Title: Medieval death
First published: 1996
Description: Medieval Death is an absorbing study of the social, theological, and cultural issues involved in death and dying in Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the early sixteenth century.

Drawing on both archaeological and art historical sources, Paul Binski examines pagan and Christian attitudes towards the dead, the aesthetics of death and the body, burial ritual and mortuary practice. The evidence is accumulated from a wide variety of medieval thinkers and images, including the macabre illustrations of the Dance of Death and other popular themes in art and literature, which reflect the medieval obsession with notions of humility, penitence, and the dangers of bodily corruption.

The author discusses the impact of the Black Death on late medieval art and examines the development of the medieval tomb, showing the changing attitudes towards the commemoration of the dead between late antiquity and the late Middle Ages. In the final chapter the progress of the soul after death is studied through the powerful descriptions of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in Dante and other writers and through portrayals of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse in sculpture and large-scale painting.
Subjects: Doctrines, Death, Religious aspects, Christianity, Church history, Religious aspects of Death, History of doctrines, Death in art, Catholic Church, History, Funeral rites and ceremonies, Doctrinal Theology, Death, religious aspects, Catholic church, doctrines, Europe, church history, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Social aspects, Medieval Civilization
Places: Europe
Time periods: 600-1500, Middle Ages, 600-1500
LC classification: BT825 .B474 1996