Death

Beginning in the 1300s, European men and women became increasingly fascinated with death. The waves of bubonic PLAGUE and other life-threatening diseases that swept across the continent killed large numbers of people, reminding the survivors that life was fragile. The growing awareness that death might strike at any time led Europeans to develop new funeral customs and methods of preparing for death.

Causes of Death. Bubonic plague was the single greatest killer in Renaissance Europe. The first severe outbreak ravaged the region in the 1340s, killing between one-third and one-half of the population in some areas. The plague reappeared in 1363 and then returned every 10 to 12 years until 1661, with some outbreaks more deadly than others. Diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis also claimed many lives. Children under age two had an extremely high death rate due to various illnesses. Once children survived their early years, however, they had a reasonable chance of reaching adulthood.

Disease was not the only cause of death in the Renaissance. Men died in accidents while traveling or farming, and many women died in childbirth. Infants and young children were sometimes abandoned or even murdered by parents who could not afford to support them. Child killing, or infanticide, became more common during times of economic hardship. Italian legal records show that twice as many baby girls as boys were abandoned or killed. Parents valued girls less because they earned lower wages than boys and because it cost their families money to supply dowries* when they married.

Attitudes Toward Death. Renaissance Europeans maintained a complete set of views about death. In the 1400s literary works called ars moriendi ("art of dying"), which told readers how a good Christian should approach death, became popular. The texts stressed that Christians should welcome death, rather than fear it, and that they should view life as preparation for the afterlife.

The ars moriendi emphasized the importance of making a "good death." They advised dying Christians to confess their sins to a priest and to forgive their family and friends, as they gathered around the deathbed, for any wrongs they had done. A good death also involved disposing wisely of possessions, often through donations to charity. Anyone could fall ill suddenly, but accepting and even planning for death was a way of controlling its unpredictability.

People of the Renaissance lived with images of death. The Dutch humanist* Desiderius ERASMUS, for example, kept a human skull on his desk as a reminder of the shortness of life. In France, Holland, and other parts of northern Europe, artists developed a variety of grim, fantastic images of death that expressed both fear and fascination. Scenes portraying the "dance of death" featured prancing skeletons, and some tomb sculptures showed the deceased lying on top of a decaying corpse. Such images reinforced the ideas that death triumphs over everyone and that the body is less enduring than the soul.

Funerals and Wills. Funeral rituals developed in two different directions between 1300 and 1600. In some Catholic areas of Europe, funerals became more formal and elaborate. People spent increasing sums on funeral processions, burial outfits, hired mourners, and mourning clothes. In other areas, by contrast, funerals grew simpler and more subdued. Some Renaissance thinkers—drawing on the ideas of ancient philosophers called the Stoics—urged mourners to show self-control and limit their displays of grief. This tendency was strongest in Protestant countries, where preachers advised people to hold simple ceremonies that focused on the afterlife rather than on worldly trappings.

One aspect of the "good death" was arranging to pass one's property on to others. Most Europeans died without leaving a will, the legal document that contains instructions about funeral arrangements and inheritance. In such cases, custom generally called for burial in the local churchyard or cemetery and distribution of property to close relatives. Some people, however, left specific instructions regarding their deaths. From the thousands of wills that survive it appears that, over the course of the Renaissance, people left increasing sums of money to pay for tombs or church services dedicated to their memory.