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The moment of death

Levitating monks
One Cistercian monk twitched so violently when he died that it seemed to his fellow brethren that he rose four feet above his bed. The next night he appeared as a ghost, peacefully surrounded by light, and when asked what had made him twitch so violently, he explained that in the instant of death his soul passed through Purgatory for a period that seemed a thousand years, even though it had only been a minute on earth.
[cited in P. Binski, Medieval Death (London, 1996), p. 187].

The monk’s death triggered off another set of rituals. The community recited the Office of the Dead and the Psalter, after which the body was placed on a stone table, stripped, washed and dressed in the monastic habit and cowl - a procedure usually carried out by the prior. Once this had been completed the community escorted the body to the choir in a procession, but if the body was rotten it was not to be brought into the church – presumably this referred to any monk who had died away from the abbey and whose body had to be transported back to the house. The abbot led the procession, carrying the Holy Water, thurible, light and Cross, and was followed by the brethren in order of seniority, with the lay-brothers joining at the end. Four monks carried the corpse which was set on a bier in the choir and the soul of the deceased was commended to God. A vigil was kept until the time of burial.