La Danse Macabre, The Men
Monk and Usurer. To the right: The usurer's unnamed customer.
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We know the text from a number of manuscripts from the 15th century
and the text is surprisingly stable. Naturally there are deviations in single words between the various sources,
but the participants are the same, arrive in the same order and speak the same
lines.(1)
The participants have the same titles in all the various sources,
e.g. Le patriarche and Le connestable.(2)
However there are few exceptions:
The usurer's customer is called
"Le povre", "Le poure homme", "Lomme qui emprunte" and even "Lacteur".
In the same way the dead king is usually called "Le roy mort" or "Vng roy mort",
but sometimes he is described instead:
"Vng roy mort tout nu couchie en uers" ("A dead king totally nude lying on his back") or
"Le roy mort que vers mignent" ("The dead king, whom the worms burrow").
The authority at the end is usually called "Lacteur",
but also "Machabre docteur" and
"ung maistre qui est au bout de la dance" ("a master, who is at the end of the dance").
The astrologer also alternates between named "Lastrologien" and
"Le maistre".
The halberdier and fool only appear in the (later) printed books.
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This could indicate that a few of the figures had no titles on the mural,
so that each writer had to resort to a description instead.
If this is correct, it means that the scribes must have checked the other dancers
by consulting the painting in St. Innocents.(3)
In 1485 Guy Marchant published the text for the first time illustrated with large, elegant woodcuts,
and somewhat paradoxically it was only from now on that the text was fundamentally changed.
Only a few months later Marchant expanded the text extensively.
He added
the four dead musicians at beginning,
ten extra men
(legate, duke,
school master, soldier,
promotor, jailor,
pilgrim, shepherd,
halberdier and fool (picture to the left)),
and
the final authority
was allotted one more verse.
At the same time the book was padded with mote poems about the transitoriness of life.
With less than a year the text had been expanded into two volumes that also included
the women's dance. The text had by now grown from
simply reproducing the 30 men
from St. Innocent's cemetery to become a "Mirror of Salvation":
Miroer Salutaire.
On the present website, the 1486-edition has been written below all the male dancers.
Authority
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Musicians
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Pope and emperor
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Cardinal and king
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Legate and duke
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Patriarch and constable
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Archbishop and knight
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Bishop and esquire
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Abbot and bailiff
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Astrologer and citizen
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Canon and merchant
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Schoolmaster and soldier
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Carthusian and sergeant
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Monk and usurer
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Physician and suitor
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Lawyer and minstrel
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Parish priest and peasant
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Promoter and jailor
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Pilgrim and shepherd
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Franciscan monk and child
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Clerk and hermit
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Halberdier and fool
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Authority and dead king
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Three living
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Three dead
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Women
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Chorea ab Eximio
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Chorea ab Eximio
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Authority 1491
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Musicians
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Authority 1528
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Authority 1531
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La grant danse
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La grant danse
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Resources on this website
Footnotes:
(1)
(2)
(3)
As a comparison one can take the dance of death in Lübeck.
In the 18th and 19th century in a city
where the level of education was high and the painting was fully accessible,
there were still great deviations between the various publications,
and the author himself seems to have deviated most.
See for instance the three versions of the clerc and
the many variants of the child.
As far as I know, the first to point this out was Hanno Wijsman in the article
"
La Danse macabre du cimetière des Saints-Innocents et un manuscrit de Philippe le Bon".
I have expounded on the subject here:
Headlines and titles.
Dances of death
Danse macabre
The men