Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T09:02:46.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ars Moriendi: Coping with death in the Late Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2015

Fernando Espi Forcén  and
Carlos Espi Forcén
Fernando Espi Forcén*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
Carlos Espi Forcén
Affiliation:
Department of Art History, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Fernando Espi Forcén, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 425 East 76th Street, Apartment 4B, New York, New York 10021. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objective:

The Ars moriendi was a book written in the early 15th century with the goal of assisting friars in their work of helping the dying. The aim of our study was to review the current literature on the Ars Moriendi concerning the field of medicine, to analyze the psychological mechanisms for coping with death anxiety within Ars Moriendi, and to explore parallels between the strategies used in the medieval book and in contemporary literature about death and dying.

Method:

A review of literature using Pubmed, EMBASE, JSTOR, Project MUSE, and the New York Public Library was undertaken first. The primary source was then interpreted from a medical/psychological point of view.

Results:

Seven articles were selected by literature review. These works comment on the importance of the Ars Moriendi in its historical context and explore the possibility of retrieving the principles of the text in contemporary society. The original text of Ars Moriendi, the primary source, presents death as a relief from the sufferings of earthly life and a gateway to eternal glory. According to the author, a good death implied the triumph over five demonic temptations in agonizing people: a lack of faith, despair, impatience, pride and greed.

Significance of Results:

Analyzed from a modern psychiatric perspective, the Ars Moriendi offers descriptions of behavioral manifestations compatible with delirium, mood and anxiety disorders that characterize people with terminal illnesses. Moreover, we also explored parallels between the strategies used to cope with death anxiety in the Late Middle Ages and in contemporary society.

Keywords

Death and dyingDeath anxietyReligionMiddle AgesMedieval artMedieval literatureSpiritualism
Type
Review Article
Information
Palliative & Supportive Care , Volume 14 , Issue 5 , October 2016 , pp. 553 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Álvarez Alonso, M.J. (1990). An edition and study of the Spanish versions of the Arte de Bien Morir. Doctoral dissertation. London: King's College.Google Scholar
Ballnus, W. (1995). Die Hospizidee. Eine neue Ars Moriendi? Zeitschrift für Gerontologie und Geriatrie, 28(4), 242–246.Google Scholar
Bayard, F. (1999). L'art du bien mourir au XV siècle: Étude sur les arts du bien mourir au bas Moyen Àge à la lumière d'un ars moriendi allemande du XV siècle. Paris: Presses de l'Universitè de Paris–Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Beringer, A.L. (2014). The death of Christ as a focus of the fifteenth-century Ars Moriendi . Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 113(4), 497–512.Google Scholar
Binski, P. (1996). Medieval death: Ritual and representation. London: The British Museum.Google Scholar
Bertman, S. (1998). Ars Moriendi: Illuminations on the good death from the arts. The Hospice Journal, 13(1–2), 5–28.Google Scholar
Breitbart, W. & Poppito, S. (2014a). Individual meaning-centered psychotherapy for patients with advanced cancer: A treatment manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breitbart, W. & Poppito, S. (2014b). Meaning-centered group psychotherapy for patients with advanced cancer: A treatment manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bynum, C.W. (1988). Holy fast and holy feast: The religious significance of food to medieval women. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Camille, M. (1992). Image on the edge: The margins of medieval art. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Chartier, R. (1976). Les arts de mourir, 1450–1600. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 31(1), 51–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chochinov, H.M. (2012). Dignity therapy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Derbes, A. (1996). Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative painting, Franciscan ideologies, and the Levant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duclow, D.F. (1999). Dying well: The Ars Moriendi and the Dormition of the Virgin . In Death and dying in the Middle Ages. DuBruck, E.E. & Gusick, B.I., pp. 379–429. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Espí Forcén, C. (2013). The triumph of death in Late Medieval Italian painting. Journal of Humanistic Psychiatry, 1(2), 10–12.Google Scholar
Feros Ruys, J. (2014). Dying 101: Emotion, experience and learning how to die in the Late Medieval Ars Moriendi . Parergon, 31(2), 55–79.Google Scholar
Flynn, E. (2014). Visualizing death and burial: Past and present. International Psychogeriatrics, 26(5): 709–713.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frankl, V. (1959). Man's search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Geary, P.J. (1994). Living with the dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, C. (1989). Ecstasies: Deciphering the witches' sabbath. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Herkommer, H. (2001). Die alteuropäische Ars moriendi (Kunst des Sterbens) als Herausforderung für unseren Umgang mit Sterben und Tod. Praxis, 90, 2144–2151.Google Scholar
Infantes, V. (1997). Las danzas de la muerte. Génesis y desarrollo de un género medieval. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar
Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Kurtz, L.P. (1934). The dance of death and the macabre spirit in European literature. Genéve: Slatkins Reprints, 1975.Google Scholar
Leget, C. (2007). Retrieving the Ars Moriendi tradition. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 10, 313–319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marrow, J. (1979). Passion iconography in Northern European art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Mellinkoff, R. (1993). Outcasts: Signs of otherness in Northern European art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mormando, F. (1999). What happens to us when we die? Bernardino of Siena on The Last Four Things . In Death and dying in the Middle Ages. DuBruck, E.E. & Gusick, B.I., pp. 109–142. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Nelson, C., Lacey, S., Kenowitz, J., et al. (2015). Men's experience with penile rehabilitation following radical prostatectomy: A qualitative study with the goal of informing a therapeutic intervention. Psycho-Oncology, doi: 10.1002/pon.3771 [Epub ahead of print].Google Scholar
Nirenberg, D. (1998). Communities of violence: Persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
O'Connor, M. (1942). The Art of dying well: The development of the Ars Moriendi. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Oosterwijk, S. (ed.) (2011). Mixed metaphors: The danse macabre in medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Richards, J. (1990). Sex, dissidence and damnation. Minority groups in the Middle Ages. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rylands, W.H. & Bullen, G. (2010). Ars Moriendi (Editio Princeps circa 1450): A reproduction of the Copy in the British Museum. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press.Google Scholar
Rolfes, H. (1989). Ars Moriendi: Eine Sterbekunst aus der Sorge um das ewige Heil. In Ars moriendi: Erwägungen zur Kunst des Sterbens. Wagner, H. (ed.), pp. 15–44. Freiburg i.B.: Herder.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, H. (1995). Vadomori. Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur, 124(3), 257–264.Google Scholar
Rozenski, S. (2008). “Your Ensaumple and Your Mirour”: Hoccleve's amplification of the imagery and intimacy of Henry Suso's Ars Moriendi . Parergon, 25, 1–16.Google Scholar
Rudolf, R. (1957). Ars Moriendi: Von der Kunst des Heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag.Google Scholar
Tenenti, A. (1951). Quelques notes sur le problème de la mort à la fin du XV siècle. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 6(4), 433–446.Google Scholar
Thornton, K. & Phillips, C.B. (2009). Performing the good death: The medieval Ars Moriendi and contemporary doctors. Journal of Medical Ethics, 35, 94–97.Google Scholar
Viladeseau, R. (2006). The beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in theology and the arts from the catacombs to the eve of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vinken, P. & Schlüter, L. (2000). The foreground of Bosch's Death and the Miser . Oud Holland, 114(2/4), 69–78.Google Scholar
Wicks, J. (1998). Applied theology at the deathbed: Luther and the Late Medieval tradition of the Ars Moriendi . Gregorianum, 79(2), 345–368.Google Scholar