Les lendemains de la mort dans les croyances occidentales (vers 1250-vers 1300)

Afterlife in Western belief (c 1250-1300) Hugues Neveux Did the death anxiety which was so much alive during the 15th century originate in the plagues that struck Europe between 1350 and 1450? This does not seem likely. In Montaillou, a Pyrenean village studied by E. Le Roy Ladurie, the peasants feared peregrination that would lead to a demon-torturer ; they aspired to a salvation identified with rest and sleep. The «Golden-Legend" written around 1270, confirms the combination : suffering inflicted by devils and rest sleep. But it also provides for the direct assumption into heaven concurrently with «dormition». Above all it rejects wandering in favor of places of suffering. This was all part of the Church's effort to enclose the souls of the dead in well-defined zones : paradise, hell and, at the end of the 12th century, purgatory (the purgatory of Saint Patrick). This endeavor was based on popular tradition, mainly Celtic, and probably came from the desire to eliminate the other tradition, that of wandering which came out of Montaillou. Whatever the case may be, the death anxiety born out of fear of being punished in the afterworld goes back well before the 15th century : the hecatomb at the end of the Middle Ages merely revived a fear that had already existed before this time.Neveux Hugues. Les lendemains de la mort dans les croyances occidentales (vers 1250-vers 1300). In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 34ᵉ année, N. 2, 1979. pp. 245-263