“If you live like a madman, know that you will have to die senseless”: instructions for a good death in Eighteenth Century Portuguese Christian literature

Abstract

Guiding believers to a holy life and instructing them for a good deathwere very common objectives in Portuguese religious literature in the modern period, especially during the 18th century. This literature proposed to define and propagate moral virtues and behaviors that would guarantee a good death. The goal in this article is to analyze the instructions that every Catholic was expected to follow as an early preparation for death in the works Sermão da Missão da quarta tarde da quaresma (1734), Terceiro Instruído na Virtude (1742) and Mestre da Virtude (1745), produced by the Portuguese Dominican Fr. João Franco

Keywords:
death; devotion manual; reading