Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Albrecht Classen, Albrecht Classen, Albrecht Classen

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110434873
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.

Footnotes

1	Harold C. Fritts, Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California: Growth and Ring-Width Characteristics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969); The Bristlecone Pine: Nature’s Oldest Living Thing (Ogden, Utah: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Region, [1994]); Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson, Ancient Trees in the Landscape: Norfolk’s Arboreal Heritage (Bollington, Cheshire, England: Windgather 2011); Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014). See also the excellent survey, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristlecone_pine (last accessed on Jan. 22, 2015).
2	Alexander Demandt, Der Baum: Eine Kulturgeschichte. 2nd, rev. and expanded ed. (2002; Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2014), 4k, 7o, 9n, et passim.
3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen (last accessed on Jan. 27, 2015).
4	See, for instance, R. C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (London: Junction Books, 1982); Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (1994; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Gero von Wilpert, Die deutsche Gespenstergeschichte: Motiv – Form – Entwicklung. Kröners Taschenausgabe, 406 (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1994); Roger Clarke, Ghosts: A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof (2012; New York: St. Martin’ Press, 2014).
5	See the contributions to Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 2 (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2007); to Gutes Leben und guter Tod von der Spätantike bis zur Gegenwart: Ein philosophisch-ethischer Diskurs über die Jahrhunderte hinweg, ed. Albrecht Classen. Theophrastus Paracelsus Studien, 4 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2012); Alterskulturen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Akten des 16. Internationalen Kongresses Krems 16. bis 18. Oktober 2006, ed. Elisabeth Vavra. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, 21 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008); Methoden der Alter(n)sforschung: Disziplinäre Positionen und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, ed. Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, Miriam Seidler, and Christian Tagsold (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2013).
6	Evy Johanne Håland, Rituals of Death and Dying in Modern and Ancient Greece: Writing History from a Female Perspective (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).
7	See, for instance, James Stevens Curl, Death and Architecture: An Introduction to Funerary and Commemorative Buildings in the Western European Tradition, with Some Consideration of Their Settings. New rev. ed. (Stroud: Sutton, 2002); Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain ([London:] Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2005); cf. also the contributions to Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in Korea: From Ancient to Contemporary Times, ed. Charlotte Horlyck and Michael J. Pettid (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press: Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai’i, 2014); Deborah Vischak, Community and Identity in Ancient Egypt: The Old Kingdom Cemetery at Qubbet el-Hawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Andrzej Buko, Bodzia: A Late Viking-Age Elite Cemetery in Central Poland. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 27 (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
8	Edwin de Jong, Making a Living Between Crises and Ceremonies in Tana Toraja: The Practice of Everyday Life of a South Sulawesi Highland Community in Indonesia (Leiden, The Netherlands, and Danvers, MA: Brill, 2013); Michaela Budiman, Contemporary Funeral Rituals of Sa’an Toraja: From Aluk Todolo to “New” Religions (Prague: Karolinum 2013); Jakob Strobel y Serra, “Der Kuss der Totenschädel,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Oct. 19, 2014, http://www.faz.net/aktuell/reise/ indonesien-sulawesi-13208497.html?printPagedArticle =true#pageIndex_2 (last accessed on Jan. 22, 2015).
9	Leichenpredigten als Quelle historischer Wissenschaften: Erstes Marburger Personalschriften-symposion, Forschungsschwerpunkt Leichenpredigten, ed. Rudolf Lenz (Cologne: Böhlau, 1975); Albrecht Classen, “Die Darstellung von Frauen in Leichenpredigten der Frühen Neuzeit. Lebensverhältnisse, Bildungsstand, Religiosität, Arbeitsbereiche,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, MIÖG 108 (2000): 291–318. Lenz has published numerous catalogues of those funeral sermons from the early modern age. See also Neil R. Leroux, Martin Luther as Comforter Writings on Death. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 133 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).
10	Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculptures: Four Lectures to its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (New York: Harry Abrahams, 1964); Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 1973); Helga Wäß, Form und Wahrnehmung mittelalterlicher Gedächtnisskulptur im 14. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zu mittelalterlichen Epitaphen und Kuriosa in Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringen, Nord-Hessen, Ost-Westfalen und Südniedersachsen. 2 vols. (Berlin: TENEA, 2006); Stephan Elbern and Katrin Vogt, Wo liegt eigentlich … begraben?: Grabstätten historischer Persönlichkeiten aus Antike und Mittelalter (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2011); see now Christina Welch’s contribution to the present volume. For a study of early modern sarcophagi during the age of Confessionalization (16th century), see...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Death and the Culture of Death
• Heroic Poetry: Achievement and Heroic Death in Old English Literature
• Death and Ritual: The Role of Wills in Late Anglo-Saxon England
• Palimpsest in the Service of the Cult of the Saints—The False Arch in the Nave’s Vault of the Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
• When the Dead No Longer Rest: The Religious Significance of Revenants in Sagas set in Viking Age Settlements Around the Time of Conversion
• The North Portal of the Freiburg im Breisgau Minster: Cosmological Imagery as Funerary Art
• The Effects of the Black Death: The Plague in Fourteenth-Century Religion, Literature, and Art
• Bonum est mortis meditari: Meanings and Functions of the Medieval Double Macabre Portrait
• Imagining the Mass of Death in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale: A Critique of Medieval Eucharistic Practices
• Death, Sinfulness, the Devil, and the Clerical Author: The Late Medieval German Didactic Debate Poem Des Teufels Netz and the World of Craftsmanship
• Pro Defunctis Exorare: The Community of the Living and the Dead in Jean Gerson’s Sermones de Omnibus Sanctis and de Mortuis
• “And Thus She Will Perish:” Gender, Jurisdiction, and the Execution of Women in Late Medieval France
• “Je viens …/d’estrange contrée”: Medieval French Comedy Envisions the Afterlife
• Gallows Humor in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea
• Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials in England and Wales
• Images of Mortality in Early English Drama
• New Perspectives of the Early Modern Afterlife: The Last Pilgrimage in the Poetry of John Donne and Sir Walter Raleigh
• Maternal Death and Patriarchal Succession in Renaissance France
• Fear of Seeming Death in Eighteenth-Century Europe
• Contributors
• List of Illustrations
• Index
• Footnotes