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Death to all | |
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To dussem dantse rope ik al gemene |
To this dance I bid you all. |
Death to the pope | |
Her pawes, du byst hogest nu |
Highest of this graded line, |
English version © Jack Freckleton-Sturla, 2021. The following is a more literal translation:
Death to all |
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I call everybody to this dance |
Death to the pope |
Mr pope, you are the highest now, |
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The text is from the fragment in Tallinn, except for Death's first 4 lines, which also survive from Lübeck.
The dance of death in the Marienkirche in Lübeck. started on the west wall of the chapel.
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In contrast to Lübeck, where Death plays the fife, Death plays a bagpipe in Tallinn, either to make the scene more gruesome, or because bagpipes are known to be able to wake the dead.
There is a certain similarity between the start of the dance in Tallinn and the even older dance of death in Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, France. This was pointed out as early as 1897 by Alexander Goette (Holbeins Totentanz und seine Vorbilder, p. 38). Hellmut Rosenfeld produced the drawing to the left for his book from 1968 (Der mittelalterliche Totentanz, picture 21), where Death also plays the bagpipe.
The problem with this interesting theory is that Rosenfeld's drawing deviates markedly from the drawing that he has copied. Achille Jubinal published Explication de la Danse des Morts de la Chaise-Dieu in 1841, and had personally seen this part of the mural before it perished. The sitting person is not a corpse, and probably isn't holding a bagpipe. One wonders why Rosenfeld had to copy Jubinal's drawing by hand. Hadn't the photocopier been invented back in 1968?
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In Lübeck, Death does not play the bagpipe, but the fife (picture to the left).
At least this was true for the copy that
Wortmann painted in 1701.
On the other hand, the feathery hat was not typical for the hat fashion
in 1463,
so the question is (again), how close Wortmann's copy was to the original.
The next Death starts the procession by calling the pope to the dance. Death carries a coffin on his shoulder, just like he does in La Danse Macabre (to the right) and the many derived dances.
Footnotes: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
In the dances of death, this "honour" is usually reserved for the pope.
Loosing and binding . . .: Compare with Jesus' words to Peter the Apostle: "And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matthew 16,19).
"To bind" means to make unlawful, and "to loose" means to make lawful. The pope is a successor of Peter the Apostle, so what it means, in effect, is that whatsoever rules the pope maketh up shall receive the Divine rubberstamp of instant approval.
Literally: "You will now become a stranger to highness".
"gast" would normally mean "quest, but the Indo-European root of the word is "ghostis", which meant "stranger".