Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe

"Paxton... has written a deeply absorbing, detailed analysis of the Christian ritualization of death for the period from the early Christian era to the ninth century.... A demanding, challenging work, but worth the effort for readers interested in how Christians have learned to confront healing, death, and incorporation into the next world."

(Choice, June 1991)

"In this insightful book, Frederick S. Paxton has traced the development of the rituals for the sick, the dying, and the dead in Christianity from their origins in the fourth century through their decisive reorganization in the Carolingian ecclesiastical reform.... Few books have so successfully conveyed the concrete nature of the link that existed in the minds of medieval Christians between the kingdom of heaven and that of this world. Paxton traces the replacement, in deathbed rituals, of the original Roman focus on the fate of the soul with Germanic and Celtic concerns with the needs of the dying person.... He has succeeded in composing an account of these ritual developments that should prove to be standard. In his insistence on the importance of the social historical context... he has also provided a model treatment for the history of religious practice."

"A humane and eloquent book."