A dead zone in the historiography of death in the Middle Ages: the sentiment of suspicious death

Medieval chroniclers referring to the deaths of individuals frequently indicate that the deceased have gone “the way of all flesh” or “paid their dues to nature.”2

According to Aldobrandino of Sienna, “living and dying are at the whim of our Lord,” and death, determined by the heavens and inherent to the human condition since the Fall, appears to inspire no speculation in terms of its modalities.3 There have been numerous studies dedicated to its history, especially regarding the “sentiment of death.”4 Yet, perhaps because of these standard formulas, scholars have devoted no attention to a psychological phenomenon that is nonetheless quite present alongside evidence of human finitude: the questioning of death. This needs to be understood not in terms of the corporeal reality of death – though the criteria for establishing death doubtlessly merit specific research linking medicine and theology – but in terms of the doubts, assumptions, and speculations elicited by the passing of specific individuals. Here, positivist historians and physician-scientists such as

1 This work draws on several previous works, in particular The Crime of Poison in the Middle Ages (New York: Greenwood Publishings, 2008); “De l’émotion de la mort à l’émoi du meurtre. Quelques réflexions sur le sentiment de la mort suspecte à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Revue Historique 656 (2010): 873-907; “Faire l’histoire du corps empoisonné,” in Le corps empoisonné. Pratiques, savoirs, imaginaire de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Actes du colloque international de Poitiers (October 2012), ed. Lydie Bodiou, Frédéric Chauvaud and Myriam Soria (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014): 13-28.