paradise and bereave us our immortality, making us into subjection not only of temporal death, but also of his eternal tormentry, were we not, by the great bounty of God and Christ’s painful passion, restored to the possibility of everlasting life, he never ceased since to run about like a ramping lion, looking whom he might devour[2], it can be no doubt but he most busily travaileth in that behalf at the time that he perceiveth us about to depart hence. For well he knoweth that then he either winneth a man for ever, or for ever loseth him. For have he him never so fast afore, yet if he break from him then, he can after his death never get him again. 

Purgatory.

Well he may peradventure have him as his jailer in his prison of purgatory, for the time of his punition temporal. But as he would have him for his perpetual slave, shall he never have him after, how sure soever he had him afore, if he get from him at the time of his death. For so lost he suddenly the thief that hung on the right hand of Christ. And on the other side, if he catch a man fast at the time of his death, he is sure to keep him for ever. For, as the Scripture saith, wheresoever the stone falleth, there shall it abide[3]. And sith he knoweth this for very surety, and is of malice so venomous and envious that he had liefer[4] double his own pain than suffer us to escape from pain, he, when we draw to death, doeth his uttermost device to bring us to damnation, never ceasing to minister by subtle and incogitable[5] means, first unlawful longing to live, horror to go gladly to God at his calling.

The devil’s temptations at the time of death

Then giveth he some false glade[6] of escaping that sickness, and thereby putteth in our mind a love yet and cleaving to the world, keeping of our goods, loathsomeness of Christ, sloth toward good works. And if we be so far gone that we see we cannot recover, then he casteth in our minds presumption and security of salvation as a thing well won by our own works ; of which, if we have any done well, he casteth them into our minds with over great liking, and thereby withdraweth as from the haste of doing any more, as a thing that either needeth not or may be done by our executors. And, instead of sorrow for our sins and care of heaven, he putteth us in mind of provision for some honourable burying, so many torches, so many tapers, so many black gowns, so many merry mourners laughing under black hoods, and a gay hearse, with the delight of goodly and honourable funerals, in which the foolish sick man is sometime occupied, as though he thought that he should stand in a window and see how worshipfully he shall be brought to church.

And thus inveigleth he them that either be good or but meetly bad.

Wicked sinners

But as for those that he hath known for special wretches, whose whole life hath in effect been all bestowed in his service, whom he hath brought into great and horrible sins, by the horror whereof he hath kept them from confession – these folk at their end he handleth on another fashion. For into their minds he bringeth their shameful sins by heap, and by the abominable sight thereof draweth them into desperation. For the agrieving whereof our Lord after their deserving suffereth him to shew himself to them for their more discomfort, in some fearful figure and terrible likeness, by the beholding whereof they conceive sometime despair of salvation, and yield themselves as captives quick[7], beginning their hell in this world, as hath appeared by the words and wretched behaviour of many that of a shameful sinful life have died and departed with heavy desperate death. Now death being such as I have described, or rather much more horrible than any man can describe, it is not to be doubted but, if we busily remembered the terror and grief thereof, it must needs be so bitter to the fleshly mind that it could not fail to take away the vain delight of all worldly vanities.

Let from the consideration of death.

But the thing that letteth[8] us to consider death in his kind, and to take great profit that would arise of the remembrance thereof, is that for by the hope of long life we look upon death either [as] so far off that we see him not at all, or but a slight and uncertain sight, as a man may see a thing so far off that he wotteth not whether it be a bush or a beast. And surely so fare we by death, looking thereat afar off, through a great long space of as many years as we hope to live. And those we imagine many, and perilously and foolishly beguile ourselves. For likewise as wives would their husbands should ween[9] by the example of Sara, that there were no woman so old but she might have a child, so is there none old man so old but that, as Tully saith, he trusteth to live one year yet. And as for young folk, they look not how many be dead in their own days younger than themselves, but who is the oldest man in the town, and upon his years they make their reckoning. 

An old man cannot live long

Where the wiser way were to reckon that a young man may die soon, and an old man cannot live long, but within a little while die the one may, the other must. And with this reckoning shall they look upon death much nearer hand, and better perceive him in his own likeness, and thereby take the more fruit of the remembrance and make themselves the more ready thereto.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., stratagem. [train : an act or scheme designed to deceive or entrap, a trick, stratagem, artifice, wile. Also: a lie, a false story. OED 1.b. ?a1400–1838]

[2] Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour: 1 Pet. v. 8.

[3] Cf.  If the tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be. Ecclesiastes xi. 3.

[4] i.e., rather.

[5] i.e., unimaginable. 

[6] i.e., hope.

[7] i.e., during their lifetime.

[8] i.e., hindereth.

[9] i.e., think.

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 1)

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are indicated by [ ] and my own by [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Remembrance of Death (Pt 1)

Death

What profit and commodity cometh unto man’s soul by the meditation of death, is not only marked of the chosen people of God, but also of such as were the best sort among gentiles and painims[1]. 

Philosophy 

For some of the old famous philosophers, when they were demanded what faculty philosophy was, answered that it was the meditation or exercise of death. For like as death maketh a severance of the body and the soul, when they by course of nature must needs depart asunder, so, said they, doth the study of philosophy labour to sever the soul from the love and affections of the body while they be together.

Dance of death in Poules (Paul’s). The first printed version from 1554: 
“The Daunce of Machabree.” See The Dance of Death in London. 

Now if this be the whole study and labour of philosophy, as the best philosopher said that it is, then may we within a short time be well learned in philosophy. For nothing is there that may more effectually withdraw the soul from the wretched affections of the body than may the remembrance of death, if we do not remember it hourly[2], as one heareth a word and let it pass by his ear without any receiving of the sentence into his heart. But if we not only hear this word “death,” but also let sink into our heart the very fantasy and deep imagination thereof, we shall perceive thereby that we were never so greatly moved by the beholding of the dance of death pictured in Poules[3] as we shall feel ourselves stirred and altered by the feeling of that imagination in our hearts. And no marvel. For those pictures express only the loathly figure of our dead bony bodies, bitten away the flesh, which though it be ugly to behold, yet neither the sight thereof nor the sight of all the dead heads in the charnel house[4], nor the apparition of a very ghost, is half so grisly as the deep-conceived fantasy of death in his nature by the lively imagination graven in thine own heart. For there seest thou not one plain grievous sight of the bare bones hanging by the sinews, but thou seest (if thou fantasy thine own death, for so art thou by this counsel advised), thou seest, I say, thyself, if thou die no worse death, yet at the leastwise lying in thy bed, thy head shooting, thy back aching, thy veins beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattling, thy flesh trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping[5], thy legs cooling, thy fingers fumbling, thy breath shorting, all thy strength fainting, thy life vanishing, and thy death drawing on.

If thou couldst now call to thy remembrance some of those sicknesses which have most grieved thee and tormented thee in thy days, as every man hath felt some, and then findest thou that some one disease in some one part of thy body, as percase[6] the stone or the strangury[7], have put thee to thine own mind to no less torment than thou shouldst have felt if one had put up a knife into the same place, and wouldst, as thee then seemed, have been content with such a change, think what it will be then when thou shalt feel so many such pains in every part of thy body breaking thy veins and thy life-strings with like pain and grief as though as many knives as thy body might receive should everywhere enter and meet in the midst.

A stroke of a staff, a cut of a knife, the flesh singed with fire, the pain of sundry sickness, many men have assayed in themselves. And they that have not yet, somewhat have heard by them that felt it. But what manner dolour and pain, what manner of grievous pangs, what intolerable torment the silly[8] creature feeleth in the dissolution and severance of the soul from the body, never was there body that yet could tell the tale.

Christ cried, (Matt. xxvii, Mark xv, Luke xxiii).

Some conjecture and token of this point we have of the bitter passion and piteous departing of our Saviour Jesu Christ, of whom we nothing read that ever He cried for any pain, neither for the whips and rods beating His blessed body, or the sharp thorns pricking His holy head, or the great long nails piercing His precious hands and feet. But when the point approached in which His sacred soul should depart out of His blessed body, at that point He cried loud once or twice to His Father in heaven, into whose mighty and merciful hands at that extreme point with a great loud cry He gave up the Ghost. Now if that death was so painful and rageous[9] to our Saviour Christ, whose joy and comfort of His Godhead, if He would have suffered it, might in such wise have redounded into His soul, and so forth into His body, that it should not only have supped up all His pain, but also have transformed His holy body into a glorious form, and made it impossible, what intolerable torment will death be then to us miserable wretches, of which, the more part, among the pangs of our passage, shall have yet so painful twitches of our own conscience that the fear of hell, the dread of the devil, and sorrow at our heart at the sight of our sins, shall pass and exceed the deadly pains of our body !

Footnotes

[1] i.e., pagans.

[2] for a short time; quickly, cursorily. Obsolete.  [OED 2. 1529-49].

[3] Poules : Paul’s.  An allusion to the famous picture, the “Dance of Death,” in the cloister of Pardon Church Haugh, at old St Paul’s, London. Death was represented by a skeleton, leading away all sorts and conditions of men, beginning with pope and emperor. The accompanying verse of John Lydgate, monk of Bury, was as gruesome as the picture itself. See The Daunce of Machabree.

[4] The charnel-house was situated near the Haugh, and contained a chapel and three chantries. Underneath was a vault for the decent reception of any bones that might be disinterred, and hence the name.

[5] narrowing.

[6] i.e., perhaps.

[7] A disease of the urinary organs characterized by slow and painful emission of urine; also the condition of slow and painful urination.

[8] i.e., weak, helpless.

[9] i.e., violent.[ rageous :of things, as fire, the sea, the wind, etc.: violent, severe, full of furious activity. OED 1.].  

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.

The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Pt 5 of 5

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

Following recovery from a recent illness, I began reading the Four Last Things, a treatise which Thomas More (1478-1535) wrote in 1522. 

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are indicated by [ ] and my own by [ ].  

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Four Last Things (continued)

The Portal of the Last Judgement. Amiens Cathedral, 13th. century.
Andrew Dickson White, Cornell University Library.

But now to return to my purpose. Sith the remembrance of these four last things is of such force and efficacy that it is able always to keep us from sin, and sith we can never be long void of both, it must thereof ensue that we shall consequently do good ; and thereof must it needs follow that this only lesson, well learned and busily put in use, must needs lead us to heaven.

Yet will ye peradventure say that ye know these four things well enough, and if the knowledge thereof had so great effect as the Scripture speaketh of, there should not be so many naught[1] as there be. For what Christian man is he that hath wit and discretion, but he hath heard, and having any faith believeth these four last things ? Of which the first, that is to say, death, we need no faith to believe, we know it by daily proof and experience.

I say not nay[2], but that we know them either by faith or experience. And yet not so very thoroughly as we might peradventure, and hereafter undoubtedly shall, which if we knew once thoroughly, and so feelingly perceived as we might percase[3], and namely[4] as we surely shall, there would be little doubt but the least of all the four would well keep us from sin. For as for yet, though we have heard of the doom[5], yet were we never at it. Though we have heard of hell, yet came we never in it. Though we have heard of heaven, yet came we never to it. And though we daily see men die, and thereby know the death, yet ourselves never felt it. For if we knew these things thoroughly, the least of all four were, as I said, enough to keep us from sin.

Knowledge with out remembrance little profiteth.

Howbeit the foresaid words of Scripture biddeth thee not know the four last things, but remember thy four last things; and then, he saith, thou shalt never sin.

Many things know we that we seldom think on. And in the things of the soul the knowledge without the remembrance little profiteth. What availeth it to know that there is a God, which thou not only believest by faith, but also knowest by reason? What availeth that thou knowest Him, if thou think little of Him ? The busy minding of thy four last things, and the deep consideration thereof, is the thing that shall keep thee from sin. And if thou put it in a say[6] and make a proof, thou shalt well find by that thou shalt have no lust to sin for the time that thou deeply thinkest on them ; that if our frailty could endure never to remit or slake in the deep devising of them, we should never have delight or pleasure in any sinful thing.

For the proof whereof let us first begin at the remembrance of the first of these four last, which is undoubtedly far the least of the four ; and thereby shall we make a proof what marvellous effect may grow by the diligent remembrance of all four towards the avoiding of all the trains[7], darts, sleights, enticings and assaults of the three mortal enemies, the devil, the world and our own flesh.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., bad.

[2] I do not deny.

[3] i.e., perhaps.

[4] i.e., particularly.

[5] This is the noun from the word deem = to judge. A judge in old English or Lowland Scotch was called a dempster, and his sentence was a doom.

[6] i.e., put it to the test.

[7] i.e., stratagems. [train : an act or scheme designed to deceive or entrap, a trick, stratagem, artifice, wile. Also: a lie, a false story. OED 1.b. ?a1400–1838]

+       +        +

The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.