Title: Preparations for a Christian Death: The Later Middle Ages
Abstract:The later Middle Ages are often denigrated as obsessed with death and the art of dying, a characterisation that rests on a number of contemporary artistic tropes including the story of the three livin...The later Middle Ages are often denigrated as obsessed with death and the art of dying, a characterisation that rests on a number of contemporary artistic tropes including the story of the three living and the three dead, wall paintings of the psychostasia and danse macabre, cadaver tombs, and literature in the vado mori and ars moriendi genres. This turn to the macabre is frequently assumed to be a product of changing sensibilities following the Black Death (1347–1351). Most of these tropes had already evolved by the mid-14th century, however, and point to a well-established culture of momento mori that had its roots in the late 11th-century advent of purgatory. They were the product of a pastoral impulse to encourage parishioners to accept that preparing for a good Christian death involved a lifelong preoccupation with re-ordering one's moral priorities. These artistic exhortations were profoundly social in their encouragements to support the living, remember the dead and invest in the fabric of the parish. Although in practice they might induce fear, in design they were intended to be practical and reassuring, and to orientate layfolk around the geography of the afterlife.Read More
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-11-17
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 13
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