ARTICOLO DI MORTE. - It is the point or moment of death, taken morally, that is, considered with a certain elasticity, in such a way as to allow the inclusion of all the time that passes from the moment at which death is held to be certain and inevitable. It is generally distinguished from the danger of death, which exists from the moment at which death is held, on the basis of the particular circumstances of the case, to be gravely probable. The a. of d. therefore presupposes the moral certainty of death; the danger of death, serious probability.
The decree of the Council of Trent (sess. XIV, c. VII) is famous, in which all priests were granted the faculty to absolve the faithful in a. of d. from any sin or reserved censure: "...Ne aliquis pereat in Ecclesia custoditum semper fuit ut nulla sit reservatio in articulo mortis; atque ideo omnes sacerdotes quoslibet poenitentes a quibusvis peccatis et censuris absolvere possint". In interpreting this concession, authors divided into two great groups, and the cause of the split was precisely the different way of interpreting the expression a. of d. While some (Soto, Cano, Covarrubias, Ledesma, etc.) maintained that the a. of d. referred only to the moment at which death is imminent and morally certain, others (among them Navarro, Suárez, Sánchez, Lugo, etc.), while also admitting that a. and danger of death were two distinct concepts, nevertheless affirmed that in ecclesiastical practice they were equivalent, at least in re sacramentali, and they adduced several ecclesiastical documents in which the equating of the two concepts appeared clear. In the chapter non dubium of the Decretals of Gregory IX (l.V, tit. 39, c. 5), for instance, that is called articulus mortis which in the canon si quis suadente of Gratian's Decree (c. 29, C. XVII, q. 4) is considered as periculum mortis. And the citations could be multiplied. They added that this broader interpretation better corresponded to the mind of the Church, which intended to facilitate access to the source of grace; something that in the majority of cases would have been impossible by interpreting the expression a. of d. strictly. This second opinion finally prevailed; and in the years immediately preceding the codification authors generally expressed themselves in the sense that in the CIC, and especially in sacramental matters, the two expressions a. and danger of death could be used interchangeably.
This doctrinal equating was accepted by the CIC, which adopted the expression periculum mortis whenever in the ancient discipline there was question of articulus mortis (cf. for confession, can. 882 and Council of Trent, sess. XIV, de poenitent., c. 7; for Baptism, can. 752, § 2 and S. Congr. S. Officii 18 Sept. 1850; for Matrimony, can. 1043 and S. Congr. S. Officii 23 Apr. 1890, etc.). In the CIC the expression articulus mortis is never mentioned.
There remain, however, in the current discipline, two cases in which the a. of d. is interpreted strictly: a) for the apostolic blessing with plenary indulgence in articulo mortis; b) for the religious profession of a novice in articulo mortis. The apostolic blessing with plenary indulgence may be imparted, according to the practice of the Church, after the administration of the sacraments of Penance, Eucharist and Extreme Unction. Although from the words of the Roman Ritual it is deduced that for the blessing one need not wait for the moment of the a. of d. but the danger of death suffices, the indulgences and graces annexed to it are not gained except in the true a. of d. understood in the strictest sense.
Religious profession in articulo mortis before the end of the novitiate was granted, as a particular privilege, to the nuns of St. Dominic by Pius V with the constitution Summi Sacerdotis (23 Aug. 1570). Pius X, with the decree Spirituali consolatione of 10 Sept. 1912, extended the concession to all religious, and on 23 Dec. 1922 the S. Congregation of Religious declared that the concession remained in force notwithstanding the silence of the Code. With this profession the novice acquires all the indulgences, graces and suffrages to which the professed of the respective religion are entitled, and obtains at the same time a plenary absolution of sins in the manner of a jubilee. No juridical consequence, however, derives from this fact. It is necessary that the emission take place precisely in articulo mortis, that is, not before the moment at which the death of the novice is held to be certain and inevitable. This is at least the current practice of the S. Congregation of Religious (cf. however F. M. Cappello, Summa I. C., II, 4th ed., Rome 1945, p. 68).
In the first years after the decree of 1922, a certain practical equating of a. and danger of death prevailed in this case as well: the "Constitutiones" of the Dominicans, the Redemptorists, etc. require only that the novice be in danger of death. At the same time, however, other "Constitutiones" speak exclusively of "a. of d.", as, for instance, those of the Claretians, of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, of the Society of the Divine Word, etc.
Since the cited decree of 1922 says: "liceat exinde novitios seu probandos qui medici iudicio graviter aegrotent ut in mortis articulo constituti aestimantur"; and since this declaration is later than the Code, it must be presumed that by the phrase "a. of d." it was intended to exclude the danger of death. In any case the S. Congregation of Religious, in the most recent approvals of Constitutions, no longer insists on the distinction between danger and a. of death.
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