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Danse Macabre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Robert Eisler
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The French word macabre was first used as an ordinary adjective by the French Romantic writers of the last century: Théophile Gautier and Petrus Borel say ‘c'est macabre’ for anything lugubriously grotesque. Sachs quotes fantaisie macabre from Émile Montégut. The word was not included in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française (1694) up to the seventh edition of 1878, but is now to be found in the eighth in the connections danse macabre, récit macabre, plaisanterie macabre. Bal macabre is not recorded, but often used. In the printers' craft-language macabre is said to be used for a Mort, that is, the accidental omission of one or more words of a text by the compositor. The medical students and servants of the dissecting rooms at the French universities call the bodies dissected les macabres. The bargees on the Seine employ the word for corpses seen drifting on the water. Parisian grave-diggers call the bodies of the poor people buried at minimum cost mauvais macabés. In the Auvergnat patois, [chant] macabre is a bag-piper's melody. In the Bergamask dialect macabret is said to mean the Devil-an easy transition from ‘Death.’ In Cervières (Burgundy) a certain sword-dance is called Bachuber, obviously either a wrong transcription of an aurally recorded macuber or a local mispronunciation of an adopted word. Macabre is found as a loan-word in English, Dutch, and German: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Spanish.

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Traditio , Volume 6 , 1948 , pp. 187 - 225
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Copyright © 1948 by Cosmopolitan Science & Art Service Co., Inc. 

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References

1 (Paris 1935) 2, 138. The 7th ed. (2, 142a) has the word only in the combination danse macabre. Google Scholar

2 Larchey, , Nouveau Supplément du Dictionnaire d’argot (Paris 1889) 143; Larchey, , Dictionnaire historique d’argot, 7e éd. (Paris 1878); Rigaud, , Dictionnaire du jargon parisien (Paris 1878); Delveau, , Dictionnaire de la langue verte, nouvelle édition par Fustier (Paris s.a.).Google Scholar

3 Buchheit, Gert, Der Totentanz, seine Entwicklung und Entstehung (Leipzig 1926) 240. See also La Danse Macabre des Saints Innocents de Paris d’après l’édition de 1484 précédée d’une étude sur le cimetière, le charnier et la fresque peinte en 1425 par l’Abbé Valentin Dufour Parisien (Paris 1874) 78: ‘Dans le language usuel des gens de rivière et par extension, des canotiers, machabé est tout être, homme ou animal, privé de la vie qui nage sur l’eau’; ibid. 77: ‘machabé qui signifie la chair qui quitte les os’—evidently referring to the argot of the Paris dissecting rooms. Huet, Gédéon, ‘Notes d’histoire littéraire, III: La danse macabre,’ Moyen Age 29 (1920) 150 quotes Groeber, , Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie II, i, 1180 for macabré meaning ‘skeleton’; as to macabé meaning ‘cadavre’ in the Parisian argot see Huet, , op. cit. 150 n. 1, who notes that the late editions of the Danse Macabre published in Troyes (by Pierre Garnier and by the Veuve Oudot) bear from the year 1729 onwards the title Grande Danse Macabée des hommes et femmes historiée and begin: ‘Créature raisonnable qui désire le firmament/Voici ton portrait véritable. C’est la danse des Macabées/Ou chacun à danser apprends …’ (Kastner, G., Les danses des Morts [Paris 1852] 96 n. 2). At Valognes they call ‘Macabées les vieilles femmes revendeuses, spécialement de fruits;’ see Ed. Héricher, Le, Les étymologies difficiles (Avranches 1886) 108–109.Google Scholar

4 See Massmann, H. F., Serapeum 8 (Berlin 1847) 134, in a review of Jubinal, , Explication de la Danse des Morts de la Chaise-Dieu en Auvergne, fresque inédite du 15e siècle (Paris 1841), quoting Kilian, , Georgia, oder der Mensch im Leben und im Staate (Leipzig 1806) I, 396.Google Scholar

5 Cp. the pronunciation Bekka for Mecca, the Septuagint reading Berodach for Merodach, Babylonian Marduk; conversely Greek Meroë for the Ethiopian Barua etc. Macabre is found as a loan-word in English, Dutch,6 and German;7 Italian,8 Portuguese,9 Catalan,10 and Spanish.11 Google Scholar

6 Van Dale’s, Groot Woerdenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Leiden 1924) 1123a.Google Scholar

7 As a non-naturalized Fremdwort and not a real loan-word it is not included, however, in Grimm’s Wörterbuch (the recent supplements do not reach up to M) nor in the two editions of Littmann’s, Enno Morgenländische Wörter im Deutschen. Google Scholar

8 See Vigo, P., Le danze macabre in Italia (Livorno 1898); Ferd. Neri, , Fabrilia (Torino 1930) 54ff.; and the same authors art. ‘Danza macabra,’ Enciclopedia Italiana 12 (1931) 369.Google Scholar

9 Vieira, Domingos, Thesouro da lingua Portugueza 4 (Porto 1873) 6a.Google Scholar

10 Diccionario Enciclopédic de la Llengua Catalana (Barcelona 1933) 3, 199 col. a (macabre, -ra, -ric, ‘tot que suggereix la dansa de la mort’).Google Scholar

11 See the article ‘Danza macabra o de los muertos,’ Enciclopedia Universal 17, 962b. Also Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua Española (Madrid 1925) 760. Dominguez, , Diccionario nacional de la lengua Española (17th ed. Madrid 1890) 1190a: ballo macabro ‘ronda inferna.’ Google Scholar

12 Vol. V (dated 1/10, 1904). See also the anonymous article in the 11th ed. of the Encyclopedia Britannica 17, 190b.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit. 238; ibid. 239 a quotation from Fehse, Wilhelm, Der Ursprung der Totentänze (Halle 1907) 42 n. 6: ‘Die erschreckend zahlreichen Deutungen, die das geheimnisvolle Wort “macabre” gefunden hat, haben nur das eine dargetan, dass die Etymologie sehr oft eine unsichere Stütze ist.’ Google Scholar

14 Romania 18 (1889) 513; 24 (1895) 131, review of Seelmann’s Die Totentänze des Mittelalters (1892).Google Scholar

15 Preserved in a Bruxelles Codex chartac. 1352 (4°).Google Scholar

16 Other examples quoted by Paris, Gaston, Romania 18, 513ff. are: Régnier, Jean ed. Lacroix 201: ‘si fault il aller à la dance de macabré’ and Montaiglon VIII, 349: ‘Je danserai la macabrée danse.’ Buchheit, , op. cit. 36 quotes from the account books of the dukes of Burgundy for the year 1449 payments to one Nicaise de Cambrai for the staging of a ‘certain jeu, histoire et moralité sur le fait de la danse macabre.’ Chambers, E. K., The Medieval Stage (Oxford 1903) II, 153 n. 2 gives the evidence for performances of the Dance of Death at Bruges in 1449 and at Besançon in 1453.Google Scholar

17 Warren, Florence, Dance of Death (EETS Orig. Series 181; London 1931 for 1929) xvii correctly interprets this line as meaning ‘I nearly died.’ So does Chaney, Edward F., La Danse Macabré des charniers des Saints Innocents à Paris (Manchester 1945) 1.Google Scholar

18 Serapeum 8 (1847) 132: ‘… hätten wir [in Jean Le Fèvre] den Verfasser des ältesten Totentanzes….’ This tentative suggestion is put forward as a certainty by Gaston Paris. His interpretation is unhesitatingly accepted by Huizinga, J., The Waning of the Middle Ages (London 1924) 13, who speaks of a ‘lost poem of Jean Lefèvre’ entitled Danse Macabre. Google Scholar

19 This name—unknown to genuine Arabic nomenclature—is attributed to one or two Saracenes in certain medieval novels celebrating the exploits of Occidental knights fighting against the Eastern unbelievers (Paris, Gaston, Romania 24, 132). Whence ‘Macabré, nom propre’ in the Suppl. 10 (1902) 102 to Godefrey’s Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française du IXe au XVe siècle 5 (1888), which had not catalogued either macabre or macabré. Massmann loc. cit. quotes from Chorier, , Recherches sur les antiquités de Vienne en Dauphiné (1659) 15, a document about a gift made by a citizen Marc Apvril to the chapter of St. Maurice of certain mills on a piece of land called Macabray’s (or Macabrays’). Huet, , op. cit. (note 3) 154 points out a Saracen by name of Macabré in ‘Elie de St. Gilles’ and in ‘Anseïs de Carthage,’ as well as dozens of Macabrés and one Maucabré in Langlois’, M. E. ‘Table des noms propres’ found in the French Chansons de Gestes. Macabré is found as a French family-name (Huet 155). See Robert, Ulysse, Testaments de l’officialité de Besançon (Paris 1902) I, 69 and 102: In 1381 there occurs a ‘Jean Macabrey de Porrentrui damoiseau’; in 1446 a ‘Jean Macabrey de Tavannes écuyer.’ Nostradamus, , Hist. Littéraire des Troubadours (Paris 1774) II, 250 mentions a nobleman and poet Macabre (sic) of Poitou (flor. A.D. 1346). The French-Burgundian poem Parthenopeus is said to mention a comte Marcabers.—∗Mar Kabir is easily understandable as a Syrian title meaning ‘Grand Seigneur’ (cp. kabirū, ‘magnus,’ Brockelmann, , Lexic. Syriac. [Halis 1928] 316b), considering the number and importance of Syrian merchant settlements throughout the Rhone valley, in Paris, etc. in Roman and Merovingian times. See Cumont, Franz, Les religions orientales dans l'Empire Romain (4th ed. Paris 1928) 20 n. 8; 98f.; 251f. n. 12; Scheffer-Boichorst, , ‘Zur Geschichte der Syrer im Abendland,’ Mitt. des Inst. für oesterr. Geschichtsforschung 6 (1883) 521–550; Bréhier, L., ‘Les colonies d’orientaux en occident au commencement du moyen âge,’ Byz. Zeitschrift 12 (1903) 16ff.; Strzygowski, Josef, Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte (Leipzig 1903) 230; Leitschuh, , Geschichte der Karoling. Malerei 52 note; Bonamy, , Mém. Acad. des Inscriptions 21, 97f.; Guignes, De, ibid. 37, 473; Loebell, , Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit (2nd ed. 1869) 159; Solari, , ‘Delle antiche relazioni commerciali fra la Siria e l’occidente I (Roma e Gallia),’ Annali delle Università Toscane, N.S. 1 (1916) 6; id. Riv. Indo-Greca-Italica (1921) 165–167; Jalabert, , Rev. de l’Orient Chrétien 9 (1904) 96–98; Wolfram, , Lothr. Jahrb. für Alt. Kunde 17 (1905) 118ff.; Pirenne, , Les villes du Moyen Age (Bruxelles 1927) 19ff.; Parker, James, The Conflict of Church and Synagogue (London 1934) I, 315ff.; II, 17; Lambrechts, Pierre, ‘Le commerce des Syriens en Gaule du Haut Empire à l’époque mérovingienne,’ Antiquité classique (1937) 35–61, quoting Stein, Ernst, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reichs I (Vienna 1928); Charlesworth, , Trade Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire (2nd ed. 1924) 204; Parvan, V., Die Nationalität der Kaufleute im römischen Kaiserreich (diss. Breslau 1909). See also Baldwin Smith, E., Early Christian Iconography and a School of Ivory Carvers in Provence (Princeton N. J. 1918) 192ff.; Ebersolt, Jean, Orient et Occident (Paris-Brussels 1928–1929) vol. I. A ‘Renaudus dictus Malcabré juré de Mezières’ (1280: Trésor de chartes du comte de Rethel [Monaco 1902] I, 381), explained by Huet op. cit. 155 n. 2 as a deformation of Macabré, is probably misread by the editor or miswritten by a scribe for Maicabré. Google Scholar

20 L’Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge (3rd ed. Paris 1925) 360 n. 5: ‘Il y a là une véritable impossibilité. Jamais au moyen âge une oeuvre d’art si célèbre fut-elle n’a été désignée par le nom de son auteur.’ Google Scholar

21 Emblems of Mortality (London 1789) with wood-cuts after Holbein’s Dance of Death; Preface p. ix. The theory is repeated in the introduction to a ‘Dance of Death of the celebrated Holbein in a series of 52 engravings on wood’ by Bewick (London 1825) 15 note and p. 16. Both books were pointed out to me by the learned book-seller, Dr. Albrecht Rosenthal of Munich, now in Oxford.Google Scholar

22 There is an article ‘Macabar’ (sic) by Weiss in the Biographie Universelle 26, mentioned and criticized in Brunet, , Manuel du libraire II, 493. Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel du 19e siede 10 (Paris 1873) 844d has an article ‘Macaber, poète allemand sur la vie duquel on ne possède aucun renseignement’ etc. So has Zedler, , Universal-Lexikon 19 (1739) 23: ‘Macabrus hat geschrieben Speculum morticinum welches in folgendem Buch die Presse gesehen hat: Roderici episcopi Zamorensis Speculum Vitae Humanae & Statuum totius orbis terrarum ac Macabri speculum Morticinum versibus ex Germanicis editum & a Petro Desrey Trecacio emendatum, Hannover 1613 in 4°.’ Equally so Chr. Gottl. Jocher, , Allgem. Gelehrten-Lexikon 3 (Leipzig 1751) 3: ‘Macaber, ein alter deutscher Poet aus dem 15. saeculo hat speculum morticinum s. speculum choreae mortuorum geschrieben, welche Peter Desrey Trecacius um 1460 lateinisch übersetzt, in welcher Sprache sie Goldastus des Rodrigi Zamorensis Speculo omnium statuum angehänget.’ Google Scholar

23 Bibliotheca latina mediae et infimae aetatis (ed. Hamburg, 1736) 5, iii, 1584; cum suppl. Schöttgeni (Florence 1858) 5, xii, 3a: ‘Macaber auctor speculi mortis sive speculi choreae mortuorum red. Petrus Desrey rhythmis Germanicis 1460. Latinis vulgavit Goldastus auctore Roderigo Zamorensi, Hannover 1613.’ Google Scholar

24 Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 7 (Leipzig 1938) 258 Nr. 7959. A facsimile edition of this text has been published by Pilinski, A. (Paris 1883).Google Scholar

25 i.e. a native of Troyes, known as a translator living under Charles VIII (1470–1498). See Massmann, , Serapeum 8, 132 n. 1.Google Scholar

26 Contes et discours d'Eutrapel par le feu Seigneur de la Hérissaye [Noël du Fail], gentilhomme breton (Rennes 1585, 8°) fol.51v: ‘Le grand rendez-vous de tels Académiques [viz. of the alchemists] estoit à nostre Dame de Paris ou aux portaux que Nicolas Flamel grand et souverain arracheur de dents en ce mestier avoit [52r] faict construire et surtout on les voit par bandes et regimens se promenans aux Cloistres sainct Innocents à Paris avec les trespassez et secrétaires des Chambrières visitans la danse Marcade [sic; see below notes 122ff.], Poète Parisien, que ce savant et belliqueux Roy Charles le quint y fit peindre et où sont représentez au vifs les effigies des hommes de marque de ce temps et qui dansent en la main de la mort.’ Since this first edition was printed after the death of the author, it is not impossible that a line of his manuscript following after the word ‘Marcade’ has been jumped by the compositor without the editor noticing the lacuna, which may have contained the words (de Macabré et lisans les vers de Pierre Desrey〈. As the words are printed, they seem to convey the meaning that the famous danse Macabre of the Parisian main cemetery is so named after a Parisian poet who composed the text of it. Du Fail (d. 1585) may have been influenced by Fabricius’ book published in 1584.Google Scholar

27 See below note 43 on the pronunciation maicaibre of the word otherwise known as macabre. Google Scholar

28 (London 1851) IV, 261: ‘Macabrée, the author of the original verses, was a German physician who is supposed to have written them from the sight of the picture which was found on many of the continental edifices about the latter half of the fourteenth century.’ Google Scholar

29 The Dance of Death (London 1833) 28ff.: ‘Macaber, not a German or any other poet, but a nonentity.’ Google Scholar

30 This etymology is quoted by Wackernagel, Wilh., Kleinere Schriften (Leipzig 1872) 318 n. 60, from Peignot, Gabriel, Recherches sur les danses des morts (Dijon 1826) 81. It is probably suggested by the fact that the article ‘Macaber’ in Fabricius’ Bibliotheca (above, note 23) is immediately followed by another on ‘Macarius.’ Google Scholar

31 Aspects of Death (4th ed. London 1922) 89. The Greek etymology dance macabre, ‘dance infernale’ had already been advanced by the de Paulmy, Marquis and d’Orville, Constant, Mélanges tirés d’une grande bibliothèque (Paris 1780) VII, 22. Kastner, , Les danses des Morts (Paris 1852) 95 quotes the two following Greek verses added to the Latin inscription of the Dance of Death frescoes of Great Basle by some Swiss humanist at the time when they were restored by Hans Hugo Klauber in 1568: … ὅpa τέλος μακρου βίου/'Αρχὴν ὄpa μακαρίου. Evidently a playful figura etymologica connecting macabre with μάκρὸς βίος and μακάριος is intended. Curiously enough, three MSS of Lydgate’s English version of the Danse Macabre (Leyden, , Vossianus 9; Lansdown MS 669; Lincoln Cathedral MS C.5.4 quoted by Warren, Florence, op. cit. [above, note 17] xxvii) begin with an ‘Incipit Macrobius’—evidently meant as a Latinization of French Macabre taken as a proper name.Google Scholar

32 Histoire de la France 14, 300.Google Scholar

33 Op. cit. 239. This etymology obviously presupposes the form macabé, discussed below notes 37ff.Google Scholar

34 Über mittelalterliche Totentänze, Untersuchungen über ihre Entstehung und ihre Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse (Beilage zum Gymnasialprogramm, Stendal 1905) equates dance macabre with θανοντες Mακαρίου(!).Google Scholar

35 Op. cit. (note 17) 100.Google Scholar

36 Translated by Clarke, and Unwin, (London 1926).Google Scholar

37 Mâle, Emile, op. cit. (above, note 20) 360 n. 5: ‘Une seule explication paraît raisonnable. Le mot macabre ou macabré forme populaire de Machabées.1 See also Wackernagel, , op. cit. 317 n. 59, on the derivation of macabre from Maccabé; see ibid. 318 n. 60 the previous literature on the etymology of the word. The alleged afformative ending -re is explained by Jacob Grimm on the analogy of such words as aucupre, tristre, légistre, célestre. Wackernagel, (p. 343) would derive it from the genitive ending of Maccabeorum , Kastner, (op. cit. [note 31] 96 n. 4) from the German plural Maccabäer. Google Scholar

38 Only in the sequel to Perceval by de Troyes, Chrestien (Perceval le Gallois, ed. Potvin, [Mons 1870] V, 139 verse 34,624): ‘tres le tans Judas le Macabré’ (see Huet, op. cit. [note 3] 153), but not in the novels of the Round Table, nor in the Chansons de Gestes. Google Scholar

39 Ellissen, , De l'architecture religieuse et des danses des morts (Leiden 1844) 30 has pointed out the existence of certain modern reprints of the Danse Macabre bearing the corrupt title Danse Maratre. Surely this could not be used as an argument for proving that the original meaning of Danse Macabre was the ‘dance of the wicked stepmother.’ Google Scholar

40 Nauta Warfum-Groningen, G. A., ‘La Danse Macabre,’ Noord en Zuyd 16, 247 quotes after ‘Msr. Moraaz de Bruxelles’ a poem by de Roovere, Anthonis, ‘rhétoricien Brugeois,’ d. A.D. 1482 (Romania 24 [1895] 588) which contains the following lines: ‘Die nu ghesont stoet es morgen duere/Makkabeus dans stelt dan in he truere/Al doen dau op valt of Zonne op rayt.’ Google Scholar

41 Huet loc. cit. after Bosquet, Amélie, La Normandie pittoresque et merveilleuse (Paris 1845) 15 and Sainéan, Lazare, ‘La Mesnie Hellequin,’ Revue des traditions populaires 20 (1905) 180: ‘à Blois et au Blaisois la “chasse sauvage” est dite “chasse Maccabée” ou “chasse des Maccabées,” le chasseur maudit Thibault Le Tricheur comte de Blois’ (Charpentier, F., Rev. des trad. pop. 9 [1894] 413). Kastner, Georges, op. cit. 96 n. 3 points out that the cloister of the cathedral of Amiens, destroyed in 1811, was known as le Macabé (Rivoire, Maurice, Vestiges d’une peinture d’une danse des morts), presumably because it had a danse macabrée, later on mispronounced danse Maccabée—as in Oudot’s edition of 1729 quoted above note 3—painted on its walls.Google Scholar

42 See Courthion, , Les Veillées de Mayens (Genève 1897) 25; Huet, , op. cit. 180 n. 3: ‘Dans le Valais la chasse sauvage appellée le Macabre Cortège est formée des morts et des vivants.’ This corresponds to the fact noticed by Wilh. Fehse, , Der Ursprung der Totentänze (Halle 1907) 15, that the Allemannic texts of the Dance of Death speak of the dead as a pack of wild wolves hunting with Death as their leader. See e.g. the inscription on one of the Little Basle frescoes (Nr. 10; Fehse p. 20) where the Count is addressed with the words: ‘Her graf, heizen uch den kaiser helfen/ich fur uch zo den wilden welfen/myt den muissen ir baizen und jagen’ (baizen lit.: ‘to hawk’). The variant text H.2.10 has: ‘mit den ir must tanzen und jagen/Der Tod will euch des nicht vortragen.’ Hind, A. M., Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum (London 1910) 280 Nr. 10 describes a print showing two ships about to be wrecked on a stormy sea. On the prow of the one, the mast of which is already splintered, a skeleton is seen standing, on the prow of the other one, a wolf. Death hunting at the head of a pack of wolves to be joined by those about to die is obviously conceived as the Wild Hunter, the Grand Veneur, the Zagreus of the Greek mysteries. See Rob. Eisler, , Orpheus (London 1921) pl. VI and p. 15.Google Scholar

43 Dictionnaire de la littérature française 2 (Paris 1869) 366. Under Etym. Littré says: ‘Lorrain maicaibre se dit d’une configuration phantastique de nuages.’ Huet, , op. cit. 150 (note to p. 149) quotes from Sainéan: ‘dialecte lorrain maicaibré, forme fantastique de.nuage’; ‘cité par Diez et Littré au mot macabré.’ This Lorraine word is, of course, nothing but a dialect pronunciation of macabre, quite interesting in view of the vocalism of mĕqabēr (below notes 99 and 100) and ‘Micawber’ (above note 27). He then goes on to say that danse macabre was a dance performed by clerics, one after the other stepping out of it to symbolize his own death. In this way, he supposes, a mystery play of the seven Maccabean martyrs to have been acted and concludes: ‘Devant chorea Machabeorum on ne peut faire compte de l’arabe makbara.’ Cp., however, Bloch, Oscar, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française 2 (Paris 1932) 29a: ‘Le rapport avec la légende des Maccabées n’est pas éclairci.’ Google Scholar

44 See note 20 above. Mâle, quotes (op. cit. 361) a document of 1393, discovered by the Abbé Miette (Études des antiquités de la Normandie avant la Révolution, MS Rouen 2215.Y.39 fol.69) in the archives of Caudebec, about a Dance of Death acted in this very church by actors representing all the ways of life from the king’s sceptre to the shepherd’s crook, one of them dropping out at every round. See already Carpentier's Supplement to Ducange’s Glossary: ‘Maccabaeorum chorea vulgo Dance macabre ludicra quidem caerimonia ab ecclesiasticis pie instituta.’ Google Scholar

45 op. cit.: ‘On est allé jusqu’à faire dériver macabre de l’arabe macber qui voudrait [!] dire tombeau.’ See already Kastner (op. cit. 96) who calls the derivation from maqbarah ‘un rapprochement de pure fantaisie’ and prefers to connect macabre with Latin macere, macerare, French maigrir! Google Scholar

46 Serapeum 8, 134, accepted by Seelmann op. cit. below note 48.Google Scholar

47 Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Roi, Livres imprimés sur velin IV (Paris 1822) 170; accepted by Millin, , Magazin encyclopédique (1811 Décembre) 367; Grimm, Jac., Deutsche Mythologie (1844) 810; Dufour, Valentin, op. cit. (above, note 3) 77: ‘Le mot a été emprunté aux langues de l’Orient. Il a … son dérivé en arabe maqbarah, maqbourah et maqabir. Par corruption macabre signifie cimetière.’ The same etymology is given by Peignot (op. cit. note 30 above), Langlois, de Longperrier, and Edouard Fournier; also in Pihan, , Glossaire des mots français tirés de l’arabe (Paris 1856). Quoted doubtfully by Buchheit 240.Google Scholar

48 Tomaseo, Thus and Bellini, , Dizionario della lingua Italiana 3 (Torino-Napoli 1871) 2c: ‘Macabra, aggiunto di “Danza” (“Danza de’ Morti”), dall Ar. Maqaber, Cimitero.’ Equally so, with a question mark, in the Spanish Enciclopedia Universal 17, 962b: ‘del árabe macbara “cementerio”?’ The word does not occur in Spanish before the 19th century. See Barcia, Roque, Primero Diccionario general etimologico de la lengua española 3 (Madrid 1881) 523; Van Dale, , op. cit. note 6 above; also Dozy-Oosterlinger, R., Verklarende lijst der nederlandsche worden die uit het arabisch, hebreuwsch, chaldeeuwsch, perzisch, turkisch afkomstig zijn (Haag 1867); Devic, Marcel, Dictionnaire étymologique des mots d’origine arabe à la suite du supplément du Dictionnaire de Littré (1876); Seelmann, , ‘Die Totentänze des Mittelalters,’ Jahrbücher des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 17 (1891) 28.Google Scholar

49 See Barcia, Roque loc. cit.: ‘macabro, cemeterio, del Arabe maqabir, plurale de maqbara, “tumba,” portuguès almocavar, español (dial.) mocabés = cemeterio.’ Barcia has a long column on all the etymologies proposed and decides for the Arabic derivation, especially because Dozy ‘ha dejado memorias de maqabir en el romance.’ See Dozy, R. and Engelmann, W. H., Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l’Arabe (2nd ed. Leiden 1869) 168. Equally so, Lokotsch, Carl, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Europäischen (Germanischen, Romanischen und Slavischen) Wörter orientalischen Ursprungs (Heidelberg 1927) 109 Nr. 1372 derives Spanish macabro, French danse macabre—in this inverted order—from Arabic maqbara ‘Grab,’ ‘Friedhof’ plur. maqabir, Portuguese almocavar ‘cemetery,’ following de Oguilaz y Yanguas, D. L., Glosario etimologico de las palabras españoles de origen oriental (Granada 1886) 443 and Lammens, , Remarques sur les mots français dérivés de l’Arabe (Beirouth 1890) 149.Google Scholar

50 Ellissen, A., Hans Holbein’s Initialbuchstaben mit dem Totentanz (1849) 8 explains danse macabre as Arabic tanz d makabiri (sic—read tanzi al maqabir) ‘Kirchhofskurzweil’; evidently with reference to Arabic tanziḥ (from the root nzḥ ‘l’action de se divertir’)—‘amusement,’ ‘récréation,’ ‘divertissement’ (Bocthor’s Dict.; Dozy, R., Suppl. au dictionnaire Arabe II [Leyde 1881] 663).Google Scholar

51 p. ccxliii, reprod. by Buchheit, G., op. cit. 53 fig. 8; Parkes Weber, F. op. cit. (note 31) 95 fig. 4.Google Scholar

52 Reprod. Buchheit 49 fig. 7.Google Scholar

53 Der Ursprung der Totentänze (Halle 1907).Google Scholar

54 Die Totentänze des Mittelalters (Munich 1922) 48ff.Google Scholar

55 de Witte, Baron, ‘Note sur un vase de terre décoré de reliefs,’ Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France 31 (Paris 1869) 160; reprod. F. P. Weber 659 fig. 93.Google Scholar

56 Pottier, E., ‘La danse des morts sur un canthare antique,’ Revue archéol. 4th ser. 1 (1903) 12–16 fig. 1; reprod. F. P. Weber 66 fig. 95.Google Scholar

57 de Jorio, A., Scheletri Cumaei dilucidati (Napoli 1810); von Olfers, J. Fr. M., Ueber ein Grab bei Kumae und die in demselben vorkommenden Bildwerke mit Rücksicht auf das Vorkommen von Skeletten in der Antike (Berlin 1831) pl. 3; reprod. F. P. Weber 728 fig. 123.Google Scholar

58 Gori, , Museo Florentino (Florence 1731) vol. 1 pl. 91 Nr. 3); Kastner, , op. cit. (note 31) pl. II fig. 10; Reinach, , Pierres gravées pl. 43 Nr. 91; reprod. F. P. Weber 724 figs. 120f.Google Scholar

59 Reprod. F. P. Weber 68 fig. 6.Google Scholar

60 Anacreon 4, 16–17: πριν ἐκεȋσε δεȋ μ’ ἀπελθεȋν/ὑπò νερτἑρων χορείας. Google Scholar

61 Virgil, , Aen. 6, 644: ‘Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt’; Tibull. 13, 59: ‘Hic choreae cantusque vigent’; cf. Kastner, , op. cit. 58 n. 2; Horace, , Odes 1, 4, 13: ‘Pallida mors aequo pulsat/Pede pauperum tabernas regumque turres,’ where the meaning of pulsare is elucidated by the verse 1, 37, 12: ‘nunc pede libero pulsando tellus’ (Wackernagel, , op. cit. 312). See further Goethe’s ‘Grab der Tänzerin,’ Nachgelassene Werke IV.—A. Marino, Fernandez, La Danza Macabre (Madrid 1884) 90ff.; Eisler, Robert, ‘Orphisch-Dionysische Mysteriengedanken,’ Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1922–23 II (Leipzig 1925) 395 n. 2.Google Scholar

62 Millin, , Voyage dans les départements du midi II, 198; Burckhardt, Jakob, Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (2nd ed. 1880) 190 (Phaidon edition, Vienna s.a. [1938?] 337 n. 358); Eisler, , loc. cit. The Greek text after Kaibel, Georgius, Epigrammata graeca ex lapidibus conlecta (Berlin 1878) 266 Nr. 650.Google Scholar

63 Antigone v. 1146. On the dance of the stars see Plato, , Timaeus 41C; Ps.-Aristotle, De mundo 6, 399a; Chalcidius, , In Tim. cxxiv.Google Scholar

64 See the article ‘Markod’ by Gansčyniec in PWK 14, 1852.37–1853.39.Google Scholar

65 An elaborate 8th-century copper-casting representing this god was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington by Mrs. Herbert Bradley. See Coomaraswami, Ananda, Burlington Magazine 17, 88 pl. II, 7.Google Scholar

66 Rō’š mehōlūh, the exact translation of Greek χορηγós. Google Scholar

67 Shîr rabba s.v. 6c; ibid. s.v. 29c; Yer. Meg. 73b med. and Qoh. rabba s.v. 73d; Bab. Sanhedr. 104b; Genes. rabba 74, 17; Levy, Jac., Neuhebr. und chaldaeisches Wörterbuch s.v. ; Krauss, S., Talmudische Archaeologie (Leipzig 1912) III, 167.Google Scholar

68 c.95 ed. Bonnet, , Acta A post. Apocrypha II, 1, 198; Hennecke, , Neutestam. Apokryphen (2nd ed. Tübingen 1924) 172 and 186; James, M. R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1924) 253.Google Scholar

69 Epistula 237 ad Ceretium, CSEL 57, 526–528; PL 23, 1034; Gougaud, Cp., ‘La danse dans les églises,’ Revue d’hist. ecclésiastique 15 (1914) 1–22; 229–245; ‘Liturgical Dances,’ The Sacristy 1 (1871) 63–67; Morris, John, ‘Dancing in Churches,’ The Month 76 (1892) 495–513; Cheetham, art. ‘Dancing,’ Diction. of Christian Antiquities (London 1875).Google Scholar

70 Vers. lat. ed. de Montfaucon, Bern. (Paris 1709) 47. Jewish ritual dancing (Chrysostom, , Adv. Jud. 1, 2 [PG 28, 845 f.]; St. Augustine, , Enarr. in Psalmos 91 [PL 37, 1172]; id. Sermo 9: ‘De decem choreis’ [PL 38, 77]) has been revived by the modern Hasidîm, the followers of the Ba‘al Shem Tobh in the 18th century and is still practised by them.Google Scholar

71 Homil. 48 in Matth. , PG 58, 491.Google Scholar

72 Loc. cit.: ἒνθα γàρ ὄρχησις ἐĸeȋ διάβολος. Google Scholar

73 Ibid.: άλλὰ ἲva σὺν ἀγγέλoıs χορεύωμεν. Google Scholar

74 Mone, , Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit 8, 334f.; Altdeutsche Blätter 2, 362f. Wackernagel, , op. cit. (note 30) 314.Google Scholar

75 Hymn. Laud. S. Gertrudis (quoted by Leclercq, Dom H. in DACL 4, 248: ‘Virginum sanctae celebrant choreae’; Commune Virginum in the Benedictine Breviary (ibid.) : ‘Qui pascis inter lilia septus choreis virginum,’ to which the Danse macabre des femmes might have been compared.Google Scholar

76 14th-century legend about the dead dancing and singing on the ‘Landgerichtsplatz’: Argovia 17, 119ff.; see Baechtold-Stäubli and Hoffmann-Krayer, article ‘Totentanz,’ Handwörterbuch des Aberglaubens 8, 1098ff.Google Scholar

77 See Geiger’s articles ‘Leichenmahl,’ Handwörterbuch des Aberglaubens 5, 1089 n. 77, and ‘Leichenwache,’ ibid. 1105–1110.Google Scholar

78 Burch. Decretum 10, 34: PL 140, 838; Grimm, , Deutsche Mythologie III, 405f.Google Scholar

79 Cp. Pope Leo IV (847–855) Homilia ed. Mansi, 14, 895: ‘Cantus et choreas mulierum in ecclesia vel in atrio ecclesiae prohibite. Carmina diabolica quae nocturnis horis super mortuos vulgus facere solet … vitate.’ These ritual dances are also mentioned by the Indiculus super-stitionum (ed. Saupe, , Leipzig 1891) 6, 10; see Meyer, Elard Hugo, Germanische Mythologie (Berlin 1891) 72; Urquell 1 (1890) 49; Bartsch, , Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg II (Wien 1890) 98; Becker, A., Pfälzer Volkskunde (Bonn-Leipzig 1927) 239f.; Wlislocki, , Aus dem Volksleben der Magyaren (Munich 1893) 29; Laube, , Volkstümliche Uberlieferungen aus Teplitz (2 ed. Prag 1902) 34; Wirth, , Beiträge zum Volksleben von Anhalt (Dessau s.a.) 2–3, 66; Rochholz, , Deutscher Glaube und Brauch im Spiegel der heidnischen Vorzeit (Berlin 1867) I, 205; Argovia 17 (1876) 74; Archiv für Religionswiss. 17 (1914) 491; Zelenin, , Russische Volkskunde (Berlin-Leipzig 1927) 331; Scherke, , Über das Verhalten der Primitiven zum Tode (Langensalza 1923) 127f.— Douce, Francis, The Dance of Death (London 1833) 8 quotes bishop Robert Grosseteste’s penitential, Manuel du pêché (13th century): ‘Kas en cimetière caroler utrage est grand a lutter’ (also in Kastner, , op. cit. 141, who mentions the prohibition of these cemetery dances by the Council of Exeter 1287; by the ‘assemblée de Melun qui défendit en 1579 de jouer des comédies ou de danser aux cimetières.’ The Rituels de Cahors [1604] order the incumbent to chase from the cemeteries ‘toutes représentations par des personnages masqués, toutes danses ou jeux’). A degenerate form of these death dances survives in Switzerland and in Austria as a children’s game. The children count themselves from the tallest downwards to the smallest, the ninth in the series becomes ‘the Black Man.’ While the others run away shouting, ‘who is afraid of the Black Man? Black Man don’t touch my back,’ the child playing this part marks out his own ground by sticking a black cap onto two trees and tries to catch one of the fugitives. Those he catches join him and help in the hunt (Warren, Florence, op. cit. [note 17] xx; Wackernagel, , op. cit. 344 n. 14). The reader will remember the terror of the child afraid of the spooky elves’ king or Hellequin, the leader of the Mesnie furieuse or Macabre cortege in Goethe’s Erlkönig set to music by Franz Schubert. A Palestinian children’s game imitating the marqodta, the luctus et saltatio funebris (below, note 123) of the grown-ups, is already alluded to in Matth. 11, 16f.: children sitting in the markets and calling unto their fellows: ‘we have piped unto you and ye have not danced, we have mourned unto you and you have not lamented. Google Scholar

80 Höhn, , Sitte und Brauch beim Tod und Begräbnis (Stuttgart 1903) 351.Google Scholar

81 Feilberg, , Dansk Bondeliv II (Copenhagen 1899) 110f.; Troels-Lund, , Dagligt liv i Norden i det 16de Aarhundrede (Copenhagen 1903–4) 14, 78.Google Scholar

82 Basler Nachrichten of November 2, 1927.Google Scholar

83 Fricke, , Das mittelalterliche Westfalen 9f.Google Scholar

84 Warren, Florence, op. cit. xiv.Google Scholar

85 John, , Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube im deutschen Westböhmen 177; Encycl. of Religion and Ethics 2, 20 on a parallel Russian custom.Google Scholar

86 Cp. Meyer, , Badisches Volksleben im 19. Jahrh. (Strasbourg 1900) 596; Hessische Blätter für Volkskunde 6 (1907) 108.Google Scholar

87 Kastner, Georges, op. cit. 64. Elsewhere these dances seem to have been celebrated in the night of St. Matthew’s Day (21st to 22nd of September, the stormy time of the autumnal equinox) or in the night of St. Matthias’ Day (24th of February; this may coincide in certain years with the 7th Adar, below at n. 136). See Milichius, Ludovicus, Der Zauber-Teuffel. Von Zauberey, Hexerey und manicherley Wercken des Teuffels (Frankfurt a.M. 1564) ch. 36 p. 308: ‘… inn der Matheisnacht. Inn derselbigen Nacht gehen auch etliche aus zu sehen welche Leuth am Totentanz gefunden werden’ (these people were believed to die really within the year following this day); Strack, Hermann, Pestilentz-Teuffel = Theatrum Diabolorum (Frankfurt a.M. 1587) II, 291: ‘Die bösen, verlogenen und versoffenen Kälber und Teuffelssäue so die Leut verzagt machen mit dem dass sie sagen, seyen auf Mathias’ Abend auf der Bärnhaut gewesen so und so viel, diese und die am Totentanz gesehen, einer sey gefallen und wieder aufgestanden, der ander sey liegen blieben. Item, sie bleiben oder fliehen, sollen sie doch diess Jar sterben.’ Google Scholar

88 De spectris, lemuribus et magnis atque insolitis fragoribus variisque praesagionibus quae plerumque obitum hominum, magnas clades, mutationesque imperiorium praecedunt: liber unus Ludovico Lavatero Tigurino auctore (Genevae 1580) 5, 21.Google Scholar

89 Traité de l'apparition des esprits. A scavoir des dances séparées, fantosmes, prodigues et apparitions merveilleuses qui précèdent quelque-fois la mort des grands personnages ou signifiens changements de la chose publique (Rouen 1600) 15, 175; see Fehse, , op. cit. (note 53) 41 n. 2.Google Scholar

90 Notes 41, 42 above.Google Scholar

91 Notes 47, 50 above.Google Scholar

92 ‘Die Totenklage im heutigen Aegypten,’ Εὐχαριστήριον für Gunkel , Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Göttingen 1923) 345ff.; 348.Google Scholar

93 Haréms et Musulmans d’Êgypte (Paris, Jouvet s.a.). Google Scholar

94 The Arabic text of the funeral dance (en nadb) is given by Kahle 366 and 381. Legrain, , Luxor sous les Pharaons (Bruxelles-Paris 1914) 216 describes an Arabic-Egyptian funeral dance called ménaah, a word which is nothing but the ancient Egyptian mnj (mĭnj) ‘to die’ (lit. ‘to land’ on the other side), found ever since the Pyramid texts (Erman-Grapow, , Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache [Leipzig 1928] 73a II). For ancient Egyptian funeral dances Professor Kahle might have quoted Wiedemann, A., Das alte Aegypten (Heidelberg 1920) 368 and 373 fig. 73 (after Capart, J., Une rue de tombeaux à Saqqarah [Bruxelles 1907] pl. 69); id. 373 n. 2; Schäfer, H., Zeitschr. für Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 41 (1904) 66.Google Scholar

95 Cp. note 85 above, for Bohemia and Russia.Google Scholar

96 Kahle, , op. cit. 390 n. 4.Google Scholar

97 Fernandez Marino, A., La Danza Macabre (Madrid 1884) 105. The oldest Spanish Danza general de la Muerte is printed in Ticknor, , Geschichte der schönen Literatur in Spanien (Leipzig 1852) II, 598ff. Also in Sanchez-Pidal-Janer, , Poetas Castillanos anteriores al siglo XV and in a separate edition, La Danza macabra de la muerte, poema Castellan del Siglo XIV (Paris 1856). It is characterized by the words ‘en la transladacion’ found in the Prologo to the 79 verses (Buchheit, , op. cit. 78–81). Among the figures lead away by Death we find the Rabbi of the Jews. The text to the picture puts into his mouth the characteristic Spanish-Jewish word meldar (Ital. meltare) for ‘read’ (late Latin meletare in Hyginus, also commeletare, pro- and praemeletare in the old Latin Bible; Greek μελετν, Lat. meditare; see Blondheim, D. S. B., ‘Essai d'un vocabulaire comparatif des parlers romans des juifs au moyen âge,’ Romania 49, 372 with further literature; Wagner, M. L., Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Judenspanischen [Vienna 1914] 170f.; Entwistle, W. T., The Spanish Language [London 1936] 183). We also find there el Afaqi, i.e. al faqih ‘the theologian’ (Encycl. Islam 2, 46a: lit. ‘one who has knowledge’) of the Moors, both he and the Rabbi following in rank upon the lowest orders mentioned (subdeacon and porter) of the Christian clergy. All these details point to the period before the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula. The text is found in a manuscript of the Escurial beginning with a poem by Rabbi Don Santo Judio de Carrion, who lived about 1360 (Buchheit, , op. cit. 228). It was, therefore, sometimes attributed to this Jewish author. The conclusion is quite unwarranted, especially since we find between Santo de Carrion's poem and the Danza de la Muerte a treatise Doctrina Christiana. But the Escurial MS does suggest that the clerc who translated the text in question was in contact with Spanish Jews—which could only be the case before their expulsion in 1492 A.D. These Spanish Jews would in turn be in close trade relations with their co-religionists in France, Germany and Italy, especially in Venice.—A Spanish play performed on Corpus Christi Day 1551, Farça llamada dança de la muerte, was composed by Juan de Pedraça of Segovia, who introduced into the cast three new allegoric personifications: la Raçon, la Ira and el Entendimiento; ed. Wolf, , Ein spanisches Frohnleichnamsspiel vom Totentanz (Wien 1852); see Wackernagel, , op. cit. 319.—In Cervantes’ Don Quichote (II, 2) the errant knight encounters on the road six actors travelling through the country in order to perform a show (auto) called Las Cortes de la Muerte (Buchheit, , op. cit. 19) or the ‘Parlament of Death’ (el parliamento de la muerte); Langlois, E. H., Essai historique, philosophique et pittoresque sur les danses des morts (Rouen 1851) 292.Google Scholar

98 The Catalan Danza de la morte (ed. Carbonell, P. M.) was translated from the original shorter French text, at the latest in 1491, i.e. equally before the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula. It is printed in the Colleccion de documentos inéditos del archivo general de la corona de Aragon 2 (Barcelona 1865) 267ff.; also by Appel, K., Beiträge zur roman. Philologie, Festschrift zum Breslauer Neuphilologentag 1902.Google Scholar

99 See Robinson’s translation of Gesenius(-Brown-Driver-Briggs; Oxford 1906) 868b, where the Pi’el is translated ‘bury in masses.’ The singular meqaber is a biblical hapax legomenon in Jerem. 14, 16 (‘they shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem and they shall have no burier’; Hebr. ‘we’eyn meqaber lahemū’). The plural meqabrîm is found in Num. 33,4 (‘the Egyptians were burying all their first-born which the Lord had smitten’) and in Ezech. 39,15. The Aramean plural meqabrîn is found in the Targum Num. 33,4; Ezech. 39,15. See Levy, Jacob, Chald. Wörterbuch zu den Targumin 343a where the Pa’el:qabar is translated ‘mehrere begraben’; and Buxtorf, , Lex. Chald. Talm. (ed. Fischer, , Leipzig 1869) 975a, fourth line from the bottom. Levy, Jacob, Neuhebr. Wörterbuch zu den Talmuden and Midrashims 4, 242a s.v. ‘qabar’ quotes Sanhedrin 113 saying of Hiel who built Jericho (1 Kings 16, 34): hayah meqaber, ‘he buried’ (one after another of his children from ’Abarim to Segub). See mĕqaber methîm in Grazowski, , Milon has-sefath ha ‘Ibhrith (Tell Abhibh 1935) 884.Google Scholar

100 Harkavy, Alexander, English-Jewish Dictionary (6th ed. New York s.a. [1908]) 57a: ‘to bury,’ beerdigen or meqaber zayn (lit. ‘to be a burier’). Yiddish-English Dict. 207 meqaber (zayn) ‘to bury,’ ‘to inter.’ Salom. Birnbaum, , Prakt. Grammatik der jüdischen Sprache (Wien-Leipzig s.a. [1909]), glossary 144b: meqaber zayn ‘bestatten’; Strack, H. L., Jüdisches Wörterbuch (Leipzig 1916) 111a: meqaber (mit ‘sein’) ‘begraben.’ The word is not used for ‘grave-digger’ (Harkavy, , op. cit. 240b: a toytengreber, a qabaroth man) . Spivak, and Bloomgarden, , Yiddish Dictionary Containing All the Hebrew and Chaldean Elements of the Yiddish Language (New York 1911) is not in the Bodleian, British Museum, or London School of Oriental Languages Libraries.Google Scholar

101 Zedler, , Universal Lexikon 44 (Leipzig-Halle 1745) 687 s.v. ‘Todengräber, Vespillo, Necrothaptēs’ (p. 686): ‘Es wird auch der Todengräber in der Übersetzung Luther’s gedacht; man darf sich dabey keine besondere Gesellschaft einiger aus dem Toden begraben ein eigenes Handwerk machender Leute einbilden, weil die Freunde jeden Toden selbst begraben, wie es bei den Juden gewöhnlich ist.’ Google Scholar

102 See the articles ‘Hebhra Kadisha’ in the American Jewish Encyclopedia 6, 298b and ‘Chevra Kadischa’ in the German Encyclopaedia Judaica 5, 434. First mentioned in Spain (Huesca A.D. 1323) as ‘Confraria que dicitur de fodiendis sepulturis’ and in Germany (Miltenberg 1326). The members are known under various names (Mit ‘assekin ‘the occupied ones,’ Gomelēy Hassadîm ‘the fulfillers of mercies’ etc.). Originally all men had to stop every other work as soon as a death occurred in a community, and to attend to the burial of the corpse. This was found inconvenient and led to the foundation of the said voluntary organisation. Only the most modern Jewish cemeteries of big Western cities have paid officials, including professional gardeners digging the tombs. According to Rashi, the French medieval commentator of the Talmud (to Mo’ed, qaton 27b), the ḫazanēy ha'ir (communal precentors) acted as buriers. Even a rabbinic scholar could act as a grave-digger. See Mishna Nidda 24b (quoted by Levy, Jacob, Neuhebr. und Chald. Wörterbuch 4, 242a s.v. ‘qabar’): ‘’Abba Sha’ul said: I used to be a grave-digger’ (qōbēr hayyithi) . Cp. below note 106 on the fossores as one of the minor orders of the Christian clergy. Interesting mural paintings on the walls of the assembly room of the Ḫebhra Qadisha of Prague, illustrating the various activities of the burial fraternity, are reproduced in collotype in Thieberger, and Rabin, , Jüdisches Fest und Jüdischer Brauch (Berlin 1936) after p. 456.Google Scholar

103 DACL 5 (1923) 2065–2092 s.v. ‘fossoyeurs.’ In 303 A.D. the protocol of a confiscation of sacred books in the church of Cirta in North Africa, ‘in domu in qua Christiani conveniebant … sedente Paulo episcopo, Montano et Victore … presbyteris … Helio et Marte diaconis … Silvano et Caroso subdiaconis,’ mentions at the end of the list ‘Januario, Meraclo, Fructuoso, Miggine, Saturnino, Victore, Samsurio et ceteris fossoribus’ (Gesta purgationis Caeciliani, CSEL 26, 186f.; PL 8, 731). After 312 the grave-diggers are counted among the lower ranks of the clergy. The civil laws of 357 and 360 A.D. give them similar rights.Google Scholar

104 Leclercq, , op. cit. 2078ff.Google Scholar

105 Op. cit. 2065.Google Scholar

106 It is a well-known fact that the lower clergy was variously composed in the churches of antiquity; cp. Tixeront, J., L'ordre et les ordinations (2 ed. Paris 1925) 86ff.; Leclercq, , ‘Ordinations irrégulières,’ DACL 12, ii (1936) 2393f. The full Roman scale of minor orders (porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon; at least since Pope Cornelius, 251 A.D.) seems not attested elsewhere except for Carthage. In the Greek Church, porters, exorcists, acolytes and various other minor officials functioned without being ordained, while lectorate and subdiaconate were universally established as orders.—For the fossores see Chronicon Palatinum ed. Mai, , Spicil. Roman. 9, 133 (6th cent.): ‘gradus ecclesiae … septem: ostiarius, fossarius, lector, subdiaconus, diaconus, presbyter, episcopus.’ Cp. Epiphanius, the anonymous De septem ordinibus ecclesiae, the Liber notarum Tironensium, all quoted by Leclercq, , op. cit. s.v. ‘fossoyeurs.’ One will also recall the theory of De Rossi (Roma sotterranea I, 101, 209f. etc.) on the early churches adopting the legal form of collegia funeraticia (see Gwatkin, H. M., Early Church History [London 1909] II, 120ff), which is however disputed by Duchesne and others; cp. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, L., Geschichte der juristischen Person I (Munich 1933) 244ff. and 254ff.Google Scholar

107 Cod. Theodos. 13, 1, 1; cf. Gothofredus’ commentary ad. loc. (ed. Lips. 1741; V, 6b-7a); Suares, J. M., in S. Nili opuscula ascetica (Rome 1673) 670 (PG 79, 1397).Google Scholar

108 Nov. Justin. 43 and 59; Tillemont, , Histoire des Empereurs 4 (Venice 1732) 235.Google Scholar

109 Epistula I ad Innocentium de muliere septies icta , CSEL 54, 7; PL 22, 330.Google Scholar

110 See the image of Diogenes Fossor (Boldetti, , Osservazioni [1720] 60, Wilpert, , Le pitture delle catacombe [Rome 1903] 180; Leclercq, , op. cit. 2071 fig. 4606) and of Trophimus Fossor (ibid. 2075 fig. 4609).Google Scholar

111 Leclercq 2081 fig. 4613 (one Constantin … qui fuit architect …); 2085f. fig. 4614 Nr. 8 (one Vincentios) and Nr. 14 (one Castor). The symbol of a triangular, short-handled spade occurs on a Jewish titulus of Villa Torlonia, inscribed (reprod. Journ. of the Palest. Orient. Soc. 15 [1935] 17, fig. 21). The funerary interpretation of it has been put forward by Kaufmann, David, ‘Sens et origine des symboles tumulaires de l’Ancien Testament dans l’Art Chrétien primitif,’ Revue des Études Juives 14 [1933] 217; cp. Krauss, S., ‘Zur Katakombenforschung’ in Festschrift für Berliner (Frankfurt 1903) 204–214. The explanation offered by H. Narkiss (‘The Snuffshovel: a Contribution to the Problem of Jewish Decorative Motives,’ Journ. Palest. Orient. Soc. 15 [1935] 14–19) is far less plausible. The symbol of a curved, rectangular shovel has been found—beside those of the seven-branched candlestick, the shrine for the scrolls of the Law, the palm branch of the feast of Tabernacles, the oil jar, and the ram’s horn trumpet (shophar) blown on the Day of Atonement—in the Jewish catacomb of Beth She ‘arim (the Bήσαρα of Flavius Josephus) excavated in 1937. The funeral inscriptions found there concerning some 400 burials range in their dates from the end of the 2nd to the 4th century A.D.; see Maisler, B. and Schwabe, M., The excavations at Beth She‘arim–Sheikh Abreiq (published by the Jewish Palest. Explor. Soc. Jerusalem 1939; previously summarized Bull. Jew. Palest. Explor. Soc. 5, iii [1937] 1); Maisler, , ‘The Second Campaign of Excavation at Beth She ‘arim, Preliminary Report,’ ibid. 20, fig. 5. These ritual symbols seem to mark the resting place of priests and levites handling them in the course of the synagogue service. The shovel may mark—as the spade certainly does—the grave of a grave-digger or it may be the bronze snuff-shovel or incense-burner, maḫtah (Exod. 25, 38; 37, 23; Num. 4, 9) belonging to the candlestick, examples of which are in the museum of Jerusalem (Quarterly of the Dept. of Antiquities in Palest. 2, 123 Nr. 5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

112 Origenes de la Dominacion Español en America II (Madrid 1918) Appendix p. cccviia Nr. 18.Google Scholar

113 This combination of grave-diggers and Talmud-Thora readers corresponds exactly to the juxtaposition of fossarius and lector in the enumeration of the seven orders of the Church quoted above note 106.Google Scholar

114 In the anniversary volume for the Grand Rabbin de France Lévy, Israel, Revue des Etudes Juives 82 (1926) 425ff.Google Scholar

115 See the late Ḫakham Gaster’s, Moses Dr. Order of Ceremonies of the Society Mikveh Isra'el (London 1899) p. viii: the brotherhood of Lavadores; also pp. 12 and 13; 15; 26; 32. Note on p. 32 the directions for the ceremonial circuits to be performed around the corpse. The same ritual was printed once before in Venice in 1661.Google Scholar

116 Neither the Bodleian nor the British Museum Library nor the library of the London School of Oriental Languages have got Cherezli’s, S. J. Nouveau petit dictionnaire judéo-espagnol-français (Jerusalem 1898–9). D. S. B. Blondheim does not catalogue any Hebrew loan-words used by Ladino-speaking Jews. I have looked in vain through Grünbaum, , Jüdisch-Spanische Crestomathie (Frankfurt 1896); Wagner, , Beiträge (note 97 above); id. ‘Caracteres generales de judeo-español de Oriente,’ Rivista de filologia española 12 (1925); ‘Los dialectos judeo-españoles de Karaferia y Brusa,’ Homenaje a Menendez Pidal II, 193–203. The Biblia medieval romanceada (ed. Buenos Aires 1927) 228 has in Num. 33, 4, where the Hebrew text offers meqabrim (above note 99), the Spanish words ‘Et soterrando los primos nascidos….’ Google Scholar

117 John Lydgate was in Paris in 1426. Laurence Callot’s Remembraunce of a Pedigree—intended to establish the claims of Henry VI to the French throne—was translated, according to the superscription by ‘John the monk of Bury at Parys at the instance of my Lord of Warrewyk,’ evidently before 1431 when Henry VI returned to England from France. In 1433 Lydgate was back in Bury (Warren, , op. cit. note 17 above). The title of Lydgate’s fifteenth-century translation, The daunce of Machabree (Dugdale, W., Monasticum Anglicanum Nr. 3) is said in the prologue to be derived from ‘the Frenche Machabrees Dance.’ In an edition of the French Dance of Death of 1598 the spelling Dance de Machabray is found. Chorier’s edition of 1659 has the title Danse Macabrey. The y at the end is an exact reproduction of the Hebrew plural status constructus or the Aramean plural ending in -ēy (see below note 120). Oudin (1640) has ‘Macabée ou Macabrée’ which shows clearly that he was in doubt about the correct reading of the word as he found it written in a MS text. The 15th-century Parisian print Le petit Laurens, Danse macabrée (Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 7 Nr. 7953) writes the word with double ee at the end. The piece of land called Macabrays (above note 19) may well have been a disused Jewish burial ground. The French family-name Macabré (ibid.), originally des Macabrés, would be of Syrian or Jewish origin and denote originally a member of the Syrian or Jewish burial fraternity.Google Scholar

118 In the Spanish Danza general de la Muerte the speaker is called el predicador (Wackernagel, , op. cit. 318 n. 23).Google Scholar

119 Cf. note 98 above. Seelmann, , op. cit. (note 48) 29 prints these lines after Carbonell’s edition in the following form: ‘Aquesta Dança de la Mort ha compost un sanct home doctore canceller de Paris en lengua francesa appellat Joannes Climachus sive Climages a pregaries de alguns devots religioses franceses,’ As it stands it makes no sense. Mathieu-Nicolas de Clamenges (latinized Clemangius; born at Clamenges—Lat. Clemangia—near Chalons in the Champagne in 1360) came in 1372 to the Collège de Navarre in Paris where his uncle Pierre was proviseur; he had there, among others, Jean Gerson as professor and became in 1393 recteur de l’Académie de Paris; made secretary to pope Benedict XIII, he retired in 1408 to Vallombrosa in Tuscany, returned to France, became treasurer of Langres, archdeacon of Bayeux, and finally returned to the Collège de Navarre in Paris, where he taught from 1425 rhetoric and theology. See Nouv. biogr. gén. 10 (Paris 1854) 643, where a list of his Latin works is given (after Cave, , Historia litt. scriptor. eccles. and Fabricius, , Bibl. lat. med. aet.) ; Medium Aevum 9 (1940) 78; James, Thomas, Ecloga Oxon.-Cantabrig. (London 1600) II, 27; Coville, A., Recherches sur quelques écrits du XIVe et du XVe siècle (Paris 1935) 282; Chesnay, Kath., Medium Aevum 7 (1938) 104. He was never chancellor of the University of Paris and was not called John. Both these characteristics apply, however, to his teacher and friend Jean Charlier de Gerson. Evidently the order of the words has been disturbed by the inadvertence of a copyist and the sentence must have run originally: ‘Aquesta Dança de la Morte ha compost en lengua francesa un sanct home appellat Climachus sive Climages a pregaries de doctore Joannes cancellor de Paris ?per〈 alguns devots religioses franceses’ [viz. for the Franciscans of Saints Innocents who had the ‘Dance of Death’ murals painted—note 188—between August 1425 and Lent 1426, that is in the year when Nicolas de Clamenges started his lectures at the University of Paris]. The hypothesis that Gerson himself composed these verses rests not only on the confused text of this subscription. See Dufour, V., Recherches sur la danse macabre (Paris 1873) 22, quoting from the catalogue of Lille MS 1830: ‘une danse macabre parmi les oeuvres de Gerson, imprimés par Colart Mansion de Bruges, provenant de la Bibliothèque des Dominicains de Lille;’ Ellissen, , op. cit. (note 39) 86 refers to two MSS from Saint-Victor: Bibl. Nat. MS lat. 14904 has, among the Latin treatises and sermons of Gerson, , ‘Dictamina choreae macabrae prout sunt apud Innocentes Parisiis,’ and MS fr. 25540, among the traites français, has ‘La Danse Macabre, prout habetur apud SS. Innocentes.’ But this does not prove that Gerson, rather than his disciple de Clamenges wrote the verses.Google Scholar

120 See Brockelmann, , Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen (Berlin 1908) I, 454e. The plural ending -è characterizes the status emphaticus (sing, ending -ū) corresponding to the English use of the word with the definite article (’asirū ‘the prisoner,’ ‘asirē ‘the prisoners’; taggarū ‘the merchant,’ taggarē ‘the merchants’): meqabrē means ‘the grave-diggers.’ Cp. Theod. Robinson, H., Paradigms and Exercises in Syrian Grammar (Oxford 1915) 19, § 7.Google Scholar

121 Blaise Pascal’s French version of Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus’ docta ignorantia. Google Scholar

122 Lexicon Adlerianum, MS Oxon. (C.C.C.) quoted by Payne-Smith, , Thesaurus Syriacus (Oxonii 1883) II, 3977 s.v. ‘marqōdta.’ The word does not occur in Professor R. A. Bowman’s concordance of published pre-Christian Syrian texts or in unpublished texts of this period known to this eminent authority (letter of Sept. 17, 1943, Chicago). The same applies to Syrian meqaber.—For Βα’αl marqod ‘Lord of the dancing ground’ see note 64 above.Google Scholar

123 Brockelmann, Carl, Lexicon Syriacum (Halis 1928) 743b s.v. ‘marqōdta’ = ‘lamentatio lugubris,’ ‘planctus’ quotes the Peshittō Genes. 50, 10: ‘they mourned [for Jacob] with a great and very sore lamentation’ (marqōdta): Syrus, Ephrem, Opera omnia ed. Benedictus, P., I (Romae 1737) 278D; id. Carmina Nisibena ed. Bickell, (Lipsiae 1866) 75, 44; Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum I (Paris 1890) 189.14; and for the sense ‘contio lugubris’: Vita Rabbulae in Ephremi et aliorum Opera (ed. Oxoniensis, 1865) 207.3; Payne-Smith, , Thes. Syr. loc. cit. note 90c quote marqōdta as the Peshiṭṭō version for Greek θρνος in 1 Macc. 9, 140; for the sense ‘planctus,’ ‘luctus’ Payne-Smith quote Ephrem Syrus II, 273 quater (ed. Bickell, ) 75, 54; John of Ephesus 255.23.Google Scholar

124 See Theod. Robinson, H., op. cit. 11 § 4: ’z’qōpo was a long vowel of the A-class still pronounced occasionally like a in ‘father.’ Google Scholar

125 Readers not conversant with Semitic languages may need to be told that Aramaic and Syrian dē’—a postposited demonstrative placed before the apposition—is only by accident phonetically identical with the Latin and Romance preposition de. The word marcadé survives as a French family name: a renowned lawyer Victor Napoléon Marcadé (born in Rouen 1810, died 1854) founded the Revue critique de législation et de jurisprudence. See Nouvelle biographie nationale 33, 379; Grand Larousse 10 (Paris 1873) 1133a; Grande Encycl. 23, 206. Two French artists, Charles Marcade (d. 1658 at Paris) and Jehan Marcadé, stone-mason (last heard of in 1583) occur in Thieme-Becker, , Künstlerlexikon 24, 56a. In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost the cast contains a Monsieur Marcade, one of the ‘Lords attending on the Princess of France.’ It is he who brings (Act V, Scene 2) the ‘heavy news’ of the death of the King of France, the father of the Princess (ed. Craig, W. J., Oxford 1904, 182). Rue Marcadet and Cité Marcadet on the Montmartre in Paris, named after a fief Marcadé mentioned in La coûtume de Paris in 1580, are well-known to all Parisians as the seat of the telephone exchange for this quarter of the city. See Nouveau dictionnaire historique de Paris (Paris 1904) 918f. The name is either inherited from one of those Syrian professional dancers and dancing masters whom the Romans used to import from Caesarea together with the flute-players (ambubaiae from Syr. ‘abbuba) of Heliopolis-Ba‘albek, the equilibrists of Laodicea and the boxers of the old Philistine towns Gaza and Ascalon (Totius orbis descriptio 32 ed. Car. Müller, M., Geogr. Graeci II; Solari, , op. cit. above note 19) and whom his Latin neighbors would know as a magister or maistre de marcadé (or marcadet); or it is derived from the Syrian name of a place where the ritual dance (marqadtha) was celebrated. Cp. ‘Marchadae, urbs in sino Arabico,’ Pliny N.H. 29, 33 (165); ‘Marcaida, barrio de la provincia de Viscaya, municipio de Munguin’ (Enciclop. Universal 32, 1323a).Google Scholar

126 The Cairo Geniza (Oxford 1947).Google Scholar

127 Turonensis, Gregorius, Hist. Franc. 10, 26 ed. Arndt, and Krusch, , MGH, Scriptores Rer. Meroving. 1 (1885) 438.17–20: ‘Eusebius quidam negotiator genere Syrus datis multis muneribus in locum eius [viz. Ragnemothi, d. 591 A.D.] subrogatus est, hisque accepto episcopatu omnem scolam decessoris sui abiciens Syros de genere suo ecclesiasticae domus ministros statuit.’ A successor of this Eusebius, by name of Simplicius is in office in 601 A.D. as we know from a letter addressed to him by pope Gregory I. See Dom Leclercq in DACL 13 ii, 1846.Google Scholar

128 Gregor. Tur. ibid. 8, 1, p. 326: ‘[Guntramnus rex] cum ad Urbem Aurelianensem venisset processitque in obviam eius immensa turba cum signis atque vexillis canentes laudes. Et hinc lingua Syrorum hinc Latinorum, hinc etiam ipsorum Judaeorum in diversis laudibus varie concrepabat, dicens: Vivat rex’ etc.Google Scholar

129 Ibid. 7, 41 p. 311.13: ‘est hic Burdegalis Sirus Eufron nomine qui de domo sua ecclesiam faciens huius sancti [viz. Sancti Sergii] reliquias collocavit.’ See Bréhier, , op. cit. (note 19) 11 n. 3 and p. 17.Google Scholar

130 Mansi 9, 1015 and 1017, canones 4 and 14; Bréhier, , op. cit. 13 n. 2; Solari, , op. cit. (note 19) 11.Google Scholar

131 Gregor. Tur. Liber in gloriam martyrum: ‘passio eorum quam Siro quodam interprete in Latino transtulimus’ (ed. cit. 552). The name of the interpreter is preserved in a MS quoted by the Bollandists, , Acta Sanctorum for 27th of July p. 391. See Solari, , op. cit. 27 n. 3.Google Scholar

132 Thegano, , Vita Caroli , MGH, Scriptores II, 592; see Solari, , loc. cit. Google Scholar

133 Syria, conquered by the Arabs in the years 634–636, ceased to export men and merchandise to Gaul. The Mediterranean, which had until then been a Roman lake, became in consequence of the conquest of Asia Minor, North Africa, and Spain an unbridged moat and wet ditch between the Occident and the Orient. See Pirenne, Henri, Les villes et institutions urbaines (Paris 1939) I, 316ff.: ‘La décadence commerciale du IXe siècle.’ Google Scholar

134 Diarium regni Caroli VII ad annum MCCCCXXIV quoted by Ducange, (2nd ed.) 5, 161: ‘Cette année fut faite la danse macabré aux Innocents.’ Google Scholar

135 See Grunwald's article in the American Jewish illustrated periodical Menorah (‘The Candle-stick’) 4 (1926) 352 and the other literature quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica 5, 434.Google Scholar

136 In Pressburg (Poszony; Bratislawa) on the Danube the celebration is held on the 17th of Iyyar (Jew. Encyclopedia 6, 299b).Google Scholar

137 Classical scholars will remember that the late Ridgeway, William Sir, The Origins of Tragedy (Cambridge 1910) 38, tried to show that the tragic dances and dramatic plays evolved from them were performed all over the world for the purpose of appeasing the dead.Google Scholar

138 See below notes 213f. on the Italian fragment of a Danse Macabre (fig. 5).Google Scholar

139 Buchheit, , op. cit. 70; see Weber, F. P., op. cit. (note 31) 31ff. and figs. 3 and 4, showing drinking vessels adorned with skeletons and little skeletons to be handed round.Google Scholar

140 The reader will remember the grim humour of the Shakespearean grave-diggers in Hamlet. According to Kastner, , op. cit. 105 n. 1, Shakespeare is supposed to have derived the inspiration for this scene from the painted Dance of Death known to have existed at Stratford on Avon.Google Scholar

141 The picturesque history and folklore of this old Jewish settlement has been described by Rabbi Moritz Herzog in a Hebrew book ’Ōhalenu (Pressburg 1916/7), not accessible in this country. I owe the reference to the author’s cousin, Professor David Herzog, the late Chief Rabbi of Graz in Styria, during the recent war a fellow-exile in Oxford.Google Scholar

142 See I. Schipper’s article ‘Drama (Yiddish),’ Encyclopedia Judaica 6, 19. Other plays about King Ahasver and Esther, Mardokhai and Haman were performed at the festival of Purim. An allegoric play representing the courtship of the ‘Bridegroom of the Law’ was produced on the day of the ‘Joy of the Law’ (Simḫath Thorah) at the end of the week of Tabernacles. There was an apocalyptic play concerning ‘The Man who had been in the other World’ and a play in the course of which the actors propounded riddles to one another (‘Solomon and Hiram’ or ‘Solomon and the Queen of Sheba’).Google Scholar

143 The word, meaning a poem composed of biblical phrases, is a corruption of Greek ποιήτ(ης) vocalised like a Semitic abstract word. The authors of such poems are known as paitanîm (= ποιήται).Google Scholar

144 Epstein, , Miqadmonioth ha-Yehudîm xlv and 128; Jew. Encycl. 7, 203b. The piut is to be recited on the day of the ‘Rejoicing of the Law.’ The text is printed in the Maḫzor Romi (Mantua 1718) 79a and in all Jewish prayer books of the Italian rite. See Schirmer, J., Encycl. Jud. 6, 2.Google Scholar

145 Herod. 4, 147.Google Scholar

146 Malalas, , Chron. (12th ed. Bonn) 77; PG 92, 161.Google Scholar

147 Zunz, , Litteraturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie (Berlin 1865) 74ff.; Ginsburger, , Revue des études juives 73 (1921) 192ff.Google Scholar

148 Wulff, Oskar, Altchristl. und Byzantinische Kunst (Berlin-Potsdam 1914) pl. XXI (Isaiah between ‘Night’ and ‘Dawn’); p. 285 fig. 268 (Moses with the mountain-god of Sinai). See David with the ‘Mountain Bethleem’ as title-page of this Psalter: Eisler, , Orpheus (London 1921) 52 pl. XXIX; Buchthal, Hugo, ‘The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter,’ Studies of the Warburg Institute 2 (London 1936) 23 pls. XII and I. See now Chas. Morey, Rufus, Early Christian Art (Princeton, N. J. 1942) figs. 58–65 to pp. 68–73 and p. 240 s.v. ‘personification.’ Google Scholar

149 Cp. the minuscle text of 1 Macc. 3, 48 and its interpretation in my paper, ‘Deux sculptures de l'antiquité classique représentant des Juifs,’ Aréthuse 7 (1930) fasc. 26 pp. 30f. (overlooked by Professor Morey). See also my review of Leveen, Jacob, The Hebrew Bible in Art (Oxford 1944) in the Hibbert Journal 43 (1944) 96.Google Scholar

150 Eusebius, , Praep. ev. ed. Gaisford 9, 29 § 14. Jewish Encyclop. 5, 320.Google Scholar

151 Levitic. rabba 27.Google Scholar

152 Apocalypse Gedullat Mosheh (Saloniki ca. 1727); Megill. 13b; Mekhilta Beshallah Wajassa 5 (ed. Weiss, 60a); Josephus Antiqq. 4, 8, 49. The reader will remember the apocryphal Ascensio Mosis written in 4 B.C. at the time of the Jewish rebellion following the death of Herod the Great.Google Scholar

153 Sota 13b.Google Scholar

154 Yalqut Deuteron. 94c.Google Scholar

155 The same altercations are found in all the various scenes of the Danse Macabre texts when each person in vain tries to show reason why he or she should be spared for a while.Google Scholar

156 Benedetto in d’Ancona, Alessandro, Origini del teatro italiano (2nd ed. Florence 1877) I, 558; Mühleisen-Arnold, , Der Islam, Germ. ed. by Germann, (Gütersloh 1878) 149.Google Scholar

157 d’Ancona, Al., op. cit. I Nr. xxxii pp. 25–35.Google Scholar

158 The origin of these rhetorical contests (σvγĸρίσειs) can be traced back to Prodikos the Sophist’s ‘Heracles at the Crossroads’ being addressed by Virtue and Vice. The form was adopted by the Cynic and Stoic philosophers for their popular diatribes. The Roman poet Ennius induced his contemporary Novius to compose a Judicium Mortis et Vitae. Medieval compositions of the same kind—the Dialogue between Magister Polycarpus and Death, the Dialogus inter infirmum et Mortem, the anonymous Italian Contrasto del vivo e del morto—are dealt with by Buchheit, , op. cit. 97f. who gives (p. 245) a bibliography of the older literature on the subject, notably Steinschneider, Moritz, ‘Rangstreitliteratur,’ Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad. phil.-hist. Kl. 155 (1908) Nr. 4 on the Arabic and Persian munadsira. On Syrian texts of this kind see below note 176.Google Scholar

159 See Schirmer’s article ‘Drama (Hebrew)’ in the Encyclop. Jud. 6, 2b.Google Scholar

160 Brunet, , Manuel du libraire II, 491; Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 7 (Leipzig 1933) 251 Nr. vi. The text, with the Débat du Corps et de l'Âme, has been published in the Collection de poésies, romans et chroniques vol. 24 (Paris 1858), the Danse macabre des femmes, by Miot-Frochot, P. L. (Paris 1869).Google Scholar

161 There is also a Hebrew prayer (salita) by Josef ben Mathatiah (1343 A.D.) which contains a ‘Contest between the Dead and the Living,’ Buchheit, , op. cit. 95; Steinschneider, , op. cit. 63 Nr. 113.Google Scholar

162 Schirmer, , op. cit. Google Scholar

163 Steinschneider, , op. cit. 79. Cp. ibid. 68 the dialogue with Death in memory of Salomon ben Jesaiah Nizza (after 1728). De Rossi, G. B., Roma sotterranea (Rome 1877) 3, 543 has published a funerary inscription of the 4th or 5th century which takes the form of a dialogue between the grave-digger (fossor) and the reader of the epitaph. This is probably the earliest literary effort of a meqaber in dialogue form.Google Scholar

164 Above at notes 93ff. The Egyptian leading wailing-woman may be compared to the ancient Roman praefica singing the naenia or funeral elegy (laudatio funebris , Polybius 6, 52; PWK 12, 992f. No. 2) to the accompaniment of musical instruments (ad tibias et fides) . Cp. the Etruscan pictures representing harpists and flute-players at the funeral meal, Martha, J., L’art étrusque (Paris 1889) 13f.; Nonius Marcellus 66, 27; Varro, , De lingua latina 7, 70; Festus s.v. ‘naenia.’ The funeral lamentations in Homer’s Iliad 24, 720 led by precentors (άοιδοί θρήνν αρxoι) singing a plaintive song while ‘the women sigh’ and Andromache addresses a funeral oration to her dead husband and her orphaned son, which is continued by Hecuba and Helena, show elements out of which a funeral drama might well have evolved. See also Odyssey 24, 60: the Muses and Nereides lamenting the death of Achilles. Solon (Plutarchus, , Solon 5 and 21) is said to have forbidden θρηνβȋν πεποιημένα, i.e. to celebrate lamentations composed in poetic form. The Greeks considered elaborate mourning ceremonies as barbaric and tried to limit them by law. Carian θρηνωδοί are mentioned by Plato, , Leges 7, 800e (cum scholiis). Hesych. s.v. καρίναι (Pollux 4, 175; Lucian, , De luctu) . The Roman laudatio funebris (Polyb. 6, 52f.) is quite analogous to the ‘adid or enumeration of the merits of the departed by the Egyptian-Arabic wailing woman. See also the Bohemian custom mentioned above note 85. Oriental dramatic funeral rites have been collected by Ridgeway, William Sir, op. cit. (note 137) 94ff. Since then, material has been accumulated about Babylonian wailing-men and wailing-women (lallaru, fem. lallartu, Sumerian lu and ge-me-er) by Ebeling in Ebert, M., Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte 6 (1920) 369; 424 and 427; Frank, , Studien zur babylon. Religion (Leipzig 1911) 47.Google Scholar

165 Erman, A., Literatur der Aegypter (Leipzig 1923) 122ff. Engl. transl. by Blackman, A. M. (London 1927) 86. See above note 94 on the survival of an old Egyptian name of the Dance of Death or of ‘dying’ and on early Egyptian funeral dances.Google Scholar

166 It survives to this day among various primitives. See Thurnwald in Ebert’s Reallex. 13, 38 about a dance around the funeral pyre, accompanied by the recital of songs and poems (Thurnwald, , Forschungen auf den Salomonsinseln und dem Bismarckarchipel [1912] 307f.) The funeral lament is guided by a precentor of the male participants and a woman leader of the wailing-women (op. cit. 388b). The mourners conduct a search for the departed dead, exactly like the search for the departed Moses by his mother Jokhebed, in the course of which songs in praise of the dead are sung and his deeds of valor are dramatically re-enacted, naval mock battles in canoes are staged (op. cit. 389a). These ceremonies were called ‘praising and honoring the dead’ (Weeks, , Dreissig Jahre am Kongo [1914] 77f.). In San Cristoval (Thurnwald, , op. cit. § 37) the men assemble after the funeral in the house of the dead to relate a certain story about the diwi-bird, the snake, and the bamboo sprout, then they call out into the dark the name of the departed, and get in reply voices calling out the names of those who are going to die next (Fox, , The Threshold of the Pacific [1924] 213; Karsten, , ‘Ceremonielle Spiele unter den Indianern Amerikas,’ Acta Acad. Ahoensis, Litt. Human. 1, 4 [1920]).Google Scholar

167 It seems characteristic that the original German (Jewish) Franco-Latin Danse Macabre has no figure corresponding to the Rabbi about to meldar (above, note 97) in the Spanish Danza de la Muerte. It would seem that the original Jewish text expected the Jewish audience to rejoice about merciless Death overpowering emperors, kings, dukes, counts, knights, bishops, priests, burghers, etc.—in other words, all their gentile enemies—and to forget for the moment that Jews too must die and be buried. It cannot be overlooked that all the Dance of Death pantomimes, pictures and verses—not unlike the medieval works of art representing the Last Judgement and showing popes and bishops, kings and nobles among the damned swallowed by the maw of hell—satisfy a feeling of what Nietzsche called ressentiment against the existing powers, best expressed by the inscription on the charnel-house of Little Basle: ‘Hie richt got nach dem rechten/Die herren liegen bij den knechten/Nu merket hïe bî/Welcher herr oder knecht gewesen sî.’ Serfs are shown rejoicing over the death of their lord in the fresco of Clusone celebrating the egualezza della morte. Google Scholar

168 Buchheit, , op. cit. 98.Google Scholar

169 Op. cit. 32.Google Scholar

170 The Paris Cimetière des Innocents, on the walls of which the famous Danse Macabre was painted in the fifteenth century, belonged to the Franciscan Couvent des Saints Innocents, cp. Seelmann, , op. cit. (note 48) 58. The Franciscan friars were the eager rivals of the Dominicans and no effective device adopted by the Blackfriars would escape the attention of the fratres minores. On the friendly and unfriendly relations between Jews, Franciscans, and Dominicans see the article ‘Friars’ in the Jewish Encyclopedia 5, 510b.Google Scholar

171 Roth, Cecil, Venice (Jewish Communities Series; Philadelphia 1930) 201f. Cp. above note 125 about the Syrian dancers and dancing-masters imported by the Romans from the Levant. In the professional qualifications of a dancer it could not make much difference whether he was a Christian or remained in a conservative synagogue.Google Scholar

172 Jewish Encyclop. 6, 106; Encyclop. Judaic. 7, 716. He was born before 1440 and is mentioned in the Liber ballorum (1460) of his master Domenico di Ferrara, who speaks of dances composed by him and a certain Giuseppe Ebreo. The famous humanist Mario Filelfo (1426–1480) praised Guglielmo in a special poem. See Kinkeldey, O. in the Gedenkschrift for Freydus (1929) 339–372, where the older literature is given.Google Scholar

173 ed. Zambrini, F. (Bologna 1873); a second edition by Messori-Boncuglia (1885). Cp. Steinschneider, M., Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 42 (1898) 419.Google Scholar

174 Roth, Cecil, op. cit. 60.Google Scholar

175 ed. Barbéra, 423.Google Scholar

176 There are traces of a Syrian funeral poetry in dramatic dialogue form. Ephrem Syrus (4th cent.) used the form of the mad(h) ràshū—the archetype of the Byzantine κοντάκιoν—for his funeral dirges. The second part of his Carmina Nisibena contains in Nrs. 52–68 a cycle of ‘Dialogues between Death and the Devil’ (cp. above notes 157ff.). Nrs. 43–51 and 66–77 are canticles (sôghîthē) about the resurrection of the dead and the miseries of dying. Among the poems doubtfully attributed to Ephrem are mad(h) ràshē and mentrē (poetic orations) of the defunct about the terrors of the day of judgement. Narses composed pàsōqē of the defunct. See Baumstark, Anton, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der christl. paläst. Texte (Bonn 1922) 39, 42, 46 and Duval, Rubens, La littérature syriaque (Paris 1900) 21, quoting the biographer of Ephrem who tells us that the saint, seeing the addiction to music of the people of Edessa, provided choirs and hymns dealing, among other things, with penitence and the fate of the departed, and which he himself accompanied on the harp, ‘to replace the games and dances of the young’ (cp. above note 79 on Matth. 11, 16f.); ibid. p. 24 on the little dramatic poems written by Narses: dialogues between the Blessed Virgin and the Kings from the East for Epiphany; between Mary and the archangel Gabriel for Annunciation Day; all of them ministering to the ineradicable love for the mimus, innate in the Syrian.Google Scholar

177 ed. de Pauw, Napoleon (Gand 1889) 67, verses 14–15, quoted by Huet, Gédéon, op. cit. (above note 3) 162. See also note 44 above on the Dance of Death performed at Caudebec in 1393.Google Scholar

178 Wackernagel, , op. cit. (above note 30) 335 n. 124, after Hilscher, , Beschreibung des Totentanzes in Dresden (Dresden and Leipzig 1705) 12.Google Scholar

179 Hilscher, , op. cit. 10f.Google Scholar

180 Wackernagel loc. cit.: ‘Blass wie der Tod am Fahnen.’ Google Scholar

181 Both Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein designed and engraved coats of arms for Death, being imagined as a knight in arms—unless these designs are intended for the use of one of the various families called Tod, Todd, Tot, Totleben or the like. See Lippmann, F., The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein reproduced from proofs and originals (London 1886) fig. xl, ‘Die Wappen des Tots.’ Google Scholar

182 Opere (ed. Firenze, 1822) 3, 55–57.Google Scholar

183 See Nouvelle biographie générale 9 (1854) 827 s.v. ‘Charles V’: ‘son nom de Sage a été expliqué par savant.’ Google Scholar

184 See note 44 above.Google Scholar

185 See notes 134 above, 188 below.Google Scholar

186 The outline given by Jubinal, , op. cit. (above note 4) has now been superseded by the photographic reproductions in Mâle, , op. cit. (above note 20) 372 figs. 215ff.Google Scholar

187 The same motif recurs in the Duke of Berry’s picture (below note 196) and in Valvasor’s Theatrum mortis (below note 211 and fig. 4). It may well be derived from the old Anglo-Norman Jeu d’Adam et Eve, recently translated into French by Prof. Gustave Cohen and played by the Théophiliens (Groupe de théatre médiéval de la Sorbonne).Google Scholar

188 Dufour, Abbé Valentin, La danse macabre des Saints Innocents … (above note 3); Ellissen, , op cit. (above note 39) 81. The entire Journal was published by Mary (Paris 1929). The relevant passage is on p. 188.Google Scholar

189 If this was so, the lay brothers of the Franciscan convent would be the grave-diggers who excavated the tombs on this main cemetery of medieval Paris.Google Scholar

190 Ellissen, , op. cit. 84.Google Scholar

191 (Paris 1653) 674, notes.Google Scholar

192 Wackernagel, , op. cit. 336.Google Scholar

193 de Quincy, Quatremère, ‘Mémoire sur le Kitâb-al-agâni,’ Journ. Asiat. 3e série 6 (1838) 502–503: King Noman taking a walk outside the city of Hirah accompanied by the poet ‘Adi-ben Zaid passed alongside some tombs between the outskirts of the town and the river. Said Adi to the King: ‘May the evil omen be kept away from you! Do you know what these sepulchres say? … Lo! O you who banded together in a caravan, gallop over the ground and proceed rapidly! We have been what you are and one day you will be what we are.’ See Künstle, , Die Legende der Drei Lebenden und der Drei Toten und der Totentanz (Freiburg i. Br. 1908) 112. Cp. above note 163 on the epitaph with the dialogue between the fossor and the reader of this early Christian funerary inscription.Google Scholar

194 Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 7, 251. This edition contains among other additions the Dits des trois Morts et des trois Vifs, a Poeme de l’Éternité and the Débât du Corps et de l’Âme discussed above at n. 160ff.Google Scholar

195 1 Cor. 15, 55f.: ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin….’ Cp. below, note 204.Google Scholar

196 Cp. the same feature in the introductory group of Adam and Eve in the Danse Macabre of the Chaise-Dieu (above note 187) and see Walter de Mapes’ (Landsdown MS 391, Ellissen op. cit. 24) Lamentatio et deplorado pro morte et consilium de vivente Deo: ‘Gustato pomo missus transit sine morte/heu missa sorte labitur omnis homo.’ Google Scholar

197 Recherches sur la danse macabre (Paris 1873) 22.Google Scholar

198 Stow, John, Survey of London (1598; quoted by Warren, Florence op. cit. [note 17] xxi): ‘About this cloyster was artificially and richly painted the dance of Machabray or dance of Death the like SS. Innocents of Paris’; Dallaway, J., Discourse on Architecture in England (London 1833) 137: ‘The Dance of Macabrey, Holbein’s Dance of Death, was painted on the walls of the cloister.’ The paintings had, of course, nothing to do with Holbein although they may have inspired the great artist’s woodcuts (on which see Clark, J. M., The Dance of Death by Hans Holbein, London 1947, with a bibliography on pp. 123ff.).Google Scholar

199 The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knight, sometimes Lord Chauncellor of England, written by him in the English tongue printed at London at the costs and charges of John Cawod, John Valy and Richard Tottel (Anno 1557) fol.77r: ‘The remembrance of death,’ col. a in margin: ‘The daunce of Poules. If we not only here this word death but also let sink into our heartes the very fantasye and depe imaginacion thereof we shall percieve that we were never so gretly moved by the beholding of the daunce of death pictures in Poules as we shall fele our self stered and altered by the feeling of that imaginacion in our hertes. And no marvel. For those pictures express only ye earthely figure of our dead bony bodies bitten away ye flesh. Which though it be ugly to behold’ etc. Cp. Delcourt, J., ‘Saint Thomas More and France,’ Traditio 5 (1947) 287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

200 See figs. 1 and 2. Above the wood-cuts the verses of the Latin Vado mori poem are printed in the version discussed by Storck, , Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 42 (1910) 426ff.Google Scholar

201 All these editions are minutely described in the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 7, 250–258 Nrs. 7943–7957.Google Scholar

202 See the literature quoted in the preceding notes; a bibliography, reaching up to 1913, has been compiled by Dürrwächter, A., ‘Die Totentanzforschung,’ Festschrift für Georg von Hertling (Kempten and München 1913) I, 390ff. See now Müller, Werner Y., Der Luzerner Totentanz von Jacob von Wyl (Zurich 1942 with 15 plates); Leu, Burkart, Luzerner Totentanz oder Spiegel menschlicher Hinfälligkeit welche von Wyl gemalt im ehemaligen Jesuitenkloster in Luzern auf bewahrt werden. Gedr. nach Originallithographien von Gebr. Egli in Luzern (Rud. Jenni 1843). Hilber, P., Der Totentanz auf der Spreuerbruecke, Luzern. The Dance of Death on the Muehlen-bruecke at Lucerne (Lucerne 1937 with 49 reprod.). Caspar Meglinger painted a Triumph of Death in Stift Beromünster.Google Scholar

203 Taken from the copy in the Bodleian (Douce M.M. 698) of La Grande Danse Macabre des hommes et des femmes (Troyes, Nicolas Le Rouge 1491). It is unpaged, the pages are numbered in Douce’s handwriting. Reprod. from the British Museum copy (Marchant 1491/2) in Hind, Arthur M., Introduction to the History of Woodcut (London 1935) II, 644 fig. 389.Google Scholar

204 Cp. Psalm 7, 13: ‘he has prepared for him the instruments of death, he ordained his arrows.’ Cp. Ps. 64, 7. For the arrow symbolizing the sting of Death see above, note 195.Google Scholar

205 See Kastner, Georges, op. cit. pl. V fig. 30, reprod. after the Danse Macabre in small folio printed by Antoine Verard Paris, described ibid. p. 164: ‘Le squelette tient dans sa main gauche une sorte de bêche ou de pelle de fossoyeur qu’il porte en renversée.’ Google Scholar

206 Now Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris Nr. 7310; reprod. Kastner, , op. cit. pl. V fig. 31.Google Scholar

207 Reprod. in the bibliographical Appendix to L’Imitation de Jésus Christ (Paris 1858) by Jules Janin, the Abbé Delaunay and Ferdinand Denis, Conservateur of the Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève. See Soleil, , Les heures gothiques et la littérature pieuse au 15e et 16e siécles (Rouen 1882).Google Scholar

208 This French, M.A. and licencié en décret also wrote Confession généralle en rime appellée l’avertissement de conscience (Paris 1506 in 4°).Google Scholar

209 See Hind, A. M., op. cit. (note 203) II, 670 fig. 411. Our fig. 3 is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Hind and by courtesy of Messrs. Constable & Co.Google Scholar

210 Hind, A. M., op. cit. II, 669 n. 2; Gordon Duff, E., The First Two Books Printed in the Scottish Language (Edinburgh, Bibliograph. Society 1892–3).Google Scholar

211 Reprod. after Kastner, , op. cit. pl. IV fig. 27. Cp. also De Bry’s title-page to Boissard, J. J., Theatrum vitae humanae (Metz 1596) showing various scenes of the Dance of Death, at the bottom Death as grave-digger. There is a drawing by Albrecht Dürer (Lippmann 794 = L.359 vol. VII ed. Winkler, , Berlin 1929) showing Death with a shovel confronting a bishop with his two acolytes.Google Scholar

212 Another representation of the Dance of Death on the stage is shown on an engraving in Urbino’s, Urbano Kabinettskalender (Nuremberg 1688) reproduced by Theod. Hampe, , Die fahrenden Leute (Steinhausen’s Monographien zur Kulturgeschichte; Leipzig 1902) 112.Google Scholar

213 Reprod. after Hind, Arthur M., Early Italian Engravings, a Critical Catalogue with Complete Reproductions of all Prints Described (London, Quaritch 1938) II, pl. 104 (A.ii.18); by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum and the Keeper of the Dept. of Prints.Google Scholar

214 There is an Italian mural painting of the danza macabre at Clusone near Bergamo, dated 1485, reproduced in Neri’s, Ferdinando article ‘Danza macabra,’ Enciclopedia Italiana 12 (1931) 369. See also Vallardi, , Trionfo e Danza della Morte (Milan 1859); Vigo, , Danza della Morte (Bergamo 1901).Google Scholar

215 Cp. notes 108, 138 above.Google Scholar

216 Note the French ending, characteristic of the dialect of Milan.Google Scholar

217 Thus in the biographical article in Zedler’s, Universallexikon 33, 2059. Galeazzo, a friend of Willibald Pirckheimer while the latter studied in Pavia, was sent to Paris to incite Charles VIII to wage war against Naples (1495); commanded in 1499—with disastrous results—the Milanese army against the French; was captured in 1500 by the French; brought to France, where Louis XII released him and made him his Master of the Horse. He took an expeditionary force of Swiss mercenaries to Italy (1522) and fell in the battle before Pavia in 1525. See Aless. Cutola, , art. ‘Sanseverino,’ Enciclopedia Italiana 30, 754b.Google Scholar

218 See Giov. Batt. Picozzi, art. ‘Sforza,’ Enciclopedia Italiana 31 (1936) 572b: ‘Bianca Giovanna, la giovannissima e gentile figlia naturale del Moro (1482-c.1496) con una unione presto sprezzata della morte (1496) pareva assicurare la fedeltà di Galeazzo Sanseverino.’ Google Scholar

219 His portrait by Jacopo Barbari is reproduced at the end of Hans Rupprich’s book, Willibald Pirckheimer und die erste Reise Dürers nach Italien (Vienna 1930) 23. There are autograph-letters of Galeazzo to Pirckheimer in the Pirckheimer papers of the Nuremberg City Library Nr. 421, dated 26 July 1504; February or March 1507. See Reicke, Emil, ‘Dürer und Pirckheimer,’ Fränkische Monatshefte 7 (1928) 152.Google Scholar

220 See above p. 191 the quotation from Chateaubriand and above note 167 on the leveller’s ressentiment actuating this sort of compensatory day-dreaming.Google Scholar