‘The Comfort for the Sick’ as ars moriendi

What is it about?

When someone suffers from sickness or is facing death, the Christian Church provides care for the soul. In the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages priests would visit the sick and dying people and speak with them about their life and their hopes for life after death. The Christian Church believes in the resurrection of the body and eternal life. This message had a great urgency in times of illness and death. In the reformation of the 16th century the rituals of the Roman-Catholic Church were replaced or, in other words, 'reformed'. This resulted in a booklet, called 'Comfort for the Sick' which was written in Dutch and was distributed widely. The booklet is even today in use in pietist Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. This article investigates who wrote Den Siecken Troost, as it was originally called, and how it found a place in the liturgical books of the Reformed Churches in the Low Countries.

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