Deathbed Repentance and Religious Discourse with Gilbert Burnet
Poet involved
What happened
In the final weeks of his life, dying of the effects of syphilis and alcoholism at his home in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, Rochester summoned the clergyman Gilbert Burnet. Over several days they held intense theological discussions that led the earl to renounce his libertine past, publicly confess his sins, and burn many of his obscene manuscripts. Burnet later published 'Some Passages of the Life and Death of… Rochester' (1680), an influential account that shaped the poet's posthumous reputation as a penitent sinner.
Literary impact
This dramatic conversion gave a moral frame to his entire body of work, allowing contemporaries to read his libertine poems as cautionary examples or expressions of a soul wrestling with God. The event itself became a literary set-piece, influencing the reception of his satires and inspiring both hagiographic and skeptical biographies.
Source: Wikipedia
