Death Through the Ages: A Brief Overview - The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages in Europe (circa 500–1485), death—with its accompanying agonies—was accepted as a destiny everyone shared, but it was still feared. As a defense against this phenomenon that could not be explained, medieval people confronted death together, as a community. Because medical practices in this era were crude and imprecise, the ill and dying person often endured prolonged suffering. But this gave the dying individual an opportunity to put his or her affairs in order and confess sins. Then, with family and friends close by, the dying person bore his or her pain, because that was believed to be conduct befitting a good Christian.

Since dying was often a long process, medieval people sincerely believed they possessed supernatural premonitions about their own deaths. Dying persons often declared, "I will die soon," and were said to have been warned about their impending deaths through premonitions or signs. When a person died suddenly, the death was viewed superstitiously. Since the whole community shared the experience of dying, sudden and unexplainable deaths jarred the more comforting perception of a pattern to an already grim existence.

By the late Middle Ages the fear of death had intensified. The plague of 1347–51, known as the Black Death, killed more than 25 million people in Europe alone. Commoners watched not just their own kind stricken, but also saw church officials and royalty struck down: Queen Eleanor of Aragon and King Alfonso XI of Castile in France met with untimely deaths, and so did many at the papal court at Avignon, France. With their perceived "proper order" of existence shaken, the common people became increasingly preoccupied with their own deaths and the Last Judgment, God's final and certain determination of the character of each individual. Since the Last Judgment was closely linked to an individual's disposition to heaven or hell, the event of the plague was frightening for those unprepared for sudden deaths.