With the Laity

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 leaves behind the powerful, urban centers of Rome and Sens and moves to Orsières, a village isolated in the mountainous terrain of southwestern Switzerland (Canton Valais). In a stroke of luck for historians, a manuscript associated with this small community survives from the fourteenth century. The source offers a rare opportunity to better understand the liturgical practices conducted by a lay community at the time of an individual’s death. This chapter argues that the deathbed liturgy of Orsières shares profound similarities with those of prominent religious institutions, while mirroring none exactly. The chapter concludes that rituals for the dying remained unstandardized even into the fourteenth century, and that the community of Orsières maintained a version that circulated locally.