The Death of Me

Personification of Death, and other modes of representing it among the Ancients.-Same subject during the Middle Ages.-Erroneous notions respecting Death.-Monumental absurdities.-Allegorical pageant of the Dance of Death represented in early times by living persons in churches and cemeteries.-Some of these dances described.-Not unknown to the Ancients.-Introduction of the infernal, or dance of Macaber.

he manner in which the poets and artists of antiquity have symbolized or personified Death, has excited considerable discussion; and the various opinions of Lessing, Herder, Klotz, and other controversialists have only tended to demonstrate that the ancients adopted many different modes to accomplish this purpose. Some writers have maintained that they exclusively represented Death as a mere skeleton; whilst others have contended that this figure, so frequently to be found upon gems and sepulchral monuments, was never intended to personify the extinction of human life, but only as a simple and abstract representation. They insist that the ancients adopted a more elegant and allegorical method for this purpose; that they represented human mortality by various symbols of destruction, as birds devouring lizards and serpents, or pecking fruits and flowers; by goats browsing on vines; cocks fighting, or even by a Medusa's or Gorgon's head. The Romans seem to have adopted Homer's[1] definition of Death as the eldest brother of Sleep; and, accordingly, on several of their monumental and other sculptures we find two winged genii as the representatives of the above personages, and sometimes a genius bearing a sepulchral vase on his shoulder, and with a torch reversed in one of his hands. It is very well known that the ancients often symbolized the human soul by the figure of a butterfly, an idea that is extremely obvious and appropriate, as well as elegant. In a very interesting sepulchral monument, engraved in p. 7 of Spon's Miscellanea Erudit? Antiquitatis, a prostrate corpse is seen, and over it a butterfly that has just escaped from the mouth of the deceased, or as Homer expresses it, "from the teeth's inclosure."[2] The above excellent antiquary has added the following very curious sepulchral inscription that was found in Spain, H?REDIBVS MEIS MANDO ETIAM CINERE VTMEO VOLITET EBRIVS PAPILIO OSSA IPSA TEGANT MEA, &c. Rejecting this heathen symbol altogether, the painters and engravers of the middle ages have substituted a small human figure escaping from the mouths of dying persons, as it were, breathing out their souls.

We have, however, the authority of Herodotus, that in the banquets of the Egyptians a person was introduced who carried round the table at which the guests were seated the figure of a dead body, placed on a coffin, exclaiming at the same time, "Behold this image of what yourselves will be; eat and drink therefore, and be happy."[3] Montfaucon has referred to an ancient manuscript to prove that this sentiment was conveyed in a Laced?monian proverb,[4] and it occurs also in the beautiful poem of Coppa, ascribed to Virgil, in which he is supposed to invite M?cenas to a rural banquet. It concludes with these lines:-

Pone merum et talos; pereat qui crastina curat,

Mors aurem vellens, vivite ait, venio.

The phrase of pulling the ear is admonitory, that organ being regarded by the ancients as the seat of memory. It was customary also, and for the same reason, to take an oath by laying hold of the ear. It is impossible on this occasion to forget the passage in Isaiah xxii. 13, afterwards used by Saint Paul, on the beautiful parable in Luke xii. Plutarch also, in his banquet of the wise men, has remarked that the Egyptians exhibited a skeleton at their feasts to remind the parties of the brevity of human life; the same custom, as adopted by the Romans, is exemplified in Petronius's description of the feast of Trimalchio, where a jointed puppet, as a skeleton, is brought in by a boy, and this practice is also noticed by Silius Italicus:

... ?gyptia tellus

Claudit odorato post funus stantia Saxo

Corpora, et a mensis exsanguem haud separat umbram.[5]

Some have imagined that these skeletons were intended to represent the larv? and lemures, the good and evil shadows of the dead, that occasionally made their appearance on earth. The larv?, or lares, were of a beneficent nature, friendly to man; in other words, the good demon of Socrates. The lemures, spirits of mischief and wickedness. The larva in Petronius was designed to admonish only, not to terrify; and this is proved from Seneca: "Nemo tam puer est ut Cerberum timeat et tenebras, et larvarum habitum nudis ossibus coh?rentium."[6] There is, however, some confusion even among the ancients themselves, as to the respective qualities of the larv? and lemures. Apuleius, in his noble and interesting defence against those who accused him of practising magic, tells them, "Tertium mendacium vestrum fuit, macilentam vel omnino evisceratam formam diri cadaveris fabricatam prorsus horribilem et larvalem;" and afterwards, when producing the image of his peculiar Deity, which he usually carried about him, he exclaims, "En vobis quem scelestus ille sceletum nominabat! Hiccine est sceletus? H?ccine est larva? Hoccine est quod appellitabatis D?monium."[7] It is among Christian writers and artists that the personification of Death as a skeleton is intended to convey terrific ideas, conformably to the system that Death is the punishment for original sin.

The circumstances that lead to Death, and not our actual dissolution, are alone of a terrific nature; for Death is, in fact, the end and cure of all the previous sufferings and horrors with which it is so frequently accompanied. In the dark ages of monkish bigotry and superstition, the deluded people, seduced into a belief that the fear of Death was acceptable to the great and beneficent author of their existence, appear to have derived one of their principal gratifications in contemplating this necessary termination of humanity, yet amidst ideas and impressions of the most horrible and disgusting nature: hence the frequent allusions to it, in all possible ways, among their preachers, and the personification of it in their books of religious offices, as well as in the paintings and sculptures of their ecclesiastical and other edifices. They seemed to have entirely banished from their recollection the consolatory doctrines of the Gospel, which contribute so essentially to dissipate the terrors of Death, and which enable the more enlightened Christian to abide that event with the most perfect tranquillity of mind. There are, indeed, some exceptions to this remark, for we may still trace the imbecility of former ages on too many of our sepulchral monuments, which are occasionally tricked out with the silly appendages of Death's heads, bones, and other useless remains of mortality, equally repulsive to the imagination and to the elegance of art.

If it be necessary on any occasion to personify Death, this were surely better accomplished by means of some graceful and impressive figure of the Angel of Death, for whom we have the authority of Scripture; and such might become an established representative. The skulls and bones of modern, and the entire skeletons of former times, especially during the middle ages, had, probably, derived their origin from the vast quantities of sanctified human relics that were continually before the eyes, or otherwise in the recollection of the early Christians. But the favourite and principal emblem of mortality among our ancestors appears to have been the moral and allegorical pageant familiarly known by the appellation of the Dance of Death, which it has, in part, derived from the grotesque, and often ludicrous attitudes of the figures that composed it, and especially from the active and sarcastical mockery of the ruthless tyrant upon its victims, which may be, in a great measure, attributed to the whims and notions of the artists who were employed to represent the subject.

It is very well known to have been the practice in very early times to profane the temples of the Deity with indecorous dancing, and ludicrous processions, either within or near them, in imitation, probably, of similar proceedings in Pagan times. Strabo mentions a custom of this nature among the Celtiberians,[8] and it obtained also among several of the northern nations before their conversion to Christianity. A Roman council, under Pope Eugenius II. in the 9th century, has thus noticed it: "Ut sacerdotes admoneant viros ac mulieres, qui festis diebus ad ecclesiam occurrunt, ne ballando et turpia verba decantando choros teneant, ac ducunt, similitudinem Paganorum peragendo." Canciani mentions an ancient bequest of money for a dance in honour of the Virgin.[9]

These riotous and irreverent tripudists and caperers appear to have possessed themselves of the church-yards to exhibit their dancing fooleries, till this profanation of consecrated ground was punished, as monkish histories inform us, with divine vengeance. The well-known Nuremberg Chronicle[10] has recorded, that in the time of the Emperor Henry the Second, whilst a priest was saying mass on Christmas Eve, in the church of Saint Magnus, in the diocese of Magdeburg, a company of eighteen men and ten women amused themselves with dancing and singing in the church-yard, to the hindrance of the priest in his duty. Notwithstanding his admonition, they refused to desist, and even derided the words he addressed to them. The priest being greatly provoked at their conduct, prayed to God and Saint Magnus that they might remain dancing and singing for a whole year without intermission, and so it happened; neither dew nor rain falling upon them. Hunger and fatigue were set at defiance, nor were their shoes or garments in the least worn away. At the end of the year they were released from their situation by Herebert, the archbishop of the diocese in which the event took place, and obtained forgiveness before the altar of the church; but not before the daughter of a priest and two others had perished; the rest, after sleeping for the space of three whole nights, died soon afterwards. Ubert, one of the party, left this story behind him, which is elsewhere recorded, with some variation and additional matter. The dance is called St. Vitus's, and the girl is made the daughter of a churchwarden, who having taken her by the arm, it came off, but she continued dancing. By the continual motion of the dancers they buried themselves in the earth to their waists. Many princes and others went to behold this strange spectacle, till the bishops of Cologne and Hildesheim, and some other devout priests, by their prayers, obtained the deliverance of the culprits; four of the party, however, died immediately, some slept three days and three nights, some three years, and others had trembling in their limbs during the whole of their lives. The Nuremberg Chronicle, crowded as it is with wood-cut embellishments by the hand of Wolgemut, the master of Albert Durer, has not omitted to exhibit the representations of the above unhappy persons, equally correct, no doubt, as the story itself, though the same warranty cannot be offered for a similar representation, in Gottfried's Chronicle and that copious repertory of monstrosities, Boistuau and Belleforest's Histoires Prodigieuses. The Nuremberg Chronicle[11] has yet another relation on this subject of some persons who continued dancing and singing on a bridge whilst the eucharist was passing over it. The bridge gave way in the middle, and from one end of it 200 persons were precipitated into the river Moselle, the other end remaining so as to permit the priest and his host to pass uninjured.

In that extremely curious work, the Manuel de Pêché, usually ascribed to Bishop Grosthead, the pious author, after much declamation against the vices of the times, has this passage:-

Karoles ne lutes ne deit nul fere,

En seint eglise ki me voil crere;

Kas en cimetere karoler,

Utrage est grant u lutter.[12]

He then relates the story in the Nuremberg Chronicle, for which he quotes the book of Saint Clement. Grosthead's work was translated about the year 1300 into English verse by Robert Mannyng, commonly called Robert de Brunne, a Gilbertine canon. His translation often differs from his original, with much amplification and occasional illustrations by himself. As the account of the Nuremberg story varies so materially, and as the scene is laid in England, it has been thought worth inserting.

Karolles wrastelynges or somour games,

Whosoever haunteth any swyche shames,

Yn cherche other yn cherche yerd,

Of sacrilage he may be aferd;

Or entyrludes or syngynge,

Or tabure bete or other pypynge;

All swyche thyng forboden es,

Whyle the prest stondeth at messe;

But for to leve in cherche for to daunce,

Y shall you telle a full grete chaunce,

And y trow the most that fel,

Ys sothe as y you telle.

And fyl thys chaunce yn thys londe,

Yn Ingland as y undyrstonde,

Yn a kynges tyme that hyght Edward,

Fyl this chaunce that was so hard.

Hyt was upon crystemesse nyzt

That twelve folys a karolle dyzt,

Yn Wodehed, as hyt were yn cuntek,[13]

They come to a toune men calle Cowek:[14]

The cherche of the toune that they to come,

Ys of Seynt Magne that suffred martyrdome,

Of Seynt Bukcestre hyt ys also,

Seynt Magnes suster, that they come to;

Here names of all thus fonde y wryte,

And as y wote now shal ye wyte

Here lodesman[15] that made hem glew,[16]

Thus ys wryte he hyzte[17] Gerlew;

Twey maydens were yn here coveyne,

Mayden Merswynde[18] and Wybessyne;

All these came thedyr for that enchesone, } doghtyr

Of the prestes of the toune.

The prest hyzt Robert as y can ame,

Azone hyzt hys sone by name,

Hys doghter that there men wulde have,

Thus ys wryte that she hyzt Ave.

Echone consented to o wyl,

Who shuld go Ave out to tyl,

They graunted echone out to sende,

Bothe Wybessyne and Merswynde:

These women zede and tolled[19] her oute,

Wyth hem to karolle the cherche aboute,

Benne ordeyned here karollyng,

Gerlew endyted what they shuld syng.

Thys ys the karolle that they sunge,

As telleth the Latyn tunge,

Equitabat Bevo per sylvam frondosam,

Ducebat secum Merwyndam formosam,