Mors de la Pomme, Fall of man

Fall of man

En signe du mors de la pomme

"Dévotes louanges à la Vierge Marie" by Martial d'Auvergne.
Adam pinches his throat.

Adam — and to a lesser degree Eva — grabs his throat after having eaten the forbidden fruit. This is related to a "sign of mors de la pomme" mentioned in the book of hours on the left.

In this case, it's not a wordplay, "Mors / Mort", but rather an etiological tale that explains why men have an Adam's apple.

According to the book "Dévotes louanges à la Vierge Marie" by Martial d'Auvergne, Adam regretted his sin and tried to squeeze his throat to prevent the apple from getting further down. Therefore, all of Adam's male descendants bear this sign:

»Et adoncques il print la peau / De sa guorge pour le fruict sourdre / Et arresta du doy le mourseau / Affin qu'il ne passast plus oultre. Et pour ce pechié, chacun homme / Despuis Adam la genealogie / En signe du mors de la pomme / En porte ung neu dessobz la guorge« "and thus he grabbed the skin / of the throat to make the fruit flow up / and stopped with his finger the bite / so that it would not go any further. / And for this sin every man / who is descended from Adam / as a sign of the bite of the apple / bears a knot under his neck".

The subtil serpent tells how it tricked Eve to make Adam eat from the apple.

The illustration shows how Death enters the World the instant Adam has taken a bite of the apple. This is in contrast to Holbein (see next page), where Death awaits outside of Paradise.

Footnotes: (1)

Dances of death Various Mors de la Pomme Fall of man