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.

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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.