THE SCENE: The reality of the life of poor people in the Middle Ages is shown starkly in the below passage, where a young priest’s ward prays for the death of all he encounters so that he has the opportunity to eat something at the funeral.
THE TEXT: To conceal his extreme stinginess the Priest said to me, “Look here, boy! Priests have to be very frugal in eating and drinking, and for this reason I do not feed like other people.” But he lied shamefully. For at meeting and funerals where we had to say prayers and responses, and where he could get food at the expense of others, he ate like a wolf and drank more than the proposer of toasts. And why do I speak of funerals? God forgive me! for I never was an enemy to the human race except on those occasions. Then we could eat well, and I wished and even prayed to God that he would kill someone every day.
When we gave the Sacraments to the sick, especially extreme unction, the priest was called upon to say prayers for those who were present. I was certainly not the last in prayer, for with all my heart I besought the Lord that He would take the sick man to Himself. If anyone recovered, I devoted him to the devil a thousand times. He who died received many benedictions from me, yet the number of persons who died during the whole time I was there, which was over six months, only amounted to twenty. I verily believed that I killed them, or rather that they died in answer to my prayers. The Lord seeing how near death I was, and that their deaths gave me life.
But there was no remedy, for if on the days of the funerals I lived, on the days when no one died I was starving, and I felt it all the more. So that there seemed to be no rest for me but in death, and I often desired it for myself, as well as for others.
– The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, 16th Century AD
