Category: Death
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Saint Gregory the Great
About the Author: In his Dialogues, Saint Gregory in conversation is challenged on the immortality of the soul. He tells stories to make the case. Saint Gregory makes the point that saints offer a specifically Catholic case for the immortality of the soul: “For sick persons come unto their dead bodies, and be cured: perjured persons…
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Caring For Nothing
About the Author: Graeme Hunter is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and a Research Professor at the Dominican University College in Ottawa. His recent books include Pascal the Philosopher: An Introduction (2014) and What Came to Mind: Essays against Fear (Justin Press, 2023). His philosophical interests are wide and range over Early modern Philosophy, Ancient…
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Saint Theresa of Avila
About the Author: Saint Theresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) is remembered as an ascetic, an author, a founder of convents, a reformer, a poet, and a mystic. Here she considers death in her 1583 book, The Way of Perfection. Wherever this love is, then, you will not fail to recognize it; I do not know…
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Walther von der Vogelweide grows old
About the Author: Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170 – c. 1230 AD) was the greatest of the Minnesänger, the wandering poets of the Middle Ages who sang of love and duty at the courts of the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire. It is unclear whether Walther began life as a noble knight, though…
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An Instruction Unto Them That Shall Die
About the work: The Ars Moriendi, or “Art of Dying” was a genre of Christian spirituality that rose to prominence after the disaster of the Bubonic Plague wiped out up to fifty percent of Europe’s population. The present work was written in the mid-fifteenth century, probably by a Dominican friar, and reminds you, the reader, that…
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The Last Will and Testament of Thomas Martyn, Farmer
About the Author: In 1473 a farmer named Thomas Martyn had his will recorded in Kent, and by an accident of history it was preserved. It is almost entirely from this document that we know anything about Thomas Martyn. We can guess that he was a farmer because so many of his bequests were of…
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Majesty in Silence: the Requiem and the Organ’s Traditional Absence
About the author: Tate Pumfrey grew up in Thamesville, Ontario and holds a Master’s Degree in Music (Composition) from York University. As a composer, he has focused on writing for the organ and sacred music. He has written articles for Catholic Insight and One Peter Five, enjoys writing poetry, and organizes traditional square and ceilidh…
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The Didache
About the Work: In the Early Church standardization soon became a problem. This problem was addressed through texts like the Didache, Teaching, the first word of its Greek title which we translate as The Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, circulated in Greek in the first century AD. The Didache covers important topics like the…
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The Martyrdom of Polycarp
About the Author: This letter from the Church at Smyrna is the earliest story of martyrdom not counting the New Testament. The original author is unknown, though our text includes the names of several men who copied the original letter. It tells the story of Polycarp, the 86 year old bishop of Smyrna, and of…
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The Dance of Death by John Lydgate
About the Author: In the early 14th century, the bubonic plague, the Black Death as it was called, swept through Europe, killing as much as half the population. Europeans suddenly had a sense of the presence of death among them, always ready to snatch them away. A French poet expressed this as the Danse Macabre, the Dance…