Salvius, who lived and died and lived again and died again during the 6th century, preferred a solitary, monastic lifestyle before being thrust into the limelight as a bishop. While living alone in a cell separated from fellow monks who had already separated themselves from the world, Salvius fell quite ill from a violent fever and died. All eyewitnesses reported him as dead. Then Salvius came back to life. Asked about this, even Salvius himself stated that he had died and been restored to life. Butler, with a slightly and surprisingly skeptical “be that as it will,” reports that upon his restoration to life, Salvius’ fame led to his being made a bishop by the Church and being sent to Albi (a city located in the south of present-day France, and now home to an exquisite Toulouse-Lautrec Museum–the artist having been born there).

During one epidemic, Salvius traveled widely to minister to the sick and dying, and “exhorted them to prepare for eternity by the practice of such good works as their condition admitted.” Carrying this lifelong awareness of death into his own final illness, Butler writes:

Perceiving that his last hour was near, he ordered his coffin to be made, changed his clothes, and prepared himself with a most edifying fervour, to appear before God. He did not long survive . . . .

For Salvius, death was something to prepare for–rather than something to be avoided as much as possible, something to be in denial over, something not to think about, or something to dread. Having once died and been returned to life, Salvius seems to have regarded death (for others as well as for himself) as a journey to plan around, to pack for, to take all one’s shots for–i.e., by “practicing such good works as (one’s) condition admitted”–and to dress appropriately for.

This perspective must have come as great comfort to those who were so very sick throughout the epidemic when Salvius engaged in personal ministry: to hear from someone who had already gone through sickness and death that, after all, it was not such a terrible thing to die. This too has much to offer us: the idea that we need not simply make some kind of uneasy peace with the inevitability of death, but can prepare for it as one prepares for any other milestone such as getting a driver’s license, graduating, marrying, or retiring.