| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 歷史研究所 === 95 === From the beginning of the fifteenth century, death seemed to have become the great source of inspiration. In the fifteenth century the image of death was to be seen everywhere. The sixteenth century went even farther than fifteenth. Even a rapid overview of Western funerary iconography from the Greco-Roman era to our own times immediately reveals that the representation of decomposing bodies, of skeletons, and of danses macabres only dominated the scene for a relatively brief period of 300 years. Even a rapid overview of the macabre of this period could not neglect the vast number of scenes representing martyrdom and massacre. Why this explosion of a morbid aesthetic as of the middle of the fourteenth century?
When the plague returned with a vengeance in 1348 and devastated a good part of continent for four years, a third of all Europeans perished. Moreover, just when these epidemics had started, bad harvests became more frequent, urban and rural revolts increased, the Turks accelerated their pressure, the Great Schism tore apart Latin Christianity, and civil and foreign wars ravaged France. The Wars of Religion afflicted France and the Low Countries during the second half of the sixteenth century. Such is the panorama of Western Europe between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century.
Here are so many factors that, gathered together, create a climate of anxiety in western civilization between the time of the plague and the end of Wars of Religion. Yesterday, as today, fear of violence is objectified in images of violence and fear of death in macabre visions. When the presence of corpse killed by plagues, famine, and soldiers becomes obsessive, the guilt-instilling sermon with its nauseating imagery will find a new audience. Clearly, the chronology of the macabre belongs to the same global phenomenon that brings together the discourse of guilt, fear before accumulated misfortunes, and the omnipresence of violence.
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