LAUSR

The behaviour of men before death is, no doubt, one of the more interesting aspects of the History of Mentalities. The sensation of death obligates the participacion in a game that no one dares to reject, because all those who can afford material wealth muse confront the moment of writing a will with the same problem: the fear of divine punishment. The act of formalizing one's last wishes thus becomes a real acknowledgement of the dishonours and negative acts the individual has committed; it forces him to utilize all of his available mechanisms for atonement with the desperate intention of avoiding the fires of hell. In this way, we can observe the prevailing collective mentality of Western Medieval Europe; a mentality that is characterized on the physical level by the preoccupation with life after death. According to the wills they left, the people who lived in Barcelona during the 14th century were not different from European people. Their last testaments became a suitable source for study of the liturgy surrounding the death of the people who wrote them, who we see carefully selecting their sepulture, arranging the celebration of the anniversary of their death, fulfilling all types of pious acts and contributions to charity -endowments to poor marriageable women for their doweries, bequests to hospitals, food and clothing for artisans, etc.-, establishing priesthoods and ecclesiastic benefits and, finally, sincerely recognizing their sins and reprehensible acts. All of chis has a finality in common that consits of ingratiating oneself with the Creator, and the well-to-do citizens of Barcelona who were experiencing a time of economic increase and commercial expansion behaved in a very homogeneous manner. Only the unequal distribution of wealth would mark differences at the moment of death and determine the type of rituals celebrated; but the perceptions of rules of conduct were so similar that, in terms of spirituality, monarchs and bourgeoisie, men and women, all declared the truth and intended to compensate for those who they mistreated or ruined in life.