Copenhagen's Dance of Death is based on the two German books Des dodes dantz and Dodendantz. The 30 participants follow in the exact same order as in Dodendantz (except that the Danish translator got confused and switched the order of the nurse and the journeyman). Several lines are direct translations and a few lines are even copied un-translated in Low German!
The book is illustrated with the same woodcuts as the
German books. This is because the printer, Hans Vingaard, had
bought some printing materials from the German Mohnkopf-printery,(1) which
included the original wooden blocks and, presumably, a copy of the 2 German books.
The unknown author hasn't just made a Danish copy of the German manuscripts - no more
than the Lübeckian manuscripts are transcripts of the painting in Marienkirche.
The Catholic Church
- especially the pope -
are blasted in plain speaking.
On the other hand, Death being a good Protestant, promises the pious parish clerk that he will go directly to
"a holy city".
One can sense that the Reformation is close at hand.
Copenhagen's Dance of Death is conceived as a theatre play. The prologue starts with "my dear friends"
and the audience is requested to be quiet and listen. Then Death calls on people from the different classes and
leads them one by one into his
"castle", which we may imagine has been a prop built on stage.
There is only one single, surviving copy
and this is defective with pages missing.
- therefore we know neither
when it was printed nor
the original title.
In 1896 the book was re-published by Raphael Meyer who added an introduction and annotations.
In 1634 Dødedantz was published. This book contains the same text (apart from minor variations in spelling). This means that we can almost re-create the missing pages in Copenhagen's Dance of Death by taking the text from Dødedantz and the illustrations from the Lübeckian books. For reasons unknown to me, Dødedantz has been unknown for centuries so this is the first time that Copenhagen's Dance of Death has been restored in any media.
The entire book is available in the Danish section (click the flag in the top, right corner) and some of the pages are translated into English (I hope), namely page openings 1 through 11 and 35. Most of the annotations are copied from Meyer. Click on the list to the left or the little pictures.
