I. The Odor of Corruption

The body of the departed hieroschemamonk Father Zosima was prepared for burial according to the established rite. Deceased monks and schema-monks, as is well known, are not washed. “When one of the monks departs to the Lord (it says in the Great Book of Needs), the appointed monk (that is, the one designated for this) wipes his body with warm water, first tracing with the sponge (that is, a Greek sponge) a cross on the brow of the deceased, on the breast, on the hands and on the feet and on the knees, and nothing beyond that.” All this Father Paisy performed over the deceased himself. After the wiping he dressed him in the monastic habit and wrapped him in his mantle, which for this purpose, according to the rule, he slit a little, so as to wrap it crosswise. On his head he put the cowl with the eight-pointed cross. The cowl was left open, but the face of the deceased was covered with a black veil. In his hands they placed an icon of the Savior. In this state, toward morning, they laid him in the coffin (which had been made ready long before). The coffin they intended to leave in the cell (in the first, large room, the very one in which the late elder used to receive the brethren and visitors from the world) for the whole day. Since the deceased was by rank a hieroschemamonk, it was proper for hieromonks and hierodeacons to read over him, and to read not the Psalter but the Gospel. Father Iosif began the reading directly after the memorial service; as for Father Paisy, who had himself wished to read afterward all day and all night, for the moment he was very busy and anxious, together with the father superior of the hermitage, for suddenly there had begun to appear, and more and more as time went on, both among the monastery brethren and among the laymen who kept arriving in crowds from the monastery guesthouses and from town, something unusual, an agitation unheard of and even “unseemly,” and an impatient expectation. Both the superior and Father Paisy did all they could to calm, as far as possible, those who were stirring so fussily. When the day was well advanced, people even began arriving from town who had brought their sick with them, especially children—as if they had been waiting on purpose for this moment, evidently hoping for an immediate power of healing, which, according to their faith, could not be slow to show itself. And only then did it become apparent to what degree everyone among us had grown used to regarding the departed elder, even in his lifetime, as an indisputable and great saint. And those arriving were by no means only common people. This great expectation of the faithful, displayed so hastily and so nakedly, and even impatiently and almost as a demand, seemed to Father Paisy an undoubted temptation, and though he had foreseen it long before, in fact it went beyond what he had expected. Meeting those of the monks who were most agitated, Father Paisy even began to reprove them: “Such an immediate expectation of something great,” he said, “is a frivolity possible only among worldly people, and unseemly for us.” But they paid him little heed, and Father Paisy noted this with uneasiness, even though he himself (if everything is to be recalled truthfully), while he was indignant at these too impatient expectations and found frivolity and vanity in them, was secretly, to himself, in the depths of his soul, expecting almost the same thing as these agitated ones, which he could not help admitting to himself. Nevertheless, certain encounters were particularly unpleasant to him, rousing in him, by some presentiment, great misgivings. In the crowd pressing into the dead man’s cell he noticed with an inward revulsion (for which he at once reproached himself) the presence, for instance, of Rakitin, or of the guest from afar, the monk from Obdorsk, who was still staying at the monastery, and for some reason Father Paisy suddenly took them both for suspicious—though they were not the only ones who might have been noticed in this sense. Of all the agitated, the monk from Obdorsk stood out as the most bustling; he could be seen everywhere, in every spot: everywhere he was asking questions, everywhere listening, everywhere whispering with a peculiar, mysterious air. The expression of his face was most impatient, and as if already irritated that what had been so long awaited was not coming to pass. As for Rakitin, he, as it turned out later, had appeared so early at the hermitage on a special commission from Mrs. Khokhlakova. That kind but weak-willed woman, who could not herself be admitted to the hermitage, had no sooner woken up and learned of the death than she was seized with so headlong a curiosity that she at once dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage in her place, so that he might observe everything and report to her in writing without delay, roughly every half hour, about everything that happened. She considered Rakitin a most pious and believing young man—so well did he know how to get along with everyone and present himself to each according to that person’s wishes, if only he saw in it the slightest advantage for himself. The day was clear and bright, and many of the pilgrims who had come were crowding around the graves of the hermitage, which were clustered most thickly around the church, though they were scattered all over the hermitage as well. Going around the hermitage, Father Paisy suddenly remembered Alyosha, and that he had not seen him for a long while, almost since the night. And no sooner had he remembered him than he caught sight of him in the farthest corner of the hermitage, by the wall, sitting on the gravestone of a monk long since departed and famous for his ascetic feats. He was sitting with his back to the hermitage, facing the wall, as though he were hiding behind the monument. Coming right up to him, Father Paisy saw that he had covered his face with both palms and, though without a sound, was weeping bitterly, his whole body shaking with sobs. Father Paisy stood over him a little while.

“Enough, dear son, enough, my friend,” he said at last, with feeling, “what is the matter? Rejoice, and do not weep. Or do you not know that this day is the greatest of his days? Only think where he is now, at this very moment!”

Alyosha did look up at him, uncovering his face, swollen with tears like a small child’s, but at once, without uttering a word, he turned away and covered his face with both palms again.

“And yet, perhaps it is so,” said Father Paisy thoughtfully, “perhaps you had better weep; Christ has sent you these tears.” “Your tender little tears are only a respite for the soul, and will serve for the gladdening of your dear heart,” he added, now to himself, as he walked away from Alyosha, thinking of him lovingly. He walked away rather quickly, however, for he felt that, looking at him, he too might, I dare say, begin to weep. Time meanwhile went by; the monastery services and the memorial services for the departed went on in due order. Father Paisy again relieved Father Iosif at the coffin and again took over from him the reading of the Gospel. But it was not yet three o’clock in the afternoon when something came to pass that I mentioned at the very end of the last book, something so unexpected by any of us and so contrary to the general hope that, I repeat, the detailed and fussy tale of this occurrence is remembered with extraordinary vividness to this day in our town and all through our surrounding district. Here I will add once more, speaking for myself: I find it almost repugnant to recall this fussy and scandalous event, which was in essence most trivial and natural, and I would of course have left it out of my story altogether, without a mention, had it not influenced in the strongest and a certain particular way the soul and heart of the chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming in his soul a kind of crisis and upheaval, which shook his reason but also strengthened it once and for all, for his whole life and toward a definite goal.

And so, to the story. When, still before dawn, they had placed the elder’s body, made ready for burial, in the coffin and carried it out into the first room, the former reception room, a question did arise among those at the coffin: should the windows in the room be opened? But this question, voiced by someone in passing and offhandedly, went unanswered and almost unnoticed—unless it was noticed, and even then only to themselves, by some of those present, and only in the sense that to expect corruption and the odor of corruption from the body of one who had departed thus was utter absurdity, deserving even of pity (if not of a smile) for the little faith and frivolity of whoever had uttered the question. For what they expected was quite the opposite. And then, soon after noon, something began that at first those coming in and going out received only silently and to themselves, and even with an evident fear, each of them, of communicating to anyone the thought that was beginning in him, but that by three o’clock in the afternoon had shown itself so clearly and irrefutably that the news of it instantly flew around the whole hermitage and all the pilgrims visiting it, at once made its way into the monastery as well and threw all the monastery folk into amazement, and finally, in the shortest time, reached the town too and stirred up everyone in it, believers and unbelievers alike. The unbelievers exulted, and as for the believers, there turned out to be some among them who exulted even more than the unbelievers themselves, for “men love the fall of the righteous and his disgrace,” as the late elder himself had said in one of his teachings. The fact was that from the coffin there began to come, little by little, but more and more perceptibly as time went on, an odor of corruption, which by three o’clock in the afternoon had become all too evident and was steadily growing stronger. And not for a long time had there been, nor could anyone even recall from the whole past life of our monastery, such a scandal, so coarsely unbridled, and in any other circumstances even impossible, as broke out directly after this event among the very monks themselves. Afterward, even after many years, certain sensible monks of ours, recalling that whole day in detail, wondered and were horrified at how the scandal could have reached such a pitch then. For it had happened before that monks of most righteous life had died, whose righteousness was in plain view of all, God-fearing elders, and yet from their humble coffins too there had come the odor of corruption, appearing naturally, as with all the dead, but this had produced no scandal, not even the slightest stir of any kind. Of course, there were some among us too, of those departed long ago, whose memory was still kept alive in the monastery and whose remains, according to tradition, had shown no corruption, which had a touching and mysterious effect on the brethren and was preserved in their memory as something seemly and miraculous and as a promise of still greater glory from their tombs in the future, if only by God’s will the time for it should come. Of these, the memory especially cherished was that of the elder Job, who had lived to a hundred and five, a famous ascetic, a great faster and keeper of silence, who had departed long ago, back in the second decade of the present century, and whose grave was shown with special and extraordinary reverence to all pilgrims arriving for the first time, with mysterious mention, as they showed it, of certain great hopes. (This was the very grave on which Father Paisy had found Alyosha sitting in the morning.) Besides this elder who had departed long ago, a memory of the same kind was alive of one who had departed comparatively recently, the great father hieroschemamonk, the elder Varsonofy—the very one from whom Father Zosima had taken over the eldership, and whom, in his lifetime, all the pilgrims coming to the monastery took for nothing less than a holy fool. Of both of them it had been preserved in tradition that they had lain in their coffins as if alive and had been buried entirely incorrupt, and that even their faces had as it were grown radiant in the coffin. And some even insisted on recalling that a fragrance had been distinctly perceptible from their bodies. But despite even such impressive recollections, it would still be hard to explain the direct cause by which so frivolous, absurd, and spiteful a phenomenon could have occurred at the coffin of the elder Zosima. As for me personally, I suppose that a great deal else came together here at the same time, many different causes acting all at once. Among them, for instance, was that same inveterate hostility toward the institution of elders, as a pernicious innovation, which still lay deeply hidden in the minds of many monks in the monastery. And then, of course, and chiefly, there was envy of the departed’s holiness, which had been so firmly established in his lifetime that to object to it seemed all but forbidden. For although the late elder had drawn many to himself, and not so much by miracles as by love, and had raised up around himself, as it were, a whole world of those who loved him, still, and all the more for that, by this very thing he had bred envious people too, and after them bitter enemies, both open and secret, and not only among the monks but even among the laity. He had never done anyone harm, for instance, and yet, there it was: “Why, now, do they think him so holy?” And this one question alone, repeated over and over, bred at last a whole abyss of the most insatiable spite. That is why I think that many, catching the odor of corruption from his body, and that so soon—for not even a day had passed since his death—were glad beyond measure; just as among those devoted to the elder, who had revered him until then, there were at once found some who were all but insulted and personally offended by this event. The affair proceeded, step by step, in the following way.

As soon as the corruption began to reveal itself, one could already tell from the very look of the monks going into the departed’s cell why they were going in. One would go in, stand there a little while, and come out to confirm the news quickly to the others waiting outside in a crowd. Some of those waiting shook their heads mournfully, but others no longer even cared to hide their joy, which shone plainly in their spiteful glances. And no one reproached them any longer, no one raised a kind voice, which was even a wonder, for those devoted to the departed elder were after all the majority in the monastery; but evidently the Lord himself allowed the minority to gain the upper hand for a time on this occasion. Soon laymen too began coming into the cell as the same sort of spies, mostly from among the educated visitors. Of the simple folk few came in, though many of them had crowded at the hermitage gates. It is beyond doubt that precisely after three o’clock the influx of lay visitors grew much greater, and precisely because of the scandalous news. People who perhaps would not have come at all that day, and had no intention of coming, now arrived on purpose, among them some persons of considerable rank. Outward decorum, however, was not yet broken, and Father Paisy, firmly and distinctly, with a stern face, went on reading the Gospel aloud, as if he did not notice what was happening, though he had long since noticed something out of the ordinary. But now voices began to reach even him, at first very quiet, but gradually growing firmer and bolder. “So God’s judgment isn’t the same as man’s!” Father Paisy suddenly heard. The first to let this fall was a layman, an official from town, a man already elderly and, as far as was known of him, most devout; but in saying it aloud he only repeated what the monks had long been repeating into one another’s ears. They had let fall this hopeless word long before, and worst of all, a kind of triumph showed itself and grew with almost every minute at this word. Soon, however, even decorum itself began to be broken, and it was as though everyone felt they had a kind of right to break it. “And why should this have happened,” some of the monks were saying, at first as if with regret, “he had a small body, dry, nothing but skin on bone, where would an odor come from?” “It means God meant to give a sign,” others hastily added, and their opinion was accepted beyond dispute and at once, for again they pointed out that even if an odor were bound to come naturally, as from any departed sinner, it would still have come out later, not with such glaring haste, at least after a full day, but “this one has run ahead of nature,” and so here it was none other than God and his deliberate finger. He meant to give a sign. This reasoning struck home irresistibly. The meek Father Iosif, the hieromonk, the librarian, a favorite of the deceased, began to object to some of the slanderers that “it is not so everywhere, after all,” and that this necessity of the incorruption of the bodies of the righteous is no dogma of Orthodoxy, but only an opinion, and that in the most Orthodox countries, on Athos for instance, they are not so troubled by the odor of corruption, and that there it is not bodily incorruption that is held to be the chief mark of the glorification of the saved, but the color of their bones, when their bodies have lain many years in the earth and have even decayed in it, “and if the bones are found yellow as wax, then that is the chief sign that the Lord has glorified the righteous departed; but if they are found not yellow but black, it means the Lord has not deemed him worthy of such glory—that is how it is on Athos, a great place, where from of old Orthodoxy has been kept inviolate and in the brightest purity,” Father Iosif concluded. But the humble father’s words passed by without effect and even provoked a mocking rebuff: “That’s all learning and novelties, no need to listen,” the monks decided among themselves. “With us it’s the old way; there’s no end of novelties coming out nowadays, are we to copy them all?” others added. “We’ve had no fewer holy fathers than they have. They sit there under the Turk and have forgotten everything. Their Orthodoxy has long since gone muddy, and they haven’t even got bells,” the most mocking ones joined in. Father Iosif walked away in sorrow, the more so as he himself had stated his opinion not very firmly, as though he had little faith in it himself. But he foresaw with dismay that something very unseemly was beginning and that even disobedience itself was raising its head. Little by little, after Father Iosif, all the voices of reason fell silent too. And somehow it came about that all who loved the late elder and had accepted the institution of elders with tender obedience suddenly grew terribly afraid of something, and, meeting one another, only glanced timidly into each other’s faces. The enemies of the institution of elders, as of an innovation, proudly raised their heads. “From the late elder Varsonofy there was not only no odor, but a fragrance flowed,” they reminded people, gloating, “but he earned that not by being an elder, but because he was righteous himself.” And after this, censures and even outright accusations rained down on the newly departed elder: “He taught wrongly; he taught that life is a great joy and not tearful humility,” said some, of the most muddle-headed. “He believed in the fashionable way, he didn’t accept material fire in hell,” others added, still more muddle-headed than they. “He wasn’t strict about fasting, he allowed himself sweet things, he ate cherry jam with his tea, he was very fond of it, the ladies used to send it to him. Is it for a schema-monk to go drinking tea?” could be heard from some of the envious. “He sat there in his pride,” the most gloating recalled cruelly, “he thought himself a saint, people fell on their knees before him, and he took it as his due.” “He misused the sacrament of confession,” the fiercest foes of the institution of elders added in a spiteful whisper, and these were even some of the oldest monks, the strictest in their devotions, true fasters and keepers of silence, who had kept silent while the deceased was alive but had now suddenly opened their lips, which was dreadful, for their words had a strong influence on the young monks, who were not yet settled. The guest from Obdorsk, the little monk from St. Silvester’s, listened to it all most attentively, sighing deeply and nodding his head: “No, Father Ferapont judged rightly yesterday, it seems,” he was thinking to himself, and just then Father Ferapont himself appeared; as if precisely to make the upheaval worse, he came out.

I have mentioned already that he seldom came out of his little wooden cell by the apiary, that he did not appear even in church for long stretches, and that this was tolerated in him as in a supposed holy fool, without binding him by the rule common to all. But to tell the whole truth, all this was tolerated in him even out of a certain necessity. For it would somehow have been even shameful to burden so great a faster and keeper of silence, who prayed day and night (he even fell asleep on his knees), with the common rule against his will, if he himself did not wish to submit to it. “He is holier than all of us and does what is harder than the rule,” the monks would have said then, “and if he doesn’t go to church, that means he knows himself when to go; he has his own rule.” It was for fear of this likely grumbling and scandal that Father Ferapont was left in peace. Father Ferapont, as was already known to everyone, disliked the elder Zosima extremely; and now even to him, in his little cell, the news suddenly came that “God’s judgment, it seems, is not the same as men’s, and that he has even run ahead of nature.” One must suppose that among the first to run to him with the news was the guest from Obdorsk, who had visited him the day before and had left him the day before in horror. I have also mentioned that Father Paisy, standing firm and unshaken and reading over the coffin, though he could not hear or see what was going on outside the cell, had unerringly divined in his heart everything essential, for he knew his surroundings through and through. He was not troubled, but awaited without fear all that might still happen, following with a piercing gaze the outcome of the agitation, which already presented itself to his mind’s eye. When suddenly an unusual noise in the entryway, one that already plainly broke all decorum, struck his ears. The door flew wide open, and on the threshold appeared Father Ferapont. Behind him, as could be observed, and even clearly seen from the cell, many monks who had come with him had crowded at the foot of the little porch, and among them laymen too. Those who had come with him, however, did not come in and did not go up onto the porch, but stopped and waited to see what Father Ferapont would say and do next, for they had a presentiment, and even a somewhat fearful one, for all their boldness, that he had not come for nothing. Stopping on the threshold, Father Ferapont raised his arms, and from under his right arm peeped the sharp and curious little eyes of the guest from Obdorsk, the only one who had not been able to restrain himself and had run up the little stairs after Father Ferapont out of his exceeding great curiosity. The rest, on the contrary, the moment the door flew noisily open, crowded back still farther in sudden fear. Raising his hands on high, Father Ferapont suddenly howled:

“Casting out, I cast out!” and at once, turning to each of the four quarters in turn, he began to make the sign of the cross with his hand over the walls and all four corners of the cell. Those who had come with Father Ferapont understood this action of his at once; for they knew that he always did so wherever he went in, and that he would not sit down or say a word before he had driven out the unclean powers.

“Satan, begone, Satan, begone!” he repeated with each sign of the cross. “Casting out, I cast out!” he howled again. He was in his coarse robe, girt with a rope. From under his hempen shirt peeped his bare chest, overgrown with gray hair. His feet were entirely bare. As soon as he began waving his arms, the cruel chains he wore under his robe began to shake and clank. Father Paisy broke off the reading, stepped forward, and stood before him, waiting.

“Why have you come, honorable father? Why do you break decorum? Why do you trouble the humble flock?” he said at last, looking at him sternly.

“For what cause have you come? What do you ask? What is your faith?” shouted Father Ferapont, playing the holy fool. “I’ve come running to drive out your guests here, the foul devils. I’m looking to see how many of them you’ve stocked up without me. I mean to sweep them out with a birch broom.”

“You drive out the unclean one, and perhaps you serve him yourself,” Father Paisy continued without fear, “and who is there that can say of himself, ‘I am holy’? Is it you, father?”

“I am unclean, not holy. I will not sit in an armchair, nor will I wish to be bowed down to like an idol!” thundered Father Ferapont. “Nowadays people are destroying the holy faith. The deceased, that saint of yours,” he turned to the crowd, pointing his finger at the coffin, “rejected the devils. He gave out purges against devils. So they’ve bred here among you like spiders in the corners. And this day he himself has gone and stunk. In this we see a great sign from the Lord.”

And this had in fact once happened in Father Zosima’s lifetime. One of the monks began to dream of the unclean powers, and in the end to see them while awake. When, in the greatest fear, he disclosed this to the elder, the elder advised him to pray without ceasing and to fast more strictly. But when this too did not help, he advised him, without giving up the fasting and prayer, to take a certain medicine. Many were scandalized by this at the time and talked about it among themselves, shaking their heads—and Father Ferapont most of all, for certain detractors had at once hurried to report to him this “extraordinary” prescription of the elder’s in so special a case.

“Begone, father!” Father Paisy said commandingly. “It is not men who judge, but God. Perhaps here we see such a ‘sign’ as neither you nor I nor anyone has the strength to understand. Begone, father, and do not trouble the flock!” he repeated insistently.

“He didn’t keep the fasts as befits his schema, and that’s why the sign came. That much is plain, and it’s a sin to hide it!” the fanatic would not be quieted, worked up as he was in his zeal that was not according to reason. “He was tempted by candy, the ladies brought it to him in their pockets, he sweetened himself with tea, he made sacrifices to his belly, filling it with sweets, and his mind with arrogant notions… And that’s why he has suffered shame…”

“Your words are frivolous, father!” Father Paisy raised his voice too. “I marvel at your fasting and your asceticism, but your words are frivolous, as if a youth in the world had uttered them, fickle and feeble-minded. Begone, father, I command you,” Father Paisy thundered in conclusion.

“I’ll go, all right!” said Father Ferapont, as though somewhat taken aback, but not giving up his spite. “You learned men! With your great reason you’ve exalted yourselves above my nothingness. I came here barely able to read, and here I forgot even what I knew; the Lord God himself has protected me, little me, from your great wisdom…”

Father Paisy stood over him and waited firmly. Father Ferapont was silent for a while and then suddenly, growing mournful and resting his right palm against his cheek, said in a singsong voice, gazing at the coffin of the departed elder:

“Over him tomorrow they’ll sing ‘Helper and Protector,’ a most glorious canon, but over me, when I croak, nothing but ‘What Earthly Sweetness,’ a little sticheron,”¹ he said tearfully and plaintively. “You have grown proud and puffed up, this place shall be desolate!” he suddenly howled like a madman and, with a wave of his hand, quickly turned and quickly went down the steps from the porch. The crowd waiting below wavered; some followed him at once, but some lingered, for the cell was still open, and Father Paisy, having come out onto the porch after Father Ferapont, stood watching. But the wild old man had not quite finished: having gone some twenty paces, he suddenly turned toward the setting sun, raised both arms above his head and—as though someone had cut him down—crashed to the ground with a great cry:

“My Lord has conquered! Christ has conquered to the setting sun!” he shouted frenziedly, raising his arms to the sun, and, falling face down on the ground, he sobbed aloud like a little child, his whole body shaking with his tears, his arms spread out upon the earth. Then everyone rushed to him, exclamations rang out, answering sobs… A kind of ecstasy took hold of them all.

“That’s who is holy! That’s who is righteous!” cries rang out, no longer fearfully. “That’s who should be an elder,” others added, spitefully now.

“He won’t be an elder… He’ll refuse it himself… He won’t serve the cursed innovation… He won’t copy their foolery,” other voices at once took up, and how far it might have gone is hard even to imagine, but just at that moment the bell rang, calling to the service. Everyone suddenly began crossing themselves. Father Ferapont too got up and, shielding himself with the sign of the cross, went off to his cell without looking back, still exclaiming, but something quite incoherent now. A few people started to stream after him, a small number, but most began to disperse, hurrying to the service. Father Paisy handed the reading over to Father Iosif and came down. The frenzied shouts of fanatics could not shake him, but his heart suddenly grew sad and heavy over something in particular, and he felt it. He stopped and suddenly asked himself: “Why is this sadness of mine so great, even to faintness of spirit?” and grasped at once, with surprise, that this sudden sadness of his came, apparently, from a very small and particular cause: the fact was that in the crowd that had just been thronging at the entrance to the cell he had noticed, among the other agitated people, Alyosha too, and he remembered that on seeing him he had at once felt something like a pain in his heart. “Can it be that this youth means so much to my heart now?” he suddenly asked himself in surprise. At that moment Alyosha was just passing by him, as though hurrying somewhere, but not toward the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly looked away and lowered his eyes to the ground, and from the young man’s look alone Father Paisy guessed what a powerful change was taking place in him at that moment.

“Or have you too fallen into temptation?” Father Paisy suddenly exclaimed. “Are you, too, with those of little faith?” he added sorrowfully.

Alyosha stopped and looked at Father Paisy somehow vaguely, but again quickly turned his eyes away and again lowered them to the ground. He was standing side-on and did not turn his face toward his questioner. Father Paisy watched him closely.

“Where are you hurrying to? They are ringing for the service,” he asked again, but again Alyosha gave no answer.

“Or are you leaving the hermitage? How can you, without asking leave, without a blessing?”

Alyosha suddenly gave a crooked smile, and cast a strange, a very strange look up at the father who questioned him, at the man to whom his former guide, the former ruler of his heart and mind, his beloved elder, had entrusted him as he was dying, and suddenly, still without answering, he waved his hand, as if he did not care even about respect, and with rapid steps walked toward the gates and out of the hermitage.

“You will come back yet!” whispered Father Paisy, looking after him in sorrowful surprise.

Notes

1. 1. “Helper and Protector” opens the long canon sung at the burial of monks in holy orders; “What earthly sweetness” begins a short hymn of the funeral service for laymen and ordinary monks.