Extreme Unction.—
“This Sacrament,” says the Synod of Exeter, “is to be considered as health giving to both body and soul ... wherefore it is not the least of the Sacraments, and parish priests, when required, should show themselves ever ready to visit the sick, and to administer it to such as ask, without asking or expecting any payment or reward.
“We further order that, avoiding all negligence, parish priests shall be watchful and careful in the care committed to them, and that without reasonable cause they never sleep out of their parishes. And further that in case they do ever so, they procure some fitting substitute, who knows how to do everything which the cure of souls requires.”
If by the fault, negligence, or absence of his priest any one, old or young, shall die without Baptism, Confession, Holy Communion, or Extreme Unction, the priest convicted of this is to be forthwith suspended from the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, and this suspension is not to be relaxed until he has done fitting penance “for so grave a crime.”
SACRAMENT OF EXTREME UNCTION
Visitation of the Sick.—The subject of Extreme Unction, “the Sacrament of the sick,” to be given in danger of death through sickness, raises the question of the visitation of the sick in a mediæval parish. The order that all parish priests should visit the sick of their district every Sunday has already been noticed. It was, moreover, a positive law of the Church, that every priest should go at once on being called to a sick person, no matter what time of the day or night the summons might come. Priests were ordered also to impress upon all doctors the need of urging sick people and their friends to send immediately for the priest in all cases of serious illnesses. Priests, however, were not to wait to be called, but directly they heard that any of their people were unwell they were warned to go at once to them.
A chance story, used to enliven a fifteenth-century sermon, illustrates the readiness of priests to go to the sick whenever they were summoned.
“I read,” says the preacher, “in Devonshire, besides Axbridge dwelt a holy vicar, and had in his parish a sick woman that lay all at the death, half a myle from him in a town. The which woman at midnight sent after this vicar to come and give her her rites. Then this vicar with all haste that he might he rose and rode to the church and took God’s body in a box of ivory,” etc.
Archbishop Peckham legislated for the mode of carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick, or rather he codified and made obligatory the usual practice. The parish priest was to be vested in surplice and stole, and accompanied by another priest, or at least by a clerk. He was to carry the Blessed Sacrament in both hands before his breast, covered by a veil, and was to be preceded by a server carrying a light in a lantern, and ringing a hand bell, to give notice to the people that “the King of Glory under the veil of bread” was being borne through their midst, in order that they might kneel or otherwise adore Him.