The Art of Dying

Plate from ‘The Art of Living Well, and of Dying Well’, from the Library of Congress

The Black Death had a significant impact on the church.  The priesthood suffered as many deaths as any other part of society: of the 600 bishops, 230 died during the plague, 13 “disappeared” and there are 20 who cannot be accounted for.  These senior clergymen would have been relatively isolated by comparison with the huge majority of the priests.  They were expected to give last rites and hear a final confession for the dying, which meant being exposed to the disease.  It reached the point that the priests simply refused to visit the sick, which would have been a real problem for a deeply religious culture: without a final confession, would they miss their place in the afterlife?

To make matters worse, the lost priests needed to be replaced, and to do that the church had to lower their standards.  They ordained many people who would have been passed over in the past, people who had limited understanding of the faith they represented.  And, of course, this compounds the problem of having so many people dying: more people than ever needed last rites, but if you actually managed to get a priest to visit they may not know what needs to be done.

People had to take matters into their own hands, and to do that they needed instructions on what was expected.  To fill that need came the Ars Moriendi, the Art of Dying.  These were books that set out what a dying person should do, what temptations they should resist, what prayers they should make to give them passage into heaven.

Devils tempt a dying man with crowns, via Wikipedia

These books were particularly popular with the growing middle-class, who could both read and afford to buy the book.  The advice in the books may also have become part of the noblesse oblige, the duty that the lords had to care for their serfs.  In the absence of priests, it was the responsibility of a lord to guard his serfs’ souls.  The church didn’t exactly sanction these texts and they weren’t responsible for making them.  After all, the church wasn’t known for giving away something that kept them important in their society.

Suppose in your game world that the dominant religion has been struck by a catastrophe, something that prevents them from aiding all of their faithful.  The gap is filled by unofficial books of religious instructions.  Perhaps these books are incorrect, even malicious – what if they were written to deceive people and that by following them they are participating in something terrible?

[You can see more about the Ars Moriendi in this paper at the University of Ottawa]

The Dance of Death

The Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut, via Wikipedia

The Great Plague was an indiscriminate killer.  Certainly it affected the poor (especially the urban poor) the most, but the wealthy, the nobility, and the clergy were not spared.  Nowadays there are differences in the quality of medical care that the wealthy would have access to, but 600 years ago the only advantage they had was being able to flee an outbreak.  It was a great leveller: rich and poor alike could be victims to it.

This gave rise to image and tales of the Dance of Death: Death leading leading people of all walks of life, from emperors and popes to peasants and children, to the grave.  Frequently it would show living people being taken by the hand by skeletons, as if in a dance, while Death plays a flute.

Image from Antiquarian Booksellers Assoc.

One thing that’s striking about these images is that the tone is not altogether morbid.  The message may be “no one will be spared, death is inevitable”, but the skeletons seem to be laughing, positively jubilant.  Even the victims don’t see terribly upset; perhaps when it’s time for you to go, it would be best to have one last dance before the end.

So here’s an option to add to our games: a death-cult with a sense of humour.  So many times the death imagery that appears in a game is of a very simple sort – everything’s bleak and horrible, the clergy are all sombre and/or insane.  Instead, they could have a rather dark sense of humour, that they “remember that the last laugh is on you” (and they could be insane and have a sense of humour).

For that matter, the Danse Macabre was a Christian image used to encourage people to prepare themselves for death.  They weren’t worshipping death, just reminding people that it was inevitable.  So take a look at the pantheon in your favourite setting and ask which of the gods might want to remind people that “death comes as an end”.