The medieval man's relationship to death was macabre, as evidenced by the many depictions of death as a dancing skeleton. These 'death dances' were a genre in themselves and can still be seen in many graveyards or chapels in Europe. Their message was to terrify:Whoever lived sinfully awaited eternal punishment. But they carry another, far more remarkable message:dignitaries, especially ecclesiastical ones, have been criticized for portraying them as sinners.
"You have lived no better than the woman in whose company you are," Death says to the cardinal, pointing to the lady of easy virtue standing next to the high clergyman. Who death put these words in the mouth is unknown. It must have happened in the middle of the 15 e century, when the chapel of Saint Peter in Macra Valle Maira was decorated with frescoes.
Today the chapel is located on a desolate road in a beautiful, sparsely populated mountain valley north of the town of Saluzzo in northwestern Italy. Around 1450, however, the chapel was not peripheral at all, but on an important road that connected Avignon with Rome. Many travelers will therefore have been confronted with the images and not always to their satisfaction. The current condition of the fresco bears witness to the emotions that the annoying message evoked in many. Early modern sources already spoke of the numerous willful damage to Macra's dance of death.
The dance of death of the Valle Maira is one of the earliest dances of death we know. This is a coherent series of illustrations and short texts that paint a picture of the encounter of death with representatives of different classes in the last moment of their life on earth.
Dances of death are therefore not literal dances. They are illustrations of a symbolic dance of death with Christian society. The earliest examples appeared in the form of monumental murals, such as in Paris and Basel on the cemeteries fences, early 15 e century. They soon became popular in print as well, such as the famous dance of death by Hans Holbein the Younger from around 1525. The genre of the dance of death spread from the middle of the 15 e century across Europe in a short time. More than five hundred dances of death are known for the period between 1425 and 1800.
Remarkably enough, the phenomenon is virtually unknown for the Low Countries. For the Netherlands and Belgium there is no evidence that such a painting has ever been seen on the walls of cemeteries or chapels. Several death dance works have been published in book form in Amsterdam and Antwerp. The most famous death dance author from the Netherlands is Salomon van Rusting (1652-1709).
Memento mori
The first dances of death were in fact painted penitential sermons, a genre that was very popular in late medieval cities. Instead of popular preachers preaching hell and damnation in loud voices, the townspeople were presented with a kind of comic strip with a similar, equally stern message. The dances of death proclaimed the need to repent, because life on earth was small and finite.
The latter – the awareness of human mortality – was instilled in the public by drawing attention to death in countless repetitions. “Memento mori” (remember to die), was the overriding motto. In images and text it was paramount that everyone, from high to low and from young to old, was equal before death. The edifying message was that only life after this mattered and that those who had no material possessions had the least to fear death.
In that sense, dances of death offered people comfort. The fear of not getting to heaven was very great. The change in Christian salvation played a major role in this, in which the church established that people were held accountable for their actions immediately after their death and no longer at the end of humanity. This scared the people. What if they were surprised by death and there was not enough time for repentance, a final confession and absolution?
So the popularity of the dances of death is certainly related to the fear of dying suddenly and thus unprepared. But that wasn't all. From the start, the makers and clients also intended the macabre works as criticism of abuses in church and society.
A reformist authorship
It has long been thought that the genre of the dance of death arose unconsciously as an artistic reflection on the Black Death that occurred in the 14 e . century killed millions. Of greater importance, however, seems to be the connection between the origin of the early dances of death and the ecclesiastical reform movements that emerged in the late Middle Ages.
Franciscans and Dominicans in particular intervened in the 15 e century with the new art genre. The reason for this was the great division in the Catholic Church. The great schism that had landed the popes in Avignon and that there were two popes at the same time, was officially over with the Council of Constance (1414-1418).
But various reformist currents remained highly critical. These included the conciliarists and the mendicant monks, who wanted to adhere strictly to the original precepts of poverty and devotion to the faith, and who rejected the riches and worldliness of the Church. There was a hostile atmosphere between the reformers who advocated a purge of the church and the conservatives who wished to cling to their social status and power.
If we examine the content, form, and style of dances of death more closely, it becomes clear that the reformers were responsible for the development of the dance of death. They bombarded a wide audience with the edifying “memento mori” that was simultaneously charged with their vision of faith, authority and society.
Catalogue of Sins
The dances of death of the 15 e and the 16 e century presented the viewer with an outright catalog of sin. Laziness, lust, gluttony and pride in all its forms, such as vanity, were exposed. The authors used strong language. It was striking that their moral reproaches were not equally distributed among all classes and groups. Church dignitaries emerged as the worst sinners in the dances of death. They had betrayed their calling and their faith. Thus death said to the abbot in the dance of death of Paris (1425):
Abbot come quickly, you flee! Don't look so frightened. Now you must chase death. Whatever your attitude to God, Carry on the abbey that has made you fat and flabby. You will perish, soon and irrevocably, The the fattest perishes the fastest!
It is striking that the church as an institution – and the Pope as its embodiment – was not directly attacked. Only the poor functioning of the other church officials was portrayed.
The noblemen were also severely criticized, who were mainly judged on their pride, lust for fame and lust. Like the clerics, they functioned poorly in their assigned social role. That is why, for example, the duke was pointed out in the dance of death in Basel (ca 1435) that he now had to pay because he had 'made it too frivolous with the women' while alive. Unlike the clergy, the criticism leveled at this group is not so much subversive as it is corrective with regard to excesses.
Scholars – to whom judges and physicians can be counted – were also not spared ridicule, although they received an ambivalent appreciation. On the one hand, the death dance authors condemned the scientists for their vanity of thinking they understood how the world worked. On the other hand, one can taste agreement between the lines when, for example, the authors did not leave unmentioned some medical 'successes'.
Even the less privileged were not spared the criticism of death. In the earliest dances of death few scenes were devoted to the lowest ranks of society. It is striking, for example, that the farmer, despite being portrayed as a narrow-minded ignoramus, was presented as a kind of ideal with regard to his religious nature. In many dances of death we meet the pious farmer who only knows hard work and hardship, and can therefore count on a mildly judgmental death. Thus death says jovially to the peasant in Basel's dance of death:"Come here, peasant, with your shabby shoes, you will be praised!"
Such warnings and condemnations were already known from other sources such as sermons and mirrors of sin. The question is therefore to what extent dances of death differ from those older genres. There must be something that can explain why the dance of death was able to become a genre on its own so quickly.
Pillory for the elite
In short, its success lies in the fact that the dance of death was a genre that provided an opportunity to criticize social authorities in front of a wide audience. The misconduct of the ecclesiastical and secular elite could be exposed openly. Such open commentary was highly unusual and came about through a rather intricate interplay of conscious strategic and stylistic choices by the authors.
The fact that society could be a theme at all was related to the fact that the dances of death used a traditional style element, the enumeration of all classes, also called the 'class row', to illustrate that really all people were equal before death.
In the class row, the privileged classes were strongly overrepresented. As a result, dances of death were relatively much more critical of the elite than of those at the bottom of the social ladder.
The political charge of this lavish criticism was particularly evident in its public nature. The choice of the authors to make their dances of death accessible to a wide audience was very unusual in their time.
This happened first of all in a material sense. The style-defining early works appeared painted on the walls of central, publicly accessible places such as cemeteries.
Secondly, the authors chose to combine image and text, and to rhyme the short texts with simple words in the vernacular. This made it quite easy to understand, remember and pass on the message.
Another important success factor of the dance of death was that it was not a human being but the personified death who expressed the criticism. Death was in the 15 e and 16 e century a figure of extraordinary significance. He was an almost omniscient, divine figure who was part of the worldly and celestial spheres. Death was not only above man, it was above all exalted far above the mighty of the earth.
Finally, the critique in dances of death was enriched by stylistic elements that belonged to the culture of the carnival, such as inversion of high and low and dance. Carnival was, among other things, the period of socio-cultural freedom in which the normally applicable laws and norms could be violated or reversed. Dancing – a symbol of craziness – was inextricably linked to carnival, the time of worldliness. Traditionally, during carnival, the authorities and customs of daily life were also mocked, often with serious undertones.
The dance of death was a miniature carnival, a dance that was completely impossible in practice, because this joint dance of the different classes radically disregarded the prevailing social boundaries, and in which the elite were pilloried. The carnival symbolism of the dance of death made it clear to the public that they also had to understand the edifying message in its relevance to worldly society.
The dance of death, we can conclude, not only proclaimed an edifying message, but was also a multifaceted, politically charged commentary on the functioning of society. This unique characteristic determines the content, design and use of dances of death to this day.
After all, dances of death are still made in churches, and the theme is literally alive and kicking in art, literature, film and music in a more secular form. Think of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's literary Totentanz of 1815, Ingmar Bergmans film classic The Seventh Seal from 1957 but also the music album Dance of Death by Iron Maiden from 2003. They all honor the dance of death theme and the truth that in the end no one escapes this dance.