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The Rheinau Sacramentary: The Ebb and Flow of Its Influence on Rites for the Dying

When people think of “the last rites” they might imagine a pre-Vatican II rite of anointing through the sacrament called Extreme Unction, most likely preceded by the confession of sins of the person nearing death. While this practice is often still lodged in people’s consciousness, the revised rites for the sick and dying look much different. Now, there are certain rites for the sick and certain rites for the dying. Rites for the sick mean to support, encourage, and bring healing to those who struggle with illness or old age, so that they can conform themselves to Christ and enter willingly into the paschal mystery—the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ—through their suffering. These rites include visiting the sick, taking communion to the sick, and anointing the sick. Rites for the dying are meant to comfort and strengthen a dying person in the passage into death. The focus for these rites is to help the dying person to trust in the promises of eternal life rather than to struggle against illness, which is characteristic of the rites for the sick. These rites for the dying include the celebration of viaticum, the commendation of the dying, and the prayers for the dead. This article will focus on one particular rite for the dying: the rite of the commendation of the dying. In particular, we will focus on a specific eighth-century ritual, the Rheinau Sacramentary, indicating how the rite of the commendation of the soul was celebrated differently in this ritual compared to previous rituals. We also will see how this particular way of celebrating the commendation of the soul continued to be used through the centuries until it was incorporated into the 1614 Roman Ritual, the Roman Catholic Church’s official and authorized ritual until Vatican II. Finally, we will include a word about how the revised rites commissioned by Vatican II contain the rite of the commendation of the dying, which has, however, been altered from what we find in the Rheinau Sacramentary. The Rheinau Sacramentary belongs to a type of sacramentary referred to as either the Frankish Gelasian or the eighth-century Gelasian sacramentary. Of the dozen that have survived, Frederick Paxton notes that there are four extant containing material on death, dying, and the dead: the Gellone, the Phillipps, the Rheinau, and the St. Gall. These use a mixture of Roman none defined