In his essay Death and the Concept of Person, Maurice Bloch
reminds us of a crucial insight by the pioneer of the anthropology
of death, Robert Hertz: in many cultures death is not something
which is believed to occur in an instant nor is it seen, as
G Dizdar The Culture of Death in late Medieval and early
Renaissance Italy
Gorin Dizdar
The Culture of Death in late Medieval and early Renaissance
Italy
History 1222: Ritual in Renaissance & Early Modern
Europe
Prof. Nicholas Terpstra
29th November 2010 Introduction In his essay Death and the
Concept of Person, Maurice Bloch reminds us of a crucial insight by
the pioneer of the anthropology of death, Robert Hertz: in many
cultures death is not something which is believed to occur in an
instant nor is it seen, as with us, as the passage of a line
without thickness. Rather death is visualized as part of a long
transformative process. (Bloch 11). Going a step further, Bloch
accuses Hertz of allowing himself to be blinded by Western ideology
in believing that the actual moment of the termination of the bodys
vital functions necessarily retains a privileged status unlike any
other single instant in the extended social process that may be
called death. Avoiding a theoretical entanglement in the delicate
issue of cultural relativism, the exploration of the meanings of
death in the late medieval and early Renaissance period carried out
in this essay will largely follow Blochs approach in seeing death
as a process that both temporally and spatially extends beyond our
contemporary understanding of the word, gradually blending into the
context of the wider social world. Nevertheless, an attempt will be
made to show that it is precisely during this period that certain
fundamental changes in the conception of and attitudes towards
death took place, changes that can be seen as the starting points
of a long process that would eventually lead to the medical and
utterly despiritualized view of death prevalent in the contemporary
Western world. I am deliberately avoiding the term individualized,
aiming to shift the discussion away from the long-standing stress
on this somewhat misleading concept originating in humanistic
philosophy and art history. As Bloch argues, the contrast between
individualism and holism is ultimately too simplistic, as the
crucial point is not whether a culture possesses the idea of
individualism, but the way in which it is conceptualized: what
differentiates our system of thinking from such examples is
therefore not the presence of individualism, but the possibility of
the occurrence of the idea that we are nothing but individuals and
that, as a result, when the combination of elements which creates
the individual breaks up, the constituent elements then have no
value in themselves. (Bloch 18) Rather than conceiving of the
changes occurring in this period along the axis individual/society,
the essay will focus on the perceived formalization and
systematization of the culture of death during this period. The
transformation of the culture of death in the late medieval period
will be explored through the interrelated, yet distinct categories
of ritual, belief and tomb design. Rather than aiming for a
comprehensive overview of either one of the categories, the essay
will analyze a few specific issues that illustrate what are
perceived as wider trends. The two interdependent underlying
question of the analysis will pertain to the nature of the changes
occurring during this period on the one hand and their purpose and
wider significance on the other. As a methodological guideline, let
us quote the new paradigm of medieval religion envisaged by Donald
Weinstein: it will have to be multidimensional and dynamic rather
than dualistic and static, pluralistic rather than hierarchical. It
will also have to incorporate what medieval people themselves
thought about the matter. (Weinstein 90) Ritual
In a treatise on mental prayer, the Florentine Dominican friar
Savonarola wrote that true cult, which is interior, had been
established in the primitive church for all Christians, whereas
ceremonies had come to be adopted as a concession to the decline of
religious ardour (fervore), a medicine for weak minds. (Weinstein
101) Although Savonarola lived in the latter half of the 15th
century, his opinion undoubtedly reflects a long-standing clerical
attitude towards contemporary religious rituals. Without adopting
his elitist extension of this duality onto the class distinction
between the clergy and the laity, the contrast between interior
cult and external ceremony is a useful one to keep in mind when
analyzing late medieval rites surrounding death. As Franco
Mormandos insightful analysis of the sermons of the popular
Franciscan reformer Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) shows,
Christian believers were urged to constantly meditate upon death
and the afterlife, adding further weight to the previously
expressed claim that death in this period should not be regarded as
merely the last moment of a persons life, but rather as a more or
less permanent presence in a virtuous Christian mind. In addition
to these reflections on death, Christians were encouraged to visit
their dying relatives and acquaintances to reinforce their beliefs,
thus forming an inextricable link between the internal and the
external.
If, expanding Hertzs previously quoted figure of speech, death
in the late Middle Ages is visualized as a shaded area with
different degrees of darkness rather than a line without thickness
in the temporal map of human existence, it can be said that the
darker areas are generally characterized by more formalized,
ceremonial behaviour. Physical death appears to be only one of
several critical moments in the medieval experience of this
phenomenon. As Roger S. Wieck notes, in the Middle Ages graves were
temporary rather than permanent resting places for the large
majority of deceased people (440). After a certain number of years
required for the complete decomposition of the body, the remaining
bones were removed and stored in charnel houses surrounding the
graveyard. While Wieck merely mentions this custom as a technical
peculiarity, it is difficult to believe that an age so profoundly
concerned with the religious significance of physical remains would
not attach any meaning to this deeply symbolic act. As the
literature on medieval death consulted for this essay remains
silent on this matter, it has appeared necessary to adopt a
comparative method to flesh out this intuition pertaining to the
religious significance of the exhumation of bones from their
graves. A relevant source for this purpose was found in Loring M.
Danforths The Death Rituals of Rural Greece, an anthropological
study of a similar custom that has survived deeply into the 20th
century. While care must be taken when comparing such different
contexts as pre-Renaissance Catholic Italy and twentieth-century
Orthodox Greece, certain emotions such as a mothers affection
towards her deceased child can be assumed to be relatively constant
across time and space. Describing the touching moment in which a
mother is faced with the bones of her daughter who had been buried
three years earlier, Danforth writes: Irini cradled her daughters
skull in her arms, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. The woman
behind her tried to take it from her but she would not let go. She
held Elenis skull to her cheek, embracing it much as she would have
embraced Eleni were she still alive. (Danforth 20) The intense
emotions described here are tied to a whole set of explicit and
implicit beliefs about death held in rural Greece. In the period
between the deceaseds burial and exhumation, the closest female
relative is excluded from society and obliged to visit the grave on
a daily basis, thus finding herself in a liminal state between the
world of the living and the world of the dead. Furthermore, a
profound significance is attached to the whiteness of the bones at
the moment of the exhumation, with any signs of the incompleteness
of the bodys decomposition being interpreted as an indication of
unforgiven sins committed by the deceased. Most importantly for the
purposes of this essay, Danforth reflects on the Greek villagers
attitude towards the official beliefs of the Orthodox Church: The
resurrected body and the soul will enjoy eternal life in the
kingdom of God. However, this mystical belief is rarely mentioned
by Greek villagers, and when it is, it is often accompanied by an
expression of incredulity and scorn (68). What this brief overview
of the exhumation customs of rural Greece shows is the profound
correspondence between social rituals and individual emotions, with
officially sanctioned beliefs being somewhat further removed from
peoples subjective experiences of death. On a general level, this
situation can be compared to the late medieval period, throughout
which the Catholic Church was concerned with formalizing and
regulating religious behaviour (Binski 41), indicated, among other
things, by the disappearance of the custom of exhumation in Western
Europe. In this respect, it is necessary to qualify Binskis claim
that thoughts, or mentalits, are beyond reconstruction, all we can
ponder is the formulaic or conventional character of emotion (51).
While this claim is beyond dispute as a general argument of a
solipsistic type, it nevertheless appears reasonable to claim that
in certain contexts there is a higher correspondence between
internal attitudes and external expressions than in others. It is
in fact the basic argument of this part of the essay that the late
medieval period saw a growing disjunction between subjective
emotions and official ceremonies, a development indicated by the
appearance of the so-called flamboyant funeral style in the second
half of the 14th century in Florence. Seen in this light, the
decline of religious ardour observed by Savonarola may have been
caused precisely by the lack of correspondence between elite and
lay religiosity in this period, rather than the inherently weak
minds of the laity. In Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence,
Sharon Strocchia provides a detailed analysis of the social
conditions that led to the development of the Florentine flamboyant
style in the late Trecento. The single most important factor was
the plague epidemic, leading to a dramatic population decline from
around 100,000 to 50,000 between 1348 and 1349 (Strocchia 58). A
second crucial factor was the status competition between
traditional patrician families and the new men, the nouveau riche
created primarily by the income redistribution caused by the
plague. From the perspective of the question of the relationship
between external ceremony and internal attitude, Strocchias most
interesting claim is that the greater use of material resources,
reflecting a newfound delight in the ephemeral, offered
psychological assurances and protection in an environment
destabilized by the uncertainties of plague (64). This argument
demonstrates Strocchias rejection of Binskis reservation towards
postulating thoughts on the basis of their conventional expression.
Furthermore, it implies the position that changes in ceremonial
expressions are a direct consequence of shifts in underlying
attitudes towards death.
Rather than rejecting Strocchias claim, I would like to offer a
theoretically more solidly founded conceptualization of the changes
involved in this shift of ceremonial customs, going beyond the
rather vague idea of psychological assurances. In his
anthropological analysis of burial customs, Bloch notes that the
death of the individual is the source of rebirth of the group (24),
offering as a general hypothesis the claim that the world religions
bury the individual and send him to God and out of the social
world. At the same time this expulsion purifies that part of the
person which continues on earth and which will be re-used and
reincarnated in other members of the corporate group to which the
dead belonged (20). Thus, rather than seeing burial as a ritual
concerned only with attitudes towards the deceased, it should also
be viewed as an event in which social relations are reshuffled and
the continuity of society is affirmed. In this respect, Van Genneps
ubiquitous taxonomy of rites of passage can be misleading and has
been deliberately ignored. Despite its obvious value in
understanding the mechanism of diverse rituals, its neat
tri-partite structure can occasionally blind the analyst to the
ambiguities and multiplicities of meanings inherent in complex
ceremonies such as the burials of distinguished citizens. Following
Blochs conceptualization of burials, the shift towards more
conspicuous consumption (Strocchia 58) should be seen as not only a
consequence of a psychological defence mechanism of the deceaseds
nearest kin or an indication of a growing individualism, but also
as an attempt of an entire society to offset a collective anxiety
about its very survival through the conscious display of its
material wealth. This view would also allow for an understanding of
the communes willingness to sell exemptions to legal consumption
ceilings after 1384 that goes beyond a mere cynical greed of the
city officials (which should of course continue to be seen as part
of the explanation). But does this mean that we should, following
Danforth (32), accept a Geertzian explanation, according to which
death rites attempt to establish a religious perspective by
postulating a sacred order, standing in stark contrast to a
common-sense perspective in which the finality of death is
accepted? In my opinion, these perspectives may be useful analytic
categories, but they do not correspond to empirically identifiable,
consciously differentiated states of minds or modes of thinking.
Instead of persepctives, it would be more useful to talk of
mentalits as complex amalgamations of a multitude of usually
inconsistent beliefs, attitudes and dispositions which are rarely
classified into any kind of categories by the persons who hold
them. Nevertheless, rituals can be viewed as attempts to modify or
control mentalits by, paraphrasing Geertz, telling societies
stories about themselves. As all stories, rituals can correspond to
the lived experiences of the societies performing them to a greater
or lesser degree. The growth of conspicuous consumption in 14th
century Florentine rituals can be considered as a symptom of the
gap that had arisen between the precarious state of the citys
socio-economic situation and the story of continuity told through
its burial ceremonies. In order to make up for its lack of
correspondence with everyday beliefs, the story of burial had to be
enriched with extravagant special effects so as to retain a measure
of credibility. BeliefHaving already touched upon the complex issue
of the relationship between explicitly formulated beliefs and
actual religious behaviour in the context of rural Greece, this
section will deal with changes in official Church doctrine
regarding death and the afterlife in the late medieval period.
Focusing on the concept of Purgatory as a third possible
destination for the soul in the afterlife, I will look at the ways
in which the early Christian belief in the purgation of the soul
after death led to the theological postulation of a specific place
where it is carried out and its eventual adoption as a dogma of the
Catholic Church. The extent to which the adoption of the doctrine
of Purgatory was a gradual process is indicated by the gap of one
hundred years between the time the idea was first formulated by
Parisian theologians and the moment in which it was adopted by the
Church at the Second Council of Lyons (1274), as well as the much
longer time period that was required for it to be accepted by wider
circles of Christian believers. Putting this theological
development into a wider context, the birth of Purgatory will be
considered in relation to the rationalization of services for the
dead that occurred during the same period.
In The Birth of Purgatory, Jacques Le Goff provides a meticulous
textual analysis of some of the most important works of 12th
century theology, essentially arguing that the development of the
concept of purgatory was a gradual process caused by the desire to
provide ever more precise answers to long-standing religious
questions. Combining certain biblical passages which suggest a
purgation for almost perfect souls on Judgement Day and the
deep-seated Christian belief that the souls of the dead can be
helped through prayers and suffrages, in the 1170s theologians of
the School of Notre-Dame made the decisive step from talking about
places of purgation in the plural to the notion of a singular
Purgatory as a specific place in which the souls of imperfect souls
are purged from their sins. The idea was then popularized through
monastic visions of visits to Purgatory, spreading through the mass
media of the 13th century (Le Goff 298), sermons enriched by
exempla. An original enrichment of Le Goffs linguistic model of the
development of Purgatory is provided by Anca Bratu-Minott in her
article From the Bosom of Abraham to the Beatific Vision: On Some
Medieval Images of the Souls Journey to Heaven. Analysing several
images from the Bury of St. Edmunds Psalter (c. 1030 1040),
Bratu-Minott argues that they should not be seen as mere
illustrations of individual biblical passages, but rather as more
complex visual statements incorporating several scriptural
references as well as expressing evaluative theological ideas
(190). Thus, for example, one image located next to Psalm 65, which
mentions the idea of the refrigerium, a concept related to the
afterlife preceding the development of Purgatory, shows souls
passing through fire and water. While these details can be found in
Psalm 65 itself, a vase with the inscription opera justitae carried
by one of the souls in the image can be read as a reference to two
biblical passages (1 Corinthians 3:13-15 and Malachi 3: 2-3) which
were eventually explicitly used as scriptural evidence for the
existence of Purgatory (Bratu-Minott, 190-191). Commenting on the
illustration, Bratu-Minott concludes that it anticipates some ideas
that theologians will later organize into the doctrine of purgatory
(193). Unfortunately, the author does not go into the controversial
question whether the correlation between the illustration and
theological ideas may be stronger than a mere anticipation. The
question of the precise relation between word and image is not
merely philological, but pertains to the wider issue of the
conditions that have allowed for the occurrence of this fundamental
shift in the Western Christian conception of the afterlife. A
crucial factor mentioned by Le Goff is the decline of contemptus
mundi, the Christian attitude of the rejection of the material
world in favour of the afterlife. A general socio-economic progress
led to the doubling of the population in Latin Christendom between
the 11th and 13th centuries (Le Goff 131), creating an interest in
the meanwhile between the present and the Apocalypse, whose
impending arrival was not felt as strongly as in the preceding
centuries. Parallel to this rising optimism about the future was
the development of terrestrial cartography and precise measurements
of time, a manifestation of which was, according to Le Goff, the
previously mentioned usage of exempla with their alleged historical
authenticity in sermons (230). Although this claim may appear
strange from a contemporary perspective, these developments can be
seen as part of the previously argued shift from internal cult to
ever-more elaborate external ceremony, in the sense that maps and
historical narratives are also, in one way, stories that societies
tell themselves about themselves. The fundamental point here is
that an underlying tendency towards precise visual representations
(whether mental or physical), stemming from the way the world was
increasingly experienced, may have played a larger role in the
development of Purgatory than hitherto recognized. According to Le
Goff, however, the birth of Purgatory is a consequence of a more
fundamental shift in the mental framework of Latin Christianity
than a mere propensity for visual and linguistic representations:
Purgatory was one of a group of phenomena associated with the
transformation of feudal Christendom, of which one key expression
was the creation of ternary logical models through the introduction
of an intermediate category (227). In other words, Le Goff is
arguing that during the late Middle Ages, Western European society
modified its basic conceptual apparatus, shifting from a tendency
to categorize the world into two poles to one in which its
structure was viewed as tri-partite. In the social realm, the most
obvious example in this respect is the emergence of a third social
category of citizens between the traditional classes of peasants
and landholders. Eventually, this ternary model was transferred
from this world to the afterlife, leading to the insertion of
Purgatory into the binary structure of Heaven and Hell. Without
offering a final verdict on this thesis, it must be pointed out
that it appears as an unmistakeable product of a French
historiographic culture, directly contradicting the empirical
principles of its English-speaking counterpart. Rather than
dismissing it as a matter of principle, however, a more relevant
criticism would relate to the fact that Le Goff devoted just over
three pages to this controversial metahistorical theory. On a more
empirical level, Le Goff suggests that the doctrine of Purgatory
played a crucial social role, enabling certain occupational groups
whose economic role had become more significant (such as usurers)
to be saved from eternal damnation. More importantly, however, it
defined the relationship between the dead and the living,
simultaneously providing believers with a rationalized form of
ritual care for their souls and securing a reliable source of
income for the Church. Although, as has been previously pointed
out, the belief that prayers could help the deceased had already
been deeply engrained within the Christian community, it was only
with Purgatory that it was given official confirmation and its
nature was precisely defined. Christians were now provided with
exact information as to how much each prayer and clerical
intercession was worth in terms of reduction of time to be spent in
Purgatory. It was also during the time of the institutionalization
of Purgatory that the traditional monastic system of commemoration
was fundamentally reformed. As Colvin explains, by the end of 12th
century, monasteries were overburdened with obligations such as
annual re-enactments of burials, vigils, masses, recitations of
psalms and distribution of food to the poor. While the obligations
were originally linked only to the founders of their monasteries,
by this time the privilege had spread to distinguished monks, other
monastic communities as well as members of the laity who were
willing and able to pay. Towards the end of the 13th century, all
previous obligations were unified into 12 general annual
ceremonies. The official adoption of Purgatory which occurred in
this same period, however, ensured that the laity would keep paying
for individualized attention by limiting the time period during
which the masses would have to be carried out in the future and
thus preventing the need for similar reductions in the future. In
my opinion, this brief analysis of social functions provides a more
fruitful direction towards an accurate historiographic explanation
of Purgatorys success than Le Goffs postulation of a shift from
binary to ternary models of thought. Nevertheless, similarly to the
discussed impact of cartography, the appearance of ternary social
models certainly may constitute part of the explanation why it
appeared as an attractive idea in the first place, particularly
considering that the medieval mind functioned in terms of
correspondences rather than causality (Waite 12). In terms of its
effect on the wider Christian world, it is an example of a
development that largely appears to conform to the traditional
medievalist paradigm of an elite innovation acting upon the masses
of common believers. By analogy with the attitude of the Greek
villagers towards official beliefs, it may be speculated that the
newly-found clerical certainty towards the after-life was met with
scepticism, taking a long time before being fully accepted by wider
circles of believers. The eventual triumph of the belief in
Purgatory is the strongest evidence of the formalization and
externalization of death in the late medieval period: instead of an
uncertain and ultimately subjective relationship with the dead, it
created a legalistic system whose parameters were determined by the
Church. The closing words of The Triumph of Purgatory seem to
perfectly encapsulate the cold and emotionally suppressed world of
its monastic creators: Yet there will always, I hope, be a place in
mans dreams for subtlety, justice, accuracy, and measure in every
sense of the word, for reason (O reasonable Purgatory!) and hope
(Le Goff 360). Keeping in mind its role in the growing cynicism and
ruthlessness of the Catholic Church in this period, it is difficult
to share Le Goffs enthusiasm for the idea of Purgatory.
TombstonesAn analysis of Christian tomb design of this period shows
that Panofskys claim that it is precisely in its attitude toward
the dead that the [Renaissance] most vigorously asserted its
modernity (67) is only true to a certain extent. Most importantly,
the familiar claim that the Renaissance (or the renascences
preceding it) has rediscovered antiquity must be qualified:
numerous medieval papal and other notable gravestones were in fact
literally recycled ancient sarcophagi, suggesting an unbroken
continuity with the Greco-Roman past. Furthermore, it is precisely
during the late Middle Ages that Latin Christianity asserted a
fundamentally Christian attitude in breaking an ancient pagan taboo
by allowing the erection of tombs and graveyards within city walls.
Beginning with subtle modifications of familiar motifs from the
sarcophagi of the early Christians, the late medieval and early
Renaissance period developed a highly complex visual language that
spoke not only through its explicitly displayed motifs, but also
through its relationship with the surrounding space as well as the
absences in comparison to other tombs that would have been known to
its audiences.There were three major structural elements through
which the late medieval tombstone could convey its message. The
fist one is the tomb chest, the part of the grave with the greatest
degree of continuity with ancient sarcophagi, which, in Panofksys
words, [leaned] heavily on the works of their professional
predecessors [] for artistic syntax, phonetics, and, above all,
phraseology (40). The second element were the canopied tomb-niches
which could be seen as a reference to ancient catacombs (Binski
82), but also, more symbolically, evocations of death as a liminal
moment between two worlds. While the niches initially could
constitute expressive elements in their own right, in the later
Middle Ages they tended to be richly decorated, acting as not more
than frames for mosaics or paintings set above the tombstones.
Finally, medieval tombs often incorporated representations of the
deceased on the deathbed in different forms, ranging from the
relatively modest sgraffito specific to Sienna (a shallow slab
engraving) to elevated effigies tilted towards the viewer. It may
be too obvious to point out that the progression from relatively
simple graves utilizing only one of these elements to highly
complex ones consisting of their elaborate combinations
demonstrates yet another symptom of the reification of the culture
of death during this period. An example that demonstrates the
gradual shift from the habit to recycle ancient sarcophagi to
developing a specifically late medieval language of tombstone
design is the tomb of the Doge Marino Morosini (1249-1253) situated
in the San Marco church in Venice. The tomb chest is decorated with
two scenes that appear to be situated in a purely religious realm:
while the upper register evokes the theme of traditio legis,
Christs transmission of law to his apostles (Pincus 47), the lower
one complements it with the Virgin Mary and five unidentified
figures in the early Christian orant gesture. The traditional
humanist argument according to which early Christian and medieval
funerary art were essentially prospective, i.e. concerned with the
deceaseds afterlife, whereas the Renaissance rediscovered the pagan
retrospective approach (Binski 72) would not provide many clues to
the meaning the Morosini tomb. Even remaining within the purely
religious realm, the tombs references to early Christianity would
be difficult to understand without an awareness of the
retrospective fact that at the time of Morosinis rule, the
Venetians were still in charge of Constantinople after its conquest
in the Fourth Crusade, thus evoking hopes for a newly unified
Christian world. More importantly, however, it is crucial to keep
in mind the Venetian political structure of this period, which
stressed the values of a unified civitas and the corporate
diffusion of authority (Pincus 49). Thus a clear parallel is
established between Christs egalitarian transmission of law,
confirmed by the ceremonial row of orants, and the Doges mode of
governance.
Figure 1: Tomb of Doge Marino Morosini Although Panofskys view
of medieval art appears essentially antiquated, some of his
arguments nevertheless deserve continuing attention, one being his
claim about the Renaissance tendency towards
decompartmentalization, defined as a tendency to abolish all those
barriers which had kept things apart (but also in order) during the
Middle Ages and thus to produce an apparently and often really
chaotic fusion of art, religion, scholarship, science and
technology (67). At first sight, the pre-Renaissance Morosini tomb
seems to contradict this claim, incorporating as it does a perhaps
not chaotic, but certainly eclectic fusion of religious, aesthetic
and political claims. However, it is important to keep in mind that
on the surface, the tomb indeed does express a purely religious
visual statement, establishing its secondary meanings only
implicitly, within a very specific cultural context in which its
wider claims could be appropriately interpreted. In my opinion, it
is precisely this shift from a predominantly implicit to an
overwhelmingly explicit formulation of multiple visual messages
that characterizes the shift from the medieval to the Renaissance
period. Thus the growing usage of classical or pagan elements in
tomb design should not be seen as merely an aesthetic rediscovery,
but the appropriation of a vocabulary required for the expression
of increasingly precise statements which was simply not available
in the Christian visual lexis.
In contrast to traditional aesthetic judgements of Morosinis
tomb, Donatellos tomb of Pope John XXIII (d. 1419) in Florence is
considered one of the major monuments of the fifteenth century
(McHam 146) and a Renaissance masterpiece. A brief interpretation
of the monument based on McHams article will illustrate the extent
to which the language of tomb design had evolved in the 150 years
separating the two tombs. The most striking difference is the
complexity of Johns tomb, which consists of a base with three
niches holding the three theological virtues, Faith, Charity and
Hope, a section displaying Johns family as well as the papal
coats-of-arms, an inscribed sarcophagus, a bronze effigy of the
deceased and finally a marble lunette displaying the Madonna and
child, all covered by a luxurious canopy. Further adding to the
extravagance of the tomb is its unprecedented location in the
baptistery of Florence, its complete incorporation into the
building further stressed through a tight integration into the
space between two supporting columns. The only explicitly Christian
element on the entire tomb, the Madonna with child, ultimately also
reveals a rather un-Christian arrogance: as McHam notes, the
convention in this period was to portray the deceased commending to
Mary with his patron saint, their absence implying the certainty in
his salvation (157). Before drawing any conclusions from the tomb
design, it is necessary to take into account the political
background of its construction: considering the extravagance of the
monument, it is somewhat surprising to find out that John died a
broken man (McHam 146), having been forced to abdicate the papacy
and later imprisoned, only to spend his last years as a cardinal.
Johns failed papacy was a consequence of dynastic struggles
involving a large number of European royalty, and his posthumous
glory must be seen in the light of Florences and particularly the
Medicis continued opposition to the legitimacy of his forced
abdication. This example shows the accuracy of Binskis remark that
in seeing tombs as primarily the sphere of a medium of art, namely
sculpture, Panofsky severed the link between them and their
audience, and so lost sight of their essentially instrumental
character. (72) At the same time, it shows the extent to which the
humanist argument of the individualization of tombs in the
Renaissance period must be taken with reservations. While a
superficial analysis of Johns tomb would inevitably lead to the
conclusion that its design bears witness to the increased interest
in individual achievement, an awareness of the wider historical
context (which has only been alluded to here) results in a much
more complex picture of the tomb as an intersection of numerous
collective claims. The very presence of a multiplicity of visual
statements on the grave indicates that the individual is in fact
conceived in accordance with the previously quoted view by Bloch,
as a combination of elements whose survival beyond physical death
is expressed through their silent presence on the tomb.
Figure 2: Donatello's tomb of Pope John XXIIIWhat has thus been
argued is that despite their obvious aesthetic differences, the
creators of both the Morosini and the John XXIII tombs have used
the medium of grave monuments to express politicized messages about
the survival of the collective. Although the traditional
distinction between prospective and retrospective approaches to
commemoration appears too simplistic, the conceptual similarities
between the two tombs should not deceive us into ignoring their
profound differences. The Morosini tomb aims to achieve its effect
by manipulating a religious imagery that cannot be situated along
the axis past/future, but is conceived of as existing in a sacred
beyond. It does not contain an explicit reference to either the
Venetian state or the Doge himself, functioning within a context in
which the state is assumed to be an expression of an eternal sacred
order. Thus it can be seen as an essentially symbolic form of
communication, referring through conceptual correspondence rather
than through direct denotation or visual resemblance. The John
XXIII tomb simultaneously communicates on several conceptual
levels, including the proto-psychological idea of the Virtues, the
familial and official coats-of-arms as denotations of particular
collectivities, the effigy as a direct representation of a
particular moment in time and the Madonna with child as an
expression of a sacred beyond that is, however, linked more closely
to the specific moment of the deceaseds salvation than to the idea
of an eternal order. Although its references are still partly
veiled in a symbolic language, the tomb moves closer to the realm
of representation, mapping out a precise conception of the elements
that have made up the individual during his life in this world.
Conclusion
Discussing his hypothesis of a conceptual shift within Latin
Christianity from a binary to a ternary system, Le Goff describes
it as one of historys essential mechanisms, the mechanism by which
mental frameworks and logical tools are transformed. (221) Holding
on to the previously expressed reservations towards this theory,
the question emerges whether the externalization and formalization
of death discussed in this essay may be seen as one such mechanism,
or at least a symptom of a wider shift within Western European
culture of this period. The emergence of the flamboyant funerary
style, the legalistic colonisation of the afterlife in the form of
Purgatory, the creation of an elaborate style of tombstone design
they all seem to be pointing in the direction of a growing
assertion of a particular vision of the world expressed through
material means. Judging the relative significance of such a shift
inevitably involves a degree of speculation regarding the mentalits
underlying the surviving written accounts or remnants of material
culture. A possible method through which such speculation may be
provided with a degree of credibility is a comparison with
anthropological studies of similar cultural phenomena and processes
utilized in one part of this essay. Another possibility the one
used by Le Goff is to assume a kind of structuralist position
according to which all cultures operate through a limited number of
conceptual possibilities, and then seek out the one most likely
corresponding to the culture in question.
There are certainly further meta-historical methodologies that
could be added to the two mentioned possibilities. I would,
however, like to return to the guideline expressed at the beginning
of the essay, the attempt to take into account what medieval people
themselves thought about the issue in question. And here one is
faced with a certain paradox when discussing the possibility of
major conceptual shifts, namely the question of the extent to which
it is desirable to take into account what the agents of this shift
thought about the matter. Should we try to emulate the assumed
conceptual frameworks of the cultures we are studying or rather aim
to present them through an objective, scientific language, assuming
something like that even exists? Is it enough to say that the
Middle Ages thought in terms of correspondences rather than
causation, or should we ourselves try to abandon our belief in
causation? In our case, concretely, the suggested shift towards an
objectified culture is something to which modern Western culture is
heir, including the very idea of historiography as an objective
portrayal of the past. These are important questions that will
remain unanswered here, indicating the inevitable limitations of
the main hypothesis of this essay. Nevertheless, an attempt has
been made to contribute towards an approach towards medieval
history that allows for, if nothing else, a more multidimensional
picture of this period to be formed, an approach that consciously
sets itself off against the humanist paradigm. The section on
rituals has aimed to incorporate anthropological insights that
allow for an analysis distinct from crude instrumentalist
approaches as well the currently predominant reliance on Van
Gennep. The discussion of belief is essentially a reflection upon
Le Goffs seminal work, expressing an agreement with his stress on
the fundamental significance of the invention of Purgatory, yet
stopping short of accepting his discovery of historys metaphysical
true face. Furthermore it has attempted to enrich his logocentric
narrative by pointing to the insufficiently studied role of
illustration in Purgatorys rise to prominence. Finally, the
analysis of tombstone design has looked into the evolution of its
visual language, paying particular attention to limiting the
significance of the disproportionate stress on the individualism of
the Renaissance. The insights presented in the essay are far from
conclusive, being conceived as possible starting points for a more
systematic approach to the topic. Bibliography:
Binski, Paul. Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996.
Bloch, Maurice. Introduction: Death and the Concept of a Person.
On the Meaning of Death: Essays on Mortuary Rituals and
Eschatological Beliefs. Ed. S. Cederroth, C. Corlin and J.
Lindstrom. Uppsala: Amqvist & Wiksell International, 1988. 11
31. Bratu-Minott, Anca. From the Bosom of Abraham to the Beatific
Vision: On Some Medieval Images of the Souls Journey to Heaven.
Death and Dying in the Middle Ages. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. 189
219. Danforth, Loring M. The Death Rituals of Rural Greece.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Le Goff, Jacques. The
Birth of Purgatory. Trans. Arthir Goldhammer. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1981. McHam, Sarah Blake. Donatellos
Tomb of Pope John XXIII. Life and Death in Fifteenth Century
Florence. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. 146 174.Mormanodo,
Franco. What Happens to Us When We Die? Bernardino of Siena on The
Four Last Things. Death and Dying in the Middle Ages. New York:
Peter Lang, 1999. 109 143. Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture: Four
Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Anceint Egypt to Bernini. New
York: Harry N. Abrahams, 1964.
Pincus, Debra. The Tombs of the Doges of Venice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Strocchia, Sharon T. Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence.
Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Tenenti, Alberto. Death in History: The Function and Meaning of
Death in Florentine Historiography of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries. Trans. Valeria Finucci. Life and Death in Fifteenth
Century Florence. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. 1 16.
Weinstein, Donald. The Art of Dying Well and Popular Piety in
the Preaching and Thought of Girolamo Savonarola. Life and Death in
Fifteenth Century Florence. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. 88
105.
Waite, Gary K. Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern
Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Wieck, Roger S. The Death Desired: Books of Hours and the
Medieval Funeral. Death and Dying in the Middle Ages. New York:
Peter Lang, 1999. 431 477. . Although it was made back in 1989,
this approach remains pertinent to current historiography.
It should be noted Strocchia qualifies the claim quoted above by
stating that flamboyance may have created a kind of ceremonial
buffer against the onslaughts of morality (italics mine) in the
preceding sentence.
Albert Tenenti seems to have something similar in mind when, in
his discussion of Florentine Historiography, he refers to the
historiographic ritual, seeing it as the very fashion in which
writers feel they have a duty to present and display events.
(Tenenti, 9)
For example, a sentence like it happens, sometimes, that at an
unexpected place in a document history drops it mask (Le Goff, 220)
would hardly be appreciated in English-speaking academic
historiography.
Although, on the other hand, an ancient Christian taboo was also
broken by allowing large numbers of people to be buried within
churches.
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