" An Italian text from 1490 shows how spontaneous and natural was the clear recognition of imminent death, and how fundamentally alien to the miraculous or to Christian piety. We are now in a psychological climate very remote from that of the chansons de geste: a commercial town of the Renaissance. In Spoleto there lived a pretty girl, young and flirtatious, very much attached to the pleasures of her youth. Suddenly she is struck down by illness. Will she cling to life, unaware of the fate that awaits her? Today any other reaction would seem cruel and monstrous, and the family, the doctor, and the priest would conspire to maintain her illusion. But this young girl of the fifteenth century immediately understands that she is going to die. She sees that death is near: “Cum cerneret, infelix juvencula, de proximo sibi imminere mortem.” She rebels, but her rebellion does not take the form of refusing to accept her death—that does not occur to her—but of defying God. She has herself dressed in her finest clothes, as if for her wedding day, and she gives herself to the devil.7 Like the sacristan of Narbonne, the young girl of Spoleto knew. Sometimes "

― Philippe Ariès , The Hour of Our Death