the execution and its message book by Roberto Bellarmino also proposing to the condemned the imitation of Christ as a way to handle their situation.203 In the literature used in late medieval times to help to prepare the condemned, the general tone was one of hope for the salvation of the executed. The endurance in suffering by Christ and many martyrs and the bloody sweat of Christ in Gethsemane underlined both the severe pain they were to suffer and the hope of entering heaven.204 Yes, despite all the reservations, the hope of salvation was often clearly propagated; even so that the emerging dogma of purgatory did not affect the preparation of the condemned. Related to this practice it was argued that the suffering of the condemned as they were executed was sufficient cleansing, as it could also be said to replace purgatory at least for some of the executed.205 At least in France, the discussions concerning confession, Absolution, and communion of the soon executed never ceased. The hesitation for letting the condemned communicate resulted in several mid nineteenth– century provincial synods stating the duty of the church of letting the contrite condemned communicate.206 The archbishop of Reims, Thomas Gousset, in 1841 stated that, as the execution unlike when the practice was established no longer took place on the same day as the sentencing, there was time for the preparation, by the priests that now were free to visit the condemned, for a solemn communion.207 It was, however, not the task of the priests to introduce the new practice; instead, it was up to each bishop to end the old tradition and bring about the new in his diocese.208 Such an alteration had already been made in the archdiocese of Paris through the Rituel of 1839 wherein it was stated that the condemned could not communicate on the day of execution if it took place in the morning.209 Communion given to the condemned had also occurred earlier. Despite the published letter of Gousset, prob203 Silverman 2001 p 111 sq, Shore 2012 p 187. 204 Klapisch-Zuber 2015 p 90 sq, Edgerton 1985 p 184 sq. 205 Klapisch-Zuber 2015 p 100 sqq, Stuart 2023 p 67 sq, 330, 369. 206 Haring 1912 p 17 sq. 207 Gousset 1841 p 7 sq. 208 Gousset 1841 p 8, 16. 209 Gousset 1841 p 13 sq. 76
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