How Death Influenced Everyday Life in the Middle Ages

Grab your local priest and your burial shroud, we're taking a trip to the Middle Ages to find out how people thought about and interacted with.... D E A T H.

SOURCES

Phillipe Aries. Western Attitudes Toward Death:
From the Middle Ages to the Present

Caitlin Doughty. From Here to Eternity: Traveling
the World to Find the Good Death.

Caitlin Doughty. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and
Other Lessons From the Crematory.

Paul Binski. Medieval Death.

John Aberth. From the Brink of the Apocalypse.

Pam J. Crabtree, Encyclopedia of Society and Culture
in the Medieval World Vol II.

J. Douglass Bremner. Traumatic Stress: Effects on the Brain.

University of Barcelona. Obras Completas del
Doctor D. Manuel Mila Y Fontanals.

Keith Perry. “Some of London's most popular picnic
spots on top of plague pits.” The Telegraph, October 28, 2014.

Clare Costley King’oo. MISERERE MEI: The Penitential Psalms
in Late Medieval and Early Modern England.

The Middle Ages: Everyday Life in Medieval
Europe. Jeffrey L. Singman


IMAGE/ and VIDEO CREDIT

Elizabeth Harper

Flip the Frog in Spooks, 1932

Ewan Munro

Livejournal user wendylady1

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Web Gallery of Art

[rhiannon.de.rohan-thomas]

Movie: * corpse rises * "brrrains"
Folklore: * corpse rises * "brrread"

[josephineward]

so the original momento mori translated pretty directly to YOLO, how vaguely horrifying, I love it

[AndreaGonzalez-wkpr]

I'm glad I'm Mexican. We're taught as young children to see death as a natural part of the cycle.

[shannonlee]

"children would go to see the body of a dead person, which is almost unheard of today"
Me at my grandpa's wake at 6 years old asking everyone why grandpa looks so droopy. Seriously, it's so wild when you see a dead body. They do not look asleep like in the movies. It is so eerie because even at that young age, I could tell that his spirit was gone.
That being said, I'm grateful I got to see him one more time before we buried him. It's extremely intimate.

[Orochimaruswife]

I'm so grateful that my great grandma died at home, in our family room, surrounded by people who loved her. I'm not planning on having children, so I dont know who will be with me when I die, but I hope I'm at least at home or that I die clutching a stuffed animal. I dont believe in an afterlife, but i want to die in comfort.

[sanriodeppressionthermos]

Also - transi tombs are great and we dont talk about them enough. My goal in life is to be rich enough to get myself a cushy ass mausoleum crypt in a pretty cemetary, have a transi tomb made for myself, then haunt the surrounding area. Goths and teenagers will come in and talk to me, people will leave candles and cool religious chachkis, it'll be great - it'll be a party.

[feefee]

India right now is a great example of a group of people who don’t get to experience invisible death. People dead on the streets, in their rivers, homes and hospitals. It’s terrible to see but we shouldn’t hide from it the articles and pictures some journalists are putting out there are hard to read but necessary for change, I follow Rana Ayyub specifically for my news, she’s fantastic.

[sanriodeppressionthermos]

80% horrible dust
10% worms
10% vile flesh
Going to put this on a pair of booty shorts.

[jasminfrey]

I live in a city in Switzerland that has been inhabited since the stone age and the romans made it a city. It became big and powerful in the middle ages.
There's a street called Totentanz, all of the city parks are former graveyards and sometimes when construction is going on and they dig up the group they find mass graves from varius local pandemics. I've seen them walking by, neatly stacked skeletons.

[juliahamilton]

My grandfather unexpectedly passed away two days ago in the middle of my university finals, and my family is the very closed-off type. I’ve been drilling through finals and work while trying to process it all in my own death-positive way and this video genuinely really helped me come to terms with a lot of my frustration. Excellent work, thank you. ❤️

[kari]

as a mexican, this was very insightful. mexican culture is very different in regards to this lol. death is never invisible here (tragically). it’s something that we live with every day, and we see it everywhere. traditionally, death is celebrated here. it’s not sad. of course, violence and our living conditions are sad, but death is not. i remember when my grandfather was told that his sister had passed, he sighed and said “well, that’s where we’re all going.” and we do believe that it’s not the end. some people request for their funerals to be parties. families build literal houses on graves so they can spend some days with their deceased. it’s a very distinctive part of mexican culture.

[kelath]

Not being able to visibly grieve for my mom, to wear clothes that showed that I was in mourning, to only have 3 days off of work to deal with the paperwork... I wanted to wear a veil for a year, to scream on the ground with my friends and family, to take weeks off to deal with how painful it was. But I couldn't.

[tararaw]

Can you speak on how this ties to the toxic way we as a society handle ideation and those who attempt/commit suicide? I'd be interested in that.

[EmilReiko]

My dad died in his home (from cancer), we family and friends kept watch over him in the time up until his death... We kept him company when he was awake and told stories about him when he slept. That was very helpful for everyone... When he died, i made a point of holding my hand on his forehead to have a memory of his warmth before he would cool down. We made a poin of not making his death invisible, and our home was a space for grief. I referenced the cattle die, kindred die stansas from the Havamal at the funeral speech and we kept his ashes in the Livingroom for a year, before depositing most of it in the ocean and some of it in the foundation of the farmhouse.

[flaviadias]

You're like an amalgamation of all of the content that i watch on YouTube: deathling content, fashion history and costume analysis, victorian culture and literature and lgbtq history. My mind is literally blown, I absolutely love you already 😭

[DeepWinter]

Years ago in Ireland, a plague caused people to appear dead but then they would awaken after a day or so. Becasue of this, we have a tradition of "The Wake" where the body of the deceased is kept in the house for a night (after embalming) and family and friends come to gather, celebrate the deceased's life, see the body and mourn together. It's very common here for family, friends and children to see the body. I guess it's a tradition that helps us process death and find comfort in eachother. There's normally food and drink (of both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic variety) and people get together to laugh, cry, play music and tell stories about the deceased.

[minette]

so memento mori was like the “yolo” of the middle ages

[uselesspotato_]

I find Americas' culture around death, honestly strange. Here in Ireland, or at least in my part of the country death is mourned a lot. We cry at the church, we have to wear formal black clothes and we have some sort of celebration(?) after a funeral, to fondly talk about the person who passed, and to partly, drink away our sorrows. We make our sadness known, funerals are a very big deal over here, we literally carry the coffin to the graveyard, the fact that in America death can be called "invisible" is wild to me. I'm happy that I was brought up in a community that doesn't shy away from death and acknowledges its existence.

[vrananikola]

Talking about death is the only way to become more comfortable with it 🖤

[hari_draws]

all these videos are SO interesting and well put together!!