THE DANCE OF DEATH

The main stylistic characteristics of the Dance of Death can be found in ‘The Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead’, a poetic work that has been known since the twelfth century.

‘The Legend’ is a didactic poetic commentary illustrated in a book miniature. The story is fairly straightforward: during a hunt, three noblemen encounter partially decomposed corpses, who can still speak and think, in the forest. The dead address the living with a sermon about the transience of life and the insignificance of fame, pleasures, and wealth.

The idea of memento mori or ‘remember death’, reflecting the idea that death comes to us all, can also be found in ancient literature. However, these were always personal reflections, comprehensible to only the most educated members of society. In the Roman milieu, the remembrance of death was more about ‘seize the moment’, carpe diem, urging one not to wait to achieve great and important things as both time and strength are finite.

Keep mortality before your eyes. The only thing that will rescue you from its power is your poetry; everything else, fragile and perishable, disappears and perishes like people themselves.

Pliny the Younger (circa 61–113 CE)

In the early Christian era, the call to remember one's mortality was seamlessly integrated into theological discourse with a new emphasis: death was seen as the gateway to God, a blessed and desirable fate for anyone who renounced earthly life for heavenly life. It was only in the late Middle Ages, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that this idea reached a new level as death began to be perceived not as a tragic event in an individual's life, but as something that inevitably happened to people collectively.

To understand where the abnormal fascination with death in the fourteenth century came from, we must know what most Europeans experienced in the preceding years. The century began with the Great Famine of 1315–17, caused by crop failures due to excessive rainfall, which, in turn, were linked to global climate change and the onset of the Little Ice Age. That famine claimed the lives of 10–25 per cent of the urban populations of France, Germany, England, Poland, and the countries of northern Europe.

That mass catastrophe was followed by the plague epidemic of 1346–53, known in history as the Black Death. The plague originated in Central Asia, traveling along the Silk Road, and struck Europe in waves for about a century or perhaps slightly longer. It claimed the lives of 30–60 per cent of the entire population of Europe, which was several tens of millions of people. In large cities, with their density and overcrowding, the mortality rate was even higher. Thus, in London, out of 100,000 residents, only 20,000 survived the epidemic. Decaying corpses were often seen in the streets of cities, along roads, and floating in rivers—they were simply everywhere!

The plague did not discriminate and killed both the poor and nobility alike. A young Princess Joan of England, Queen Joan of Burgundy in France, Queen Eleanor of Portugal and Aragon, Queen Joan of Navarre, and King Louis of Sicily all succumbed to this disease. Thus, it was in the fourteenth century that death, once a distant and vague prospect, became a constant companion in the life of every person, regardless of age, wealth, or social status. From this point onwards, death was a terrifying and great equalizer, a grim form of justice that placed a pauper next to a king in the equally unappealing nakedness of dry bones.

In this atmosphere, from around the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century, paintings depicting the Dance of Death began to appear in Europe. The first reliably known example was created on the southern wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris in 1424–25. In 1430, a painting of the same theme, possibly inspired by the Parisian fresco, appeared in the cemetery at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. This depiction was accompanied by verses from John Lydgate, a monk and one of the most famous British poets of the first half of the fifteenth century.

In 1485, the Parisian printmaker Guy Marchant published the first edition of ‘The Danse Macabre’, featuring engravings that reproduced the fresco from the Cemetery of the Innocents.

In this strange, macabre place, which was the Cemetery of the Innocents, thousands of people day after day saw the simple figures, examined them, read the plain and clear verses where each stanza ended with a well-known proverb, and trembled before the inevitable end, consoling themselves with the thought that they were all equal in the face of Death. Nowhere could this monkey-like Death be more fitting: grinning, moving with the uncertain steps of an old dance master, leading the Pope, the emperor, the knight, the laborer, the monk, the small child, the jester, and behind them all other classes and trades. The engravings of 1485 probably conveyed only faintly the impression made by this famous painting.

— from The Autumn of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga

The London fresco was lost in 1549, and the Paris one in 1669, but by then, engravings of the Dance of Death were already being sold throughout Europe. As a result, the composition of the Dance of Death became widely known. Artists painting on walls in churches and cemeteries had a model before their eyes, which they could then develop according to their own taste.

Many murals with this theme have survived to this day, demonstrating its popularity. The Danse Macabre can be found in churches all over Europe, from north to south: from the Niguliste kirik church in Tallinn, Estonia, to the 1539 fresco on the outer wall of the Catholic church La Chiesa di San Vigilio in Pinzolo, Italy.

It is unclear what appeared first: street theatrical dances mocking death or the church murals. However, it is well documented that the Dance of Death was often performed by actors in costumes in city festivals in the fifteenth century. In 1449, it was performed at a masquerade at the court of the Duke of Burgundy in Bruges.

In southern Europe, the Dance of Death was often seen as biting social satire, emphasizing the futility of wealth. In the North, it served more as a pious, though grim, reminder of the fleeting nature of life.

As we have already seen, the composition of the Dance of Death was established quite early. On the fresco depicting the Danse Macabre in the fifteenth-century Chapelle de Tous-les-Saints in the town of Preuilly-sur-Claise in France, you can see all the typical participants. Initially, only male characters were depicted among the dancers, but later women were also added.

The fresco is arranged as follows:

1. To the right of the entrance is a large panel depicting dancing women. The participants include a queen, an abbess, a wife, a mistress, a nun, a young maiden, an old woman, a child, a shepherdess, a widow, and a peasant woman.

2. To the left, you can see a panel of the same size depicting the men's Danse Macabre. The male characters include a monk, an archbishop, a papal legate, a lawyer, a schoolteacher, a minstrel, a bailiff, an emperor, and the pope.

3. Next to them is the Orchestra of the Dead, consisting of four musicians. One holds a bagpipe, another a portable organ, the third plays a harp, and the fourth a flute.

Interestingly, the Orchestra of the Dead appears among the characters of the Dance of Death only in the second half of the fifteenth century.

Along with the Dance of Death and the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead, another popular theme in the Middle Ages was the combination of depictions of the living with images of skeletons or corpses. This was known as the Triumph of Death.

The most famous painting on this theme is by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from circa 1562. In the artwork, an army of skeletons wreaks havoc on a scorched, desolate landscape. In the distance, the sea is littered with shipwrecks, and fish rot on the shores of ponds. The living people either panic and flee or futilely try to resist the skeletons, who drive them into a trap shaped like a coffin. Like the theme of the Dance of Death, The Triumph of Death depicts people from various social backgrounds, from peasants to kings, whom death claims indiscriminately.

Arguably the most vivid embodiment of the idea of death were the gruesome ‘transi’ tombs. True to their name, the sculptures on these tombs depicted human bodies in a state of transi, or decay.

Where earlier tombs featured idealized figures of the deceased in dignified poses, sculptures showing the body of the deceased in a semi-decomposed state, devoid of any grandeur, now emerged. To modern visitors to cathedrals, this might seem a little strange, but these unpleasantly realistic tombs, commissioned by members of the highest social classes, were considered extremely respectable and fashionable for over a hundred years.

For the church, paintings depicting the Dance of Death served as advertisements for its services. After all, nothing terrified the medieval Christian as much as the idea of death without repentance. In those times, the deathbed was often depicted as the final battleground between the devil and the angels for the soul of the dying. The importance of a ‘good death’ for a Christian cannot be overstated as it was thought that only the observance of the correct rituals could ensure the soul’s safe journey to heaven.

One of the strongest fears of the medieval Western individual was not just death itself, but a sudden and solitary death, when the dying person was deprived of the opportunity to receive absolution for their sins and of any hope for the salvation of their soul. The plague, from which people died by the thousands without the chance to confess to a priest, was terrifying for mainly this reason. For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the main character refuses to kill his uncle, the murderer, while he prays, precisely because he wants to fully avenge his father's death, who was killed in his sleep without absolution.

It is known that at the peak of the Black Death epidemic, the church amassed enormous wealth because dying individuals often bequeathed their entire estates to the nearest monasteries. This happened so frequently that a special decree was issued in England prohibiting individuals from leaving their heirs without financial means.

It may seem strange that Europeans, having miraculously survived during this ‘wonderful’ time and rethinking what had happened, somehow decided to surround themselves with images of dancing skeletons and dried corpses. Here they seem to have acted on the principle that if you can't deal with fear, imagine it in every detail, talk about it with other people, and it will ease your burden. Accept it, don't sin, hope for the best, and live every day as if it were your last.

The Danse Macabre emphasized the equality of all classes in the face of death. And this fact, at least, brought grim satisfaction to the common people in terms of social justice. Perhaps it was in the dance of the skeletons that the idea of ​​equality first announced itself in Western Europe.