SOURCE: Bowers, R. H. “Iconography in Lydgate's ‘Dance of Death.’” Southern Folklore Quarterly 12, no. 2 (June 1948): 111-28.

[In the following essay, Bowers points out the various ideas and motifs that informed Dance of Death and discusses the work's significance in the medieval danse macabre tradition.]

John Lydgate, the “monk of Bury” (c.1375-c.1448), dealt almost entirely with medieval themes in his poetry, themes which one might suppose would no longer interest the modern world; yet when the English poet Auden published his acrid poem The Dance of Death in 1933, he was drawing on a motif (likewise used by Lydgate) and sentiment which was so ubiquitous in Western Europe during the fifteenth century that it has been termed the last characteristic gesture of the Middle Ages. The universal truth that all men must die (Jeder Mensch muss sterben), was fashioned at that time into a didactic and compelling theme of peculiar character by the energy of the preachers to stimulate the sinner to repent and mend his ways. The common folk of Western Europe, be they urban or rural, heard and saw (in pictorial representation) continual warning of the pain of Hell and the possible swiftness with which Death could snatch them off, a swiftness that might find them with their sins unconfessed.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine some of the many ideas and influences which contributed to the synthesis of the fully crystallized form of the Dance of Death, or, as it is more usually called, the danse macabre. Attention will be focused on Lydgate's Middle English free translation of a French verse rendition, and my general observations will be directed towards the English and French cultural milieu, although a few incidental references will be made to the occurrence of the danse macabre motif in other lands.¹

Speaking of French art at the close of the Middle Ages, Lévêque writes: “L'artiste cherche alors à émouvoir par le spectacle de la souffrance, ou à terrifier par la représentation minutieusement cruelle de la morte … En tout cas, la douleur et la mort furent, au quinzième siècle, de grandes inspiratrices. C'est alors que l'on imagina de représenter des cadavres en putréfaction, et surtout ces fameuses Danses macabres, qui ornaient les murs des églises et des cloîtres. La danse macabre était formée d'une série de peintures représentant des personnages appartenant à toutes les conditions sociales—roi, évêque, chevalier, moine, bourgeois, jongleur, mendiant, etc.—et chacun de ces personnages était entraîné par un squelette dansant … Étrange et sardonique glorification de la Mort, la grande niveleuse, devant qui tous les hommes sont égaux.”²

The danse macabre is essentially a symbol of man's dying.

The most famous mural painting of the danse macabre was in Paris, on the walls of the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, a locale famous as a social rendezvous for all manner of people—tradesfolk, idlers, swindlers and prostitutes.³ This painting is usually dated 1424; but there is a reference in the Contes et Discours of N. du Fail (1597) to alchemists frequenting the promenades in the cloisters of St. Innocent, wherein a danse macabre was depicted, during the reign of Charles V, who died on the 6th September 1380. The earliest painted danse macabre in Europe seems to have been executed at Klingenthal, Little Basel, in 1312, although it is quite possible that other examples have perished. Most of these paintings appear to have been accompanied by verses explaining, enlarging and commenting on the motif.

The motif was also acted. We have definite evidence that a danse macabre—perhaps as a masque or pageant, was played at Bruges before Philippe le Bon of Burgundy in 1449. The accounts of the Burgundian dukes, preserved in the Lille archives, record a payment of “viii francs” to a certain Nicaise de Cambray, “painctre” who “a joue devant mondit seigneur, en son hostel, avec ses autres compagnons, certain jeu, histoire et moralité sur le fait de la danse macabre. …”⁴ It is quite possible that similar masques, pageants or plays took place in England during the fifteenth century, although no records survive. It has been conjectured that a masque of the Seven Deadly Sins written by William Dunbar (c.1507) was suggested by a similar masque acted before James IV of Scotland on a Shrove Tuesday.⁵ One thing is certain: the danse macabre furnished a motif that found representation in many forms. The paintings and woodcuts, however, have been usually regarded as most significant by scholars because they afford the most vivid realization of the import of the theme. Rivalling the Holy Innocent mural mentioned above (no longer extant), there survives a famous mural at the Abbey of Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne.⁶ In England there were murals, no longer extant, at Wortley Hall, Stratford-on-Avon, Croyden, and Hexham Church, Northumberland.

Perhaps the most famous woodcuts were those of Holbein (Basel: 1530), which have been reproduced over a hundred times; and those of Guyot Marchand, made in Paris in 1490 for Geoffroi de Marnef.⁷

II

At some time after his sojourn in Paris in 1426, Lydgate was apparently commissioned by John Carpenter, Town Clerk of London from 1417-1438, to make a translation of the French verses accompanying the danse macabre of the Holy Innocents to go with the new Dance of Death painting which was subsequently painted on the walls of the north cloister of St. Paul's in London.⁸ The date for the painting is usually given as c.1430. The entire icon was called the Dance of Paul's and was well known: Sir Thomas More said that to meditate on it would be “good for the spirit;” and there is a reference to it in The Demaunde Joyous.⁹ Stow further records that the whole cloister with its tombs and monuments was pulled down in 1549 at the order of the Duke of Somerset to be converted into a garden for the “Pety Canons.”

Lydgate's verses must have been fairly popular since twelve manuscripts survive as well as the printed edition made by Tottel in 1544 as an appendix to his edition of Lydgate's Fall of Princes.¹⁰ In this “dance” or procession, Death addresses all classes in hierarchal gradation from Pope to Laborer, thirty-six in all, bidding them follow him; and each personage gives a sad reply.

And being painted on the cloister walls in a favorite gathering place in London, they must have been known to many Londoners. For over a century there was as much business transacted and gossip spread in the famous aisles of Old St. Paul's as there were sermons preached.¹¹ In this respect the secular activities in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris, which Lewis calls a “Ranelegh,”¹² are similar.

III

In listing the various literary antecedents, ideas, motifs, and possible sentiments arising from contemporary social conditions which went into the complicated amalgamation of Lydgate's Dance of Death, I would stress that it is impossible to determine, with any satisfactory finality, the relative importance of any one ingredient, or to establish rigid categories of influence. The materials were welded, so to speak, into an artifact, and the final result was in many respects typical rather than unique. What impresses the cultural historian is the sameness, rather than the variations, in the international treatment of characteristic medieval themes. No doubt, a future historian will be appalled by the lack of variation in the thousands of cow-boy motion pictures which have been manufactured in Hollywood during the past two decades.

LITERARY TRADITIONS

(A) The verses of Lydgate are cast in a dialogue form, Death addressing a victim, and the victim responding. However, the wooden dialogue itself is not very dramatic. Lydgate, even if he had so desired, was not capable of being a dramatic writer; he was essentially a narrator, and a translator. Furthermore, in this particular case, he was translating from a French source¹³ as well as being restricted to the exigencies of writing for iconographical purposes—i.e., commenting on the mural painting above the explanatory verses.¹⁴ Lydgate did other work of this nature: his so-called tapestry poems, The Life of St. George and The Fall of the Seven Princes have been printed by Hammond in Englische Studien XLIII (1910); his Bycorne and Chichevache has been printed by Hammond in her English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey.

The dialogue as a literary form has been enormously popular, from the time of Plato on, and its great value has resided in its fitness for the progressive development of ideas through dialectic, as well as for character delineation and revelation.¹⁵ Medieval writers, so fond of disputation, were very fond of this method of literary presentation. Debates between the Body and the Soul, between departed spirits and the living, between Satan and a Christian adversary, are common in medieval Latin and the vernacular tongues, and helped to fix the symbol of personified Death, or the Devil.

(B) The Vado Mori tradition. An interesting Latin poem and vernacular poem in twelve distichs, which has survived in several versions, dating from the early part of the 14th century, consists of representatives of the different social classes who repeat in turn the sinister refrain vado mori. They are not being summoned by Death, nor are they apparently being addressed by another party. Their attitude is resigned; there is no spirited protest against fate or Fortuna. This literary tradition was widely disseminated; and contained several elements similar to the later danse macabre such as the notion that in death all men are equal and the arrangement of representatives of different social classes in gradation, answering to the medieval love of classification. There is no dance motif; and no pictorial representations of the theme are known.¹⁶

(C) The Three Living and the Three Dead (Les Trois Mors et li Trois Vifs). This legend was popularized in a French metrical work of the late 13th century, which became a favorite theme in mural painting.¹⁷ According to this story, three noble youths (or kings, in older versions) were hunting in a forest when they were intercepted by three hideous images of Death, from whom they hear sententious lectures on the vanity of human endeavor. The significant element in this tradition is the irony and suddenness with which Death confronts young, fortunate members of the privileged class; and the dramatic tension arising from the tragic tone of the encounter. Yet, as it has been noted, there is a marked element of clemency in this legend which was seen is not present in the danse macabre. It might be noted further that the subjects, the three noble youths, represent but one segment of medieval society; hence the scope of inclusion of all social classes in the danse macabre marks an advance in what might be termed the development of a comprehensive, rather than class conscious, attitude. Some of the later versions of this theme, however, do show a development similar to the representation of the lower classes in the danse macabre, in that the three kings (or noble youths) become representatives of different estates or even of the lower orders.¹⁸ The dead usually serve as messengers to warn the living to mend their ways to escape the punishments of the other world.

(D) The Dance. The interpretation of this element has caused scholars a good deal of trouble. In the first place, there is some ambiguity in the term, because in Middle English the term often means “procession,” rather than dancing itself. But that some of the artists and writers who composed danses thought of dancing proper is clearly indicated by the second woodcut in Guyot Marchand's 1490 edition of the Dance of Death, where four images of Death are playing musical instruments—a bagpipe, a drum, a pipe, a portable organ (the prototype of the calliope) and a lyre.

Various theories to account for the dance have been advanced. Scholars have frequently pointed out the ancient superstition that the dead danced in cemeteries at night;¹⁹ Warren thought that the clergy had tried to substitute a moral form of dancing for the questionable dancing that often was indulged in by the folk in churchyards;²⁰ Stegemeier reviews a complicated, and tenuous, theory that the notion of dancing in the danse macabre may be connected with the notion of some mystics that death was a happy entrance to eternal life, an entrance signalized by happy dancing (nur ein suzzer durchgank zu dem ewigen leben von diesem werltlichen tode), and related to the concept of Christ leading a dance of Christians to the grave.²¹

The most plausible theory has been advanced by Manasse, who sees in it the idea of compulsion, and points to such medieval legends as the Pied Piper of Hamelin wherein a magic compulsion was exerted on people by music. Nobody is able to resist the piping of Death.²²

Dancing is a common phenomenon in all ages. And there are “good” dances as well as “bad” dances. In a comprehensive survey of sacred dancing, Oesterly observes that in dancing at a mourning or burial rite, some notion of propitiatory action “whereby the spirit of the departed is persuaded to refrain from molesting the living” is present.²³

The medieval English preacher, on the whole, seems to have regarded dancing as a form of vanity and to have condemned it roundly. The more decorous and stately procession on formal occasions was certainly preferred. Yet dancing at harvests and feasts was a frequent mode of expressing community joy, and certainly no amount of pulpit denunciation wrought any permanent eradication of this perennial social activity.

In the first woodcut in Tottel's text of Lydgate's danse macabre the various figures are walking in a procession rather than dancing. In the Marchand woodcuts, the images of Death usually strike a more animate—some even a coy—posture than the unhappy mortals who are being summoned; but they are not actually dancing.

(E) The Medieval Drama. Because of the “dramatic” nature of the danse macabre some scholars have conjectured that it had been subjected to a strong influence emanating from the various forms of the religious drama. It is true that in some late English moralities, such as Everyman, there is a clear use of what may be termed the Summons-of-Death theme²⁴ and the various warnings of impending end, mixed with the usual admonitions to lead a more virtuous existence. However it is much more likely that both late moral drama and danse macabres grew out of the same cultural milieu and from the same basic themes since in most respects they are parallel literary growths. Furthermore, scholars may speak of the many “dramatic” features of medieval preaching which had a “wide influence,” but unless the term dramatic is restricted to the presence of actual impersonation, it becomes almost meaningless, or at best a synonym for any form of expressive action or speaking.

(F) Personified Death, and the suddenness of his attack. Manasse notes that in the iconographical history of the figure of Death in “Gothic” art, at least three stages of development can be discerned.²⁵ Before that time, Death was overthrown by Christ, sharing his ignominy with Satan, with whom the symbol was often (con)fused.²⁶ Later, about the start of the thirteenth century, Death appears as powerful and triumphant, and more involved in the affairs of the world, and more and more assuming the likeness of what he makes his victims. The end of the development is “the complete identity of the figures of Death and the deceased human being.”

In the Marchand woodcuts, the various representations of Death carry different symbolic instruments: a deadly spear, a spade (for grave digging), a scythe.²⁷ Death is often represented as a hunter or fowler in German iconography.²⁸ But throughout, he is regarded with awe and horror, as a deadly enemy, a “privee theef,” as he is called in Chaucer's Pardoner's tale, who suddenly strikes down men. This concept of suddenness is very noticeable in Lydgate's poem (sodein tidinges, 1.210; haste of Death, 1.405; sodein stroke, 1.540) and Mâle has argued that this idea is the second main idea in the danse macabre. Suddenness, of course, requires no comment.²⁹ In an age where the violent tenor of life and the frequency of deadly communicable disease was everywhere, the idea of “suddenness” could hardly have been avoided.

Now it is clear that the iconography of Death reflects contemporary thinking. It is remarkable that as far back as in the Old English Salomon and Saturn, Salomon argues in Christian vein that the recitation of the Pater Noster will ward off all attacks of the Devil, regardless of what guise he assumes to tempt the unwary.³⁰ This is a common theological position, not unrelated to common incantation in folklore, throughout the Middle Ages. But when the concept of Death-Satan as triumphant developed, the incantation, or warning appears to have been mainly directed against the lures and wiles of Satan proper.³¹ The figure of Death was depicted as inexorable, ineluctable and—at times—the hope of ultimate salvation through the merciful agency of Christ must have seemed remote indeed.³² This has led Owst to observe: “On its purely doctrinal side, then, the English pulpit of the waning Middle Ages has little inspiration to offer.” Sermon after sermon seems to consist of sheer terrorism, as some preachers and schoolmen worked themselves into a frenzied description of the tortures of Hell and the suffering of the damned. Others, however, contends Owst, “speak living voices of hope, and blow the spring of a new Renaissance upon the Church, making the old sap of moral purpose rise once again within her.”³³

CULTURAL SENTIMENT

(A) The didactic element. The danse macabre shares with the vast body of devotional literature the basic element of didactic admonition to sinners. Depicting the horror of death was regarded by the medieval preacher as an unfailing cure for the proud, the indifferent and the flippant. Many a pulpit was actually raised amid the tombs or even over a freshly dug grave, and the preacher could point with impassioned gesture to the pending end of man, made horrible beyond description if that man met his end with his sins unhouseled. Typical of the morbid mood of this theme in preaching and typical of the danse macabre itself in its more intense forms, is a passage such as the following:

Riȝt as a worme is but a litel and a foul thinge and of no prise, and cometh crepynge naked bare out of the erthe where he was bred, riȝt so a man at his begynnynge is a foule thing, litel and pore … Therfore seith the holy man Bernard thus: “quid est homo nisi sperma fetidum, saccus stercorum, esca vermium?” What is man, he seith, but a stynkynge slyme, and after that a sake ful of donge, and at the laste mete to wormes …³⁴

While some preachers, no doubt, followed the easy path of devoting the energy of their teaching and preaching on men of good will and letting the scoffers and sinners follow the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,³⁵ others did their duty as they saw it, and redoubled their efforts to reach all their congregation. How many of the listeners regarded these efforts with amusement or pious appreciation must, no doubt, remain a matter of conjecture.

The corpus of devotional literature in medieval and renaissance English, of ars moriendi, of forms of confession, of ways to Godliness is so vast that we can almost say that it represented a dominating cultural idealism, pointing to the endless dichotomy between what men preach and what they practice.³⁶

(B) The element of satire. Satire has about the same targets—the Seven Deadly Sins, in any age from Juvenal to Joyce. In Lydgate's poem the physician fond of gold, the lady of great estate given to “daliaunce,” the lawyer and usurer bewitched by lucre, the proud archbishop, the fat abbot, the corrupt juror, the prioress who uses rouge, sports a wimple and costly furs and goes ungirt, are all noticeable. But these charges are typical, being in the French source, as well as being paralleled in English homiletic literature.³⁷ Readers who see in these types Chaucerian reminiscences should remember that Chaucer often deals with common charges.

(C) Closely related is the idea of “democracy,” i.e., the equality of all men before Death, or before God. This is how Mâle describes one main import of the danse macabre. It would be misleading, however, to leave this statement unqualified. The official teaching of the Church was always, that while in origin and death all men are equal, during their career on earth God has ordained for them a rigid class (or caste) system³⁸ with different privileges and duties. Hence the typical hierarchy of the medieval society, based on an inevitable division of labor, was upheld.

The characteristic position of a typical “reformer,” such as William Langland, has been aptly summarized by Ker:

Piers Plowman is one of the most impartial of reformers … His remedy for the evils of the world would be to bring the different estates—knights, clergy, labourers and all—to understand their proper duty. His political ideal is the commonwealth as it exists, only with each part working as it was meant to work. …³⁹

However some medieval preachers, while vitriolic in their denunciation of the pride and avarice of the rich and powerful, tempered their wind to the shorn lamb, and adopted the cause of the poor plowman and laborer, preaching in a “socialistic” vein. Others were impartial and denounced the poor for avarice and pride with equal vehemence.⁴⁰ In Lydgate's poem it is noticeable that Death speaks almost gently to the Laborer.

(D) The Day of Judgement or the Day of Wrath (Dies Irae). While there is no evidence of direct influence of the Day of Judgement theme, so forcefully depicted on the tympanum at Amiens, there are many points of similarity with the danse macabre. In both, all ranks of society are summoned or snatched from life to some situs of final reckoning. In many representations the protesting human beings are dragged off by leering devils. In others the human beings accept their fate in sad resignation.⁴¹

Now this theme was important in English medieval preaching. And the bitter vindictiveness with which preachers predicted the fall and judgement of the rich and mighty contained a marked element of violent and “primitive” vengeance. Owst has noted the effect which such an idea must have had on many discontented and suffering persons who felt that such preaching justified their active role in bringing the eventual judgement of an angry God to bear, and taking matters into their own horny hands. The various peasant uprisings, so characteristic of Europe from the Great Rebellion of 1381 to the German Peasants' Revolt in Luther's time, appear to have been sparked, in some instances, by the rabid “socialistic” preaching and agitation of priests. Owst writes:

Sacred orators of the Church, as hostile to class war, to earthly revenge and social revolution, as any Luther, were here unconsciously formulating a revolutionary charter of grievances. With the one hand they were really instructing the rebels of tomorrow how to present their case and prepare for the struggle, while, on the other, they sought to restrain them from taking any action in the matter. Everyone can guess which hand was likely to prevail … The very Judgment scene itself was certainly designed not to excite but to pacify and console the sufferers while it warned the offender. The righteous poor were by means of it to know that “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay” (Mihi vindicta; et ego retribuam). This latter was a doctrine enforced by the pulpit with equal care …⁴²

HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES

Since Europe was visited by many waves of Black Deaths and other plagues and epidemics, as well as racked by Hundred Year wars and riots during the 14th and 15th centuries, some scholars have seen the strong impetus to the danse macabre in the psychological morbidity of people affected by these violent upheavals. French social conditions, in particular, during the middle of the 15th century have often been described in lurid color, and the old tale of wolves stalking the grass covered streets of Paris has been a favorite cliché of the popular historian. One writer of this school, seeking a cause for fantasy in French garb and behavior during this period, says:

La terreur du Jugement, l'appréhension de la mort reparaissent comme à la veille de l'an mil … la France danse et fait des mascarades … En ce temps-là, l'hiver, des bandes de loups parcourent Paris desert. Cependant, la ronde vertigineuse se reforme partout, dans les rues, dans les églises, enfin dans les cimetières. C'est la danse macabre, la derniere originalité du génie national, l'adieu funèbre que l'on fait à la civilisation.⁴³

It has been customary for some English historians to view the 15th century as one of continual riot and anarchy because of the ravages of the brawl between Lancaster and York, although calmer heads have urged that the 15th century was not radically different than other centuries. Kingsford wrote:

We are so accustomed to think of the middle fifteenth century as a period of wild political disorder that it is with a sense of surprise that we find people going quietly about their business and dancing, and that if means of communication were hazardous and difficult they were not altogether fortuitous.⁴⁴

Of course there was lawlessness,⁴⁵ epidemics, sudden death and misery—there is in any age: a visitor from Mars could get a distorted impression of modern life if he merely read the front pages of a newspaper, which deals with the unusual, the terrible, without clearly realizing that what was portrayed thereon was the unusual.

Yet one cannot dismiss the facts of plague, violence, and misery from any account of the danse macabre. They are part of the same cultural milieu which found meditation on decay and death as a persistent theme throughout the 15th century.⁴⁶ Villon, perhaps the greatest poet of the age, continually sings in the ubi sunt vein, although the tough masculinity, the quick retort, the Gallic egotism, may be taken as symbolic indication that at least one European had not been overwhelmed by hopeless melancholia even though the characteristic burden of literature of his age is that the sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and the characteristic material of medieval chronicles is fire, famine, fever, floods, fighting and frustration.

IV

The danse macabre has not been regarded as a thing of beauty by modern scholars. Warren says that “It is pleasant to escape from this atmosphere of morbid horror.” Caix de Saint-Aymour called it a hideuse moralité, devised avec la complicité de prédicateurs, and born of sentiment crétien. Speaking of the close of the Middle Ages in France, Evans says, in a broader interpretation: “The hidden principle of Renaissance art is pride; its avowed aim is earthly glory, and its moral teaching is the danse macabre.”⁴⁸ Huizinga writes: “The dominant thought, as expressed by the literature, both ecclesiastical and lay of that period (the waning Middle Ages) hardly knew anything with regard to death but these two extremes: lamentation about the briefness of all earthly glory, and jubilation over the salvation of the soul. All that lay between—pity, resignation, longing, consolation—remained unexpressed … Living emotion stiffens amid the abused imagery of skeletons and worms … At bottom the macabre sentiment is self-seeking and earthly. It is hardly the absence of the departed dear ones that is deplored; it is the fear of one's own death, and this only seen as the worst of evils.”⁴⁹

And doubts have been expressed concerning the efficiency of the danse as a didactic device⁵⁰ to stimulate the sinner to mend his ways. Mâle says: that it retained little of a Christian character “dépouillée de son commentaire. … Les illettrés qui la contemplaient au cimetière des Innocents sans pouvoir lire les vers édifiants du préambule et de la conclusion, étaiant libres de l'interpréter à leur guise. La plupart, il faut le croire, y trouvaient un encouragement à bien faire, mais quelques-uns, sans doute, y voyaient une invitation à jouir de cette courte vie. Au cimètiere des Innocents, les filles de joie erraient sous les cloîtres et parmi les tombeaux.⁵¹ Ivins writes of the Marchand woodcuts: “They made nobody sad … Marchand's Dance is as impersonal as an actuary's tables … In its matter-of-factness about a subject that later ages have timidly ceased thinking about, it provides one of the most illuminating of all our documents for the mentality of the end of the middle ages in France.”⁵² It is not unlikely that some London loiterers of Lydgate's day paid little solemn attention to the Dance of Paul's; others may have regarded it with the absorbed curiosity of a visitor to a modern art museum; still others may have gained from it a certain feeling of adjustment to the inevitable, rather than a sharp stab of remorse for past misdeeds. English churches in the 15th century, both rural and urban, were much more the center of social life than they are now, if for no other reason than that they were not used in those days exclusively for religious purposes. The main purpose of both church and priest was to enable the folk to hear Mass daily, although possibly most people could attend only on Sunday or important feast days. Perhaps the very frequency of the service lessened its psychological value.

It is always difficult to interpret the possible effect which artifacts of another age had on the folk of another age. We may know our own reactions; but how can we always be sure of the reactions of folk belonging to another social context? One generalization may be advanced: ritual, ceremony or artifact means what a folk intends it to mean, and we can never interpret on the basis of an artifact alone—we must see it in dynamic relation to the cultural complex of which it is an integral and component part.⁵³

But few scholars have been able to resist the itch to generalize about the “spirit of the time,” the Volksgeist, l'âme Française, on the basis of the evidence afforded by a single, or a few, artifacts.⁵⁴

Hence the cultural historian is reduced to mere conjecture concerning the possible effect of Lydgate's Dance of Paul's. The safest assumption is simply that it must have affected different persons in different ways. There never was any unanimity in religious thought or moral sentiment during the Middle Ages, however predominant the official and orthodox Catholic faith was in Europe. An age which embraced manifold pagan superstitions, relic and saint worship, addiction to the un-Christian preoccupation with the cruel whims of Fortuna and her terrible wheel, could hardly be termed unified in Christian feeling. The Church, even when it was not split by schism, pillaged by confiscation, or harried by governments,⁵⁵ was beset on one hand by the heresies of mystics, moral rigorists, and Biblical literalists such as the Lollards,⁵⁶ and, on the other hand, by the gross errancy and credulity of the illiterate.⁵⁷

The ideas in Lydgate's poem never wholly died out, while a new age turned to other modes of devotional expression. Many ballads of the 16th and 17th centuries testify to the perpetual concern with such unavoidable topics. The 18th century “graveyard” poets revive, according to their needs and feelings, the sad mood of meditation among the monuments to the departed, and voice the perpetual recognition that in death all men are equal, even if in life many a flower is born to blush unseen.⁵⁸ And a modern American poet, Conrad Aiken in his penetrating poem John Deth (1930), draws on sentiments and images which go back a thousand years in the folk-lore of the Western world.

Notes

1. The literature on the subject, especially by German scholars, is enormous. The topic has been attracting American scholars. A recent Chicago dissertation, Henri Stegemeier, The Dance of Death in Folk-Song, With an Introduction on the History of the Dance of Death (1939), deals mainly with Bavaria, South Austria and Switzerland; a Bryn Mawr dissertation by F. Whyte, The Dance of Death in Spain and Catalonia (1931), covers Spanish material; a Columbia dissertation, L. P. Kurtz, The Dance of Death and the Macabre Spirit in European Literature (1934), pays considerable attention to France; for Italy, see Pietro Vigo Le Danze Macabre in Italia (Bergamo, 1901). In 1939, Archer Taylor referred to the “complicated and unsolved problems of the origin and dissemination of the Dance of Death” (Problems in German Literary History of the Fifteenth & Sixteenth Centuries, p. 111); and provided useful bibliographical guides in Modern Philology XXX (1933) 325-328. E. M. Manasse, “The Dance Motive of the Latin Dance of Death,” Medievalia et Humanistica (University of Colorado) fasciculus iv (1946) 83-103, has been of great help to me. The etymology of the term macabre is still unexplained, although the theory that it is derived from the Arabic maqbara (=tomb) has been generally supported; for other theories see Gaston Paris in Romania, XXIV (1895) 199-132.

2. André Lévêque Histoire de la Civilisation Française (1940) 101-102; cf. also J. Vander Heyden, Het Thema en de Uitbeelding van den Dood in de Poeme der Late Middeleeuwen en der Vroege Renaissance in de Nederlanden (Ghent, 1930).

3. J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Eng. trans. 1924) 124-135; É Mâle, L'Art Religieux de la Fin du Moyen Age en France (3rd. ed. 1925) 359-380; B. J. Wyndham Lewis François Villon (1928) 45-48.

4. Florence Warren, The Dance of Death (1931) p. xi; E. K. Chambers English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages (1945) p. 53.

5. Frank Heath, in Traill's Social England II, sec. ii, 704; R. Withington English Pageantry (1918-1920), 2 vol. s.v.

6. Warren op. cit., p. 97, lists 22 paintings in Europe, drawing partly on a list provided in Georges Kastner Danses des Morts p. 78. Illustrations of the Chaise-Dieu mural are available in Mâle, pp. 372-376.

7. See The Dance of Death printed at Paris in 1490; a Library of Congress reprint (1945) of the rare Lessing J. Rosenwald copy, with an introduction by William M. Ivins, Jr. The book is described in the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke No. 7957.

8. John Stow, Survey of London (ed. Kingsford, i, 327). Warren pointedly suggests that Stow's authority for this statement may have been from the tradition preserved in the Trinity College Cambridge MS R. 3.21 copy of Lydgate's Dance of Death (or Daunce of Machabre, as it is termed therein): these words payntyd in ye cloystar [of St. Paul's] at ye dispensys & request of Jankyn Carpenter.

9. Cf. G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation (1919) p. 410n.

10. Modern annotated editions of the poem will be found in E. P. Hammond English Verse from Chaucer to Surrey (1927), from Bodleian MS Selden supra 53; Florence Warren in EETS OS (1931) No. 181, from Ellsmere MS 26/A.B. and Brit. Mus. MS Landsdowne 699. Tottel's text has been reprinted by Dr. Henry Bergen in his edition of Lydgate's Fall of Princes (Short Title Catalogue No. 3177), part iv, in EETS ES (1924) No. 123; this edition contains two significant wood-cuts on p. 1027 and p. 1043 (orig. 160 × 110 mm, 158 × 110 mm), the first depicting a procession of living persons in hierarchal gradation compelled to go on the “dance” by their respective skeleton-cadavers; the second depicting three courtiers solemnly contemplating the dead body of a king recumbent on a sepulchre while elongated worms (or snakes?) feast on his entrails. Cf. E. Hodnell English Woodcuts 1480-1535 (1935).

11. Cf. details in Bowers Byrsa Basilica (Materials for the Study of the Old English Drama, vol. XVII, Louvain, 1939) pp. xxi-xxiii; H. T. Stevenson Shakespeare's England (1905) 81-106. Cf. further C. L. Kingsford Prejudice & Promise in XVth Century England (1925), p. 140: “The common enlargement of London churchyards about the middle of the fourteenth century may have been due rather to the ravages of the Black Death than to an increase in the number of the inhabitants. But during the fifteenth century, or very soon afterwards, we know that over fifty of the London churches were rebuilt or enlarged. This may have been due in part to the piety of wealthy benefactors, who built chapels whether as burial places or chantries. But in some cases the rebuilding was clearly to supply the increased needs of the parish.”

12. Lewis, op. cit., p. 45.

13. Hammond, op cit., prints a French text from MS Lille 139 which undoubtedly represents the tradition which Lydgate followed: the wording is very close; Warren, op cit., prints a similar French text from Brit. Mus. Add. 38858, collating it with Hammond's text.

14. For general introductions to iconography and the complicated theme relations between art and literature, see E. Panofsky Studies in Iconology (1939); T. B. L. Webster Greek Art and Literature (1930), a study of Attic culture; C. B. Tinker Poet and Painter (1938), a study of English culture during the 18th century; for medieval studies, see Mâle, op. cit.; R. S. Loomis Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (1938); H. F. Dunbar Symbolism in Medieval Thought (1929); J. C. Webster The Labours of the Months in Antique and Medieval Art (1938); H. R. Patch The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (1927); J. W. Spargo Virgil The Necromancer (1934) 254-267. These works can be handled with comparative comfort by American students in libraries which do not hold extensive deposits of German or French monographs.

15. For a general survey of this literary type in English literature, see E. Merril The Dialogue in Eng. Lit. (Yale Studies in Eng. No. 43); E. N. S. Thompson The English Moral Plays (Pub. of the Conn. Academy of Arts & Sciences, xiv); J. E. Wells A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, p. 411; Bowers The Gast of Gy (Föster's Beiträge zur Eng. Philologie, heft xxxii, 1946) p. 17.

16. Cf. Stegemeier, 28-29.

17. For illustrations, see Mâle, pp. 354-8.

18. Stegemeier, p. 27.

19. Cf. J. A. MacCulloch Med. Faith and Fable (1932) 90-91, 120, 123; Hoops, Reallexicon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, s.v. Aberglaube.

20. Warren, op. cit., p. xiii. Her theory seems far fetched. It is quite true, however, that there were frequent fairs, festivities and dancing held in English churchyards cf. references given by Lucy T. Smith, art. “Town Life” in H. W. C. Davis ed. Medieval England (1924) p. 313.

21. Stegemeier, p. 20, citing A. Pelzer, Deutsche Mystik und deutsche Kunst (Heidelberg diss.; 1899) p. 79.

22. Manasse, p. 91.

23. W. O. E. Oesterly, The Sacred Dance (1923) p. 30.

24. For a recent study of Everyman, see Henry de Vocht, Everyman; A Comparative Study (Materials for the Study of the Old Eng. Drama, Louvain, 1907, vol. XX); for general survey of the moralities, see W. R. Mackenzie, The English Moralities from the Point of View of Allegory (Harvard Stud. in Eng. [1911] No. 2); E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (1903) ii, 153-55.

25. Manasse, op. cit., p. 83. Citing W. Molsdorf, Christliche Symbolik der Mittelalterlichen Kunst (Leipzig, 1926) pp. 241 ff. See chapt. vi, “The Mythology of Death,” in MacCulloch, op. cit., 89-102.

26. These two figures are blended in the Harrowing of Hell theme, taken from the apocryphal book of Nicodemus, wherein Christ descends to Hell and liberates the dead (i.e., redeems them): Satan is called princeps et dux mortis; he himself boasts of leading the dead to Infernus (Hades) … quos ad te mortuos perduzi; and is directly called Death: Tum gloriae dominus conculcans mortem at comprehendens principem inferorum privavit omni sua potestate (Manasse, p. 97, citing Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1876) pp. 395, 410. Cf. further W. H. Hulme, The Middle English Harrowing of Hell, EETS ES (1907) No. 100; Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (1933) i, 149-177; Paul Piper, Die Geistliche Dichtung des Mittelalters (1887-1895) vol. 3; Dürer's woodcut of the theme (from the Large Passion of 1510) is reproduced as the frontispiece in A. E. Zucker, The Redentin Easter Play (1941).

27. Cf. the interesting chapter on “Father Time” in Panofsky (op. cit.) who likewise often carries a death-dealing scythe to symbolize one of his functions. Panofsky traces this concept back to the Roman concept of a cannibalistic Saturn, who as god of agriculture often carried a scythe.

28. Cf. Stegemeier, 13-15.

29. Hamlet's magnificent figure: this fell sergeant, death, / Is strict in his arrest (V, ii. 346) draws on centuries of tradition.

30. See the edition of R. J. Menner (1941) p. 38. Chanting parts of the Pater Noster against the Seven Deadly Sins is commonplace in medieval devotional literature.

31. The medieval preacher never tired of contending that the Devil assumed deceptive shapes such as that of a lewd woman, in order to lead men astray: the feendys skyppedyn aforne hem in lyknes of wommen, and thanne tho men in here herte were temptyd to leccherye … (Jacob's Well, EETS OS No. 116, p. 237).

32. Cf. the exhaustive study by R. A. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Illinois Studies in Lang. & Lit., XXVIII, 1942, I-354). He concludes that, on the basis of the available epigraphical evidence, there was no “widespread, nor strong” belief in immortality. He notes carefully the pagan elements in Christian epitaphs (p. 317); describes the prevalence of the memento mori theme (p. 256); and notes the famous quod tu es ego fui, quod nunc sum et tu onis admonition to the living (p. 257).

33. G. R. Owst, Lit. & Pulpit, pp. 54-55.

34. Cited from Harley MS 45, fol. 112b, by G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, (1926), p. 341.

35. In what may have been an unguarded moment, Wycliffe says that he decided to concentrate his attention on those who would appreciate it: When a gedrynge of peple is, summe comynly ben gode, for hem principaly men prechen goddis word, and not for houndis that berken aȝenst God and his lawis, ne for awyn that bathen hem in synne, and wolle nevere leven hem for drede of peyne ne hope of blisse. (English Works, ed. Mathew, EETS OS No. 74, pp. 110-11.)

36. For typical expressions of didactic motif in literature contemporary with Lydgate see Carlton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Fifteenth Century (1938), esp. No. 156, 157, 158. For persistence of the same general attitudes into Tudor England, see M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (1939); H. C. White, Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century (1944); L. B. Wright, Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935), esp. chap. viii. Caxton, Pynson, and de Worde printed mainly devotional literature; and a quick glance at the titles in Pollard's Short Title Catalogue will give a clear picture of the reading tastes of the age. In the 15th century contemporary records indicate dozens of owners of Rolle MSS to one or two of The Canterbury Tales (R. W. Chambers, On the Continuity of English Prose [1932] p. ci.)

37. See esp. G. R. Owst, Literature & Pulpit in Medieval England (1933) 210-471; for a general survey, see S. M. Tucker, Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance (1908).

38. See, in general, Ruth Mohl, The Three Estates in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1933).

39. W. P. Ker, English Medieval Literature (Home Univ. Libr.) p. 200.

40. Owst, Lit. and Pulpit, p. 367-8.

41. The iconography of the Last Judgment is often blended with medieval conceptions of Hell and final retribution; cf. E. H. Wilkins, “Dante and the Mosaics of his Bel San Giovanni,” Speculum II (1927) 1-10. In the same issue of Speculum, pp. 177-200, T. Spencer, in an interesting art. “Chaucer's Hell” reprints the famous depiction of the suffering of the damned from the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berri.

42. Owst, op. cit., pp. 295-6.

43. Émile Gebhart, Les Origines de la Renaissance en Italie (1923) p. 36.

44. C. L. Kingsford, Prejudice & Promise in XVth Century England (1925) p. 33. He argues that the “myth” of 15th century anarchy was started by Hall, an apologist for the Tudors who had supposedly saved England from anarchy, whose history was copied by Holinshed, who in turn was copied by Shakespeare. Yet a Victorian historian, Creighton, writing in Traill's Social England, II sec. ii, p. 569, spoke of the mid 15th century as being a “period of peaceful development notwithstanding the Wars of the Roses.”

45. H. S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England (1922), chapt. xiii “Lawlessness,” stresses the violent tenor of life; and observes that in casting off serfdom the poor and weak lost the protection and sustenance which custom had counterpoised to their legal disabilities (p. 180).

46. Cf. Henry Lucas, The Renaissance and the Reformation (1934), chapt. xi, for a conventional description of the “average European mind,” influenced by popular religion and superstition, during the “pessimistic” 15th century.

47. La Grande Encyclopédia, xiii, 884. One would have been grateful for a clarification of Saint-Aymour's point about Christian sentiment.

48. Joan Evans, Medieval France (1925) p. 200.

49. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, p. 214.

50. G. G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation (1928) advances the speculative theory that medieval art and religion had been separate growths; this thesis was part of a critique of Mâle's view that the puritanical iconoclastic Reformation had hampered artistic production, especially after the Council of Trent. The problems opened up by such speculation are very complicated, and must depend, in large degree, on selected and partial evidence. Some preachers, of a puritan cast of mind, always distrusted art as mere vanity: several sermons go so far as to state that it is sinful to waste money on an elaborate crucifix when the money had better be spent on the relief of the poor (Owst, Lit. & Pulpit, p. 99). But if art was to be regarded solely as a handmaiden or instrument of didactic teaching, such an attitude would presumably have been accommodated to the practical need. Closely related is the question of the function of “realism” or “naturalism”: a sample of the usual view that the Renaissance saw a rapid development in this direction is as follows: Man will nicht mehr bloss symbolische Andeutungen, nicht mehr bloss “Illustration,” man will endlich die Natur genauer ins Auge fassen und die Dinge wirklich so darstellen, wie sie sind, man will sich bald nicht mehr bloss auf das Allernotwendigste in de Darstellung beschränken, sondern im Bilde all das ausdrucken, was man sieht und empfindet (Franz Jacobi, Die Deutsche Buchmalerie, 1923, p. 66). To speak of “realism,” or “naturalism,” in the depiction of a personification, such as Death, or of an hypostasis or reification such as a demon, raises some interesting, and puzzling problems. What constituted realism to the medieval worker in symbolism? Did not many symbols—which to us seem mere fictions—appear very “real” to him? Furthermore, it is, I think, somewhat wide of the mark to patronize the medieval artist, or preacher, as being superstitious when he reduces abstract ideas to homely particular or to vivid personification, for that is the only way in which most minds can grasp ideal relations—in any age. Panofsky has shown how some of the pictures of Titian, which seem to modern taste to be largely inspired by “naturalistic” aims and tendencies, illustrate some of the basic concepts of Ficino's neo-platonic philosophy (op. cit., 150-169); a great deal of Renaissance art, even that which is concerned with such utilitarian matters as portraiture, is shot through with symbolism.

51. Mâle, p. 380.

52. Ivins, int. to Marchand's Dance of Death (1945, Library of Congress reprint) p. x.

53. For a dynamic theory of cultural interpretation, see esp. B. Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944); for a critique of some of Malinowski's ideas, see Lord Raglan “Magic and Religion,” Folk-Lore (1939) 115-136. Comparetti, one of the great medievalists of the 19th century, after studying the medieval legends which sprang up concerning Virgil, said that “the human mind worked on different principles than those which have guided it at more normal (sic) periods of history” (Virgil in the Middle Ages, Benecke trans. of 1895, p. 241). This may indicate the scorn of the classical scholar for “vulgar” Latin as well as the patronizing attitude of a “rational” 19th century intellectual towards a “primitive” age; but it is certainly the wrong attitude for the cultural historian to assume. The term “primitive” is invidious, as well as misleading: a great deal of medieval art and literature is sophisticated, mature, and even blasé.

54. For example, Dover Wilson, a mature and competent textual scholar, writes—no doubt as a nodding Homer—that because the early plays of Shakespeare are happy comedies and his later plays tragic, hence the dramatist was happy during the reign of Elizabeth and unhappy during the reign of James. And a further assumption extends to England as a whole the assumed moods of Shakespeare: The Elizabethan period was one of “halcyon days of happy case, illimitable hope and untarnished honour” (The Essential Shakespeare, 1933, p. 36). Jane Ellen Harrison, in her book Mythology (a contribution to the Our Debt to Greece and Rome, series in 1922) argued that Greek mythology banished fear—apparently because some Greek myths are pretty (p. 144). One wonders what the Mitylenians felt just before their able-bodied men were massacred by the Athenians (Thucydides, III, ix).

55. Cf. C. W. New, A History of Alien Priories in England to the Confiscation of Henry V, (1916); for the argument that Catholic religious drama was virtually destroyed by the political censorship of Henry VIII's ministers, see H. G. Gardiner, Mysteries' End (Yale Studies in English, No. 103, 1946).

56. Cf. J. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (1908).

57. For a sketch of the “popular mind” in the 15th century, see Lucas op. cit., and J. A. MacCulloch, Medieval Faith and Fable (1932) passim; for the spirit of “protestantism” against the Roman Church, see G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (1938) esp. chapt. 51; for a study of the attitudes of the humanists, the intelligensia of their day, see R. Weiss, Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century, (1941), who stresses “utility” rather than the pursuit of belles lettres as their main concern.

58. See examples printed by W. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859) i, 84; H. Rollins, Old English Ballads 1553-1625 (1920) p. 257; the 18th century “graveyard” poets are represented by Young, Night Thoughts (1742-5) Blair, Grave (1743) and, of course, Gray's Elegy (1750).

    * Karl Brunner's important art. “Mittelenglische Todesgedichte,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen vol. 167 (1935) 19-34, came to my attention too late to be used in this paper; it does not invalidate my general remarks.