Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. (James 5:14)

According to traditional Catholic teaching (formalized at the Council of Trent, 1545–63), this verse was the apostolic authorization of a sacrament which came to be known as extreme unction—that is, the anointing with oil of one ‘in extremis’, meaning in danger of death.

As one of the seven sacraments, extreme unction was often represented in sets of images devoted to the theme, and this finely carved relief sculpture was originally made for such a series on the north side of the campanile of the Duomo in Florence.

An eagle—perhaps here symbolizing the restoration of youth or strength as in Psalm 103:5—is depicted beneath the comfortably appointed bed of an emaciated and plainly gravely ill man, wearing a close-fitting cap. Three other men—perhaps monks—attend him. At the head of the bed, one solemnly reads from the office book, while towards the foot of the bed another holds a candle. In the middle a third, who may be a priest, leans over to administer the anointing.

It was traditional to anoint the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, hands, feet, and loins, with the prayer that God would forgive the sins committed through each of them. Here the sick man seems to lie peacefully and patiently to receive the rite. His hand rests calmly on the neatly folded—and beautifully sculpted—sheet, which echoes the gently flowing lines of the robes of those ministering to him.

How should a death bed look? It is perhaps the very neatness of this bed, with its fine and orderly linen, which serves to evoke the comfort which the rite promised to the dying. In the later Middle Ages, the death bed was often conceived as a battleground, in which the devil would try the faith and patience of the sick and dying, in a bid to have them doubt or despair, and so fall away from God. John Aubrey, writing in England at the end of the seventeenth century, recalled that before the Civil War, ‘ancient people, when they heard the Clock-strike, were wont to say, “Lord grant that my last howre may be my best howre”’ (Aubrey 1972: 157). 

This dying man’s last hour is a serene one.

References

Aubrey, John. 1972. Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, in Three Prose Works ed. by J. Buchanan-Brown (Fontwell: Centaur Press)