La Danse Macabre
The authority / author introduces the dance.
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The first dance of death in the world was probably the mural in the
Cimetière des Innocents in Paris.
It was this dance that Lydgate translated into English,
and it may be called the mother of all
dances of death.(1)
When the preacher in Lübeck / Tallinn
starts with, »Och redelike creatuer«, and
the preacher in Heidelberg's block book starts with,
»O deser werlde weysheit kint«,
they point back to the Danse Macabre in Paris, where the authority (to the left) starts his admonition with
»O creature roysonnable«.
The dance on the wall of Cimetière des Innocents was painted between August 1424
and the Lent of 1425.
This was a relatively quiet period in the 100 Years War - and both text and pictures are full of satire and slapstick.
The portly abbot is told that the fattest person is the first to rot:
»Le plus gras est premier pourry«.
Death makes eyes(!) at the chevalier and tugs the urineglass-carrying physician by his crotch.
We are not told, however, whether the dance started at the beginning of the 40 days,
along with the carnival antics, or whether the skinny cadavers were introduced during the fasting.
Franciscan monk and child
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Not only is la Danse Macabre the world's first dance of death, but for all we know
it made its appearance fully developed and complete with
an authority to introduce the dance,
and 30 couples, who start with pope and emperor, and follow a strict hierarchical sequence
with alternating clergy and secular participants.
The dance is finished by a dead king and another authority,
who deliver the moral of the poem.
Except for the dead king, which the French have kept for themselves,
this is the model followed by all other dances of death.
The 67 verses all have 8 lines and the rhymes follow the pattern
A, B, A, B, B, C, B, C.
The last line is always some sort of motto.
The bigot woman and the fool
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In contrast to the other dances of death there are no women in la Danse Macabre,
but there is another — slightly younger — text, where all the dancers are women.
This poem is very aptly named La Danse Macabre des Femmes,
and we know it from a handful of manuscripts, where 30-32 women are participating.
Guy Marchant also published this text in 1486, and he streamlined it
to follow the same model as the men's dance with four musicians at the beginning
and a dead queen at the end.
Five years later, in 1491, he had commissioned woodcuts for all the women,
who by now numbered 36.
Guy Marchant must have hit a trend with this 60 years old text,
for copies were soon to appear.
Not just in Paris:
Petit Laurens, Nicole de la Barre and
Antoine Vérard, but also in other cities like
Troyes,
Rouen,
Geneva and
Lyon.
Even books with pious prayers were decorated with
the 30 men and 36 women, viz. the books of hours published by
Simon Vostre,
Guillaume Godard,
Thielman Kerver,
Jean de Coulonces,
Jacobinus Suigus and
Marcus Reinhart.
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This section is dedicated to Michael J. Hurst, author of
pre-Gébelin Tarot History,
who gave me the impetus and encouragement to begin this task.
Dance well, my friend.
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Translations
On these pages I present those texts and images that are available on the Internet.
Unfortunately there are not nearly as many as one would think.
One thing that is not offered here, is a translation of the text.
The text has been translated many times, and several of these can be found on the Net.
La danse macabré des charniers des Saints Innocents à Paris by Edward Frank Chaney, 1945.
If Google Books is in a good mood, almost the entire translation of the men's dance can be read.
Despite the title, the book is based on
Le Roux de Lincy & Tisserand's text, which is a copy of
Louis-Catherine Silvestre's.
Der tanzende Tod by Gert Kaiser, 1983, pages 70-107.
German translation of the text from the 1485 edition.
The Danse Macabre: Printed by Guyot Marchant, 1485
by David A Fein. A (free) subscription to the Internet Archive is necessary.
The fifteenth-century Catalan translation of the French Danse macabre by Alina Zvonareva.
The main subject is an old Catalan translation, but the document also contains a critical version
and translation of Ms. Lat. 14904.
La Danse macabre - transcription and translation by Elizaveta Strakhov (translator, editor) and Megan L. Cook (editor).
The main subject is the English dance of death at St. Paul's Cathedral,
but there is also an English translation of the MS BNF fonds français 14989.
»John Lydgate, The Dance of Death, and its model, the French Danse Macabre«, 2021.
Pages 171-193 are a modern translation by Sophie Oosterwijk.
The Danse Macabre of Women: Ms. Fr. 995 of the Bibliothèque Nationale by Ann Tukey Harrison with a translation of the women's dance. Parts of the book can be read on
Google Books, but obviously one could buy it as well.
Resources
La Danse Macabre of Paris
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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La danse macabre des femmes
Authority
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Musicians
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Queen and Duchess
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Regent and Knight's wife
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Abbess and noblewoman
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Prioress and young woman
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Citizen and widow
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Merchant's wife and bailiff's wife
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Bride and darling wife
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Virgin and theologian
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Newly-wed and pregnant woman
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Chambermaid and housekeeper
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Spinster and Franciscan Nun
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Hospitable woman and wetnurse
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Shepherdess and crutches
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Peasant woman and old woman
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Resales woman and suitoress
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Midwife and young girl
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Nun and witch
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Bigot woman and fool
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Authority and dead queen
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Footnotes:
(1)
»It is this French mural that appears to have been the origin of all later artistic examples of a medieval motif that has proved to be as inspirational as no other from this period«.
(Hartmut Freytag in the preface to Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2011)
For details about "date" and "dating", see the top of this page: Dating the Danse Macabre.
The dance of death
La Danse macabre in Paris