Chapter XXVIII. Of his happy passing from this world and his burial in the… and for the salvation of souls, bidding that each one of them should have recourse to him, and obey him willingly. When he had quietly settled these and other matters he came to the last moment of this present life, for his bodily weakness was increasing.
(4) Now the most sacred Festival of the Annunciation was at hand, for this was the Vigil 146 of that Feast, in honour of the glorious Mother of God, most Blessed Mary, ever Virgin!
Most Holy Mother of Jesus Christ, whom Florentius the devout Vicar of her Son had ever loved with deep devotion. So, after the hour of Compline, when the customary Antiphon had been chanted in honour of Our Lady, and the Angelus had rung at the close of day he made an end of his life on earth while the Brothers round him prayed with sighs and tears.
It was no marvel that they did so, for the might of their deep love constrained them to weep when their most beloved Father, the light and mirror of all the devout, the comforter of all that were troubled, was taken away from the light of temporal day, yet when they that loved him thought upon the sober and modest life of this most excellent priest, their pious faith did comfort them with the hope that glory in heaven should not be denied him, through Jesus Christ, Whom he had loved with all his heart, to Whom he had clung continually till the very instant of death, and served with the full devotion of faith.
(5) So Master Florentius, this Priest beloved of God and man, passed from this world in the fourteen hundredth year after the Incarnation of the Lord, during the reign of Pope
Boniface IX, being forty-nine years old as I reckon, or but little more. He lived in good and holy conversation for nearly sixteen years after the death of the venerable Master Gerard, and during this time he gathered much fruit among the people of God, in Deventer and the whole Diocese of Utrecht. For his laudable life, let Christ Who adorned our time with a star of so bright a lustre, be praised and glorified for evermore.
On the day following the Canons and Clerks assembled, and the poor body, worn by 147 long-continued chastisement, was carried by the Canons and Priests in procession to the Church of St. Lebuin and there interred with the rites proper to burial and all reverence, before that Altar in the Church which is dedicated in honour of St. Paul. The chosen Priest of God, as became a humble servant of Christ, had himself desired to be buried in the Cemetery with the Brothers who had died before him, and that no further honour should be paid him; but that Reverend Master Rambert, the Dean of Deventer, would by no means allow this, but determined rather, and that most rightly, that he should be buried with honour in a prominent place within that Church of which he had been a priest notable for virtue and adorned with learning.