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Raymond Diocrès, a professor at the Sorbonne, and a man with a universal reputation for learning and apparent virtue, died in Paris. Three days later, his coffin, beautifully adorned with the symbols of his profession, was brought into the cathedral with solemnity, accompanied by his fellow professors, by a large group of students and many priests.
Hundreds attended the funeral service; innumerable candles were lit and prayers were offered for him by those who had admired the great knowledge and virtues of the illustrious deceased. But when the choir came to the passage in the Office of the Dead: 'What are my faults and my sins? My misdeeds and my sins make known to me!' which Holy Job asks in Scripture, suddenly the corpse, which was lying exposed on its bier, moved before their eyes, sat up, and cried out in accents of desperation which matched the despair in his eyes: 'By the judgement of God, I have been accused, judged and condemned'.
It was because of this event that St Bruno of Cologne (1030-1101) went to great extremes in rejecting the pleasures of this world by founding a monastery in the Chartreuse Mountains, a home for the Carthusian Order. The Carthusians are, to this day, renowned for being the most rigorous and ascetic of all the cloistered orders.
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