 |
| 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.
+ + +
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.
The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.
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 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 3)
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
.jpg) |
| The Four Last Things.Maarten van Heemskerck (1565). Royal Collection. |
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. 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.
+ + +
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.
The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment