I have a couple of earlier answers on suicide in the Middle Ages, if you're interested! This one gets into the religious/pastoral care aspects the most:
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I'm borrowing some pieces from earlier answers here and here, but it's mostly new.
It's impossible to calculate the rate at which medieval people in the Latin West killed themselves or tried to. First, for the usual reasons--lack of records, bias of records that do survive in favor of focus on specific groups, the sketchily-drawn nature of calculating medieval demographics in general. Equally important, however, are the immense social, legal, and Christian religious consequences not just for the ones who killed themselves, but for those staring numbly at their loved one's body. While we can't say "how commonly did medieval people kill themselves," it is evident that suicide was not only a common problem for survivors, but became an even bigger emotional burden over the course of the Middle Ages.
The central drumbeat of any examination of suicide in the Christian Middle Ages must be: suicide was a sin. And not just any sin, but an absolutely, fundamentally unforgiveable one. It was understood that the act of self-murder was the last thing that a person would do; there was no time for confession and absolution. No cleansing purgatorial fire awaited those who killed themselves: they were eternally bound to hell. As early as 570, Gregory of Tours writes that the body of a nobleman who had killed himself was taken to a monastery by his survivors, but the monks could "not put [him] among the Christian dead, and no Mass was sung for him." The refusal of burial with the Christian community in consecrated ground is an earthly symbol of the theological belief that the count was separated from the Christian community in the afterlife.
This story shows us two further things. First, the intimate relationship of suicide and death means the theology of suicide was doctrine that wrapped itself around every level of Christian society. Even if not every single person over a thousand year span was excited to hear every last sermon or could recite the Paternoster (prayer) without prompting at their goddaughter's baptism, everyone dealt with death, whose aftermath was the domain of God and the Church.
Second, it shows the desperation of the count's family. They still took his body to the monastery even knowing he had killed himself, holding out some shard of hope for his soul, that the holy men might still be able to help. Already in the earliest years of the Middle Ages, we witness the desperation of the survivors.
The fallout of this desperation--even a generalized sadness of pious writers upset at the consignment of any soul to hell--permeates the medieval source record on suicide. As with Gregory, it's not that suicide isn't mentioned. We hear about it in monastic chronicles: a 12th century monk and prior of Le Dale monastery named Henry fell in love with a local woman and, officially absent from his house to earn money for it, moved in with her. When his affair was discovered and he was forced to return to the convent, "Taking guidance from the Devil he got into a hot bath and opened veins in both arms; and by way of spontaneous, or rather foolish, death he put an end to life." From late medieval England, we have cases mentioned in coroners' rolls: A man sentenced to sit in the stocks overnight is found dead in the morning, having stabbed himself.
Miracle stories attached to saints and shrines describe people who attempted suicide, maybe even appeared to have killed themselves, but were (literally) miraculously revived: a young woman was raped repeatedly by her uncle, who forced her to have an abortion each time she became pregnant. The third time, she did so directly, by ripping open her stomach with a knife. But when she cried to the Virgin Mary--here as both mother and mediatrix--Mary healed her external as well as internal wounds, and the woman took vows in a Cistercian convent to spend the rest of her days in praise of Mary/out of sight of mainstream society. And fictional literary sources talk of suicide, too: Boccaccio's Elegy of Lady Fiammetta describes a woman who decides to kill herself by jumping from a tower, because the people who find her body won't be able to tell whether it was suicide or an accident.
But in these stories, a clear pattern emerges: an emphasis on secrecy, privacy, and shame. A traveler who drops back from the group; a nun who barricades herself into a room for "private prayer" but slips out the window. Fiammetta (who is ultimately rescued) wanted to camouflage her death as an accident; the noblewoman in Gerard of Frachet's miracle tale hid herself away in the aftermath.
This only increases as one moves up the social scale in considering cases. Although typically we'd say the source record is radically denser for religious and the upper class than the small but growing middle class and peasants, with suicide this is not so. Alexander Murray, who composed the most important study of suicide in the Middle Ages (and to give you an idea of the weight of this project: he only ever made it through two volumes of a planned three before it was too much), instead says we must look to "whispers".
The sources ideologically and personally closest to a named noble or royal will shy away from mentioning suicide or suicidal ideation; those further removed in time and alliance will be less reticent. One example of this in operation is the possible attempted suicide of Henry IV, 11th (mostly) century Holy Roman Emperor. A lot of chronicles discuss his wars with the pope and his own son. But it is only one account, by known opponent Bernold of Constance, who includes this detail:
He betook himself to a castle and there remained without any regal trappings. He was in a state of extreme dejection and, as they say, he tried to give himself over to death, but was prevented by his men and could not bring his wish to effect. (trans. Murray)
While the modern reader will recongize circumstances of deep depression and suicidal desire that feel all too familiar, there is an even darker angle in play. A given "mental illness" is of course a name attached of a web of symptoms that frequently travel together, manifesting slightly differently in all cases; but even the concept of illness is a cultural-scientific attachment. Tristitia, acedia, melancholia, and their fellows in medieval writings appear to aligns with different manifestations of what we call major depressive disorder today. But in the Middle Ages, they were sins. Even before one stepped onto the tower window ledge or threw the rope over the rafters, sorrow over worldly matters like your own son leading an armed rebellion against you, nbd was a sin that divorced you from other people and from God. It's not an accident that so many accounts of suicide attribute the act to possession by the devil or the influence of demons, and describe the victim's diabolical fear or behavior in the days or years beforehand.
It's no wonder, then, that even an anti-Henry partisan like Bernold can only bring himself to write "As they say" (aiunt). It's a common pattern. Dante Alighieri refused to identify thirteenth-century king Henry Hohenstaufen as one of the inmates of the seventh circle of hell in Inferno, despite rumors to the effect he was among those violent against themselves. It's not agreement or disagreement with this decision that is picked up by commentators, it's the debate: "but others write," hedges Bevenuto da Imola, and "if this is true."
There was good reason for those left behind to be cautious. As laws and legal systems coalesced over the course of the Middle Ages, death by suicide came to have extensive legal consequences for one's heirs (and whatever a grudge against the dead, might not be good to antagonize the living). Laws permitted or mandated the "ravage" of the property of someone who committed suicide: that its, its seizure by the lord or city rather than passing down to one's heirs. This could extend all the way to the home that a house-owner's family was still living in, throwing them onto the street.
A 1280 case from England illustrates these laws in action. Upon the death of one of his tenants, a lord had claimed it was suicide and thus her property reverted to him. Her heirs had sued to get the property back, claiming his "presumptions" were (a) wrong and (b) even if they were right, presumptions weren't strong enough to be evidence of suicide. Notably, the judge ruled in the lord's favor because one of the 'presumptions' was the dead woman's threat to do something to shame her friends. Suicide was shameful for the immediate victim, but it also smade victims of the survivors who had to deal with public shame and material loss in the midst of private grief.
So interesting! Thank you!